"The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" or, "Thou wast Israel's artillery and cavalry;" according to an interpretation of some one, whose spirit was not so utterly unlike the spirit of the Tishbite. Yes; that is what Elisha meant to say. "The car of battle art thou, and its army-banner, its bulwarks and pallisades, its lightning legion, and its invincible armada!" What an invocation is that! What a noble, majestic testimony! Yet, what is there contained more in this testimony than a faithful portrait of the man whom God, în fact, made as an iron bulwark round about His Zion, and in whose person He had united a whole armed force against the foes of Israel. Consider only on the devouring flames which his zeal for the house of the Lord conjured down upon the adversaries of God and his people, and the dreadful defeat which, on mount Carmel, he, as with one wave of his hand, spread over the destroyers of his nation. Reflect on the awful thunder which he bore upon his lips for the blasphemers of Jehovah, and of the subduing, levelling power, which he was wont to exercise with a glance of his eye, or by the weight of his appearance, over the most firm and daring spirits. He spake, and horse and momentous inscription which he placed, as it were, upon his monument, upon his triumphal arch. Out of these words shines forth again upon us the whole glory and splendour in which God has invested this man and his appearance, at the same time that therein is disclosed to us one page concerning this mighty warrior which we have certainly but seldom seen presented to us in his history. Elisha styles him his father. "My father! my father!" he cries and the name of "father" may never, probably, have been pronounced on earth with stronger emotion, and more inward tenderness of feeling, than it was here shouted after him who was the dearest friend Elisha had ever possessed in the world. It is as if he still desired to draw back the departing prophet, with this love-appeal, as with a chain of gold, out of the very heavens again into his arms; so longing with desire, so filial in his entreating, does it sound, whilst it announces a connection of heart in which the two have stood to one another, which, in the case of Elijah, may have for us, who almost have only been made acquainted with this son of thunder from the scenes of his judge-like acts of terror, a feature well-nigh astounding. For we could not have understood ourselves, if we had attempted to indicate the feel-rider stood still as if thunderstruck. He threatened, ing which was wont to overpower us at his appearance by the term of an intimate confidence. The imposing halo of fire in which this armourer of Jehovah has come forth to meet us has but commanded our reverence, and the exalted, majestic gravity which has rested on his whole appearance presents him to our gaze, for the most part, like a being from another world, to whom the purely human aspects and the more delicate affections of our own spirit must needs be strange. Elisha, however, who had learnt to know the Master of Israel well from private intercourse, knew better what Elijah was; he had watched even his most minute thoughts; and in this mighty being he had learned, at the same time, to recognise the man. Oh, what a gentle spirit was Elijah! What an affectionate and inwardly sympathizing friend had the chariot of fire taken from his side in him! No, no, thinks Elisha, a sincerer or more delicately sensitive heart has never breathed on earth than I have found in his bosom! How happy, how beneficial was it, to be near him! What a heaven full of love could beam from his eye! With what tender care would he devote himself to even the smallest matters of his friends! How would he comfort, raise up, and cheer, those in trouble. How susceptible was he, although habituated almost entirely to the supernatural, to every thing, whether trifling or important, that occurred to him either in nature or in the world of the human mind, that was beautiful and touching; and if at one moment he had stood terrible in the scene of conflict, with the drawn sword of the Spirit in his hand, he was ready the next moment after, to become like a mother, gathering the like-minded under the wings of his love, taking the timid and bashful confidingly to his breast. What, then, had not Elisha lost in that man! The happiest, the most important hours of his life had been passed with him. Ah, what recollections would now hover about his soul, as if in the light of revelation! What a surging sea of longing, of affection, gratitude, and sorrow, are poured out in the parting exclamation, "My father! my father!" and tyrants, trembling, fell back mute and aghast at his rebuke. He commanded in the name of God, and fire and sword united to extirpate from the earth, root and branch, a whole generation of rulers, because it had taken the field against the kingdom of the Lord. He raged in spirit, and his wrath was as a burning fire, which consumed a whole host of lying priests from out of the land of Israel. In all these occurrences, who