Sunset on the Heights of Gilgal
“Bright cloTids! ye are gathering one by one.
Ye are sweeping in pomp round the dying sun,
With crimson banner, and golden pall,
Like a host to their chieftain’s funeral;
Perchance ye tread to that hallow’d spot
With a muffled dirge, though we hear it not.
“But methinks ye tower with a lordlier crest,
And a gorgeous flush as he sinks to rest:
Not thus in the day of his pride and wrath
Did ye dare to press on his glorious path;
At his noontide glance ye have quaked with fear,
And hasted to hide in your misty sphere.
“Do you say he is dead? You exult in vain,
With your rainbow robe, and your swelling train;
He shall rise again with his strong bright ray,
He shall reign in power when you fade away,
When you darkly cower in your vapoury hall,
Tintless, and naked, and noteless, all.”
—SiGOURNET.
“Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. And Joash the king of Israel came down unto him, and wept over his face, and said, 0 my father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof! And Elisha said unto him. Take bow and arrows: and he took unto him bow and arrows. And he said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow: and he put his hand upon it; and Elisha put his hands upon the king’s hands. And he said. Open the window eastward: and he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot and he shot. And he said, The arrow of the Lord’s deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance fi om Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them. And he said. Take the arrows: and he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground: and he smote thrice, and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times, then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice. And Eiisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moaldtes invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Eiisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Eiisha, he revived; and stood up on bis feet.” — 2 Kinqs xiiL 14-21.
The quiet glory of this sunset corresponds with the antecedent history. We love to seat ourselves on the brow of Gilgal, and watch its disc slowly disappearing over the neighbouring hills.
Elisha stands out, in sacred story, in striking contrast to his great predecessor, Elijah. The prophet of Horeb had a reflection of his own character in the earthquake, the tempest, and the fire seen from his mountain-cave. He on whom his mantle fell, and whose life-close we are now to consider, had his type and symbol in “the still small voice” that succeeded. The one was the Peter, the other the John of the prophetic period. The one, bold, vehement, daring — coming forth with shaggy hair and leathern girdle from the savage glens of Northern Gilead, where he had been “meetlyjmrsed” for his life of romantic exploits; — with a mind subject to strong impulses, as easily prostrated as elated. The other, (‘.ii;nified, yet calm, — ftiithful and uncompromising, yet loving :.iid tender, — the Barnabas of the Old Testament, (” the son of consolation,”) amid the stricken homes of Israel. The one is !.ke a meteor blazing through the firmament — startling us with the suddenness of his apparitions, from the moment he a|)pears on the stage of sacred history confronting guilty Ahab, till, with equal suddenness and equal splendour, he is borne majestically to heaven in a chariot of fire. The other has less of this fitful lustre. Yet in conjunction with milder attributes Lc has the majesty, too, of the sun “going forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run his race!” In one word, Elisha was, in the strictest sense, a great and a good man; and in his goodness consisted his greatness. His life is a living sermon. He was to be found in season and out of season, — in every occasion of need. Never do we find him lacking in moral courage. Wherever his word and presence were required to rebuke sin, this righteous man was “bold as a lion!” He seems to grudge no time, no labour, if only his great work be advanced. We find him in royal palaces, in martial camps, in weeping households. At one time, hurling the awful malediction over impenitence and wrong-doing; at another, minolinoj his tears over ‘’ the loved and lost,’’ and then his songs of joy over the lost, raised to be loved again. Poor and unostentatious in dress, in mien, in dwelling, he had been again and again the saviour of his country, and exercised what was equivalent to regal sway in court and city, — by the throne and by the altar. He had fostered, with loving heart, the schools of the prophets, — training, with holy fidelity, those on whom the mantle of his office and example was afterwards to fall. Never was there greater need of such a man than at this crisis of Israel’s history. Their sensual idolatries, the deep moral and spiritual degradation of the whole body politic, cried loudly for one who would mingle words of love and wisdom with those of stern rebuke, and who, by the exercise of those miraculous powers which were peculiarly conferred upon him, would bring the people back from their gross materialism to the spiritual worship and national recognition of their fathers’ God.
But the time lias come when he, too, must pay the great debt of nature. Long ere he had attained the mature age at which he died, the old man seems to have retired into comparative obscurity. His brilliant public work was over; and, ere he passed to his rest and his crown, God saw meet to lay him on a couch of sickness in some lonely, unknown dwelling in Israel. It is around that couch we are now summoned. As the sands in his life-glass are slowly falling, grain by grain, come and let us gather a few of the solemn truths which the scene presents.
