"

So we have certain preliminary duties to attend to; as, for example, finding out the whole of our resources, placing these at the disposal of the master, beginning with a little as if it were a great amount, and gradually proceeding until we ourselves are surprised by the largeness and completeness of the miracle. Now Elisha proceeds to his work :-"Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels." This would have committed him to some degree of miraculous interposition, but this was not all he said; he added to his instructions, "Borrow not a few" (v. 3). In Psalm lxxxi. 10. we read, Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." It is God's joy, if we may so put it, to give large answers to the requests of men. Said Christ, "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." Not a partial joy, and not the beginning of a joy, but a complete, overflowing, redundant joy. Then comes an instruction which compares strongly with what Jesus Christ himself stated with regard to our action in prayer. The woman was commanded to shut the door upon herself, and upon her sons, and to pour oil into all the vessels which she had borrowed, setting aside the vessels as they became full. "And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed" (v. 6). It was the vessels that were exhausted, not the hand of God that was emptied. A notable lesson this, that it is never God who fails but always man who comes to the end of his capacity. It was so in the case of the manna, as we have seen in Exodus xvi 18:-"He that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack." The woman moved by gratitude came and told the man of God. This is recorded to the credit of the woman, but it could not be recorded to the credit of many who are now living; that is to say, they receive mercies from God, hunger is satisfied, thirst is allayed, present appeals are answered, and yet no religious response is made. "There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger." This is the first of the domestic miracles performed by Elisha.

In verse 8 we find the beginning of another miracle of the domestic kind. A "great woman" in Shunem was kind to the

prophet and his servant. She made a little chamber for the prophet, and put therein a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick. Poor furniture it may have been indeed from a merely mercantile point of view, but being chosen by the spirit of love, and set up by the hand of care, the whole chamber glowed and shone as with a light from heaven. It has given a name to all the other rooms which have been set apart for the service of good men. To this day we call the room occupied by the pastor, or the evangelist, or the agent of any good cause, "the prophet's chamber." Elisha recognised the goodness of the woman and magnified her attention, describing what she had done in terms that might appear like extravagance, for he said, "Thou hast been careful for us with all this care" (v. 13). Now the prophet offered her some reward, asking whether she would be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the host. Elisha considered that he had influence at court, as indeed he might well have, because of his great character and his splendid service. But the woman had no such wish. She said she dwelt amongst her own people; she was in peace with all her neighbours; she was not ambitious; celebrity had no charms for her, and she could work more easily under love than under patronage. What she did she did independently, feeling that hospitality shown to a servant of the living God added to her greatness. She had indeed a reward in the very fact that the man honoured her house with his presence. "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward." The prophets of the Lord avail themselves of the courteous attentions and liberal hospitalities of those who are pleased to accord them. Even the Apostle Paul did not reject the obligations of love which were offered to him. He said, "I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God." Elisha promised that this woman should have a son; and in due time

"When the child was grown, it fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And when he had taken

him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died" (vv. 18-20).

Does not this seem like mockery on the part of God? The woman was offered a reward for her generous hospitality, and behold the reward was turned into a new trial. Is it not always so? Does not increase of life really mean increase of pain? Or is it not often true that the things we most desire are often turned most heavily against us, so that our comforts become our distresses, our advantages are transformed into our hindrances, and our very pre-eminence over men does but expose us the more openly to the roughest of the wind and the tempest? As increase of wisdom is increase of sorrow-because we say, How much there is yet to be known, and how small a portion of anything is really understood-so increase of life exposes but a greater surface to the darts of the enemy. The woman took a very motherly course. Suggestively, and as it were almost upbraidingly, she laid her dead son on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out. She would make her own statement to Elisha. She would come unto him on Mount Carmel and chide him because of his cruelty. She seized Elisha by the feet, and the prophet saw that her soul was vexed within her, and yet he knew nothing of the cause, for the Lord had hidden it from him, and told him not. Then she made her speech, full of a mother's eloquence, full of bitter upbraiding, saying, "Did I desire a son of my lord? did I not say, Do not deceive me"? Elisha would send his servant to see what could be done, but the woman said, "As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee." Here is a model of importunate prayer. Here, too, is the very ground of prayer. We have what may be termed a natural standing before God, because he hath made us and not we ourselves; and as for all we have, is it not his own special and direct gift? God would seem to allow us to establish the right of speaking to him on the very ground that what we have we have received from himself. There is nothing unreasonable in the theory and exercise of prayer as defined in Holy Scripture. Suppliants in all ages have felt that God would not forsake the work of his own hands. The prophet entered the chamber, and the child was restored to the grief-stricken mother.

