Great Texts of the Bible by James Hastings - 1 Kings 19:11 - 19:12

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Great Texts of the Bible by James Hastings - 1 Kings 19:11 - 19:12


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

A Still Small Voice

And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.—1Ki_19:11-12.

1. This is, perhaps, the most forcible example of moral and spiritual teaching in a dramatic form in the whole range of Holy Scripture. And when it is regarded in the light of the mental condition of the prophet to whom it was granted, its force is still more evident. Elijah—the prophet of fire—a man of highly-strung emotional nature, a man who sometimes rose very high, but, like all such men, sometimes sank very low, had been marvellously elated by the great scene on Carmel. He imagined that by that one decisive stroke the idolatry of Baal had been completely overthrown, and that Jehovah would now reign supreme in the hearts of the people. His spirits had risen as high as the great mountain on which that memorable decision had been effected. But the excitement wore away, and he saw, as so many besides him have seen, that no great spiritual reformation is wrought by one stroke, however decisive. He saw, that the people still lusted after Baal, that the powers of the nation were still upon the side of idolatry, so that he seemed alone and solitary—the prophet of the Lord. Thus he fell from the clear and bracing air of the mountain to the enervating atmosphere of the valley below. The reaction which follows excitement came, and the prophet who, in solitary grandeur, could stand confident and fearless before the thousand priests of Baal, before the fierce oath of a vindictive woman fled to the desert, where his only wish was to die, because he was no better than his fathers. With nerves unstrung by excitement, with the reaction producing despondency in his heart, with a sense of loneliness which made life seem a burden, and death a happy door of release, he plunged still farther into the desert, and came even to Horeb, the Mount of God.

2. Perhaps no spot on earth is more associated with the manifested presence of God than that sacred mount. There the bush burned with fire; there the Law was given; there Moses spent forty days and nights alone with God. It was a natural instinct that led the prophet thither, and all the world could not have furnished a more appropriate school. Natural scenery and holy associations lent all their powers to impress and elevate the soul.

We know the scenery. Beneath Elijah’s eyes, as he stood at the entrance of the cave, lay the vast desert, a rough and stony plain, with dry and infrequent herbage. Infinite silence, infinite awe, as of the presence of an eternal God, encompassed him. Near at hand were the great mountain walls of red granite, deep-hewn valleys below splintered gorges; and above, the naked peaks piercing the heaven, in which the stars burned in depths even more vocal of infinitude than the desert. Tradition still points out, as tradition chose, the small and lonely valley, the upland level under the summit, where Elijah rested. One cypress tree stands now in its midst, and a well and tank are open near the ruined chapel which covers the rock in which the cave was set. It is one of the most silent places in the world, as hidden as it is silent. The granite cliffs lap it round on all sides but one, that side where Elijah stood, when, in the dawn, he came forth to hear the voice of God.

3. Elijah is in great despondency. It is amazing through what apparently inconsistent moods the same man can pass in a very short time. We go back but a little way to his experience upon Carmel, when the same Elijah moved about in majestic confidence, inspired by unclouded hope. He seemed to realize the immediateness of the Almighty, and he revelled in the fulness of his resources. And now all this bounding assurance passes away; the heavens appear to be emptied; the earth is deserted; and the prophet is languishing in this melancholy recital, “I, even I only, am left!” The once triumphant spokesman of the Lord has temporarily lost his exuberant faith, and is sunk in dark despair.

There is something in human nature which makes us feel more akin to men who occasionally suffer defeat. If Elijah’s pilgrimage along the way of life had been a series of unfailing triumphs, and if the cloud of uncertainty had never gathered about his heart, he might have seemed like a man of an alien race, having little or no kinship with the sons and daughters of despondency and grief. When the Apostle Peter is very bold, daring even death in the presence of the great ones of the earth, he appears very remote to the child of hesitancy and doubt; but in the hour of Peter’s weakness, when he shrinks from the foes that beset him, he becomes one of the common crowd. His impulsiveness makes even his martyrdom human. St. Paul’s feelings of wretchedness lend humanness even to his ecstasies, and his unspeakable revelations do not lie in lands too remote.

But, in spite of all this, the pity of the prophet’s defeat! He knew the strength of his God, he had experienced the softened light of His guidance, he had had proofs innumerable of His providential care, he had “tasted that the Lord is gracious,” and yet here he is, in a season of peculiar crisis, throwing up his ministry, and lying down with a desire to die!

