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 ./ . tf . 
 
 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM.
 
 THE 
 
 HALLOWING OF CRITICISM 
 
 $ermon0 on (fljlijafj ipreacljefc in 
 
 Rochester Catbetiraf, 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY READ AT THE CHURCH CONGRESS, 
 MANCHESTER, OCTOBER 2ND, l888. 
 
 REV. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D., 
 
 L-" ~ 
 
 ORIEL PROFESSOR OF THE INTERPRETATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE AT 
 OXFORD, CANON OF ROCHESTER. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVIII. 
 
 [All rights reserved.}
 
 Printed by Hazell Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
 
 TO 
 
 MY WIFE, 
 
 WHO, IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE, 
 HAS TRAVELLED WITH ME IN THE PSALMISTS' 
 
 AND ELIJAH'S LAND, 
 THIS BOOK, WHICH IS HER OWN, 
 
 IS 
 DEDICATED.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 HE history of this little book is as follows. 
 Finding myself transferred for three 
 months from studious Oxford to the cathedral 
 city of a busy, practical diocese, I had to con- 
 sider how I could make some small distinctive 
 contribution to Church work. The best way 
 appeared to be to attempt a (to me) fresh 
 experiment in preaching. It was evident that 
 Old Testament subjects were by no means 
 adequately represented or accurately explained 
 in ordinary Anglican sermons, and it seemed 
 to me (as it has doubtless done to others) 
 that a reform might well be initiated by 
 cathedral preachers. If any additional justi- 
 fication be needed, I have only to refer to 
 the present Dean of Westminster's expository
 
 viii PREFA CE. 
 
 lectures on Ecclesiastes and Job. The present 
 course of sermons, it is true, is not purely 
 expository ; it also touches from time to 
 time on historical criticism. I hope, how- 
 ever, that the tone is not less popular than 
 that of Dean Bradley's excellent work. The 
 subject is, no doubt, a familiar one ; and it 
 may have been too bold to touch it. Stanley's 
 predecessor at Oxford (W. W. Shirley, Pro- 
 fessor of Ecclesiastical History, so favourably 
 known by his Wycliffe researches) printed four 
 university sermons on Elijah ; these I have 
 not seen. That accomplished and catholic- 
 minded New Testament scholar Professor 
 Milligan, of Aberdeen, has also published an 
 interesting and instructive work " Elijah : his 
 Life and Times " in the series called " Men 
 of the Bible " (Nisbet and Co.) ; several parts 
 of this book I have read (as some footnotes 
 will show) with sympathy, though not without 
 regret that it is not more pronouncedly critical. 
 For myself the subject had a special attraction,
 
 PREFA CE. ix 
 
 owing to my recent return from a tour in 
 Palestine with my wife and our friends Canons 
 Driver and Were ; and I only wish that we 
 could have had a nearer view of Elijah's Mount 
 Carmel. I had no thought of publishing this 
 
 course; but finding that I had only twenty 
 
 c 
 
 minutes to deal with a certain great subject at 
 the Manchester Church Congress, it occurred 
 to me that these sermons might help to illus- 
 trate my ideas. 
 
 The subject referred to may be briefly 
 described as the Hallowing of Criticism. The 
 Scriptures must in future, as many think, be 
 expounded by preachers and teachers with 
 some reference to the results of criticism ; and 
 the question becomes an urgent one how this 
 can be done so as not to injure, but, if possible, 
 even to promote, the higher or religious life. 
 The Church Congress paper itself is appended 
 to the sermons. It might have been fitly 
 supplemented by an essay on the relations of 
 Old Testament criticism to the Christian
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 faith which I was called upon to read at the 
 Church Congress at Reading in 1883. This, 
 however, is already printed as the introductory 
 chapter to a work called " Job and Solomon ; 
 or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament" (1886). 
 
 ROCHESTER, 
 September itf/i, 1888.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. ELIJAH His CHARACTER AND FIRST AP- 
 PEARANCE i 
 
 II. ELIJAH AT CHERITH AND ZAREPHATH. . 23 
 
 III. ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL . . .43 
 
 IV. ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL (continued} . 61 
 V. THE BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT . .81 
 
 VI. ELIJAH AT HOREB 101 
 
 VII. ELIJAH AT HOREB (continued) . . .121 
 VIII. NABOTH'S VINEYARD . . . .141 
 
 IX. THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH . . . .163 
 APPENDIX 183
 
 I. 
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER AND FIRST 
 APPEARANCE. 

 
 " And he shall go before his face in the spirit and power of 
 Elijah." LUKE i. 17 (R.V.).
 
 I. 
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER AND FIRST 
 APPEARANCE. 
 
 r I^HE story of Elijah is one of those dra- 
 -* matic portions of the Old Testament to 
 which we all come back with delight. I sup- 
 pose that there has been no period in which 
 men have been so able and willing to do full 
 justice to the imaginative side of that sacred 
 literature as the present. This seems to me 
 a great advantage. Turn over the pages of 
 commentaries and sermons, dry, and dead, and 
 buried, of fifty years ago. Can you help being 
 struck by a fearful poverty of imagination on 
 the part of the writers ? Good men, no doubt, 
 but not able to help this generation. It is, 
 of course, not enough to regard the narratives 
 of Joseph, Balaam, Jonah, Elijah, and Elisha,
 
 4 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 simply as stories ; but stories they certainly 
 are, stories of the highest and noblest type, 
 from the point of view of art as well as from 
 that of morality and religion. Some people 
 are used to disparage those stories which have 
 a tendency or purpose. But did not the great 
 classic masters always write with a purpose ? 
 I do not say, a conscious purpose ; that is, 
 were not their lives rilled with high ideas and 
 noble aims, to which they could not help giving 
 expression in their works of art ? Just so it 
 was with the story-tellers the prose-poets 
 of Israel. They at least those whose works 
 have been preserved in the sacred Canon 
 arranged and ornamented the wild growths of 
 popular tradition in such a way as to promote 
 sound morality and religion at a time when all 
 the rest of the world, especially of the Eastern 
 world, was comparatively dark. Their works 
 are not, like some romances of our own day, 
 mosaics of fascinating description, clever por- 
 traiture, and ethical or theological controversy ; 
 they are stories perfumed with the natural 
 fragrance of realized ideas and constantly
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 5 
 
 present purposes. This is why they are so 
 true to nature, that persons who are devoid 
 of a sense for literature often suppose them 
 to be true to fact. True to fact ! Who goes 
 to the artist for hard, dry facts ? Why, even 
 the historians of antiquity thought it no part 
 of their duty to give the mere prose of life. 
 How much less can the unconscious artists of 
 the imaginative East have described their heroes 
 with relentless photographic accuracy ! There 
 are indeed facts for him who will dig for them 
 as for hid treasures, and there are ideas 
 which derive a fresh lustre from those facts ; 
 but there is also pure, unalloyed pleasure which 
 ever springs anew to the imaginative reader 
 from these truly inspired stories. 
 
 I have chosen the story of Elijah, in pre- 
 ference to the others which I menticned, as 
 the subject of a course of sermons because 
 to-day is the Feast of St. John the Baptist, of 
 whom Elijah is repeatedly represented in the 
 New Testament as the type. You know that 
 fine passage in an admirable, though far from 
 perfect, romance of our own day, " Daniel
 
 6 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 Deronda," in which a kind of modern Jewish 
 prophet says to the hero of the story, with 
 intense conviction, " You will be my life ; it 
 will be planted afresh ; it will grow. You 
 shall take the inheritance ; it has been gather- 
 ing for ages. The generations are crowding 
 on my narrow life as on a bridge : what has 
 been and what is to be are meeting there ; and 
 the bridge is breaking. But I have found 
 you. You have come in time." This is just 
 what Elijah, had he been permitted to revisit 
 the earth, would have said to John the Baptist, 
 in whom the soul of that ancient prophet was, 
 as it were, born again, to accomplish that great 
 work of making a righteous nation which 
 Elijah began, but was not destined, and indeed 
 was neither by nature nor by grace prepared, 
 to bring to completion. There is not merely 
 poetic, but deep historic, truth in the saying 
 that Elijah was a type : and, since it is " God 
 only wise" who directs history, a Divinely 
 
 1 Comp. footnote on Sermon VII. The sermon was 
 preached on St. John Baptist's Day. The question may 
 perhaps be hazarded, Does the ministry of the Baptist
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 7 
 
 appointed type of that greatest of woman-born 
 in the ages before the Christ Johanan or 
 John, the kinsman or forerunner of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 But how Elijah was the type of the Baptist, 
 we shall only see at the end of our brief study 
 of his life. Would that we had the story of 
 that grand personage in its earliest form, and 
 not shortened so as to fit the Book of Kings, 
 and altered by the addition of fragments from 
 later biographies ! How abruptly, for instance, 
 Elijah is introduced by the story-teller ! With- 
 out a word of preliminary information respect- 
 ing him, we are told that Elijah the Tishbite, 
 
 exhaust the fulfilment of the prophecy in Malachi (iv. 5, 6) 
 to which Luke i. 17 and similar passages refer? Is it not 
 probable that each " great and dreadful day of Jehovah " 
 has been preceded by some Elijah-like preacher of repent- 
 ance, and that the greatest of these days will be heralded 
 by the most powerful of all Elijah's successors ? Theo- 
 doret and other Greek fathers anticipate a literal fulfilment 
 of Mai. iv. 5, 6. Possibly Malachi himself may have 
 done so, being unable in the waning light of Hebrew 
 prophecy to foresee the revival of the gift. But the Spirit 
 of prophecy, as represented by our Lord, meant otherwise. 
 (The Jewish belief is that Elijah will come three days 
 before the Messiah.)
 
 8 2 HE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto 
 Ahab t etc. We have to illustrate the story- 
 teller's parenthesis from other parts of the 
 Old Testament and from travel. Gilead, the 
 home of Elijah, differed widely both in scenery 
 and in population from the west side of the 
 Jordan. The summits are in parts rugged 
 and desolate; and one can understand the 
 poetic fancy of another inspired story-teller, 
 who in Genesis xxxi. (at the end of what has 
 been called the Hebrew Comedy of Errors 1 ) 
 represents Jacob as gathering stones and 
 making a heap, called Gal-'ed, 2 or " cairn of 
 witness." To his original hearers or readers 
 he certainly meant more than he says, and 
 sportively glanced at those great mountain- 
 
 * This is one of the few references in Ewald's works to 
 modern literature, which are so specially interesting when 
 they do occur. 
 
 2 "Gal-'ed" is evidently a variation upon "Gil'ad" 
 ("hard," "rugged"). The narrator would not have called 
 the memorial of stones Gal-'6d if the name had not been 
 in his opinion equally applicable to " Mount Gilead." In 
 fact, the heap of stones must be imagined upon one of the 
 hills of Gilead, surely not Jebel Osh'a (which is too far 
 south), but one of the mountains of Ajlan. At present
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 9 
 
 walls, called Gilead (i.e., " rough," " rugged "), 
 any one of which might well be called a " cairn 
 of witness," a boundary-heap, to the peoples on 
 the opposite sides. The slopes, however, are 
 clothed with magnificent woods ; and in the 
 picturesque ravines there are numerous large 
 caves, which still supply a simple shelter to 
 Arab families, just as they did perhaps in 
 olden times to companies of Jehovah's prophets 
 (i Kings xviii. 13). This was the land to 
 nourish wild and warlike natures, such, for 
 instance, as Jephthah, the judge, or those 
 heroes of Gad, in David's life, who swam the 
 Jordan in time of flood, whose faces were like 
 the faces of lions, and who were as swift as 
 the roes upon the mountains (i Chron. xii. 8), 
 or as the Bedouins of our own day, who 
 suddenly cross the traveller's path, go with 
 him for a short space, and then as suddenly 
 disappear. 1 Elijah the Tishbite was in out- 
 
 the old name of Gilead clings to a chain of mountains to 
 the south of the Zerka (Jabbok), called Jebel Jil'ad. 
 
 1 The comparison is Stanley's ; but no traveller can 
 help making it for himself.
 
 io THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 ward seeming something like these Bedouins. 
 We are told that he was " a hairy man," or, 
 as the margin of the Revised Version has 
 it, " a man with a garment of hair ; " i.e., 
 a garment made of goat's or camel's hair. 
 This garment or mantle plays a great part 
 in the story of Elijah's life. Sometimes he 
 would strip it off, and roll it up like a staff 
 in his hand ; at other times he would wrap 
 his face in it. Evidently it was neither a 
 token of poverty nor of humiliation. It was 
 not voluntarily assumed as an ascetic dress, as 
 apparently it was by John the Baptist, but the 
 national garb of his race. But though it was 
 not voluntarily assumed, it was of Elijah's 
 own free will that he retained it. He might 
 have joined the bands of prophets on the 
 other side of the stream, and who lived in 
 many respects like ordinary men. But no, 
 civilization was corrupt, and Elijah would not 
 be indebted to it even for his dress. He pre- 
 ferred the solitudes of the wilderness to the 
 palaces of nobles, and returned to them with 
 gladness. In an instant he appeared before
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 11 
 
 Ahab, and after he had delivered his message, 
 in an instant he was gone. And so we read in 
 a passage from the story of Elijah, which has 
 been severed, as we saw, from the earlier 
 context, And Elijah the Tishbite said unto 
 Ahab, By the life of Jehovah, Israel's God, 
 before whom I stand, there shall not be dew 
 nor rain these years, but according to my 
 word. 
 
 We must not attempt to read later revelations 
 into these words. Elijah does not mean to say 
 that Jehovah is the only living God in opposi- 
 tion to Baal and Baal's consort, but simply 
 that Jehovah lives, and that this to Ahab, who 
 was himself a worshipper of Jehovah, is to be 
 the guarantee of the truth of Elijah's oracle, 
 just as Joseph says to his brethren, Or else, 
 by the life of Pharaoh, surely ye are spies. 
 No ; Elijah does not deny that Baal may be 
 the god of Tyre, and may have some power 
 to help or to injure his Tyrian worshippers. 
 What he does declare is that Jehovah, being 
 the God of Israel, can and will withhold His 
 blessing from the soil if His worshippers with-
 
 12 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 hold their full homage. The worship of Baal, 
 introduced through Jezebel, was not intended 
 to contradict the Divinity of Jehovah ; it was 
 a religious act of gratitude to the supernatural 
 power through whom, as Ahab thought, the 
 friendship of Tyre had been secured. A war 
 with Tyre would have meant to Ahab a war 
 of Jehovah against Baal ; a friendship with 
 Tyre meant a friendship on the part of Baal 
 to Jehovah. But to Elijah, as well as to 
 Moses, Jehovah is a jealous God, who will 
 not brook the divided allegiance of His 
 worshippers. We must not be unjust to 
 Ahab, though it is perfectly right to take 
 Elijah's side against him in the great struggle. 
 Israel was now just beginning to come into 
 closer relations with other kingdoms. Accord- 
 ing to the feeling of antiquity, it was impossible 
 to have friendship with other nations unless a 
 friendly recognition in short, worship was 
 extended to the gods of those nations. Ahab 
 was not an irreligious man ; but he was, first 
 and foremost, the guardian of the political in- 
 terests of his people. Could Israel stand
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 13 
 
 alone ? King Ahab thought not. I am not 
 sure whether Elijah saw the political issue as 
 clearly as Ahab ; nor does it much matter. 
 He was right, and Ahab was wrong. Pro- 
 phetic intuition was sounder than political cal- 
 culation. Israel's mission was religious, not 
 political; that at least Elijah saw, however 
 little he could reason upon it. Welcome, 
 political ruin, so long as the deposit of 
 pure religion be safe! So thought and said 
 Jeremiah ; and so, if he could have reflected 
 upon it, would EHjah too doubtless have 
 thought. 
 
 This prophet is not so much a teacher as a 
 religious hero. Like John the Baptist, he is 
 a " witness " a witness to facts, quite apart 
 from theories about the facts. And in this 
 is he not like I will not say all, but the 
 majority of Christian ministers ? Not in bold 
 and original speculation on Divine things, not 
 even first in exhortation, or warning, or encour- 
 agement, but in a simple presentation of facts, 
 lie at once their chief sphere of action and 
 their strength. They are the servants of God
 
 i 4 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 and of His Christ, before whom they stand. 
 They have to witness of those things which 
 they have both heard and seen, viz., the facts 
 of the life of Jesus upon earth and in heaven, 
 in His humiliation and in His glorification ; 
 they are the heralds of what Jesus was, of 
 what Jesus is, and of what Jesus will be. And 
 to do this properly requires some degree of 
 the heroic temper of an Elijah. It is true that 
 our Master tells us that, if He were lifted up, 
 He would draw all men unto Him ; but the 
 drawing is not always immediate, or at least 
 it is often counteracted by an opposite influence 
 which translates itself into open opposition or 
 quiet indifference to the messenger and his 
 testimony. And the only sufficient source of 
 strength can be the thought which is expressed 
 in these striking words : The life of Jehovah, 
 before whom I stand. 
 
 The prophet's address to Ahab may seem 
 a threatening one ; and no doubt the most 
 prominent feature in his character is sternness. 
 But there is more than mere threatening in 
 the prophecy, There shall not be dew nor rain
 
 ELIJAHHIS CHARACTER. 15 
 
 these years, but according to my word. Elijah 
 loved his people with a love resembling that 
 of our stern Puritan forefathers for England. 
 He loved not what Israel was, but what Israel 
 would become. He speaks indeed as if the 
 giving and withholding of rain were dependent 
 on his temper and inclination, but this is not 
 really his meaning. He knows how those 
 " kindly fruits of the earth " the corn, and 
 the wine, and the oil, which are the riches of 
 Palestine, and supply sustenance and refresh- 
 ment to its population, depend on the dew and 
 the sea-mist (which is the same in Hebrew as 
 " dew ") during the rainless summer months, 
 and on the early and the latter rain afterwards. 
 He knows that God made seedtime and harvest, 
 summer and winter, and has no desire to be 
 a troubler of Israel. As soon as the people 
 are morally prepared for the blessing of rain, 
 Elijah sets himself to obtain it. But it is not 
 he to whom they are indebted for it, but 
 Jehovah. It is not without a great effort of 
 prayer the "fervent prayer" of which St. 
 James speaks on the part of the prophet that
 
 1 6 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 the heavens become black with clouds, bene- 
 ficent rain falls. One angel must rise to 
 heaven with his prayers that another may 
 descend with the answer. We shall see later 
 on that Elijah has his softer side. And the 
 word of Jehovah came unto him, saying, Get thee 
 hence, and hide thee. 
 
 But why does Elijah flee ? Is he afraid of 
 Ahab's vengeance ? No, not afraid ; no true 
 prophet ever was afraid in the hour of danger ; 
 but God has other work for Elijah to do, and 
 hides him, as (you remember) He did Jeremiah 
 from the bloodthirsty Jehoiakim. He hath 
 made my mmth like a sharp sword, and in his 
 quiver hath he hid me; these words of the 
 " Servant of the Lord " in Isaiah (xlix. 2) might 
 well have been uttered by Elijah. It is pro- 
 bable, however, that this was not the first time 
 that the prophet had sought a hiding-place. 
 I said that the opening words of chapter xvii. 
 are clearly a fragment of a longer narrative. 
 A later section of the Elijah-story contains 
 allusions to facts which must, it would seem, 
 have been related by the original story-tellers
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARAC2ER. 17 
 
 before the threatening prophecy of the three 
 years' drought. The greatest of modern inter- 
 preters of the Old Testament has endeavoured 
 to give the substance of the lost portion of the 
 narrative thus : 
 
 "A crime of unexampled heinousness, which 
 Ahab made no attempt to prevent, has been 
 committed by Jezebel. She has not only in- 
 troduced the worship of Baal, but also destroyed 
 the altars of Jehovah, and murdered the 
 prophets whom she has so long persecuted 
 (i Kings xix. 10). Only one of them is left 
 Elijah ; but he has received from Jehovah, on 
 his consecration long ago to the prophetic office, 
 the promise that no man shall have power to 
 harm him, and that he need fear no one save 
 Jehovah ; and so in the midst of all the perse- 
 cutions, while others have hid themselves, he 
 has publicly displayed his constant zeal for 
 Jehovah, unmolested and borne about, as it 
 were, by Jehovah's wind (i Kings xviii. 12). 
 But now the great blow has been struck ; the 
 altars of Jehovah are all overthrown, His 
 prophets are all slain ; and, as though the 
 
 2
 
 1 8 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 whole creation were compelled to mourn such 
 horrors, Jehovah commands the rain not to 
 fall in blessing upon the land. Deep and 
 dreadful stillness broods over all. The prophets 
 of Baal cannot draw from their idol-deity the 
 least alleviation of their distress; and Elijah 
 has already received from Jehovah the com- 
 mand to hide himself so soon as he has told 
 the king the stern truth." 1 
 
 The spirit leads him first into the wilderness 
 to a torrent-valley called Cherith. It would 
 require a painter's hand to bring that sublime 
 but desolate landscape adequately before you. 
 Another Sunday I will at least try what words 
 can do, trusting to your own imagination to 
 supply the colouring. I know that the very 
 deepest truths of our religion, those which con- 
 cern the largest number of persons, can be 
 detached from the scenes of their original reve- 
 lation. And yet to an instructed member of the 
 Church it ought to be no slight boon to be en- 
 abled to realize those inspired narratives of the 
 Bible which are so singularly full of suggestive- 
 
 1 Ewald, " History of Israel/' iv., 104.
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 19 
 
 ness. I hope some time or other to show you 
 in what sense I use the words " inspired narra- 
 tives" a true and deep as well as Biblical 
 sense, though not of course that of the ortho- 
 doxy of the last generation. But now I must 
 pass from the historic scenery of the first part 
 of Elijah's story to the inner and informing 
 purpose. 
 
 The life of this prophet is an expressive 
 picture of great and everlasting truths. Do 
 not think that Elijah is superhuman; no; he is 
 really much less superhuman than Abraham 
 and some of the other figures of prehistoric 
 Hebrew antiquity. Elijah the Tishbite is the 
 perfectly human embodiment of the most essen- 
 tial part of the ideal of the Christian minister. 
 So indeed is John the Baptist. Of both we 
 may truly say that they were sent to bear 
 witness of the light (John i. 7) that is, to reveal 
 God in a truer manner than was possible for 
 the popular religious teachers of the day. 
 Their function was not to bring forth such 
 " treasures of wisdom and knowledge " as we 
 find in the Apostolic Epistles; they were not
 
 20 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 sent to theorize about the supernatural facts, 
 but to make them known. And in this are 
 they not like the Christian minister? 
 
 To "stand before Jehovah" (Elijah's favourite 
 expression) is one of the regular Old Testament 
 phrases for the ministration of priests ; you will 
 see this from Deut. x. 8, Ps. cxxxiv. I, Heb. 
 x. ii. Now mark the lofty privilege of a true 
 prophet. He is not only a "spokesman" of 
 Jehovah, but a priest and a priest 1 in a more 
 secret sanctuary than those who sacrifice, for 
 Jehovah wakeneth his ear morning by morning 
 (Isa. 1. 4). None can enter that sanctuary but 
 two Jehovah and the prophet; wherever the 
 prophet's work calls him, there is his God 
 ready with counsel and help. How, then, 
 could he dream of fleeing from the presence of 
 Jehovah (Jonah i. 3) ? It is his glory and his 
 strength to " stand before Jehovah, the God of 
 Israel." And does not the same privilege 
 belong to the Christian minister ? He is 
 
 1 Priest, &7/;<F=;one who stands to administer an office 
 (not the word, however, used by Elijah) ; prophet, nabl 
 spokesman.
 
 ELIJAH HIS CHARACTER. 21 
 
 no sacrificing priest ; but he is, for all that, a 
 true priest. He is always " standing before " 
 his Master, ready for the faintest hint of the 
 Divine will. He goes about his duty, not as a 
 hireling, but as one who has the Master- 
 workman (Prov. viii. 30) by his side. He 
 subordinates his own personality entirely to 
 that of Him who alone gives him at once his 
 work and his strength. And for Him he 
 witnesses of facts of the facts which the 
 Gospel and the Church have handed down to 
 him, and of those also which he knows from 
 his own inner experience. Whether his witness 
 will be accepted or not by the non-Christian or 
 half-Christian world is not a matter which 
 concerns him so deeply as to disturb his peace 
 of mind. Like Elijah, he leaves the issue in 
 the hands of One who turns a king's heart as a 
 gardener turns his watercourses (Prov. xxi. I). 
 His hope is not in himself, but in the self- 
 attesting power of revelation so soon as it is 
 apprehended by the heart. The Spirit is the 
 great Preacher ; it is the Spirit and the Bride 
 who say, Come (Rev. xxii. 17). Paul may have
 
 22 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 planted, and Apollos have watered ; it was God 
 who gave the increase (i Cor. iii. 6). 1 
 
 The life of Jehovah, before whom I stand. 
 The thought expressed in these words belongs 
 to all of us. We stand before God, as His 
 priests and prophets ; we are called to be a 
 kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Our life as 
 Christians should be upward-looking. We need 
 not say, Oh that I knew where I might find him 
 (Job xxiii. 3) ! He loves to dwell in the lowly 
 and contrite heart. " If with all your hearts ye 
 truly seek Him, ye shall ever surely find Him," 2 
 and shall solve the spiritual enigma so dear to 
 the psalmists ; viz., how it is possible to dwell 
 in the house of the Lord all the days of our 
 life. 
 
