kness, but the beacon burns on.

The next point to note is the clear prophecy of a forerunner. 'My
messenger' is to come, and to 'prepare the way before Me.' Isaiah had
heard a voice calling, 'Prepare the way of the Lord,' and Malachi quotes
his words, and ascribes the same office to the 'messenger.' In the last
verses of his prophecy he calls this messenger 'Elijah the prophet.'
Here, then, we have a remarkable instance of a historical detail set
forth in prophecy. The coming of the Lord is to be immediately preceded
by the appearance of a prophet, whose function is to effect a moral and
religious reformation, which shall prepare a path for Him. This is no
vague ideal, but definite announcement of a definite fact, to be
realised in a historical personality. How came this half-anonymous Jew,
four hundred years beforehand, to hit upon the fact that the next
prophet in Israel would herald the immediate coming of the Lord? There
ought to be but one answer possible.

Another point to note is the peculiar relation between Jehovah and Him
who comes. Emphatically and broadly it is declared that Jehovah Himself
'shall suddenly come to His temple'; and then the prophecy immediately
passes on to speak of the coming of 'the Messenger of the covenant,'
and dwells for a time exclusively on his work of purifying; and then
again it glides, without conscious breach of continuity or mark of
transition, into, 'And _I_ will come near to you in judgment.' A
mysterious relationship of oneness and yet distinctness is here
shadowed, of which the solution is only found in the Christian truth
that the Word, which was Grod, and was in the beginning with God, became
flesh, and that in Him Jehovah in very deed tabernacled among men. The
expression 'the Messenger (or Angel) of the covenant' is connected with
the remarkable representations in other parts of the Old Testament, of
'the Angel of Jehovah,' in whom many commentators recognise a
pre-incarnate manifestation of the eternal Word. That 'Angel' had
redeemed Israel from Egypt, had led them through the desert, had been
the 'Captain of the Lord's host.' The name of Jehovah was 'in Him.' He
it is whose coming is here prophesied, and in His coming Jehovah comes
to His temple.

We next note the aspect of the coming which is prominent here. Not the
kingly, nor the redemptive, but the judicial, is uppermost. With keen
irony the Prophet contrasts the professed eagerness of the people for
the appeara