Each prophet was succeeded by a gentler ministry. Elijah was sent from Horeb to anoint Elisha, who, for the most part, passed through the land like genial sunshine--a perpetual benediction to men, women, and children; while John the Baptist opened the door for the Shepherd, Christ, who went about doing good, and whose holy, tender ministry fell on his times like rain on the mown grass.
From the solitudes beyond the Jordan, as he walked with Elisha, talking as they went, the chariot and horses of fire which the Father had sent for his illustrious servant from heaven bore him homeward, while his friends and disciples stood with outstretched hands, crying: The chariot and horses of Israel are leaving us, bearing away our most treasured leader. In those same solitudes, or within view of them, the spirit of John the Baptist swept up in a similar chariot. As the headsman, with a flash of his sword, put an end to his mortal career, though no mortal eyes beheld them, and no chronicler has told the story, there must have been horses and chariots of fire waiting to convey the noble martyr-spirit to its God. The parallel is an interesting one--it shows how God repeats Himself; and, if time and space permitted, we might elaborate the repetition of a similar conception, either in Savonarola of Florence, or in Martin Luther, or in John Knox, who had been baptized into the same Spirit, and inspired to perform the same ministry. That Spirit is waiting still--waiting to clothe Himself with our life; waiting to do in us, and through us, similar work for the time in which we live. What these men did far back in the centuries, it is probable that others Will have to do before this dispensation passes utterly away. A man, or men, shall again rise up, who will tower over their fellows, who will speak and act in the spirit and power of Elijah--men like Edward Irving, but without the mistakes that characterized his heroic life. Perhaps some young life may be inspired by this page to yield itself to God, so that it may be sent forth to turn back the hearts and lives of vast multitudes from their evil way, turning the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
II. NOTICE THE INFERIORITY OF THESE GREAT MEN TO THE LORD.--Neither Elisha, the disciple of Elijah, nor the eloquent Apollos, the disciple of John the Baptist, would have dared to say of their respective masters what Philip and Andrew, Peter and Thomas, habitually said of Christ. Greatly as they revered and loved their masters, they knew that they were men like themselves; that their nature was made in the same mould, though, perhaps, of finer clay; that there were limitations beyond which they could not go, and qualities of mind and soul in which they were not perfected. They dared not say of them, "My Lord and my God." They never thought of prostrating themselves at their feet in worship; they never appealed to them after their decease as able to hear and answer prayer from the heaven into which they had passed.
Neither Elijah nor John had what Jesus asserted--the consciousness of an unique union with God; neither of them dared to affirm, as Jesus did, that he was the Son of God, in the sense that made other use of that term blasphemy; neither of them thought of anticipating a moment when he should be seen sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds; neither of them dared to couple himself with Deity in the sublime and significant pronoun _we_--"We will come and make our abode with Him." Neither of them would have dreamed of accepting the homage which Jesus took quite naturally, when men worshipped Him, and women washed and kissed his feet: and I ask how it could be that Jesus Christ, so essentially meek and lowly, so humble and unwilling to obtrude Himself, should have spoken and acted so differently, unless his nature had been separated by an impassable gulf from that of other men, however saintly and gifted? The very fact that these men, acknowledged amongst the greatest of our race, drew a line, and said: Beyond that we cannot pass; we are conscious of defilement and need; we require forgiveness and grace, equally with those to whom we minister. And this compels on our part the acknowledgment that Jesus Christ was all He claimed to be, and that He is worthy to receive glory, and honour, and riches, and power, and blessing; for He is Man of men, the second Man, the Lord from Heaven.