2 Kings 13:14-21. When ELISHA was in his last
illness, King Jehoash of Israel visited him and wept over him. "My father!
My father! The chariots and charioteers of Israel!" he cried. Elisha told
him, "Get a bow and some arrows." And the king did as he was told. Then
Elisha told the king of Israel to put his hand on the bow, and Elisha laid
his own hands on the king's hands. Then he commanded, "Open that eastern
window," and he opened it. Then he said, "Shoot!" So he did. Then Elisha
proclaimed, "This is the Lord's arrow, full of victory over Aram, for you
will completely conquer the Arameans at Aphek. Now pick up the other arrows
and strike them against the ground." So the king picked them up and struck
the ground three times. But the man of God was angry with him. "You should
have struck the ground five or six times!" he exclaimed. "Then you would
have beaten Aram until they were entirely destroyed. Now you will be
victorious only three times." Then Elisha died and was buried.
Groups of Moabite raiders used to invade the land each
spring. Once when some Israelites were burying a man, they spied a band of
these raiders. So they hastily threw the body they were burying into the
tomb of Elisha. But as soon as the body touched Elisha's bones, the dead man
revived and jumped to his feet!
The quiet glory of this SUNSET corresponds with the
antecedent history. We love to seat ourselves on the brow of Gilgal, and
watch his sun slowly disappearing over the neighboring 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 belt from the savage glens of Northern Gilead, where he
had been "fitly nursed" for his life of visionary exploits--with a mind
subject to strong impulses, as easily prostrated as elated. The other,
dignified, yet calm, faithful and uncompromising, yet loving and tender--the
Barnabas of the Old Testament, ("the son of consolation,") amid the stricken
homes of Israel.
The one is like a meteor blazing through the
skies--startling us with the suddenness of his appearances, from the moment
he appears on the stage of sacred history confronting guilty Ahab, until,
with equal suddenness and equal splendor, he is borne majestically to heaven
in a chariot of fire. The other has less of this fitful luster. Yet in
conjunction with milder attributes he has the majesty, also, 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 labor, if only his great
work be advanced. We find him in royal palaces, in martial camps, in weeping
households. At one time, hurling the dreadful malediction over impenitence
and wrong-doing; at another, mingling 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 demeanor, in
dwelling, he had been again and again the savior 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 country,
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 has come when Elisha also, must pay the
great debt of nature. Long before 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, before he passed to his rest and his
crown, God saw fit 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
Jehoash'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 many of the guilty ways of "Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who 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 Elisha 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! No--more than this--it is no mere courteous visit. It is
not the patronizing stoop of haughty 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 eulogies 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, shriveled 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
him," and then broke silence through his choked utterance with the
words, "My father, my father! the chariots of Israel, and their
horsemen!"
What did he mean by this? In that moment of profound
emotion, the king saw in that waning 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 you, my best chariots and horsemen; with the decay of
these mortal walls of your frail body, I forfeit my best bulwarks--my
nation's tower of strength. I can recruit any depleted ranks, decimated by
famine and pestilence and by the cruel fortunes of war; but I cannot
reanimate or recall your saintly prayers--your godly counsels--your
commanding influence--your unsullied example, and untainted life. Your death
will be, as if, by one fearful sweep--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. "Howl, fir-tree, for the 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, and unblemished life. No 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
military strength--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 shield of defense around her hearths
and homes!
Let us not be guilty of the impiety of measuring a
nation's might by her arsenals and dockyards, the stockpiles of her
ammunition, and the caliber of her weapons. 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 defense for all that is dear in the hour of
peril! But we are thankful 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 Nimshi," with horses' hoofs
trampling the plain as they rush on to battle.
She has her ELISHAS also--noble, lofty souls--bold in the
maintenance of Christian principle--yes, men in her high places, who count
not their coronets tarnished because they love their Savior; and who 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 the roll of her conquering drum by land, the voice of
her thunder by sea, challenging the sovereignty of the ocean--the 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 our ark in the midst of European storms. "We have not only
a strong city"--(a strong nation)--but "Salvation is appointed 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! the chariot of Israel, and their horsemen!"
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
as 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 forever.
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 Galilee, where the Syrian army were then encamped.
Before, however, the arrow is discharged, the prophet puts his withered
hands over the hands of the king, aiding him in drawing the bow; forth flies
the feathered weapon in the direction of the foes of Israel, the aged
Prophet adding--"This is the Lord's arrow, full of victory over Aram, for
you will completely conquer the Arameans at Aphek."
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 lack 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 burial 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 viceregent,
speaking and acting in the name of the God he served. When he laid his
wrinkled hands over those of Jehoash, it was to proclaim by an expressive
symbol, "If that arrow proves to be 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," but you remember "the name of the Lord your God." "Blessed
be the Lord, who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight." (Ps.
20:7; 144:1.)
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--"We did not get possession of the land by our own
sword, neither did our own arm save us. But your right hand and your arm,
and the light of your countenance, because you had favor unto us." 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. "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Your name we
would give glory." "By the grace of God we are what we are."
