If things are so with us we are just in Elijah's position, and God's message to His prophet these hundreds of years ago is just as really His message to us to-day. Like Elijah we look too much to externals, dwell too much upon the circumference and too little at the centre of things. In proportion to our eagerness and self-devotion is our tendency to exaggerate our own im- portance to the cause of God and to waste time in looking for visible results of our activity. We have lost our true perspective by over-absorption in the immediate and the near outside the soul. We have, in fact, lost God. How shall we find Him again ? The text tells us how God revealed Himself to Elijah.
I.
Wheke God is not.
" A great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind : and after the wind an earthquake ; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire."
i. God does not always reveal Himself in Nature.
The first point we would make is that God did not manifest Himself to Elijah at this time in the forces of Nature.
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1. A fierce storm burst upon that wild spot, a fearful hurri- cane swept across the sky. As the black clouds of tempest rolled up from the sea, " a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord." The prophet stood amid all the horrors and wild disorder of a tropical storm. What could it mean? As the fierce tempest raged about the granite rocks and mountain peaks of that savage desert, and the massive fragments of stone were hurled down the heights to the plain below, and all nature seemed turbulent amid the rush and fury of the storm, how the heart of Elijah would burn with exultation to find his own wild spirit reflected in that tumultuous scene. The violent commotion and the passion of that whirlwind were a true image of himself. Could it be that God had mantled Himself in this form of terror ? Was it indeed true that the vehemence of the Lord confirmed and crowned the vehemence of the man ? Did the turbulence and passion of the human spirit find their counterpart in Him ? The prophet's heart beat wildly at the very thought — 0 that God were such a one as he himself? "But the Lord was not in the wind." No ! although it was a speaking symbol of the resistless power which he always delighted to associate with God, and had seen manifested in more than one memorable episode of his life.
"And after the wind an earthquake." The whole earth appeared convulsed as in terror. Solid movmtains shook, and great rocks were split and sundered by the fierce upheaval. Deep chasms were opened where before had been nought but massive stone. "Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel." Once more the prophet saw an image of himself, saw his own convulsive nature mirrored in that scene of tumult and agitation. Would God reveal Himself now ? Was it possible that God could be imaged in that wild dis- turbance? The prophet waited with anxious heart to know. He looked, and looked again, but saw not in the convulsion the presence of God. That was simply an image of himself. "But the Lord," he was again conscious, "was not in the earthquake," though it pictured vividly the tremendous upheaval by which he longed to cast down the altars of Baal and to destroy his priests, possible (he well knew) to the might of
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Jehovah, who again and again had overwhelmed His enemies in Israel's past.
"And after the earthquake a fire." Suddenly that wilder- ness of granite peaks was lighted up with the blinding glare of tropic lightning. So swift and fierce were the streams of fire that flashed across the sky that the whole earth appeared bathed in glorious light, and the heavens one mass of flame. Was this the symbol of G-od's glory ? The prophet felt perhaps that here was the reflection of his truest self. Surely at last God was about to make Himself known. But no. Once more it was borne in upon him that " the Lord was not in the fire," though to the stern eye of the prophet it was eloquent of the fierce vengeance which he had again and again in his despair invoked from heaven upon the sins of Jezebel and her godless court.
2. Does the writer of this story deny that, to those who had the prophetic gift of interpreting nature, there were special messages from heaven in the storm and the earthquake? By no means. At another time Jehovah might have spoken to Elijah, as He spoke to Job out of the tempest; but upon this occasion the prophet was to be shown that the highest revela- tions were to be expected, not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary, not in the most awful, but in the gentlest and most familiar, manifestations of God in nature.
With kindlier mien, one said, "Go forth unto the fields, For there, and in the woods, are balms that Nature freely