the Lord's appearing, and that there may be henceforth laid up for you "a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give you at that day.”* * 2 Tim. iv. 8. LECTURE II. ELIJAH'S COMING. BY THE REV. A. M'CAUL, D.D., PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, AND PREBENDARY MALACHI IV. 5, 6. "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." FROM Malachi until the birth of John the Baptist, the Jewish people was left without any supernatural communication from the Almighty. The canon of the Old Testament was closed, and the succession of prophets ceased. The four centuries, however, that intervened were not productive of that species of unbelief which shuts God out of his own world, and binds even the Almighty to the immutable laws of cause and effect. The Sadducees were but a minority. The Jews generally believed in the possibility of immediate Divine interposition, and lived in hope of its exercise, and their hope was not disappointed. When the fulness of the time was come, the prophet like unto Moses appeared, and the presence of God was manifested by miracle. The Christian Church has now been left a much longer time without a messenger immediately commissioned by the Most High, and provided with supernatural credentials. Her faith has wavered still more than that of the Jews. The absence of miracle has led a numerous and learned class of teachers of the Christian Church to deny miracle and revelation altogether, and to make any implication of the supernatural an infallible sign of the fabulous. Others, who do not advance to the same degree of open unbelief, manifest, nevertheless, a strong bias towards the exclusion of Divine interposition, and think that the world is now left to the ministry of the word, and the ordinary operations of the Spirit,-that these are sufficient to effect the moral regeneration of the human race, and that nothing more is to be expected until the Son of Man appear for the final dissolution of this terrestrial state. To others it seems strange that the more glorious dispensation should be left without the privileges vouchsafed to the ministration of death. They look upon direct intercourse with heaven, and the presence of inspired men as a blessing. They do not see that the ministry of the Gospel is working anything like universal conversion. They perceive that gross idolatry has still a wide dominion; that Infidelity makes fearful advances amongst the heathen and the Mahometan, the Jews, and the professed disciples of Christ. They fear the approach of perilous times; they anticipate the revelations, miracles, and persecutions of Antichrist; they think when the devil makes the last great manifestation of a power beyond the laws of nature, that a similar and greater display of the Divine omnipotence will be absolutely necessary. They remember that hitherto, when God hath interposed for mercy or judgment, as at the deluge, the destruction of Sodom, the giving of the law, the first advent of Christ, and the destruction of Jerusalem, he has given notice of his approach to warn the impenitent, or prepare his waiting people; and are led, by analogy, to expect that before the most wonderful of all Divine revelations, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, some similar note of preparation shall be sounded, and warning given to the world. This expectation seems confirmed by the text; it says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." The first question here must be, Of whom does the prophet speak? of Elijah, or of some other person? For many centuries it was the unanimous belief of the Jewish nation and of the Christian Church, that the Tishbite who had protested against the idolatries of Jezebel was to return before the great and terrible day of the Lord, and prepare the world for Christ's second advent. In Justin Martyr's dialogue with Trypho, we find that the Jew says, "Because Elias is not yet come, we do not believe that Jesus is the Christ." To this Justin Martyr replied, "Here I asked him whether the Prophet Malachi did not say that 'Elias was to come before the great and dreadful day of the Lord?' (Mal. iv. 5.) "Yes,' answered he. 'If the Scripture, then, forces you to own that the prophecies mentioned a twofold coming of Christ; in one of which he was to appear in the form of a suffering, inglorious, mean, and despicable creature; and in the other was to come encircled with glory, |