2. From the challenge of Elijah to the falling of the fire from heaven, the interest grows and the excitement deepens. It was one of the most memorable .national convocations ever held in Israel. Old men were there, and they could not remember such a bitter time in the nation's history. For years no rain had fallen at the appointed seasons, and the land was literally burnt up with the drought. By famine and hunger God had appealed to the conscience of the nation, and the appeal had apparently been in vain. They had not risen up in wrath and repentance to cast the new and false religion out of the land.
412 HALTING BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS
Fear of the king and queen and priest had deterred them. Fashion ruled them even in their misery. Lack of conviction, mental and spiritual instability, had been their undoing. Since the cruel famine began, Elijah had been in hiding, and there had been no decisive voice ringing out clearly for Jehovah and His cause. Now he has come forth from his retirement. It is at his instance that this assembly has been convened ; and by his lips, and by the manifestation of His own might, Jehovah is about to make His final appeal to them. They would see such a sight that day as would, for a time, drive all hesitation out of their hearts, and force from each one of them, in the face of Ahab and the masterful priests of Baal, the confession, " The Lord, he is the God."
3. How the pulse quickens as we read the story! In his splendid isolation stands Elijah against king, court, and nation. For three years he has been a hunted fugitive ; for three years Jezebel lias enjoyed her wicked triumph; but this one man is unsubdued and unsubduable. At last he comes forth from his desert, and he comes like a thunderbolt. He bars the way of the king's chariot with a gesture, and silences him with one stern accusation: "Thou and thy father's house have made Israel to sin ! " Never was the fearlessness of right so splendidly illus- trated, or the impotence of evil so conclusively exposed. The hunter is dumb before his prey; the tyrant quails before his victim. There is a royalty in righteousness before which all other royalty is but tinsel ; there is a supremacy in goodness which strikes the wicked dumb. Are you armed with that supremacy ? Dare you stand fearless in the right though the heavens fall ? Only then is man invulnerable. No one can defeat a man who is in the right. He may be a wild man of the 'desert and stand in tattered garb, but the chariots of wrong stop at his signal, and kings fear his face. When Elijah says, " Gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel," Ahab knows he must obey. So to Carmel Israel is gathered; there the broken altars are rebuilt, and there the pregnant question of the text is put to the vast multitude, who at last, when the fire of God descends, cry in fearful acquiescence not less than profound conviction, "The Lord, he is the God ; the Lord, he is the God."
I KINGS XVIII. 21 413
4. We have in this story of Ehjah the record of the actual struggle which went on in Israel for at least fifty years between
"monotheism and idolatry, between purit^nism and immorality, between the individual conscience and a despotism, between nationalism and foreign influences. Politically, socially, morally, arid religiously Elijah represented and concentrated this struggle. No figure can be more grand than he, standing there alone, above the wild dance and crying of the priests of Baal ! All the desert majesty is upon his face ; all the glory of the great conception of one God, of one righteousness, is shining in his eyes ; all the power of that thought, and of being the servant of its law, speaks in his iron attitude, even in his scornful speech — one against the world, and in mortal danger. There are few who have the steady inward power to take and keep that post. It needs courage, not only physical, but moral ; it needs determined will ; it needs intense conviction of the right of that for which the stand is made ; it needs to have lived a blameless life. All these things belonged to Elijah, and their power in him made him majestic. Every soul that saw him that day, erect upon the rock, felt the strength and awe of his solitude and solitary faith in God flow like a river from him into their hearts. Every soul felt the baseness, in comparison with his stern manhood, of the court of Ahab; the noble contrast between his life and the luxury of the city, the indifference of the people, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Every one knew that there was in him something higher than earthly power ; that the soul of man was here greater than the whole world. Each man, as the long hours of the day drew on, looked, knew that God was there, and said within his heart —
"The Lord sat as king at the Flood; Yea, the Lord sitteth as king for ever."
5. It was not only human courage, will, and^ goodness that gave Elijah majesty. It was his faith in God. The man was possessed with God; behind him stood One whom none might see, but from whom streamed into His servant a spiritual might and inspiration. Elijah felt it; he knew that God had seized him, and he held to that faith with an intensity which made the man seem transfigured. This was the deep root of his courage, of his resolute will, of his scorn of all that men could do unto him,