the face of the assembled nation: and in the penalty he saw, at length, the reflection of his crime. He rent his robes, and put on sack-cloth, and fasted, and went barefoot. God was pleased to accept of this penitence, and Elijah was commissioned to declare the postponement of the sentence to the days of his successors. The curse began to operate upon his very first successor. His son, Ahaziah, being dangerously hurt by a fall, sent, after the idolatrous notions of his devoted family, to consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron.

His messengers were met in

their way by Elijah, whom an angel had purposely forewarned. He reproved them for their idolatrous design, and turned them back again with a message to Ahaziah, saying, "Thou shalt not come down from thy bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die." Ahaziah immediately suspected the deliverer of this message. It could come from no one but him whom his mother, if not his father, had taught him to look upon as the unrelenting enemy of his house. On asking for a description of the man, he was told that, "He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." "It is Elijah the Tishbite," he immediately cried out, and sent a captain of fifty with his men to seize him. Elijah was sitting on the top of a hill. The captain went up to him, and said, "Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down." The prophet answered, "If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty." And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. The same fate befel two more captains which were sent: after

which, admonished by an angel, he went and delivered in person his fatal message to the king, and the king died.

The term of Elijah's ministry now approached. In this too he shared with Moses the lot of an extraordinary departure; and extraordinary were the signs of its approach. As Elisha attended his master, and passed successively through Bethel and Jericho, the prophets belonging to the colleges at those places, announced to him, "that the Lord would take away his master from his head that day." Thus the whole brotherhood had his departure revealed to them as an event concerning the Church of God. When they reached the Jordan, Elijah smote the waters with his folded mantle, and they divided hither and thither, and gave them a dry passage to the other bank. Elijah then asked his intended successor, what he should do for him, before he was taken away. He begged for a double portion of his spirit. Thou hast asked a hard thing, replied his master; nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so. As they were still walking on and talking, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

The whole history of Elijah furnishes a glorious and visible example of the manner in which God works with his faithful servants. It was in the memory of his countrymen down to the

ever

The pro

last hour of their national existence. phecy of Malachi had taught them to expect his

re-appearance just about the time that the Baptist came and preached the approach of the kingdom of God, and they anxiously looked forward to a magnificent exhibition of miracles, to which, it is too plain from their treatment of our Lord, they would have been as insensible as their forefathers. Elias did come, and they knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they listed'. Let it be in the memory of the Christian also, let him read it, and mark it, making the right distinction between the times of a carnal and of a spiritual dispensation, knowing of what spirit he is. He will not look, even in his greatest need, for the external symbols of help which God vouchsafed to Elijah. He knows that he will assuredly have the benefit of the inward and essential co-operation. He will not call down fire from heaven to consume the adversary, unless it be the fire of the Holy Ghost to enlighten him. Nor will he expect the sign of visible fire from heaven to ratify his credentials before his hearers. He knows that it will come into the hearts of his hearers. will not ask to hear the audible voice of God's angels charging him. He distinctly hears within the still small voice of the spirit prompting him. He will not look for carnal meat and drink to be miraculously supplied to his necessities; a series of miracles has already procured for him the spiritual meat and drink which perisheth not.

He

And in this his faithful prophet, God has proved that he will never leave himself without a witness upon earth. He, even he only, was left of the pro

1 Matt. xxii. 12.

phets of God, and yet he, amid all the discouragement of a general apostsay, was more than equal to four hundred of the prophets of Baal. God's servants, however thinned and scattered, will never be left thus solitary again. They shall witness each the others toils and dangers, and build up one the other into a living temple of God. And if they be forced by tyrannous persecution to flee for a time to hidingplaces, the spot of refuge shall be, as Elijah's, in the very mount of God. There they shall behold his glory, and hear him, and be comforted. Thence they shall issue forth, sent with renewed credentials to proclaim him before men. They shall anoint to themselves successors to carry on their holy work to the end of the world. And their departure, however it seem to the eyes of men, however miserable, shall be to them as the mounting into the fiery chariot; for they die to a certain resurrection in glory. And in the last day they shall be seen with Moses and Elias bathing in the blissful brightness of the glory which surrounds them in the company of their redeeming Lord.

JOSIAH.

B. c. 649-610.

THE reign of this prince is like a gleam cast from a lowering sky, before it bursts with the tempest. Under his government Judah rose only to fall with greater violence afterwards. At the early age of eight years he began to reign, and at the age of sixteen, when he had become his own master, began to meditate the holy work of the restoration of true religion. At the age of twenty he entered upon it by taking measures for the destruction of idolatry. This was a difficult task. His wicked father, Ammon, had undone in a short reign of two years all that the penitent Manasseh had done in the course of thirty. Idolatry had needed but the slightest encouragement to rear its head again, and the Chaldean worship of the heavenly host, the Persian worship of the horses of the sun, the Syrian worship of Baal, the Sidonian of Ashtaroth, the Ammonite of Moloch, the Moabitish of Chemosh, with similar abominations, were flourishing in the land. The temple was partly profaned by idolatrous altars set up in its courts, and groves attached to it, and had partly been left to fall into disgraceful ruin. The idolaters were a powerful body in the land, and would naturally have the countenance of the mighty nations without, whose pupils