of His soul and is satisfied. Though He builds all
Himself, yet He will let us have the joy of feeling that we are
labourers together with Him. 'Ye are God's building'; but the Builder
permits us to share in His task and in His triumph.

THE PRIEST OF THE WORLD AND KING OF MEN

'He shall build the Temple of the Lord ... and He shall be a Priest
upon His throne.'--ZECHARIAH vi. 13.

A handful of feeble exiles had come back from their Captivity. 'The holy
and beautiful house' where their fathers praised Him was burned with
fire. There was no king among them, but they still possessed a
representative of the priesthood, the other great office of divine
appointment. Their first care was to rear some poor copy of the Temple;
and the usual difficulties that attend reconstruction of any sort, and
dog every movement that rests upon religious enthusiasm, beset them
--strong enemies, and half-hearted friends, and personal jealousies
weakening still more their weak forces. In this time of anarchy, of toil
at a great task with inadequate resources, of despondency that was
rapidly fulfilling its own forebodings, the Prophet, who was the spring
of the whole movement, receives a word in season from the Lord. He is
bidden to take from some of the returned exiles the tribute-money which
they had brought, and having made of it golden and silver crowns--the
sign of kingship--to set them on the high priest's head, thus uniting
the sacerdotal and regal offices, which had always been jealously
separated in Israel. This singular action is explained, by the words
which he is commanded to speak, as being a symbolic prophecy of Him who
is 'the Branch'--the well-known name which older prophets had used for
the Messiah--indicating that in Him were the reality which the
priesthood shadowed, and the rule which was partly delegated to Israel's
king as well as the power which should rear the true temple of God among
men.

It is in accordance with the law of prophetic development from the
beginning, that the external circumstances of the nation at the moment
should supply the mould into which the promise is run. The earliest of
all Messianic predictions embraced only the existence of evil, as
represented by the serpent, and the conquest of it by one who was known
but as a son of Eve. When the history reaches the patriarchal stage,
wherein the family is the predominant conception, the prophecy
proportionately advances to the assurance, '