Bowdoin

college lib.

19-8

ELISHA.

I.

ELISHA'S CHARACTER AND FIRST APPEARANCE.

It is a pleasing period of which the prophet Micah speaks, in the fourth verse of his fourth chapter, where he says,

They shall sit every man under his own vine and under his fig-tree, and none shall make them afraid." What a lovely representation of tranquil serenity and delightful repose, smiles upon us in this saying of the prophet! In Micah's time, the happy period he foresaw, lay certainly remote; for it was that which commenced with the incarnation of Deity—the New Testament dispensation. There were, however, seasons under the Old Testament economy in which, for a shorter or longer time, the golden age to come very wondrously reflected itself, and in which, extremely cheering and peaceful prelude of that ardently longed-for era, delightfully presented themselves.

Such a period was the patriarchal age, which succeeded the flood. It exhibited throughout a New Testament character. Its aspect is entirely that of a prophetic representation of the Gospel year of liberty and jubilee. Childlikeness and filial confidence constituted the basis of that position of heart, which the saints of those days occupied with reference to the Almighty. At that time no Sinai smoked, no compulsatory law pursued with its menaces

the peculiar people. Love was the ruling motive; love, enkindled by the condescension and tender mercy of Him, who again rejoiced in the habitable part of the earth; and in the tents of Abraham, or under the shade of the Terebinthine groves of Mamre, we almost feel as in the cottage at Emmaus, where the man, who is at the same time the Lord Most High, sits confidentially at table with the two travellers; or as at Bethany, in the house of Lazarus and his highly-favoured sisters.

A period similarly peaceful and benign dawned upon Israel at the appearing of Elisha. It is to these cheering and evangelically enlightened times, that we will at present direct the course of our meditations, and, if it please God, linger awhile in their mild and soothing atmosphere. May the Spirit of the Lord God, the sole interpreter of the Divine records, graciously accompany us, and enable us to meet with many a pearl of consolation, and much refreshing fruit matured under other suns, in this promising course of contemplation!

2 KINGS II. 19-22.

"And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth, but the water is naught, and the ground barren.

"And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him.

"And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more dearth or barren land. "So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha, which he spake."

We find ourselves therefore again upon that soil so rich in wonders, where a few months ago so many a well of

comfort and encouragement opened itself to us in the eventful life of Elijah the Tishbite. The region upon which we are entering, is consequently not strange to us. It presents a well-known and friendly aspect, and scarcely does our eye rest upon a landscape, a mountain, a valley, or a town, with which some stupendous and beneficial recollection is not connected. Upon this stage, a new history will now develop its manifold images, scenes, and events before us; the history of Elisha, the man of God; a rich and glorious history. May it therefore be to us, what it ought to be to faith, according to the intentions of Him, who caused it to be recorded for us, a source of manifold joy and refreshment in troublous times, and a perennial spring of consolation in the days of trial and affliction.

Our present meditation will be in a great degree a preparatory one, and may serve in the place of an introduction to those that shall follow. We direct our attention, first, to ELISHA'S PECULIAR CHARACTER AND THAT OF HIS VOCATION, and then to THE FIRST PROPHETIC APPEARANCE OF THE MAN OF GOD.

I.

You are already acquainted with the state of things at the period when Elisha began his prophetic career. His labours stand in immediate connexion with those of his great prodecessor; and it will be still fresh in your recollection, how affairs stood in Israel at the time when Elijah ascended to heaven. King Ahab had been swept away by the judgment of the Almighty in the battle with the Syrians. Ahaziah, Ahab's son and immediate successor, is likewise no more in the land of the living. Because he sent to inquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron, as if there

were no God in Israel, the Tishbite was sent to him with the awful message, "Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die." The regal diadem, polluted by a thousand atrocities, then descended from the head of this Ahaziah, upon that of his brother Jehoram, the second son of Ahab and Jezebel; and it was under his reign that Elisha elevated the prophetic standard. The Scripture says of Jehoram, with whom we shall become more closely acquainted in the sequel, that he likewise wrought evil in the sight of the Lord, though not exactly in the same measure and degree as his father and his reprobate mother. Terrified by the horrible judgments which he saw break in upon Ahab and Ahaziah, he had deemed it advisable at least to remove and destroy the abominable Sidonian idol, which his father had caused to be made and set up, as the object of adoration; but in other respects, he continued to adhere to the worship of Jeroboam's calves, patronised the idolatrous priests in every possible manner, and if he occasionally prostrated himself before the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, it was only the hypocritical homage of the moment. His mother Jezebel, the queen dowager, pursued under him her scandalous and reprobate course, and exerted her whole influence over the weak-minded Jehoram, only to strengthen him in his worthlessness, and by his instrumentality to bring the moral corruption of the degraded people to an awful maturity. A filthy idolatry, with which vice in every shape was connected, continued to constitute the religion of the State; the whole land was covered with this darkness, which issued forth from the bottomless pit, and the little Church of God, though beaming with increased splendour from its contrast with this nocturnal obscurity, was only like a verdant oasis in a

vast and howling wilderness, and like a solitary island of the sea, exposed to every storm.

Between the black clouds of this mournful period, the beneficent appearance of the prophet Elisha meets us like a rainbow, announcing salvation. He rose upon his people like a serene and placid moon, beaming only gentle. ness and peace, after the majestic setting of that glittering and burning meteor, which had shone upon Israel in Elijah. His was not the dazzling and destructive glare of the lightning; it refreshed and gladdened all whom it reached. Many have imagined that they perceived nothing in Elisha, but a weak copy of his infinitely greater predecessor, as they regarded him; and maintain, that the life of the son of Shaphat, as contrasted with that of the Tishbite, was only like a faint echo to the full original sound, or like the more complicated and scientific but far weaker variations of a melody, compared with its simple but infi. nitely more sublime and majestic theme. But this view of the subject is far from betraying particular acuteness and discernment; and it only requires a little deeper insight into it, to lead us to a very different conclusion. If Elijah was an original phenomenon, Elisha was no less so. There is an infinite variety in all that God creates. overflowing fulness of his productive power calls forth none but original forms. Who ever thinks of saying, that he who has seen a rose, can no longer be pleased with the bloom of the apple-tree? Does not the latter in its kind, seem equally as admirable and beautiful to us as the former? But if the apple blossom were intended to be an imitation of the rose, there would then be room for comparison, and we might say, it was only an unsuccessful, faint, and inferior copy. But as it is, the one delights us in its peculiarity not less than the other. Keep it there

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