Why should God kill the people for what David did? Is it a sin to be
counted? Can anything more brutally hellish be conceived? Why should man
waste prayers upon such a God?
Fifty-fifth. Must we admit that Elijah was fed by ravens; that they
brought him bread and flesh every morning and evening? Must we believe
that this same prophet could create meal and oil, and induce a departed
soul to come back and take up its residence once more in the body? That
he could get rain by praying for it; that he could cause fire to burn
up a sacrifice and altar, together with twelve barrels of water?1 Can we
believe that an angel of the Lord turned cook and prepared two suppers
in one night for Elijah, and that the prophet ate enough to last him
forty days and forty nights?* Is it true that when a captain with fifty
men went after Elijah, this prophet caused fire to come down from heaven
and consume them all? Should God allow such wretches to manage his fire?
Is it true that Elijah consumed another captain with fifty men in the
same way?3 Is it a fact that a river divided because the water was
struck with a cloak? Did a man actually go to heaven in a chariot
of fire drawn by horses of fire, or was he carried to Paradise by a
whirlwind? Must we believe, in order to be good and tender fathers and
mothers, that because some "little children" mocked at an old man with
a bald head, God--the same God who said, "Suffer little children to come
unto me"--sent two she-bears out of the wood and tare forty-two of these
babes? Think of the mothers that watched and waited for their children.
Think of the wailing when these mangled ones were found, when they
were brought back and pressed to the breasts of weeping women. What an
amiable gentleman Mr. Elisha must have been.4
Fifty-sixth. It is hard to believe that a prophet by lying on a dead
body could make it sneeze seven times.5