does not hear already the roaring of that heavy artillery which, in this man, rolled throughout the land of Samaria; who does not behold therein the charge of that cavalry which, concentrated in the solitary Tishbite, marched on with banners flying under Jehovah's command against the realm of darkness and its chief. And what a wall of protection was this man round about the believers in the land! What a barricade around the Zion of the true Church! How did he encourage the trembling and scattered flock, by precept and example! How did he, for their sakes, throw himself into the breach, that their faith might not fail! And what encouragements to perseverance went forth to them, both in precept and example, from this champion of their militant host! And Elijah was not alone their champion and standard-bearer; he was at the same time the shield above their head, and the panoply about their breast. For courage gradually failed even the most panting tyrants, to strive farther against the defences of a man out of whose mouth proceeded devouring fire, and who was more formidable to them in his invisible armour than whole forests of the Syrian and Philistine lances. And this was the man who had now departed! This phalanx of Israel, and its bulwark, was now taken away! What must now be the consequence? Who now plead the cause of our God, and oppose his breast to His foes? O thou irreparable one, alas! that thou really must leave us! "My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" It is long since the Church of God has beheld men worthy of this majestic title. The days in which we live are meagre, and spiritually impo verished, although the kingdom of darkness, as it appears, keeps its festivals, and has no want of champions and heroes. But we wait also for a time still to come, when, according to the promise, "The Lord of Hosts shall visit His flock, the house of Judah, and make them as His goodly horse in the battle; and they shall be as mighty men, which tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle;" for a time when, in the still greater imitators of the zeal of the man of Tishbeh, the daughter of Zion shall place once more her chariots and cavalry-hosts in the field of battle, and in the might of the strength of Jehovah again destroy, in a short space of time, the Babelwalls of the anti-christ like straw. Until then, however, the cry must be, "Here is the patience of the saints!" and, again, until then, ought generally never to be forgotten what a small couplet briefly, but truly, says :— lion, they hurl to the dust troops of fighting men, they restrain decrees of wrath, they menace the swelling waves of the sea, and disperse the furious storm. O happy is the place which contains such believers for its inhabitants: they are more useful to it than if it were surrounded by a brazen wall and ramparts of rocks. Happy the church whose hussars are "the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" They are Israel's chariot, when, like Moses once, they journey with you on the fiery wheels of mediation, through the clouds to God's throne; Israel's horsemen are they, when they fall upon you with their weapons, exclaiming, "Thou, thou art the man of death!" Israel's chariot are they, when, with a bold, joyful courage, they thresh all high places under your feet, that Christ alone may be exalted, and nothing else; Israel's horsemen are they, when in the armour of God, when they keep the field for you day and night, against the power of Satan and "Consecrate, in olden time, was the cedar and the palm-his spirit of lies. Pray, my beloved, for your own Holy are, in modern day, weakly tendrils, tender halm-weal, that God may consecrate your teachers also tree; tree." as such people, and that at some future period you may be able to place upon their grave stone, to the praise of Almighty God, something similar to what Elisha inscribed upon the monumental pillar of his friend and master: "The chariot of Israel art thou, and the horsemen thereof!" III. Elisha still remained watching his master's triumphal car, although it was already disappearing from view in the immeasurable empyrean, and the glowing wheels seem now to the eye but as two faintly burning starlets, the horses of fire like a pair of waning comets, and the whole equipage like a meteor without shape, and continually fading upon the eye. A moment after, nothing but a gleam of light is visible in the far distance, like a lustrous streak of silver, and now, even this has disappeared, and a few remotely-echoing dull peals of thunder announce to the prophet below the arrival of his friend in the neighbourhood of the city of Jehovah. Elisha beholds now nothing more than the black cloud which droops dark and mournful over him from the sky, and the silent stars which now already regard him here and there through the cleft tracery of the clouds, and seem to motion towards him a tender, In a certain sense, however, the honourable title, "The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof," belongs now to all true believers and righteous