qualled pathos, has come down to us. "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song, and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" How, indeed, sing it, save as we may conceive the fiends singing in hell the songs of heaven, the words the same, the melodies the same, but woe for the accompaniments and for the hearts? How sing here the songs of Judah's vintage, and Judah's ingathering, and Judah's marriage feasts? Surely, it is the most delicate and infernal of insults for a spoiler to demand mirth instead of labor, a song instead of patient sorrow! We, they reply, can sing at your bidding no songs of Zion, but we can testify our love to her by our tears. And, trickling through the hand of the taskmaster, and running down three thousand years, has one of these tears come to us, and we call it the 137th Psalm.

From this state of degradation and woe, Judah had been raised. She had been brought back in circumstances mournfully different, indeed, from the high day when, coming out of Egypt, she turned, and encamping between Pihahiroth and the sea, felt that the extremity of the danger was the first edge of the rising deliverance, and when she went forth by her armies with a mighty power and a stretched out arm. Now she must kneel, and have the bandage of her slavery taken off by human hands, and be led tamely out into her own land, under the banners of a stranger. Even after she had reached and commenced the operation of building the Temple, numerous difficulties, arising partly from the opposition of surrounding tribes, and partly from the indifference of the people themselves, were presented. For fourteen or fifteen years the enterprise was abandoned, and it is on an unfinished Temple that we see Haggai first appearing to stir up his slothful, and to comfort his desponding, countrymen.

We know only of this prophet, that he was born during the captivity; that he had returned with Zerubbabel, and flourished under the reign of Darius Hystaspes.

The right of Haggai to the title poet has been denied, on account of his comparatively tame and prosaic style; but we must remember the distinction we have indicated between

poetic statement and poetic song. He has little of the latter, but much of the former. There is nothing in the Hebrew tongue calculated more to rouse the blood, than these simple words of his "Who is there left among you that saw this house in its former glory? And what do ye see it now? Is it not as nothing? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith Jehovah. And be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest. And be strong, O all ye people of the land, saith Jehovah. And work, for I am with you, saith Jehovah, Lord of Hosts. For thus saith Johovah of Hosts, yet once more, it is a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory, saith Jehovah of Hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts. Greater shall be the glory of this latter house than of the former, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts. And in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts." This, if prose, is the prose of a pyramid, or an Olympus, compared with the flowery exuberance of Enna or Tempe. It is the bareness of grandeur. It is one of the moors of heaven.

The building of the second Temple had been resigned in despair, partly because it was impossible to supply some of the principal ornaments of the ancient edifice, such as the Urim and Thummim, the ark containing the two tables of the law, the pot of manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the cloud, or Schekinah, that covered the mercy-seat, and was the symbol of the divine glory.. It became then the part of Haggai, in his work of encouragement and revival, to point out the advent of one object to the new Temple, which should supply the lack of all. This was to be the living cloud—the personal Schekinah-the Christ promised to the fathers. And he, when he came, was not only to glorify the mercyseat, and brighten the turban of the high priest as he went in to pray, but to pour a radiance over the whole world, of which he had been the desire. Did the Temple shake when the cloud of glory entered it in Solomon's day? The Earth was to respond to the vibration, when the Son of Man came to his Father's house. 66 Tidings of the new Schekinah" may, therefore, be the proper title for Haggai's prophecy; and while the old men wept when they contrasted the present with the former Temple, he rejoiced, because he saw in the absence of

those external glories, in the setting of those elder stars, the approaching presence of a spiritual splendor-the rising of the last great luminary of the Church.

It was not needful that the herald of an event (comparatively) so near should be dressed in all the insignia of his office. These had been necessary once to attract attention, and secure respect, but now the forerunner was merely, like Elijah, "to gird up his loins, and run before" the chariot which was at hand. And thus we account for the comparative bareness of style appertaining to the prophet Haggai. His associate in office was

ZECHARIAH.

"In

He was the "Son of Barachiah, the son of Iddo." Ezra," says Dr. Eadie, "he is styled simply the son of Iddo, most probably because his father, Barachiah, had died in early manhood, and his genealogy, in accordance with Jewish custom, is traced at once to his grandfather, Iddo, who would be better known. He appears to have been a descendant of Levi, and thus entitled to exercise the priestly, as he did the prophetic, office. He entered upon his prophetic duties in the 8th month of the second year of Darius, about 520, A.C. Jewish tradition relates that the prophet died in his native country, after "a life prolonged to many days," and was buried by the side of Haggai, his associate.

