414 HALTING BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS
of the certainty which made him mock his foes, and call on all the folk of Israel to watch the falling of the fire before it fell. This, too, was the root of his calm ; all the day long, he waited, " like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved " ; silent till the end ; wrapt in his mantle, wrapt in faith ; at peace in the midst of turbulence. Yet within him, born too of faith in God and hatred of oppression, of fierce contempt of evil, and love of his mighty thought that God was one and undivided, there was also that without which nothing great in morals, nothing sublime in spiritual life is ever wrought — passion at white heat; not bursting like that of the priests of Baal into wild cries, fanatic self-torture, and maddened dancing, but self-restrained and ruled, cool at its centre, mastered by will, inspired by a cause which in its origin was not his own, exalted by an idea the source of which was beyond himself in God.
6. We see Elijah stand here, in his full strength, on Carmel, at a great crisis in the fate of Israel. To that crisis he was equal ; nay, in it he stood the first. By might of character he was then the monarch of all Israel; by the same might he swept into agreement with himself all the wavering, all the indifferent, all the worldly-minded. Against him stood the court, the weak king, the cruel and masculine queen, the whole body of the priesthood of Baal, the whole of the foreign and idolatrous tribe that had invaded the religion of Jehovah. That religion was often fierce and ruthless, but it was not foul. It held to two great principles of the deepest importance for the progress of the world. It held to the unity of God, and to justice and purity as the necessities for His worship. Both these principles were traversed by the worship of Baal and Astarte. On one side, then, was the crowd and the court, on the other only one man. But, lonely as he was, so great was his thought, and so grand his character, that Ahab trembled in his palace when he thought of Elijah, and Jezebel heard at night his voice, crying aloud her doom.
And were it wisely done If we who cannot gaze above, should walk the earth alone? If we whose virtue is so weak, should have a will so strong, And stand blind on the rocks to choose the right path from the wrontr ?
I KINGS XVIII. 21 415
To choose, perhaps, a love-lit hearth instead of love and
heaven, A single rose for a rose-tree which beareth seven times seven ? Until in grieving for the worst, we learn what is the best?
Dear God, and must we see All blissful things depart from us or ere we go to Thee ? We cannot guess Thee in the wood, or hear Thee in the wind; Our cedars fall around us ere we see the light behind. Aj, sooth, we feel too strong, in weal, to need Thee on the
road. But woe being com^, the soul is dumb that crieth not on God !
y
7. It was the battlefield of two religions, and Elijah concen- trated tEe struggle in the first words that fell from his lips, words marked aslnuch by his stormy contempt as by his religious passion ; words that carry their impassioned appeal to us : " How long halt ye between two opinions ? if the Lord be God, follow him : but if Baal, then follow him."
For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Eound the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or
wrong ; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-simdered fibres feels the gush of joy or
shame ; — In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal gain.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide. In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom
or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the
right. And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness and that
light.
Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt
stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against
our land?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.^
^ James RussoU Lowell, The Present Crisis.
4i6 HALTING BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS
11.
Jehovah or Baa.l.
i. The Decision.
Elijah called the people to decide between two Gods — Jehovah and Baal. This decision has to be made in every age. Now Baal, the male, and Ashtaroth, the female, represented the fertilizing and productive principle in nature, and their worship was that of power. To the more cultivated and refined, it was simply a species of pantheism ; to the multitude, it was what one has called " the worship of deified abundance, under a splendid and sensuous ceremonial"; or, as Maurice has put it, "The worship of Baal was the worship of power as distinguished from righteousness." But we are less concerned with what Baal stood for to the Israelites than with what "the God of this world" means to ourselves.