I. We watch a royal visitor entering the obscure abode of Elisha. It is no other than the king of Israel. And from what we can gather from the brief notices of his history, the remarkable thing about Joash’s visit is, that he must have had little sympathy, at all events, with the high-toned and elevated piety of the man of God. With many fair traits of character — intervals of sincere and true devotion — he was still following nob a few of the guilty ways of “Jeroboam the son of Nebat, luho made Israel to sin.” For this he had, doubtless, been often and again rebuked by the faithful admonitions of the prophet, — he had quailed under his piercing eye, — and evaded, whenever he could, that presence of exalted sanctity. We never hear, during all the sixteen years he had already reigned, of his once coming to him before on a personal visit. But now, when he hears that the aged Seer’s end is approaching, he hastens to do homage to the greatness and goodness that are so soon to leave behind them an irreparable blank! Nay, more than this — it is no mere courteous visit. It is not the patronising stoop of supercilious royalty coming to parade vain etiquette and adulation when the time for just recognition of service is past. But he comes as the representative mourner of a whole nation. He comes to pour out one of the noblest panegyrics ever pronounced over departing or departed worth. It was uttered from a bursting heart, and through eyes moist with weeping.
Mark the picture. (We can imagine no nobler subject for inspired painting.) An old man on the threshold of a century, shrivelled and wasted by long sickness, with pale lip and feeble hand, lies stretched on the couch from which he is never to rise. His monarch stands by, and stoops over him, bathed in a flood of impassioned tears. We read, “He wept over his face;” and then broke silence through his choked utterance with the words, “My father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!”
What meant he by this? In that moment of profound emotion, the king saw in that weaning eye — that ebbing life-pulse — that there was about to pass away “a power mightier than all the armies of Israel.’’ “I lose,” he cries, “in thee, my best chariots and horsemen; with the decay of these mortal walls of thy frail body, I forfeit my best bulwarks, — my nation’s tower of strength. I can recruit my wasted ranks, decimated by famine and pestilence and by the cruel fortunes of war but I cannot reanimate or recall thy saintly prayers — thy godly counsels — thy commanding influence — thy unsullied example, and untainted life. Thy death will be, as if, by one fearful sweej) — one cruel blow — my chariots and horsemen were cast into the depths of the sea, — as if the beauty of Israel was slain in the high places. ‘’ Hold, fir-tree, for tJie cedar has fallen!”
We have here an example of the homage (often tardily extorted) paid by men of the world to true piety and principle, pure devotion, consistent character, unblemished life. Nay more, it is the assertion by kingly lips of a great truth, from which we may well, in these days, gather comfort and instruction; — that there are walls and bulwarks constituting a nation’s strength, nobler than material strongholds and vast armaments; — that the great and the good — men of prayer, and men of faith, and men of God — are a nation’s noblest defenders, the truest guardians of her liberties, the best rampart of defence around her hearths and homes! Let us not be guilty of the impiety of measuring a nation’s might, in modern times, by her arsenals and dockyards, the stores of her ammunition, and the calibre of her cannon. Thanks be to God, we have all these to boast of too; — and brave souls, ready to leap, like the sword from its scabbard, to do gallant defence for all that is dear in the hour of peril! But it is matter of thankfulness that Britain has more than these. She has more than the bravery which had its representative in the furious courage of another contemporary of Elisha, and one divinely appointed to co-operate with him; — she has more than her “Sons of JS’imshi,” with horses’ hoofs spurning the plain as they rush on to battle. She has her Elishas too; — noble, lofty souls, — bold in the maintenance of Chrisjlan principle; — ay, men in her high places, who count not their coronets tarnished because they love their Saviour; and ^Yho are not ashamed to avow their allegiance to the Prince of the kings of the earth. Yes, we may be proud to point to the annals of our country’s old martial glory; to listen to tljc roll of her conquering drum by land, — the voice of her thunder by sea, challenging the sovereignty of the ocean; —
*TO- SUNSETS ON THE HEBREY/ MOU^^ TAINS.
jhe old indomitable lion making its proud leap still, against fearful odds, as on the stern battle-fields of other days. But we own a nobler title to supremacy; — one which preserves jur ark in the midst of European storms. “We have not only a strong city” — (a strong nation) — hut “Salvation is apiointed for walls and for bulwarks.” While the statesmanship that in some momentous crisis wielded the nation’s destiny is lauded and extolled; — while brilliant homage is awarded to the political sagacity which steered the vessel amid conflicting storms; — while every tongue is justly eloquent in the praises of the valiant squadrons that mounted breach after breach to victory; — while science wins new laurels in girdling our shores with impregnable bulwarks, frowning defiance on every invader; — we may do well also to ask Israel’s king to read to us the grand philosophy of a nation’s greatness, — we may hear his voice echoing in every chamber where a Christian dies, — ‘’ My father, my father 1 the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!”
