II. If now we inquire into the peculiar signification and intention of the Divine manifestation at Horeb, we cannot, I think, remain long in doubt respecting it. It is evident that the Lord meant thereby to lead the prophet out of a ' variety of doubts and anxieties in which he had lost himself. One outward mystery had followed another; one inward perplexity had complicated another. He had lost his clue to the windings of the labyrinth, in the sudden turn which the affairs of God's kingdom had taken in Israel. In God's name, and with his commission, he had forsaken his native mountains, and gone to Samaria, to recal the backsliding people to the faith of their fathers. The means for such a work had been placed in his hand by God himself. It had been given him to shut heaven, and to open it again; to bring distress upon the land, and to remove it. He had done signs and wonders, such as had not been wrought in Israel for centuries, and had laboured as abundantly as any saint before him. From such exertions he had expected, as was natural enough, corresponding results; and had hoped for nothing less than a penitent return of all Israel to their allegiance to Jehovah. The fervent man of God, however, was mistaken. Not only were his hopes not realized; they were utterly frustrated. In the very moment when he had expected to lead back the re-converted people to the altar of the living God, with psalms and hymns of rejoicing, he sees the sword uplifted to slay him, and all his labour appears in vain. All this was too mysterious for him; and he could not reconcile it with his views of the faithfulness of God.

This doubting state of mind had attained its height at Horeb, and had broken forth in a complaint, not only against the people, but virtually against the Lord himself; when the majestic signs and wonders, we have been considering, passed before him, and produced those effects which have been already described. The wind, the earthquake, and the fire, produced only an awful sense of distance; and the still small voice, on the contrary, the liveliest emotions of joy and sense of communion with God. In these signs, and their

effects, I apprehend, we are to behold a Divine lesson given to the prophet respecting the nature and working of his own past prophetic labours, and a glorious answer to all the complaints, doubts, and fears, to which he had given way.

The scenes of terror which he had witnessed were signs of his own prophetic teaching and activity, which had been wrapped in the awful grandeur of Divine majesty, and been characterised more by the spirit of the law, than of the gospel. The storm was but an echo of his own words of thunder in reproving sin, with which he had struck the consciences of the people of Israel; the earthquake represented the shaking of plagues and judgments over the land; the fire reminded him of the flames of Carmel, and of the bloody execution of which it had been the signal. In this way, it had fallen upon Elijah to appear as another Moses, with the burning torch of the law, a herald of that God, who will not be mocked. But in his zeal our prophet had forgotten, that in looking for reformation from these measures, he was expecting consequences which never can attend the ministration of the law, but must always be coupled with the still small voice of the gospel. What had he expected? Nothing less than the penitent return of all Israel to the God of their fathers. In this hope he went too far. He was not justified in cherishing these expectations, and it was this which was to be brought to his mind in an impressive manner on Horeb. He there learned that the display of mere power and majesty, however overwhelming, if their burning terrors are not tempered by grace, may indeed inspire the sinner with anxiety and alarm, but cannot truly humble or convert him. He was to become deeply conscious, that the display of infinite holiness, unassociated with the kindness and love of God our Saviour, can make the soul tremble and shrink back in despair, but cannot move it to penitential confession, or confiding submission to the Lord. Now he had experienced in his own heart that grace alone can really soften, and melt, and convert the soul; and that the blessed results, which he had ignorantly expected

from the law, could only be produced by the loving-kind ness and mercy of Jehovah.

But though thus taught the error of his past hopes, he was at the same time led to the pleasing conclusion that his labour would not be in vain in the Lord; and that, after the storm, the earthquake, and the fire, the Lord would come, also in due time, with the still small voice, which the hearts of men would then be unable to resist, and to which the stubborn would gladly yield; and with what delight must Elijah have read in these events this great promise; and embraced it! And his labour, too, was not to be a lost labour. How welcome the assurance! As the signs of power and terror on Horeb had not passed over his own soul without trace of good, but had prepared it for the genial breath of the still small voice, and heightened the melting power of the contrast, so the Lord would thereby have him understand, that the mind of the people had been made alive by terror to the coming manifestation of grace. He was thus taught to regard his prophetic office as designed to break up by the plough the hardened soil of apostacy; to present the forgotten law, in all its majesty and strictness, before the minds of a backsliding people; to awaken the sleepers and terrify the secure with the thunders of the law, and thereby to excite in them a longing after the gospel, a hungering and thirsting after "grace reigning through righteousness, unto eternal life."

Thus Elijah has received a satisfactory solution to all his difficulties; and in how wonderful and divine a manner. In this one divine act the Lord has fully justified his own dealings towards the prophet,—cleared up all the mysteries of his life, dispelled all his anxieties,—rebuked all his doubts, --and, at one and the same time, gloriously vindicated his own honour, and gently taught the prophet his own mistakes, so that he is ready to bow in the deepest humility and to utter the confession, "Thou, Lord, art righteous, but unto me belongeth confusion of face." And though Elijah soon after repeated the complaint, it was in a totally different spirit. It then proceeded from a contrite and

humbled frame of mind. The gloomy vexation, the fretting temper, the inward strife and murmuring, had all disappeared. The jarring discords of his agitated spirit had melted into the purest harmony.

Thus, my friends, I have endeavoured to give you some explanation of the immediate design of the mysterious events on Horeb. The reason why so many evangelical expositors have left it no better than a riddle, arises from their excessive, or let me rather say, improper ideas of the sanctity of the prophet. They saw in him a being who was no longer liable to human errors, and who could never be drawn aside from the path of divine simplicity, and of steadfast, childlike, unreserved submission to his Lord. But Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are; he was not free, any more than others, of what we all inherit from Adam; and we must seek the key to the wonderful manifestation on Horeb, not in the prophet's perfection, but in his infirmity. Yet, how does it exalt our ideas, after all, of the greatness of his devoted spirit, that for his reproof and instruction, heaven and earth were moved, the rocks rent, the mountains overthrown; and how must the mighty God have loved him, to have deemed him a worthy object of such condescension !

This narrative enables us to answer a question which has been sometimes proposed, Why is Elijah styled a prophet, while, in his whole history, there appears no trace of the gospel or future Messiah? We deny the assertion. There is here a trace of the gospel of life; nay, more than a trace. The office of our prophet was not, indeed, that of an evangelist, seeing that he was appointed to maintain the dispensation of Moses; but the sun of the gospel had risen upon his own heart; and we have seen from the effects of " the still small voice," what healing there was under its wings. I am persuaded, that could he have unbosomed himself more lolly, he would have been one of the most blessed heralds of mercy to he ancient church, and his speech would have dropped as the rain, and distilled as the dew. But the people among whom his lot was cast, were not yet ripe for

the full disclosure of grace, and hence his high mission required him to treasure up the jewel of his faith almost in the secrecy of his own heart, and to hide the office of the evangelist under the rough garment of a herald of the law.

Here, for a season, we leave the top of Horeb, and, I trust, not without refreshment and blessing. May the Lord, who is the great, and gracious, and faithful God, visit us all with the still small voice, and may our whole life be like the standing of Elijah before Him with his face wrapped in his mantle !

V.-RENEWED MISSION.

One of the most affecting and consolatory of the Old Testament histories is that which relates the wonderful preservation of the infant Moses, Exod. ii. 1-10. Lo, at the bank of the Nile, there floats among the reeds a small ark made of bulrushes, and carefully coated over with slime and pitch, that the water might not enter in; for a treasure, indeed, lies concealed in it, an infant, beautiful before the Lord, and dear and precious beyond all else to his mother: she has, therefore, thus secured it to try if the babe in its floating cradle may not escape the cruel sentence which Pharaoh has pronounced on all the new-born males of Israel. A mother's love has prepared the infant's couch with many silent tears; and while it lies there rocked by the winds and the waters, the sisterly love of Miriam keeps her within sight of it to watch its fate. The providence of God brings Pharaoh's daughter to the banks of the river, she descries the ark floating among the reeds, and sends one of her maids to fetch it. "And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children." Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee, and she said, Go." And

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