men, and especially to those who know how to pray in the spirit of the new testament. Look towards Sodom,-why hung the clouds of fire so long broodingly over this city, longing to burst in all their destruction upon it, and could not? One single man held them together, acting as a girdingwall about the city, and a shield of many thousands. A solitary righteous man places a barrier upon the floods of wrath, over which they cannot pass. For what does the Lord testify concerning this man? "I cannot do anything till thou be come theuce." Look across into the wilderness. Who is that prostrated there upon the earth, stretching his hands towards heaven? Who is the petitioner ? It is Moses, the servant of Jehovah. Turn now your gaze, and cast it upon the distant plain. Listen to the din of war there! What clashing of arms, what neighing of steeds! Amalek against Israel; and, see! Amalek gives way, flies, falls, and remains dead upon the field of battle, trodden" Weep not, Elisha!" Over the wilderness evening under foot! Who gained the battle? The swords of Israel? Assuredly not; the arm of the worshipper yonder. In Moses you behold Israel's horsemen and war-chariots. Look forth towards Mizpah, in the open plain. What a host of armed men! Here the Philistines, past numbering, in masses thickly compacted; and there a small weak band under Juda's banner, filled with dread and trembling. But, in the back ground, behold a solitary man, who sacrifices a ewe-lamb, and cries unto the Lord. That is Samuel. And, whilst he raises his glance upward, behold, a mighty peal passes over the Philistines, so that they shrink together, are struck with amazement, lose heart, and are "smitten with the edge of the sword." Who smote them? Jehovah; at the appeal of Samuel and thus was Samuel Israel's artillery and strength of arms. Behold, my beloved, this can believers do! For faith takes hold of the promise, and in the promise takes hold of the almighty power of God, and thus can do all things. They defend cities, they decide the battle, they aim the host of war, they stay the raging spreads its grey mantle, the wind sighs in the thicket, more faintly is heard the rushing of the Jordan in the distance, and from the forests and the clefts of the rocks already the shriek of the nightbird, and the roaring of the hungry beast of prey, break upon the ear. A melancholy past describing falls then upon the prophet. Ah! thought he, would but a second chariot came to convey him also beyond the dark valley of the shadow of death and of tears. Ah, what a painful feeling of loneliness, and deprivation, and abandonment, that threatens to burst his heart. What an unutterable never-before experienced home-sickness, that, like a consuming fire, burns throughout his inner man. All that he feels harmonizes with the lament of David: "Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech and dwell in the tents of Kedar." And in this sensation of desire-fraught sadness, which demands expression, were it only in the silence of an outward mark of mourning, Elisha rent his own clothes in two pieces, exclaiming: "My father, my father!" No, my beloved, we are not in a situation to comprehend and sympathize entirely with Elisha's danger is horrible; you however know it not; you do not wish to know it. Suddenly, your last hour strikes in the clock-tower of eternity; but, no angel prepares to fetch you home, no peaceful ta sorrow; because we have never yet had to mourn over the departure home of such a man as Elijah. We ought to have lived to see the death of a Luther or Calvin, or even have stood at the grave of a John Arndt, a Frauke, or a Bengel, to be ena-bernacle of the skies is opened for your reception, bled to perceive what that meaneth, when Israel is driven to exclaim: "The crown is fallen from our head, our fathers have sinned, and are not." Let us imagine to ourselves the feeling produced in the more limited circle of a family, at the loss of a beloved father, or a tender mother, and then apply it, in an increased degree, to the whole community of the saints as a body. Not one house alone, but a whole world we shall find, becomes then a desolate waste. Not within a few chambers only will a void be felt, but as far as the clouds extend. Through thousands of souls there passes a billow-stroke of longing aspiration for home, which is never again allayed, and the Church feels as though the heaven were hung with funeral bells, as if the whole earth were arrayed in one dark veil. But the images of those departed hence live and shine in the minds of those that love them, like the figure of the sun, which, mirroring itself in the waters, attracts them at the same time into its own spheres; and sorrow transmutes itself into the enchanting prospect-"They are only gone before us; we shall follow them!" Yes, whatever of the truly great and grand the earth hath borne and still beareth, even should it vanish before the perishable eye, to the children of God it is still unlost. It awaits us in the treasure-chambers of heaven, in order there to beam on us again in