But let us pass to a strange episode in the story of Elisha’s deathbed.
The old prophet has all the love of his country, as well jjs of his God, still unquenched in his bosom. And with the grand heroism of a dying patriot, he gives a significant token and assurance of success over their hereditary foe, to the king and nation to whom he is so soon to bid adieu for ever.
He tells the young monarch to take his bow and quiver, — and opening the eastern window of the sick-chamber, to shoot an arrow in the direction of Aphek. This was a frontier- town, near the eastern shores of the Lake of Gailee, where the Syrian army were then encamped. Before, however, the arrow is discharged, the prophet puts his withered hands over the hand of the king, aiding him in drawing the bow; forth flies the feathered weapon in the direction of the foes of Israel the aged Seer adding — “The arroiu of the Lord’s deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them.”
Nor was this all. After the flight of the arrow, Elisha told him to take the remaining contents of the quiver, and “smite the ground with them” This Joash did three times only. The prophet, displeased at his want of faith, tells him that, instead of a series of victories ending in complete triumph, the armies of Israel should only have three successful battles with their old adversary. It seemed to have been the old man’s expiring act. The accounts of his death and sepulture immediately follow.
There are many instructive reflections suggested by this incident.
The prophet seeks to leave the world, impressing on his sovereign and his people the great truth, that the hand of the Lord can alone give deliverance from any enemy. He was now as God’s vicegerent, speaking and acting in the name of the God he served. When he laid his wrinkled hands over those of Joash, it was to proclaim by an expressive symbol, “If that arrow prove an arrow of deliverance, it is because the Lord’s hand and might have been with the bowmen. If .the Syrians be routed, as routed they shall be, give Him all the glory. In every military project and campaign, look to Him for direction and victory.”
The king had just spoken, in the ears of the prophet, of the “chariots and the horsemen of Israel.” Elisha’s reply was in the spirit, at least, of another noble Hebrew. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses,” hut remember ye ‘’the name of the Lord your God.” “Blessed he the Lord, who teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight.” *
But we cannot think that in this dying, symbolic act, there were no spiritual lessons for the Church of God and for every believer in every age.
Mightier adversaries than the Syrians are around us; — invisible spiritual enemies, “whose name is Legion, for they are many.” God would impress upon us, alike in our spiritual conflicts and spiritual advancements, our dependence on Him; — that if we ever reach the heavenly inheritance, this will be our confession on our every retrospect of the earthly battle-field: — “Vie got not yossession of the land by our own sword, neither did our own arm save us. But thy right hand and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto its. ‘It is the good hand of our God being upon us — His hands “overlaying” ours — that gives power and direction to every arrow, whether of conviction, or deliverance, or comfort. “JS^ot unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name we woidd give glory.” “By the grace of God we are what tue are.” But while all this is true, He would at the same time teach us here a great counterpart truth, viz., that He works by means. He tells us to “take bow and arrow.” What are these? It is the bow 0/ faith and the arrow o/pkayer! and the dlrection to us, as to Joash, is ‘■ shoot.” Prayer is the arrow
* Ps. XX. 7, cxliv. 1.
of deliverance. Christ himself has strung it. He has, like Elisha, put his hand on ours, declaring, ‘’Believe, onhj believe.” ‘’All tilings are j)0ssihle to him that helisveth.” “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name he will give it yoiC Alas! that, like Joash, we should” limit the Holy One of Israel,” that we should get “weary of smiting,” and thus cheat ourselves of the promised blessing. We do not empty our quivers. We “smite the ground” with a feeble, irresolute hand. We ask with the half-hearted faith of those who think that the Lord’s hand is ‘’shortened that it cannot save.” We think we do enough when we have “smitten thrice and then stayed.”