4. What is the secret of his despondency? He has been counting heads. He has become the victim of the apparent. “They have thrown down thine altars, slain thy prophets!” The antagonisms are overwhelming! “I, even I only, am left!” The enemy, who flaunted his greatness, seemed the greatest power on the field.

Has there never been a time in our experience when we have grown baffled and weary with the greatness of our tasks and the smallness of our success with them? Have we never felt that we craved something besides the feeling that what we were doing was worth doing and that we would prevail in the end? Have we never had our hours of deep discouragement—yes, and our seasons of defeat—in which we questioned with ourselves whether what we were doing was worth doing after all? Like Elijah, perhaps, we played the man, and did it well. We confounded King Ahab in the full consciousness of rectitude and sincerity of purpose. We even had our Mount Carmel, our dramatic stand for righteousness, and our hard-won, stormy triumph. We fixed our eye upon a certain goal and got there. We gained our point in some fiercely contested conflict of interests in which we managed to see justice done. We unmasked some piece of cruel humbug or put to silence some clamorous evil. We put our whole soul into the cause, whatever it was, which we felt to be ours, and our very intensity and self-forgetful zeal gained us a temporary victory. Then followed the hour of disillusionment. No sooner did we drive an evil out by one door than it returned by another. The victory we thought was going to do everything turned out to have done nothing; things were no better than they were before—worse, perhaps.

If things are so with us we are just in Elijah’s position, and God’s message to His prophet these hundreds of years ago is just as really His message to us to-day. Like Elijah we look too much to externals, dwell too much upon the circumference and too little at the centre of things. In proportion to our eagerness and self-devotion is our tendency to exaggerate our own importance to the cause of God and to waste time in looking for visible results of our activity. We have lost our true perspective by over-absorption in the immediate and the near outside the soul. We have, in fact, lost God. How shall we find Him again? The text tells us how God revealed Himself to Elijah.

I

Where God is not

“A great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire.”

i. God does not always reveal Himself in Nature

The first point we would make is that God did not manifest Himself to Elijah at this time in the forces of Nature.

1. A fierce storm burst upon that wild spot, a fearful hurricane swept across the sky. As the black clouds of tempest rolled up from the sea, “a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord.” The prophet stood amid all the horrors and wild disorder of a tropical storm. What could it mean? As the fierce tempest raged about the granite rocks and mountain peaks of that savage desert, and the massive fragments of stone were hurled down the heights to the plain below, and all nature seemed turbulent amid the rush and fury of the storm, how the heart of Elijah would burn with exultation to find his own wild spirit reflected in that tumultuous scene. The violent commotion and the passion of that whirlwind were a true image of himself. Could it be that God had mantled Himself in this form of terror? Was it indeed true that the vehemence of the Lord confirmed and crowned the vehemence of the man? Did the turbulence and passion of the human spirit find their counterpart in Him? The prophet’s heart beat wildly at the very thought—O that God were such a one as he himself? “But the Lord was not in the wind.” No! although it was a speaking symbol of the resistless power which he always delighted to associate with God, and had seen manifested in more than one memorable episode of his life.

“And after the wind an earthquake.” The whole earth appeared convulsed as in terror. Solid mountains shook, and great rocks were split and sundered by the fierce upheaval. Deep chasms were opened where before had been nought but massive stone. “Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.” Once more the prophet saw an image of himself, saw his own convulsive nature mirrored in that scene of tumult and agitation. Would God reveal Himself now? Was it possible that God could be imaged in that wild disturbance? The prophet waited with anxious heart to know. He looked, and looked again, but saw not in the convulsion the presence of God. That was simply an image of himself. “But the Lord,” he was again conscious, “was not in the earthquake,” though it pictured vividly the tremendous upheaval by which he longed to cast down the altars of Baal and to destroy his priests, possible (he well knew) to the might of Jehovah, who again and again had overwhelmed His enemies in Israel’s past.

“And after the earthquake a fire.” Suddenly that wilderness of granite peaks was lighted up with the blinding glare of tropic lightning. So swift and fierce were the streams of fire that flashed across the sky that the whole earth appeared bathed in glorious light, and the heavens one mass of flame. Was this the symbol of God’s glory? The prophet felt perhaps that here was the reflection of his truest self. Surely at last God was about to make Himself known. But no. Once more it was borne in upon him that “the Lord was not in the fire,” though to the stern eye of the prophet it was eloquent of the fierce vengeance which he had again and again in his despair invoked from heaven upon the sins of Jezebel and her godless court.

