It becomes us to see to it that our religion is a religion of joy.  Our text is an authoritative command as well as a joyful exhortation, and we do not fairly represent the facts of Christian faith if we do not ‘rejoice in the Lord always.’  In all the sadness and troubles which necessarily accompany us, as they do all men, we ought by the effort of faith to set the Lord always before us that we be not moved.  The secret of stable and perpetual joy still lies where Zephaniah found it—­in the assurance that the Lord is with us, and in the vision of His love resting upon us, and rejoicing over us with singing.  If thus our love clasps His, and His joy finds its way into our hearts, it will remain with us that our ‘joy may be full’; and being guarded by Him whilst still there is fear of stumbling, He will set us at last ’before the presence of His glory without blemish in exceeding joy.

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HAGGAI

VAIN TOIL

’Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.’—­HAGGAI i. 6

A large emigration had taken place from the land of captivity to Jerusalem.  The great purpose which the returning exiles had in view was the rebuilding of the Temple, as the centre-point of the restored nation.  With true heroism, and much noble and unselfish enthusiasm, they began the work, postponing to it all considerations of personal convenience.  But the usual fate of all great national enthusiasms attended this.  Political difficulties, hard practical realities, came in the way, and the task was suspended for a time.  A handful remained true to the original ideas; the rest fell away.  Personal comfort, love of ease, the claims of domestic life, the greed of gain, all the ignoble motives which, like gravitation and friction, check such movements after the first impulse is exhausted, came into play.  Like every great cause, this one was launched amidst high hopes and honest zeal:  but by degrees the hopes faded and became nothing better than ‘godly imaginations.’  The exiles took to building their own ceiled houses, and let the House of God lie waste.  They began to think more of settling on the land than of building the Temple.  No doubt they said all the things with which men are wont to hide their selfishness under the mask of duty:—­Men must live; we must take care of ourselves; it is mad enthusiasm to build a temple when we have not homes; we mean to build it some time, but we are practical men and must provide for our wants first.’

This wisdom of theirs turned out folly, as it generally does.  There came, as we learn from this prophet, a season of distress, in which the harvest, for which they had sacrificed their duties and their calling, failed:  and in spite of their prudent diligence, or rather, just because of their misplaced and selfish attention to their worldly well-being, they were poor and hungry.  ’The heaven over them was stayed from dew, and the earth from her fruit.’  Haggai was sent by God to interpret the calamity, and to urge to the fulfilment of their earlier purposes.