As with Israel’s king, unbelief is the guilty cause of all these religious failures and declensions, — these shortcomings and defects. When our enemies smite us and vanquish us, let us blame ourselves — not Him, whom we have displeased by our want of faith. We refuse to take God at His word. We controvert and gainsay His commands by our carnal reasonings. ““What” (that proud young monarch might say to himself) — “what the need of these silly repetitions; — dashing these arrows on the clay floor of this dwelling? I understand the significancy of the arrow of deliverance which sped a little ago from the eastward window, but this ’ smiting on the ground’ is a meaningless act. I shall (to please the old Seer) go the length of casting three arrows on the floor, but I shall submit to no more.”
What a picture of ourselves! We stop short in the means of gaining spiritual conquests, just when a little more faith, prayer, courage, self-sacriflce, trust in God, might have won the day, and given us victory. It is the case with thousands on thousands, that they go a certain length in well-doing, and then they cease. They are content with laiiouid, fitful efibrts. They lop off a few branches and leave the old root to throw out fresh shoots. They stop half way up “the Hill Difficulty.” They go half way through the torrent, manfully breasting and buffeting it, and then sink. Their religion is not the work of men in earnest. After a few victories over master sins, a few dominant lusts subdued, they leave unvanquished corruptions to levy a new army on the side of evil. The tide washes out all their good resolutions, and “the last state of that man is worse than the firsty Oh that we knew, and realised, and acted out, the power of believing prayer and persevering prayer; — that great truth which Christ inculcated and illustrated by no less than two parables, that” men ought aliuays to pray and not to faint.’’ *
It must be believing prayer. “I will direct my prayer to thee,” says David, *’ and will look up.’’-]’ And so it is with the true Christian. Prayer with him is not an empty form. “He knows he will have the petitions desired of God.” He “directs“’ his supplication, and “looks up” for the descent of the promised blessing, saying, ‘’Bo as thou hast said.” I
It must also be “persevering prayer. Let us not cease to smite the ground with Heaven’s own winged arrows, when Christ says, “Smite on.” Paul, in his Christian-armourychapter, in naming this “arrow of deliverance,” most specially reminds us never to desist till our quiver be exhausted, — - “Praying always’’ says he,” with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all persever-
‘Luke xviii. 1. f Ps. v, 3. J 1 Chron. xvii. 23.
ance and supplication for all saints.“* Beware of distrusting and dishonouring God, — becoming languid and indifferent, —” the hands hanging down and the knees feeble; “and that, too, in the best period of your lives, when you have health and strength to serve Him; — keeping back” the arrows of the mighty “when your hand is best able to grasjj the bow. If you neglect to draw it now, when your arm is strong, and (lod is guiding you, what will you do when the arm is feeble, — “when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves? “— ‘* If thou hast run luith the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend ivitli horses? And if in the land of jjeace, wherein thou trustedst, they luearied thee, then how luilt thoio do in the swelling of Jordan?” -(*
One other point still remains — the lessons from the sick-bed of the prophet.
The comparison has often and again been suggested (and the contrast is a striking one) between the departure of Elisha and that of Elijah. Both are characters truly great; each possessing their peculiar lineaments of greatness and grandeur. But while Elijah is unquestionably the more brilliant and dazzling of the two, encircled with a halo of moral chivalry, which his successor does not, at least to the same extent, share, we think (as we have already indicated) that the purer, godlier life belonged to Elisha.
Why then so startling a difference in the manner in which they bade adieu to the earth they had gladdened with their presence? Why was there given to Elijah the brilliant equipage, “the chariot of fire and the horses of fire?’*
* Eph. vi. 18. + Jer. xu. 5.
Why to him give immunity from pain and suffering, from the langour and decay of sinking nature, the decrepitude of age, the pangs of a sick-bed? why spare him all these, and, in the glory of his manhood, when the laurels were green on his brow, and his eye undinimed, send him majestically up to heaven on the wings of the whirlwind; while the saintlier man — the man of more even walk — more consistent life and rarer goodness, is suffered to waste away by sickness in the secluded home of his old age? From the peculiar expression, “Now Elisha was fallen sick oithe sickness whereof he died,” we are led to conjecture that his was no brief illness; — but that the aged proyhet may rather have been “made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights were appointed him, full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.” Many require such discipline and chastisement, — but he needed, apparently, no such polishing for his crown, no such furnace to refine him; he needed to give no further testimony (for his life was already an eloquent evidence) that “he pleased God.” Why, then, we again ask, was it not with him as with Elijah? Why did not the fiery coursers come down to his cottage home too at Gilgal, and save him these long days of weakness and suffering?
