thee shall be disappointed. O let not our faith be wanting to thee; thy care can never be wanting to us.

Elijah might have lived for the time with bread and water, neither had his fare been worse than his fellows in the caves of Obadiah; but the munificence of God will have his meals better furnished; the ravens shall bring him both bread and flesh twice in the day.

It is not for a persecuted prophet to long after delicates. God gives order for competency, not for wantonness. Not out of the dainty compositions in Jezebel's kitchen, not out of the pleasant wines in her cellar, would God provide for Elijah; but the ravens shall bring him plain and homely victuals, and the river shall afford him drink. If we have wherewith to sustain nature, though not to pamper it, we owe thanks to the Giver. Those of God's family may not be curious, not disdainful. Ill doth it become a servant of the Highest to be a slave to his palate. Doubtless, one bit from the mouth of the raven was more pleasing to Elijah than a whole tableful of Ahab. Nothing is more comfortable to God's children than to see the sensible demonstrations of the divine care and providence.

The brook Cherith cannot last always. That stream shall not, for Elijah's sake, be exempted from the universal exsiccation; yea, the prophet himself feels the smart of this drought which he had denounced. It is no unusual thing with God to suffer his own dear children to be enwrapped in the common calamities of offenders. He makes difference in the use and issue of their stripes, not in the infliction. The corn is cut down with the weeds, but to a better purpose.

When the brook fails, God hath a Zarephath for Elijah: instead of the ravens, a widow shall there feed him; yea, herself by him. Who can enough wonder at the pitch of this selective providence of the Almighty! Zarephath was a town of Sidon, and therefore without the pale of the Church. Poverty was the best of this widow: she was a pagan by birth, heathenishly superstitious by institution. Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto this Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. He that first fed the prophet by the mouth of unclean fowls will now feed him by the hand of an heathenish hostess. His only command sanc

tifies those creatures which by a general charge were legally impure.

There were other birds besides ravens, other widows besides this Sareptan; none but the ravens, none but the Sareptan, shall nourish Elijah. God's choice is not led in the string of human reasons. His holy will is the guide and the ground of all his elections. It is not in him that wills, nor in him that runs, but in God that shows mercy.

The prophet follows the call of his God. The same hand that brought him to the gate of Sarepta led also this poor widow out of her doors. She shall then go to seek her sticks when she shall be found of Elijah. She thought of her hearth; she thought not of a prophet; when the man of God calls to her, Fetch me a little water, I pray thee, in a vessel, that I may drink. It was no easy suit in so droughty a season; and yet, at the first sight, the prophet dares second it with a greater; Bring me a morsel of bread in thine hand. That long drought had made every drop, every crumb precious; yet the prophet is emboldened, by the charge of God, to call for both water and bread. He had found the ravens so officious that he cannot make doubt of the Sareptan. She sticks not at the water; she would not stick at the bread if necessity had not pressed her; As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.

If she knew not the man, how did she know his God? And if she knew not the God of Elijah, how did she swear by him? Certainly, though she were without the bounds of Israel, yet she was within the borders. So much she had gained by her neighbourhood, to know an Israelite, a prophet by his habit; to know the only living God was the God of the prophet, the God of Israel: and if this had not been, yet it is no marvel if the widow knew Elijah, since the ravens knew him.

It was high time for the prophet to visit the Sareptan. Poor soul! she was now making her last meal: after one mean morsel she was yielding herself over to death. How opportunely hath God provided succours to our distresses! It is his glory to help at a pinch; to begin where we have given over, that our relief might be so much the more welcome by how much it is less looked for.

But O, what a trial is this of the faith of a weak proselyte, if she were so much! Fear not; go, do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it to me, and after make for thee and thy son. For thus saith the God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, nor the cruse of oil fail, till the day that God send rain upon the earth. She must go spend upon a stranger part of that little she hath in hope of more, which she hath not, which she may have. She must part with her present food, which she saw, in trust of future, which she could not see. She must rob her sense in the exercise of her belief, and shorten her life in being, upon the hope of a protraction of it in promise. She must believe God will miraculously increase what she hath yielded to consume. She must first feed the stranger with her last victuals, and then after, herself and

her son.

Some sharp dame would have taken up the prophet, and have sent him away with an angry repulse: "Bold Israelite, there is no reason in this request. Wert thou a friend or a brother, with what face couldest thou require to pull my last bit out of my mouth? Had I superfluity of provision, thou mightest hope for this effect of my charity; now that I have but one morsel for myself and my son, this is an injurious importunity. What can induce thee to think thy life, an unknown traveller, should be more dear to me than my son's, than my own? How uncivil is this motion, that I should first make provision for thee in this dying extremity! It had been too much to have begged my last scraps. Thou tellest me the meal shall not waste, nor the oil fail; how shall I believe thee? Let me see that done before thou eatest. In vain should I challenge thee when the remainder of my poor store is consumed. If thou canst so easily multiply victuals, how is it that thou wantest? Do that beforehand which thou promisest shall be afterwards performed, there will be no need of my little."