2 Kings iv. 31.

"And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face of the child, but."

H

PERSONAL POWER.

ERE is a remarkable thing in Bible history-nothing less than that a miracle should miscarry. Here is an attempt to work a miracle, which ends in failure. This is strange and most painful. Who knows what may fail next? The reading about miracles in the Bible is such easy reading, everything goes on so fluently and happily, that one is called up with great abruptness at an instance like the present. Is it without a parallel? Does it stand wholly alone? Are there any purposed miracles suddenly broken in failure? Does the staff ever come back without having done its work? We are bound to ask these sharp and serious questions. Do not let us hasten perfunctorily over the melancholy fact of our failure; let us face it and wisely consider it, and find out whether the blame be in Elisha, or Gehazi, or the staff, or whether God himself may be working out some mystery of wisdom in occasionally rebuking us in the use of means and instruments. Elisha was not a man likely to make vain experiments. He surely would not send a staff that would fail if he knew it. time the staff had been sent upon an adventurer, an empiric, a man what can only be done by a life? We must insist upon putting these piercing inquiries because to heal the hurt slightly is but to postpone the pain. We had, therefore, better know with all frankness and simplicity exactly what the case is, for in faithfulness may be the beginning of success. Gehazi came back and said, in effect, "Here is the staff, but it has done no good. There is neither sight, nor hearing, nor sound of returning

Surely this was not the first such an errand. Was Elisha who wanted to do with a staff

voice; the child is not awaked." There is the staff, unbroken, uninjured the prophet's staff. Let him take it back again, and remember that the child is not awaked. Why was that staff useless? A prophet's staff-yet not doing a prophet's work. Does the prophet's staff require a prophet's hand to use it? There may be something in that suggestion. It is not every man who can wear the armour of Saul; it may not be every man who can use the staff of Elisha. Let us, therefore, go into critical inquiry of a moral kind.

Who was this Gehazi? An undeveloped hypocrite. Up to this moment he may have secured outwardly his master's confidence and regard, but we are more than one self. There were three or four different men in that Gehazi figure. There are three or four different men in each of us. Which man is it to whom we speak; who is it that announces the hymn, that offers the prayer, that reads the Scriptures, that proclaims the word ? "Things are not what they seem." Gehazi was at this moment an undeveloped knave; and what can he do with Elisha's staff, or with God's sunlight? The bad man spoils whatever he touches. In the fall of man, everything with which man has to do must also fall. Virtue perished out of Elisha's staff; it became in the grip of Gehazi but a common stick. There is law in that deterioration; there is a whole philosophy in that mysterious depletion of virtue, and we ought to understand somewhat of its operation. Sin impoverishes everything. The universe is but a gigantic shell, gleaming with painted fire to the bad man. To him there are no flowers in the garden; there may be some diversity of colour, but flowers as tabernacles in which God reveals himself, creations of the supreme power, there are none, there can be none. The bad man sees no beauty, hears no music, acknowledges no virtue, turns everything into a nature like his own. Therefore, beware of the bad man. Do not let him kiss your little child, he will stain the sweet mouth; do not let him grip your hand, he will leave a mark behind which will be as a wound; do not hold company with bad men. "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." If they say, "Let us all have one purse, and enjoy ourselves in rattling and dashing gaiety," know that their purpose is the ruin of the soul.