increased splendour, Short was the space of time that elapsed before this endearing thought, like an angel with the palm-branch, had found the sorrowing heart of Elisha, therein to set joy once more on its throne. And in like manner may it then seek out our heart also, when we too with sorrowfraught desire take our leave of the wilderness by Jordan, and would likewise rather see that the wheels of our chariot also rested even now upon the stars than that they bore us back again from the blessed threshold of the opened paradise to the toil and trouble of every-day life. But, patience, beloved! Time rolls along quickly; our longing will reach its term. For the hour must strike once, and who knows how soon the maternal bosom of eternal love will open itself to us also, and "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" sweep over us from the palm-peaks of Eden. You, however, poor soul! who suffer your longing after home to sleep; it is you that I mean, you unconverted, you despiser of the atoning blood, you who are shy of approaching the cross, you that choose not the honey out of the carcass of the slaughtered lion of the Lord, and follow another standard than that of mount Calvary, how shall I describe to you your wretched condition? In your case also there will be a setting out. But the goal thereof? Listen, how the devils cry, "Lord Jesus, command us not to go out into the deep!" thus do you know it. Behold, man, you also shall hear now what will one day be your fate. Before your eye also the regions are suffered to open themselves at a distance, in which this very day perhaps, or to-morrow, your course terminates. Airily and lightly you go on your way; you exclaim, "Peace!" when indeed there is no peace; you call out, "There is no danger!" and yet the no garland of life wreathed for your temples. Your Yes, disguise it from yourself no longer, but tremble which they writhe. And, while you look at the illand quake! Unhappy man! it is in the hand fated crew, you are encircled by the brooks of of the devil that you behold yourself, and on your Belial also, and an extremity of distress breaks in pilgrimage to hell! There you now stand, and upon you, in comparison with which the most conjure the hideous, grisly company into which you awful visitation that you knew on earth vanishes have fallen, to set you once more free, to let you like nothing. Alas! alas! what a misery, what an return once more bodily to the earth. But, "Never indescribable lamentation; and, far and wide, no again," is the reply. You fall on your knees before helper, and no more sacrifice for sins; and, instead them, like a beggar, and supplicate for it; but of sympathy, the bitter laugh of scorn; and, in they laugh you to scorn. You kiss their accursed place of encouragement, a fiendish, "Look to yourfeet, and "beseech them to restore you your liberty self!" Alas, affection dwells not in these gloomy once more!" but they only jeer at your lamen-regions, and, woe! hope also moves not through tation and groaning. You revile them as dogs, these darknesses. Here no longer strikes the destroyers, liars, and deceivers; but they ask you belfry-clock, that you might say: "Thank God! with a composure and an icy-coldness that is truly already another hour has passed over me!" Here horrible, "Wherefore, then, you have thrust your-no dawn awakes upon the night of horror, so that self upon them,-wherefore you have enlisted under you might think: "Haply, the morning will be their colours? You had it in your power to fly better!" Alas, here that scene becomes life as easily to the cross; but, being once now here, which has been delineated to our eye with features your honour requires you should play out to the so fearfully true. One of the damned meets another, end the part once undertaken!" and, amidst a and asks him, raving with despair, "What may be thundering, "Away, away with you!" the terrific the hour?" the other returns for answer: "Here journey proceeds. You stop again, and look around are no minutes, no hours, no years, no time, no you-ah! where are you? Like a desolated world, seasons; but only the long, awful, never-ending which no deity has renewed, lies all around you, a eternity. Here is one solitary, gigantic clock, deserted wilderness, fearfully silent, like the grave; which has no dial-plate, no hands, no figures. It gloomy and black, like the deepest cavern of the has nothing but a pendulum that, from everrocks. And when you raise your eyes, ah! you lasting to everlasting, dins on the ear with monare no longer greeted with the blue firmament, no ster-tones, "Ever - never! Ever damnation starlight beams upon you through the thick dark- never release! Oh, how like paradise does the ness. Thus you continue onwards, from abyss to earth appear to you, in spite of all its vexations abyss, through waste chasms and isolated glens. and nights of care. Compared with the abode What silence reigns around; but a silence full of whose shades now surround you, it lies before your horror, the silence of a charnel house. You hear soul's eye like