 1 Professor Milligan will notice that I have adopted his own 
 view of the "witness " of Elijah. " Theology," he remarks, 
 " as distinguished from the facts that underlie it, ought to 
 be free ; and theological speculation upon these facts is not 
 for the world at all." Two of the above Bible-references 
 are from p. 16 of his book. 
 
 2 The Sunday morning anthem (from Mendelssohn) 
 began with these words.
 
 II. 
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERJTH AND 
 ZAREPHATH.
 
 " And Elias the prophet stood up as fire, and his word 
 was burning as a torch." ECCLUS. xlviii. I.
 
 II. 
 
 ELIJAH A 2 CHERITH AND 
 ZAREPHATH. 
 
 *\ T 7 E looked up at the heroic form of Elijah 
 the Gileadite last Sunday afternoon, 
 and saw that his true character was that of a 
 courageous witness to unpalatable facts. He 
 might have said, like our Lord, For this cause 
 was I born, and for this cause came I into the 
 world: that I should bear witness unto the 
 truth. We saw, too, that his great source 
 of strength was the thought expressed in his 
 favourite phrase, The life of Jehovah, before 
 whom I stand. I hope that we also agreed 
 that Christian ministers, and in their several 
 degrees the members of the Church in general, 
 are witnesses to the essential facts of religion 
 those which concern God and His Christ, and
 
 26 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 those which concern, not merely this man 
 and that man, but the whole human race. 
 There are essential and there are non-essential 
 facts and truths ; both require their witnesses ; 
 but the primary duty alike of clergy and of 
 laity is to witness to those facts and truths 
 which are essential or fundamental. This 
 witnessing requires something of the heroic 
 temper of Elijah, which can only be obtained 
 by the conviction that our opportunities of 
 work and of witnessing are assigned to us by 
 God, that He ever liveth, and is not far from 
 any one of us. If He brings us into a pre- 
 ordained peril, He will also provide for us a 
 preordained way of escape. He will hide us, 
 as He hid Elijah and Jeremiah, under the 
 shadow of His wings. There shall no evil 
 befall thee, nor any plague come nigh thy 
 dwelling, till thine own work in the world 
 and God's work in thy soul are complete. 
 There are mysteries in the lives of God's 
 witnesses. Urijah falls by the sword of 
 Jehoiakim, Jeremiah is spared ; whole bands 
 of prophets of the Lord are cut off by Jezebel,
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERITH. 27 
 
 Elijah escapes : he is led by the Spirit into the 
 wilderness to a wddy, or narrow gorge, with 
 a torrent-stream flowing through it, called 
 Cherith, and described by the inspired story- 
 teller as opposite the Jordan. You come to 
 it (if I am not mistaken 1 ) on the wonderful 
 road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Few moun- 
 tain gorges in Western lands can compare with 
 it. It is one of the most stupendous chasms 
 in what a Hebrew poet calls the ancient moun- 
 tains, itself only less ancient, so narrow that 
 you can scarcely measure twenty yards across 
 at the bottom, so deep that you can only just 
 see, by peering over the cliff, the slender 
 torrent-stream which winds along amidst canes 
 and rank rushes to the river Jordan. Dark 
 and dismal is that wady, where the sun scarcely 
 penetrates, and the torrent but slowly dries 
 up. On each side rise lofty, perpendicular 
 walls of rock, bare, treeless, and also lifeless, 
 save that the wild pigeon makes its nest in 
 the clefts of the rock (Cant. ii. 14), and that 
 
 1 The view here adopted is not impossible, and certainly 
 contributes to picturesqueness of exposition.
 
 28 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 " over the caves by the deep pools the African 
 kingfisher flutters." 1 Surely this is just the 
 place where Elijah would feel safe from his 
 persecutor ; if Christian hermits found a refuge 
 with the wild goats, a hunted prophet, especially 
 a Gileadite, could do so too. Perhaps you 
 wonder what Elijah did there. Had he been 
 a poet, he would have composed hymns, just 
 as another ascetic (Stephen of Mar Saba), 
 living on the top of a similarly wild and 
 sublime mountain solitude, within sight of the 
 Dead Sea, wrote the lovely Greek hymn, known 
 to all of us in its English adaptation, which 
 begins with the verse, 
 
 " Art them weary ? art thou languid ? 
 
 Art thou sore distrest ? 
 Come to me, saith One, and coming, 
 Be at rest." 
 
 But Elijah was not, so far as we know, a poet, 
 nor an educated man. His sole occupation must 
 have been thinking upon God. He was a 
 religious genius. He had not indeed the tender 
 
 1 I have filled out my own impressions from Conder's 
 excellent book " Tent Work in Palestine " (ii. 22).
 
 ELIJAH AT CHER1TH. 29 
 
 mysticism of St. Stephen of Mar Saba ; but 
 he knew Jehovah personally as a gracious 
 Master, as a living God, not of course in the 
 full sense of Jeremiah, but in a sense most 
 humiliating to the worshippers of Baal. He 
 knew, too, that feverish activity was not essential 
 to the service of God, or, in words which may 
 have been suggested to Milton by Elijah's fine 
 expression Jehovah, before whom I stand, " they 
 also serve who only stand and wait." And if 
 human friends were wanting, yet was not 
 Elijah, like our Lord in the temptation, with 
 the wild beasts ? those free, non-human, but 
 not unintelligent beings with whom ascetics 
 and members of religious orders have so often 
 been on terms of familiar friendship. Was 
 Elijah friendless ? No, indeed ; the wildest of 
 birds put off their wildness to pleasure him. 
 The ravens brought him bread and flesh in the 
 morning, and bread and flesh in the evening. 
 " Arabians," we should rather render it, said the 
 devout philosopher Leibnitz, giving way to 
 the rationalism of the seventeenth century. Oh, 
 no, thou most sagacious thinker ; this is not the
 
 30 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 way to reconcile reason and faith. Take the 
 letter of the record in its natural meaning ; 
 but learn to distinguish between prose and 
 poetry. Few thinking men will admit . that 
 the verse which I have read expresses a fact ; 
 but no one formed upon Shakespeare and 
 Milton will deny that it is the highest poetry, 
 full charged, as such poetry always is, with 
 spiritual meaning. Why do we teach our boys 
 and girls Shakespeare and Milton ? Is it 
 because they need amusement ? No, but 
 because poetry is the symbolic, and if not 
 always the only adequate expression, yet the 
 most universally interesting expression, of the 
 highest and grandest truth; because, to speak 
 popularly, " poetry is truth in its Sunday 
 clothes." 
 
 At each step that we take in the story of 
 Elijah we are enveloped in a golden atmosphere 
 of mingled fact and poetry ; this is an element- 
 ary lesson of Bible-study. Some Bible-stories 
 are pure facts ; others, and those the most 
 delightful, are mingled fact and poetry; this 
 variety to a thoughtful student is a part of the
 
 ELIJA H AT CHERITH. 3 1 
 
 charm of the Biblical literature. The amount 
 of poetry in a Bible-story depends on the age 
 when it was written. If the life of Jeremiah 
 (which we studied last summer) had been 
 written in more poetic times, we cannot doubt 
 that what the pious prose-writer describes by 
 the phrase The Lord hid him (Jer. xxxvi. 26) 
 would have been painted to the imagination 
 somewhat as the prose-poet in Kings paints 
 in words the deliverance of Elijah. There is 
 no doubt as to what the latter means. He 
 would have us realize how well off Elijah was 
 through his implicit reliance on Him who 
 feedeth even the young ravens which call upon 
 him. Isaiah declares (xi. 6) that a day is 
 coming when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
 and the leopard lie down with the kid, and a little 
 child shall lead them. The Book of Proverbs 
 tells us about the ravens which make their 
 home in torrent-valleys, and are as cruel as the 
 young vultures (Prov. xxx. 17) ; there it stops. 
 Most unlikely were these fierce birds to be 
 kind to Elijah. Yet in this beautiful story 
 they become the prophet's foragers, and deny
 
 32 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 themselves to keep him alive. Isaiah's golden 
 age has begun to dawn literally ? No. Faith 
 loves poetry, and laughs at impossibilities. 1 
 In the dismal wady of Cherith, in the hideous 
 den of Babylonian lions, and in the equally 
 peril-girt abodes of our Central African mis- 
 sionaries, if the Lord will, the believer is safe. 
 He can turn the heart of a savage African 
 despot, can stop the mouths of roaring lions, 
 can send ravens to Elijah with bread and flesh 
 in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening. 
 Prose and poetry alike are claimed as their 
 heritage by the inspired writers. 
 
 There was once a great man his name is 
 precious in the history of England who wrote 
 a " Defense of Poetrie." It is only in the West 
 that such " Defences" are needed ; Poetry, like its 
 sister Religion, has its native home in the East. 
 I too stand here to defend poetry to-day 
 the poetry of the greatest of Eastern books, 
 the Old Testament ; and I defend it on many 
 grounds, but especially upon this : that we in 
 
 1 Compare the fine passage Job v. 19 23, especially 
 verses 22 and 23.
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERITH. 33 
 
 England are getting too old in sentiment, and, 
 I think, even in our religious sentiment; and 
 we need to refresh ourselves at the fountains of 
 natural feeling, and above all by entering more 
 deeply into the spirit of those glorious Scrip- 
 tures which come down from the time when 
 the world was young. Pleasure and spiritual 
 profit may in an equal degree be derived from 
 them. Take the story of Elijah. We have 
 seen how, through the imagination, it commends 
 to us that heroic faith which can remove moun- 
 tains of difficulty. But though I have all 
 faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have 
 not charity, I am nothing. So the poet-teacher 
 brings Elijah back to the haunts of men of 
 men not of his own faith and race and shows 
 us how he gained, if not perfect Christian 
 charity, yet a greatly increased sympathy with 
 his fellows. The thin line of moisture in the 
 wady of Cherith vanished at last ; the torrent- 
 stream dried up ; and it would, you might 
 think, have been only consistent if water as 
 well as flesh had been supernaturally supplied. 
 But no ; the servant of God, who has warned 
 
 3
 
 34 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 his neighbours of the consequences of their sin, 
 is bound himself to suffer with them, that he 
 may not fall into a callous indifference. Yes ; 
 he is bound to suffer, but God cannot leave 
 him to die in that bare wilderness. And so 
 from Cherith, in the south, this poetic biographer 
 brings his hero to the far north of Palestine to 
 Zarephath. There is nothing arbitrary in this. 
 The place which he mentions lies at the base 
 of the Lebanon mountains, the streams spring- 
 ing from which would in a dry season continue 
 to flow when the brooks of Palestine had dried 
 up. They were not now copious enough to 
 spread life and freshness in the fields, but by 
 careful management (for the Easterns were not 
 always improvident, as they are now) supplied 
 at least a scanty drink to the industrious popu- 
 lation. And now see how wonderfully God 
 deals, how He brings the most unlikely persons 
 face to face. There were many widows in his 
 own country, but unto none of them was Elijah 
 sent, but unto a widow of the Sidonian city 
 Zarephath (Luke iv. 25). God picked out a 
 single individual, and drew Elijah from his
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERTTH. 35 
 
 rocky retreat to meet her ; and this favoured 
 person was a worshipper of Baal. " One touch 
 of nature makes the whole world kin." Jesus 
 asks water of a heretical Samaritan, Elijah 
 of a still more misbelieving Phoenician. Just 
 so (as you remember) in our Indian mutiny 
 many a poor idolater gave food and shelter to 
 pale-faced English fugitives. Elijah is to be 
 taught that even a bad religion cannot wholly 
 extinguish the heavenly light which lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world. And 
 not only for the Jews, but for us, was this 
 lovely story (true, as I hope, not only to poetry, 
 but to fact) put down in Elijah's biography. It 
 is a lesson for us not to shut ourselves up from 
 those whom God has not yet taught much of 
 the truth, but who may yet have learned the 
 elementary lessons of doing justly and loving 
 mercy, which are, according to the prophet 
 Micah, two-thirds of the whole duty of man. 
 Gladly does the poor widow fetch water for the 
 thirsty traveller, and gladly would she also 
 give him bread, but she is poor, and has only a 
 little meal left, and is getting sticks for a fire,
 
 36 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 to make one of the large but thin cakes of 
 bread still common in Syria, that she and her 
 child may live a day longer upon it. Then 
 the wellspring of pity gushed forth in the 
 prophet's heart, like that fountain of sweetest 
 water (En-gedi) which still brightens the bare, 
 parched shore of the great Salt Sea. Could 
 God be less pitiful than man ? And now it was 
 possible for a fresh revelation to enter the 
 prophet's mind. Remember this : that the 
 supernatural is not the violation of the natural. 
 Nature can by God's power and wisdom be so 
 changed as to admit of what, for want of a 
 better word, we call the supernatural. God 
 has been teaching us this by science and philo- 
 sophy all through this century ; and the lesson 
 is confirmed in some slight degree by the 
 Divine education of Elijah. The prophet could 
 not receive the revelation till he was naturally 
 prepared for it. The voice of pity within him 
 gathered more and more distinctness till it be- 
 came the " still small voice " of a Divine oracle. 
 In subsequent times the prophets were also 
 poets; and the later" writer who composed
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERITH. 37 
 
 Elijah's life, himself doubtless a lover of poetry 
 and of prophecy, could not. help expressing 
 the substance of the oracle in a poetical form : 
 Thus saith Jehovah, Israel's God : The barrel of 
 meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil 
 fail, until the day that Jehovah sendeth rain upon 
 the land. And the barrel of meal wasted nof, 
 neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the 
 word of Jehovah which he spake by Elijah. So 
 then the day was fixed for the blessed dropping 
 of what Mohammed so beautifully calls God's 
 compassion ; that is, the rain. Thenceforth 
 Elijah's life is spent in looking for this long- 
 delayed but now assured blessing. But of 
 course not merely in expectation. We cannot 
 help supposing (for the coast was very largely 
 occupied by the Phoenicians) that he some- 
 times ventured southwards by the coast-road 
 to Carmel. The ascent of this beautiful ridge 
 is easy from the sea, and its wild gorges are 
 so narrow that an Egyptian writer says that 
 the soldiers of Pharaoh could only slip through 
 one by one. Here then Elijah could find 
 a retreat for days together as secure as in the
 
 38 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 wady of Cherith. He could not always have 
 stayed at Zarephath, among Baal-worshippers ; 
 this would have been as painful to him as for 
 an English missionary to live alone, without 
 Christian society, in an unevangelized Indian 
 city. He must surely have sought communion 
 with God sometimes where our Lord sought 
 it in the wooded solitudes of the hills. While 
 at Zarephath, he doubtless groaned in spirit, 
 like St. Paul "when he saw the city wholly 
 given to idolatry," and not to a noble idolatry, 
 like that of Athens, but to a most debasing, 
 though comparatively stately, one. His comfort 
 must have lain first in thinking upon God 
 (Psalm xlii. 7), and next in the hope that he 
 might be morally and spiritually helpful to the 
 poor widow. This hope was not groundless ; 
 for she saw how high and noble his religion 
 was, she admitted that Jehovah was not only 
 a true, but also a holy God, who hated 
 sin, and who therefore hated and would 
 punish her sin. The very first time that she 
 met Elijah, she assured him of her deep 
 poverty by using the formula By the life
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERITH. 39 
 
 of thy God Jehovah; at another time she 
 addresses him as a man of God, and as a pro- 
 phet of Jehovah, whose word in his mouth was 
 truth. How touching is the simple and 
 genuine expression, which I will now read, of 
 a sense of sin not inferior, at least in reality, 
 to that of the Psalmist's ! And it came to pass 
 after these things that the son of the woman, the 
 mistress of the house, fell sick ; and his sickness 
 was so sore that there was no breath left in him. 
 And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do 
 with thee, O thou man of God ? Art thou come 
 unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to 
 slay my son ? What this means will be clear 
 from Isa. Ixii. 5 : / have set watchmen upon 
 thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold 
 their peace day nor night; ye that are the Lord's 
 remembrancers (as the margin of your Bibles 
 puts it), keep not silence. The " watchmen " are 
 the prophets, and part of their duty is to 
 "remind Jehovah" of something from which 
 He must have turned away His eyes. This 
 poor Phoenician woman knew well that she had 
 committed some sin (at any rate, she knew
 
 40 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 like the Psalmist, that she had " errors " and 
 " secret faults," unknown even to herself), 
 and she thought that Elijah had come on 
 purpose to find out these sins and tell God 
 of them that they might be punished. But 
 Elijah proves to her at any rate, this is what 
 the story proves to us that affliction is not 
 always sent to the afflicted one as a punish- 
 ment, but that the glory of God that is, His 
 combined graciousness and righteousness may 
 be made manifest. Neither Elijah nor his 
 hostess knew that the life beyond the grave 
 is a life of conscious, happy immortality ; that 
 a mother can safely trust the child of her love 
 to a yet more loving heavenly Father. And so 
 even Elijah feels driven to expostulate with 
 his God : Hast thou also brought evil upon 
 the widow with whom I sojourn by slaying her 
 son ? How indulgent the true God is to the 
 poor conceptions which we form of Him ! He 
 answers Elijah's piercing cry by restoring the 
 child to life, because it would have shocked 
 the prophet's faith in the Divine goodness if 
 this kind and God-fearing woman had had
 
 ELIJAH AT CHERITH. 41 
 
 such a sore trouble during his sojourn with 
 her. On the other hand, God does not always 
 answer our earnest prayers for a sick child, 
 because we are in less danger of misinter- 
 preting Him, knowing as we do the wide 
 compass of His love. Elijah lived up to the 
 light that he had, and trusted God with an 
 implicit trust. Let us, my brothers, live up 
 to the light that we have, looking upward for 
 more. Let us be ever seeking for a deeper 
 conception of God, through the teachings of 
 the records of revelation, through the leadings 
 of our spiritual experience, and through the 
 discoveries of physical and historical science, 
 God's special gifts to this age. Let us en- 
 deavour, like that hero of faith whom we are 
 studying, to realize that which we know to 
 be true ; and let us trust God as he did, but 
 with far more comprehension, both for our 
 children, and friends, and neighbours, and for 
 those in heathen lands, upon whom the same 
 light faintly shines which shines upon us. 
 Most of us, I suppose, have some leisure. 
 Can there be a better occupation for a part
 
 42 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 of it than to think what it is that we ought 
 to mean by the word " God " ? Can there be a 
 nobler ideal of practice than to harmonize 
 thoughts and actions with this conception, and 
 so become true Christian Theists, prophets 
 and witnesses of life eternal ? For this is life 
 eternal: to know thee, the only true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Oh, let 
 not the religious men and women of this 
 generation put from them the key of know- 
 ledge ; but let them use it freely to unlock the 
 treasuries of new-found truth. Let them, how- 
 ever, always remember that truth unhallowed 
 is truth but half known, and that the highest 
 use of knowledge is to deepen our conception 
 of God and to promote the spread of all that 
 is in the widest sense Christian both in our 
 own land and throughout God's world.
 
 III. 
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT C ARM EL.
 
 " And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab 
 said unto him, Is it thou, thou troubler of Israel?" I KINGS 
 xviii. 17 (R.V.).
 
 III. 
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT C ARM EL. 
 
 T N Western climes it is difficult to realize 
 -*- the preciousness of a draught of water. 
 The Palestine traveller knows it a little better 
 when he finds that he cannot halt till he has 
 reached a village with a good spring. The 
 native population know it better still. Since 
 the days of Abraham they have called a 
 " fountain " and an " eye " by the same name ; 
 what the face would be without the eye, that, 
 according to them, would be a landscape with- 
 out a fountain. But what if the fountains and 
 the streams, which they feed, dry up ? A 
 passage which we read last week in that fine 
 book 1 the work at once of a poet and of a 
 
 1 Job vi. is the second evening lesson for July 2nd.
 
 46 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 holy man the Book of Job may throw some 
 light upon this : 
 
 My brethren (he complains) have been 
 treacherous as a winter stream, 
 
 As the beds of winter streams which pass 
 away; 
 
 Which were (once) turbid with ice, 
 
 And the snow as it fell hid itself in them ; 
 
 But now that they feel the glow, they vanish, 
 
 When it is hot, they disappear from their 
 place. 
 
 Caravans bend thither their course ; 
 
 They go up into the desert, and perish (Job vi. 
 15-18). 
 
