And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink: and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, and said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times. And 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, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass, in the meanwhile, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain (1 Ki. xviii. 41-45). THE LITTLE CLOUD ON THE SEA. There are some incidents in the life of the grand old prophet Elijah which place him beyond the sphere of our humanity. One is almost apt to exclaim on reading an account of these, "Is he a god or a man?" Had he lived in a pagan country, where the worship of the one living and true God was utterly unknown, he would have been one of the deities whom the people worshipped. His name and his deeds would have been associated with divine honours. As a prophet he was certainly one of the giants, and in point of stern and rugged grandeur of character no one approaches him. He raises the dead; controls the elements of nature; seals up the clouds of heaven by his prayers, and opens them again when he pleads on Mount Carmel for rain. Take him all in all there is a majestic isolation about him like that of some Alpine peak which shoots up far above the surrounding mountains-a moral sublimity that gives him anexalted but lonely position, and makes him at times an object of awe and dread. And yet beneath this stern and rugged exterior there is a warm and tender heart that melts in pity at the widow's tale of sorrow-a soul glowing with sympathy that cannot rest till the empty meal-barrel in her desolate dwelling is filled, her cruise of oil replenished, and her dead son restored to life. His was a nature as rugged as a rocky mountain, as bold as a lion, and yet as gentle and sensitive as the heart of a mother when she comforteth a son passing through some great sorrow. His life was cast upon an evil time, and from the darkness of that degenerate age he bursts upon the stage of history like a flash of lightning from a dark thundercloud. With startling abruptness he confronts the godless king in a message as awful as it was sudden, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." He seemed to be girt about with steel, but there was an opening in the joints of his harness, as well as in that of King Ahab; and this great prophet, who wielded a power that made him superhuman, could be reached at a weak and open point, and when touched there he became faint as other men, and threw himself down under a juniper-tree in the desert. Weary of his life, he would have gladly thrown it away, for he prayed that he might die, and not live. Which of us in some moment of despondency has not done the same? He was but man, and encompassed with the infirmities of our nature. The apostle James has drawn his character and position in these striking words, "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained. not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit." It was |