whether he chose to strike them dead, or whether he chose to send the bears from the wood to devour them, is was a judicial act; and shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

A DOUBLE PORTION OF THE SPIRIT.

"And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee, &c."-2 KINGS ii. 9, 10.

ELIJAH was so thoroughly and entirely a Protestant that he said to Elisha, Ask if I can bestow upon you any favour when it is within my power to do so; for after I am removed neither my intercession nor influence will be able to bestow any. Ask therefore what I shall do for thee before it be too late for me to be of any use to you—namely, when I shall be taken away. Elisha said, I have only one desire; and that is, that a double portion of that Holy Spirit which has actuated, and enabled thee to perform all thy wondrous acts of beneficence and power, may be bestowed upon me. Elijah said, Thou hast asked a hard thing, and a thing that I cannot perform; nevertheless, I am authorized to tell you that if you see me ascend into the opening sky, that ascent will be to you a pledge that God will bestow upon you a double portion of his Holy Spirit; but if you do not see me, but are removed from me, then no such

presence will be granted as that which you have now asked. The lesson I am desirous of impressing upon you in this reading is a most precious one, the necessity of our asking what the God of Elijah, or rather the God and Father of our Saviour Jesus Christ is ever ready to bestow-a double portion of his Holy Spirit. Elisha seems to have valued supremely-not exclusively-the highest, the holiest, even heavenly things. He saw in the prospect of his ascending master what we should now see in the recollection of our ascended Lord, nothing magnificent but heaven, nothing essential but eternity, nothing glorious but God; until the whole soul, as in his case, filled with the splendour of the vision, counts all but loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Him; and like Simeon is ready to depart in peace, having seen the Lord's salvation. At the same time it is but right and proper to observe, that this supreme desire of heavenly, spiritual and eternal things does not imply no sympathy with or no desire for sublunary and terrestrial things. It is not the language of Christianity to say, Denounce the world and all that is about you in the world in order that you may thus magnify and glorify all that is in heaven. The stoic may despise or the epicurean may wallow in the things of this world; but the Bible, replete with common sense, tells us to weep, but as though we wept not; to rejoice, as though we rejoiced not; to use the world as not abusing it, for the fashion of it passeth away. It is therefore most unreasonable in the Christian preacher to bid his audience extinguish within them the love of every thing that is in the world. When the love of the world, however, becomes so dominant within you that you sacri,

fice to it the higher interests of the soul, and the claims of duty, of conscience, and God's word, then it becomes the root of countless and incalculable evils.

This prayer of Elisha suggests, in the next place, the vast importance, whilst not extinguishing the love of all that is in the world, of so subordinating it that we shall set our affections not exclusively, but chiefly, on things that are eternal. Those things that are above have weight, and bulk, and reality; the brightest and most beautiful things must fade. I often feel, and I dare say it has sometimes flitted across your minds, when the summer comes I cannot enjoy its beauty from the forebodings that it must so soon pass away. And so the dearest and the nearest blessings that one has, one is reminded, as the Psalmist says, to have and possess with trembling. How fragile, precocious, and uncertain they are. But those things that are above are so real, so substantial, they so satisfy the deep wants and fill the large capacities of the immortal soul, that when you set your heart upon them you set it upon things that satisfy and are certain, the possession of which never disappoints. This is a very important distinction. There is no earthly thing that seemed to you charming and beautiful in the distance, that did not disappoint you in some measure when it ceased to be a desire, but a possession. This lies in the nature of all terrestrial things; what seems luxury in the distant horizon is no sooner within the walls of our own house than it assumes the shape of a necessity; and we enjoy it no more than if we had it not. God shews us that man's soul has indeed fallen, seeing it sets its affections on passing and earthly things; but there survives in that soul one magnificent

stamp of its original greatness-that all the grandeur that it seeks can never satisfy it. David reached the culminating point of human greatness; and seated on a throne, surrounded by loyal subjects, with the bravest troops that ever unsheathed a sword to defend his realm and his throne, he cried from a yearning and unsatisfied heart, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest." Happiness does not consist in wealth, nor in power and great. ness; it relates to the heart. It only feels at rest in God as the spring of happiness, and thus man becomes happy. Of all earthly things it may be said, "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him, it shall be to him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life."

Let us observe here, the intensity of Elisha's peti tion. It was no half-and-half desire. I have but one desire that I may have a double portion of the Holy Spirit thou hast. He must have known its value; he must have appreciated the excellency of the possession, You may depend upon it that if we appreciate aright the safety of the soul, the happiness of heaven, the uncertainty of life, the instancy of the future, the certainty of death-we shall ask the blessings that we need with no stammering lips, but from the heart; intensely as the exile seeks his home, the slave liberty, the sick health, as the dying yearns for life that cannot die. But before we can obtain any blessing, we see in every page of the Bible that it is essential to ask of God. God has linked together our ask. ing and His giving by a bond that can never be broken. You may hear some persons of a metaphysi

cal turn of mind argue in this way;-God is so good that if he sees man needs anything that is good for him He will give it without our asking. I will accept your proposition; of course you will not shrink from carrying it out; because what is good in higher things is good in lower things. God sees his creatures need bread, therefore He will give them golden harvests without their being at the trouble of ploughing and sowing. God sees they need the treasures of distant lands; therefore He will send them across the ocean without your being at the trouble of building ships, and chartering them to distant parts of the earth. If you do not sow there will be no harvest; and yet if you sow and God do not bless there will be no harvest. So in prayer: God has made prayer the sowing, and has promised to prayer the blessing that is sought, and if you do not seek He will not give; and the man that never prays, depend upon it, never possesses spiritual and eternal things. But why should any one hesitate about prayer? Some people seem to have the idea that it is a loss of dignity for man to pray. If man were the highest angel that soars on unwearied pinion about God's throne, it would be his dignity, not his shame, to kneel and ask. The highest subject of the realm asks of our most gracious Queen what she has promised to bestow; and in asking he does not feel he loses, but rather that he is covered, because permitted, with a greater dignity. And shall we not carry the same great law into the court of the King of kings, and feel that the mightiest on earth a suppliant on his knees before God shines in the glory of a heavenly presence, and is dignified, not degraded, in asking all things, from a crumb of bread to a crown of glory?