feels it his duty and privilege instantly to obey it. When he came to the gate of the city, the widow woman, a victim of the universal famine, was gathering sticks in order to light a little fire that she might cook a meal for herself and for her child. The prophet said, to her, "Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink." And when she was going to fetch it, he added that he was hungry as well as thirsty, and said, "Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand." And she said, “As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and, behold, I am gathering two sticks that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die." Elijah instantly replied, in words that must have startled her, "Fear not, go and do as thou hast said; but make me thereof a little cake first," asking first for himself, "and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and thy son." Here was a test of her faith; a test that we sometimes may be summoned to experience; where God says, Give sacrifice, do what first is dutiful to me, and then I will take care of your own interests temporal and eternal. The widow, believing that he was a prophet, instantly did what he told her; and he added to her the confirmatory prophecy, "The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth." She did what he commanded her, however difficult; and she found the fulfilment of the prophecy, for "the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah." Here is one of the best precedents for our

sacrificing to the spread of the Gospel, the claims of humanity, the interests of souls, in compliance with the will and word of God. You never yet heard in all your experience of a man exhausting his all by his liberality to the claims of man, of souls, and of God. Nay, it is literally true, and I have seen instances myself in my own experience, that men who have given most liberally, with almost disproportionate liberality, to the claims of their fellow-creatures, have become richer by it. One candle may light a thousand, but it does not burn one whit the less brightly that it does so. The greatest giver is always the greatest receiver; there is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and you never heard a man upon his death-bed say, I destroyed all my property, and lost my estate, by my excessive love to the Saviour, my great sacrifices for my brethren of mankind, or by my liberality in any good work.

We then come to the close of the chapter, where the widow's son dies, Elijah restores him by a special miracle, and places him again in the bosom of his sorrowing mother, and she recognizes him as the prophet of the Lord his God. To this we will revert our next chapter.

THE WIDOW'S SON.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE DEATH AND RESTORATION OF THE WIDOW'S SON.

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"And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him," &c. 1 Kings xvii. 17—24.

THERE is presented here a specimen of a group of miracles contained in the Old Testament Scriptures, differing in several respects from the more brilliant, and I may add magnificent, miracles recorded in the New Testament. If we compare the miracles wrought by the servants of God prior to the birth of Christ with those which were done by our Lord and the Apostles at the dawn of the Christian era, we shall see two great points of contrast. For instance, the miracles in the Old Testament appear to have been wrought-I speak of the appearance-with greater difficulty. Moses pleads long before the leprosy of his sister is healed; Elijah prays over the child taken to the prophet's chamber in the widow's house; and after praying and stretching himself on the child three times, he is restored to life. Elijah's servant had, when his master prayed, to go seven times before the rain appeared. Christ's miracles seem to have been done at once, without a moment's difficulty, or an instant's delay. The miracles in the New Testament seem to have greater glory. For instance, Elisha feeds a hundred people with twenty loaves; our blessed Lord

feeds 5000 persons with five loaves. Moses required his rod, Elijah his mantle; but Christ simply by his word achieved the most stupendous results. The Old Testament miracles had about them an aspect of terror and of awfulness, while the New Testament miracles overflow with kindness, beneficence, and love. The Old Testament miracles, lastly, seem to deal chiefly with the outer physical and material world. Those of the New Testament seem to rise to a higher level, and to touch the soul, deal with its sins, illuminate its prospects, strengthen its hopes, and inspire it with a sense of the radiance of the blessed, and a forelight of the everlasting day.

The prophet, in obedience to the word of God, flees a fugitive from starvation to the borders of the brook Cherith, and eventually seeks a shelter and a home, and a cake of bread from a poor widow at Za rephath. Our blessed Lord makes use of this incident, when he says that there were many widows at that time in the land of Israel, but unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. God singled out this poor widow to be the recipient and the memorial of some of the greatest blessings that he had to bestow. When she put trust in the prophet's word, and gave credit to the prophet's prediction, she found it literally and strictly came to pass. Her hospitality to Elijah was the best bargain she ever made; her sacrifice to save a prophet from famine was the greatest saving. God never leaves him to pine of want who has never forgotten to give to the claims of the needy, and in obedience to the commandments of God. When this prophet, invested with supernatural power, was sent

on an embassy to this poor widow in order to live in her home, and participate of her humble fare, he expresses no reluctance, feels no difficulty. Had he acted by sense and sight he might have said, "There is famine over all the land, so great that I cannot get a morsel to save myself from starvation, how can I expect that this poor widow, equally a sufferer from the universal famine, will be able to give me a morsel of bread ?" But he had faith in the inexhaustible provision of the God that gave him the precept. He went accordingly to this woman's humble home, and there we find him occupying the prophet's chamber, spared with the widow from the sufferings of the famine, and hidden by her sheltering roof from the lynx eyes of the wicked and the profligate Ahab. Never was archbishop in his palace happier than that prophet in his humble chamber. The truth is, it is a lesson that we often hear, but which we are all slow to learn, that happiness is not in what people have, but in what people are in the sight of God, and in relation to themselves. Many a happier heart beats in a Scottish shieling, or an Irish cabin, than in noble hall and in royal palace. All our prescriptions for making man happy are wrong. Our prescription is, give man what he has not, and you will make him happy. God's prescription is, make man what he is not, and then only he will be happy. We propose changing the patient's bed in order that the patient may be made well; God restores the patient's health, and then the prophet's rude bed is soft and warm enough for him.

When so sainted a man came to this home, one would have thought all would have been prosperity in' the experience of the widow and her son. She had as