precious living germ that would presently spring up and bear fruit, or as that which
would kindle into light and chase all darkness. But among themselves, then and many
times afterwards, in secret converse, they questioned what the rising again from the
dead should mean.3
2. St. Mark ix. 10.
3. St. Mark ix. 10.
There was another question, and it they might ask of Jesus, since it concerned not the
mysteries of the future, but the lessons of the past. Thinking of that vision, of the
appearance of Elijah and of his speaking of the Death of the Messiah, why did the
Scribes say that Elijah should first come - and, as was the universal teaching, for the
purpose of restoring all things? If, as they had seen, Elijah had come, but only for a brief
season, not to abide, along with Moses, as they had fondly wished when they proposed
to rear them booths; if he had come not to the people but to Christ, in view of only them
three - and they were not even to tell of it; and, if it had been, not to prepare for a
spiritual restoration, but to speak of what implied the opposite: the Rejection and violent
Death of the Messiah - then, were the Scribes right in their teaching, and what was its
real meaning? The question afforded the opportunity of presenting to the disciples not
only a solution of their difficulties, but anothe r insight into the necessity of His Rejection
and Death. They had failed to distinguish between the coming of Elijah and its
alternative sequence. Truly 'Elias cometh first' - and Elijah had 'come already' in the
person of John the Baptist. The Divinely intended object of Elijah's coming was to
'restore all things.' This, of course, implied a moral element in the submission of the
people to God, and their willingness to receive his message. Otherwise there was this
Divine alternative in the prophecy of Mala chi: 'Lest I come to smite the land with the
ban' (Cherem ). Elijah had come; if the people had received his message, there would
have been the promised restoration of all things. As the Lord had said on a previous
occasion4: 'If ye are willing to receive him,5 this is Elijah, which is to come.' Similarly, if
Israel had received the Christ, He would have gathered them as a hen her chickens for
protection; He would not only have been, but have visibly appeared as, their King. But
Israel did not know their Eli jah, and did unto him whatsoever they listed; and so, in
logical sequence, would the Son of Man also suffer of them. And thus has the other part
of Malachi's prophecy been fulfilled: and the land of Israel been smitten with the ban.6
4. St. Matt. xi. 14.
5. The meaning remains substantially the same whether we insert 'him' or 'it.'
6. The question, whether there is to be a literal reappearance of Elijah before the Second
Advent of Christ does not seem to be answered in the present passage. Perhaps it is
purposely left unanswered.
Amidst such conversation the descent from the mountain was accomplished. Presently
they found themselves in view of a scene, which only too clearly showed that unfitness
of the disciples for the heavenly vision of the preceding night, to which reference has
been made. For, amidst the divergence of details between the narratives of St. Matthew
and St. Mark, and, so far as it goes, that of St. Luke, the one point in which they almost