the outer-court of heaven. Ah, nothing farther, save, ever and anon, the darting still does the Almighty's name of "Father" echo over of an accursed angel, and behind you the throughout its confines, and, whichever way we turn fearful thundering of doors and gates closing upon ourselves, it sounds or shines upon us. The genial all egress. And more wild and desolate still grows sun that He conducts over it in the morning, and the region, and the atmosphere becomes more and the peaceful shades of night which every evening more dense and sultry, and the anguish of your He spreads over the weary; the showers of rain with soul more powerful and great. Ah! what sounds which He nourishes the parched meadow-lands, are those that tremble over from the distance? and the sweet fruit wherewith He crowns the garIt is the wail of the damned in torment; that dens and fields; - O, they speak still of a benevo"weeping and gnashing of teeth," of which on lence and compassion of which there below not earth you heard the Saviour speak. You will soon one small word is heard. And, let us penetrate arrive at your destination. The meetings grow even into the most barren wildernesses of the earth, more numerous and frequent. What forms! each lo, where nothing but a raven's nest meets the eye, more ghastly than the other; and on all counte- between the branches of a tree, and He, the Great nances nothing but despair and rage; on all lips Provider, feeds that raven's young; or a flower nothing but blasphemy and self-damnation! Ge- blossoms on a lonely mountain, with a dew-drop henna receives you! Great God! what a realm is glistening in its dressy and odorous cup; or a that! What a region of death! Hear you not bird flies along, "that sows not, neither does it this endless whining, this continued howling of reap or gather into barns," and yet has every thing hopeless anguish, this moaning that might soften in its fulness, and sings, in its own natural note of stone ? You discern the cry of lamentation of the joy, its hymn of praise; or a swallow soars through accursed. Alas! who digs for them out of their the air, not knowing of itself either path or way, marrow "the worm that dieth not; " who pours and yet travels straight to its warmer home, drawn water for them "on this fire, that never more is and led by One whom it knows not. Behold, thus, quenched?" Look, who rushes onwards yonder, even there also, is the Almighty's name of "Falike a cloud of the night, and cries, wringing his ther" whispered in the listening ear by a soft, hands for annihilation, and cries in vain? It is sweet, angelic voice; and even in the heart of the Judas, the betrayer! Who crouches himself yon- desert it stands inscribed that upon earth there der on the ground like a trodden worm, and cannot is a rule of love, and a control of an unbounded, find death, although he would dig it out of the wide-armed mercy, of which in the heaven-deserted earth? It is Cain, the murderer of his brother! enclosure of damnation no trace is any longer to There, behold the bloodhound, Nero! Of such be seen. No, here nothing more is read of God's a character is now your society; but no one troubles Father-name; - for where should it be written? himself here about his fellow-man. Each has On the chains of darkness which never burst? In enough to do with his own necessity, and all hearts the vaporous smoke of the torment, which, accordare here stone; but not stone to the tortures under ing to the Scriptures, "Goeth up for ever and ever?" In the horrible flames, which are never more to be extinguished, even with floods of remorseful tears? In the howling of the damned, that never finds a hearing? O God! in hell, nothing stands written upon all walls and in all hearts, nothing else for ever, save, "Our God is a consuming fire!" O thou wretched being, you who must now live to experience all the dreadful meaning of this sentence, with what a shriek of delight would you hear it, were it to be called out to you, only once again, as was so often done on earth, "Be ye reconciled to God;" and could you see but once again, as of late, a curse and a blessing placed within your choice. But now the curse is your eternal portion; no longer are you the object of God's care; no longer does a Saviour ask after you; no day of grace dawns on you again, and the outlets from these regions of sin and death are locked, not for centuries merely; they are closed upon you for ever and for ever! 66 account of the limited circle of their vision, it is, nevertheless, true, the apple of their spiritual eye is small, and their heart also might be larger, whilst their desire for the exaltation of the name of Jesus might be more lively and cordial. They moreover deprive themselves, by the small estimation of the prophetical portion of the Bible, of a rich store of consolation, and stop up to their use thereby a fountain of elevated joy in the vale of tears and travail. Despise not prophesyings. Quench not the Spirit!" writes Paul to the Thessalonians. These two sentences being so connected together not without