There is in the nature of the case a very strong probability that the practice of inserting this expository term in the Chaldee versions was originally sanctioned by higher authority than any that we have notice of, after the time of Ezra, or that of Malachi, who is by some supposed to have been the same person as Ezra, and by others to have been contemporary. Of all people, the Jews were the least likely to receive and adopt such an exposition in relation to the Divine names, without the prescription and sanction of a prophet. The supposition of its having originated and been brought into use and favor at a later period is wholly improbable, whether considered in relation to the nature and tendency of the practice, or to the condition of the Jews down to the time of our Saviour. It is, in itself, far more probable that the devout Jews during the captivity in Babylon, with Ezekiel, who had visions of the Personal Word in the likeness of man, and who appears sometimes, if not often, to refer to Him by the Hebrew term _Dabar_, answering to the Chaldee _Memra_, Word, or Revealer; with Daniel, who had visions of the same delegated one, in the same form; and with Ezra and other of their disciples of the sacerdotal and prophetic order, held the same faith as the prophets and patriarchs of earlier times, concerning the person, agency, and manifestations of the Messiah; recognized him under the same designations, and, on their return to Jerusalem, adopted, under the guidance of Ezra, an additional title, rendered necessary to the common people by their disuse of Hebrew, and their use of another language, which was thenceforth to be their vulgar tongue. And if not, from the circumstances of the case, to be assumed as needing no confirmation, it is at least probable in the highest degree that the Great Revealer would in such a way provide for the maintenance and perpetuity of a church of true worshippers, holding the doctrines and the faith of the patriarchs and prophets concerning his person, and the manifestations and titles by which he was known to them; a succession of devout, instructed, and faithful worshippers, who, at whatever time his advent might take place, would, on his appearance in a form answering to that in which Abraham and others saw him, be ready and waiting, like Simeon and Anna, to see and to proclaim their recognition of him.