2. Does the writer of this story deny that, to those who had the prophetic gift of interpreting nature, there were special messages from heaven in the storm and the earthquake? By no means. At another time Jehovah might have spoken to Elijah, as He spoke to Job out of the tempest; but upon this occasion the prophet was to be shown that the highest revelations were to be expected, not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary, not in the most awful, but in the gentlest and most familiar, manifestations of God in nature.

With kindlier mien, one said, “Go forth unto the fields,

For there, and in the woods, are balms that Nature freely yields;

Let Nature take thee to her heart! she hath a bounteous breast

That yearns o’er all her sorrowing sons, and she will give thee rest.”



But Nature on the spirit-sick as on the spirit-free

Smiled, like a fair unloving face too bright for sympathy;

Sweet, ever sweet, are whispering leaves, are waters in their flow,

But never on them breathed a tone to comfort human woe!



Small solace for the deer that hath the arrow in its side,—

And only seeks the woods to die,—that o’er his dappled hide

Spread purple blooms of bedded heath, and ferny branchings tall—



A deadly hurt must have strong cure, or it hath none at all;

And the old warfare from within that had gone on so long,

The wasting of the inner strife, the sting of outward wrong,

Went with me o’er the breezy hill, went with me up the glade—

I found not God among the trees, and yet I was afraid!



I mused, and fire that smouldered long within my breast brake free,

I said, “O God, Thy works are good, and yet they are not Thee;

Still greater to the sense is that which breathes through every part,

Still sweeter to the heart than all is He who made the heart!



I will seek Thee, not Thine, O Lord! for (now I mind me) still

Thou sendest us for soothing not to fountain, nor to hill;

Yet is there comfort in the fields if we walk in them with Thee,

Who saidest, ‘Come, ye burdened ones, ye weary, unto Me.’ ”1 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]

3. God ignored the old means of manifestation because of the present needs of His prophet. Elijah had read into the Divine character the swift impatience of his own angry heart. He was not one of those who find it easy to live quietly. Born a Gileadite, he retained to the end much of the restlessness of the Bedouin. Headlong, impetuous, and swift to strike where it seemed that a blow was the shortest way to attain his purpose, he could confront a whole college of idolatrous priests and enjoy the combat. There is a kind of stern joy in the truculent irony of his taunts on Carmel which shows how much to his liking was the contest in which he was engaged. As the storm raged over Horeb his fierce nature would recognize a brother in the wild wind; the shocks of earthquake found an echo in the depths of his tumultuous spirit; the flashing lightning reflected the swift movements of his own fiery passions. He would be quick to see the hand of God in a national catastrophe; but not until it had been specially shown to him could he find the evidence of higher working when things had settled down into common channels. He would always choose the short cut to success, and he thought God must do so too. Like the Baptist in the dungeon of Machaerus, when the immediate developments that he expected did not follow, he found himself in anguish of soul, doubting whether he was not altogether mistaken, and for the time being he was crushed under a burden which he could not sustain. Men of this type make splendid reformers, and they are the born pioneers of any new movement for God and righteousness. But they are generally too summary in their verdicts to be good judges of the Divine dealings with men as a whole. Sooner or later they fall into the mistake that things are not moving fast enough.

Savonarola, whose burning utterances from the pulpit of the Duomo flashed like the sword of God of which he spoke into the guilty heart of fifteenth-century Florence, went far beyond the guidance of the Spirit within him, when he assumed to know that only through a storm of vengeance would the Church be purged of its abuses, and the clergy be restored from licentiousness and formalism to the spirituality which he felt was their supreme need. The needed renewal came to Europe; but it came rather through the spiritual awakening of the Reformation than through any vast temporal judgments upon the Papacy, and the brave monk died in no small measure a martyr to his own mistakes. The tempestuous spirit of Luther needed to be balanced by the saner and more sympathetic insight of Melanchthon. In the work of the Apostles the strenuous energy of St. Peter had to be tempered by the spirituality of St. John 1 [Note: F. B. Macnutt.]

ii. God does not reveal Himself in Nature finally

The second point we would make is that God does not manifest Himself to us finally or in His fulness in Nature, or in the forces which in our text are mirrored by Nature.

