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satisfied with this prediction of the false prophets; Jehoshaphat being a Christian and a worshipper of the true God. "And the king of Israel said, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord; but I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil;" that is, he speaks the truth; and a bad man never likes the truth, because God's truth and man's bad conduct never can coincide and blend together. However, at last he was persuaded to send for him. "And the messenger that was gone to call Micaiah spake unto him, saying, Behold now, the words of the prophets declare good unto the king with one mouth; let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them and speak that which is good." This was a confidential friend of Ahab, sent to Micaiah; whom the king sent for not that he liked him, but that he did not like to seem afraid of hearing the opinion of anybody; and he sent this messenger quietly to whisper in his ear, now just do as you are bid; do not say anything that will dishearten the king; prophesy nothing but sunshine, don't let there be a speck of cloud in the whole sky; and you may depend upon it that by so speaking you will have the best of it, and it will be well with you. "But Micaiah said, As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak." There was a faithful and a fearless man, who spoke the truth, let the issue be what it might. Well, when he came and stood before Ahab, and Ahab asked, "Shall we go up against Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we forbear;" he answered at first, "Go, and prosper, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." It is supposed that this was said ironically; he

quotes, you observe, the very words of the heathen prophets; and it is not the words, but the manner in which the words were said, that constitutes their real significance. It is plain that he said it ironically. And the king then said, "How many times shall I adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of the Lord ?" And then he said,

I saw the vision, that is the token, of thy nearing catastrophe; all thy subjects scattered like sheep upon the mountains; and the king, the shepherd that governs them, gone or having disappeared. "And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee that he would prophesy no good concerning me, but evil." Now, then, the next question that arises is about this lying spirit, how God would sanction such a thing or permit such a thing. In the first place you will notice that this first statement of Micaiah in the 19th verse is not the statement of a fact, but of a vision. He said, "Hear thou therefore the word of the Lord; I saw the Lord sitting on his throne;" just as he saw all Israel scattered like sheep without a shepherd; so in a second vision, a sort of pictorial representation that swept before his eyes, he saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and heard the question asked, "Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead ?" And he says, "I saw an evil spirit offer his services to go out and persuade him that that would occur which would not occur." In the first place this is not a statement of fact, as if these events literally and historically occurred in heaven; but it is a vision, a portrait seen by the prophet, and declared by him. Secondly, the spirit of it however, how God would permit a lying

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spirit to go and deceive, still remains to be disposed of and to be vindicated.

God permits everything that happens; if you will push your reasoning very closely you might argue this way;-God is omniscient, he knows therefore evil that is, and evil that is approaching; and secondly, God is omnipotent, and he could if he liked prevent the evil, and permit only the good. But as a matter of fact he does not do so; when a false teacher persuades you to error he must have permission to do so; that is to say, God could restrain him, but he does not. The fact is, when we begin to solve the mystery of evil, why it came, why it is permitted, we are like Milton's angels reasoning of faith, foreknowledge, and high decrees; we are lost, and bewildered, and blind. There is no explanation, we can receive the facts, the atmosphere of mystery that surrounds the facts we cannot always penetrate. You might say, why does God permit slaughters, and murders, and cruelties, and atrocious crimes? we cannot answer; he does permit them. His omnipotence could prevent what his omniscience sees; and yet he permits it. When we read a drama we cannot understand it till we come to the last act: this is a great mysterious drama; God's providential dealings in our world are full of perplexity; but when the close comes, when the last act shall be performed, and the last words shall be spoken, and the mist shall be lifted up into everlasting sunshine, and we shall see no more through a glass darkly, no more through a veil dimly, but all things shall lie in everlasting light; then we shall see that wisdom, and goodness, and mercy were put forth by God continually; that wherever there was cloud,

distress and sorrow, and suffering, and grief, that was not God inflicting it, but sin originating it, and God perhaps waiting to teach man that sin is a very bitter thing, and to enable him at the end to magnify that grace that redeemed him from all its thraldom, its misery, and its issues.

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AHAZIAH.

II KINGS, CHAPTER II.

AHAZIAH'S ACCIDENT, HIS APPEAL TO BAALZEBUB. THE WORD OF ELIJAH. JUDGMENT ON THE CAPTAIN AND HIS FIFTY, A CAPTAIN SPARED. THE JUDGMENT ON THE KING.

It is most important we should recollect, in reading these chapters, that we are reading not simply the outer history of mankind, which this world's historians record, but that we have the veil, as it were, drawn aside for a little, and the motive springs, and the sources, and the reasons of the outward acts laid bare. If this history had been written by a human historian, he would have said a captain and fifty came up to invite a certain person, supposed to be a prophet, to come and see the sick king, and a flash of lightning or a thunder cloud burst, and they were all destroyed; and that this was an untoward or an unlucky accident. But when we read the record in the Word of God, we discover that no flash leaps from the cloud that has not its mission; that there is no accident or incident in which directly or indirectly God is not concealed, and where we can see no reason, and trace no just ground for what seems to us a very terrible visitation, if our eyes were opened as the prophet's were on a former occasion, we should see that there are reasons, deep and real, and numerous, for every incident and accident, as the world calls it, which took place.

Here we are told of Ahaziah, the world would say by accident, falling down through a lattice, as it is here

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