4oo THE CITY WITHOUT WALLS
hand drew for our fathers, and to raise again the bulwarks behind which they sufficiently sheltered His shrine. Whether these ancient and sacred defences be dogmas or institutions, we have no right, God tells us, to cramp behind them His powers for the future. And the great men whom He raises to remind us of this, and to prevent by their ministry the timid measurements of the zealous but servile spirits who would confine everything to the exact letter of ancient Scripture — are they any less His angels to us than those ministering spirits whom Zechariah beheld prevent- ing the narrow measures of the poor apprentice of his dream ? x
3. But while Zechariah, like a wise teacher, was intensely interested in the plans of the builders, he at the same time tried to fire their imagination by emphasizing the greatness of Israel's calling. As the people of Jehovah, the nation was destined to hand on to future ages, not a political economy, but a religion. She was summoned to hold aloft the torch of revelation, and thus fulfil the part of a great missionary people. Her ideal was not political, but religious. She was not an empire, but a Church.
God's purpose was wider than men imagined; it could no longer be contained within the boundaries which sufficed for earlier needs; God's city must be built without walls. There must be ample room for expansion, space for more citizens, for a wider franchise, for a bolder confidence in the future. And lest any man should be afraid to welcome this larger view, Jehovah Himself promised the defence of His encircling guard and the illumination of His abiding presence. Here, in this vision of Zechariah, we have presented to us in vivid contrast the rival elements in the faith of Israel — the temper which was always in favour of setting up stone walls and living within them, and the temper which refused to be confined, and looked beyond and trusted God. These elements run deep in human nature ; they need not be rivals, if we can once learn how to be both loyal to the past and open-minded towards the future, and how to maintain the material fabric, the outward institutions, for spiritual ends.
Tj You cannot measure anything that God builds. You cannot measure the Church, the Church of Christ. It is easy to find out how many nominal Christians there are. Government tables will do that for you, or a little map painted in black here and in red
1 G. A. Smith, The Book of The Twelve Prophets, ii. 290.
i ZECHARIAH n. 4, 5 401
there and in gold there, and you think you have got it. God does not make nominal Christians. He has nothing to do with that work, so you can measure and count them. But the Church of Christ — you have to find out how much self-forgetting, Christlikc fervour, generosity, enthusiasm, Christlike patience, zeal, there are ; these give you the extent of the Saviour's kingdom, and you cannot measure them. You might as well attempt to tabulate a martyr's zeal, or keep a ledger account of a mother's love. Two or three hundred years ago a little ship crossed the Atlantic, the Mayflower. People would not venture to cross the Atlantic in such a tub to-day. You could have swung it up on the after-deck of one of the latest Cunard steamers without having appreciably added to the freight. That little ship carried in its hold a company of men and women who had left home and fatherland for Jesus' name, carried moral forces enough to lay the founda- tion of the mightiest republic the world has ever seen. Nobody could measure that ; it was God's building.1
4. The dream of Zechariah never came to pass. Jerusalem was rebuilt, but she never attained her former greatness and glory. Her after-history was a succession of disasters and humiliations. Ere many generations elapsed, she was conquered by the Greeks ; then she fell under the Eoman dominion ; and finally she was devastated by the army of Titus and her citizens were dispersed over the face of the earth.
In the century after Zechariah, we find Ezra organizing the Jewish community on the most exclusive principles, and Nehemiah setting to work at once to repair the walls of Jerusalem, and to collect the people within them for protection. So far from any thought of welcome for converted Gentiles, the main object of the religious leaders was to safeguard the com- munity from heathen surroundings. Consolidation rather than expansion was the supreme necessity, if the Jewish faith and nation were to survive at all. In the centuries which followed, as the Persians succeeded to the Babylonians, and the Persians again gave place to the successors of Alexander, and Syria and Egypt fell under changing powers, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile to the struggling little nation in Jerusalem — during this period the main religious tendencies were making for the preserva- tion rather than the enlargement of the distinctive faith and 1 J. G. Greenhough, The Cross in Modern Lift, 158. JBR.-MAL. — 26
4o2 THE CITY WITHOUT WALLS
practice of Judaism. It was the period when the faithful turned to the past for encouragement and idealized their ancient history, and studied the writings of the prophets, annotated and added to them, in a wistful effort to adjust their belief in God's particular providence to the non-fulfilment of His promise.