 The last two lines describe, with the simplicity 
 and directness of the highest genius, the fate 
 of a caravan which miscalculates the duration 
 of the winter streams. I need not remark 
 that the Syrian and Arabian deserts are not 
 entirely like the great sandy desert of Africa ; 
 that they are varied by patches of fertile country, 
 which are watered, not only by fountains, but 
 by winter streams. Caravans bend thither their 
 course ; but in an exceptional season they may
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 47 
 
 go up into the desert, and perish, because the 
 streams have dried up too soon. But Palestine 
 is not a desert land ; it is only here and there 
 that a long stretch of country occurs without 
 a good fountain. Comparing it with the desert 
 of Sinai, the Book of Deuteronomy describes 
 it in viii. 7, most beautifully and truly, as a 
 land of streams of water (that is, streams too 
 full of water to dry up quickly), of fountains, 
 and of floods (like those at the fountainhead 
 of Jordan, so vividly described in Psalm xlii.), 
 which spring forth in the valleys and in the 
 hills. Few countries can be more fertile 
 than Palestine was in the time of Christ ; and 
 even before this, its natural riches must have 
 been considerable. The drawback in the 
 early period was that this wonderful produc- 
 tiveness was dependent on the regularity of 
 the seasons. Before the Roman times and the 
 greater development of agriculture, droughts 
 were common in Palestine. The prophet Joel 
 gives a striking picture of one of them, which 
 may be applied to the still more terrible 
 drought in the reign of Ahab : The seeds rot
 
 48 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 under their clods ; the garners are laid desolate 
 the barns are broken down; for the corn is 
 withered (Joel i. 17, 20). I can never quite 
 sympathize with St. Paul when he says, Doth 
 God take care for oxen ? but I can join hands 
 across the centuries with this ancient prophet 
 who says, The beasts of the field pant unto thee, 
 and with that other who heard the voice of 
 God declaring His pity, not only for the inno- 
 cent children in Nineveh, but also for its many 
 cattle (Jonah iii. 1 1). But why was not God 
 moved by the sufferings of the people of Israel ? 
 Intense indeed those sufferings must have 
 been. For two years (so we gather from the 
 story in Kings) the sky had been as glowing 
 brass, and the delightful shadow of a cloud 
 all but unknown. The later students of Scrip- 
 ture took the narrator to mean that it had not 
 rained upon the land at all for the space of 
 three years and six months. This view is not 
 binding upon us ; the scribes in their worship 
 of the letter lost the key to the meaning of 
 half their Bible. And yet all the time they 
 were using hyperbole themselves freely, just
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 49 
 
 as St. Paul (a true Eastern, though no mere 
 scribe) speaks of the sailors in his voyage to 
 Italy as having eaten nothing for fourteen days. 
 There may be an exaggeration in the narrative 
 in Kings, but one that can have deceived none 
 of the original readers. Showers may have 
 fallen, and the water have been gathered in 
 cisterns, but the great rains the former and 
 the latter had been as good as withheld. It 
 was now the third spring unblessed with what 
 the Psalmist calls the river of God, which is full 
 of water. Did God look on unmoved at this 
 dire affliction ? How do the beasts groan ! (to 
 quote from Joel again) ; the herds of cattle are 
 perplexed, because they have no pasture ; yea, the 
 flocks of sheep are made desolate. Has God had 
 no pity on the cattle ? They surely have not 
 sinned. True, but there is (according to the 
 Old Testament) a Divinely ordained sympathy 
 between nature and man; nature is bound to 
 suffer for man's sin, and to rejoice for man's 
 recovery. Strangely enough, Ahab at last 
 begins to feel distressed and uneasy ; but do 
 you think it is for the myriads of his suffering 
 
 4
 
 50 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 people ? No, but for the horses and mules, 
 many of which have died ; and the rest may 
 soon perish, leaving him an impoverished king. 
 Hitherto he and his nobles have been able at 
 great cost to buy the luxuries of corn and 
 water ; but now there is a sore famine upon 
 man and upon beast even in the capital city, 
 Samaria. Ahab himself and his horses have 
 been touched by the hand of God, and he 
 hastens to seek a remedy. He determines to 
 make a search in all the wadys and by all the 
 wells for any grass which may still be left for 
 the perishing cattle. It is a small land over 
 which he rules ; and he divides it with his chief 
 courtier, Obadiah, Ahab going one way by 
 himself, and Obadiah another way by himself. 
 There is something very interesting in the 
 character of this Obadiah, but we must not 
 at this point be allured into studying it ; we 
 must return to Elijah, but for whom indeed we 
 should never have heard of this notable journey 
 of Ahab and his courtier. And it came to pass 
 (we are told) after many days that the word of 
 Jehovah came to Elijah in the third year, saying,
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CAR MEL. 51 
 
 Go, show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain 
 upon the earth. Elijah's long waiting-time is 
 over. He on the one hand and Israel on the 
 other have been prepared for the final crisis. 
 The ravens have taught him faith ; the poor 
 widow has taught him love ; at any rate, the 
 wady of Cherith and the Sidonian city were 
 the schools in which he practised himself 
 in those essential qualities. Israel too has 
 been brought down by suffering, and has begun 
 to distrust a god who cannot relieve it in its 
 distress. Longing to help his people, and 
 knowing that this cannot be till Israel of itself 
 turns to its God, Elijah sets forth to meet the 
 man who is the chief cause of its backsliding. 
 On his way, he encounters Obadiah, who is 
 vainly searching, by Ahab's direction, for some 
 retired spots of verdure, and who at once re- 
 cognizes in that meanly clothed figure the herald 
 of a greater King than his master. And he knew 
 him, and Jell on his face, and said, Is it thou, my 
 lord Elijah ? The answer was short and 
 decided : It is I; go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah 
 is here. And now see the curiously contrasted
 
 52 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 character of Obadiah. He was an adherent of 
 the pure religion of Jehovah ; and during a 
 great massacre of Jehovah's prophets by Jezebel 
 (prophets were specially numerous in the 
 northern kingdom) he rescued many of them, 
 at the peril of his life. Was it not told my lord 
 . , . how I hid an hundred men of Jehovah's 
 prophets by fifty in a cave and fed them with 
 bread and water? Has Obadiah changed all 
 at once changed into a timid, cowardly man, 
 because the prophet has said, Go, tell thy lord, 
 Elijah is come ? It may be so ; even John the 
 Baptist, the Elijah-like preacher of righteous- 
 ness, the prophet of the Lamb of God, lost 
 heart in the dim dungeon of Machaerus, and 
 sent to ask, Art thou he that should come, or 
 look we for another? Such things have been ; 
 transformations of character are not always for 
 the better ; Jeremiahs may become lion-hearted, 
 but lion-hearts sometimes become Jeremiahs. 
 Remember that Obadiah was famine-stricken, 
 and do not blame him if at the prospect of 
 danger his courage fails. He does not presume 
 to check Elijah ; indeed, he has no fear for the
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 53 
 
 prophet. A wild fancy enters his mind that 
 as soon as he has gone from Elijah " the spirit 
 of Jehovah," or perhaps " a wind of Jehovah " 
 (of the God whom Amos so grandly calls " the 
 Creator of the wind "), will carry him away, no 
 one can tell whither. Doubtless Obadiah 
 knows of Elijah's sudden appearances and dis- 
 appearances ; his error lies in ascribing to the 
 prophet a capriciousness and a love of teasing 
 worthier of the fairies of folklore than of an 
 inspired prophet. And so for the third time 
 the narrator puts into Obadiah's mouth the 
 words of fright and astonishment : And now thou 
 sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here; 
 and he will slay me. The prophet, however, 
 does not waste so many words, for time is 
 pressing. He simply replies, By the life of 
 Jehovah, the God of hosts, before whom I stand, 
 I will surely show myself to him to-day. And 
 now Obadiah lingers no more. He goes to 
 meet Ahab, and tells him ; and Ahab goes to 
 meet Elijah. 
 
 You remember the last time these two great 
 powers met. It was when, in anger at the
 
 54 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 religious resolution forced upon Israel by Ahab, 
 Jehovah's prophet announced the coming of the 
 great three years' drought. Since then the 
 very existence of Israel has been imperilled by 
 the ruin of its crops and pasturage. Can you 
 wonder that Ahab's resentment flames up 
 when he sees Elijah again ? We are in the 
 habit of doing Ahab an injustice. Do you 
 suppose a great prose-poet like this would have 
 given Elijah an antagonist utterly unworthy of 
 him ? I admit that Ahab h:*d inconsistencies ; 
 but at least he died nobly, and at this crisis of 
 his life he is not the weakling he sank into 
 afterwards. Privation has not reduced his 
 courage, nor is he cowed in the least by the 
 lofty bearing of Elijah : And when Ahab saiv 
 Elijah, he said unto him, Is it thou, O troubler of 
 Israel? You know that striking story in the 
 book of Joshua ; Achan has taken an accursed 
 thing, and Israel has been smitten by its 
 enemies. Joshua finds out the transgressor, 
 and brings him to a certain wady, or torrent- 
 bed full of stones, and says, Why hast thou 
 troubled Israel? Jehovah shall trouble thee this
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 55 
 
 day. And all Israel stoned him with stones. 
 This shows what Ahab means ; viz., that Elijah 
 has brought, not merely a small trouble, but 
 ruin, upon Israel. How nobly does Elijah 
 retort, / have not ruined Israel ; but thou and 
 thy fathers house, in that ye have forsaken the 
 covenant of Jehovah; and thou hast followed the 
 Baalim. This, he says, was the true cause of 
 Israel's calamity : that by introducing a foreign 
 god by the side of Jehovah Ahab had virtually 
 deposed the God who revealed Himself on 
 Mount Sinai. / am Jehovah thy God, and Thou 
 shall have no other gods before me these, the 
 first and second of the sayings in the Deca- 
 logue, had become a dead letter in Ahab's reign. 
 It was no defence that Ahab did not profess to 
 be opposed to Jehovah, that he even named his 
 son, the crown prince, " Ahaziah ; " that is, " he 
 whom Jehovah takes hold of." Ahab might 
 indeed worship a god called Jehovah ; but this 
 was no more the God of Elijah, than the 
 Jehovah of Jehoiakim was the God worshipped 
 by Jeremiah. By placing Jehovah and Baal 
 side by side, Ahab directly fostered the false
 
 56 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 belief that Jehovah was of the same class of 
 gods as Baal ; that is, a god who reveals him- 
 self fully and entirely in the forces of nature, 
 known in the country where he is worshipped 
 one of those sky-gods who meet us so con- 
 stantly in the ancient heathen mythologies. 
 The Jehovah of Ahab was, in fact, a heathen 
 god, because he was not a holy God. 
 
 I admitted in my first sermon that there was 
 an excuse for Ahab, who looked at religious 
 questions from a political point of view. Elijah 
 did not so regard religion, nor can any one to 
 whom religion is the breath of his life so regard 
 it. That Elijah was the better patriot, there 
 can be no doubt ; the only chance for Israel as 
 a nation lay in progressively assimilating the 
 truths involved in the revelation of Sinai. 
 Elijah felt this, if he did not clearly see it ; 
 whereas Ahab acted as if he directly denied it. 
 And now they have met face to face, each of 
 them conscious that he represents a great 
 principle. Ahab does not indeed strike us as a 
 weakling ; he meets the prophet with a bold 
 front ; but it is Elijah who imposes his own
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 57 
 
 will on the perplexed king. Now therefore (he 
 says) send and gather to me all Israel unto 
 Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four 
 hundred and fifty, and the prophets of Asherah 
 (Baal's consort) four hundred, which eat at 
 Jezebel's table. In a word, Elijah appeals from 
 Ahab to a national assembly ; and Ahab, recog- 
 nizing the republican element in the constitu- 
 tion, allows the appeal. Israel, and not Ahab 
 and Jezebel, shall decide upon the national 
 religion ; but first of all there shall be a trial of 
 the supernatural powers of the two classes of 
 prophets. If Baal's prophets can draw down 
 fire from heaven to kindle the sacrifice, Baal 
 shall be the god; that is, Jehovah shall be 
 worshipped only as an Israelitish counterpart 
 and companion of the Tyrian Baal. If, however, 
 Elijah can succeed in doing so, Baal shall be 
 put down, and Jehovah shall be worshipped as 
 Elijah worshipped Him, and His few and 
 strictly moral commandments shall be the rule 
 of daily life. 
 
 It was a grand scene this struggle between 
 opposing religious principles on the eastern
 
 58 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 slopes of the sacred mountain Carmel ; but I 
 must not enter upon it to-day. From the first, 
 Elijah knows what the end of the contest must 
 be ; but Ahab does not. He still has faith in 
 his sky-god a faith for which Jezebel, his 
 wife, is not alone responsible, for there has 
 been this heathen tendency in Israel ever since 
 it became a settled nation. The attractiveness 
 of Jezebel's religion, especially to those who 
 were not politicians like Ahab, lay in this : 
 that it gave a more stately form and a more 
 imposing ceremonial to a familiar and much- 
 loved natural religion. Elijah's form of worship 
 was evidently plain even to bareness. He 
 needed no temple, no elaborate ceremonial ; an 
 altar and a priest were enough for him, and if 
 need were, a sacrificing priest could be dis- 
 pensed with. Puritanism was then the only 
 possible religion for a good man. A long 
 education was needed before it was discovered 
 that the strictest morality and the most spiritual 
 theism could be combined with forms of ritual 
 far more elaborate than those of the Tyrian 
 Baal-worship. Whether in all ages and in all
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 59 
 
 countries they can be combined is a grave 
 question which concerns the churchman as 
 much as the religious philosopher. 
 
 Let us see to it that, whether in the matter 
 of ritual we sympathize with Ezra or with 
 Elijah, or perhaps with both, we do not fall 
 behind the first great Puritan in realizing his 
 two special truths that there is a living God 
 and that our life, physical and spiritual, being 
 derived from Him, is to be a priestly, conse- 
 crated life. The theology of the Church is but 
 an expansion of these two great truths. Elijah 
 would, I think, have called them, not truths, but 
 facts. Can we say that they are becoming 
 facts to us ? facts which in the sight of God 
 are transfiguring our lives ? Surely if this 
 were the case as it might be, the existence of 
 the supernatural would want no other argu- 
 ment ; and theoretic or practical atheism would 
 be as impossible as to deny the power of the 
 tides or the sun. This is why I ask you to 
 regard Elijah, not as a being from another 
 planet, but, to use St. James's words, so happily 
 amended (in the margin of the Revised Version),
 
 60 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM 
 
 as a man of like nature with ourselves (James v. 
 17). For the loving, and reverent, and, so far 
 as our means allow, historical study of the 
 biographies of the Bible is in the highest 
 degree conducive, not only to the expansion 
 and sanctification of the intellect, as I think, 
 but to the reproduction in our own small lives 
 of the noblest types of Bible religion.
 
 IV. 
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL (continued).
 
 " 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." i KINGS xix. 39.
 
 IV. 
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL (continued]. 
 
 T~^RIDAY next 1 is appropriated in the 
 * English Church calendar to an Eastern 
 saint called St. Margaret, but there is a greater 
 saint to whom throughout the Eastern Churches 
 the 2Oth of July is dedicated ; viz., Elijah. No 
 saint indeed is more venerated by Orientals, not 
 excepting the Mohammedans, than Elijah, 
 though in a character which perhaps we are 
 not accustomed to ascribe to him that of 
 benefactor. Many an encomium upon him will 
 be delivered in convent churches next Friday, 
 and great will be the ingenuity shown in estab- 
 lishing the justice of his reputation. One 
 thing at least even we may regard as certain : 
 
 1 July 2Oth is the Feast of St. Margaret, whose name is so 
 familiar near Rochester Cathedral Precinct.
 
 64 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 that Elijah was a great religious patriot. Long 
 has he waited longer than most of our 
 patriots would have done in the like circum- 
 stances ; and now the hour has struck. From 
 all quarters the heads of the clans and of the 
 families of the northern tribes repair to the 
 appointed place, for a national assembly has 
 been called. Samaria is not a sacred city, like 
 Jerusalem ; Ahab therefore is not bound, like 
 Josiah on a similar occasion, to crowd the 
 representatives of the people into the narrow 
 streets of an Eastern city. Carmel was the 
 place chosen by him and by Elijah one of the 
 most beautiful of mountains, not perhaps in 
 itself, but according to the impressions of all 
 Palestine travellers. Compare it with the 
 romantic hill-country in the Lower Lebanon, 
 and it may disappoint you ; but approach it 
 from the south when fresh from the bare 
 brown hills of Judah, and how you will feast 
 your eyes on its purple slopes ! Alike from 
 the glorious hill-top above Nazareth, where 
 Jesus, with His keen sense of natural beauty, 
 must so often have sat, and from the broad
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 65 
 
 green plain of Jezreel, this long, dark ridge> 
 jutting out into the blue Mediterranean, is an 
 attractive object. Not stately, indeed, like the 
 snow-white peaks of distant Hermon, but fair 
 to look upon, with its green, flowery glades, 
 and not only fair, but sacred sacred to us 
 from its historical associations ; sacred to the 
 Israelites because of the hill-worship which 
 they had adopted from the Canaanites, and 
 which in a qualified form Elijah does not dis- 
 allow. Centuries afterwards the Roman 
 emperor Vespasian found a god still wor- 
 shipped here, according to the ancient usage, 
 without either temple or statue ; and the story 
 of Elijah itself tells us how before the prophet's 
 coming there had been an altar of Jehovah, 
 which Jezebel had caused to be broken down. 
 On the south-eastern extremity of this moun- 
 tain ridge, looking towards Jezreel, is a terrace 
 of natural rock, surrounded by a low wall ; and 
 a short distance from it is a spring, said to be 
 perennial. The wide upland sweep just 
 beneath would afford standing ground to 
 Jezebel's large band of prophets, and those of 
 
 5
 
 66 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 the people who had to stay in the plain would 
 have the altars in full view. Nor would Elijah 
 have far to go to perform that dread act of 
 judgment with which this scene of the tragedy 
 of Israel terminates. At the base of Carmel is 
 the torrent Kishon, on the right bank of which 
 is a bare hill, with the only too suggestive 
 name " Hill of the Priests." Few traditional 
 sites have the natural appropriateness of this 
 terrace of rock, still known in the district as 
 " The Place of Burning." Let us then imagine 
 the broken-down altar in the sacred enclosure, 
 and near this on one side a single man, of calm 
 and noble aspect, but strange apparel, and on 
 the other four hundred and fifty excited, eager- 
 looking, well-clothed men, supported by the 
 king himself and a multitude of his expectant 
 subjects. Similar scenes may very often have 
 been witnessed : " Athanasius against the 
 world " has passed into a proverb ; but never 
 perhaps has there been such a dramatic scene 
 as that which Israel's prose-poet has described 
 for us. 
 
 Elijah knows too well that except the Jews
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT C ARM EL. 67 
 
 see signs and wonders they will not believe. Yet 
 in case the chastening through which Israel 
 has passed may have spiritualized its cha- 
 racter, he comes forward, and makes a short, 
 stirring address. 
 
 "Oh for a sculptor's hand, 
 
 That thou might'st take thy stand, 
 Thy wild hair floating on the Eastern breeze ! " 
 
 This is what he says : How long halt ye 
 between two opinions ? or rather, How long will 
 ye go lame upon tottering knees ? that is, be 
 constantly wavering between truth and false- 
 hood, Jehovah and Baal. If Jehovah be the 
 God, follow him ; or if Baal, then follow him" 
 You see, Elijah refuses that politic compromise 
 which Ahab desired to introduce, according to 
 which Baal and a Jehovah in the likeness of 
 Baal were to be worshipped concurrently or 
 alternately. The only Divinity worth having 
 is the one true God, who, being the universal 
 Lord, can assuredly help His worshippers. 
 But (we are told) the people answered him not 
 a word. They did not care much perhaps for
 
 68 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 the queen's Tyrian Baal ; but for the very 
 similar Baal of their ancestors, whose worship 
 they had learned from the Canaanites, they 
 cared much. Many a sacrifice had they offered 
 at the numerous local shrines, and many a 
 solemn procession had they joined in, akin to 
 those of the peasantry of Palestine, in the hot, 
 dry spring of this year, seeking with litanies 
 and discordant music to draw down rain from 
 the ungenial skies. But never yet had they 
 joined collectively in a great national sacrifice ; 
 never yet had they performed such a great act 
 of faith in Baal as was now contemplated. 
 
 Again Elijah opens his lips. Like St. Paul, 
 he disdains the use of rhetoric the true 
 prophet is no popular preacher. Briefly he 
 reminds the people how much the balance of 
 probabilities is against him. How much less, 
 upon a mechanical view of prophecy, must the 
 supernatural powers of Jehovah's solitary 
 prophet be than those of the four hundred 
 and fifty prophets of Baal ! Do not let us 
 from the height of our supposed spirituality 
 look down upon these Unenlightened Israelites.
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT C ARM EL. 69 
 
 Think of the great trial by fire by which 
 Savonarola was to have made good his cause 
 against his Franciscan adversaries Savona- 
 rola, the most prophet-like man of the Church 
 of his time ; and think of the mechanical test 
 of the validity of prayer proposed not so many 
 years ago by one of our leading scientific 
 professors. No ; I fear that for a long while 
 to come spiritual causes will continue to be 
 judged by unspiritual tests ; and if God Him- 
 self seems to ratify this procedure by the fire 
 from heaven which descended on Elijah's 
 sacrifice, we must remember the principle of 
 accommodation to imperfect capacities which 
 pervades the Old Testament dispensation. I 
 will not blame these unspiritual Israelites ; 
 but I think it will soon become clear to us that 
 the results of this great appeal to Heaven are 
 far from corresponding to the external gran- 
 deur of the scene. 
 
 The God that answereth by fire, let him be the 
 God. Strange argument indeed ! for what else 
 could this prove but that Jehovah, and not 
 Baal, is the glorious God that maketh the thunder
 
 70 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 that He is a mighty, but not that He is a 
 holy, God ? Still in all reformations construc- 
 tion must be preceded by destruction, affirma- 
 tion by negation, though we must add that 
 destruction must be followed by construction, 
 as we hope to see some day on a grand scale 
 in the Christianization of the sceptical classes 
 of the natives of Imiia. Strange argument, 
 but one that commends itself to the adherents 
 of a nature-religion ! Those who wished to do 
 so could still retain their sky-god under the 
 name of Jehovah. So all the people answered 
 and said, It is well spoken. You know the rest 
 of the story. Those four hundred and fifty 
 prophets of Baal, not all at once, but by relays, 
 go through the mystic ritual by which they 
 hope to force the deity to gratify their wishes. 
 We are told just enough to enable us to guess 
 what took place ; we have all of us read of 
 those fanatical dervishes who perpetuate 1 some 
 at least of the strange practices of the old 
 heathen East. The constant repetition of the 
 name of the Deity, the dancing (our story- 
 teller calls it " leaping," or rather " limping"),
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 71 
 
 the cutting of the flesh with knives and lances, 
 may still be seen in any of the larger Moham- 
 medan cities. The aim of the dervishes is to 
 attain mystic union with God ; such, too, I sup- 
 pose, was the aim of these prophets, but they 
 wished for a union so close that their will could 
 be made God's will the very opposite of the 
 aim of a servant of the true God. Their will 
 was to draw down fire from heaven to consume 
 the sacrifice. Hour after hour they continued 
 their fanatical performances ; but there was no 
 voice, nor any that answered. Noontide came, 
 with its scorching ardours, but there was no 
 repose for the overdone prophets ; the spec- 
 tators themselves were doubtless too excited 
 to think of food or rest. What were Elijah's 
 feelings ? He will tell us himself. See, he 
 advances ; he addresses these howling, dancing 
 dervishes, now perhaps, in the cruel heat, 
 beginning to flag. Does he persuade them to 
 give up their cause, or express pity for their 
 self-imposed sufferings ? No ; in accents 
 which can be heard far and wide, he calls, 
 Cry louder, for he is a god (and therefore a
 
 72 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 long way off, and much occupied) ; either he ts 
 musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a 
 journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must 
 be awaked. A grim and bitter humour per- 
 vades these words ; can you understand it ? 
 Is this the Elijah who lived so long with the 
 Baal-worshipping widow woman of Zarephath, 
 and proved so true and kind a friend to her ? 
 Poor deluded prophets ! Why add to their 
 sufferings by exposing their inutility ? Is this 
 the true missionary method ? 
 
 No, I will not indeed blame Elijah ; for he 
 was subject, like ourselves, to the law of 
 historical development. The power to hate 
 what is evil developed far more quickly in the 
 Jewish Church (if I may call it so) than the 
 power to find out " the soul of goodness in 
 things evil " the power to comprehend and in 
 comprehending to pity and to love. We must 
 not, like the Greek and Syrian preachers on 
 Elijah's day, eulogize the prophet at the 
 expense of truth. Still less must we transfer 
 his methods to our own dealings with religious 
 or moral error. If we do so, we shall be
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT C ARM EL. 73 
 
 punished both by failing to gain an influence 
 over others, and by missing some portion of 
 the truth ourselves. If we call Mohammed 
 an impostor, and the Constantinople dervishes 
 foolish fanatics, we shall on the one hand 
 never commend the Gospel to Moslems, and 
 on the other fail to see what constitutes the 
 vital force of Mohammed and of Mohammedan 
 fanaticism. A similar remark applies to our 
 missions to the idolaters. If we ridicule the 
 superstitions of their time-honoured beliefs, 
 we on the one hand increase their prejudice 
 against the Gospel, and on the other fail to 
 understand the beliefs which we oppose. Not 
 so did St. Paul at Athens. Ye men of Athens, 
 he cried as he looked up at the Parthenon, 
 / perceive that in all things ye are full of a 
 religious instinct. 1 The word " superstitious " 
 never crossed the lips of the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles ; and if, in his unchastened zeal, it 
 ever crosses the lips of a messenger of the 
 Cross, he exposes himself to the Saviour's 
 rebuke Ye know not what manner of spirit ye 
 
 1 Acts xvii 22 (w Si
 
 74 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 are of. Nor can I, even in view of the tercen- 
 tenary of another great struggle between rival 
 religious principles which God, as we think, 
 determined against the spiritual tyranny of 
 Rome, follow Charles Kingsley 1 in applying 
 the wo -ds of Elijah to the well-wishers of the 
 Armada. No ; it was not on the English side 
 alone that true prayers ascended to the throne 
 of God in July, 1588, and, however much he 
 disapproves of the invocation of saints, a 
 Christian preacher must not indulge in the 
 thought that the patron saint of Spain on St. 
 James's Day treated his worshippers no better 
 than Baal in olden time. 
 
 The light began to wane ; the sun-god, so 
 it seemed, would soon go down in his chariot 
 of fire. The last despairing cry of Baal's 
 prophets had died away ; they had fallen, like 
 the dervishes, into the unconsciousness of 
 collapse. It was time for Jehovah's champion 
 to reappear. With native majesty, he turns 
 to the people on the uplands, and summons 
 them to attend him. Next he repairs the altar 
 
 1 " Westward Ho " (chapter on the Armada).
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 75 
 
 of Jehovah, made of twelve unhewn stones. 
 Elijah's mission was not to bring in a new 
 dispensation, but to restore the primitive forms 
 of the old. " Like all true reformers, he would 
 connect himself with the past, and not obliterate 
 it." It is a lesson for Christian thinkers and 
 Churchmen. That venerable altar, the stones 
 of which were lying about in the enclosure, 
 had its sacred history and associations. " A 
 Divine wisdom guided Elijah when, instead of 
 building a new altar, he repaired that which 
 had been broken down." I do not say that 
 Elijah can tell us more than half the truth, 
 or that Christian thinkers and Churchmen 
 have not a far more difficult work to do than 
 that of restoring the theology and the Church 
 of long-past centuries without adapting them 
 to the wants of the nineteenth. 1 
 
 The altar was built ; but Elijah knew human 
 nature, and wished to guard against the 
 possible imputation of deceit. There always 
 have been false pretenders to the possession 
 
 1 See Milligan, "Elijah," pp. 55, 56. I have ventured to 
 emphasize more the incompleteness of Elijah's message.
 
 76 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 
 
 of supernatural powers, among whom Baal- 
 worshippers would be only too glad to class 
 Elijah. A large supply of water was brought 
 from the perennial fountain close at hand, and 
 poured upon the altar and into the trench. 
 Now mark the contrast between Elijah's ritual 
 and that of the prophets of Baal. They 
 thought to force their will upon their god by 
 ascetic practices " that bodily exercise " which, 
 as an epistle says, " profiteth little " (i Tim. iv. 
 8). He had made God's will his own, viz., the 
 conversion of His people, and now asks God 
 to do that which He had already willed to do. 
 He asks with an intensity of earnestness, not 
 because he doubts God, but because the 
 spiritual state implied in believing prayer is the 
 true mystic union, without which there can be 
 no miracles. Behold, we are come unto thee, 
 say the penitent Israelites in Jeremiah's ideal 
 description (Jer. iii. 23), for thou art 
 Jehovah our God. Truly in vain is the help 
 that is looked for from the hills, the tumult 
 (like that of Baal's prophets) on the mountains ; 
 truly in Jehovah our God is the salvation of
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 77 
 
 Israel. Elijah's prayer is in the spirit of his 
 great successor : Let it be known this day that 
 thou art God in Israel, . . . that this people 
 may know that thou, Jehovah, art God, and that 
 thou hast turned their heart back again. The 
 answer was immediate. The fire of Jehovah fell 
 (i.e., the lightning) and consumed the burnt sacri- 
 fice, 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 said, Jehovah, he is the God; 
 Jehovah, he is the God. 
 
