who read of these things, feeling your need of a like assistance from above, employ like means of obtaining it let your prayers be fervent and earnest, and "ask in faith, nothing wavering :"* and so avail yourselves of the grace already granted you, that they may be the prayers of righteous upright men, who sincerely and in truth desire what they ask; who wish to be wholly freed from the bondage of sin, and to become servants unto righteousness. Elijah, during the long drought which his prayers had brought as a punishment upon the nation, was miraculously supported, first, in a retired situation. near the brook Cherith, where the ravens had their natural instinct so divinely changed, as to bring him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and afterwards, when the brook dried up, in the village of Sarepta, which belonged to Zidon, where a poor widow woman was appointed to sustain him. This history our Lord applied to his countrymen in Nazareth, saying, "No prophet is accepted in his own country: but I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years, but unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow :"† showing them that no one, because of any fancied privileges of his outward condition, hath a claim upon God's favour; that oftentimes, resisting the proud, he giveth it unto the humble, and that those who enjoy apparently the most easy access to the means of grace, are not always the most ready, or the most willing to use them. The poor widow, whom Elijah was commanded to look to for support, was herself in danger of undergoing the extremity of famine: when he came to her, she had nothing left but "an * James i. 6. Luke iv. 24-26. James iv. 6. 1 Pet. v. 5. handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse.' Yet these, being so requested, she shared cheerfully and in a meek spirit of trusting resignation with the man of God: and upon these, preserved from wasting by a constant miracle, she and her son and her guest the prophet were sustained for many days. Nor was this the only reward which she brought upon herself, by her marked exercise of faith and charity: her son was afterwards actually raised from the dead by means of the prayers of Elijah, before that prophet quitted her hospitable roof, to undertake by God's command the dangerous errand of showing himself to the angry Ahab, and denouncing him to his face as one who had "troubled Israel, in that he had forsaken the commandment of the Lord."+ The Spirit which animated Elijah in the discharge of this duty appears, like that which in after times rested on Christ's apostles, to have given him a mouth and wisdom which none were able to gainsay or resist. The king, instead of punishing his boldness, consented to call together an assembly of the people, before whom the claims of Jehovah and of Baal to be accounted God should be submitted to the test of a miracle. An altar was prepared and a victim laid thereon, and whichsoever of the two answered the call of his servants by sending down fire from heaven, was thenceforward to be entitled to the undivided worship of the people. The priests of Baal did not dare for shame to refuse this public trial of their faith; they cried therefore to their idol, cutting themselves after their barbarous custom with knives and lancets, but all in vain : while the solemn prayer of Elijah was immediately answered by the descent of heavenly fire, and the people fell on their faces and said, "The Lord He is the God."§ This great triumph of the true religion was followed * 1 Kings xvii. 12. +1 Ibid. xviii. 18. by that solemn prayer of Elijah upon Mount Carmel, which opened the heaven, and brought down an abundant rain upon the land of Israel; and, as if to show the inconstancy of all things earthly, and which depend even in part upon the strength of man, it was followed also by the flight of that same prophet from the fury of Ahab's dangerous wife, the cruel Jezebel, who had vowed to slay him, because he had done these great things, and had destroyed the priests of Baal. The courage which had forsaken him in that trying moment was restored in the wilderness, whither he fled, by a vision of God in his holy mountain; and he was taught by the "still small voice"* with which the Spirit speaketh comfort to his servants, that God had still more duties to impose upon him, and a man in store to succeed him, Elisha, the son of Shaphat, whom he was commanded to anoint. There likewise he received the consolatory assurance, that he was not alone, as he fancied, in Israel, a devout worshipper of the true God, but that he had still left him seven thousand there, who had never bowed the knee to the image of Baal; "a remnant according to the election of grace," such as there was in the first age of the Gospel, and such as there will ever be, till the work of God shall be finally accomplished, and "the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ."‡ In the mean while Ahab, though awe-struck for a time, and perhaps prevented from returning publicly to the worship of Baal, appears to have entertained no real sentiments of penitence and amendment, but to have been as much as ever under the dominion of a carnal mind. The only action which we read of him, bearing upon the face of it an appearance of kindness and mercy, namely, his sparing the king of Syria when he had * 1 Kings xix. 12. + Rom. xi. 4, 5. Rev. xi. 15. him in his power, was in itself an act of disobedience towards God, who had commanded that king's destruction: while the manner in which he possessed himself of the vineyard of Naboth, by suborning, or allowing Jezebel to suborn false witnesses against that innocent man, and causing him to be put to death, showed his base character in its true colours, and brought upon him the sentence of utter ruin to his whole family by the mouth of Elijah. It is pleasing, when Holy Writ exhibits to us any one as a melancholy example of prevailing sin, to find that it exhibits him also as an instance of accepted repentance. This in some degree was the case with Ahab overwhelmed by the terrible prospect disclosed to him by Elijah, he had recourse to such means as his awakened conscience suggested to him, of appeasing his offended God; "he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly." "'* God who knew how far he did these things in sincerity, was pleased to show his approval of them, and to encourage through him all repenting sinners, by the postponement at least, though not the full remission, of the penalty which awaited him. "Because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evils in his days, but in his son's days I will bring the evil upon his house :" that is, his eyes not seeing it, he being mercifully removed by the stroke of death before the vengeance should fall upon his family. For himself there was allotted a soldier's-death, in battle against the enemies of his country; and there may be reason to suppose that his latter conduct was, outwardly at least, far altered from that of his earlier days, when we find that Jehoshaphat the king of Judah did not refuse to contract an alliance with him, and to go up in his company to his * 1 Kings xxi. 27. last battle against the Syrians, though in his inward mind, as we learn from the prophet Jehu, who rebuked Jehoshaphat for this very thing, there was still enmity against God. With the exception of this too easy connexion with Ahab, Jehoshaphat had shown himself a resolute follower of his father Asa, in all that king's most righteous and pious ways-removing all gross abominations out of the land, and striving, by various well considered institutions, to promote the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of his subjects. Of instruction in the law of God, and in the main duties of religion, it appears that they were singularly destitute; and this he endeavoured to remedy, by sending out a certain number of learned men, partly princes of his court, partly priests and Levites, to go about through all the cities of Judah, carrying with them the book of the law, and out of it to teach the people. Nor was he, like the Pharisees of after times,* ready to impose burdens upon others which he himself touched not with one of his fingers, but cheerfully took his own part in the work of reformation, going out through the people from Beersheba to Mount Ephraim, and bringing them back unto the Lord God of their fathers. And when the lack of religious instruction had been thus supplied, and a spirit awakened in the people of inclination towards holy things, as well as an improved state of moral feeling, he took measures to perpetuate that which had been so well begun, by forming these able and discreet men, when they returned from their progress through the provinces, into a permanent court of civil and ecclesiastical justice, which should hold its sittings at Jerusalem. The benefit of these institutions was soon perceptible, when, upon occasion of an invasion of the Moabites, the people, instead of despairing, or trusting * Matt. xxiii. 4. |
