The Trial and Triumph of Faith

“Arise, get thee to Zarephalh, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman, there to sustain thee.”- — i KINGS xvii. 9.

‘TpHE plough is fatal to the picturesque. A country under husbandry, with its farms and formal divisions, each field throughout its whole extent of the same crop and colour, with all God’s beautiful flowers cut down and cast out under the name of weeds, is as inferior in point of beauty as it is superior in point of profit to moor or mountain. How tame your levelled fields of wheat or barley compared with the rudest hill-side, where green bracken, and the phimes of the fern, and the bells of the foxglove, and brown heath with its purple blossoms, and the hoar, gray, rugged stones that lie scattered in wild confusion, unite to form a mantle, in richness and variety of hues, such as loom never wove and queen never wore. This variety should minister to more than taste. A pious mind, extracting food for devotion from the flowers which supply honey to the bee, finds profit where others find only pleasure, and, rising from nature up to nature’s God, exclaims with David, O Lord, how

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manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all!

Without this variety, how tame our gardens with every flower in form and colour the counterpart of another and how monotonous the music of early morn did every lark in the sky, linnet in the bush, rook and ringdove in the woods, all utter the same notes! But variety characterises every department of nature. Each lamb of the flock has a bleat known to its own mother; each rose on the bush has its own shape and shade of colour; and there is not a lark that hangs carolling in the clouds but has a voice recognised by the brood above whose grassy nest she sings her morning hymn, calling the drowsy world to rise for worship and for work. Nor is this variety anywhere more remarkable than in mankind. It is calculated that there are ten hundred millions of our race scattered over the five continents and countless islands of the globe. Now, while in their grand characteristics, in their features, organs, voices, limbs, and general form these all resemble each other, yet there are not two faces, for instance, out of these ten hundred millions, which are exactly alike. Nor does a rich, boundless, divine variety characterise and adorn only this world of ours in the living creatures of its lands and seas, the shells which strew its shores, the flowers and fruits of its fertile plains, its shaggy mountains, up to their snowy crests. It shines above us — in stars fixed or moving, stars single, stars in pairs, stars in clusters, some sparkling with borrowed, others with native light; in the sun that runs his daily round, and comets, that with fiery locks streaming out behind them rush away into darkness, nor return for a hundred, perhaps for a thousand years. And high above that starry firmament, amid the splendours of the upper sanctuary, in angels and archangels, in cherubim and seraphim, in saints on higher thrones and crowns of brighter glory, in the various orders of unfallen and the various honours of ransomed spirits, we see a manifold and magnificent diversity in the works of God.

From this we might conclude that the kingdom of grace would present something of the same variety as that which distinguishes all his other works; and that as neither all angels nor all insects are formed alike, no more would all Christians be so. And thus it is; for variety is one of the many points at which the kingdoms of grace and nature touch. Christians have individual peculiarities which, as much as their faces, distinguish them from each other; and this is rather a beauty than a blemish — a charm rather than a fault. Some have one grace and some another, in such prominence, that John’s love, and Peter’s ardour, and Paul’s zeal, and Job’s patience, and Moses’ meekness, and Jeremiah’s tenderness, and Abraham’s faith, have become proverbial. Nor is this variety, as among the flowers of moor and meadow, an element merely of beauty. It is a power; an element of the highest utility in the Church. Hence the mistake of those who would have all Christians modelled on their own pattern, as, for example, of some modest, retiring, gentle spirits, who cannot appreciate the worth and usefulness of those whom God has cast in a rough mould and made of stern stuff.

In the early ages of the Church, when she is endowed with supernatural powers, and some have the gift of wisdom, others of knowledge, others of faith, others of healing, others of miracles, others of prophecy, others of tongues, others of interpretation, Paul by a beautiful analogy recommends mutual respect — illustrating the advantages of variety, and shewing how people with very different gifts may nevertheless be true members of Christ’s true Church. “If the foot,” he says, “shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now God hath set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” We live in an age of ordinary gifts; but it is as true of these ordinary as of those extraordinary gifts of the

Spirit, that there is as much utility as beauty in the diverse temperaments and endowments of Christian men. What is diverse is not of necessity adverse. God has different kinds of work to do; and since he chooses to employ men, he has need of different kinds of instruments.

