way of believing in a loving, all-knowing, and
all-powerful God, and are stock arguments of the unbeliever and
perplexities of humble faith. Never to have felt the force of the
difficulty is not so much the sign of steadfast faith as of scant
reflection. To yield to it, and still more, to let it drive us to cast
religion aside, is not merely folly, but sin. So thinks Malachi.

II. To the stout words of the doubters is opposed the conversation of
the godly. '_Then_ they that feared the Lord spake one with another,'
nourishing their faith by believing speech with like-minded. The more
the truths by which we believe are contradicted, the more should we
commune with fellow-believers. Attempts to rob us should make us hold
our treasure the faster. Bold avowal of the faith is especially called
for when many potent voices deny it. And, whoever does not hear, God
hears. Faithful words may seem lost, but they and every faithful act are
written in His remembrance and will be recompensed one day. If our names
and acts are written there, we may well be content to accept scanty
measures of earthly good, and not be 'envious of the foolish' in their
prosperity.

Malachi's answer to the doubters leaves all other considerations which
might remove the difficulty unmentioned, and fixes on the one, the
prophecy of a future which will show that it is not all the same whether
a man is good or bad. It was said of an English statesman that he called
a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old, and that
is what the Prophet does. Christianity has taught us many other ways of
meeting the doubters' difficulty, but the sheet anchor of faith in that
storm is the unconquerable assurance that a day comes when the
righteousness of providence will be vindicated, and the eternal
difference between good and evil manifested in the fates of men. The
Prophet is declaring what will be a fact one day, but he does not know
when. Probably he never asked himself whether 'the day of the Lord' was
near or far off, to dawn on earth or to lie beyond mortal life. But this
he knew--that God was righteous, and that sometime and somewhere
character would settle destiny, and even outwardly it would be good to
be good. He first declares this conviction in general terms, and then
passes on to a magnificent and terrible picture of that great day.

The promise, which lay at the foundation of Israel's national existence,
included the recognition of it as 'a