326 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
tell you, because what I tell you is in accordance with that Word, and because I am the Messenger of God's Covenant.
Given that assumption and a literalist's conception of the Bible, together with an intense reformer's egoistic appreciation of the old Scotch utterance, " The hour has come, and the man," and the rest was not difficult. He could thus say with conviction on that second of June :
But of Elijah's final manifestation all the Scriptures had said that the physical, psychical, and spiritual embodiment of Elijah must take the form of prophet, priest, and ruler of men. I say it fearlessly that by the grace of God I am, and shall be, that.
In a " general letter," written a week later, and addressed to the members of the Christian Catholic Church, he further said :
For more than two years we have taken the responsibility before the church and the world of being the Messenger of the Covenant. It was as such that we unfurled the banner of Zion in Europe last year, and carried it victori- ously from city to city and land to land. The scriptural and logical issue of our action was the declaration as Elijah the Restorer which we made in the Chicago Auditorium before about seven thousand persons last Lord's day afternoon.
The Messenger of the Covenant, Jesus tells us, was John the Baptist. John the Baptist, Jesus said, was Elijah.
God said through the prophet Malachi : " Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." "Why say the scribes," asked the disciples, "that Elijah must first come?" "Elijah indeed cometh," said Jesus, " and restoreth all things."
These facts, therefore, logically require assent to the following : first, John the Baptist was the Messenger of the Covenant, and Elijah the prophet; second, Malachi and Jesus say that the Messenger of the Covenant and Elijah must come again ; third, if we are the Messenger of the Covenant, we must also be Elijah the Restorer.
Those who have spoken and written largely concerning the next coming of our Lord have failed to lay stress upon one fact, that the apostle Peter declared in Acts 3 : 20, 21, that God would "send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus ; whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, whereof God spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began. This " restoration of all things" was to be accompanied by the prophet of whom God speaks to Moses in Deut. 18: 15-22.
That prophet was to be a man. " From among thy brethren, like unto me," said Moses.
