Part 328 (1/2)

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MALACHI

(Malachi wrote after the Exile. The temple, whose building Haggai had urged, was erected; but the people were already tired of its service.

”What a weariness it is!” they said. They brought worthless animals for sacrifice, and would do nothing in the temple except for pay.

Malachi denounced their selfishness, but said that if they would turn to G.o.d, he would still be ready to bless them. Malachi's writing is less poetical in its style than most of the prophets, but he speaks in a very plain, straightforward fas.h.i.+on.)

”Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in, behold, he cometh,”

saith the Lord of hosts. ”But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver; and they shall offer unto the Lord offerings in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in ancient years. And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against perjurers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me,” saith the Lord of hosts. ”For I the Lord change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

”From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside {409} from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you,” saith the Lord of hosts. ”But ye say 'How then shall we return?' Will a man rob G.o.d? yet ye rob me. But ye say, 'Wherein have we robbed thee?' In t.i.thes and offerings. Ye are cursed with the curse; for ye rob me, even this whole nation. Bring ye the whole t.i.the into the storehouse, that there may be food in mine house, and prove me now herewith,” saith the Lord of hosts, ”if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field,” saith the Lord of hosts.

”And all nations shall call you happy: for ye shall be a delightsome land,” saith the Lord of hosts.

”Your words have been stout against me,” saith the Lord. ”Yet ye say, 'Wherein have we spoken against thee?' Ye have said, 'It is vain to serve G.o.d: and what profit is it that we have kept his charge, and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are built up; yea, they tempt G.o.d, and are delivered.'”

Then they that feared the Lord spake one with another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.

And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day that I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

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SELECTIONS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT

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These selections from the Epistles are not in poetic form, but they are given here because they are, in a way, the culmination of the lofty and inspiring thought of the Bible. Not only do they treat of the great themes of life and death, but they treat of them in the most solemn and impressive manner. They are like organ music, not pleasing the ear by the delicacy of rhythm, not having the rhyme and melody of lyric verse, but moving with grandeur and sublimity of thought in the higher ranges of being. Thus they form the fitting climax for all the wealth of song and story which precedes them.

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THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND SERVICE

PAUL'S EPISTLES

The letters of a man tell us more about him than any books he could write. Now Paul never wrote any books; but he wrote many letters. Some were to the churches he had founded; some to his fellow workers. Some of these letters were preserved and are in the Bible under the name of Epistles. Even in these letters others are mentioned which are not preserved. We have two letters to the Corinthian Church, but in them Paul mentions other letters which he wrote to that church. In the letter to the Colossian Church, he mentions a letter to the church at Laodicea, a city near to Colosse. It is fair to suppose that many other letters have also been lost. Probably the best and most important of his letters were preserved. These letters are the outcome of long thought. They were on subjects that Paul had considered for many years. The writing of the letters, however, was often the work of a short time, and their expression is not smooth and polished and carefully wrought. Sometimes, as in the case of Galatians, the letter was written because of a situation which he felt demanded immediate attention. Sometimes, as in the case of I Corinthians, he replied to letters of questions that had been sent to him from the churches.

Sometimes, as in the case of Philippians, the letter was called out in thanks for the kindness of the church. The most important letter, Romans, was written to prepare the church, which he had never visited, for his expected coming to them. In every case--it is always true of letters--the occasion of the letter largely determines its style and tone, but in all cases the spontaneity of the letter-writer is seen.

Paul dictated or wrote his letters hurriedly. He cared less for style than for thought. Vigor and force mark his writing. He did not try to imitate the graces of the rhetorician. He did not {414} always follow out a topic to the end. He sometimes began a sentence in one way and finished it in another. He sometimes began a sentence, and, going off to another topic, never finished it at all. He is not always easy reading. But these evidences of a free, spontaneous writing are only occasional. The greater part of the letters of Paul are very clear, simple, forceful statements of what he wishes to say.

Paul was not merely a Jew. He was a citizen of the great world of the Roman empire. He had been brought up in a city where Greek culture and civilization were very flouris.h.i.+ng. His travels brought him into contact with all the varying forms of Greek life. He visited Athens.

He made long stays in Corinth, where the commerce of the world crowded the docks, and sailors and merchants from all parts of the great empire were to be met in the streets. He lived for nearly three years in the great city of Ephesus, where the courtiers of the governor of the province, fresh from all the latest fas.h.i.+ons of Rome, jostled the priests of the great temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Before the end of his life he was a prisoner in Rome itself, the one city into which all the world poured its representatives, where the fair-haired men from distant Britain in the North met the dusky Ethiopian from Africa, and the Spaniard from the Atlantic coast walked the street with the Scythian from the distant East. Paul the prisoner lived for two whole years in his own hired house, and had permission to receive all who came to him. During this time, and for two years of previous imprisonment, he was in daily contact with the Roman soldiery. This cosmopolitan man, with his wide experience of many phases of Roman and Greek life, has dropped here and there in his writings many pictures from the civilization with which he was in touch. He used it to ill.u.s.trate the Christian life.

The athlete in the theater gave him a picture of the earnest, eager strife of the Christian. The soldier with his clanging armor suggested to him the armor by which a Christian might meet his foes. The temples that studded every great town taught him how the Christian was himself the temple of the living G.o.d. Thus it happens that the most lasting memorial, the most widely read allusions, to the great civilization of Greece and Rome come from this wandering preacher of an obscure faith who at last {415} was a despised prisoner at Rome. How it would have astonished the crowds at Ephesus who shouted, ”Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” to be told that their great temple and their G.o.ddess herself would be known to most people in the world only because of their connection with the life of this man Paul whom they wanted to put out of the way! It was a wonderful civilization in the midst of which Paul lived, and a very bustling, active, self-important world through which he moved, but the most permanent things in it were by no means the things that seemed to most people of the time to be the greatest.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of G.o.d, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to G.o.d, which is your reasonable service. And be not fas.h.i.+oned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of G.o.d.