The world cannot be exhausted by physical explanations: and so the savage who worships the forces of nature, and the scientist who declares them to be the ultimate source of all things, are equally and very similarly in the wrong. God is not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. These are only the fringe of His garment, the shadow of His inner glory. God is a Spirit, and is known through the vocal silence of spiritual fellowship.

How often in the midst of the sublimities of nature, a spectator, gazing upon some high mountain-range, has been fain to cry out, “What an aid to devotion! what a ladder up to Heaven!” Who has not exclaimed, when the thunder-cloud has rolled its awful peal, “Surely this is the voice of God!” And yet it is to be questioned whether any man was ever drawn to God by the contemplation of the glory of creation alone: or, whether any man ever received, indeed, his call to grace, in the summons of the storm. Men have lived their threescore years and ten in all the intimacy of nature’s most eloquent works, and from the cradle to the grave, they have not found God, for He is not in the wind; and He is not in the earthquake; and He is not in the fire; but He is in the still small voice.

1. “The Lord was not in the wind.” Strong religious impulse may be more than half physical,—a matter of temperament, of constitution. Earthly passion, in some natures, may take this form; the language, the intended and professed objects, may be of heaven, and the spirit of earth. Even though mountains of opposition are rent by it, and rocks of prejudice are broken in pieces, and changes are brought about which fill the thoughts of men and live in history, it may yet be that the agency which effects all this is itself destitute of anything properly Divine; “the Lord was not in the wind.”

2. “The Lord was not in the earthquake.” Spasmodic terror may be only terror. The thought, or sight, or immediate apprehension of death, may convulse, to its very depths, the human soul. But mere agitation may be only desperate; “the fear of the Lord,” as distinct from the fear of anything else, “is the beginning of wisdom.” Whether the Lord is or is not in the great earthquakes of the soul depends, generally speaking, upon the soul’s previous relations with Him.

3. “The Lord was not in the fire.” He was in the burning bush; He was in the fiery tongues of Pentecost; but He was not in the fire which played around Elijah on Horeb. Religious passion carried to the highest pitch of enthusiasm is a great agency in human life; but it may be too inconsiderate, too truculent, too entirely lacking in tenderness and charity, to be in any sense Divine. Christendom has been the scene of the most Divine enthusiasm of which the soul of man has ever had experience; but it has also been ablaze with fires (and they are not altogether extinct in our day and country) of which it may certainly be said that the Lord is not in them.

In our religious experience we are too apt to rely upon carnal force and energy. We are hopeful if we can make a noise, and create excitement, stir, and agitation. The heaving of the masses under newly invented excitements we are too apt to identify with the power of God. “At least we must have an eloquent preacher,” we say,—“one who can plead with choice picked words, a master of the art of oratory.” Yet God does not always choose this form of power, for still He will not have our faith to stand in the wisdom of words, but He will have us to learn this lesson, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” Crash after crash the orator’s passages succeed each other. What a tremendous passage! The hearers must surely be impressed. Wind! And the Lord is not in it. And now everything seems to shake, while, like a second John the Baptist, the minister proclaims woe and terror, and pronounces the curse of God upon a generation of vipers! Will not this break hard hearts? No. Nothing is accomplished. It is an earthquake; but the Lord is not in the earthquake. Another form of force remains. Here comes one who pleads with vehemence; all on fire, he flashes and flames. Look at the coruscations of his sensational metaphors and anecdotes. Yes, fire (might we not say fireworks?); and yet the Lord does not work by such fire. The Lord is not in the fire. The furious energy of unbridled fanaticism the Lord does not use. God is not there. The hallowed mind—the prayerful frame—the Spirit—they are all absent there. There was the wind, but “the Lord was not in the wind”; there was the earthquake, but “the Lord was not in the earthquake”; there was the fire, but “the Lord was not in the fire.” “The still small voice” did not speak. Souls go away admiring—excited—agitated; but there has been no intercourse with God.

Some great and overwhelming catastrophe has occurred, some judgment has broken over our heads, the sudden stroke of death has made its awful appeal; and one with whom we have long been familiar has been hurried, in a moment, to his grave; and the wisdom of man begins to argue—“Surely, now, there will be a revival. The Lord will be recognized here. Surely, in so loud a sign, hearts that never prayed before, will hear their Maker’s bidding, and will lift up to Him a repentant cry.” While we look for it, the solemn event passes by, and it is all forgotten. “The still small voice” has not been heard. The wind and the earthquake and the fire have been only like a pageant when it is past.

iii. Nature is often a Preparation for the Voice of God

The Lord was not in the hurricane; the Lord was not in the earthquake, the Lord was not in the fire: but the wind, the earthquake, the fire went before the Lord. And so our third point is that the wind, the earthquake, and the fire may be a preparation for the still small voice.