The object of Zechariah is precisely that of Haggai"writ large." It is to rouse an indolent, to encourage a desponding, and to abash a backsliding people. This he does, if not with greater energy, yet by bolder types, and through the force of broader glimpses into the future, than his coadjutor.

In all prophetical Scripture, we find lofty symbols rushing down, as if impatient of their elevation, into warm practical application, like high white clouds dissolving in rain. This we noticed in Ezekiel. But in Zechariah it is more remarkable. The red horses, the four horns, the stone with seven eyes, the candlestick of gold, the olive-trees, the flying roll, the ephah and the talent of lead, the four chariots from between the two mountains, the staves Beauty and Bands, the cup of trembling, the burdensome stone, aud the fountain of purification, are not mere brilliant dreams, " for ever

flushing round a summer's sky," but are closely connected with the main purposes of the prophecy. It is Haggai's argument plead from the clouds.

The poet who extracts his own thought and imagery from ordinary scenery, is worthy of his name. But he is the truest maker, who forms a scenery and world of his own. This has Zechariah done. The wildest of the "Arabian Nights" contains no descriptions so unearthly as those in his prophecy. Those mountains, what and where are they? Those chariots, whence come, and whither go they? Those four horns, who has raised? Those red horses, what has dyed them? But strangest and most terrible is the "flying roll," "passing like night from land to land"-having "strange power of speech," stranger power of silence-a judgment, verily, that doth not linger, a damnation that doth not slumber. How powerfully does this represent law as a swift executioner, winged, and ever ready to follow the trail of crime, at once with accusation, sentence, and punishment!

From the height of contempt, Zechariah has reached for the then state of his country-he has but a few steps to rise to a panoramic prospect of the future, even of its most distant points and pinnacles. The long day of Christianity itself looks dim in the splendors of its evening; the second advent eclipses the first. The "day of the Lord" surmounts all intermediate objects; and the "last battle" brings his prophecy to a resplendent close.

One stray passage must be noticed, from its connection with the New Testament, and the tragedy of the Cross. It is that where the Lord of Hosts cries out, in his impatience and anger, "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." How startling the haste of this exclamation! 66 Haste, for the victim has been bound to the altar. Haste, for the harps in heaven are silent till the day of atonement has passed away. Haste, for hell is dumb in the agony of its dark anticipations. Haste, for the eyes of the universe have been fixed upon the spot; all things are ready; yea, the sackcloth of the sun has been woven, and ere that darkness pass away, the sweat of an infinite agony must have been expended, and the blood of an infinite atonement must have been shed."

Did not the great victim bear this în view on the last

night of his life, when, looking up to the darkened heaven and the unsheathed sword, he sounded himself the signal for the blow, as he cried, "It is written, smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered?"

This wondrous cry was obeyed. The sword awoke against the man, God's fellow. It was "bathed in heaven." And now no more is the cry raised, " Awake, O sword." Against the people of God it is sheathed for ever. Yet shall this

dread moment never be forgotten. For even as in the glad valleys of earth, when sunshine is resting on the landscape, the sound of thunder heard remote only enhances the sense of security, and deepens the feeling of repose, so, in the climes of heaven's-day, shall the memory of that hour so dark, and that cry so fearful, be to the souls of the ransomed a joy for ever.

MALACHI.

The word means 66 my angel or messenger." Hence some have contended that there was no such person as Malachi, but that Ezra was the author of the book. Origen even maintains that the author was an incarnate angel. The general opinion, however, is, that he was a real personage, who flourished about four hundred years before Christ. It was meet that the ancient dispensation should close amid such cloudy uncertainties. It had been all along the "religion of the veil." There was a veil, verily, upon more than the face of Moses. Every thing from Sinai-its centre, down to the least bell or pomegranate-wore a veil. Over Malachi's face, form, and fortunes, it hangs dark and impenetrable. A masked actor, his tread and his voice are thunder. The last pages of the Old Testament seem to stir as in a furious wind, and the word curse, echoing down to the very roots of Calvary, closes the record.

On Malachi's prophecy, there is seen mirrored, in awful clearness, in fiery red, the coming of Christ, and of his forerunner, the Baptist. "I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." Last of a long and noble line-fated to have no follower for four hundred years—a certain melancholy bedims this prophet's strains. His language is bare and bald, compared with that of some of the others, although this seems to spring