a deep reason, alas! what a discouraging, dispiriting picture does the present Church of Christ in general present! On examining it only slightly, we see already how it glares on us in the extreme west of our hemisphere with the double mask of Jesuitism, and of Voltaire-like free-thinking; in the south, like carrion ripe for the eagle; at the foot of the Alps, winding Great God! what a picture and spectacle is this, its dance round about the liberty-tree of the most especially when contrasted with that in which we shallow enlightenment; in Holland, chewing up the lately delighted! Then it caused us pain to be crumbs of German over-sageness; in the remote forced to return from the blissful realms of light, East, it walks along in the chains of a cold forin which we in the spirit had journeyed after the mality; in the land even which the Lord has triumphant prophet, back again to the vale of tears. chosen himself to be the emporium of his kingdom Now, may we shout with joy, that the way back and word, we behold, at least in extensive districts to the earth still stands open, and, in "the accepted thereof, a hundred-headed creature, concealing untime," in "the day of salvation," still do we hear, der the parade of strict devotion, nothing but the in place of the roaring of the devil and the damned, most decided atheism; and, in our own German fathe voice of God, which calls to repentance; still ther-land we see it stare at us with the north-pole do we look, instead of into the flames of the fur- expression of the most icy rationalism, and approach nace, into the open arms of our Deliverer, which us with the waterglass, instead of the Lord's chaspread themselves affectionately towards us. But lice. What a picture is that of terror and weeping! every thing has its time and season; see therefore" But then, that is surely not the true Church," that you rejoice with fear and trembling; "for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do according to His own good pleasure." "Kiss, oh kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way. When his wrath is kindled but a little, blessed are all they that put their trust in him." One of two events closes our pilgrimage; either an ascension into heaven, or a descent into hell. Here is no middle course. Therefore, O Jesu, thou Lamb of God, have mercy on us. Have mercy on us, O Jesu, Jesu! Amen. THE LEGACY. WHOEVER knows not of the era of the triumph and of the consummation which, before the dawning of the last day, still awaits the kingdom of Christ on earth, knows not the Scripture; at least, the veil is to him cast over a portion thereof the prophetical portion. Whosoever concerns not himself about the future condition of the Church of God, he robs his own soul, and is just as little capable of understanding both the past and the present as he is to comprehend the actions of a man, and the measures he makes use of, until made acquainted with the object that guides his conduct. There are many Christians to be found who, shut up within the limits of their asceticism, give themselves little trouble or concern respecting the course of development of the kingdom of God; and the future state of the Church on earth is to them a matter of indifference, except it can be proved to them that either of the coming events will affect themselves personally. Far as we are from wishing to undervalue these house-doves of the faithful, on In say you. Yea, I know it; but now a more gloomy result presents itself. All those realms are now void, and link themselves, as it were, into one with the world of heathenism. Now, the Lord Christ appears on earth wholly like a mere petty mediating chief, and the prince of darkness is the ruler of the world. For how far do the lines of Zion extend? And, if they extend far over, what body of people do they span? And, even if the people of the faithful be greater in number than many suppose; what shape do they, for the most part, assume, and where do they confront us, in the uncrippled beauty of the full, primitive Christian healthfulness? Let us remember the stiff, formal, and strict sabbatarians yonder, and turn our attention again to the longsighted and hobbling Christians elsewhere; let us recollect the groaning and ever-complaining creatures beneath us. general, how weak is the foundation laid, amongst our Christians of the present day, in the word of God, how little dominion over the flesh and over sin, how little apostolic enfranchisement from the world: how little life and action in the evangelic element of Christianity! Thence, how much narrow-heartedness and coldness, on the one hand, how much impurity, faintness, and weakness on the other! Oh thou fair scion of the early time, thou glorious and sublime church of the Pentecost, where art thou now? Living mirror of Christ, thou dove of the Lord with thy feathering of gold, where does thy sweet and beauteous image beam still upon us? The bands of thy perfectness remain entwined around thee; - but we are severed. A rose of God, thou blossomest in the valley; on * 1 Thess. v. 19, 20. |