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rightly. The sense his words bear is this: "The disease with which your lord is afflicted is not mortal, and will not bring him to the grave; yet, nevertheless, God has revealed it unto me, that Ben-hadad will never more quit his bed alive. He will die, but of another wound than that which this disease will inflict." After Elisha had performed his mission, "he gazed," thus the words of the eleventh verse are to be interpreted, "stedfastly at Hazael, until the latter was ashamed," or was embarrassed; and then the "man of God wept." What that stedfast gazing imported is quite clear. "Do you

hear," Elisha wished to tell him with that searching look, "your king may recover, and yet will die! Do you understand this riddle? Observe, wretch that you are, your plan of blood lies open and discovered before God's eyes!" O! yes, Hazael himself well knew how to trace the true meaning from that look of the prophet. The judge in his breast soon interpreted it for him, and it was not without a cause that the silent look already made him stagger, made him confused. A bad conscience is like a powder magazine, where it only needs the smallest spark of a penetrating look to produce the explosion. It is like a deer among the rustling leaves, which, whilst it endeavours to escape and conceal itself, thus only the sooner betrays itself to the sportsman. And thus we perceive it to be also with Hazael. The look of Elisha sufficed already to give alarm to his conscience; but when it wishes to escape and conceal itself, then the movements of his countenance betray the fugitive's guilt, and expose it to the open day. The man stands there in the most painful embarrassment. And what can he contrive to lead the prophet to desist from that embarrassing gaze? Why,

perhaps he may succeed, he thinks, by forthwith asking him the cause of the tears which he just perceives are falling from his eyes, and accordingly, with a difficult attempt at hypocritical ease of manner, he asks, “Why weepeth my lord?" and fancies he has now brought him upon another theme.

Elisha weeps. His whole being is dissolved in sorrow and mourning. Why he is so sorrowful, he tells us himself. O! those are sacred tears which moisten his eyes, tears flowing from a source such as does not flow in every heart. In Hazael he sees before him the scourge which is to cut Israel in twain, the dreadful sword of justice of God, which shall shortly be steeped in the blood of his brethren in the flesh. Harrowing pictures of smoking ruins, and slaughtered men, women, and children, pass his soul's view; but what affects his heart still more profoundly than those outward horrors, is the representation of all the thousands of souls which the murderous steel of Hazael will surprise in the midst of their God-estranged state of torpidity, and, alas! send them sinking into the abyss of eternal death. Even whilst he thinks upon it, his very heart turns round within his breast, and the depths of his being are shaken. No, this pain he cannot subdue, he cannot stifle. The tears burst forth in streams from his eyes, and in every movement is expressed a painful manifestation of his inward grief. As regeneration has its train of joy, so also it has its pains; and in the same degree as it is extended, does it become more profound. Our love becomes cosmopolitan, embracing an entire kingdom, a kingdom whose limits are the same with those of the world, nay, extend far beyond the limits of the visible world. But the more extended the circle of our tender

ness, into so much larger a community of suffering as well as of comforts have we entered, according to the words, "When one member suffers or rejoices, then suffer or rejoice the others also;" the greater the number of dear ones, with whom we grew into one body, the more extended naturally is the point of aim for the arrow of calamity, which, wherever it may strike amongst the members, every time wounds us also. And as we in the life of faith have become conscious of a happiness, which in glory exceeds infinitely what may delight us temporally and sensually, we have likewise learned to know a misfortune, of which the world, it is true, suspects nothing, but in comparison with which every thing that it terms injury, mishap and misery, is hardly worth consideration, nay, to be regarded as nothing. We behold the judgment-seat from afar, which "burns in flames," and know how dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God, and suffer perdition of soul; and ah! in a thousand cases, where the world only complains of temporary losses or separations, we behold quite different abysses opened, and the billows of eternal destruction striking together over the heads of the shipwrecked. Before our eyes eternity has lifted her veil. Our eye contemplates a heaven of inexpressible bliss, but also a hell of endless terror. We know that to the latter a thousand ways lead, to the other one single way only; and, ah! how many, who are dear to us by ties of blood or friendship, do we see passing over the paths of death. How many sources of care, of sorrow and tears, these circumstances contain for us, none can imagine who are not upon the same ground with us.

Whilst Elisha is standing there, and weeping, I be

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hold, in spirit, a group of people joining him, and saying with great indifference, "Why do you grieve, Elisha, about sinners whom God, in his holy purposes, has resolved to destroy? Resign yourself to it, and let the Almighty act as He pleases!" But Elisha turns silently away, and his tears continue to flow on. For whom, my friends, is your heart entendered? For the weeping prophet, or for those tearless beings, with their Resign yourself?" For myself, I confess, if I had to choose a friend, the selection would not need much consideration. And I fancy I hear those courageous ones say, further thus: "Elisha, in the vessels of wrath' is the righteousness of God glorified; and if only the Almighty makes his name great, in whatever way it be, in wrath or grace, it must be to us equally welcome, equally joyful!" But Elisha, as if he scarcely heeds what they say, measures them with a hasty look, those people with the dry eyes; but his eyes will not become dry. Say, if you had to provide yourselves with a preacher from that group, which name would you inscribe upon the tablet? That of one of those cheerful men, or that of the prophet? I know who, by unanimous resolution, would be your shepherd. "But then is not the name of God glorified in those whom His wrath crushes?" Certainly, my friends; but the superhuman point of view in which, from pure zeal for the glory of the Lord, the pain at the sacrifices which fell before his holy vengeance is contemplated in profound divine tranquillity, nay, joy, is to be more frequently affected here, but only attained above; and those who act as if they had already attained that height of pure zeal for God's honour, are only anxious hypocritically to cover the void of love and coldness in

their heart with a shining mask. I find among the scriptural men of God none who would so easily, as many among us do, find consolation in the destruction of those whom God appears to have cast out; but rather do I hear a Moses, with agony, exclaim, “ Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written!"1 Well do I hear the confession of a Paul," For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren!" Well do I behold the Lord of Heaven himself standing on the Mount of Olives, and shedding tears over the unrepenting Jerusalem; hear Him cry, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes." "93 And like to those tears of the holy Son of Man are those which we behold our prophet shedding before Hazael. Tears of love are they, and of the most tender sympathy; tears of a man who, with all submission to the decree of God, still cannot think of the judgment which threatens the ungodly people, which he loves in his heart, without that heart bleeding. And sweet, before God and man, are such tears, and they are the most lovely blossom of a mind regenerated and modelled to the image of Christ.

IV.

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"Why weepeth my lord?" asks Hazael. which Elisha replies, concealing from him the deepest cause of his grief, and which the heathen, indeed, would not have understood: "Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt

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