It might be enough for us to answer, “The Lord willed it so.’” But we generally find that God has a reason for all He does — that He acts on great principles. There is nothing capricious in His dealings — nothing accidental even in His appointments regarding a sick-bed.
And we may the more readily speak of this contrast between the departures of the two great prophets of their age.
because it is a contrast constantly occiuTing still in the diverse experiences of believers. Some are surrounded with a halo of brightness to the last; — others are laid low in the midst of public usefulness — chained, for years on years, to a couch of languishing — the dim lamp of life flickering long in its socket, till the flame of wasted nature expires.
Let us learn, from the contrasted cases of Elijah and Elisha, that God adapts His dealings to the different characters of His people. He knoAVS exactly what they can best bear. He knows how they can best glorify Him. “He stays his rough tuind in the day of his east tuind.” He “tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.” Elijah, that spirit of the storm — bold, manh, full of zeal for his God and his nation; — yet by natural temperament, rash, impulsive — and if severely tried, fretful and irritable; — with a hero-heart — one day up amid the frantic crowd on Blount Carmel — the next hiding amid the clefts of the Sinai desert, away from life and its great mission; — though God’s grace, indeed, could have braced him up for anything, yet (judging on ordinary grounds) he would not have been well fitted to stand the wasting ordeal of a prolonged sickness. He glorified his God too, — but it was, as with David’s lion-like men of a former age, by brilliant but fitful feats of moral championship. Act after act of his life was too often like wave upon wave dashing proudly in succession on the rock, but retreating again to hide the chafed foam in the porous sands. We can hardly picture to ourselves this Gilead chief — the Bedouin of his age — laid for years on years in some lone cottage of Israel — the fire of his noble spirit burning slowly out. It would have been like Samson chafing in his dun-M geon, but unable, like Samson, by the Divine sanction and by a brilliant deed, to terminate his humiliation. And therefore God, (knowing the constitutional temperament of His favoured and devoted servant) prepares for him rather the glorious translation. He uses him in another way, to give testimony to the doctrine of the resurrection; — and without one moment’s pang — one day’s experience of suffering or sickness — the eddying whirlwind and the fiery coursers bear him away as in a car of victory to the gates of glory!
Not so Elisha. The Lord who trieth all hearts, knows that He can get another revenue of glory from this holy man, in addition to what he had already rendered, in his public character, during the day of health and manly vigour. He will not carry him off while he is yet in his prime; — He allows the lengthening shadows of age to creep upon him; — He whitens his brow with the snows of fourscore winters; — He takes him to a lowly home of obscurity, there lays him on a sick-bed — and He would have him preach to all Israel, and to us too, by these days of passive endurance and suffering, as well as by his former life of stern work and active and laborious duty.
Let no one say that a man is unable to serve and glorify his God in a home of obscurity or on a couch of prolonged and hopeless distress. We go to Elisha’s sick-chamber for the refutation True — we are told little (we are told nothing) as to how he bore his trouble. There is no positive record of his patience and endurance, his calm and childlike submission in this season of illness. But we gather, at all events, that he lived through his sickness as he had lived through his health, — a man of God — a man of faith, — with a soul glowing with high patriotism, which the panas of a death-couch could not quench! If sickness and trouble had soured and irritated him, — he would have turned his back when he heard these royal footsteps — he would have mocked and scorned these royal tears. Thinking nothing but of himself, and thinking hardly of his God, he would have said, in the peevish mood of Elijah, ‘’It is enough; take away my life I “How different! Grand it is to see this feeble, decrepit Sage, racked with the pains of approaching death, raising himself up to deliver, with patriot lip, a message of peace to Israel. Like a great dying hero of our own, he would not compose his head on its last pillow, till ‘’victory” was borne to his ears amid the shout and shell of battle.