I. In what is recorded of Elijah, he appears as one specially fitted for his work.

Go into the workshop of a mechanic; what a variety of tools is there! Some are straight, others crooked; some are blunt, others sharp as a razor; some are rough, others have the polish of a mirror; some are soft as silk, others hard as steel; some are light enough to be the playthings of his children, while it needs his own brawny arm to swing the ponderous weight of others. He finds a use for them all nor can he dispense with any. Now, to compare great things with small, God’s work to ours, it is by a corresponding diversity of accomplishments, and gifts, and dispositions in her members and ministers that the Church is thoroughly furnished for every good work. It had fared ill, for instance, with the cause of truth at the Reformation, if the gentleness of Philip Melancthon, however much we may admire it and love him, had not been asspciated with the rough and ready energy of Martin Luther. Knox, our own great Reformer, has been severely handled for his lack of courtly urbanity to Mary, and called rude, a brute, a rugged savage. But, as he himself said, when, having thwarted the Queen in her attempt to reimpose the hateful yoke of Popery on our land, he left her in tears, and was reproached, as he passed from the council chamber, for his rudeness, Better that women weep than bearded men! Of this heroic man we say what the Irish Presbyterian said, when asked beside the ruins of an old castle which the Protector had assailed with fire and sword, what he thought of Oliver Cromwell, he replied, God gave him stern work to do, and he did it! Knox was not more stern or rugged than the time required. Rugged? Who quarrels with the ruggedness of the rock that presents a bold front to the roaring sea, and, withstanding their shock, flings back the proud waves into their bed; defending the land from deluge, and its inhabitants from death? The times, it is said, make men. True; but it is as true that men are made for the times — raised up by God with gifts and graces suited to the work they have to do.

Of these remarks the illustrious man whose life supplies the incident recorded in my text, is a remarkable illustration. Elijah’s lot was cast in evil and stormy days; and with his bold and dauntless spirit, how well was he fitted to face the dangers, and conquer the difficulties he had to encounter 1 The times called for a Boanerges, a son of Thunder; and, raised up by God, Elijah, stern in aspect and wild in dress, appears on the scene — rushing on the stage with a curse on his lips, and leaving it for heaven in a whirlwind and chariot of fire. He pronounced a doom of drought on the guilty land, — skies that should shut up their treasures, and yield neither dew nor rain; and it was in consequence of this, that he was placed in the circumstances which the text brings before us. Directed by God, he fled for protection from the vengeance of Ahab to the lonely banks of Cherith, where the brook gave him drink, and the ravens brought him meat, as day by day, he whiled away the time, and woke the echoes of the rocks with the songs oi David, singing,

“The Lord ’s my shepherd, I ’11 not want.

He makes me down to lie
In pastures green: he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.”

Steering on black wing through the hot and stagnant air, the ravens supply his morning and evening meals and laying them at his feet, those caterers go to croak and whet their beaks on the overhanging trees — like servants who wait to satisfy their own wants with the fragments of their master’s feast. Thus, by a singular miracle, did God answer his prayers, and give him day by day his daily bread. But at length, no dew falling from clear nor rain from cloudy skies, Cherith’s stream begins to fail; each day its gurgling sound grows more and more faint; betimes it contracts to a tiny rill at length it vanishes, leaving nothing in its bed but a course of dry, white stones. Now it is that God, who watched over his servant, says, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.

II. Consider the trial to which this put the prophet’s faith.

i. He is sent for safety to a heathen city.

Unlike Moses, Samuel, David, for whose future greatness their previous history prepares us, as does the gray dawn for the full blaze of day, Elijah bursts on our notice. His appearance as a prophet of the most high God startles us not less by its suddenness than by its terror; how much more the weak and wicked Ahab that day, when, stalking into the palace in uncourtly robes, his shaggy raiment bound by a leathern belt, his aspect severe and stern, he walks up boldly to the king, and fixing his eye on him, says, “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my wore!” — and so saying, vanishes. As the words of Christ which blasted the fig-tree — that emblem of formal Christians, these went forth like a poisonous breath, withering all vegetation in the guilty land. Gaunt famine came, but no repentance with it; only death, and deeper exasperation against the servant of God. No wonder, therefore, when the brook fails, that Elijah is not sent back to Ahab and the land of Israel. But God might have sent him to

Judah1? True j and I can fancy the welcome and ovation he would have received from those who, unlike their kindred in Israel, clung to the temple and worship of their fathers’ God. It does seem strange that, for pro tection from the dangers to which his opposition to idolatry had exposed him, he is sent, not to Judah, but to Zidon and Zarephath to a land and city of idolaters. Like a man who has got out of his depth, and, drowning, turns his back on the shore and his face to the sea, was not this but making bad worse? It was as if one flying in terror from a lion, was directed to seek refuge in the lion’s den.