 And now comes Elijah's terrible but neces- 
 sary act of judgment. He performed it with 
 strictest regard to the merciful provision in the 
 primitive Israelitish law (Only) an eye for 
 an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Jezebel had 
 slain all the faithful prophets of Jehovah but 
 one ; Elijah retaliated by slaying, not all the 
 Baal-worshippers he could seize, but only the 
 four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. No 
 doubt his action was more than this. It was 
 a picture of the true God's hatred of the 
 unholy religion which Jezebel patronised.
 
 78 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 The prophets were the perfect embodiment 
 of all that Elijah had set himself to counteract. 
 Therefore he cried to the spectators, who 
 were still under the influence of a great wave 
 of emotional excitement, Take the prophets q/ 
 Baal; let not one of them escape. There is a 
 path which leads down from the traditional 
 site of the sacrifice to the torrent Kishon, and 
 which passes round a great, bare height now 
 called "The Hill of the Priests." At the base 
 of this hill, probably the priest-prophets of 
 Baal were judicially slain. 
 
 This was how Elijah began to educate his 
 people in righteousness. But what a task lay 
 before him ! How absolute must have been 
 his faith in God ! We shall see presently that 
 even his faith gave way for a short space under 
 the oppressive burden of his mission ! Soon 
 afterwards God relieved him by giving him a 
 companion and successor. But at this moment 
 he is the only missionary of Jehovah in a 
 country profoundly corrupted by heathenism ; 
 and though he seems to have won Israel back 
 to a pure faith, yet the means employed have
 
 ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL. 79 
 
 not been of a spiritual kind, and so the results 
 cannot but be disappointing. 
 
 Next to the greatest of all trial-scenes, there 
 is none in the Bible more exciting to the ima- 
 gination than that which we have now followed 
 to its close. How it all stands out before the 
 mind ! How vastly it excels in tasteful sim- 
 plicity of form the extravagant Eastern tales 
 which charmed us in youth ! But for what 
 cause do I bid you study it ? To open to 
 yourselves a fresh source of purest pleasure ? 
 Certainly, but for more than this to strengthen 
 your interest in the greatest of all the religious 
 questions of our day ; viz., What shall be the 
 religion of thinking and inquiring men in 
 England and in our Indian empire ? The 
 great struggle still goes on, and in the con- 
 fusion of the strife we cannot see which way 
 the battle is going. We on the Christian side 
 must have Elijah's absolute faith in our unseen 
 Leader, but also St. Paul's wisdom in meeting 
 the difficulties of those who are without. Those 
 difficulties, especially in the artisan class, are 
 partly caused by the widespread ignorance of
 
 8o THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 the origin and true meaning of the books of 
 the Old Testament. Your children at any rate 
 cannot help learning what these difficulties are ; 
 will you not try to bring them up, not in a less 
 reverent, but in a far freer and more historical, 
 habit of mind towards these books than was 
 formerly possible ? If you will only do so, be 
 sure that even in your lifetime you will have 
 your reward ; the Bible will be more, and not 
 less, honoured, and Christ will be more, and not 
 less, clearly seen as not merely the fairest 
 flower upon the stem of Israel, but the only 
 balm in Gilead for the sins and woes of suffer- 
 ing humanity. Strengthen ye therefore the weak 
 hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say unto 
 them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong ; 
 fear not.
 
 V. 
 
 THE BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT.
 
 " Are there any among the vanities of the nations that 
 can cause rain ? or can the heavens give showers ? art not 
 thou Jehovah our God, that we might wait upon thee ' ? for 
 thou hast made all these things." JER. xiv. 22. 
 
 1 I cannot follow the Authorised Version (unrevised in the 
 Revised Version). The prophet does not record a resolu- 
 tion of his people to " wait upon " Jehovah, but reverently 
 reminds them of the fact that, since He is Israel's, pro- 
 tecting God, Israel has a right to look to Him for succour.
 
 V. 
 
 THE BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 
 
 r I "HE reign of the king who cut up and 
 -*- burned Jeremiah's roll is the period 
 which most nearly corresponds in the second 
 part of Israel's history to the reign of Ahab in 
 the first. It was really as much a trial-time 
 for Judah as that great day in Ahab's reign 
 was for the old northern kingdom. Jehoiakim 
 was in antagonism to Jeremiah, just as Ahab 
 was to Elijah ; both these kings advocated a 
 fundamentally false conception of religion. But 
 note this difference between the cases : Elijah 
 succeeded in bringing his people over to the 
 side of the true Jehovah, but Jeremiah did 
 not. I do not say that Jeremiah's work was 
 a failure ; but it seemed to be a failure, 
 whereas Elijah's seemed to be a success. It
 
 84 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 has not been often observed that in both cases 
 the trial of the opposing religions was accom- 
 panied by a drought. The prophet Jeremiah 
 describes with painful realism the sufferings 
 consequent upon this irregularity of the seasons 
 in the beginning of his fourteenth chapter, 
 after which he records two intercessory prayers 
 of his own in behalf of his people ; the words 
 of the text are the conclusion of his second 
 prayer. Alas ! both times he prayed in vain ; 
 one of the greatest privileges of his office was 
 denied him ; not even a Moses or a Samuel 
 could any longer pray effectually for Israel. 
 The darkest view of the people's guilt was 
 correct ; and God's judgments, of which this 
 drought was the first, must continue to come 
 upon Israel to the bitter end. So the prophet 
 himself tells us. 
 
 Now see the contrast in the northern king- 
 dom in Ahab's reign. We heard the national 
 decision at the close of the great trial 
 Jehovah, he is the God ; Jehovah, he is the God. 
 Those deadly enemies of the true religion the 
 prophets of Baal have ceased to breathe.
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 85 
 
 Ahab and Elijah stand side by side with what 
 different feelings ! near the torrent Kishon. 
 Then the prophet, who throughout his career 
 treats Ahab with all the respect he can, turns 
 to his companion, and says, Get thee up, eat 
 and drink (i.e., perhaps ascend Carmel again 
 to the place hard by the altar, where the sacri- 
 ficial feast has been spread) ; but do so quickly, 
 for hark ! the noise of a rain-storm ! There 
 is no occasion to suppose that Elijah literally 
 heard some strange sound in the air ; he speaks 
 in the style of the later prophets, of the Baby- 
 lonian Isaiah for instance, who says, Hark ! 
 there is one that crieth, Prepare ye Jehovah's 
 way in the wilderness, although it will still be 
 some time before the Jewish exiles actually 
 return home. Elijah saw and heard what not 
 the most experienced seaman could. If you 
 want to see into the future, you must not 
 apply to men who have nothing but ordinary 
 experience to augur from. God still works 
 miracles ; and men of prayer, like Elijah, can 
 prophesy more truly than unbelievers. There 
 has not been the least change in the atmos-
 
 86 2 HE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 pheric conditions, and yet Elijah knows that 
 there will be rain. Now imagine that prophet 
 and king have gone up the hill again, while 
 you, with a speed like Elijah's, have gone 
 round to the sea-shore. You gaze towards 
 the plain, and are grieved at its brown, parched 
 aspect ; you turn your eyes to the sea (the 
 Mediterranean), which still shimmers under 
 the too radiant sky, and notice a few Sidonian 
 vessels which have ventured farther than usual 
 from the shore. All at once, you observe a 
 strange commotion on board. The sails are 
 being quickly furled, and all those precautions 
 taken which indicate the approach of bad 
 weather. Why is this ? It is because the 
 mariners have seen a cloud on the horizon, no 
 larger than a man's hand ; and they know that 
 they must quickly seek such shelter as the 
 bay of Hepha (now commonly called Haifa) 
 can afford. The drought is on the point of 
 breaking up, and the inspired story distinctly 
 brings this into connection with Elijah's prayer. 
 Would you like, unseen yourself, to follow the 
 prophet to his oratory ? Go then to that
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 87 
 
 retired hollow just below the summit. There 
 you will find the man whom Ahab thought so 
 proud, crouching down upon the earth, with 
 his face between his knees. He trusts the 
 God before whom in spirit he ever stands, and 
 waits confidently for a message from the great 
 King. He sends his servant to the highest 
 point of the mountain to scan the horizon. 
 Six times the lad has gone, and returned 
 with the impatient words, There is nothing. 
 But it came to pass at the seventh time that he 
 said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of 
 the sea, like a man's hand. And he said, Go 
 up, say unto Ahab, Make ready thy chariot, 
 and get thee down, that the rain-storm hinder 
 thee not. And it came to pass in a little while 
 that the heaven grew black with clouds and wind; 
 and there was a great rain-storm. There was 
 no time for reflection. It is at least twelve 
 miles from the base of Mount Carmel to 
 Jezreel. Doubtless the chariot-horses flew 
 along in the wind and the rain, but Elijah was 
 swifter than they. A Divine impulse came 
 upon him ; and, like one of those runners who
 
 88 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 still in the East precede the carriage of a 
 governor, he ran before Ahab to the entrance 
 of Jezreel. Does not this illustrate that beau- 
 tiful saying of one of the Jewish Fathers 
 (Judah ben Tema), " Be bold as a leopard, 
 strong as a lion, light as an eagle, and swift 
 as a roe to perform the will of thy Father 
 which is in heaven " ? 
 
 Every one knows that fine passage in which 
 Cowper describes the men of prayer as the 
 greatest benefactors of their nation. He ex- 
 presses one of the deepest lessons of the story 
 of Elijah. " Israel's troubler " was Ahab's 
 name for Elijah, but the sacred story repre- 
 sents him as its one true friend. But can we 
 in all points trust the view which is here com- 
 mended to us ? Let us pause to answer this 
 question, while the king and queen in their 
 summer palace review the situation of affairs, 
 and Elijah, trusting too much in Ahab's con- 
 version, quietly waits in or near Jezreel to 
 concert fresh reforming measures with the 
 king. May we, in short, follow the pious 
 writer, whose work has been incorporated into
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 89 
 
 one of our Scriptures, in believing first that 
 the three years' drought was a judgment, and 
 next that its termination was due to the effec- 
 tual prayer of Elijah ? As to the first point, I 
 need not recall to you the great change which 
 has been passing for more than a century over 
 the mind of educated society, and which is now 
 practically complete. No one now believes the 
 dreadful things, which all but the very greatest 
 religious thinkers believed on the subject of 
 judgments in the seventeenth century. Within 
 the last twenty years many of those who 
 formerly hesitated have come to see that the 
 ark of God is not endangered by being looked 
 at from a changed point of observation. They 
 feel now that the Divine glory is only heightened 
 by a belief in the continuity of the operations 
 of nature, and cease to regard famines or 
 pestilences as death-warrants suddenly sent as 
 judgments for national sins. 
 
 But must we, in our reaction against the 
 mistakes and exaggerations of the past, go so 
 far as to deny the disciplinary character of 
 certain events altogether ? Granting that God
 
 $o THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 gives a measure of independence to the forces 
 in nature, does this prevent Him from modify- 
 ing the action of physical forces in accordance 
 with a plan and a purpose which are far more 
 perfect than the action of any physical forces 
 / can be ? Is not man himself, who is but God's 
 creature, the possessor, not indeed of absolute, 
 / but of relative, freedom ? Has he not a real 
 sovereignty ovqr nature, which increases in 
 proportion to his knowledge of the forces and 
 
 / laws of nature ? God's knowledge is infinitely 
 greater than man's ; must not His power of 
 
 y modifying nature be infinitely greater too ? Add 
 to this that there are certain psychological 
 phenomena which recur with such regularity in 
 the whole animal world that we may speak of 
 
 / psychological laws. It is one set of these 
 phenomena which establishes the fact or law 
 of efficacious prayer. For instance, the young 
 of the lower animals express their wants 
 through cries, and our children make known 
 their desires by tears or by words ; in each 
 case these articulate or inarticulate prayers 
 are efficacious. Social intercourse, too, is
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 91 
 
 carried on largely by petition and answer. 
 Now if God be a conscious, living Being, > 
 why should not our intercourse with Him 
 be carried on in the same way ? And if < 
 He be a morally perfect Being, and One 
 who desires the good of His creatures, why 
 should He not, I do not say violate, but 
 modify the action of the physical forces in 
 accordance with His perfect plan for the good 
 of mankind ? If so, we may and must regard i/ 
 many of the events which befall us as designed, 
 partly at any rate, to test our relation to God, 
 whether we really love Him. We are told 
 by one of our dhief religious authorities that 
 all things work together for good to them that 
 love God, from which two inferences may be 
 drawn: (i) that, if we are truly spiritual, the 
 hardest trials will in the end make us love God 
 more, and (2) that, if we are selfish and sense- 
 bound, our troubles, instead of bringing us. 
 nearer to God, may even drive us farther from 
 Him, in fact that they will become, not 
 chastenings, but punishments. Let us then- 
 cling to the sister-truths of God's orderliness
 
 92 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 and His fatherliness. God has established a 
 beautiful and wonderful, though not perfect, 
 order of things the Kosmos. This, however, 
 He has been wont to modify, ever since man 
 
 v/ 
 
 has existed, in accordance with certain great 
 moral ends for the race, for each nation, and 
 for each individual. The great events of life 
 have as direct a message for us as for the 
 Bible-writers. They are, according to that 
 beautiful Hebrew phrase, which takes in 
 tf punishments " and " chastenings " alike, 
 admonitions. And whether they be chiefly 
 punishments or chastenings, they are sent, not 
 in wrath, but in love. For (as an all but 
 Christian writer in the Apocrypha beautifully 
 says) thou lovest all the things that are, and 
 abhorrest nothing which thou hast made, for 
 never wouldest thou have made anything if 
 thou hadst hated it. And how could anything 
 have endured if it had not been thy will, or 
 been preserved if not called by thee ? But thou 
 sparest all, for they are thine, O Lord, thou 
 lover of souls (Wisdom of Solomon xi. 23 26). 
 I have frankly told you that, when tested in
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 93 
 
 the sunlight of free but reverent Christian 
 thought, the ideas implied in the story of 
 Elijah are not always perfect. But to those 
 who upon this or upon any supposed critical 
 ground depreciate or set aside this and similar 
 parts of the Old Testament, or even perhaps 
 the Old Testament itself as a whole, I will as 
 frankly say that they are not rationalists in the 
 good sense of the word, but as unreasonable as * 
 they could be. These stories are among the 
 precious heirlooms of the Christian family, and 
 no one with the least sense of history (and 
 history is one of the great feeders of reverence) 
 could wish to part with them. Those very 
 portions of the Bible which are the favourite 
 theme of scoffers ought rather to inspire us 
 with a specially tender interest, because they 
 show how prolonged and painful was the 
 struggle of our spiritual forefathers towards 
 the light. They should fill us with love and 
 sympathy for those who in any part of the 
 world are struggling under disadvantages 
 towards the truth. They should also excite a 
 feeling, not of pride, but of humility, consider-
 
 94 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 jng that the Church of our own age is not in 
 point of knowledge more in advance of Elijah 
 than the Church of succeeding centuries will, 
 we may hope and think, be in advance of ours. 
 The wonder is, not that Elijah knew so little, 
 but that, knowing so little, he clung to it so 
 firmly, realized it so intensely, and lived so 
 great a life in the strength of it. Let us follow 
 him in his loyalty to acknowledged truth ; 
 follow him in his continual reference of all 
 his acts and words to Jehovah, before whom 
 I stand; follow him, lastly, in his cultivation of 
 the habit of prayer. 
 
 But some one may ask, Were Elijah's prayers 
 for temporal benefits really effectual ? This is 
 the second point for the investigation of which 
 we paused in our biographic study. It is not 
 only Elijah, but every prophet and apostle, and 
 the great Master Himself, who answer, Yes. 
 But then we must remember that Elijah's 
 prayers were directed by a keen spiritual 
 insight into God's purposes. The breaking up 
 of the drought was to all appearance necessary, 
 if Israel was to persevere in good courses. Is
 
 t\ 
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGH2. 95 
 
 it wonderful then that God, who gave him his 
 spiritual insight, should have honoured his 
 faith by giving him the blessings which were, 
 in fact, necessary at the time for the growth of 
 God's kingdom ? 
 
 There was therefore nothing arbitrary, 
 nothing sudden, about it. It was a true 
 miracle, but not in the sense of a violation of 
 the order of nature. There are many wonders 
 which no philosophy has yet cleared up, and 
 perhaps no philosophy ever will ; yet, for all 
 that, the more instructed reverence of this age 
 of the Church refuses to admit that there can 
 be a true irregularity either in the moral or in 
 the physical Kosmos. The mysteries of the 
 world are great, but we Christians look for- 
 ward to a time when Wisdom will in the 
 fullest sense be "justified of all her children." 
 Certain at least it is even in this dark, lower 
 world that, as St. James says (v. 16), the 
 supplication of a righteous man availeth much 
 in its working; i.e., it is one of the Divinely 
 appointed forces in the universe, and he 
 instances the case of Elijah, who prayed fer-
 
 96 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 vently, and to all appearance changed the 
 course of nature. We may not hold that the 
 continuity of God's works was actually broken ; 
 but we must hold Elijah's and St. James's view 
 of prayer, if our spiritual life is to thrive. 
 There are Theists who pray and Theists who 
 do not pray, but the Theism of the one class is 
 a philosophy, that of the other class is a religion. 
 But if we pray at all, let us aim at praying 
 fervently. This may seem a high standard, 
 but we ought not to aim at less ; nor ought we, 
 after the first tottering steps in the Christian 
 life, to find fervent prayer difficult. Fine words 
 are not necessary ; there may even be prayers, 
 as there are songs, without words prayers 
 which are not too feeble to be expressed in 
 words, but too deeply felt, as the Psalmist 
 hints to us when he prays, Hold not thy peace at 
 my tears (Psalm xxxix. 12). Does any one 
 doubt the efficacy of such prayers ? Then let 
 us return to one of our analogies for successful 
 prayer in daily life. One of your children 
 perhaps can only lisp his request ; while 
 another cannot do as much as this, but is able
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT. 97 
 
 to stretch out his little hand and cry. Does 
 the father attend to these unspoken or ill-spoken 
 prayers in any degree the less ? Just so those 
 who are in the " nurture and admonition " of 
 the heavenly Father are heard by Him accord- 
 ing as they can pray, and not according as they 
 cannot. Only their prayers must be earnest 
 and believing, the same in kind, if not in 
 degree, as Elijah's. 
 
 Of Elijah's type of prayer, the psalmists are 
 the best teachers. Listen to one of them : 
 
 "Jehovah, thou art my God: early (that is, 
 earnestly) will I seek thee, 
 
 My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh pineth 
 for thee, 
 
 In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." 
 
 And again, "Jehovah, in the morning shalt 
 thou hear my voice; 
 
 In the morning will I order (my sacrifice) 
 for thee, and will look out." 
 
 That is what we mean by earnest and 
 believing prayer 
 
 But may we really venture, with the sweet 
 singer of Israel, to look out for answer to 
 
 7
 
 98 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 prayer ? Did not Elijah, did not the Psalmist, 
 live in the heroic ages of faith ? No ; as I 
 have said, God still works miracles, and still 
 makes common men and women into heroes. 
 Take an instance from the early history of 
 Christian Europe. You know the terror 
 excited by the Huns, those wild barbarians 
 who in the sixth century after Christ pene- 
 trated into the very heart of Christian France. 
 Already they had occupied the suburbs of 
 Orleans, and the people who were incapable 
 of bearing arms lay prostrate in prayer. The 
 governor sent a messenger to observe from the 
 rampart. Twice he looked in vain, but the 
 third time he reported a small cloud on the 
 horizon. " It is the aid of God," cried the 
 Bishop of Orleans. It was the dust raised 
 by the advancing squadrons of Christian 
 troops. 1 I quote this from the great, fair- 
 minded, though unbelieving, historian Gibbon, 
 because it is such an exact parallel to the story 
 of Carmel. Only those who pray are not great 
 prophets, but common men and women ; and 
 
 1 Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," iv., 232.
 
 BREAKING UP OF THE DROUGHT, gg 
 
 the answer to their prayers presents not the 
 least appearance of what men are pleased to 
 call a miracle.* Not inferior wonders will be 
 found to happen in many a common life. We 
 may look out for answers to our prayers if, 
 like Elijah and the psalmists, we live our 
 lives, not to please ourselves, but as Christian 
 soldiers, whose grand aim is to help forward 
 the kingdom of God. That is the condition 
 of successful prayer we must not only be 
 fervent, but unselfish ; we must subordinate 
 all loves, desires, and hopes to those which 
 have their centre in Jesus Christ. Seek first 
 God's kingdom and righteousness, and blend 
 all other interests with this, and then you may 
 be certain that your prayers will be answered, 
 always in the spirit and sometimes, or even 
 perhaps often, in the letter. 
 
 " He answered all my prayer abundantly, 
 And crowned the work that to His feet I brought 
 With blessing more than I had asked or thought 
 A blessing undisguised, and fair, and free. 
 
 1 In this respect this story differs from that of the 
 Thundering Legion.
 
 ioo THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 I stood amazed, and whispered, ' Can it be 
 That He hath granted all the boon I sought ? 
 How wonderful that He for me hath wrought ! 
 How wonderful that He hath answered me ! ' 
 O faithless heart ! He said that He would hear 
 And answer thy poor prayer, and He hath heard 
 And proved His promise. Wherefore didst thou fear? 
 Why marvel that thy Lord hath kept His word? 
 More wonderful if He should fail to bless 
 Expectant faith and prayer with good success ! " ' 
 
 Miss Havergal, " Under the Surface."
 
 VI. 
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB.
 
 "And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the 
 strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, 
 the mount of God. And he came thither unto the cave, 1 and 
 lodged there ; and behold, the word of Jehovah came unto 
 him, and he said unto him. What doest thou here, Elijah ? " 
 I KINGS xix. 8, 9. 
 