Thus, then, we deduce the lesson, that God will adapt His dealings to our varied temperaments and capacities of endurance. He suits the soldier to the place, and the place to the soldier. He will send us no temptation or trial, which He knows we are unable to bear. Look at the deaths which are constantly occurring around us — some swept away like Elijah, suddenly in a moment, “as a dream when one awaketh; “— others, in the delirium of fever, saving them mercifully the bondage-fear of dissolution; and with a glorious surprise opening their eyes in heaven. To others, He appoints the slow process of wasting and decay — transfigured on the Mount of Suffering before being glorified — the light of heavenly peace shining through the chinks of their “earthly tabernacle” before it is finally “dissolved 1 “But all is His appointment. It is not for us to question, in these varied experiences, —” Where is the Lord God of Elijah t “” Where is the Lord God of ElishaV
We may learn more than this — whether, in the case of ourselves, when visited with future, unforeseen, protracted sickness, or in that of some near and dear to us, who may now be laid on couches of anguish and suffering. Let us never think that we or they are useless to the world; — cast as weeds and wrack on the desert shore, — unable to glorify our God.
Nay, far from it. There is no grander pulpit than a sick-bed; — no more impressive preacher than that weak and languid sufferer who has for years on years been familiar with no more cheerful vision than the obscured light creeping through the shaded windows, no sound but the suppressed footfall or whisper of affection. Ah, it is often easier to be an Elijah than an Elisha. It is often easier to mount the steeps of Carmel, to pronounce maledictions on transgressors, and make the river Kishon run with blood; — to confront an Ahab, and dare a royal frown, than, lying low under the Divine hand, with meek, gentle, kind, loving spirit, to say, “It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.’’ * And be assured, God does not (like man) measure character or deeds by their greatness and lustre. When man’s eye is on some brilliant action; — or some display of boasted munificence, — His niay be on the unselfish kindness, the unostentatious deed of lowly beneficence, the humble trust of the widow in the widow’s God; — the pining sufferer, amid long years of anguish, giving forth no utterance but one — “Even so, Father, f 07’ so it seems good in Thy sight.’’
And was Elisha’s prolonged life of weakness, — was his sick-bed unproductive of glory to the God he served, and of * I Sam. iii. 18,
£1^ood to the people he loved? Go 1 (after that noble old hero-yrophet is sleeping in his grave) — go north amid the glens of Gilead, where the army of Israel is reposhig after a day’s bloody conflict with Syria, and hear how they connect the last act of that palsied arm with the victory they had achieved! The Syrians have fled from Aphek, and Israel is triumphant. But it was the old prophet’s symbolic “arrow “which that day inspired every bowman and spearman with indomitable valour. The voice of the dead has led them on to victory! Tears may well flow afresh down the cheeks of Joash as he sees the tide of conflict setting in his favour. He may well turn the old panegyric into a battle-cry,, and shout over the prophet’s ashes, as he had done over his death-pillow, — ‘’My father! myfaiJier! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!”
God, moreover, would not suffer His servant, who had glorified Him so faithfully in his life and in his death — He would not suffer him to pass to his sepulchre without a fresh attestation to the words, ‘’Them that honour me I luill honour.” The historical narrative further narrates, hov a dead body, that was cast into the prophet’s tomb to secrete it from a band of Moab marauders or bandits, on touching the bones of the buried Seer, started into life. It was an exception to the great truth,” The dead ijraise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.’’ Here was one who did praise Him; praised Him in life, and praised Him after he descended into the tomb.
Come, and learn from all this, not only that you can honour God in old age, in sickness, in sufTering, in obscurity, ay, in the very valley of death, but (by an expressive allegory — a miraculous figure in the vivifying of this body by contact with the bones of Elisha) you are taught that your influence can survive dissolution, — that there may be a power in the holy memories of your life and example, which may kindle new aspirations in others when your own tongues are silenced! Ah! it is a mighty theme this of posthumous influence. While you gather round the sick-bed of Elijah, and learn its lessons, gather around his grave. See that dead corpse touching his bones, and learn the lessons it, too, conveys. Shall our graves and sepulchres wake up some dormant fount of life? Shall the arrow of deliverance which speeds from our living hand, enter into some heart when the hand that sped it is mouldering in the tomb? If we, when dead, are thus to speak, remember, our speech will be the echoes of the 2^’iesent. What we shall say then, is what we are now! Stupendous thought 1 glorious privilege! We envy not Elijah his burnished chariot-wheels and majestic whirlwind. We will cheerfully, if God see meet, lie down with Elisha in his humble couch and lowly sepulchre, — if we are better able thereby to quicken by our example, and animate by our faith.
Spirit of God! breathe upon the dry bones that they may live! If now, the memories of the departed come hovering over us, — their virtues in living, their submission in trial, their peace in dying, — let us touch their ashes; — let the dead speak; — let them meet in the affirmative the challenge of the Psalmist, — ‘’Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth r