CHAPTER TWO (Verses 1-8). (Continued from page 257.)

There is nothing harder for man to do than to wait on God. The restlessness and activity of the flesh will not brook delay, but counts time spent in waiting and watching as so much time lost. It is blessedly otherwise with Habakkuk. As no reply is at once given to his eager, anxious questionings, he takes the attitude of the patient learner who remains silent till the Master is ready to make known His mind.

"I will stand (he says) upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved " (ver. i).

His words bespeak a very right and proper condition of soul. Perplexed and confused by the seeming enigma of God's ways, he owns he may require reproof, and takes his stand upon the watch-tower, above the mists of earth, and beyond the thoughts and doings of men, where he can wait quietly upon God, and look out to see what He will say unto him.

Such an attitude insures an answer. God will not leave His servant without instruction if there be a willing mind and an exercised conscience. As he maintains his lonely watch Jehovah answers, bidding him "Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it " (ver. 2). The oracle about to be revealed is not for the prophet alone, but through him for all men. It is a principle of vast importance, far-reaching in its application. Therefore let him take his stylus and set it forth plainly upon a writing-table, that he who reads it may run and proclaim the message far and near.

'' For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie:though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry " (ver. 3). What is to be declared is not for the then-present alone. It shall have fuller, wider application in a time of the Lord's appointment, which was then in the future. Forward to this day of blessing is the prophet directed to look.

We know from Heb. 10:37 that it is really Messiah's reign to which he is pointed. When the verse is quoted there, the pronouns are no longer in the neuter, but they become intensely personal. To Christ alone do they refer. " For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." When the apostle wrote, He had already come the first time, only to be rejected and crucified. But He is coming back again, coming in a "very, very little while," as the words might be rendered. When He returns He will put down all unrighteousness and bring forth judgment unto victory. Then shall that for which the prophet yearned have come to pass. The mystery of God's long toleration of evil shall be finished, and the reign of righteousness shall have come in. To this period of blessing Habakkuk is to look forward; and meantime, though of the man of self-will it can be said, "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him," yet, however wickedness may triumph, the man of God is given to know that "the just shall live by his faith" (ver. 4).

This is the oracle which Habakkuk had been bidden to write so plainly. This is the word that the reader should run to declare.
Such a reader and such a runner was the apostle Paul. This verse is the key-note of his instruction to both saint and sinner.

Having read the prophet's words with eyes anointed by the Holy Ghost, he runs the rest of his days to make them known to others.

Three times they occur in his epistles, and in each place they are used with a different object in view.

When, in the letter to the Romans, he is expounding the glorious doctrine of the righteousness of God as revealed in the gospel (chap. i :16, 17), he finds in these words the inspired answer to the question raised ages ago in the book of Job, "How then can man be justified with God ?" (chap. 9:2; 25:4), triumphantly he points to the revelation of the watch-tower, and exclaims, " The just shall live by faith "!

When Judaizing teachers sought to corrupt the assemblies of Galatia by turning them away from the simplicity that is in Christ, implying that while it is by faith we are saved, yet the law becomes the rule of life afterwards, he indignantly repudiates the false assertion by declaring that not only is faith the principle upon which they first begin with God, but "the just shall live by faith " (Gal. 3:11). Immediately he proceeds to show that " the law is not of faith," and therefore cannot be the Christian's standard. Christ, and Christ alone, is that. In Him we are a new creation. "And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God " (chap. 6:16).

Again, when, in the treatise to the Hebrews, he is tracing out the pilgrim's path through this world, from the cross to the glory, he shows most blessedly that only the entering into the power of the unseen can sustain the believer through a life of trial and conflict; and so once more he declares "The just shall live by faith" (Heb. 10:38). He adds, "But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him," which is the first half of the verse in the Septuagint rendering.

Thus the secret made known to Habakkuk so long ago becomes the watchword of Christianity, as at the Reformation it most properly became the battle-cry of Luther and his colleagues.

It was all-important that the lonely prophet look beyond and above what his natural eyes beheld, and thus would he endure "as seeing Him who is invisible."

So today. Much there is to dishearten and discourage. But dark though the times may be, the; man of God turns in faith to the Holy Scriptures, there to find the mind of the Lord. He acts on what is written, let others do as they may. His path may be a lonely one, and his heart be ofttimes sad; but with eager, glad anticipation he looks on to the day of manifestation, and seeks to walk now in the light of then.

Thus his eyes are opened to behold everything clearly, and he is able to estimate the pretensions of ungodly and unspiritual men at their true value. The Chaldean proudly boasted of being helped by his gods to overthrow the people of Jehovah. Habakkuk is shown that he is but an instrument used for present chastening, but soon to be recompensed double for all his sins. " Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell (Sheol), and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people" (ver. 5). Inflated, and self-important, like the false world-church of the day, Babylon would gather all into its fold, and stifle everything that is really of God. But the hour of doom is coming, when he shall be the sport of the people, and they shall tauntingly cry, "Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his ! " Suddenly his enemies shall arise, and he shall be spoiled because of his blood-guiltiness and his blasphemy against Jehovah (vers. 6-8).

Meantime, though the times be difficult, and waters of a full cup be wrung out to the little flock who seek to walk in obedience to God, the trusting soul looks up in holy confidence, knowing that the triumphing of the wicked is short. Thus "the just shall live by his faith."

In every age, when declension came in, those who would live for God have found themselves in a position similar to that of Habakkuk. Jeremiah, his companion-prophet, felt it most keenly. But grace sustained him through all. And it is well if, in our day, when the word of God is in large measure given up, and human expedients take the place of divine precepts, that we be found walking humbly in the path of faith, able to say, "All my springs are in Thee " ! H. A. I.

(To be continued.)