ness over people who cared for it much, and a cause of perplexity, therefore, to men's trust in the Eternal,—though their conscience told them this, yet of their own shortcomings and perversities it told them louder still, and that their sins had in truth been enough to break their covenant with the Eternal a thousand times over, and to bring justly upon them all the miseries they suffered. To enable them to meet the terrible day, when the Eternal would avenge him of his enemies and make up his jewels, they themselves needed, they knew, the voice of a second Elijah, a change of the inner man, repentance.[1]
And then, with Malachi s testimony on its lips to the truth of Israel's ruling idea, Righteousness tendeth to life! died prophecy. Through some four hundred years the mind of Israel revolved those wonderful utterances, which, even now, on the ear of even those who only half understand them and who do not at all believe them, strike with such strange, incomparable power, the promises of prophecy. Through four hundred years, amid distress and humiliation, the Hebrew race pondered those magnificent assurances that 'the Eternal's arm is not shortened,' that 'righteousness shall be for ever,'[2] and that the future would prove this, even if the present did not. 'The Eternal fainteth not, neither is weary; he giveth power to the faint.[3] They that wait on the Eternal shall renew their strength; the redeemed of the Eternal shall return and come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head; they shall repair the old wastes, the desolations of many generations; and I, the Eternal, will make an everlasting covenant with them.[4] The Eternal shall be thine
