But the interest of this change of style must not prevent us from appreciating the genuine prophetic spirit of our book. Far more fully than, for instance, that of Haggai, to the style of which its practical simplicity is so akin, it enumerates the prophetic principles: the everlasting Love of Jehovah for Israel, the Fatherhood of Jehovah and His Holiness, His ancient Ideals for Priesthood and People, the need of a Repentance proved by deeds, the consequent Promise of Prosperity, the Day of the Lord, and Judgment between the evil and the righteous. Upon the last of these the book affords a striking proof of the delinquency of the people during the last half-century, and in connection with it the prophet introduces certain novel features. To Haggai and Zechariah the great Tribulation had closed with the Exile and the rebuilding of the Temple: Israel stood on the margin of the Messianic age. But the Book of “Malachi” proclaims the need of another judgment as emphatically as the older prophets had predicted the Babylonian doom. “Malachi” repeats their name for it, _the great and terrible Day of Jehovah_. But he does not foresee it, as they did, in the shape of a historical process. His description of it is pure Apocalypse—_the fire of the smelter and the fuller’s acid: the day that burns like a furnace_, when all wickedness is as stubble, and all evil men are devoured, but to the righteous _the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings_, and they shall tread the wicked under foot.[999] To this the prophet adds a novel promise. God is so much the God of love,[1000] that before the Day comes He will give His people an opportunity of conversion. He will send them Elijah the prophet to change their hearts, that He may be prevented from striking the land with His Ban. In one other point the book is original, and that is in its attitude towards the heathen. Among the heathen, it boldly says, Jehovah is held in higher reverence than among His own people.[1001] In such a statement we can hardly fail to feel the influence upon Israel of their contact, often close and personal, with their wise and mild tyrants the Persians. We may emphasise the verse as the first note of that recognition of the real religiousness of the heathen, which we shall find swelling to such fulness and tenderness in the Book of Jonah. Such are in brief the style and the principles of the Book of “Malachi,” whose separate prophecies we may now proceed to take up in detail. FOOTNOTES: [987] Ezra iv. 6-23.