But while all this is true, He would at the same time
teach us here a great counterpart truth, that is, that He works by means.
He tells us to "take bow and arrow." What are these? It is the
bow of FAITH and the arrow of PRAYER! and the direction to us, as
to Joash, is "shoot." Prayer is the arrow of deliverance. Christ
himself has strung it. He has, like Elisha, put his hand on ours, declaring,
"Believe, only believe." "All things are possible to him that believes."
"Whatever you shall ask the Father in my name he will give it you."
Alas! that, like Jehoash, 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 so "shortened that it cannot save." We think we do enough
when we have smitten thrice.
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 lack of faith. We refuse
to take God at His word. We question and deny His commands by our carnal
reasonings. "What" (that proud young monarch might say to himself)" what is
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 while ago from the eastward window, but this 'smiting on
the ground' is a meaningless act. I shall (to please the old Prophet) 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-sacrifice, trust in God, might have won the day, and given us
victory. It is the case with thousands, that they go a certain length in
well-doing, and then they cease. They are content with languid, fitful
efforts. They lop off a few branches and leave the old root to grow 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 impose 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 first." Oh that we knew, and realized, 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 always to pray and not to faint," (Luke 18:1).
It must be BELIEVING prayer. "I will direct my prayer
to you," says David, "and will look up," (Ps. 5:3). 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, "Do as you
have said," (1 Chron. 17:23).
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-armory-chapter, in naming this "arrow of
deliverance," most specially reminds us never to desist until our quiver be
exhausted--"Praying always," says he, "with all prayer and
supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and
supplication for all saints," (Eph. 6:18). Beware of distrusting and
dishonoring God--becoming languid and indifferent--"the hands hanging down
and the knees feeble;" and that, also, 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 grasp the bow. If you neglect to
draw it now, when your arm is strong, and God 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 you have run with the footmen, and they
have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land
of peace, wherein you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the
swelling of Jordan?" (Jer. 12:5).
One other point still remains--the LESSONS from
the sickbed 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
features 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, both
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?" Why to him give immunity from pain and suffering, from the
languor 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 undimmed, 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
suffering from the sickness from which he died," we are led
to conjecture that his was no brief illness--but that the aged prophet 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 the fiery horses not 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 occurring 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, until 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 temperaments of His
people. He knows exactly what they can best bear. He knows how they can
best glorify Him. "He stays his rough wind in the day of his east wind."
He "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." Elijah, that spirit of
the storm--bold, manly, 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 Mount
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 himself
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 also, 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 lonely cottage of
Israel--the fire of his noble spirit burning slowly out. It would have been
like Samson chafing in his dungeon, 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 favored 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--without one day's experience of suffering or
sickness--the eddying whirlwind and the fiery horses bear him away as in a
chariot of victory to the gates of glory!
Not so Elisha. The Lord who tries 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 vigor. 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 also, 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 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 pangs 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!" 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, until "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 awakens"--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!" But all is His appointment. It
is not for us to question, in these varied experiences--"Where is the
Lord God of Elijah?" "Where is the Lord God of Elisha?"
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 wreckage on the desert shore--unable to glorify our
God.
No, far from it. There is no grander pulpit than a
sickbed--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 a meek, gentle, kind, loving spirit, to say, "It
is the Lord, let him do what seems him good," (1 Sam. 3:18). And be
assured, God does not (like man) measure character or deeds by their
greatness and luster. When man's eye is on some brilliant action--or some
display of ostentatious munificence--God's may 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, for so it
seems good in Your sight."
And was Elisha's prolonged life of weakness--was
his sick-bed unproductive of glory to the God he served, and of good to the
people he loved? Go! (after that noble old hero-prophet is sleeping in his
grave)--go north amid the glens of Gilead, where the army of Israel is
reposing 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 valor. The voice of the dead has led them on to victory!
Tears may well flow afresh down the cheeks of Jehoash as he sees the tide of
conflict setting in his favor. He may well turn the old eulogy into a
battle-cry, and shout over the prophet's ashes, as he had done over his
death-pillow--"My father! my father! the chariot of Israel, and their
horsemen!"
God, moreover, would not allow His servant, who had
glorified Him so faithfully in his life and in his death--He would not allow
him to pass to his sepulcher without a fresh attestation to the words,
"Those who honor me I will honor." The historical narrative further
narrates, how a dead body, that was cast into the prophet's tomb to hide it
from a band of Moab marauders or bandits. On touching the bones of the
buried Prophet, that dead body sprang into life. It was an exception to the
great truth, "The dead praise 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
honor God in old age, in sickness, in suffering, in obscurity, yes, in the
very valley of death, but (by an expressive allegory--a miraculous figure in
the enlivening 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 that it conveys. Shall our graves
and sepulchers 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 present.
What we shall say then, is what we are now! Stupendous
thought! glorious privilege! We do not envy Elijah his burnished chariot and
majestic whirlwind. We will cheerfully, if God sees fit, lie down with
Elisha in his humble couch and lowly sepulcher--if we are better able
thereby to quicken others by our example, and animate them 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 you? shall it declare
your truth?"