serts that he was Ezra; but the statement has no confirmation, and if
it had been correct, we should not have expected that such an author
would have been anonymous. This dim figure, then, is the last of the
mighty line of prophets, and gives strong utterance to the 'hope of
Israel'! One clear voice, coming from we scarcely know whose lips,
proclaims for the last time, 'He comes! He comes!' and then all is
silence for four hundred years. Modern critics, indeed, hold that the
bulk of the Psalter is of later date; but that contention has much to do
before it can be regarded as established.

The first point worthy of notice in this passage, then, is the
concentration, in this last prophetic utterance, of that element of
forward-looking expectancy which marked all the earlier revelation. From
the beginning, the selectest spirits in Israel had set their faces and
pointed their fingers to a great future, which gathered distinctness as
the ages rolled, and culminated in the King from David's line, of whom
many psalms sung, and in the suffering Servant of the Lord, who shines
out from the pages of the second part of Isaiah's prophecy. This
Messianic hope runs through all the Old Testament, like a broadening
river. 'They that went before cried, Hosanna! Blessed is He that
cometh.'

That hope gives unity to the Old Testament, whatever criticism may have
to teach about the process of its production. The most important thing
about the book is that one purpose informs it all; and the student who
misses the truth that 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy'
has a less accurate conception of the meaning and inter-relations of the
Old Testament than the unlearned who has accepted that great truth. We
should be willing to learn all that modern scholarship has to teach
about the course of revelation. But we should take care that the new
knowledge does not darken the old certainty that the prophets 'testified
beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and of the glory that should
follow,' Here, at the very end, stands Malachi, reiterating the
assurance which had come down through the centuries. The prophets, as it
were, had lit a beacon which flamed through the darkness. Hand after
hand had flung new fuel on it when it burned low. It had lighted up many
a stormy night of exile and distress. Now we can dimly see one more, the
last of his order, casting his brand on the fire, which leaps up again;
and then he too passes into the dar