I conferred not, says St Paul, with flesh and blood. Had he done so, he had never, counting all things loss for Christ, become the great apostle of the Gen tiles; had Moses done so, he had never, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, become the lawgiver and founder of the Jewish nation had David done so, going back to his flock, he had never plucked the laurels from the giant’s brow, or worn royal crown upon his own; and had Elijah conferred with flesh and blood, then worldly wisdom, cautious prudence, everything but the faith that trusts in God, and laughs at impossibilities, had pronounced his going to Zidon and Zarephath to be an act of downright madness — rushing, not blindfold, but with open eyes on ruin. Surely in vain, says the proverb, the net is spread in the sight of any bird. But from Israel to Zidon, from a land

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where idolatry was but of recent growth and thousands beside Elijah remained true to their God, to one where all were old, bigoted idolaters, was from bad to worse. If he had run with the footmen and they had wearied him, how was he. to contend with horsemen? If they had wearied him in, comparatively speaking, a land of peace, what wras he to do in the swellings of Jordan 1 If his life was in danger in Samaria, how was he to be safe in Zidon 1 This was a perplexing question. He walked, perhaps, in darkness, and had no light; but he walked boldly on. He stayed himself on God. It was enough that He bade him go there; and there he went as bravely as he strode into Ahab’s palace, and bearded that lion in his own den. What a pattern to us, when, though the way be dark, the duty is clear! A most noble example of what a man can dare and a man can do, whose faith is fixed on God!

2. He is sent for sustenance to a widow woman.

Who that has read the story has not admired the tender and touching delicacy of the couriers who, stained with the blood of battle and flushed with victory, communicated to his father the dark tidings of Absalom’s death? One messenger has already come; and deeply touched by the anxiety visible in David’s countenance, he drops but a hint of evil j announces the victory, but, having no heart to lift the veil and quench at once the hope that breathes in the eager question, Is the young man Absalom safe?

evades it, saying, I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was. It falls to Cushi, the second messenger, to deal the blow that reaches the father’s heart. But, how delicately done! “Tidings, my lord the king; for the Lord hath avenged thee this clay of all them that rose up against thee,” are the words with which he bursts, panting, into the king’s presence. Not thirsting for vengeance, but thinking only of his misguided son, the father’s heart, true as needle to its pole, turns to Absalom. These words, “avenged thee of all them that rose up against thee,” have an ominous sound; still he clings to hope, again eagerly inquiring, Is the young man Absalom safe? Cushi’s hand is red with blood, yet, though more familiar with inflicting wounds than with healing them, how gently he unveils the dreadful truth! Taking care, by not even pronouncing Absalom’s name, or making any allusion to the fact that he was David’s son, his first-born, a son of much anxiety and many prayers, to avoid everything that might aggravate the blow and increase the burst of grief which he saw would come, he, as I can fancy, bowing his head and dropping his voice, just says, or, addressing David’s God rather than himself, prays, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is!