1. It very often pleases God to make use of external displays of His power to make way for the working of His grace; only, we say, He is jealous to show that these external circumstances are never themselves the grace. Let us not despise them. The most earnest sermon that was ever preached, cannot convert; but, if God pleases, it can awaken the slumbering feelings in a man’s heart. The grandeur of the most awful scenery can never declare the Gospel to the beholder; but it may humble him into a deep sense of his own insignificance. We would not underrate the wild prelude that ushers in the harmony. God delights to write out His love in the background of His terrors.

2. We see this clearly in the case of Israel at this time. Before Elijah left the land of Israel manifestations of God’s power had been given fitted to awe the minds of men, but these were the mere forerunners of His kingdom of grace, and of its great power—the word of life; and because they had not done what the word of God alone can do, Elijah fled. Elijah, to whom the word of the Lord was committed, fled, instead of carrying that word forth among the people.

And not only had he overlooked the power of God’s word, but he had overlooked also the favourable circumstances which had occurred for its going forth in might. The Lord is not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the devouring fire; yet these may and do prepare the way for His still small voice. These awe men’s minds and make them attentive to the voice of God. It was thus God had roused the attention of Israel in that very wilderness to which Elijah had fled. He first impressed the minds of the people with a deep sense of His majesty, and then He spake to them. He made the earth to tremble, and the mountain to quake, and the thunder to roll, and then He spake to the awestruck tribes the words of His law. It was thus He had dealt with His servant Job. Provoked by the miserable comforters who had gathered round him, Job had spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and had been ready to justify himself, when suddenly the sky darkened and the lightnings began to flash from cloud to cloud, and the tempest came sweeping around them; and out of the whirlwind God called to Job and spake to him, and reproved him for darkening counsel by words without knowledge; and “Job answered the Lord, and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.” Thus humbled he waited for the voice of God, the still small voice. It came, and he was enlightened and comforted. It was thus God dealt with Isaiah. He saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and he cried, “Woe is me! for I am undone; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts”; and then he heard the voice of the Lord, the still small voice, and gave ear to it. It was thus the Lord dealt with Saul of Tarsus. On his way to Damascus he was overwhelmed by the glory which shone around him, and fell to the earth, and then a voice spake to him—the still small voice of the Lord of glory. All these had a manifestation of the power and majesty of the Lord preparatory to the coming of the still small voice; and when their minds were awed and they were attentive to hear, the word of the Lord came.

Now, before Elijah fled from the land of Israel, God had been rousing the nation and impressing their minds. The prophets of Baal had been confounded and then cut off; the land had been afflicted, grievously afflicted, and then delivered; and surely the minds of many must have been opened to conviction; but the means of conviction did not come to them, for the prophet fled. The still small voice came not.

3. We know it in our own experience. There are times when we need, as Elijah needed, the rebuke of the storm, the terror of the earthquake, the purification of the fire, that, by having implanted within us the hardy virtues that outbrave the tempest, we may be fitted for the still small voice of God. Robertson puts it thus: “The storm struggle must precede the still small voice. There are hearts which must be broken with disappointment before they can rise into hope. Blessed is the man who, when the tempest has spent its fury, recognizes his Father’s voice in its undertone, and bares his head and bows his knee, as Elijah did.” To such spirits it seems as if God had said, In the still sunshine and ordinary ways of life you cannot meet Me; but, like Job in the desolation of the tempest, you shall see My form and hear My voice, and know that your Redeemer liveth.

’Tis not the whirlwind, o’er our fair fields sweeping

That speaks God’s present wrath:

This is but nature’s course, for all men keeping

One indiscriminate path.



Nor yet the earthquake, firm foundations shaking

Of houses long since built:

This is but fortune’s chance, its havoc making,

Without affixing guilt.



Nor yet the fire, whate’er is near confounding

In blind remorseless flame:

This is but man’s fierce ire, which all surrounding

Treats, good or bad, the same.

It is the still small voice within which speaketh,

When guilt’s fierce gust is done,

That tells the doom God’s righteous anger wreaketh,

Yet tells, that we may shun.



