\ When once thou art well grounded in this Inward Worship thou wilt have learnt to live in God above Time and Place. For ' F. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 208.
2 KINGS V. 13 469
every day will be a Sunday to thee, and wherever thou goest thou wilt have a Priest, a Church, and an Altar along with thee. For when God has all that He should have of thy Heart, when re- nouncing the Will, Judgment, Tempers, and Inclinations of thy old Man, thou art wholly given up to the obedience of the Light and Spirit of God within thee, to will only His will, to love only in His love, to be wise only in His wisdom ; then it is that every- thing thou doest is as a Song of Praise, and the common Business of thy Life is a conforming to God's Will on Earth, as Angels do in Heaven.^
4. He who, like Naaman, has been brought to try the Divine remedy, has proved its perfect efficacy. He has found that the cleansing fountain of Jesus' blood has done more than merely purge away his sins. Naaman was not merely cleansed, but made " as a little child " ; a new-born life, so to speak, was given him. And so with the sinner washed in the blood of Christ. He gets more than cleansing, he has a new life imparted to him, and that is life in resurrection, for he is made a partaker of the life of his risen Lord.
"^ " How," asks the disciple in Jacob Behmen's Supersensual Life, "How shall I be able to subsist in all this anxiety and tribulation so as not to lose the eternal peace ? " And the Master answers : " If thou dost once every hour throw thyself by faith beyond all creatures into the abysmal mercy of God, into the sufferings of our Lord, and into the fellowship of His intercession, and yieidest thyself fully and absolutely thereunto, then thou shalt receive grace from above to rule over death and the devil, and to subdue hell and the world under thee. And, then, thou mayest not only endure in all manner of temptation, but be actually the better and the brighter because of thy temptations."
* William Law.
The Visible and the Invisible.
471
Literature.
Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 14. Banks (L. A.), Thirty-One Revival Sermons, 225. Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 1. Brooks (P.), Christ the Life and Light, 190.
„ New Starts in Life, 51.
Burrell (D. J.), A Quiver of Arrows, 72. Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 96. Foxell (W. J.), God's Garden, 51.
Greenhough (J. G.), Half-Hours in God's Older Picture Gallery, 175. Huntington (F. D.), Christ in the Christian Year, ii. 64. Husband (E.), in Church Sermons, No. 32. Hutchings (W. H.), Sermon- Sketches, ii. 249. Momerie (A. W.), The Origin of Evil, 248. Morrison (G. H.), Flood-Tide, 64. Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, v. 148. Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, i. 212. Skrine (J. H.), The Heart's Counsel, 125. Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 195. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxvii. (1891), No.
2215 ; liv. (1908), No. 3117. Stalker (J.), The New Song, 75. Wilberforce (B.), Following on to Know the Lord, 143. Woolsey (T. D.), The Religion of the Present and of the Future, 129. Christian Age, xxvi. 323 (Talmage) ; xxxii. 324 (Talmage) ; xlii. 226
(Jubb) ; liii. 98 (Huntington). Christian World Pulpit, xxxix. 227 (Medley) ; xlix. 216 (Berry) ; Ixii.
134 (Gorman) ; Ixv. 387 (Gray) ; Ixviii. 305 (Sinclair), 309 (Potter). Church of England Pulpit, Ixi. 569 (Yarde-Buller). Churchman's Pulpit : Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, xi. 472 (Liddon),
476 (Brent), 478 (Woolsey). CleTgyman's Magazine, ix. 84 (Bardsley),
The Visible and the Invisible.
And Elislia prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; and he saw : and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. — 2 Kings vi. 17.
1. It is an old Hebrew story. Do we not hear it said sometimes that we ought to let the sins and virtues of the Israelites go, and talk to the present century about its own affairs ? But what we want is not to let the wonderful history of that ancient people go, but rather to study it far more deeply and wisely. We want to save our present life from being a poor extemporized thing by seeing how God was teaching lessons for this age of ours, and for every age, centuries ago. Never was there a history in which God's working was so manifest ; never was there a nation whose evil and whose good were so suggestive. We cannot know how much tamer these halls of our common humanity would seem if they no longer felt the tread and echoed to the voices of the giants of the Old Testament — Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Elisha.
2. " And Elisha." Let us recall the facts which led up to the situation depicted in our text. The king of Syria was making war upon Israel, and the prophet Elisha knew and exposed his plans. The king sent out to capture and destroy the troublesome prophet. He sent a whole army, " horses, and chariots, and a great host : and they came by night, and compassed the city about. And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host with horses and chariots was round about the city." The great host shows the terror which Elisha had in- spired, and the importance attached to getting possession of him. It is an odd instance of the inconsistency of the Syrian king that it never occurs to him that Elisha, who knew all his schemes, might know this one too, or that horses and chariots were of little