 1 A.V. and R.V., "a cave."
 
 VI. 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 
 
 \ T 7 E left Elijah at Carmel ; we find him at 
 * Horeb. Both were mountain sanctu- 
 aries, the one adopted by Israel from the 
 Canaanites, the other from the Arabian race. 
 Jehovah, in His triumphant progress at the 
 head of His people, had claimed them for His 
 own worship and reconsecrated them to Him- 
 self. It was on Carmel that He turned the 
 heart of His people back again ; it was on 
 Horeb that He again and again appeared to 
 Moses, and, as we shall see, gave a revelation 
 to Elijah unequalled for its loveliness in the 
 whole of the Old Testament. But how came 
 the prophet of Israel to journey so far from 
 his sphere of duty ? The circumstances are 
 these : Elijah was suffering from a spiritual
 
 104 THE fl ALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 reaction. The strain of that great day of 
 Carmel had been too intense for him ; and 
 when Jezebel, as stern and resolute as himself, 
 came forward as the avenger of blood to her 
 own prophets, he fled for his life, and left her, 
 as it seemed, to restore the old impure worship 
 and fascinate the crowd with its stately ritual. 
 He hurried far beyond the boundary of Israel 
 to Beersheba, where the cultivated land of 
 Judah ceases. There he left his attendant 
 the Sidonian boy of Zarephath, according to a 
 later legend and plunged into the desert alone. 
 He was like that noble explorer of Africa l 
 who, shocked at the conduct of his Arab escort, 
 preferred to be left behind, resting under a tree, 
 and waiting upon Providence. Or rather he 
 was worse off, for the Italian explorer, in his 
 weakness and loneliness, had at least his 
 parrots and his dogs for company, whereas 
 
 1 Giovanni Miani, the Venetian, who penetrated to 
 within a few miles of Lake Victoria before Speke. I might 
 have pointed to Mungo Park drawing spiritual comfort in 
 circumstances of danger from "the extraordinary beauty of 
 a small moss in fructification" (see his "Travels in Africa," 
 chap, xviii.).
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB.. 105 
 
 Elijah was too soured by disappointment to 
 care for anything or anybody upon earth, and 
 lay down with the prayer that a life not worth 
 living might be cut short. If God had then 
 been pleased to open his eyes, as He did those 
 of the poor exhausted but patient Hagar, he 
 would have seen the tall bush of broom, mis- 
 called a juniper tree, under which he lay, 
 lighted up by a pink cloud of blossoms, and 
 would have gathered from this gracious provi- 
 sion, not merely for the shelter, but for the 
 delectation, of travellers, a twofold lesson of 
 humility and faith. Truly Elijah needed this 
 lesson, for he was at this moment both proud 
 and unbelieving. Pride there surely was in 
 the thought which he expressed soon after- 
 wards that he had been the great reformer, and 
 that if he were taken, the work would be 
 dropped, as well as in that which seems to be 
 implied in his present complaint; viz., that he 
 had a right to see more fruit of his labours 
 than those who had gone before him had done 
 of theirs. And was he not unbelieving too ? 
 He was sure that he at least had been very
 
 106 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 jealous for Jehovah, but he doubted whether 
 God had been jealous enough for Himself. 
 Why could not He who had sent down fire 
 from heaven to consume the sacrifice have also 
 consumed Jezebel and every obstinate Baal- 
 worshipper? He was falling into the sin of 
 Job, and criticising the wisdom of One who 
 seeth the end from the beginning. He com- 
 mitted the common error of taking short views, 
 and so became equally unjust to the work of 
 the past and to the prospects of the future. 
 He thought that his fathers had done nothing 
 that had lasted, that his own great labours had 
 come to nothing, and that no one else would 
 take up his mantle and work with still better 
 results. Oh, if there be any one here who is 
 ever tried by similar proud and unbelieving 
 thoughts and what educated man or woman is 
 not sometimes so tried ? let him remember 
 that Elijah is not a model for imitation. 
 
 " Say not, the struggle nought availeth ; 
 The labour and the wounds are vain." 
 
 This were as foolish as it is treasonable. A
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 107 
 
 wider range of vision leads to very different 
 conclusions. Historical development, not 
 always, but upon the whole, makes for real 
 progress. Youthful optimism does less violence 
 to facts than the pessimism of old age. 
 
 " For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main." l 
 
 But why did Elijah travel so far to give vent 
 to his despondency ? Were there no secluded 
 spots in Gilead, congenial to pessimistic moods? 
 Some wild ravine in his native hills would 
 have been, one might think, a more natural and 
 more wholesome retreat than the sand hills with 
 which the Arabian desert begins. The truth, 
 however, is that Elijah was on a pilgrimage 
 to Horeb, the " mountain of God," and that 
 this was his first desert station. He had not 
 come here intending this outburst of despond- 
 ency. The germs of pride and unbelief were 
 indeed already in his mind when he left Jezreel, 
 but he had not yet been tempted to disparage 
 1 A. H. Clough.
 
 io8 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 God's awful gift of life. He had taken up the 
 pilgrim's staff because he believed that on 
 Horeb Jehovah would reveal Himself more 
 fully than on Carmel, as the God of vengeance, 
 and would make known to him a plan for 
 breaking the opposition of Ahab and Jezebel, 
 for sending out His lightnings and tearing 
 them, shooting forth His arrows and consuming 
 them. For a moment he forgot his errand, 
 and lay down, as he thought, to die ! He was 
 wrong ; but if he was wrong, doubly so are 
 we if we ever follow his example. I do not 
 say that there are not moments when hard- 
 pressed Christian soldiers may, with Charles 
 Kingsley, long to receive their discharge and 
 lie down, as he expressed it, in the cool 
 churchyard. But these longings indicate a 
 morbid strain in the character, and are not to 
 be intensified by indulgence. Very different 
 are they from that heavenly aspiration of St. 
 Paul in his imprisonment that he might break 
 up his earthly camp, and be with Christ, and see 
 for himself what that wonderful promise meant, 
 Where I am, there shall also my servant be.
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 109 
 
 There are several remedies for this morbid 
 state of the spiritual life. One medicine is to 
 turn to a psalm and dwell upon one of those 
 phrases of lightning brevity and brilliance which 
 in a moment reveal the one Great Life and 
 Love which directs the course alike of nations 
 and individuals. The forty-second Psalm, for 
 instance, is full of them. But Elijah had not 
 this ever-fresh source of inspiration. Nor 
 can even we afford, in dealing with such morbid 
 experiences in ourselves or in others, to rely 
 entirely on spiritual medicines. Let us see 
 how the great Healer of all infirmities treated 
 His patient. First, He gave him that blessed 
 gift which is one of nature's sacraments, and 
 proves how much God loves us, for, as a sweet 
 psalm says, he giveth his beloved sleep. Next, 
 He sent Elijah a more special message of love 
 one of those kindly Gabriels that stand in the 
 presence of God, who gently roused the sleeper 
 with a touch and bade him arise and eat. 
 
 I know not what the literal fact was, nor 
 can I paraphrase poetry. The nature of angels 
 is a thing which could not be revealed to a
 
 no THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 human intellect, or described by human speech. 
 There is high religious authority for the view 
 that natural phenomena are but, as John Henry 
 Newman says, " the skirts of the garments, 
 the waving of the robes," of angelic minis- 
 trants ; but when we seek to go behind these 
 symbolic expressions, we lay ourselves open 
 to carping criticism, and feel that religion is 
 partly poetry, and though not less true, is 
 much less capable of description, than the facts 
 of science or history. How much was objec- 
 tive and how much subjective in the prophet's 
 experience, I know not, nor does any one 
 know. But sure I am that, whenever despond- 
 ing thoughts come upon us, and life seems too 
 hard to bear, a wise Christian friend will first 
 of all seek to mend our physical condition. 
 If winds and storms may be called "angels" 
 by a psalmist, I see not why some fellow- 
 mortal whom God has enabled by some 
 winged word of counsel or comfort to lead us 
 into the right path may not be gratefully 
 accounted by us God's angel. Our Lord 
 Himself is called in prophecy the " angel of
 
 ELIJA H AT HOREB. 1 1 1 
 
 the covenant," so that to become Christlike 
 is to become angel-like ; and each of us in turn 
 may seek to do an angel's part to his neigh- 
 bour. Is this too high an ambition ? Surely 
 not. By nature man was made, according to 
 the Psalmist, only a little lower than the angels ; 
 by grace we are lifted above ourselves, and 
 can join angels and archangels, not only in 
 their praises, but in their ministry. 
 
 " To comfort and to bless, 
 
 To find a balm for woe, 
 To tend the lone and fatherless, 
 Is angels' work below." 
 
 Learn, then, of Christ and of Elijah's angel 
 to minister to the bodily as well as to the 
 spiritual wants of the desponding ; and learn 
 of both to do so with a touch. Half the 
 ministry and, I may say, half the preaching 
 that is attempted is spoiled by a want of 
 sympathy. When the nerves are unstrung, 
 a rough word or an ungentle touch is intole- 
 rable. How hard it is for many, without some 
 schooling in this matter, to visit the poor and 
 the sick.
 
 ii2 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 I do not say that the holy man who wrote 
 this story meant anything but what he seems 
 to mean ; but I am sure that, if he were here 
 to-day, he would not disown these interpreta- 
 tions or inferences. The Bible is not a " dead 
 book ; " and if you keep your mind open to 
 its manifold suggestions, you will be rewarded 
 by finding out depths below depths, meanings 
 within meanings ; and these old stories, and 
 poems, and prophecies will rise again into a life 
 so new and beautiful, that the Bible will never- 
 more be far from your hand. 
 
 Twice, as the story tells us, Elijah arose at 
 that kindly angel's prompting, and ate and 
 drank, and went in the strength of that food 
 forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, the 
 mount of God. I do not forget that scoffers 
 are lying in wait to make the most of each 
 great or small inexactitude in the Scriptures. 
 Still we must in fairness note such facts as 
 often as they occur. To us revelation is a 
 heavenly treasure in what, comparatively 
 speaking, must be called earthen vessels ; to 
 the scoffer the earthen vessel is the revelation
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 113 
 
 itself. The fault is ours more than his, for 
 how few of us have been taught or have taught 
 ourselves to be free and honest, though tender 
 and reverent, Bible-students ! We must have 
 patience even with the scoffer, and explain to 
 him that though the Church is, as our article 
 says, the witness and the keeper, it has never 
 claimed to be the critical expositor, of Holy 
 Writ, and that in dealing with this ancient 
 literature believers and unbelievers alike have 
 often fallen into serious mistakes. It is need- 
 ful, then, to notice that the mountains of Sinai 
 are not, as the story implies, forty-one days' 
 journey from Beersheba. Accustomed as he 
 was to rapid movements, and refreshed both 
 spiritually and physically, Elijah cannot have 
 spent nearly so much time over his pilgrimage, 
 nor could even a less energetic traveller have 
 done so. What then ? The object of the 
 story-teller was not merely to collect facts, 
 but to glorify Elijah and Elijah's God. Even 
 if he had a minute acquaintance with the 
 geography of Sinai (which he probably had 
 not), he would not in this matter have cared 
 
 8
 
 ii 4 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 to be too accurate. For the journey across 
 the desert is a poetic symbol. Who does not 
 love the eighty-fourth Psalm, which has even 
 more right to be called the " psalm of life," 
 than Longfellow's poem ? There, as you 
 know, the sweet singer says that every true 
 pilgrim is helped on his way by miracles, till, 
 after going from strength to strength, he 
 appears before God in Zion. In poetic 
 language, he expresses a fact of experience. 
 Faith, hope, and love can even heighten 
 physical vitality. Have we not sometimes seen 
 this exemplified in a wonderful way in unex- 
 pected recoveries from sickness ? Elijah, how- 
 ever, is not sick. Who could be weary, or 
 languid, or sore distressed, approaching Sinai ? 
 Air, landscape, and associations all combine to 
 stimulate body and mind in the highest degree ; 
 and when you reach the fair and fertile valley 
 in which St. Catherine's convent stands, and 
 see the front of Horeb rising like a wall before 
 you, you comprehend how in the revelation 
 of Sinai Jehovah could be described as at 
 once abundant in goodness and One that will by
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 115 
 
 no means clear the guilty (Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7) : 
 the two sides of the Divine character, goodness 
 and severity, seem reflected, the one in the 
 verdant valley, the other in the darkly frown- 
 ing granite mountain. 1 Half-way up the peak 
 named after Moses (Jebel Musa) is a little 
 garden, with a solitary cypress, a spring, and 
 a tank of water. A few paces off is a cave, 
 the traditional scene of Elijah's vision ; and 
 considering that from the earliest times pilgrims, 
 as the book of Exodus seems to show, 
 thronged to Sinai, I see not why it should 
 not be the cave spoken of in I Kings xix. 9 : 
 And he came thither unto THE cave, and lodged 
 there; i.e., in the cave well known from the 
 descriptions of Israelitish or other pilgrims. 
 
 There is no more sacred spot than this in 
 the world. And yet, strange to say, Elijah 
 did injustice to the noblest of its associations. 
 It may be that the cave in which he now 
 lodged was the very " cleft of the rock " where 
 Moses is said to have been hid while Jehovah 
 
 1 See Robinson, " Biblical Researches," i., 130. The 
 whole section is well worth reading.
 
 n6 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 passed by when He proclaimed that glorious 
 name from which I quoted just now. Did 
 Elijah forget this, or may we suppose that this 
 tradition had not reached him ? At any rate, 
 the prophet's idea of the God of Sinai is of a 
 God of vengeance ; and he has several of the 
 psalmists and prophets on his side. He 
 thought only of the terrible accessories of the 
 Law, and imagined that in them God's nature 
 found complete expression. He remembered 
 
 only 
 
 " The fires that rushed on Sinai down 
 In sudden torrents dread," 
 
 and forgot the gentler teaching of his own 
 sojourn at Zarephath. He longed to see God 
 as Moses saw Him, and his wish was com- 
 paratively granted. Not, however, before 
 Jehovah had probed the conscience of His 
 prophet, and made him give clear expression 
 to the thoughts and feelings which had been 
 troubling him. What doest thou here, Elijah ? 
 means, What is that impression of thine own 
 work and of the Divine nature and principles of 
 action which has brought thee hither ? Elijah,
 
 ELIJA H AT HOREB. 1 1 7 
 
 you know, had given way in some degree to 
 the temptations of pride and unbelief. He 
 thought too much of his own labours, and he 
 trusted his God too little ; he was unfair to 
 the past and hopeless as to the future. There 
 is no reserve in his reply to Jehovah ; he says 
 it all out all that made his heart heavy and 
 his life miserable. One thing, indeed, he does 
 not express ; it is the question, Why dost Thou, 
 Jehovah, suffer these things to be ? To this 
 unspoken but not unheard question, Jehovah 
 gives no direct answer ; but He summons him, 
 as He summoned Job in the great Hebrew 
 drama of Doubt and Faith, to witness those 
 awful phenomena of nature in which God was 
 supposed to be specially manifested. And he 
 said, Go forth and stand upon the mount before 
 Jehovah. And behold, Jehovah passed by (as 
 He passed by Moses of old) ; and a great and 
 strong wind rent the mountains i.e., a hurricane 
 burst through the massive walls of granite 
 and brake in pieces the rocks, rolling them down 
 in fragments around him. But where was 
 Jehovah ? Jehovah was not in the wind. And
 
 ii8 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 after the wind an earthquake, so that the 
 foundations of Horeb itself quaked beneath 
 Elijah. But where was Jehovah ? Jehovah 
 was not in the earthquake. And after the earth- 
 quake afire, splintering the rocks into smaller 
 pieces than those which the hurricane had 
 broken off. But where wast Thou, Jehovah ? 
 Jehovah was not even in the fire. 
 
 Imagine the scene, if you can. What the 
 wind can be in the mountains, some of us may 
 know. Of the resistless energy of the Divine 
 Being can there be a better symbol ? What 
 earthquakes are, and how completely the 
 strongest nerves are shaken by them, we also 
 know very well since the calamity which befell 
 that lovely Italian coast in 1887. What a 
 thunderstorm in the mountains means, we also 
 many of us know, though few can have 
 witnessed one in Sinai itself, where, as we are 
 told, the lightning seems like falling masses of 
 fire. 1 All these phenomena in their highest 
 degree were combined. What were Elijah's 
 feelings ? Did he say to the rocks as they 
 
 1 See Ebers, "Durch Gosen zum Sinai," p. 433.
 
 ELIJA H AT HOREB. i \ 9 
 
 fell around him, Yea, fall on me and hide me 
 from the face of Him that sitteth on the 
 throne, for the great day of His wrath is come, 
 and who shall be able to stand ? No ; it is 
 another saying of the seer of Patmos which 
 more nearly expresses his thought : Surely 
 I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come. Yes, 
 he was fearless amidst it all, knowing that he 
 bore a charmed life, and smiled at each awful 
 indication that Jehovah his God was near. 
 And yet, as Job said, 
 
 Lo, he goeth by me, but I see him not ; 
 He passeth me also, but I perceive him not 
 
 (Job ix. 11). 
 
 How strange, how startling, to Elijah ! Bow 
 thy heavens, Jehovah, and come down ; touch the 
 mountains, so that they smoke (Psalm cxliv. 5). 
 Such had been his prayer; and lo, the moun- 
 tains had been touched, and seemed all cloud 
 and flame ; but where was Jehovah ? Had He 
 not answered by fire, according to the prayer of 
 Elijah, on Mount Carmel ? Not indeed audibly, 
 but no speech was needed then. Now a word
 
 120 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 was needed a revelation, to make clear once 
 for all whether Jehovah would allow Ahab and 
 Jezebel to ruin the spiritual prospects of His 
 own people. Elijah's inmost soul cried out for 
 an assurance from God that the majesty of the 
 moral law should be vindicated, and that dark- 
 ness should not cover the earth, and gross 
 darkness the peoples ; but the voice of revela- 
 tion was mute. Wait on, prophet of God ; 
 and He will make thy darkness to be light. 
 He who answered Job out of the midst of the 
 tempest will find a still nobler way to answer 
 thee, and will make thee a witness and a preacher 
 to all generations of the highest and deepest 
 view of the nature of God.
 
 VII. 
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB (continued}.
 
 " And after the earthquake afire, but Jehovah was not in the 
 fire, and after the fire a gentle, murmuring sound.' "' I KINGS 
 xix. 12. 
 
 1 I take d'mdmdh in the sense of " murmur" or " whisper." 
 There may be a root d-m, " to murmur." Or if the literal 
 meaning of d'md/nd/i be " stillness " (as the margin of the 
 Revised Version suggests), we may remember that ' silence" 
 in Hebrew has a somewhat wide sense. The Septuagint 
 everywhere renders d ' indindh aupa ; e.g., here, KOI jutrd ro 
 irvp (JHiivr) atipag
 
 VII. 
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB (continued). 
 
 OUBLIME indeed are the thoughts which 
 **-* flash upon the mind during a thunder- 
 storm in the mountains, when, as at the 
 creation, all the sons of God seem shouting 
 for joy. In entertaining these thoughts the 
 mind itself seems to grow larger, and deep 
 is our debt of gratitude to the poet who in the 
 songs of the archangels in Faust has given to 
 some of them such noble expression. There 
 is a great temptation in our time to undivinize 
 nature; that is, to look at nature apart from 
 God. That is inconsistent in a Christian, who 
 deprives himself thereby of an immense pleasure, 
 and God of a part of His glory. The more 
 sublime phenomena of nature are so many 
 eloquent appeals to us from Jehovah to open
 
 i2 4 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 our eyes to the greatness, and beauty, and 
 wonderfulness of His universe. And yet it 
 must be admitted that the thoughts which visit 
 the mind during a grand thunderstorm are not 
 those which bring us nearest to God. This is 
 one of the lessons of the story of Elijah, who 
 was familiar enough with the sterner and 
 wilder side of nature, though he may not have 
 seen in it what the eye of the great modern 
 poet saw. Not in the great and strong wind, 
 not in the earthquake, not in the fire, did the 
 inner voice assure Elijah that he was in per- 
 sonal contact with his God. Then, as he 
 listened for the echo from peak to peak, a 
 solemn quiet fell, broken only to the attentive 
 ear of Elijah by a murmur akin to silence, and 
 beautifully described as " the sound of a gentle 
 whisper." Then at length the inner voice 
 spoke, It is Jehovah ; and Elijah wrapped his 
 face in the folds of his mantle, and stepped to 
 the entrance of the cave. I must pause a few 
 moments here, because it is important to under- 
 stand the outward form of this acted parable. 
 Throughout antiquity there were two sounds
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 125 
 
 which more than any others betokened the 
 communication of an oracle : the roaring of 
 thunder and the rustling of trees. We cannot 
 doubt that these sounds meant to Elijah what 
 they meant to other Israelites. An unexpected 
 clap of thunder and the rustling of ancient 
 trees conveyed to those who had the prophetic 
 gift an intimation of the will of God. We 
 know that on Carmel Jehovah spoke to His 
 prophet by a flash of lightning ; and we cannot 
 doubt that often, when he stood by some 
 venerated tree, the rustling of its boughs had 
 conveyed to him a message from the Most 
 High. It is true that on this desolate, storm- 
 ravaged mountain-side there can have been no 
 friendly tree to become the sacramental channel 
 of revelation ; but nothing prevents us from 
 explaining the " still small sound " of some 
 other variety of nature's music, and the context 
 at once suggests the gentle sound of a breeze, 
 following on the rough storm-wind, such a 
 breeze as is spoken of in Psalm cvii. 29 : 
 
 He turned the hurricane into a soft air, 
 And the waves of the sea were hushed.
 
 126 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 And the significance of the story consists 
 largely in this : that the two forms of sacra- 
 mental symbol are put side by side. The one 
 form was on this occasion deprived of its 
 efficacy in order to do greater honour to the 
 other. Does the pious writer of this story 
 deny that, to those who had the prophetic gift 
 of interpreting nature, there were special mes- 
 sages from heaven in the storm and the 
 earthquake ? By no means. At another time 
 Jehovah might have spoken to Elijah, as He 
 spoke to Job, out of the tempest ; but upon 
 this occasion the prophet was to be shown that 
 the highest revelations were to be expected, 
 not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary, 
 not in the most awful, but in the gentlest and 
 most familiar, manifestations of God in nature. 
 And so Jehovah gently whispers His message, 
 " like a father consoling a fretful child " for 
 some lost plaything. 
 
 It was an important moment in the history 
 of revelation. Despise it those who can those 
 who are content to walk on in the old routine, 
 with no eyes beyond the party struggles of the
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 127 
 
 day, and no ears for any but their own inter- 
 pretations of the infinite truth. Let those who 
 value the Gospel because it is a historical 
 religion, and worthy of educated men and 
 women, think with interest of the long-past 
 stages through which our spiritual forefathers 
 were led. From this time forward (supposing 
 our narrative to be founded on fact), those 
 stern and awful phenomena ceased to be re- 
 garded as the usual accessories of revelation. 
 Jehovah will roar from Zion, says Amos, and 
 utter his voice from Jerusalem (Amos i. 2); 
 but the two most common expressions for a 
 Divine revelation are henceforth " a word " and 
 " a whisper." Very often, where the Author- 
 ized Version has simply, " The Lord saith," the 
 Hebrew has "The whisper of Jehovah." The 
 lesson is that not entirely by violence and com*- 
 pulsion, but, so far as is possible, by an appeal 
 to man's better self, the messengers of Jehovah 
 are henceforth to prepare His way. Contrast 
 the Law as given in Exodus in the time of 
 Moses with the Law as enlarged in Deuteronomy 
 in the time of Jeremiah, and you will see the
 
 128 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 difference between the two forms of sacramental 
 symbolism brought before us in this acted 
 parable. 
 
 But I must not allow myself to extract the 
 spiritual kernel of the narrative before we have 
 completed our study of its outward form. I 
 said designedly, " not entirely by violence and 
 compulsion." For the lesson which the acted 
 parable bore to the prophets of Israel before 
 the Captivity was evidently not the same as 
 it bore to the chastened Jewish Church in 
 Babylon (see Isa. xlii. 2, 3), much less the 
 same as it now bears to each Christian soul. 
 When in awed expectancy the prophet had 
 taken his station at the entrance of the cave, 
 what was it that seemed to strike upon his 
 ear ? The very same question which (in 
 what manner the story does not inform us) 
 Elijah's Divine Lord had put to him before 
 the great convulsion of nature. And to this 
 he replies in exactly the same words as before, 
 as if this wondrous exhibition of the majesty 
 of the All-holy One had left his inner senses 
 untouched. Well, perhaps the writer means
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 129 
 
 that Elijah at least did not take in much of 
 the significance of the parable ; the lesson 
 was doubtless too deep, too far-reaching, to 
 be apprehended at the moment. And is not 
 this sometimes the case with us ? God brings 
 us into situations the full spiritual significance 
 of which we do not see for years afterwards. 
 At any rate, Jehovah's reply communicates 
 facts which were well adapted to overcome 
 His servant's despondency. Elijah's work 
 would not be dropped when he himself dis- 
 appeared. He was commissioned to anoint 
 Hazael king over Syria, Jehu king over Israel, 
 and Elisha as his own successor Hazael to 
 punish Israel by "cutting it short" (2 Kings x. 
 32), Jehu to give Baal-worship a final and 
 decisive blow, and Elisha to announce the 
 impending doom of Israel as a kingdom in 
 words which were so many stripes, according 
 to that saying of Jehovah in Hosea / have 
 hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them 
 by the words of my mouth (Hos. vi. 5). With 
 that commission Elijah is bound to be satis- 
 fied ; the " goodly fellowship of the prophets " 
 
 9
 
 1 3 o THE HALLOWING OF CRIIICISM. 
 
 is too united for envy or jealousy to find 
 admission. One soweth, and another reapeth; 
 and yet both he that soweth and he that reapeth 
 shall in the great harvest-home rejoice together. 
 But what of Israel ? Is all this lavish expen- 
 diture of toil to issue in nothing but rebuke 
 and punishment ? No ; these are the last 
 words of the Divine oracle : Yet will I leave 
 me (not, Yet have I left me) seven thousand 
 in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed 
 unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not 
 kissed him. Here again we are carried into 
 the region of symbols. Not one hundred and 
 forty-four thousand, the symbolic number of 
 redeemed Israel in the Apocalypse, but seven 
 thousand, will the survivors of the Divine judg- 
 ment be. Few perhaps, and yet enough to 
 form the nucleus of a regenerate people, for 
 " the kingdom of God is always stronger than 
 it seems." Yes, few, but in the sight of God 
 precious, will those faithful servants be, who 
 have fought the good fight against Baal and 
 kept the true faith of the holy God that 
 " remnant " of the northern Israelites which
 
 ELIJA H AT HOREB. 13 1 
 
 was finally to be united with the " remnant " of 
 Southern Israel spoken of by the great prophet 
 Isaiah. Not much is said here of these seven 
 thousand ; but the pious writer of Elijah's 
 story lived, we must think, somewhat later 
 than Hosea, and in Hosea we find a promise 
 that the children of Judah and the children of 
 Israel shall gather themselves together under one 
 head and come up out of the land of their 
 captivity (Hos. i. u). To have developed this 
 happy prospect here would have been a mis- 
 take, because Elijah's strength lay, not in 
 bright anticipations of the future, but in the 
 practical treatment of present difficulties. Thus, 
 even in the Old Testament, that saying of St. 
 Paul is true that there is a rich multiplicity 
 in the gifts and operations of the one Divine 
 Spirit (i Cor. xii. 4 6). 
 
