STORY XXII.

THE FLIGHT OF ELIJAH.

WHEN Ahab had got home, he made haste to tell Jezebel all he had seen and heard. How Baal's prophets had called on their god, and bawled as loud as they could, and that he could not hear them, or send them a spark of fire; but that Elijah only began praying, when, lo, the heavens opened, and a mass of flames fell on his sacrifice, and consumed it, and the stones of the altar, and dried up the twelve barrels of water he had poured in the trench. And how all the people had fallen on their faces, and owned Elijah's God as the true God; and finally, how the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal had been slain.'

He told her, that Elijah had done all this;

whereas he should have said, it was the Lord, in answer to the prayers of Elijah. It looks as if he thought that the prophet had wrought this miracle by some secret craft of his own, by which he had deceived the people; and so, if this were the case, Baal might yet be a god. How true is the saying of the wise man,-" Bray a fool in a mortar, yet will his foolishness not depart from him."

Now the torrents of rain were falling over all the land, how ought he and his subjects to have adored and praised the living and the true God, the giver not only of the rain, but of "every good and perfect gift."3

But Jezebel, when she heard of the death of Baal's prophets, was in a great rage, and she sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life, as the life of one of them, by to-morrow about this time !"

She would have been more likely to have cut him off, if she had not sent to give him warning. See how God takes "the wise in their own crafti

ness. But she made sure, now she knew where he was, of slaying him. Just as Pharaoh did of destroying Israel. He said, "I will arise," I will do what I please, and so on. And he did so; but he and his hosts perished in the mighty waters.*

It is a proud word for any mortal to say, that he WILL do this or that "to-morrow." But Jezebel said, she would cut off the prophet tomorrow. How did she know she might not be dead before the dawn of to-morrow? Herod said, that he would kill Peter to-morrow; but the night before, God sent his angel to open the prisondoors, and so he was saved from his cruel hands." The power of life and death is not in the keeping of any one of our race.

And Elijah was much afraid; and he arose and fled in haste to Beersheba, which was not in the kingdom of Ahab. There, as he wished to be alone, to think of the sad state of things, and to pray that God would appear for his cause in the land of Israel, he left his servant. But he ought not to have fled; for God, who had preserved him