IV. THE FATHERS AND THE CHILDREN. 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. THIS MALACHI iv. 6. HIS is the last verse of the Old Testament. The voices which registered the laws, histories, poems and visions through which God broke in upon the struggle and march of the world before Christ, expired in these words. From Malachi to Christ prophetic lips were mute for four hundred years. It is strange that those who revere the Old Testament as the veritable oracles of God the Jews, for instance should maintain that it enunciates the perfect and final religion of mankind. On the contrary, its last words are the distinct and explicit acknowledgment of its incompleteness. The Old Testament closes with a suspended, half-uttered syllable. It lapses into silence with a promise: "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." These words, spoken of John the Baptist, are based upon a fact in life and a trait of human nature which it is well for us to study in their relation to the mission of the Forerunner of Christ. We all know his place and work in the line of the divine revelations of truth. He came to announce the approach of a new kingdom of God on earth, in which the moral and spiritual life of men was to catch sight of new truth, set itself to new ideals, march to new goals, build itself up into new structures of thought and social organization. He heralded the coming of One Who was to unhinge the gates of the world's history, and swing them on new pivots. This was the high errand of that strange prophet who proclaimed |