O gentle Lord, who like a friend reprovest,

Tender not less than true;

Thou our hard hearts by whispered warnings movest,

Their erring ways to rue.



Thou, whose pure eye like lightning might consume him,

On man with pity look’st;

Thou who to fire, storm, earthquake, well might’st doom him,

With still small voice rebuk’James 1 [Note: Lord Kinloch.]

II

Where God is

“And after the fire a still small voice.”

The terrible vision of the storm has passed. The blast of the tempest is stilled. To the convulsions of the earthquake succeeds the calm, to the terrifying glare of the lightning the pure and fresh brightness of day. Heaven reappears—the heaven of the East, with its transparent and deep azure; nature seems born again more beautiful and serene, and from the valleys there rises to the top of Horeb, and the cave where Elijah had sheltered himself, a sweet and gentle sound—the harmonious voice of nature opened up afresh under the breath of God. Elijah goes forth from his retreat. An inexpressible emotion seizes his soul, which the terror had thrown into confusion; an ineffable feeling of peace, of freshness, and of joy penetrates it. Neither the voice of the tempest nor the convulsions of nature had roused him to that point. In that sweet and gentle sound he recognizes the presence of God, and, covering his head with his mantle, he bows himself and adores.

Elijah had shared in the outward manifestations of Divine favour which appear to mark the Old Dispensation—the fire on Carmel, the storm from the Mediterranean, the avenging sword on the banks of the Kishon. These signs had failed; and he was now told that in these signs, in the highest sense, God was not; not in these, but in the still small gentle whisper of conscience and solitude was the surest token that God was near to him. Not in his own mission, grand and gigantic as it was, would after-ages so clearly discern the Divine inspiration, as in the still small voice of justice and truth that breathed through the writings of the later Prophets, for whom he only prepared the way—Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah. Not in the vengeance which through Hazael and Jehu was to sweep away the house of Omri, so much as in the discerning Love which was to spare the seven thousand; not in the strong east wind that parted the Red Sea, or the fire that swept the top of Sinai, or the earthquake that shook down the walls of Jericho, would God be brought so near to man, as in the still small voice of the child of Bethlehem, as in the ministrations of Him whose cry was not heard in the streets, in the awful stillness of the Cross, in the never-failing order of Providence, in the silent insensible influence of the good deeds and good words of God and of man. Elijah, the furthest removed of all the prophets from the evangelical spirit and character, has yet enshrined in the heart of his story the most forcible of protests against the hardness of Judaism, the noblest anticipation of the breadth and depth of Christianity.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley.]

However the rendering may be altered—into “a gentle murmuring sound” or, as in the R.V. margin, “a sound of gentle stillness”—no expression is more full of the awe and mystery of the original than the phrase “a still small voice.” It was God’s whisper to Elijah’s soul. Was it articulate or not? Was it accompanied by an outward rustling, as Cheyne thinks? We do not know. All that is of consequence is that in it Elijah recognized the presence of God and came forth to worship.

Why seek ye for Jehovah

’Mid Sinai’s awful smoke?

The burning bush now shelters

A sparrow’s humble folk;

The curve of God’s sweet heaven

Is the curve of the leaf of oak;

The Voice that stilled the tempest

To the little children spoke,—

The bread of life eternal

Is the bread He blessed and broke.

“A still small voice.” That was how God manifested Himself to Elijah and how He delights to manifest Himself to us. Looking at the words more closely we see—

i. That God is most really in the gentlest things—in that which is still.

ii. That God is not in the agencies that seem the mightiest—He prefers to manifest Himself in that which is small.

iii. That God manifests Himself as a Voice.

i. Stillness

It is difficult to realize that in the hush which followed the fire, the earthquake, the wind, God really was. But if there is any meaning in this story, it is that the silence was more really Divine than the noise, the flash, and the trembling which went before. And one of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that God is in the quiet, the gentle influences which are ever around us, working upon us as the atmosphere does, without any visible or audible token of its presence. We must seek to discern God in the quiet and the gentle. It is perhaps because we fail to discern Him there that He comes sometimes in the tempest. We do not find Him in health, and so He comes in sickness. We do not find Him in prosperity, and so He comes in adversity. We do not find Him in the stillness, and so He is compelled to come in the storm. But He would rather take the gentle way.

