terness of it found expression. But what is posthu mous justice to the heart that ached then?

What greater minds like Elijah's have felt intensely, all we have felt in our own degree. Not one of us but what has felt his heart aching for want of sympathy. We have had our lonely hours, our days of disappointment, and our moments of hopelessness, — times when our highest feelings have been misunderstood, and our purest met with ridicule.

Days when our heavy secret was lying unshared, like ice upon the heart. And then the spirit gives way: we have wished that all were over; that we could lie down tired, and rest like the children, from life; that the hour was come when we could put down the extinguisher on the lamp, and feel the last grand rush of darkness on the spirit.

...: Now, the final cause of this capacity for depression, the reason for which it is granted us, is that it may make God necessary. In such moments it is felt that sympathy beyond human is needful. Alone, the world against him, Elijah turns to God. "It is enough; now, O Lord."

3. Want of occupation.

As long as Elijah had a prophet's work to do, severe as that work was, all went on healthily; but his occupation was gone. To-morrow and the day after, what has he left on earth to do? The misery of having nothing to do proceeds from causes voluntary or invol untary in their nature. Multitudes of our race, by circumstances over which they have no control, in single life or widowhood,-in straitened circumstances, are compelled to endure lonely days, and still more lonely nights and evenings. They who

have felt the hours hang so heavy can comprehend part of Elijah's sadness.

This misery, however, is sometimes voluntarily i incurred. In artificial civilization certain persons exempt themselves from the necessity of work. They eat the bread which has been procured by the sweat of the brow of others; they skim the surface of the thought which has been ploughed by the sweat of the brain of others. They are reckoned the favored ones of fortune, and envied. Are they blessed? The law of life is, In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread. No man can evade that law with impunity. Like all God's laws, it is its own executioner. It has strange penalties annexed to it. Would you know. them? Go to the park, or the esplanade, or the soli tude after the night of dissipation, and read the penalties of being useless in the sad, jaded, listless countenances, nay, in the very trifles which must be contrived to create excitement artificially. Yet these very eyes could, dull as they are, beam with intelligence; on many of those brows is stamped the mark of possible nobility. The fact is, that the capacity of ennui is one of the signatures of man's immortality. It is his very greatness which makes inaction misery. If God had made us only to be insects, with no aobler care incumbent on us than the preservation of our lives, or the pursuit of happiness, we might be content to flutter from sweetness to sweetness, and from bud to flower. But if men with souls live only to eat and drink and be amused, is it any wonder if life be darkened with despondency?

4. Disappointment in the expectation of success. On Carmel the great object for which Elijah had lived

seemed on the point of being realized. Baal's proph ets were slain; Jehovah acknowledged with one. voice; false worship put down. Elijah's life-aim, the transformation of Israel into a kingdom of God, was all but accomplished. In a single day all this bright picture was annihilated.

Man is to desire success, but success rarely comes. The wisest has written upon life its sad epitaph-"All is vanity," that is, nothingness.

The tradesman sees the noble fortune for which he lived, every coin of which is the representative of so much time and labor spent, squandered by a spendthrift son. The purest statesmen find themselves at last neglected, and rewarded by defeat. Almost never can a man look back on life and say that its anticipations have been realized. For the most part life is disappointment, and the moments in which this is keenly realized are moments like this of Elijah's.

II. God's treatment of it.

1. First, he recruited his servant's exhausted strength. Read the history. Miraculous meals are given, then Elijah sleeps, wakes, and eats on the strength of that, goes forty days' journey. In other words, like a wise physician, God administers food, rest, and exercise; and then, and not till then, proceeds to expostulate, for, before, Elijah's mind was unfit for reasoning.

Persons come to the ministers of God in seasons of despondency; they pervert, with marvellous ingenuity, all the consolation which is given them, turning wholesome food into poison. Then we begin to perceive the wisdom of God's simple, homely treatment of Elijah,

and discover that there are spiritual cases which are cases for the physician rather than the divine.

2. Next Jehovah calmed his stormy mind by the healing influences of Nature. He commanded the hurricane to sweep the sky, and the earthquake to shake the ground. He lighted up the heavens till they were one mass of fire. All this expressed and reflected Elijah's feelings. The mode in which Nature soothes us is by finding meeter and nobler utterance for our feelings than we can find in words, by expressing and exalting them. In expression there is relief. Elijah's spirit rose with the spirit of the storm. Stern, wild defiance, strange joy-all by turns were imaged there. Observe, "God was not in the wind," nor in the fire, nor in the earthquake. It was Elijah's stormy self reflected in the moods of the tempest, and giving them their character.

Then came a calmer hour. Elijah rose in reverence, --felt tenderer sensations in his bosom. He opened his heart to gentler influences, till at last out of the manifold voices of Nature there seemed to speak, not the stormy passions of the man, but the "still small voice" of the harmony and the peace of God.

There are some spirits which must go through a discipline analogous to that sustained by Elijah. The storm-struggle must precede the still small voice. There are minds which must be convulsed with doubt before they can repose in faith. There are hearts which must be broken with disappointment before they can rise into hope. There are dispositions which, like Job, must have all things taken from them, before they can find all things again in God. Blessed is the man who, when the tempest has spent its fury, recognizes

his Father's voice in its undertone, and bares his head and bows his knee, as Elijah did. To such spirits, generally those of a stern, rugged cast, it seems as if God had said: "In the still sunshine and ordinary ways of life you cannot meet Me; but, like Job, in the desolation of the tempest you shall see My Form, and hear My Voice, and know that your Redeemer liveth." 3. Besides, God made him feel the earnestness of life. What doest thou here, Elijah? Life is for doing: a prophet's life for nobler doing, not doing, but moaning.

and the prophet was

Such a voice repeats itself to all of us, rousing us from our lethargy, or our despondency, or our protracted leisure, "What doest thou here?"- here in this short life. There is work to be done; evil put down God's church purified good men encouraged-doubting men directed a country saved time going life a dream-eternity long one chance, and but one forever. What doest thou here?

Then he went on further, "Arise, go on thy way." That speaks to us: on thy way. Be up and doing fill up every hour, leaving no crevice, nor craving for a remorse or a repentance to creep through afterwards. Let not the mind brood on self; save it from speculation, from those stagnant moments in which the awful teachings of the spirit grope into the unfathomable unknown, and the heart torments itself with questions which are insoluble except to an active life. For the awful future becomes intelligible only in the light of a felt and active present. Go, return on thy way if thou art desponding, -on thy way, health of spirit

will return.

4. He completed the cure by the assurance of vic