What a contrast did this exquisite tenderness on the part of man present to the tone and whole style of God’s address to Abraham, when he demanded the sacrifice of his only son! How much in that case did the manner aggravate the matter? With, as we would say, all the skill of oratory, everything is planned to magnify the difficulty of the dreadful task, and, by awaking a father’s tenderest emotions, to harrow his feelings and open up the deepest springs of grief. “Take now thy son;” and as if God had a pleasure in wringing the old man’s heart, he goes on, “thine only son,” reminding Abraham that he is childless when Isaac dies; still more, he names the lad “Isaac,” child of promises that nature fears may henceforth lie like withered leaves beneath a father’s feet; and still more, as if it needed to be told, or that was a time to tell it, God adds, “whom thou lovest;” and so, by this most tender introduction, prefaces this most dreadful conclusion — “and offer him for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee off.” Fancy how Abraham started as these words fell like a thunder-peal on his ear, or, rather, struck like a knife through his heart! Had the earth opened at his feet, he could not have been more astonished. And what horror succeeded astonishment! Yet God’s purpose was to try, and by trying to strengthen his servant’s faith; not to extinguish it, but by this rude wind to blow it up into a brighter flame, that it might shed its light adown the course of time, and make him an example to God’s people in all future generations, to be “not faithless, but believing.” And as there, so here every circumstance tends to increase the difficulty of the prophet’s duty. It was not enough that he must seek protection from persecution in a city of idolaters, but, worse and more trying still, he is thrown for bread in famine on a poor widow. Strange! he is not only to expect safety in a land of persecutors, but also plenty in a house of poverty. Our faith, alas! is weak at the strongest. With fightings without and fears within, how ready is it to fail? how often has it failed — overcome by the trials and temptations of life? But when or where was it ever put to a trial like that? A widow woman! “Let thy widows trust in me,” “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation,” are words which prove how helpless widows were in those lands where violence so often usurped the place of law. A widow woman! the least likely person in Zarephath to be able to feed this hungry man. The head that had counselled her in difficulties, the arm that had defended her from wrong, the hand that had provided for her wants, laid in the cold grave, mouldering in the dust, in her the prophet seemed to have a forlorn hope indeed. Famine had roused the fiercest passions of our nature: might was right j men fought with men in the streets for bread j and, within-doors, mothers driven mad did worse. If at such a time there were an empty cup and cold hearth in Zarephath, these would be the widow’s; one poorer than another, it would be she. Would it have been wonderful had Elijah said, If God is to preserve me, why throw me into the lion’s jaws? if he means to support me, why send me to take the bread out of a widow’s mouth? why not send me to board with those that have bags of gold and barrels of meal? To cast me for support on a widow, is to lay the burden on a broken back — to bid me turn for help to the hand of the drowning. The ravens are- gone, the brook is failed, and I may as well wait death where my unburied bones shall whiten my native soil, as go to seek him in a land of foreigners and a house of famine. What a trial had faith here 1 and what a triumph 1 He cast himself on one whom

we shall see, gaunt with famine, coming from a house where she has left her dying boy, to gather a few sticks for their last earthly meal; and so doing, Elijah, acting by faith and not by sight, laid the burden on Him who says, Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.

III. Let us learn faith and confidence from the prophet’s example — following “them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

The distant ranges of the Alps or the Andes, on first coming into view, appear but snow-wreaths left by departing winter. The nearer we approach them, they rise higher, and higher, and still higher against the sky, till, resting on stupendous precipices, those snow-crowned summits seem to support the vault of heaven. This effect is often reversed in the case of the believers trials. Formidable at a distance, dreaded when remote, the nearer his approach to them, not the greater, but the less they grow. The cloudiest day has more gleams, the barest rocks more flowers, the bitterest cup more sweetness, the darkest night more stars, than his fears allowed him to expect; the work is more easily done, the burden more easily borne, than he anticipated; he survives trials that he once thought would have crushed and killed him; and to the last and greatest trial, how applicable often are those words, “Who art thou, O great mountain 1 before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.” He has dreaded death; and death is swallowed up in victory. His latter end is peace. As I have seen the sun as he declined in the west scatter the clouds that hung over the place of his setting, and in his last hour light up heaven and earth in a blaze of glory, so faith, growing stronger as flesh grew weaker, has dissipated all the fears of the dying Christian — leaving his sun to set in a cloudless sky, and weeping friends to exclaim amid their tears, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!

It happened quite otherwise, however, in the case of the prophet. Bad as it appeared to be cast for maintenance at a time of famine on a widow’s help, the trial was worse than his worst fears, perhaps, anticipated — it was like going into a cavern, the further in the darker; into the sea, the further in the deeper. As has befallen others of God’s people, the hour of deliverance was preceded by that of greatest trial; just as the pain of an abscess is severest before it bursts, as the darkest hour is before the dawn, and the coldest before sunrise. When the prophet left the banks of Cherith for Zarephath, hope, which often tells a flattering tale, may have suggested that the widow’s circumstances might not be so poor as he had at first feared. No doubt famine raged throughout the land, but Zarephath might be an oasis in the desert, supplied with corn through the foresight of a second Joseph; what had occurred before might occur again; and, since the world is preserved for the sake of the saints, as had already happened in Egypt, the fields of the idolater might be made to feed the servants of God. Or this widow might have been left to the comforts of an ample fortune; with gold to buy bread enough even in a famine. Besides, she might have stout, and kind, and gallant sons to sustain her in her widowhood and old age; as I have seen a tree support a wall that had fallen into decay — screening with its leaves, and with its strong, tough arms holding up. the stones that had lent it in former days both shelter and support.

