In the year B.C. 538, the Babylonian empire was conquered by Cyrus, the Persian.  There was scarcely any resistance on the part of the Babylonians.  And one of his first acts in the conquered city was to issue a proclamation that captives and exiles from other lands might return if they wished.  It was the chance for which the Jews for forty years had been hoping.  Now at last they could go back over that thousand-mile journey, up the Euphrates, across to the coast land, and down to Canaan.  But alas! too many years had passed.  Most of those who had come to Babylon as grown people and who remembered Canaan as home were now dead.  Most of the living Jews had grown up in Babylon and were comfortably settled there.  Yet some did return, and from time to time others kept returning.  These men who thought enough of their nation to go back to the home land and help it in its weakness and poverty almost always became leaders.

=The new temple.=—­It may have been a group of these leaders returned from Babylon who started the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem in the year B.C. 520, just sixty years after the old temple of Solomon was burned by the soldiers of Nebuchadrezzar.  There were two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, who did much to stir up the people to this work.  Some of their words are preserved in the Old Testament books which bear their names.  These men may have been returned exiles.  The new building was erected on the same old foundation and was finished in four years.  It was dedicated amidst the shouts of the people, while old men and women, who as children had seen the former temple before it was destroyed, wept for joy that at last a house had been rebuilt for Jehovah.  It seemed like the beginning of better times for their nation.

THE GREATEST OF THE PROPHETS OF HOPE

Yet the years that followed the building of the new temple were sad and disappointing.  The better days did not seem to come.  The walls of Jerusalem still lay in ruins.  The robber tribes still made their cruel raids.  The poor people suffered most, for they were oppressed and plundered by the richer men even of their own people.  “What has become of Jehovah?” men asked.  “Where are his promises to Abraham?  Why does he allow even his most faithful servants to be oppressed—­those who do not oppress others; who obey his just laws, and who are merciful to their brothers?”

=The great unknown.=—­About this time there came to the people of Israel a new message from one of the greatest prophets of all those whom God has raised up in any nation.  He is sometimes called the “Great Unknown,” because we to-day know nothing about his personal life, not even his name.  His great messages to his fellow Jews are found in the latter part of the book of Isaiah, beginning with chapter 40.  The first verse of this chapter strikes the keynote of comfort which runs through all the chapters to follow.