 Do you not feel inclined to pity our prophet ? 
 " True mysticism," as a French writer says, : 
 "has never sounded sweeter chords;" but Elijah 
 cannot hear them. The finest of all the parables 
 in the Old Testament has been acted before 
 
 1 Reville, " Prolegomena to the History of Religion."
 
 i 3 2 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 him, but a few bare facts are all that it conveys 
 to him. I do not say that the facts were of 
 trifling importance to Elijah, though, being 
 divorced from truths which we value so much, 
 they may appear so to us. It was quite worth 
 the prophet's while to make the pilgrimage to 
 Horeb to free his mind from that " perilous 
 stuff" pride and unbelief, and to feel, however 
 imperfectly, the continuity of God's work in all 
 generations. He came to the holy place 
 moaning like a dove ; he departed with the 
 aspiring heart of a falcon. How he acquitted 
 himself of his tasks, 1 we are not told ; but we 
 may be sure that to interfere in the succession 
 to two thrones must have required the highest 
 moral courage and the most sublime faith. All 
 this is true ; and yet when we read the story 
 over again we feel a want of correspondence 
 between the splendid scenery of the revelation 
 and the revelation itself, just as in the story of 
 the youthful Samuel we are conscious of a 
 
 1 2 Kings viii. 7 i5i ^ X -F which assign these tasks to 
 Elisha, evidently belong to the same biography of Elijah 
 as the story of Naboth.
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 133 
 
 certain fall in the tone of the narrator as he 
 passes from the sweet description of Samuel's 
 childlike openness mingled with surprise to the 
 awful details communicated in the sequel. 
 And so, projecting ourselves, as it were, into 
 the personalities of Elijah and Samuel, we are 
 tempted to complain because they did not see 
 the full significance of such great events in 
 their lives. But we forget that it could not 
 have been otherwise, unless God had chosen to 
 break the fundamental laws of the mind. No 
 human schoolmaster would dream of doing 
 this. If I were to give a page of Plato to a 
 young boy, he might indeed learn it by rote, 
 but he would never understand its subtle and 
 profound philosophy. And there is no evidence 
 that the great Teacher of the prophets has ever 
 chosen to break these laws any more than those 
 of the world outside man. It is of the most 
 vital importance that the God whom we con- 
 ceive in our mind should be free from all 
 appearance of caprice and vacillation. Most 
 earnest are the prophets of the Old Testament 
 on this point. Thus saith Jehovah : If my
 
 134 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 covenant of day and night stand not, and if I 
 have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and 
 earth, then will I cast away the sin of Jacob and 
 David my servant (Jer. xxxiii. 25). God 
 cannot break these ordinances ; things may 
 happen that are above nature, but not that are 
 against nature. God never forces His will 
 either upon the sentient or the non-sentient 
 creation. And so it comes to pass that, 
 throughout the Old Testament, revelations are 
 always proportioned to the mental state of the 
 person receiving them. 
 
 If these things are so, we cannot wonder at 
 and cannot seriously pity Elijah. Great as he 
 was, he could no more fathom the depths of this 
 heavenly parable than Moses could catch the 
 full meaning of the Decalogue, or Ten Words 
 of God. But why, some one may perhaps ask, 
 was so stimulating an experience granted to 
 Elijah, if his nature was so little fitted to profit 
 by it ? The answer is that he lived in an age 
 of the simplest faith, while men still believed 
 that to an attuned ear the thunder and the 
 breeze conveyed special messages from above.
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 135 
 
 Not for himself only, but, even more, for the 
 Jewish and Christian Church, Elijah received 
 this parable. It is a mistake, as St. Paul tells 
 us, to suppose that the Old Testament stories 
 were written down merely for historical pur- 
 poses. They are not merely histories, but 
 symbols; or, let me rather say, in most cases 
 they are not so much histories as symbols. 
 The real historical facts have to be deduced 
 by patient criticism, but the truths which the 
 stories symbolize have continually new appli- 
 cations. These things, we read in I Cor. x. n, 
 happened to our fathers by way of type l (or 
 figure) ; and they were written for our admonition, 
 upon whom (for St. Paul thought that the sands 
 of time were running out) the ends of the ages 
 are come. 
 
 And what is it that the acted parable of the 
 
 1 A.V., "for ensamples" (margin, "types") an interesting 
 use of the good old word " ensample" or " sample." The 
 Greek has rturiicdie, v.l. TVTTOI, Delitzsch liliyoth Vmofetk 
 (see Isa. viii. 18; Ezek. xii. n). A revised version of the 
 Bible for home use would surely render mofeth in the Old 
 Testament and TVTTOC; in the New Testament " type." On 
 this word comp. Max Muller's recent volume of essays.
 
 136 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 hurricane, and the earthquake, and the gently 
 whispering breeze conveys to us ? Unto you, 
 says our Lord, it is given to know the mysteries 
 of the kingdom of heaven. God loves to reveal 
 His mysteries, and I think this mystery at 
 least is being revealed to us of this generation 
 with special fulness. One hopes there may 
 have been truth in that saying of a mediaeval 
 claimant of the prophetic gift 1 that there would 
 be three ages in the Church the age of the 
 Father, that of the Son, and that of the Spirit. 
 Surely all true Christians, whatever be the cut 
 of their mantle, do in their hearts honour the 
 Holy Spirit with the earnestness of deepening 
 spiritual needs. Not with rough rebukes, but 
 with sweet persuasions, taught by Christ's own 
 Spirit, do the preachers of our day woo subjects 
 for the King of saints. 2 Do they, in taking 
 this course, disparage the Law ? Not more 
 than St. Paul did. When the proud Judaizing 
 
 1 Joachim, Abbot of Flora in the kingdom of Naples. 
 See Milman, " Latin Christianity," v., 254257. 
 
 * Need I say that I do not dream of disparaging preachers 
 like Whitefield, the John Baptist of his time, whose stern 
 preaching was doubtless necessary to break the hard rock
 
 ELIJAH AT HOREB. 137 
 
 Christians accused him of "making void the Law 
 by faith," what was his reply ? Far be it; yea, 
 we establish the law. And so to us, the modern 
 disciples (as I hope) of no meaner a theologian 
 than St. Paul, the Law, given through Moses 
 and expanded by the Spirit of Christ, remains, 
 and will remain, the moral test and the moral 
 ideal both of nations and of individuals. But 
 we want more than this. The Law can do two 
 things : it can convince us of sin, and it can 
 make us hunger and thirst after righteousness ; 
 but it cannot give us strength to perform the 
 mandates. Oh, how many have tried in their 
 own strength to fulfil the Law tried and failed, 
 because they wanted a Hand to guide them, and 
 the Law, with its Thou shalt do this, stood over 
 against them like the stern front of Mount 
 Horeb. How could Moses help them to climb 
 the steep of duty ? Why, he even broke the 
 tables of the Law at Israel's first sin ; he had 
 no sympathy with weakness no " Hands 
 
 of human nature in the last century ? Need I also guard 
 myself against the imputation of ignorance of the true 
 reading of Rev. xv. 3 ?
 
 138 THE H ALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 stretched out to draw me near." There is only 
 One who can help One who can strengthen 
 our feeble wills, and concentrate our distracted 
 hearts ; it is He who, by His intense sym- 
 pathy (for He was in all points tempted like 
 as we are), identified Himself with the race of 
 man and offered Himself up for it as a spotless 
 sacrifice. 
 
 And how does Jesus help us ? By giving 
 us a new motive power even that blessed 
 Spirit whose chosen emblem is the wind not 
 the destroying storm-wind, but the refreshing 
 breeze. The wind of the Spirit is like a 
 musical instrument, with various stops. Some- 
 times it is a rustling, mighty wind, 1 for without 
 a mighty inspiration how can the Church carry 
 on Christ's work ? Sometimes it is toned down 
 to a whisper as of mountain pines, lest it should 
 
 1 Acts ii. 2, /xoc ''oairip ^tpojuvjje TTI/OJJC /3iaiac. Delitzsch 
 paraphrases, Kqol riiakh se'drdh : " like the sound of a storm- 
 wind." But the narrator chooses a phrase which may mean 
 either a destructive storm-wind (comp. Ezek. xiii. 13, Sept.), 
 or what we should call a stiff breeze. The Peshitto has 
 riiho 'azizttho : "a vehement wind;" Van Dyck, rih' H 
 'asifal*" : ''a strongly blowing wind."
 
 ELIJA H AT HOREB. i : 9 
 
 break the bruised reed or quench the smoking 
 flax. But oh, be sure there is a distinct 
 articulate message even in that gentle murmur. 
 To those whose ears have been opened it is 
 no vague, meaningless sigh, but, as the familiar, 
 though inaccurate, version gives it, " a still small 
 voice." 
 
 Nor is the message the same to-day as 
 yesterday ; it is like God's mercies, which are 
 new every morning. Oh, let not the cares 
 of the world close our ears to its heavenly 
 pleadings ; but may those beautiful words of the 
 prophet be verified in each of us, He wakeneth 
 mine ear morning by morning (Isa. 1. 4). 
 
 The proud Assyrian monarch said of his 
 generals, Are not my captains altogether kings 
 (Isa. x. 8) ? The meanest of Christ's 
 soldiers may claim this kingly rank for himself, 
 inasmuch as he ever draws supplies of light 
 and strength from the King of kings. Oh, 
 how grand it is to be, not merely delivered 
 from the death of sin, but inspired with the 
 breath of a new life ! And all this comes to 
 us through Jesus our Brother the image of
 
 140 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 the invisible God. No longer, with Elijah, 
 need we pray, Bow thy heavens, Jehovah ; and 
 come down, for Jehovah has come down, not, 
 as of old, in cloud and flame, but in the vesture 
 of a sweet and gentle human form. We saw 
 Him not, nor heard we that voice which spake 
 as never man spake ; but we have the per- 
 petual fulfilment of His most sure promise 
 / will not leave you orphans ; I will come to you. 
 Yes ; we know that He has come to us by 
 the Spirit whom He sent us from the Father. 
 It is the Spirit, and yet it is Jesus, whose 
 " still small voice " we hear saying, / am with 
 you -always ; and to both are the responsive 
 breathings of the devout soul addressed. 
 
 " No sign we ask from heaven above, 
 Nor rushing wind nor hovering dove, 
 Our loving work content to do 
 With things on earth alone in view ; 
 But we believe, O Lord, that Thou, 
 With power Divine, art with us now. '
 
 VIII. 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD,
 
 "And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast tlion found me, O mine 
 enemy? " i KINGS xxi. 20.
 
 VIII. 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 T OW pathetic it is that Elijah could not 
 * * himself sound the depths of the great 
 parable which had been acted before him, and 
 so could not carry on the religious reformation 
 of Israel into a new stage. If he could but 
 have recognized the legitimate cravings of the 
 popular mind for a God who was not merely 
 all-mighty, but all-gracious, and, adding to this 
 conception that of God's all-righteousness, had 
 gone about persuading men to receive it, like 
 Him of whom it was said, He shall not cry, nor 
 clamour, nor make his voice to be heard in the 
 street, there would have been some hope of the 
 moral and spiritual regeneration even of a 
 downward-moving people. But Elijah, though 
 strong in practice, was weak in spiritual
 
 144 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 intuition, and could but prepare the way for 
 a far greater prophet of the northern kingdom 
 Hosea. One might perhaps have thought 
 that he would now retire into privacy, and 
 wait in perfect peace for that dismissal which 
 only yesterday he had tried to extort by fretful 
 complaints. If the compiler of the Book of 
 Kings had been guided by merely aesthetic 
 considerations, he would have made Elijah do 
 this, and would have followed up the narrative 
 of Horeb by the equally grand closing scene. 
 That he has not done so is to be ascribed to 
 his reluctance to allow any significant tradition 
 respecting the great prophet to pass into 
 oblivion. Two traditional facts in the life of 
 Elijah are therefore interposed between the 
 scene at Horeb and the ascension. One of 
 them is altogether disappointing ; I mean the 
 account of Elijah's destruction of the companies 
 sent to him by King Ahaziah. That a spiritual 
 hero like Elijah should end his active career 
 thus is startling in the extreme. At an earlier 
 point one might perhaps admit the relative 
 justification and therefore the possibility of
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 145 
 
 such a deed ; but that from the God who had 
 so patiently educated him to better things he 
 should crave as his last boon the destruction 
 of his fellow-creatures is contrary to psy- 
 chological probability, and an insult to that 
 higher reason which is the voice of God. Did 
 the compiler of Kings think of these objections 
 when he placed the story where it now stands ? 
 Surely not, any more than St. Matthew and 
 St. Mark lay claim to strict accuracy in points 
 of chronology. Did he even mean to insist on 
 its historical character apart from its chrono- 
 logy ? Surely not ; he is evidently half 
 historian, half preacher, and to this narrative 
 as well as to others we may apply the words of 
 the poet Whittier 
 
 " The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, 
 The myths and parables of the primal years, 
 Whose letter kills, by Thee interpreted, 
 Take healthful meanings, fitted to our needs." 
 
 Let us then take this strange narrative, quite 
 apart from the story of Horeb (itself the grandest 
 of parables), as a symbolic representation 
 of the spirit of the earlier dispensation. We 
 
 10
 
 146 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 have our Lord's authority for this. In one of 
 the most striking scenes of the gentle painter- 
 evangelist we find the "sons of thunder" 
 James and John wishing to call down fire 
 from heaven to consume some Samaritan 
 heretics. Jesus, however, rebukes them, in 
 words which themselves burn like coals of fire : 
 Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For 
 the Son of man came not to destroy men's lives, 
 but to save them (Luke ix. 55, 56). I know 
 that there are many who think on critical 
 grounds that this passage does not properly 
 belong to the third Gospel. 1 For myself, I 
 care not. Whoever inserted it in its present 
 place did so with a fine feeling of the spirit of 
 St. Luke and a perfect comprehension of the 
 aim and motives of Jesus, and I see in the 
 insertion a fulfilment of that beautiful promise 
 The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, shall 
 teach you all things, and bring to your remem- 
 brance all that I said unto you (John xiv. 26, 
 R.V.). 
 
 1 The Revised Version omits it. See, however, its 
 marginal note.
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 147 
 
 I will not therefore pause on the details of 
 the narrative in 2 Kings i., but pass on to one 
 which, if it were a romance, would deserve to 
 rank with the finest productions of the modern 
 psychological novelist, and, if it is history, 
 supplies valuable material for estimating the 
 social state of Israel under Ahab. From every 
 point of view, the story of Naboth deserves an 
 attentive study from the aesthetic, from the 
 historical, from the religious. Yes, from the 
 religious point of view it is difficult to over- 
 estimate its importance. It is probably not 
 by him who penned the fine stories of Cherith 
 Zarephath, and Carmel ; but it reveals the same 
 preoccupation with high moral and religious 
 ideas, and contrasts in this respect with the sad 
 story of the destruction of the two captains and 
 their fifties. But let us recall the details of the 
 narrative. 
 
 The town of Jezreel stands high, you would 
 scarcely guess how high as you approach it 
 riding across the gently swelling plain of 
 Esdraelon. Looking eastward, however, you 
 see that there is a steep, rocky descent on that
 
 148 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 side into the valley of Mount Gilboa, with the 
 remains of winepresses cut in the rock, 
 showing that the slope was once laid out in 
 vineyards. There the vineyard of Naboth 
 must have been, which Ahab coveted. Close 
 by it, we are told, was the royal palace. King 
 Ahab had been dwelling in his other palace 
 at Samaria, but he came to Jezreel to see 
 Naboth with a view to a perfectly fair trans- 
 ference of the vineyard to himself. Give me 
 thy vineyard, he said, that I may have it for a 
 garden of herbs, and I will give thee for it a 
 better vineyard, or, if it seem good to thee, I will 
 give thee the worth of it in money; that is, in 
 bars of silver, for there was then no coined 
 money. It was, however, the ancient ( law of 
 Israel that the land should always remain in 
 the families to which it had been assigned. 
 Only in the case of poverty a temporary 
 alienation of land seems to have been per- 
 missible. But Naboth was evidently not so 
 poor as to need to sell his vineyard, and 
 Ahab was therefore to blame for tempting him 
 to do so. But let us be just to Ahab, for he
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. I49 
 
 did not at any rate propose to take the land 
 by force. We read in Isaiah and in Micah 
 of those who join house to house and lay field 
 to field, and who violently treat a man and his 
 house, even a man and his heritage (Isa. v. 8 ; 
 Micah ii. 2). Things were not so bad as this 
 in the northern kingdom in Ahab's reign. 
 
 The scene of the narrative then shifts to 
 the palace in Samaria. The author of this 
 story differs from the earlier biographer of 
 Elijah in that he does not scruple to set Ahab 
 in a somewhat ridiculous light. The king 
 goes back in an ill-temper, and, like a spoiled 
 child, throws himself on his couch at dinner- 
 time, turns away his face, and will eat no 
 bread. Jezebel asks the cause of his sadness. 
 She has no scruples ; nothing seems unfair 
 against such a confirmed adherent of the law 
 of Jehovah 1 as Naboth. Dost thou now govern 
 the kingdom of Israel? Arise, and eat bread, and 
 let thy heart be merry; I will give thee the vine- 
 yard of Naboth the Jezreelite. Truly that saying 
 
 1 It is not intended to imply that Naboth was acquainted 
 with a written law.
 
 150 THE HALLO'WING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 of Isaiah's would have been appropriate in 
 Elijah's lips, A wilful child is my people's tyrant, 
 and women rule over it (Isa. iii. 12). So Ahab's 
 imperious consort seizes his pen and his seal, 
 and writes letters in the king's name to the 
 chief men of Jezreel as David wrote to Joab 
 concerning Uriah the Hittite directing them, 
 if they wished to please Ahab, to get rid of 
 their obnoxious fellow-citizen Naboth. Not, 
 however, in the coarse way adopted by David 
 and Joab, but with due observance of all con- 
 stitutional forms. An assembly was to be 
 convened, and Naboth was to be set on high 
 among the people that is, in one of the most 
 honourable seats as a respected and influential 
 burgher ; and then, after certain religious forms 
 had been gone through penitential forms, for 
 it was to be a day of public humiliation for some 
 great act of wickedness suddenly false wit- 
 nesses were to be brought in (think of Jesus 
 Christ in the high-priest's palace), who were 
 to accuse Naboth of high treason both to 
 Israel's earthly and to its heavenly King, 
 saying, Naboth hath cursed Jehovah and the
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 151 
 
 king. The black deed was consummated. 
 Demoralized by the annual residence of the 
 Court in their midst, these unworthy ministers 
 of justice hastened to comply with what they 
 supposed the king's request. Again one thinks 
 of later times (I believe the writer meant us 
 to do so in telling the tale of Naboth he was 
 expressing his horror of the judicial murders 
 which he had seen) one thinks of Isaiah's com- 
 plaint, And he looked for judgment, but behold 
 shedding of blood; for righteousness, but behold 
 a cry (Isa. v. 7). Then they sent to Jezebel 
 (they knew that she was the true king of 
 Israel), saying, Naboth is stoned. They did 
 not need to tell her that his sons were also 
 stoned, according to the grim custom of 
 Hebrew antiquity. 
 
 So the vineyard is forfeited to the crown ; 
 and Ahab goes down (for Samaria stands higher 
 than Jezreel) to visit his bright and cheerful 
 summer retreat, to which so strangely, as he 
 says to himself, this convenient addition has 
 been made. Can you not fancy him walking 
 up and down, with the air of a landed proprietor,
 
 152 2 HE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 planning improvements ? " It must in future," 
 he says to himself, " be a garden of herbs. 
 Vineyards enough I have. How pleasant it 
 will be to leave the narrow streets of the city 
 and the din of the gossipers or the plaintiffs 
 and defendants in the city gate, and sit under 
 the shade of a fig tree in my own garden ! " 
 Suddenly a tall form approaches : he knows 
 it but too well ; it is his personified conscience, 
 or, as Ahab would rather say, his evil genius. 
 It is Elijah. In a moment Ahab comes to 
 himself, though not in the sweet filial spirit 
 of the penitent prodigal. He comes to himself 
 so far at least as to recognize that Elijah has 
 good reason to be on his track, but not so far 
 as to thank him for acting like a true friend 
 and disturbing him in his fool's paradise. Hast 
 thou found me, O mine enemy? he cries, his 
 better and his worse self expressing themselves 
 simultaneously. His better self says to him, 
 Thou art Naboth's murderer. As the anointed 
 king, was it not thy duty to see personally to 
 the administration of justice ? If thy wife 
 infringed thy prerogative, was it not thy duty
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 153 
 
 to punish her, and make compensation to 
 Naboth's heirs ? Then spoke up his worse 
 self, offering plausible reasons for questioning 
 this. It was not he, but Jezebel, who had 
 planned this bold stroke. If Jezebel had told 
 him that she wished to write letters in his 
 name, he could have stopped her. He feels 
 sure (so sophistical is a man's worse self) that 
 he would have done so. For had he not 
 proved how anxious he was to obtain the 
 vineyard by strictly fair means ? And then 
 was not Naboth perhaps really guilty ? His 
 trial had been perfectly regular. Elijah might 
 say that the witnesses were men of no cha- 
 racter, " sons of Belial ; " but then Elijah was 
 his personal enemy. 
 
 But the prophet remorselessly brushes away 
 the cobwebs of his brain, and gives his support 
 to Ahab's better self. The sinner is cowed, 
 and confesses his guilt, not indeed in words, 
 but in the expressive picture-language of 
 Oriental, mourning. When Ahab heard this 
 (we are told), he rent his clothes, and put sack- 
 cloth upon his flesh, and lay in sackcloth, and
 
 154 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 went softly ; that is, with slow, measured gait. 
 And this repentance, which, for the time at 
 least, was apparently sincere, was accepted by 
 his God. Not in his days, but in his son's 
 days, did the threatened judgment come upon 
 the family of Ahab. A small comfort to Ahab, 
 you might think. But ancient Jewish feeling 
 was different in this respect from ours. The 
 principle of the solidarity, the union, of the 
 father and his children, almost pervades the 
 Old Testament. Ahab would suffer in his 
 children, but it was at least a mercy to Israel 
 that the disastrous period of revolution was 
 postponed for a time. Slowly and painfully 
 did men come to see that each person must 
 suffer for his own sin ; and that, if the children 
 of a sinner are punished, it is not for their 
 father's sin, but for their reproduction of it 
 in a heightened degree. Anyhow what the 
 inspired writer wishes us to dwell upon is the 
 truth that mercy may be had even by the 
 greatest sinner. It is perhaps a poor expres- 
 sion which this grand truth finds here, but 
 how early a place it occupies in the catalogue
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 155 
 
 of evangelical passages ! It is like the first 
 red streak of dawn in the east. 
 
 Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ? The 
 title was undeserved ; Elijah was not Ahab's 
 personal enemy. After the great day of 
 Carmel, he even ran before his chariot, like a 
 courier. He might have called down fire from 
 heaven upon Ahab, as another biographer 
 actually says that he did on the messengers of 
 Ahaziah. But no ; in his heart he interceded 
 for Ahab, and God to whom the American 
 poet l so devoutly says, 
 
 " All that I feel of pity Thou hast known 
 Before I was ; my best is all Thy own " 
 
 heard and answered his prayer. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to apply this 
 striking story to ourselves, just because it is 
 so striking. Our Lord was not, it would seem, 
 fond of interpreting His parables. He did so 
 when the dulness of His disciples compelled 
 Him. What is the story of Naboth but an 
 inspired comment on the Tenth Commandment, 
 
 1 Again I quote the noble-hearted Whittier.
 
 156 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 showing forth at once its meaning and the 
 kindness of Jehovah (oh, yes, one of our God's 
 names is still " Jehovah ") in issuing such a 
 command ? What I want to explain now is the 
 cause of Ahab's strange moral downfall I call 
 it strange because even if in his heart he was 
 still a Baal-worshipper, like his wife, there was 
 ho necessity for a Baal-worshipper to break 
 the second table of the Law so conspicuously. 1 
 Elijah's widow-woman at Zarephath was a 
 Baal-worshipper, and she certainly "loved her 
 neighbour as herself." The truth is, I think, 
 that Ahab's nature was not a religious one. 
 We have seen that his introduction of the 
 Tyrian Baal was probably due to political con- 
 siderations. Tyre would and could only grant 
 its friendship if equal respect was paid in 
 Israel to Baal and to Jehovah. Ahab, I 
 strongly think, was a devout worshipper of 
 neither ; and as morality was even more closely 
 
 1 It is wonderful, the way in which the evil tendencies 
 of a religion are sometimes counteracted by " the Light 
 which lighteneth every man." See Mungo Park's "Travels 
 in Africa."
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 157 
 
 connected with religion in Ahab's day than it is 
 in ours, the consequence of his undevoutness 
 was that he had no morality but such as suited 
 his conscience. To a devout worshipper of 
 Jehovah it must have been easy to love his 
 neighbour as himself, almost easier from one 
 point of view than it is for us, because his 
 religion did not recognize the spiritual rights of 
 the individual. Not to the individual Israelite, 
 but to the community of which he was a 
 member, were Jehovah's protecting care and 
 love assured. It was only through Israel that 
 the blessings of the covenant descended to the 
 Israelite, just as in Roman Catholic countries 
 it is only through the Church i.e., the Church 
 as they regard it that the individual Christian 
 too often believes that he enjoys the blessings 
 of the Gospel. Brotherly love was therefore 
 an indispensable quality of a good Israelite, not 
 only that he might imitate Israel's God, but 
 because as a fact the Israelites collectively 
 formed a single organism, to which alone 
 Jehovah's favour was secured. It ought, I say, 
 to have been easy to an Israelite to love his
 
 158 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 neighbour as himself, because to all intents and 
 purposes his neighbour was a part of himself. 
 Ahab, however, was not a devout Israelite ; and 
 therefore he had no brotherly love. In times 
 like his the twelfth Psalm might well have been 
 written, which begins, Help, Jehovah, for the 
 man of brotherly love is no more, for the faithful 
 have vanished from among the children of men. 
 This would have been only a slight exaggera- 
 tion, for was not Elijah told upon Mount 
 Horeb that there were but seven thousand 
 Israelites who in worship and in practice 
 obeyed the law of their holy God ? 
 
 This was how Ahab a man in whom 
 generous feelings were not wholly deficient, 
 and who died nobly, even if he lived basely 
 fell into this grievous sin. He failed to realize 
 that no statecraft could be a substitute for the 
 Divine favour, and that this favour was con- 
 ditional on Israel's cleaving fast to its God 
 and cherishing brotherly love in its midst. 
 And, my friends, are the conditions of God's 
 favour altered now ? I know that we are not 
 as dependent spiritually upon the Church as
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 159 
 
 Ahab was upon Israel. As Jeremiah foretold 
 in that great prophecy which is among the 
 title-deeds of our evangelical inheritance, we 
 need no priest always at our hand to teach us 
 and to offer sacrifice for us, for each one of us 
 individually is " taught of God," and can obtain 
 from Him " true absolution and release." 
 Yet it is most certain that a religion which is 
 divorced from brotherly love is dead in the 
 sight of God. We may perhaps, through 
 favouring circumstances, keep clear of such 
 glaring transgressions as Ahab's ; but remember 
 that in the account of the last judgment in 
 Matt. xxv. the things for which those on the 
 left hand are condemned are not sins of com- 
 mission, but of omission : / was hungry ', and ye 
 gave me no meat; thirsty, and ye gave me no 
 drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; 
 naked, and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison, 
 and ye visited me not. 
 
 Remember, too, that brotherly love means 
 far more to a Christian than to an Israelite. 
 Christ has broken down the partition-walls 
 of nations ; Jew and Gentile, Greek and bar-
 
 160 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 barian, are alike brethren in Him. Henceforth 
 "brotherly love" means to a Christian worthy 
 of the name just what it meant to Christ. An 
 inspiring but also a humiliating thought ! 
 Well may Christ say to each and all of us, 
 Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of I 
 Alas ! which of us does ? How could we 
 sleep if we remembered all that has been 
 omitted or not rightly done by Christians in 
 the past, and all that remains to be done in 
 the future ? Not to destroy men's lives, nor 
 to heal their hurts slightly (Jer. vi. 14), but 
 grandly and largely to save them, by baptizing 
 men instru men tally with a heavenlier fire 
 than Elijah dreamed of this is the work which 
 Christ began, and to which every form of 
 moral and spiritual work is helpful. Yes ; it 
 is a mistake to interpret the phrase " spiritual 
 work " in a narrow sense ; let us read the 
 Gospel for the tenth Sunday after Trinity 
 (I Cor. xii. i, etc.) and form bolder hopes. 
 What we want is, not, from misplaced humility, 
 to deny ourselves Christian ambitions, but to 
 get that " power from on high " which our
 
 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 161 
 
 Saviour promised to those who share in His 
 " travail." With work for Christ to do and a 
 "Divine electric fire" to vitalize us, we shall 
 have no room for purely selfish desires. Let 
 our master-impulse be to work for the kingdom 
 of God, and we shall be raised above that 
 sordid but most common temptation which was 
 the ruin of Ahab. For what is covetousness ? 
 It is simply desire directed towards the wrong 
 objects those which have no connection with 
 the soul's true life. St. Paul calls it idolatry, 
 and bids us mortify it. But how shall we do 
 so ? By starving our emotional nature ? Oh, 
 no, but by nourishing it with purer and more 
 satisfying food. " Is it hard," cries the saintly 
 Faber, 
 
 " Is it hard to serve God, timid soul ? Hast thou 
 
 found 
 Gloomy forests, dark glens, mountain-tops, on thy 
 
 way? 
 
 All the hard would be easy, all the tangles unwound. 
 Wouldst thou only desire as well as obey." 
 
 For his commandments are not grievous, and 
 His promises exceed all that we can desire. 
 
 1 1
 
 IX. 
 THE ASCENSION Of ELIJAH.
 
 " And as they still went on and talked, behold chariots 
 of fire and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder 
 and Elijah went up by the tempest* into heaven." 2 KINGS 
 ii. II. 
 
 1 So R.V. margin. 
 
 2 A.V. and R.V., "by a whirlwind."
 
 IX. 
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 I j* LIJAH'S noble but weary work was over. 
 * ' The time was come when, as the narra- 
 tive says, Jehovah would take up Elijah into 
 heaven by a tempest. No more was that strange 
 figure in the rough mantle to be seen hurrying 
 to and fro between kings' palaces and the 
 wild mountain-side. Elijah had not done all 
 that he wished, but he had done all that God 
 sent him to do. Jehovah-worship had not 
 been restored to its original purity (witness 
 the story of Naboth), but the dangerous Baal- 
 worship of Jezebel had sunk at any rate into 
 the religion of a sect. Elisha had been 
 anointed to take up the reformer's work, and 
 far away in the distance there was the prospect 
 of a nation growing up out of the seven 
 thousand into a people prepared for the Lord.
 
 1 66 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 It was at the hill-town of Gilgal not that 
 near Jericho, but one in the centre of Palestine 
 that Elijah and his disciple were now re- 
 siding. A guild of prophets also dwelt there 
 for this is the meaning of the phrase the 
 sons of the prophets so that we may conjecture 
 that the great leader gave his last thoughts 
 to confirming his younger colleagues in the 
 true religion. Elijah and Elisha descended the 
 hill together. But before they had. gone far, 
 with a tenderness which reminds us of his 
 sojourn at Zarephath, Elijah turned to his 
 companion and said, Tarry here, I pray thee, 
 for Jehovah hath sent me to Bethel. To this 
 the faithful minister would not listen ; he 
 would go, if need were, even to Horeb, to 
 attend his master to the last. So they went 
 together to Bethel one of the most ancient 
 sanctuaries of Israel. It seems as if the prophet 
 wished to take leave of the hallowed spots 
 which he loved so much. Another prophetic 
 guild was established here; and its members, 
 warned by some prophetic instinct that their 
 leader was seeking the appointed place of his
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 167 
 
 departure, came out to meet them. While 
 Elijah was resting, they called his companion 
 aside, and said, Knowest thou that Jehovah will 
 take away thy master from thy head to-day? 
 But the matter was too grave to be made the 
 subject of conversation. A collected mind was 
 as necessary for the disciple as for his master 
 at this turning-point in the lives of both. Once 
 more Elijah tried to persuade his minister to 
 remain behind, and once more Elisha was proof 
 against entreaty. 
 
 They arrived at the city of palm trees (no 
 palm trees are there now), and the same scenes 
 were repeated as before. It is a wondrous 
 story. Does Elijah's strength begin to fail in 
 the hot, steaming Jordan valley ? Oh, no ; 
 onward he moves, drawn with cords of love by 
 his invisible Guide to the other side of the 
 Jordan the side which, for Gilead's sake, he 
 loves the best. There he stands, gazing ; it is 
 not a noble river, but far more interesting to 
 him than the Abana and the Pharpar ; and if 
 not a wide stream, it has at any rate a resistless 
 rush which gives it a character of its own.
 
 1 68 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 Will Elijah be detained ? for the stream is too 
 deep to ford. No ; his God will honour him 
 as He honoured Moses in days of old, when He 
 said, Lift up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand 
 over the sea, and divide it. " He ungirds the 
 rough mantle from around his shaggy frame; 
 he rolls it together, as if into a wonder-working 
 staff; he smites the turbid river, as though it 
 were a living enemy ; and the waters divide 
 hither and thither, and they two go over on 
 dry ground." l At a distance stand fifty 
 prophets of Jericho. They respect Elijah's 
 privacy, and yet wish with their keen eyes to 
 follow him as far as they can. And now the 
 Gileadite is at home again ; how he enjoys a 
 last look at the beloved hills ! His eye is not 
 dim, nor his natural force abated these words 
 were first said of Moses, but in the spirit of the 
 narrative we may safely apply them to Elijah. 
 Together they climb the steep ascent the old 
 prophet and the young. Can we doubt which 
 ascent it is ? It must be that of Nebo, or else 
 the last touch which gives perfection would be 
 
 1 Stanley, " Jewish Church," ii., 290.
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 169 
 
 wanting to Elijah's portrait. And as they 
 press on, the elder prophet breaks the solemn 
 stillness with generous words : Ask what I 
 shall do for thee (but ask quickly) before I be 
 taken from thee. There could be only one gift 
 which Elisha would desire; unworldliness is 
 always a sure mark of the true prophetic 
 character. I pray thee, says Elisha, let a double 
 portion of thy spirit the portion of a firstborn 
 son (Deut. xxi. 17) be upon me. This is all 
 that he dares ask ; there could no more be a 
 second Elijah than a second Moses ; the great 
 Artificer of souls never repeats Himself. But 
 even this is no slight boon ; it is a bold venture 
 of faith to ask it. Of course Elijah, friendly as 
 he is, cannot himself grant it ; the God of the 
 spirits of all flesh can alone transfer or transmit 
 prophetic capacity. Nor can even God Himself 
 do so without a heroic effort on the part of 
 Elisha ; only through a fiery trial can this 
 heavenly gift be won. Thou hast asked a hard 
 thing, replies Elijah ; nevertheless, if thou see me 
 when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto 
 thee; but if not, it shall not be so. If thou see
 
 1 70 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 me that is, If thou canst gaze at me without 
 being " blinded by excess of light." For Elijah 
 is about to be transfigured on Nebo, 1 like 
 our Lord on the slopes of Hermon ; the re- 
 flection of the Divine glory which has so long 
 irradiated his spirit is about to manifest itself 
 outwardly, and who but one of Jehovah's 
 mighty ones can see this unscathed ? What 
 more passed between Elijah and Elisha, the 
 story saith not ; but the former at least could 
 scarcely help recalling that other wild mountain 
 walk and the glorious vision which had been 
 its goal. Again he seeks an ancient mountain 
 sanctuary, warned by the " still small voice ; " 
 but how great and glorious the vision this time 
 will be, he cannot guess. This only he knows : 
 that it will be no transient brightness, but 
 heaven itself, and that his " mortality is about 
 to be swallowed up of life." Expectantly he 
 gazes at the sea of peaks around him ; and lo, 
 the heralds of the great King already appear. 
 The mountains begin to gleam with flashes 
 
 1 " And lo, as they entered " (the Celestial City), "they 
 were transfigured " ("Pilgrim's Progress," Part I.).
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 171 
 
 of lightning, and to peal with claps of thunder ; 
 the flashes are God's arrows, and the thunder 
 is His voice. Elijah has always thrilled with 
 joy at a thunderstorm ; but how his heart 
 bounds to-day ! And now the lightning comes 
 closer ; we should have said it was like falling 
 masses of fire, 1 but, in his more poetic style, our 
 story-teller can see in it the same chariots and 
 horses of fire, 2 which invisibly surround the 
 dwellings of the just (2 Kings vi. 17; Psalm 
 xxxiv. 7). This heavenly host parts Elijah 
 from his disciple ; but Elisha, whose inward as 
 well as outward eyes have been opened, can 
 see Elijah carried up by the tempest that is 
 probably by one of these fiery chariots into 
 heaven. 3 And Elisha saw it; and he cried, My 
 
 1 Seep. 118. 
 
 2 Bunyan unconsciously corrects the " chariot " of the 
 Authorized Version in his fine adaptation of 2 Kings ii. 1 1 ' 
 " But, behold, all the banks beyond the river were full of 
 horses and chariots, which were come down from above to 
 accompany him to the city gate" ("Pilgrim's Progress," 
 Part II.). 
 
 3 Comp. Ecclus. xlviii. 9 : " who was taken up in a 
 whirlwind, in a chariot of fiery horses." What does Milligan 
 gain by rejecting this obvious interpretation ?
 
 172 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 father, my father, the chariots 1 of Israel and the 
 horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more; 
 and he took hold of his own clothes, and 
 (like one who mourns) rent them in two 
 pieces. Presently he will assume the sacred 
 mantle of Elijah, but for the moment he 
 forgets himself in sorrow for Israel's loss. 
 For Elijah was indeed like chariots and 
 horsemen to his people, not so much for his 
 power of working miracles, as because he 
 was Israel's personified conscience. Yes ; he 
 was a born chariot-fighter ; swiftly and surely 
 he dealt his blows against all that was dis- 
 pleasing to Jehovah ; and the fiery chariots 
 and horses which were all that Elisha could 
 see after the disappearance of Elijah were to 
 him a speaking similitude of the spirit of his 
 master. 
 
 Elijah's end corresponds with singular exact- 
 ness to his beginning. He appears in the 
 history of Israel like a meteor, and he dis- 
 appears as mysteriously. The mountain hollows 
 and ravines were searched, as when Moses 
 1 So R.V. ; A.V. and R.V. margin, " the chariot."
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH, 173 
 
 died 1 (the Jews say) of a kiss from God, but 
 none could find the body of Elijah ; and it is 
 in perfect harmony with the spirit of these 
 earlier narratives that Moses and Elias are 
 introduced together on the Transfiguration 
 Mount communing with Him who resembled 
 but surpassed them both. 
 
 Surely I may call this narrative the grandest 
 prose-poem in the Old Testament. A dry-as- 
 dust historian may reject it because of the late 
 date of its composition. A student of St. John 
 may question it on the ground of our Lord's 
 words No man hath ascended into heaven but 
 he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of 
 man, which is in heaven (John iii. 13, R.V.). 
 To me it seems to possess great value both 
 historically and devotionally even if it be only 
 a prose-poem. Historically it tells us that the 
 Jewish Church in the time of its author was 
 ready to believe that some extraordinary per- 
 sons might and must escape death. This 
 makes Jewish unbelief of the resurrection of 
 
 1 Deut. xxxiv. 6 : " No man knoweth of his sepulchre 
 unto this day."
 
 174 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 Christ the more extraordinary. Devotionally 
 we may at least be excused for regarding it 
 as a poetic symbol of our Lord's ascension. 
 In one of our Ascensiontide hymns we read, 
 
 " ' Master,' may we ever say, 
 ' Taken from our head to-day, 
 See, Thy faithful servants see, 
 Ever gazing up to Thee," " 
 
 where Charles Wesley evidently alludes to the 
 speech of the sons of the prophets to Elisha. 
 This appears all the more natural when we 
 remember that several of Elijah's wonderful 
 works are suggestive of striking miracles of 
 Jesus. Still if we look more closely, we shall, 
 I think, see that the parallel is not complete. 
 How calm and bright are the transfiguration 
 and ascension of Jesus ; how awful and tem- 
 pestuous is that of Elijah ! l Nor could it well 
 have been otherwise. Comparing the lives of 
 Elijah and of Jesus as wholes, we cannot say 
 that the relation between them is that of a 
 type to its antitype. As our Lord taught His 
 disciples, it was John the Baptist of whom 
 
 1 In Elijah's case the two scenes are fused in one.
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 175 
 
 Elijah was the type, because the character of 
 both was similar, and the mission of both was to 
 preach righteousness and to turn Israel's heart 
 back to its God. For myself, it is not of the 
 transfiguration and ascension of Christ that I am 
 reminded by the Hebrew prose-poem, but of an 
 important stage in the lives of His followers. 
 
 Do you know those beautiful pages which 
 close both parts of our great religious prose- 
 poem the " Pilgrim's Progress " ? It is more 
 especially the conclusion of the second part to 
 which I would draw your attention. Read it 
 again, if I may venture to ask you, to-day, 
 because it was two hundred years last Friday 1 
 since the " Glorious Dreamer " passed into the 
 eternal realities. There you will find the land 
 of Beulah described, that pleasant, sunny region 
 on the banks of the river, where the pilgrims 
 await the messenger who is to summon them 
 to their home. Bunyan's idea of the last stage 
 in the Christian's pilgrimage is that of a 
 waiting-time, 1 during which the soul by prayer 
 
 1 Bunyan preached his last sermon (on John i. 13) 
 August igth, 1688, and died Friday, August 3ist.
 
 176 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 and meditation fortifies itself for its supreme 
 trial. How many there are to whom this de- 
 scription applies, persons of scanty leisure, who 
 have longed in vain to " come apart and rest 
 a while," and to whom the solitude even of a 
 sick-chamber gives a welcome opportunity for 
 reflection ! Such have often found it painfully 
 difficult to combine the varied interests of this 
 and of the other world, to be at once worldly 
 and " other-worldly," to render unto Ccesar the 
 things that are Ccesar's and unto God the things 
 that are God's. But are there not many others 
 who, even in the last stage of life, do not need 
 such complete seclusion, and upon whom there- 
 fore it is not providentially enforced? "In 
 journeyings often " journeyings of mind or of 
 body they can still meditate and pray. Move- 
 ment is to them a necessity of existence, and 
 progress the essence of life. These two classes 
 
 1 This seems to be Bunyan's final idea. In Part I. he 
 represents Christian as partly walking through the land 
 of Beulah, partly resting or detained there by brief sickness, 
 also as crossing the river without waiting for a messenger 
 to call him. This gives a less consistent picture than that 
 in Part II.
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 177 
 
 of pilgrims are widely different, and the story 
 of the great travelling prophet's last journey 1 is 
 specially edifying to the latter. All his life 
 long Elijah has stood in spirit before Jehovah, 
 and has alternated between meditative retire- 
 ment and bold intervention in the highest 
 national concerns. Why should he change 
 his manner of life now ? The Divine Spirit 
 sympathizes with him, and bids him visit his 
 fellow-prophets once more and let them print 
 his holy features upon their memory ; after 
 that, let him go up to meet his God on the 
 sacred mount. So Elijah becomes a type of 
 those who remain to the end thankful citizens 
 of two worlds, and who, amidst all their activi- 
 ties, can say, with the poet-philanthropist, 
 
 " And so beside the silent sea 
 
 I wait the muffled oar ; 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 On ocean or on shore." * 
 
 The truth is that as there are two types of 
 
 1 It is with great insight that the Talmudic legend repre- 
 sents Elijah as an indefatigable traveller, often to be met 
 with in the ruined places of Palestine. 
 
 2 Whittier, "The Eternal Goodness." 
 
 13
 
 178 THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 religious character, so there are two kinds of 
 waiting, and we cannot say that one is distinctly 
 better than the other ; God has appointed them 
 both. Nor can it be denied that in some 
 respects both classes of Christ's pilgrims may 
 turn Elijah's closing scene into golden coin. 
 The Christian knows, even as Elijah knew, 
 that he is not walking downwards to the tomb, 
 but upwards to glory, and that the " King of 
 love" will only send chariots of fire to those 
 whom He strengthens to bear them. He 
 thanks God from his heart that not to a chosen 
 few alone to an Enoch and to an Elijah this 
 prospect of the heavenly glories is opened, as 
 the Jews long thought, and that not merely, 
 like the Psalmist, in one of his most exalted 
 moments, but in his deepest physical depres- 
 sion, he will be able to murmur the words 
 According to thy purpose wilt thou guide me, 
 And afterward receive tne with glory (Psalm 
 Ixxiii. 24). 
 
 Even though his departure, like Elijah's, 
 should be shrouded in mystery, he knows that 
 with his redeemed spirit all will be well. He
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 179 
 
 will be for ever on the Transfiguration Mount 
 in that tabernacle which will never be taken 
 down, holding high converse with the noblest 
 society of heaven. Will he be meet for such 
 a privilege ? Yes ; the Father long since 
 made him meet, as St. Paul says, for the inherit- 
 ance of the saints in light (Col. i. 12). 
 Worthless without Christ, he is perfect in 
 Christ ; and if he needs a quiet, final prepara- 
 tion-time, the Father will not refuse it, for 
 precious in the sight of Jehovah is the death o/ 
 his saints (Psalm cxvi. 1 5). 
 
 Precious ! Do we all of us realize what this 
 means? Let us go to one 1 who, if he were 
 not such a great novelist, would be a great 
 preacher, nay, who has preached better than 
 many of us by his novels, and listen to the 
 opening words of a simple, touching prayer, 
 which ought to be read in its own expressive 
 Scottish : " O Thou in whose sight our death is 
 precious and no light matter, who through dark- 
 ness leadest to light, and through death to the 
 greater life, we cannot believe that Thou 
 
 1 Mr. George Macdonald, in " David Elginbrod."
 
 i8o THE HALLOWING OF CRITICISM. 
 
 wouldest give us any good thing to take the 
 same back again, for that would be but child's 
 play. We believe that Thou takest that Thou 
 mayest give again the same thing better than 
 before, more of it and better than we could 
 have received it otherwise ; just as the Lord 
 took Himself from the sight of them that loved 
 Him well, that, instead of being visible before 
 their eyes, He might hide Himself in their 
 very hearts." Yes, " precious and no light 
 matter" is death, worth being carefully pre- 
 pared for, and when it comes full to the 
 eye of faith of heavenly brightness, a mild 
 and chastened brightness as of the ascending 
 Saviour. Nor is it unfitting to believe that the 
 inner eyes of departing saints can see an un- 
 earthly radiance, and that their inner ears can 
 hear the sweet melodies of the angels of light. 
 Shall we envy those who are entering into 
 peace (Isa. Ivii. 2) ? That were as unwise as 
 to bemoan them. Weep ye not for the dead, 
 neither bemoan him, neither envy ye him. The 
 lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground, at least 
 if / have set God always before me. How
 
 THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. 181 
 
 beautiful is the world, and how desirable is 
 life, if I can see in the one the glory of the 
 Lord, and in the other the pillar of cloud and 
 fire, guiding me by day and by night !
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 TO WHAT EXTENT SHOULD RESULTS OF HISTO- 
 RICAL AND SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM, ESPECIALLY 
 OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, BE RECOGNIZED 
 IN SERMONS AND TEACHING? 
 
