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Baal gather, dressed in their splendid vestments, a sharp contrast to the roughly clad prophet. All that follows can be almost seen as we read the story. The chanting of the priests, their gradually deepening excitement, the wild cries, the fantastic gestures, the piercing appeal, tense, passionate, taken up with fresh voices as relay after relay of priests faint through the long hot day. Then Elijah's scorn, his taunt of ridicule and wild mockery, till the day passed and the sacrifice lay unconsumed. There is a moment's silence then Elijah bids them stand aside. He gathers the people about. He takes up twelve stones of the ancient altar that had been allowed to crumble into ruin, and piled them in place; and on them lays the sacrifice. From the well, near by, water is brought, and the wood is drenched, and water fills the trench about the altar. The hour of the evening sacrifice is at hand. Far out across the great Western Sea the sun lowers to its setting-and Elijah utters his short pathetic appeal to God.

"Jehovah, God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.

"Hear me, O Jehovah, hear me, that this people may know that thou Jehovah art the God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

"Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

"And when all the people saw it they fell on their faces: and they said, Jehovah, he is the God: Jehovah, he is the God.

"And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal: let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there."

The drought was broken, through torrents of rain Ahab and Elijah came to the gates of Jezreel.

VII. The Character of Elijah. There seems at first, as we read the story of his life, something inexplicable in the flight of the prophet from the wrath of Jezebel. But nothing is truer than the mysterious revulsion from some final and supreme strain, the mysterious drop from power to weakness. In the awful slaughter of the priests of Baal it would have seemed as if the whole strength of opposition had collapsed. Yet at once there rises the fierce presence of this woman, who sends her messengers with her implacable curse. The power of a curse is something we in these days cannot easily comprehend. It recalls the anathema of the Pope, the curse of excommunication laid upon a king or a kingdom in the middle ages of Europe, before which the resistance and wile of king and people shrivelled away. Henry of Germany standing in the snow for three days waiting for the favor of Hildebrand shows something of that mysterious power. In Jezebel there was incarnated not only the power of royalty, but the almost hypnotic force of a woman who seemed to have turned the very defeat of his priests into a deathless hate and who dared to put upon him the spell of her curse. With all his strength, Elijah was human, and into the strange loneliness of his soul there crept this dark shadow of fear, and he fled south into the deserts. Spent and despairing, his strength strung to the breaking point, he lay down to die, crying, "It is enough! Now, O Jehovah, take away my life: for I am not better than my fathers!" Then came the knitting together again through sleep of the torn thread, the vision of God's angel, speaking, the mysterious food-brought we know not how, and in the strength of that meat he pushed southward across the desert to Horeb, the Mount of God. One of the finest studies of the character of Elijah is to be found

in F. W. Robertson's Sermon (Robertson's Sermons Second Series Ser. V.). His character suggests that of S. John Baptist. They have the same strain of stern, unbending will, the same message of condemnation of evils, the same call to repentance, the same bold front before kings, the same love of the free wild desert solitudes, the same experience of bitter darkness and doubt. To Elijah came God's supreme revelation of love and patience in the loneliness of the desert mountain. To John the Baptist the quiet, untroubled sweetness of Christ's message in the dark dungeons of Herod's fortress. Each was strong, none stronger among the sons of men, yet each had his hours of doubt and weakness, and to each came the full and wonderful revelation of God's patient purpose and His unwearying service of human life, which we ourselves need to remember when we are tempted to, weariness and discouragement. Elijah did not wipe out the religious and social evils of his time. Jezebel still held her power. Ahab still reigned on. But the effect of his ministry was to keep alive the old ideals. Thousands of unknown and faithful Jews still held their faith. Elijah did his work and passed, but what he did sank deep into the memory and life of his race. It strengthened the essential truth of Judaism, and contributed powerfully towards the slow but sure uplifting of the Hebrew people.

A Summons to Righteousness

Lesson Passages: Amos 5:8-27; 7: 10-15.

The chronology of the kings of the two kingdoms at this time is important. Study carefully the table in the appendix.

The present chapter treats of a time some seventy years after the reign of Ahab. The interim had been free of struggle and change. The dynasty of Omri and Ahab had lasted about forty-four years, when John, head of the army, seized the throne. He put to death the aged Jezebel and her priests, and sought to establish his dynasty by the double policy of allowing the older Jeroboam calf-worship to continue, and by aggressive military action. His son Jehoahaz reigned for seventeen years, but was himself slain by his Syrian neighbors. But again the tide changed under his son Joash, who was a skilful warrior, and who three times in succession defeated Benhadad, and won back much of the lost territory. Amaziah, the eighth king of Judea in the Davidic dynasty, was a powerful prince. He had defeated Edom, and in the glow of that triumph sent his challenge to Joash of Israel. He was miserably vanquished, however, and Joash entered Jerusalem in triumph and carried away vast treasures.

I. Jeroboam II, whose very name indicates the continuance of the policy of Jeroboam I, the founder of the kingdom, cherished ambitions beyond those of his father Joash. He began a series of wars which make him deservedly famous, and have given him a reputation as being the great

est of the northern kings. He conquered Moab, he pushed the boundaries of his rule far north beyond the great city of Damascus, which he made part of his kingdom. When we remember the military power of this Syrian state, and how it had held its own against Assyria, what an army and chariots it possessed, then we can appreciate the superb generalship and prowess of this prince. Not only Damascus, but Hamath, another hundred miles farther north, also came under Jeroboam's influence, and thus was again under Hebrew rule for the first time since the death of Solomon, when it had been lost in the disruption of the original kingdom. His reign was long, lasting forty-one years. It was marked by great prosperity. Now and then there came misfortunes such as drought, locusts, pestilence and even earthquake, which broke in upon the prosperous development of the kingdom. But these did not materially interfere with national welfare.

II. National Prosperity. In many respects the reign. of Jeroboam II recalled that of Solomon. Commerce flourished, peace was finally established, to the ordinary mind there seemed no cause for anxiety. Such material growth covers out of sight many evils that may be eating at the heart of society. This increase of prosperity brought great wealth to certain classes. The standard of living rose. The simpler type of social life yielded to the demand for greater luxury. Men who had lived in quiet homes built themselves lordly palaces. Instead of one house, they had several. They moved from city to country according to the dictate of fashion or the desire for change. There grew up then standards and tests that found their expression in the frivolity and abandon of a luxurious civilization. There was a closer intercourse with foreign

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