Are there not, then, two musics unto men?—

One loud and bold and coarse,

And overpowering still perforce

All tone and tune beside;

Yet in despite its pride

Only of fumes of foolish fancy bred,

And sounding solely in the sounding head;

The other soft and low,

Stealing whence we do not know,

Painfully heard, and easily forgot,

With pauses oft and many a silence strange

(And silent oft it seems, when silent it is not),

Revivals too of unexpected change:

Haply thou think’st ’twill never be begun,

Or that ’t has come, and been, and past away:

Yet turn to other none,—

Turn not, oh, turn not thou!

But listen, listen, listen,—if haply be heard it may;

Listen, listen, listen,—is it not sounding now?1 [Note: Clough.]

1. In quietness there is power.—This is a truth which in these days we are very apt to forget. We have fallen upon a generation of fuss, and bustle, and trumpet-blowing, and advertising. It would almost seem as if many of us believed that we were to take the world by storm. We get up excitements in mass-meetings, and pass resolutions, and listen to eloquent orators, and make thundering plaudits, as if these alone were to win the day. We have more faith in the whirlwind and the earthquake than in the still small voice; and we mistake a momentary out-flashing of enthusiasm for the celebration of a final triumph. The sensational is everywhere in the ascendant. We see it in the extravagance of dress that seeks to call attention to itself; we see it in the domain of literature, in the highly coloured and hotly seasoned romances; we see it in feverish speculations. Surely there is something in this vision for our sensation-loving life. It were well that we had less faith in noise, and more in that which is the most God-like thing on earth, namely, a character moulded after the example of Christ, and created and sustained by the agency of the Holy Ghost. It were well that the voices among us were less loud, and the deeds were more pronounced. Life is more potent than words; and character, though quiet, is more influential in the long-run than any immediate sensation that flares up and crackles like a blaze of thorns.

God’s greatest works are carried on in silence. All noiselessly the planets move in their orbits; “there is no speech nor language; their voice cannot be heard” as they sweep on through their appointed paths in space. No sound attends the crystallization of the dewdrops on the myriad blades of grass in the summer evenings; and while the crops are growing in the fields, so profound sometimes is the stillness that all nature seems asleep. What greater revolution can there be than that which recurs at every morning’s dawn when night quits her “ebon throne” and resigns her empire to the king of day? Yet how quietly it is accomplished! There is first a streak of light along the edge of the eastern horizon, so faint that you wonder whether it has not shot out from that brilliant star; then a few stray gleams of glory, as if the northern aurora had flitted to another quarter of the heavens; then a flush of ruddy beauty before which the stars begin to pale; and as we watch how one by one these faithful sentinels put out their lamps, the sun himself appears, and becomes the undisputed monarch of the heavens. But it is all so silent that the sleeper is not awakened on his couch, and the pale, sick one who has been longing for the morning knows not it is there until through the shadowed casement it looks in upon him with its benignant smile.1 [Note: W. M. Taylor.]

I look upon my study walls and see Munkacsy’s great picture, “Christ before Pilate.” There is a vast, howling mob, the very incarnation of brutal and irresistible force. It seems as though the violent crowd can carry all before it. Standing before the surging, shouting throng is the meek figure of the Master! It seems as though one hand out of the violent mob could crush Him like a moth! And yet we now know that in that silent figure there dwelt the secret of Almightiness, and the Lord was not in the mob.2 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

The quietest room in a Lancashire cotton mill is the engine-room. It is significantly called “the power-room” of the mill. But from that quietest room emerges all the force which speeds the busy looms in their process of production. Let the engine be neglected, let countless looms be added without proportional increase of power, and the mill breaks down. We have been neglecting our quietest room, our power-room; we have been adding to the strain without multiplying the force, and the effects are seen in weariness, joylessness, and ineffectiveness. We must not work less, but we must pray more. We cannot minimize our activities; but we must sustain them with those more adequate supplies of grace that come in answer to common prayer.1 [Note: Charles A. Berry, Life, 266.]

2. In the quietest force—love—there is most power.—You have heard of the old fable which tells how the sun and the wind strove with each other, which of them should first make the traveller divest himself of his cloak. The more fiercely the wind blew, the more firmly the wayfaring man gathered his outer garment about him. But when the sun shone warmly upon him he speedily threw the weighty covering from his shoulders. So antagonism creates antagonism. If you attempt to drag me by force, it is in my nature to resist you, and I will pull against you with all my might; but if you try to attract me by kindness, it is equally in my nature to yield to its influence, and I will follow you of my own free will. What the hammer will not weld together without fiery heat and prolonged labour, the magnet will bring together and hold together in a moment. So in dealing with men, the mightiest influence is love.

