(Tenth Sunday after Trinity.)
1 Kings xxi. 19, 20. And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus
saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? and
thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place
where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood,
even thine. And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine
enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold
thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.
Of all the grand personages in the Old Testament, there are few or
none, I think, grander than the prophet Elijah. Consider his
strange and wild life, wandering about in forests and mountains,
suddenly appearing, and suddenly disappearing again, so that no man
knew where to find him; and, as Obadiah said when he met him, 'If I
tell my Lord, Behold, Elijah is here; then, as soon as I am gone
from thee, the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know
not.' Consider, again, his strange activity and strength, as when
he goes, forty days and forty nights, far away out of Judea, over
the waste wilderness, to Horeb the mount of God; or, as again, when
he girds up his loins, and runs before Ahab's chariot for many miles
to the entrance of Jezreel. One can fancy him from what the Bible
tells us of him, clearly enough; as a man mysterious and terrible,
not merely in the eyes of women and children, but of soldiers and of
kings.
He seems to have been especially a countryman; a mountaineer; born
and bred in Gilead, among the lofty mountains and vast forests, full
of wild beasts, lions and bears, wild bulls and deer, which stretch
for many miles along the further side of the river Jordan, with the
waste desert of rocks and sand beyond them. A wild man, bred up in
a wild country, he had learnt to fear no man, and no thing, but God
alone. We do not know what his youth was like; we do not know
whether he had wife, or children, or any human being who loved him.
Most likely not. He seems to have lived a lonely life, in sad and
bad times. He seems to have had but one thought, that his country
was going to ruin, from idolatry, tyranny, false and covetous ways;
and one determination; to say so; to speak the truth, whatever it
cost him. He had found out that the Lord was God, and not Baal, or
any of the idols; and he would follow the Lord; and tell all Israel
what his own heart had told him, 'The Lord, he is God,' was the one
thing which he had to say; and he said it, till it became his name;
whether given him by his parents, or by the people, his name was
Elijah, 'The Lord is God.' 'How long halt ye between two opinions?'
he cries, upon the greatest day of his life. 'If the Lord be God,
then follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.' How grand he is, on
Carmel, throughout that noble chapter which we read last Sunday.
There is no fear in him, no doubt in him. The poor wild peasant out
of the savage mountains stands up before all Israel, before king,
priests, nobles, and people, and speaks and acts as if he, too, were
a king; because the Spirit of God is in him: and he is right, and
he knows that he is right. And they obey him as if he were a king.
Even before the fire comes down from heaven, and shows that God is
on his side, from the first they obey him. King Ahab himself obeys
him, trembles before him--'And it came to pass, when Ahab saw
Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?
And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy
father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the
Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather
to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four
hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred,
which eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent unto all the children of
Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.' The
tyrant's guilty conscience makes a coward of him: and he quails
before the wild man out of the mountains, who has not where to lay
his head, who stands alone against all the people, though Baal's
prophets are four hundred and fifty men, and the prophets of the
groves four hundred, and they eat at the queen's table; and he only
is left and they seek his life:--yet no man dare touch him, not even
the king himself. Such power is there, such strength is there, in
being an honest and a God-fearing man.
Yes, my friends, this was the secret of Elijah's power. This is the
lesson which Elijah has to teach us. Not to halt between two
opinions. If a thing be true, to stand up for it; if a thing be
right, to do it, whatsoever it may cost us. Make up your minds
then, my friends, to be honest men like Elijah the prophet of old.
For your own sake, for your neighbour's sake, and for God's sake, be
honest men.
For your own sake. If you want to be respected; if you want to be
powerful--and it is good to be powerful sometimes--if God has set
you to govern people, whether it be your children and household,
your own farm, your own shop, your own estate, your own country or
neighbourhood--Do you want to know the great secret of success?--Be
honest and brave. Let your word be as good as your thought, and
your deed as good as your word. Who is the man who is respected?
Who is the man who has influence? The complaisant man--the cringing
man--the man who cannot say No, or dare not say No? Not he. The
passionate man who loses his temper when anything goes wrong, who
swears and scolds, and instead of making others do right, himself
does wrong, and lowers himself just when he ought to command
respect? My experience is--not he: but the man who says honestly
and quietly what he thinks, and does fearlessly and quietly what he
knows. People who differ from him will respect him, because he acts
up to his principles. When they are in difficulty or trouble, they
will go and ask his advice, just because they know they will get an
honest answer. They will overlook a little roughness in him; they
will excuse his speaking unpleasant truths: because they can trust
him, even though he is plain-spoken.
