Zerubbabel finished his task, but its end was but a new beginning of an order of things of which he did not see the end.  There are no beginnings or endings, properly speaking, in human affairs, but all is one unbroken flow.  One man only has made a real new beginning, and that is Jesus Christ; and He only will really carry His work to its very last issues.  He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.  He is the Foundation of the true Temple, and He is also the Headstone of the corner, the foundation on which all rests, the apex to which all runs up.  ‘When He begins, He will also make an end.’

The completion of the work is to be the token that the ’angel who spake with me’ was God’s messenger.  We can know that before the fulfilment, but we cannot but know it after.  Better to be sure that the message is from God while yet the certainty is the result of faith, than to be sure of it afterwards, when the issue has shattered and shamed our doubts.

If we realise that God’s Spirit is the guarantee for the success of work done for God, we shall escape the vulgar error of measuring the importance of things by their size, as, no doubt, many of these builders were doing.  No one will help on the day of great things who despises that of small ones.  They say that the seeds of the ‘big trees’ in California are the smallest of all the conifers.  I do not vouch for the truth of the statement, but God’s work always begins with little seeds, as the history of the Church and of every good cause shows.  ’What do these feeble Jews?’ sneered the spectators of their poor little walls, painfully piled up, over which a fox could jump.  They did very little, but they were building the city of God, which has outlasted all the mockers.

Men might look with contempt on the humble beginning, but other eyes than theirs looked at it with other emotions.  The eyes which in the last vision were spoken of as directed on the foundation stone, gaze on the work with joy.  These are the seven eyes of ‘the Lord,’ which are ’the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth’ (Rev. v. 6).  The Spirit is here contemplated in the manifoldness of His operations rather than in the unity of His person.  Thus the closing assurance, which involves the success of the work, since God’s eyes rest on it with delight, comes round to the first declaration, ’Not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit.’  Note the strong contrast between ‘despise’ and ‘rejoice.’  What matter the scoffs of mockers, if God approves?  What are they but fools who look at that which moves His joy, and find in it only food for scorn?  What will become of their laughter at last?  If we try to get so near God as to see things with His eyes, we shall be saved from many a false estimate of what is great and what is small, and may have our own poor little doings invested with strange dignity, because He deigns to behold and bless them.

THE FOUNDER AND FINISHER OF THE TEMPLE