It was then that the last of the prophets found an echo in the first of the Evangelists, and the new revelation began where the old ended. The words which Isaiah originally recorded, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight," and which announced the mission of all natural forces ruled by a divine purpose, were repeated by Malachi at the close of the Hebrew scriptures, and constituted the first command of the precursor of the true Messiah. These words were written B.C. 420, at the time when philosophy was enlightening the Greeks with moral wisdom, and Rome was advancing toward the grandeur of her republican greatness; and were resounding in the accents of a living tongue when Darius and Alexander met at Arbela, B.C. 331, and the East fell into the embrace of the West. While these and such like potsherds were contending with each other from first to last, the splendor and omnipotence of the Deity were revealed to the prophet Elias, as he journeyed forty days toward the holy mountain, and divinely illuminated his mortal eyes. There came a great and mighty wind, which made havoc of trees and rocks, but God was not in the wind. There came afterward a violent earthquake with fire, but he was in neither the earthquake nor in the fire. Then there arose the soft breath and gentle movement of tender air; in this was the immediate presence of God, and in awe and reverence the prophet veiled his face. Such was the origin and nature of Christianity, compared with the crash and cruelty of war it came to supersede. In the lifetime of Augustus, Christ was born; under Tiberius, the foundation of the Christian religion was laid; and during the reign of Nero the authentic record of that infinite mercy brightened the first fair page of Roman history.