victorious is already to have half won the battle. 3. Elijah's irresistible weapon is prayer. " Hear me, 0 Lord, hear me ; that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again" (ver. 87). If we now look nway from Elijah himself to the plan he proposed to pursue in his warfare against idolatry, we shall see that no better is possible for us to-day. He does not multiply arguments in dealing with his adversaries; he meets them on the co=on ground of experience. He gives practical rather than theoretical demonstration of the power of God. Here are the priests of Baal assembled on Mount Carmel. On their side are the people, the favour of the king, the confidence of. the public. Elijah stands alone, and yet he feels he is not alone, for God is with him. The heaven, closed for long months against the fertilizing rain, in punishment of the perverseness of Israel, seems a vault of iron and brass. Will it ever melt aaain, and spread life in soft reviving showers over the land ? In vain Ahab has sent his servants up and down throughout the country ; the water springs have all failed. The one question in all hearts is, What intercession may avail to draw down the rain once more from heaven? Elijah offers a challenge full of bitter irony to the priests of Baal. May he not lawfully do so, as the messenger of Him of whom it is said that "He shall laugh at the mighty ones who exalt themselves against him''? (Psa. ii. 4.) In vaiu the priests cry, and leap, and cut themselves with stones, in their savage rites ; there comes no answering voice from their deaf and dumb idol. But at the prayer of Elijah the heavens re-open, and his God reveals Himself in the glory of His power. Champions of the true God, the God of the gospel, defend it, as Elijah did, agaiust the insolent idolatry of materialism, or of the pantheism which sets up an idol as monstrous as the Baal of old. Be bold, like Elijah, in showing the idolaters how deeply they have fallen. Believe in the victory of your cause; use the iuvincible weapon of prayer; and to those who have vaiuly sought the living water iu the broken cisterns of earth (J er. ii. 18), show the heavens opened and the gracious rain descending upon all broken hearts, and bringing the blessings of a full redemption. Give to our generation this conclusive practical evidence. Meet the positivism of the infidel with the positivism of the Cllr:istian. This is the snrest means of casting down the idol iuto the dust, without having recourse to that exterminating sword which the prophet of the old covenant was co=anded to draw upon the idolatrous priests. We live under another dispensa,.. t:ion, and ours is that sword of the Spirit which only wounds to heal.-E. de P.
EXPOSITION. OIIAl'TER XIX. 1-21. unwilling, account of the sacrifices, of the descent of the heavenly fire, of the ories it ELIJAB'B FLIGHT, Tim THEOPHANY OP wrung from the people, &c., would have HoBEB AND THE CALLING OIi' EusHA.-We brought conviction to her mind and taught Cll,Il readily understand with what a sense her how useless it was to kick against the of humiliation and shame the weak and pricks. But there are eyes so blinded (2 excited king, who mnst have been aweu and Cor. iv. 4) and hearts so steeled against the impressed by the strange portent he had truth that no evidence can reach them, and witnessed, would recount the day's proceed- this fierce persecutor of the prophets had ings to his imperious and headstroni; con- long been given over to a reprobate mind. sort, and with what intense mortification She listens to his story, but her ono thought and rage she mnst have heard of the triumph is of revenge. of the proscribed religion and of the defeat Ver. 1.-And Ahab told Jezebel &ll that and death of the priests of Baal. Ona might Elijah had done, and withal bow be bad almost have expected that the testimony of sla.1.n [Heb. and all which he had slain. an eye-witness, and that her husband, to The construction, if it were not for the ?f ihe greatness and completeness of El.ij1l.h's would be usue.l enough. As that woru is viewry ; that hie unprejudiced, and indeed omitted in some MSS. and versions, it ill oa. xix. 1-21.) THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS.