are there his falterings and depressions-his mistrusts and betrayals-like so many beacons glaring their warning lights upon our path. His excellencies are there his stern integrity and consistent walking, his intrepid wrestling and heroic endurance-that we may be followers of his patience and faith, and ultimately share his crown. So marked and hallowed is this candour, that we do not wonder at its being alleged as an argument for the book's divinity. The characters are all human in their experience, although Divine in their portrayal. They were men those Bible worthies, world-renowned, God-smitten, princely men, towering indeed in moral, as Saul in physical, stature above their fellows, but still men of like passions with ourselves to the same frailties incident-with the same trials battling by the same temptations frequently and foully overcome. Their perfect humanness is, indeed, their strongest influence and greatest charm. Of what avail to us were the biography of an angel, could you chronicle his joys in the calm round of heaven? There could be no sympathy either of condition or experience.

But the Bible, assuming the essential identity of the race, tells of man, and the one blood" of all nations leaps up to the thrilling tale. There is the old narrative of lapse and loss; the tidings, ancient and undecaying, of temptation, conflict, mastery, recompense. In ourselves there have been the quiverings of David's sorrow, and the stirrings of David's sin. We, perhaps, like Elijah, have been by turns confessor and coward-fervent as Peter, and as faithless too. The heart answers to the history, and

responsive and struggling humanity owns the sympathy, and derives the blessing.

It is a strange history, this history of the Prophet Elijah. Throughout the whole of his career we are attracted almost more by his inspiration than by himself. We are apt to lose sight of the man in the thought of the Divine energy which wielded him at its terrible or gentle will. The unconsciousness of self, which is the distinctive mark of the true seer, is always present with him-in his manliest and in his meekest hours-in his solitary prayer in the loft at Zarephath, in his solemn sarcasm on the summit of Carmel, when he flushes the cheek of a dead child, or pales the brow of a living king. He is surrendered always to the indwelling God. He always seems to regard himself as a chosen and a separated man— lifted, by his consecration, above the love or the fear of his kind-forced, ever and anon, upon difficult and perilous duty—a flying roll, carven with mercy and with judgment—an echo, rather than an original utterance" the voice of one," not "one," but "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"

How abruptly he bursts upon the world! We know nothing of his birth, nothing of his parentage, nothing of his training. On all these matters the record is profoundly silent. He is presented to us at once, a full-grown and authoritative man, starting in the path of Ahab sudden as the lightning, energetic and alarm

ing as the thunder. "Elijah the Tishbite, who was

of the inhabitants of Gilead." This is all.
all we need. What reck we of his ancestry?

And it is

He is

royal in his deeds. probably from the herdmen or vine-dressers of Galilee, regarded by the men of Tishbe as one of themselves

Obscure in his origin, springing

a little reserved and unsocial withal-his person, perhaps, held in contempt by the licentious court, and his intrusions stigmatized as annoying impertinence, he held on his high way notwithstanding, performed stupendous miracles, received large revelations, and at last, tired of the world, went up to heaven in a chariot of fire. How often have we seen the main fact of this story realized in later times! Men have looked. at the trappings of the messenger-not at the import of his message. The faculty of appreciation has been grievously impaired. A prophet has leaped into the day with his burden of reproof and truth-telling, but he has not been clad in silken sheen, nor a speaker of smooth things, and the world has gone on to its merchandise, while the broken-hearted seer has retired into the wilderness to die. A poet has warbled out his soul in secret, and discoursed most exquisite music; but alas! it has been played among the tombs. A glorious iconoclast has come forth among the peoples, expecting that they would have understood how that the Lord by him had sent deliverance," but he has been met by the insulting rejoinder, "Who made thee a ruler and a judge?" Thus, in the days of her nonage, because they lacked high estate and lofty lineage, has the world poured contempt upon some of the choicest of her sons. "A heretic!" shouted the furious bigotry of the Inquisition. "And yet it moves," said Galileo-resolute, even in the moment of enforced abjuration, for the immutable truth. A scoffing to

Genoese bravos, grandees of Portugal, and the court of England, Columbus spied the log of wood in its eastward drifting, and opened up America-the rich El Dorado of many an ancient dream. "An empiric!" shouted all the Doctor Sangradoes of the time, and the old physiologists hated Harvey with an intensely professional hatred, because he affirmed the circulation of the blood. "A Bedfordshire tinker!" sneered the polite ones, with a whiff of the otto of roses, as if the very mention of his craft was infragrant-" What has he to do to preach, and write books, and set up for a teacher of his fellows?" But glorious John Bunyan, leaving them in their own Cabul-country, dwelt in the land of Beulah, climbed up straight to the presence of the shining ones, and had "all the trumpets sounding for him on the other side." Sydney Smith wrote at, and tried to write down, "the consecrated cobbler," who was to evangelize India; but William Carey shall live embalmed in the memories of converted thousands, long after the witty canon of St. Paul's is forgotten, or is remembered only as a melancholy example of genius perverted and a vocation mistaken. "A Methodist!" jested the godless witlings of Brazenose-"A Jacobin!" reiterated the makers of silver shrines-" A ringleader in the Gordon riots!" said the Romanists whose errors he had combated-and the formalistic churchmanship of that day gathered up its gentilities, smoothed its ruffled fringes, and with a dowager's stateliness flounced by" on the other side:" and reputable burghers, the canny bodies of the time, subsided into their own respectabilities, and shook their heads at every mention of the pestilent fellow but calm-browed and high

:

souled, John Wesley went on until a large portion of

light, and wondered at And if it be lawful to

his world-parish rejoiced in his its luminous and ardent flame. speak of the Master in the same list as his disciples, who, however excellent, fall immeasurably short of their Divine Pattern, he was called a Nazarene, and there was the scorn of a world couched in the contemptuous word.

There are symptoms, however, of returning sanity. Judicial ermine and archiepiscopal lawn robing the sons of tradesmen, and the blood of all the Montmorencies-fouled by mésalliance with crime-cooling itself in a common prison, are remarkable signs of the times. Men are beginning to feel conscious, not, perhaps, that they have committed a crime, but that they have been guilty of what in the diplomacy of Talleyrand was considered worse-that is, a blunder. Whether the chivalry of feudalism be extinct or not, there can be no question that the villeinage of feudalism is gone. Common men nowadays question the wisdom of nobilities, correct the errors of cabinets, and do not even listen obsequiously to catch the whispers of kings. That is a strong and growing world-feeling, which the poet embodies when he sings

"Believe us! noble Vere de Veres,

From yon blue heavens above us bent
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.

Howe'er it be, it seems to me

'Tis only noble to be good

Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood."

Not that rank has lost its prestige, nor royalty its