For your neighbour's sake, I say; and again, for your children's
sake; for the sake of all with whom you have to do, be honest and
brave. For our children--O my friends, we cannot do a crueller
thing by them than to let them see that we are inconsistent. If
they hear us say one thing and do another--if, while we preach to
them we do not practice ourselves, they will never respect us, and
never obey us from love and principle. If they do obey us, it will
be only before our faces, and from fear. If they see us doing only
what we like, when our backs are turned they will do what they like.
And worse will come than their not respecting us--they will learn
not to respect God. If they see that we do not respect truth and
honesty, they will not respect truth and honesty; and he who does
not respect them, does not respect God. They will learn to look on
religion as a sham. If we are inconsistent, they will be profane.
But some may say--'I have no power; and I want none. I have no
people under me for whom I am responsible.'
Then, if you think that you need not be honest and brave for your
own sake, or for other peoples' sake, be honest and brave for God's
sake.
Do you ask what I mean? I mean this. Recollect that truth belongs
to God. That if a thing is true, it is true because God made it so,
and not otherwise; and therefore, if you deny truth, you fight
against God. If you are honest, and stand up for truth, you stand
up for God, and what God has done.
And recollect this, too. If a thing be right for you to do, God has
made it right, and God wills you to do it; and, therefore, if you do
not do your duty, you are fighting against God; and if you do your
duty, you are a fellow-worker with God, fulfilling God's will.
Therefore, I say, Be honest and brave for God's sake. And in this
way, my friends, all may be brave, all may be noble. Speak the
truth, and do your duty, because it is the will of God. Poor, weak
women, people without scholarship, cleverness, power, may live
glorious lives, and die glorious deaths, and God's strength may be
made perfect in their weakness. They may live, did I say? I may
say they have lived, and have died, already, by thousands. When we
read the stories of the old martyrs who, in the heathen persecution,
died like heroes rather than deny Christ, and scorned to save
themselves by telling what they knew to be a lie, but preferred
truth to all that makes life worth having:--how many of them--I may
say the greater part of them--were poor creatures enough in the eyes
of man, though they were rich enough, noble enough, in the eyes of
God who inspired them. 'Few rich and few noble,' as the apostle
says, 'were called.' It was to poor people, old people, weak women,
ill-used and untaught slaves, that God gave grace to defy all the
torments which the heathen could heap on them, and to defy the
scourge and the rack, the wild beasts and the fire, sooner than foul
their lips and their souls by denying Christ, and worshipping the
idols which they knew were nothing, and worth nothing.
And so it may be with any of you here; whosoever you may be, however
poor, however humble. Though your opportunities may be small, your
station lowly, your knowledge little; though you may be stupid in
mind, slow of speech, weakly of body, yet if you but make up your
mind to say the thing which is true, and to do the thing which is
right, you may be strong with the strength of God, and glorious with
the glory of Christ.
It is a grand thing, no doubt, to be like Elijah, a stern and bold
prophet, standing up alone against a tyrant king and a sinful
people; but it is even a greater thing to be like that famous martyr
in old time, St. Blandina, who, though she was but a slave, and so
weakly, and mean, and fearful in body, that her mistress and all her
friends feared that she would deny Christ at the very sight of the
torments prepared for her, and save herself by sacrificing to the
idols, yet endured, day after day, tortures too horrible to speak
of, without cry or groan, or any word, save 'I am a Christian;' and,
having outlived all her fellow-martyrs, died at last victorious over
pain and temptation, so that the very heathen who tortured her broke
out in admiration of her courage, and confessed that no woman had
ever endured so many and so grievous torments. So may God's
strength be made perfect in woman's weakness.
You are not called to endure such things. No: but you, and I, and
every Christian soul are called on to do what we know to be right.
Not to halt between two opinions: but if God be God, to follow Him.
If we make up our minds to do that, we shall be sure to have our
trials: but we shall be safe, because we are on God's side, and God
on ours. And if God be with us, what matter if the whole world be
against us? For which is the stronger of the two, the whole world,
or God who made it, and rules it, and will rule it for ever?