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by the warning voice of an Apostle, that "now it is high time to awake out of sleep;" that "the night is far spent,—the day is at hand;" that we must therefore, without delay, "cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light." Just so the Jewish Church was awakened by the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord;" the message of John the Baptist was the same as the Apostle's to us—"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He was to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just;" he was to be the Elias who was "to restore all things;" and accordingly the prophecy in which his mission was foretold, after vehement rebukes and warnings to the Jewish people, concluded with a solemn exhortation to them to "remember the law of God's servant Moses, which he commanded in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and the judgments." (Mal. iv.) In like manner St. Paul urges upon us the solemn Law which has been given to the Christian Church, the "new commandment," by which we shall be tried, when the Messenger of the Covenant comes again to His Temple. The Apostle has been giving many precepts of Christian practice, (ch. xii, xiii.,) but it seems as if he heard his Master's voice, "Behold, I come quickly," and so the more anxiously sounded in our ear the simple commandment which He left us, to "love one another." "He that loveth another, hath fulfilled the Law. Love is the fulfilling of the Law. And that, knowing the time; the day is at hand; let us therefore walk honestly as in the day, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." And now, having seen and felt what Christ will seek for, when He comes into His temple, we may profit duly by the awful lesson which we learn in the Gospel. The Jews had long been looking impatiently for the promised Deliverer; (Mal. ii. 17. iii. 1.) and when they saw Him riding into Jerusalem as the Prophet had foretold, they cried, saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!" Meanwhile, what were the thoughts of the "meek and lowly" King? His forerunner had been despised, the Law of Moses had not been "remembered," the hearts of the fathers were not turned to the children, nor the hearts of the children to the fathers;—and He was now coming to "smite with a curse."