But this good Sareptan was wrought by God not to mistrust a prophet. She will do what he bids, and hope for what he promises. She will live by faith rather than by sense, and give away the present in the confidence of a future remuneration. First, she bakes Elijah's cake, then her own; not grudging to see her last morsels going down another's throat, while herself was famishing. How hard precepts doth God lay where he intends bounty! Had not God meant her preservation, he had

suffered her to eat her last cake alone without any interpellation : now the mercy of the Almighty, purposing as well this miraculous favour to her as to his prophet, requires of her this task, which flesh and blood would have thought unreasonable. So we are wont to put hard questions to those scholars whom we would promote to higher forms. So in all achievements the difficulty of the enterprise makes way for the glory of the actor.

Happy was it for this widow that she did not shut her hand to the man of God; that she was no niggard of her last handful. Never corn or olive did so increase in growing as here in consuming. This barrel, this cruse of hers, had no bottom: The barrel of meal wasted not; the cruse of oil failed not. Behold, not getting, not saving, is the way to abundance, but giving. The mercy of God crowns our beneficence with the blessing of store. Who can fear want by a merciful liberality, when he sees the Sareptan had famished if she had not given, and by giving abounded? With what thankful devotion must this woman every day needs look upon her barrel and cruse, wherein she saw the mercy of God renewed to her continually! Doubtless, her soul was no less fed by faith than her body with this supernatural provision. How welcome a guest must Elijah needs be to this widow, that gave her life and her son's to her for his board! yea, that in that woful famine gave her and her son their board for his houseroom!

The dearth thus overcome, the mother looks hopefully upon her only son; promising herself much joy in his life and prosperity; when an unexpected sickness surpriseth him, and doth that which the famine but threatened. When can we hold ourselves secure from evils? No sooner is one of these sergeants compounded withal than we are arrested by another.

How ready we are to mistake the grounds of our afflictions, and to cast them upon false causes! The passionate mother cannot find whither to impute the death of her son but to the presence of Elijah, to whom she comes, distracted with perplexity; not without an unkind challenge of him from whom she had received both that life she had lost and that she had; What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come to me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? As if her son could not have died if Elijah had not been her guest; whereas her son had died, but for him. Why should she think that the prophet had saved him from the famine to kill him with sickness? As if God

had not been free in his actions, and must needs strike by the same hands by which he preserved. She had the grace to know that her affliction was for her sin, yet was so unwise to imagine the arrearages of her iniquities had not been called for if Elijah had not been the remembrancer. He who had appeased God towards her is suspected to have incensed him.

This wrongful misconstruction was enough to move any patience. Elijah was of an hot spirit; yet his holiness kept him from fury. This challenge rather increased the zeal of his prayer than stirred his choler to the offender. He takes the dead child out of his mother's bosom, and lays him upon his own bed, and cries unto the Lord; O Lord my God, hast thou brought evil also upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? Instead of chiding the Sareptan, out of the fervency of his soul he humbly expostulates with his God. His only remedy is in his prayer: that which shut heaven for rain must open it for life.

Every word enforceth; first, he pleads his interest in God, O Lord my God: then, the quality of the patient; a widow, and therefore both most distressed with the loss, and most peculiar to the charge of the Almighty: then his interest, as in God, so in this patient, with whom I sojourn; as if the stroke were given to himself through her sides: and lastly, the quality of the punishment, by slaying her son, the only comfort of her life and in all these implying the scandal that must needs arise from this event, wherever it should be noised, to the name of his God, to his own, when it should be said, "Lo how Elijah's entertainment is rewarded: surely the prophet is either impotent or unthankful!"

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Neither doth his tongue move thus only. Thrice doth he stretch himself upon the dead body; as if he could wish to infuse of his own life into the child; and so often calls to his God for the restitution of that soul.

What can Elijah ask to be denied? The Lord heard the voice of the prophet; the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. What miracle is impossible to faithful prayers? There cannot be more difference betwixt Elijah's devotion and ours, than betwixt supernatural and ordinary acts; if he therefore obtained miraculous favours by his prayers, do we doubt of those which are within the sphere of nature and use? What could we want if we did not slack to ply heaven with our prayers?

Certainly, Elijah had not been premonished of this sudden sickness and death of the child. He who knew the remote affairs of