 (A Paper read at the Church Congress, Manchester, 
 October 2nd, 1888.) 
 
 then there are results of historical and 
 scientific criticism of the Old Testament 
 which demand at least some recognition in 
 sermons and teaching. The Israelitish history 
 and literature are a history and literature 
 like any other, save that the hand of Pro- 
 vidence may to us be plainer in that history 
 than elsewhere, and that that literature may 
 reveal a religious genius which by us can only
 
 1 84 APPENDIX. 
 
 be ascribed to the Holy, the Divine, Spirit. This 
 is more than I hoped to see admitted, I will 
 not merely say twenty, but as late as five, years 
 ago. The modernizing of our criticism and 
 our exegesis, for which in the Church Congress 
 at Reading I ventured to ask tolerance, to-day 
 meets with more than tolerance recognition. 
 Thank God for this sunshine ! May it prove no 
 transient gleam ! And now, since we are thus 
 far of one mind in our house, let us ask first 
 in what spirit we ought to approach the great 
 question before us. Surely in the spirit of 
 faith, hope, and love. Of faith in Him who 
 directs or overrules the phases of criticism, 
 just as He does the course of external history. 
 Let there be no more talk of the endless 
 subjectivity of the critics; there is a broad 
 stream of critical tendency, and One who 
 "sitteth above" is guiding it. It is equally 
 wrong to despise criticism and to fear 'it. Of 
 faith, too, in that Spirit whose operations, even 
 in St. Paul's time, were so manifold. Can we 
 believe that the cycle of noble Christian cha- 
 racters is finished ? Hast thou not reserved
 
 APPENDIX. 185 
 
 a blessing for me a/so, my Father? Among 
 the many new embodiments of the Christian 
 spirit, may not this be vouchsafed us a free 
 and yet devout critic ; one who loves all 
 the departments of God's truth with an equal 
 love ; one who does not try to concede as 
 little as he can to a power which he cannot 
 bless, but dares not curse ; one who is not 
 afraid even to make mistakes, on the chance of 
 finding out some fresh fact, and when he has 
 made them to admit them, but who, like Job, 
 is greatly afraid to "speak unrighteously for 
 God " (Job xiii. 7) ? Of hope, too ; that is, 
 of sure confidence that " all things " including 
 even the subversion of traditional opinions- - 
 " work together for good " to the Church as 
 well as to its members. And of love, seeing 
 much to respect and sympathize with even 
 in those from whom we differ, and even when 
 we censure them doing so, not for the glory 
 of self or party, but for their own good, or, if 
 they are no longer with us, for that of the 
 Church. Time forbids me to develop these 
 sentences, which are so many friendly criticisms
 
 1 86 APPENDIX. 
 
 of much that has been said and printed on our 
 subject by members of the Church of England. 
 Would that I could disburden my whole heart ! 
 But the President's bell would ring before I 
 had done a quarter of my work. In place of a 
 volume, I can only offer suggestions which 
 might perhaps be called commonplace were 
 it not too evident that they are by no means 
 axiomatic to the majority of English theolo- 
 gical writers. 
 
 The Subjects Committee has shown genuine 
 insight in its phrase "historical and scientific 
 criticism," and in the precedence which it gives 
 to the epithet " historical." So far as the Old 
 Testament is concerned, it is impossible to 
 meet the arguments brought against it by not 
 a few eminent scientific men and their disciples 
 without the aid of historical criticism. I am 
 really pained at having to make this dogmatic 
 assertion. In the field of study with which I 
 am mostly concerned it is the part of the true 
 scholar to be abundant in qualifications and 
 reserves ; but I can find no qualification to 
 make in this sentence. I seldom take up a
 
 APPENDIX. 187 
 
 book on either side of the controversy 
 " Science versus Theology and the Old Testa- 
 ment " without being struck with the narrow 
 and uncritical view of the Hebrew Scriptures 
 equally accepted on both sides; and I ask 
 myself, " Can this be science, and can that 
 be theology ? " There is doubtless far more 
 excuse for the advocates of science (if I am 
 bound to use this beautiful word in such a 
 limited sense) than for those of the Old Testa- 
 ment. The former have been so long accus- 
 tomed to hear the defence of those Scriptures 
 rested on non-critical grounds, that they have 
 come to believe that any other point of view 
 is non-existent. They are perfectly at home 
 in their own subject, and they assume that 
 their opponents are equally so in theirs. And 
 so they have well-nigh demolished the conven- 
 tional orthodoxy, I will not say of to-day, but 
 of yesterday, so far as this has to do with the 
 Old Testament ; and but for the infiltration of 
 more critical views into the minds of English 
 Bible-students, the cause of this priceless heir- 
 loom of the Church would be virtually lost.
 
 1 88 APPENDIX. 
 
 A change is, I hope and think, taking place ; 
 but it is a very slow one at least, it is slower 
 than it need be. Let critical scholars open 
 their mouths, in the pulpit and out of the 
 pulpit, in season and out of season, and have 
 the courage to be dogmatic. It is both useless 
 and needless for them to meet non-Christian 
 assaults on the Old Testament Scriptures by 
 counter-arguments ; change the point of view, 
 and the arguments of scientific critics vanish 
 into thin air. Let me give an example, at the 
 risk, which I cheerfully accept, of being called 
 arrogant alike by those eminent scientific allies 
 of orthodoxy Professor Dana and Sir William 
 Dawson on the one side and Professor Huxley 
 on the other men at whose feet I would sit 
 were I worthy to become their pupil in the 
 sciences which they illustrate. Take the docu- 
 ment, then, which is sometimes called the 
 Hebrew cosmogony, and sometimes the pro- 
 logue to the Book of Genesis the one descrip- 
 tion is as loose as the other; it begins at 
 Gen. i. I, and ends in the middle of Gen. ii. 4. 
 The position of modern criticism and exe-
 
 APPENDIX. 189 
 
 gesis differs toto ccelo from that which the 
 orthodoxy of yesterday asserted and the science 
 of to-day denies. The so-called cosmogony 
 was not meant to be taken as an account of 
 what we call " facts ; " it is not a specimen of 
 rudimentary science or pseudo-science. How 
 far the idea of natural science had dawned 
 upon the Babylonians may be left an open 
 question ; there is no evidence that it had 
 dawned upon the Israelites in Old Testament 
 times. A pious Hebrew writer takes a semi- 
 mythical narrative current either in his own 
 or in some neighbouring nation, and moulds 
 it into a vehicle of spiritual truth. Can we 
 be surprised at this, remembering the numerous 
 undoubtedly mythic phrases in the language 
 of the Old Testament ? Whether we are 
 surprised at it or not, it is a fact about which 
 none of the competent experts are or ever have 
 been in doubt. It is useless then for the 
 experts in other subjects to depreciate this 
 document on scientific grounds; it is the under- 
 lying spiritual truths against which alone, with 
 due seriousness, it is admissible to argue.
 
 I 9 o APPENDIX. 
 
 But it is not only scientific workers who 
 attack the Old Testament from a wrong point 
 of view. I suppose that one of the great 
 questions of our time is this : " Shall the work- 
 ing-men of England stand by Christ and His 
 religion, or shall they ' make new gods ' ? " 
 and that this religious question is constantly 
 debated on grounds largely derived from the 
 Old Testament. The battlefield has been 
 selected by the foe ; we might have preferred 
 to confine it in the first instance to the New 
 Testament. This is not, however, a real 
 misfortune. There are elements of vital truth 
 in the Old Testament which are not fully 
 drawn out in the New, and which it concerns 
 Christian patriots to emphasize, such, for in- 
 stance, as the continued Divine government 
 of nations and the idea of the higher prophet- 
 hood as the personified conscience of Israel. 
 Now permit me to say that the hostile criticism 
 of the secularist leaders can only be adequately 
 met by giving them a new and better point of 
 view for the examination of the Bible, such as 
 will at once put a new face on their difficulties,
 
 APPENDIX. 191 
 
 scientific, historical, and, above all, moral. I 
 will not blame those who, like Dr. Newman 
 Smyth, 1 seek to mitigate the moral difficulties 
 of the Old Testament by the consideration 
 that the Divine selection of the people of Israel 
 could not withdraw it from the action of the 
 law of historical development. But how much 
 more definite his argument would have been 
 had he accepted at any rate the safest results 
 of historical criticism ! Indeed, without that 
 criticism how can he justify his use of such a 
 line of argument at all ? No ; I think that 
 in any serious debate with thoughtful (I do 
 not say, educated) men, especially of the work- 
 ing classes, the Christian advocate is at a 
 great disadvantage if he does not avowedly 
 adopt the point of view of historical criticism. 
 I know that his position must in any case be 
 a hard one. The Bible has been so long 
 presented and interpreted uncritically and 
 irrationally that it will require immense patience 
 and energy to undo the mischief; but unless 
 
 1 "The Morality of the Old Testament" (Cassell, 1886) 
 ("Helps to Belief" Series).
 
 T92 APPENDIX. 
 
 we put forth this patience and make this effort, 
 the prospects of even the simplest historic 
 Christianity among working-men as a class 
 seem to me gloomy indeed. I say this with 
 all modesty, and simply because I am distressed 
 at the heavy burdens which are accumulating 
 for the Church of the next generation. Dis- 
 abuse working-men of the notion that the 
 Christian Church is committed on theological 
 grounds to a definite system of views on the 
 historical origin and meaning of the books of 
 the Old Testament ; tell them on the authority 
 of experts (as worthy of respect in their own 
 line as Huxley and Tyndall in theirs) some at 
 least of the most assured results of critical 
 study; and let them see how much more in- 
 telligible and interesting and both morally and 
 religiously usable those books become, thanks 
 to those results : and you will have acted as 
 true missionaries and good patriots. 
 
 I have used the phrase " Christian advocates " 
 of those who take the Christian side in meet- 
 ings of secularists. But does the title belong 
 only to these ? May it not also be claimed by
 
 APPENDIX. 193 
 
 all who have to deal as preachers with thought- 
 ful and sceptical men and women of the 
 nineteenth century ? For my own part, I do 
 not much believe in the preaching from which 
 all " apologetic " considerations are systematic- 
 ally excluded, nor in exposition of the Scrip- 
 tures which calmly overlooks difficulties. 
 Would St. Paul under all circumstances have 
 "determined not to know anything" but a 
 crucified Saviour ? Surely not ; the preaching 
 of the Cross has, in a certain sense, like its 
 Apostle, to " become all things to all men," 
 and there must be some neglect of duty when 
 it does not. I can understand the position of 
 a pure intuitionalist, but I fail to see how 
 a " minister of God's holy word " can preach 
 without occasional reference to the facts of 
 historical criticism. I know that the realizing 
 of a few simple but very deep truths is all 
 that is essential to salvation. It is these 
 realized truths which give peace. But when 
 John Bunyan's Pilgrim had slept in the chamber 
 whose name was Peace, was he not had into 
 the study, and instructed in the great deeds of 
 
 13
 
 194 APPENDIX. 
 
 the Lord of the House Beautiful and of His 
 servants ? The records may not be all, as the 
 Dreamer thought, "of the greatest antiquity;" 
 but would it be pious to neglect the study of 
 them altogether? Just because they are so 
 precious, it is our duty to be critical. We 
 want the truest truth and the facts of God's 
 revelation in their most original form ; when 
 we have got these, we will doubt no more. 
 
 But some one will remind me that there are 
 " weak brethren " to be considered persons 
 who cannot distinguish between the truth and 
 its casket, or between the various forms which 
 revelation assumes in different ages, persons 
 who can believe in God the Father and in God 
 the Son, but not, except in His relation to 
 individuals, in God the Holy Spirit. Such 
 " weak brethren " doubtless exist, and the ten- 
 derest sympathy is due to them. They may 
 be divided into two classes : those who are 
 weak by nature and those who have become 
 so through the fault of their teachers. Those 
 who are weak by nature will not have the 
 mental ability to grasp either the method or
 
 APPENDIX. 195 
 
 the results of historical criticism ; those who 
 are so by a faulty education (of whom Renan 
 at Saint Sulpice, described to us by his own 
 masterly pen, is a melancholy instance) will 
 be saved from all evil consequences if you 
 show them that the Church is not officially 
 committed to any definite system of Bible- 
 interpretation, and that essential Christian 
 truth is not endangered by (do pardon me if 
 I use the phrase in my own sense) true scien- 
 tific criticism. Those who are weak by nature 
 will feed on those precious truths of heart- 
 theology some of which should be conspicuous 
 in every sermon, and will leave the rest ; those 
 who are weak by education will at least see 
 that you personally have your feet planted on 
 a rock, and will ask how it is that what would 
 make them stumble only seems to give you a 
 bolder and a more rejoicing faith. I say, then, 
 Encourage such " weak brethren " to inquire ; 
 regard it as a part of your pastoral work to 
 lead them to a higher point of view, remember- 
 ing that he who said, "Destroy not the weak 
 brethren" (Rom. xiv. 15), was himself un-
 
 196 APPENDIX. 
 
 weariedly active in enlightening the conscience 
 and enlarging the point of view of his spiritual 
 children. 
 
 Does some one ask for a few ounces of 
 practice to these bushels of theory ? I will 
 reply that I am not entirely strange to pastoral 
 work, and know a little of its difficulties. Not 
 as a model, but as a specimen of what may be 
 done, I will mention a small volume, nearly 
 through the press, on Jeremiah and his times 
 in the light of criticism, 1 based upon sermons 
 which it fell to me to deliver last year in one 
 of our cathedrals, and another on the life 
 of Elijah, 2 which consists of cathedral sermons 
 written with no thought of their being printed, 
 but published this day as an illustration of 
 these ideas. I may also venture to say that 
 in all my own critical work since the year 
 1880 the separation of the permanent from the 
 temporary religious elements of the Old Testa- 
 ment has been my chief aim next to that of 
 ascertaining historical truth. I do not see 
 
 1 James Nisbet and Co. (" Men of the Bible " Series). 
 
 2 Hodder and Stoughton,
 
 APPENDIX. 197 
 
 why a scholar, even if he be also a professor, 
 should not have a true pastor's spirit. He 
 cannot, he dare not, conceal his well-weighed 
 results, even if they give a momentary scandal 
 to the " weak," even if they are but approxima- 
 tions to the truth. But he may transfer some 
 hours from his delightful studies to the service 
 of the Church at large, and so make somewhat 
 plainer to thoughtful Christians the significant 
 facts which God is revealing through criticism. 
 Even if he should suffer as a scholar,, he will 
 gain as a man. Is there not too much refined 
 self-seeking among us scholars ? Can we all' 
 of us take for our motto "No man liveth to 
 himself" ? Have we thought enough of the 1 
 hallowing of criticism ? Give us more of your 
 confidence, and we will seek to correct our 
 faults, which are partly due to the lamentable 
 indifference of the Church at large to theological 
 scholarship. Oh, how faulty has the organiza- 
 tion of theological study been in the old 
 English universities, not to speak of the Non- 
 conformist and the American colleges ! How 
 little attempt has been made to fill the chairs
 
 1 98 APPENDIX. 
 
 with mature and progressive scholars, and to 
 train up young men of talent for the career of 
 truth-finders and professors ! 
 
 I have spoken of what the Church may ex- 
 pect from her preachers and professors. There 
 is still a department in which very much is 
 left to be desired that of the teaching of the 
 Scriptures both in Sunday and in weekday 
 schools of all classes. The subject is too 
 large to be more than glanced at here. For 
 my own part, I do not see how the higher 
 Bible-teaching in schools can be much im- 
 proved till we have better books both for the 
 training of the teachers, and for use in class. 
 There has long been a want of a good school 
 handbook to the religious history of Israel ; 
 but it is a peculiarly difficult want to supply. 
 A kindred but an easier task has been under- 
 taken by two American professors of the 
 sister-Church, and upon the whole their work 
 can be recommended. The first volume, l which 
 is all that I know, contains the Israelitish tradi- 
 
 1 "Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, Arranged and Edited 
 for Young Readers as an Introduction to the Study of the
 
 APPENDIX. 199 
 
 tions of that which happened from the Creation 
 to the Exile, condensed, rearranged, and illus- 
 trated both from the more literary parts of 
 the Bible and from external sources. The 
 translators have not felt themselves bound 
 either to the Authorized or to the Revised 
 Version ; I fear (though I should be very glad 
 to be proved wrong) that this will somewhat 
 limit the circulation of the book. Meantime 
 all superior teachers can at any rate use the 
 Revised Version. They will try the opposite 
 plan to that on which they were themselves 
 too probably taught. The political history of 
 Israel will retire into the background ; they 
 will try to make their pupils enjoy the Old 
 Testament in its finest and most suggestive 
 portions. As the children become older, the 
 range of study will gradually be extended. 
 Criticism, too, free but reverent criticism, will 
 become necessary. These children have to 
 
 Bible." By Edward T. Bartlett, A.M., Dean, and John P. 
 Peters, Ph.D., Professor, in the Protestant Episcopal 
 Divinity School in Philadelphia. Vol. I. (London : James 
 Clarke and Co., 1886.)
 
 200 APPENDIX. 
 
 be prepared for life, and in life they will meet 
 with the advocates of a falsely free and 
 irreverent criticism. We all know that there 
 are secularist preachers who were formerly 
 Sunday-school children and teachers, and our 
 highly cultured Agnostics (different as they are 
 from those coarse and only too practical artisan 
 leaders) have all presumably passed through 
 some kind of Bible instruction. Many teachers 
 will, I think, be glad to be referred to Dr. 
 Newman Smyth's small book in Cassell's series, 
 though it will be necessary to supplement it 
 from other more pronouncedly critical sources, 
 among which Canon Driver's " Sunday-school 
 Lessons " (a bold title !) on parts of Genesis 
 and Exodus 1 and his recent volume, " Isaiah : 
 his Life and Times," 2 must not, small and un- 
 assuming as they are, be overlooked. 
 
 Alas ! I know the difficulties which will 
 impede our clergy in realizing the just expec- 
 tations of the Church. Thus (i) the quantity 
 and variety of the official work which falls 
 
 1 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887. 
 
 2 James Nisbet and Co. (" Men of the Bible " Series), 1888.
 
 APPENDIX. 201 
 
 upon them, except in some country parishes, 
 make connected study almost an impossibility. 
 Some there may be who, like the late Bishop 
 Wordsworth, are so constituted as to find 
 recreation in a change of work ; but the 
 physical constitution of the English race (or 
 is it perhaps our faulty educational system ?) 
 does not seem to favour such an experience. 
 What shall we say to this ? We shall say 
 that a duty does not cease to be a duty 
 because through causes beyond our control 
 we are unable to perform it. We shall 
 also say that somewhat more might be done 
 than is done, and that much sympathy and 
 encouragement is due to the parochial clergy 
 from their more happily situated brethren. 
 But (2) must we not go further back, and 
 confess that, with a singular want of insight 
 and of prescience, our superior teachers of the 
 Old Testament have too often treated modern 
 criticism and critical exegesis as enemies of 
 Christianity, the result of which is that many 
 of our clergy can have little or no idea what 
 the study of the Bible means ? What shall
 
 202 APPENDIX. 
 
 we say to this ? We shall say, first, that the 
 friends of criticism must try to overcome the pre- 
 judice of these well-intentioned, conscientious 
 men, and, next, that the latter on their side 
 must try to assimilate all that they honestly can 
 of the results of criticism. The point is, Do 
 they desire a richer and more inspiring view 
 of the Old Testament than they at present en- 
 joy ? It is such a view which criticism, rightly 
 pursued, can give them. Just as Christ has 
 been hidden behind theology, so the Bible has 
 been obscured by a traditional and unscientific 
 criticism and exegesis. I know but too well 
 that no "-ism " of any sort can give the nobly 
 discontented Bible-student what he craves. A 
 person is wanted, he whose coming I have 
 prophesied already, the free but devout critic. 
 
 " Flash on us, all in armour, thou Achilles ! 
 Make our hearts dance to thy resounding tread." 
 
 Before thee let the misconceptions and illusions 
 of the past vanish ! Be that second Hooker 
 for whom our own Milman longed, 1 " who 
 shall show us the eternal, irrepealable truths 
 
 In the " History of Christianity."
 
 APPENDIX. 203 
 
 beneath the imaginative forms of the Jewish 
 and even the Christian Scriptures ; " but, even ' 
 more than this, be a second and greater Herder 
 to a larger and more religious public than that 
 of the poet-theologian of Weimar. Put off 
 the stiff robe of the professor which hampered 
 even that true Churchman Heinrich Ewald. 
 Appropriate the results of modern criticism in 
 the interests of religion. Let others share 
 with thee the joy of the discoverer, so finely 
 described in Keats's sonnet, as each new planet 
 each transformed, but not disfigured, book of 
 Scripture " swims into his ken." Show them 
 that the Bible gains infinitely more than it loses 
 when viewed in the light, not of an unreal 
 tradition, but of a seven times tested criticism. 
 In a word, we require special books for the 
 clergy and the educated laity. First, we want 
 a statement, by some one who has a command 
 of the complicated questions involved, of the 
 present position of the researches into the 
 origin of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1 with some 
 
 1 Professor H. L. Strack has given such a statement, 
 with the learning, and I must add the dryness, peculiar to 
 German theologians in Zockler's theological series.
 
 204 APPENDIX. 
 
 hints as to their bearing on the interpretation 
 of the contents. Special students will require 
 more than this, but less than this cannot be 
 offered to the educated public. It must always, 
 however, be remembered that there are few 
 who can do justice to the processes of criticism, 
 and fewer still who can give an intelligent 
 opinion on disputed points. We need not be 
 surprised at this. How many of us have no 
 special aptitude for mathematics, even if, 
 unlike Vico, we have "got the length of the 
 pons asinorum in Euclid," 1 or even, one may 
 hope, a good distance beyond ! On the other 
 hand, there are many who can perfectly well 
 assimilate the best results of Biblical criticism, 
 and appreciate the inspiring view of the sacred 
 literature and of the history of revelation which 
 they open up. Consequently we want a 
 second book which shall give such a view, 
 assuming those results, in a popular style, and 
 in a historical and sympathetic spirit. 2 For the 
 
 1 Professor Flint, "Vico," p. 24. 
 
 2 Herder's " Geist der Ebraischen Poesie " is an inspiring 
 book, but of course incomplete and unmethodical. Nor 
 was Herder a special scholar.
 
 APPENDIX. 205 
 
 .present distress I can think of no better book 
 than a freshly written and stimulating, though 
 necessarily incomplete, volume by Mr. R. F. 
 Horton, called " Inspiration of the Bible," * 
 which displays in a high degree that sym- 
 pathy with the " weak brethren " which is 
 not less essential to the teacher than critical 
 insight. 
 
 I have mentioned two of the greatest diffi- 
 culties which impede the recognition of the 
 results of criticism by the clergy. There is 
 still one to which I must, however briefly, refer. 
 It is that the clergy are in doubt as to the 
 doctrinal results of such a recognition. How 
 I should myself deal with this question, I 
 stated at Reading in 1883. I should insist 
 on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's con- 
 tinual presence being made ever more and 
 more a reality. No essential truth which He 
 has once revealed can be impaired by any 
 fresh discovery of facts. Faith in the super- 
 natural cannot pass away ; but our modes of 
 
 1 T. Fisher Unwin, 1888.
 
 206 APPENDIX. 
 
 conceiving the supernatural may be largely 
 modified through the revelations of science 
 and of criticism. Spiritual truths cannot 
 become antiquated ; but if the successes of 
 criticism have the value which I have ascribed 
 to them, they must lead to fuller insight 
 into Divine truth. All truth, in fact, is 
 Divine ; all truths are connected, and there- 
 fore ultimately reconcilable. Do not, then, be 
 afraid. The Church of England has lost time ; 
 it was a hundred years last year since the 
 death of Lowth, and how little interest has 
 been taken in the Old Testament in the 
 interval ! Let us make haste, but make haste 
 slowly. It is to the young men that I appeal. 
 Let them not blindly accept this or that system 
 of criticism. The great popular book on the 
 Old Testament which I have prophesied will 
 admit that different solutions of some problems 
 are possible. But let them close their ears 
 to those who falsely assert that no durable 
 results have been attained. The certainties 
 are neither few nor unimportant. Would that 
 I could speak of them as they deserve ! Think,
 
 APPENDIX. 207 
 
 for instance, of the Pentateuch (even apart 
 from Kuenen and Wellhausen), Isaiah, Daniel, 
 and Ecclesiastes. Already the Old Testament 
 is transfigured to those who regard it histori- 
 cally. Yes, criticism is a great power already ; 
 and yet is there not something greater still, of 
 which it is its glory to be the minister 
 exegesis ? The transformation or reinterpre- 
 tation of theology for which the Church of 
 the future will importunately ask will have for 
 one of its presuppositions a modernized and a 
 critical exegesis. 
 
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