Alas! for Elijah, as his weary steps bring him to the gate of Zarephath, if he had no better trust than that. A sight met him there to dash such hopes in the dust, shivering them like a potter’s vessel. The widow is at the gate to receive her guest. It is not politeness, or kindness, or, as people meet a great visitor, respect for the man of God that brings her there; no, nor anticipation of the blessing this new burden is to bring. A spectral form, with head bent to the ground, creeps slowly along, ever and anon stretching out from beneath her cloak a skeleton arm to pick up some withered sticks. We have stood in cold and empty room to hear children cry for bread when the mother had none to give them; we have seen hunger looking out from hollow eyes and wasted cheeks, but, never perhaps, such an object as this. The skin like yellow parchment; the bony hand; the eyes sunk in their sockets, whence they emit an unearthly glare; the hollow cheeks; the sepulchral voice; the wasted form, seen sharp through scanty rags; the slow, tottering gait — these bespoke a victim of the famine. And while Elijah gazes on her with mingled emotions of pity and horror, the voice of God is in his ear, saying, Behold the widow woman whom I have commanded to sustain thee!

Was God mocking him when, with finger pointing to this bruised reed, he said, Lean your weight on that 1 Was it for this he had brought him, buoyed him up with hope, to Zarephath? How did it look as if God were saying to him, as he shall say to his enemies on that day when, having rejected Christ, they find no refuge from impending wrath, I “will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh.” What a trial was here! Elijah asks a morsel of bread. Bread? God help her! She has none her haggard aspect and hollow tones correspond too well with her terrible apology, for him to doubt its truth, “As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” How great the faith that staggered not under this blow, but strengthening with the trial, and believing impossibilities, in tones of cheerfulness to which she had been long a stranger, replied, Fear not go and do as thou hast said; but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.

And why should not we face our trials and difficulties, whatever they may be, with Elijah’s faith 1 These things were written not for our entertainment, but for our instruction j not so much for our admiration as for our admonition. Let them teach us, saints and sinners both, to place unbounded trust in every passage and promise of God’s word that suits our circumstances — to venture our souls upon them. No doubt Elijah, having much in God’s past dealings to sustain his faith, could say with David, 1 will remember the years of the right hand of the most High. He who made the wild ravens serve him could make poverty sustain him. The man who had seen these shy birds sweeping past

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their nests and clamorous young to lay their plunder at his feet, and wait at his table as dutiful and familiar servants, might look on this gaunt and ghastly widow to trust her for bread — leaning his whole weight on a support frail as the thread of a spider’s web. But have we not grounds of trust in God as good and strong as he had ‘{ He has given his Son for us — his own beloved Son to die for us. The eye that saw the ravens desert their brood to cater for a hungry prophet, saw no proof of kindness and power and love to compare with Calvary’s bloody cross. Miracles we do not look for: but that God, if you will truly and earnestly seek him, will forgive your sins for Jesus’ sake j that whosoever believeth in his Son shall never perish; that he will cast out none that come to him; that he will save you now, and just as you are; that he will shut the door in no man’s face; that he will make his grace sufficient for you, and perfect his strength in your weakness; that with or without miracles he will make good every promise in his word — these are truths I cannot doubt. All blessings which the Father has promised, and the Son has purchased, the Spirit is ready to bestow. He who spared not his own Son, shall he not with him freely give you all things 1 Now then, “Arise, be up and doing;’7 and whether your sins call you to the fountain of blood, or your sorrows to the fountain of consolation, or your weakness to the fountain of strength, “arise,” as I can fancy Elijah rose, and, leaving Cherith’s dry bed behind, took his way to Zarephath; and as he went beguiled the road and woke the echoes of the lonely valleys with such songs as these —

“The lions young may hungry be,
And they may lack their food;
But they that truly seek the Lord
Shall not lack any good.

“Oh! taste and see that God is good;

Who trusts in him is bless’d.
Fear God his saints; none that him fear
Shall be with want oppress’d.”