is here contemplated in the manifoldness of His operations rather
than in the unity of His person. Thus the closing assurance, which
involves the success of the work, since God's eyes rest on it with
delight, comes round to the first declaration, 'Not by might, not by
power, but by My Spirit.' Note the strong contrast between 'despise' and
'rejoice.' What matter the scoffs of mockers, if God approves? What are
they but fools who look at that which moves His joy, and find in it only
food for scorn? What will become of their laughter at last? If we try to
get so near God as to see things with His eyes, we shall be saved from
many a false estimate of what is great and what is small, and may have
our own poor little doings invested with strange dignity, because He
deigns to behold and bless them.

THE FOUNDER AND FINISHER OF THE TEMPLE

'The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house;
his hands shall also finish it.'--ZECHARIAH iv. 9.

I am afraid that Zerubbabel is very little more than a grotesque name to
most Bible-readers, so I may be allowed a word of explanation as to him
and as to the original force of my text. He was a prince of the blood
royal of Israel, and the civil leader of the first detachment of
returning exiles. With Joshua, the high priest, he came, at the head of
a little company, to Palestine, and there pathetically attempted, with
small resources, to build up some humble house that might represent the
vanished glories of Solomon's Temple. Political enmity on the part of
the surrounding tribes stopped the work for nearly twenty years. During
all that time, the hole in the ground, where the foundations had been
dug and a few courses of stones been laid, gaped desolate, a sad
reminder to the feeble band of the failure of their hopes. But with the
accession of a new Persian king, new energy sprang up, and new,
favourable circumstances developed themselves. The Prophet Zechariah
came to the front, although quite a young man, and became the mainspring
of the renewed activity in building the Temple. The words of my text
are, of course, in their plain, original meaning, the prophetic
assurance that the man, grown an old man by this time, who had been
honoured to take the first spadeful of soil out of the earth should be
the man 'to bring forth the headstone with shoutings of Grace, grace
unto it!'

But whilst that is the original application, and whilst the words open
to us a lit