'Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for
ever? 6. But My words and My statutes, which I commanded My
servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your
fathers?'-Zechariah i. 5, 6.
Zechariah was the Prophet of the Restoration. Some sixteen years before
this date a feeble band of exiles had returned from Babylon, with high
hopes of rebuilding the ruined Temple. But their designs had been
thwarted, and for long years the foundations stood unbuilded upon. The
delay had shattered their hopes and flattened their enthusiasm; and
when, with the advent of a new Persian king, a brighter day dawned, the
little band was almost too dispirited to avail itself of it. At that
crisis, two prophets 'blew soul-animating strains,' and as the narrative
says elsewhere, 'the work prospered through the prophesying of Haggai
and Zechariah.'
My text comes from the first of Zechariah's prophecies. In it he lays
the foundation for all that he has subsequently to say. He points to
the past, and summons up the august figures of the great pre-Exilic
prophets, and reminds his contemporaries that the words which they spoke
had been verified in the experience of past generations. He puts himself
in line with these, his mighty predecessors, and declares that, though
the hearers and the speakers of that prophetic word had glided away into
the vast unknown, the word remained, lived still, and on his lips
demanded the same obedience as it had vainly demanded from the
generation that was past.
It has sometimes been supposed that of the two questions in my text the
first is the Prophet's--'Your fathers, where are they?' and that the
second is the retort of the people--'The prophets, do they live for
ever?' 'It is true that our fathers are gone, but what about the
prophets that you are talking of? Are they any better off? Are they not
dead, too?' But though the separation of the words into dialogue gives
vivacity, it is wholly unnecessary. And it seems to me that Zechariah's
appeal is all the more impressive if we suppose that he here gathers the
mortal hearers and speakers of the immortal word into one class, and
sets over against them the Eternal Word, which lives to-day as it did
then, and has new lessons for a new generation. So it is from that point
of view that I wish to look at these words now, and try to gather from
them some of the solemn, and, as it seems to me, striking lessons which
they inculcate. I follow with absolute simplicity the Prophet's
thoughts.