'Tis not the whirlwind, o'er our fair fields sweeping
That speaks God's present wrath: This is but nature's course, for all men keeping
One indiscriminate path.
Nor yet the earthquake, firm foundations shaking
Of houses long since built: This is but fortune's chance, its havoc making
Without affixing guilt.
Nor yet the fire, whate'er is near confounding
In blind remorseless flame: This is but man's fierce ire, which all surrounding
Treats, good or bad, the same.
It is the still small voice within which speaketh,
When guilt's fierce gust is done, That tells the doom God's righteous anger wreaketh,
Yet tells, that we may shun.
0 gentle Lord, who like a friend reprovest,
Tender not less than true; Thou our hard hearts by whispered warnings movest,
Their erring ways to rue.
Thou, whose pure eye like lightning might consume him,
On man with pity look'st; Thou who to fire, storm, earthquake, well might'st doom him,
With still small voice rebuk'st.^
II.
Wheke God is.
"And after the fire a still small voice."
The terrible vision of the storm has passed. The blast of the tempest is stilled. To the convulsions of the earthquake succeeds
* Lord Kinloch.
444 A STILL SMALL VOICE
the calm, to the terrifying glare of the lightning the pure and fresh brightness of day. Heaven reappears — the heaven- of the East, with its transparent and deep azure; nature seems born again more beautiful and serene, and from the valleys there rises to the top of Horeb, and the cave where Elijah had sheltered himself, a sweet and gentle sound — the harmonious voice of nature opened up afresh under the breath of God. Elijah goes forth from his retreat. An inexpressible emotion seizes his soul, which the terror had thrown into confusion ; an ineffable feeling of peace, of freshness, and of joy penetrates it. Neither the voice of the tempest nor the convulsions of nature had roused him to that point. In that sweet and gentle sound he recognizes the presence of God, and, covering his head with his mantle, he bows himself and adores.
^ Elijah had shared in the outward manifestations of Divine favour which appear to mark the Old Dispensation — the fire on Carmel, the storm from the Mediterranean, the avenging sword on the banks of the Kishon. These signs had failed; and he was now told that in these signs, in the highest sense, God was not ; not in these, but in the still small gentle whisper of conscience and solitude was the surest token that God was near to him. Not in his own mission, grand and gigantic as it was, would after- ages so clearly discern the Divine inspiration, as in the still small voice of justice and truth that breathed through the writings of the later Prophets, for whom he only prepared the way — Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah. Not in the vengeance which through Hazael and Jehu was to sweep away the house of Omri, so much as in the discerning Love which was to spare the seven thousand ; not in the strong east wind that parted the Eed Sea, or the fire that swept the top of Sinai, or the earthquake that shook down the walls of Jericho, would God be brought so near to man, as in the still small voice of the child of Bethlehem, as in the ministrations of Him whose cry was not heard in the streets, in the awful stillness of the Cross, in the never-failing order of Providence, in the silent insensible influence of the good deeds and good words of God and of man. Elijah, the furthest removed of all the prophets from the evangelical spirit and character, has yet enshrined in the heart of his story the most forcible of pro- tests against the hardness of Judaism, the noblest anticipation of the breadth and depth of Christianity.^
"11 However the rendering may be altered — into "a gentle 1 A. P. Stanley.
I KINGS XIX. II, 12 445
murmuring sound " or, as in the E.V. margin, " a sound of gentle stillness " — no expression is more full of the awe and mystery of the original than the phrase " a still small voice." It was God's whisper to Elijah's soul. Was it articulate or not? Was it accompanied by an outward rustling, as Cheyne thinks ? We do not know. All that is of consequence is that in it Elijah recog- nized the presence of God and came forth to worship.
Why seek ye for Jehovah
'Mid Sinai's awful smoke? The burning bush now shelters
A sparrow's humble folk ; The curve of God's sweet heaven
Is the curve of the leaf of oak; The Voice that stilled the tempest
To the little children spoke, — The bread of life eternal
Is the bread He blessed and broke.
" A still small voice." That was how God manifested Himself to Elijah and how He delights to manifest Himself to us. Look- ing at the words more closely we see —
i. That God is most really in the gentlest things — in that which is still.
ii. That God is not in the agencies that seem the mightiest — He prefers to manifest Himself in that which is small.
iii. That God manifests Himself as a Voice.
i. Stillness.
It is difficult to realize that in the hush which followed the fire, the earthquake, the wind, God really was. But if there is any meaning in this story, it is that the silence was more really Divine than the noise, the flash, and the trembling which went before. And one of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that God is in the quiet, the gentle influences which are ever around us, working upon us as the atmosphere does, without any visible or audible token of its presence. We must seek to discern God in the quiet and the gentle. It is perhaps because we fail to discern Him there that He comes sometimes in the tempest. We do not find Him in health, and so He comes in sickness. We do not find Him in prosperity, and so He comes in adversity. We