And

call this woman, and when she came he said to her, "Thou hast been very careful for us, we have enjoyed your hospitality, you have been most kind, most generous; what is to be done for you? Would you like me to say a word to the king for you, that he may raise you to higher honour; or to the captain of the host, that he may give you some advantage ?" And she answered, with great independence, "I dwell among mine own people,-I am quite happy in the midst of my own clan and family, and I have no wish for any additional honour or aggrandizement in this world." Then he said, “What is to be done for her?" Gehazi said, "She has but one crook in the lot, she has no child." You know that every woman in Israel hoped to be the mother of the promised Messiah, and for a wife not to have a child in ancient Israel was almost a shame; and a number of children, or many children, was one of the temporal promises of good that God made to his people Israel. Well, the prophet called to her, and said, in words startling to her, and startling still more, all the circumstances of the case considered, "Thou shalt embrace a son." And she said, "Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid:"-a very severe charge, but the thing seemed so absurd that she said so. But it came to pass as Elisha said, and the child was given to her. But how often have the blessings that we most earnestly desired turned out calamities that we cannot but deplore. This child grew up to boyhood; he went out to his father to bind a sheaf, and to hear the song, the musical song, of the reapers singing the harvest home, suddenly, in the heat of the sun, eridently the result of a sunstroke, he said, "My head,

my head." And the father, with an exquisite perception of the source of the truest sympathy, and of one who could give and administer the greatest relief, said, 'Carry him "—not to a physician, not to a servant, still less to a stranger, but carry him where all his griefs will have a resounding echo-"Carry him to his mother." "And when he had taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon." What an exquisite picture; what a fine sketch of that group a first-rate painter would make; it is full of suggestive, beautiful, and impressive thought. We then read that he died; and the mother took him and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and she called her husband, and begged that she might be sent instantly to him, to see if there could be any explanation of this strange phenomenon. The blessing he had promised without her asking, is the very blessing, after she had tasted its joys, that is now suddenly and unexpectedly taken from her.

When the prophet saw her approaching, he told Gehazi to go up to her, and ask the question, "Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child ?" and she, with Christian magnanimity and trust, answered, "It is well." When she came

to the man of God she fell at his feet, but Gehazi would have thrust her away, as if it was too friendly and too familiar with one so great as he felt his master to be. And she said, "Did I desire a son of my lord? I did not ask the blessing, the blessing has been sent me in answer to thy prayers; now the blessing that I fondled so dearly has been snatched from my bosom, and I am more desolate now than I was before." He then told Gehazi to go and lay his staff upon the

child, and he did so. The child was not recovered. It was supposed by some in his day, that the staff had miraculous virtue; perhaps his sending Gehazi with this staff was to shew that there was no virtue there, that the virtue that could quicken the dead child came from a higher source. He went himself; and used means. You will notice our Saviour never wrought a miracle without employing something that connected him, the miracle worker, with the subject on whom the miracle was wrought. For instance, in the case of the blind man he made clay, anointed his eyes. There was no virtue in the clay; there was nothing in the anointing; but it was evidence that the virtue proeeeded from or through him who thus connected himself by an outward and visible link with him who was to be the subject of the cure. So here he stretched himself upon the child; he prayed to God, as the author of the resurrection and the life; and then, the breath returning to the lungs, the child sneezed, and opened his eyes, and the warm tide of life circulated again through his veins, and he rose and mixed with the living that were about him. "And Elisha called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out."

We then read that there was a dearth at Gilgal, on a subsequent occasion, and at a subsequent period. It seems that in gathering herbs in the midst of the famine to feed the people, they gathered some wild. vine therewith, supposed to be a poisonous herb, mistaken for a wholesome and useful vegetable, shred it

with the rest of the food, and the bitter and acrid taste convinced them that they had made some fatal mistake. The prophet took meal, which had no healing virtue in it, and was merely the sign of the miracle being connected with him, the miracle worker, and the poison was removed.

A man then brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, and he said, "Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that they may eat; for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof." And it came to pass as he said.

All these are merely earnests of the greater miracles of a yet greater than Elisha. But you will notice one striking fact, that almost all the miracles of the Old Testament, and all the miracles performed by Christ, had each and all what I may call a redemptive character; they were not simply displays of omnipotent power, but manifestations of redemptive goodness. When Christ healed the sick, when he opened the eyes of the blind, when he quickened the dead, when he cured the paralytic, he gave in all these proofs of grace, healing what sin had done, and so far they were instalments of that magnificent restoration, when all sin, and sorrow, and tears, and disease, shall be cast out, and all things shall be made new, and the Prince of peace shall reign over a world at peace with itself, and at peace with God also.

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IT IS WELL.

"Run now, I pray thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well."-2 KINGS iv. 26,

THE great subject I would endeavour to illustrate, I trust not without a blessing, is that those dispensations of Providence, which appear to us altogether unmingled ill, have in their bosoms such blessings, we shall ultimately find, as will leave but one regret, that we ever murmured against God; and thus lead us to one conclusion, It is altogether well. The woman was asked first, "Is it well with thy husband ?" He was sorrowing and sad when he heard the intelligence; and yet she knew something in the facts of the case that enabled her to say, "It is well." And is it well with thee, the mourning, and the afflicted, and the brokenhearted mother. She too could answer, for reasons that she felt in the depths of her own experience, "It is well." And is it well with the child? She could answer with no less unhesitating confidence, "It is well with him also." What were the grounds on which she came to this conclusion-grounds on which we may come to a similar conclusion, not in this one incident, but in all incidents of an analogous and equally painful kind.

First of all then when she was asked, "Is it well,” she answered, "It is so," for she felt that the death of the child was a dispensation from God. View death as an accident, nothing is so deplorable; view death as an eruption from beneath, and nothing can be so pain