the most of his ill-gotten gain-and the most he could do was to endeavour to conceal it. Yet it was known where it was; and we venture to believe that, although it was stowed away, as he thought, in a safe place, the oppressiveness of it hung about him like a mill-stone, as heavy as lead.

And now, perhaps for the first time, he is afraid to approach his master; but he must make a virtue of necessity; and, although unsent for, he must needs go in with a brazen face, and present himself before him. "And Elisha said, Whence comest thou, Gehazi?" Aha! matters are quickly coming to a crisis. "And he said, Thy servant went no whither." Oh, how he must tumble downhill, lying and sinning all the while, because he has made a false step at the top of it!" And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to receive money and to receive garments, and olive-yards and vineyards, and sheep and oxen, and men-servants and maidservants?" All these things Gehazi perhaps meant to procure with the talents he had gotten so basely. Who can tell, indeed, but he might comfort himself with the thought that it was for his master's good that he had done it, and even

for the support of the sons of the prophets? Had they not just passed through a famine, and had not he seen and felt the straits his master had been reduced to? But if the prophet did indeed sanction a compromise of duty in the case of the king of Syria's servant, he would not allow the villany of his own to go unpunished. "The leprosy therefore of Naaman," said he, "shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow."

And what became of his silver and his changes of garments then? Elisha did not tell him to take them back. No: he would have been too glad to carry them all the way to Damascus, if the ridding himself of them would have restored him to the condition he had lost in the getting of them. But he must keep them, and be reminded by them of all they had cost him. Yes, keep them he must; for now he was a leper, and no one would have accepted them at his hand. And the very thing which he had coveted was made the means of adding to the sure punishment of his crime.

187

XII. THE BORROWED AXE.

2 KINGS, vi. 5.

"Alas, master! for it was borrowed."

It was natural that the station at Gilgal should attract a greater number of the sons of the prophets than others, for it was there apparently that Elisha usually resided. Hence it was that he sent the Syrian nobleman to wash in the Jordan, which flowed past at no great distance; and there too it must have been that "the place" where his pupils dwelt was found "too strait" for them, and they said, "Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell.”

From any little glimpses of the inner life and social condition of the sons of the prophets with which we are favoured, we can only form the notion of a state of great indigence. Elisha had just sent away the Syrian with his £10,000; and

certainly he would not condescend to touch any portion of that which Gehazi had brought back. This very incident which now claims our notice may suffice to show how far he sacrificed his interests to his duty. The money which he had refused to receive at the hand of Naaman would have sufficed to pay for the erection of a spacious abode for himself and the sons of the prophets; and that, too, probably without its having been necessary to call in the aid of labour which was not likely to be backed with skill.

Be that as it may, the facts which we can rely on are plainly told. From one cause or another the sons of the prophets who dwelt at Gilgal were becoming more numerous, and the place where they dwelt was too strait for them. Their numbers might be recruited partly from without, or more likely, perhaps, from the natural increase of their families, like those of other people who enter into the marriage relation, as they are known to have done. But the times were hard, and their means of subsistence must have been very limited; and cases of difficulty, such as that of the poor widow woman, when the creditor was about to take her two sons for slaves, were perhaps but too common. The difficulty here mentioned, however, arose from a lack of accommodation. Whether it

was that they inhabited some house, or college, or village, or quarter of a city by themselves, it were vain to inquire. The place, whatever it was, had become too strait for them; and they first asked Elisha's permission to go and cut down timber for the addition they proposed to make to their dwelling; and when he had granted them liberty they proceeded a step further and requested him to accompany them, so he consented. They would do nothing, even in the smaller matters of everyday life, without his advice or consent, thinking, it would seem, that when near him all would go well; and experience showed that they were right.

They were going to rear a log-house like those which settlers in America set up when they enter into the forest in search of a home. Gladly would Gehazi have given all that he had taken of the Syrian to have been permitted to ply his axe amongst those which resounded through the woods by the banks of the Jordan; but it is not likely he was present.

They had proceeded so far in their undertaking when an accident occurred which threatened to prove a source of great trouble to one at least of their number; and it shows that they must have enjoyed but very limited means when an event so trifling could plunge any one of them into such