I was a lad of fifteen years at the time, an unindentured apprentice on board a large sailing ship which was homeward bound with a cargo of grain from Tacoma, Puget Sound. Not far south of San Francisco we encountered a violent storm which continued without abatement for nearly forty-eight hours. The severe buffeting to which the ship was subjected by the great seas caused the cargo to shift, and the vessel lay with her starboard rail completely submerged. To make matters worse, a spare spar had burst from its fastenings, and to the roar of the elements was added at frequent intervals the thud, thud, of this spar as the sea dashed it like a battering ram against the deck. Our situation was one of extreme peril, and little hope was entertained by captain or crew that the vessel would weather the storm.

In the midst of the storm I felt the awe which the play of destructive forces can inspire. As I considered our danger, these same forces stirred my heart with fear. Loud and terrible, however, as were the voices which spoke to me, their message did not go deep enough to abide. The impression made on me by this dread experience, though it seemed at the time to be very great, proved to be altogether transient. In a comparatively few hours the storm was by God’s mercy stilled, and the ship steered a course for San Francisco. The sense of danger then began to yield to a feeling of security, and my own conduct, as that of the crew generally, was characterized by levity itself. Before the anchor was cast in the beautiful harbour of San Francisco, the storm and danger were only a memory. The solemn experience had left no other sign.

Very different in its effect was the experience of my first hours at home, where I arrived about seven months later. I had deserted my vessel in Frisco, and my relatives did not know where I was or how I had been conducting myself. When I stood before them empty-handed, their fears that all had not been right were quickened; yet only words of welcome were spoken. Their looks, however, and their voices, had something in them that appealed powerfully to all that was best in me. Their entire attitude had the permanently arresting quality of the “still, small voice.” It was love patiently and, as far as possible, cheerfully shouldering the burden of my folly. That experience is more than a memory. The impression it made was deep and abiding. It has long been my conviction that that was the turning-point in my spiritual history. Then was begun in me a work of whose significance I was at the time unconscious; a work which is largely the cause of my being a Christian minister to-day; a work which, by God’s grace, shall not stop, even for death.1 [Note: John M‘Neil (Airdrie).]

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways!

Reclothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives Thy service find,

In deeper reverence, praise.



O Sabbath rest by Galilee!

O calm of hills above,

Where Jesus knelt to share with thee

The silence of eternity

Interpreted by love!



With that deep hush subduing all

Our words and works that drown

The tender whisper of Thy call,

As noiseless let Thy blessing fall,

As fell Thy manna down.



Drop Thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.



Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and Thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm!1 [Note: J. G. Whittier.]

ii. Smallness

The significance of the symbolism portrayed before the despondent prophet was surely that, while comparative impotence may roar in the guise of tempest and fire, Almightiness may move in whispers. Feebleness hides in the apparently overwhelming; Almightiness hides in apparent impotence. God was in the weak thing! Elijah left the mount with his conceptions entirely changed.

1. And so we see that we must look for God in the everyday occurrences. We should all like to be spoken to by a prodigy. But the Lord does not often do that. He is too great to do that. It belongs to everything that is really great to act simply. The infinite God does all His works in the simplest manner possible. And the Lord does everything in a way to show His own power. If the machinery were great, the mover might be little.

There is in many minds something which makes them crave for proofs of the presence and power of God in remarkable interruptions of nature and providence rather than in their orderly course. It is a perversion of the truth. If a miracle is sublime, how much more sublime is the unity and greatness of the order which it seems, on some singular occasion, to interrupt. The mind which has learned to see God in the daily course of nature and providence comes nearer to the happy truth than that to which this order is meaningless, and which cries out to Him to raise up His power and come and declare His presence by miraculous wonders. Is it not better for us to learn that God is near in the daily exhibitions of His goodness than to look for Him only in those rare events in which we try to persuade ourselves that He has worked a miracle in answer to our cry? For one miraculous we enjoy a thousand customary gifts of grace and kindness. Happy are we if in our deep hearts we consent that this is so, and that this is best.1 [Note: G. R. Wynne.]

2. We must not undervalue agencies because they seem to be insignificant. It was said of the Lord Himself, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” and the first apostles were despised as “unlearned and ignorant men.” Yet though God used only “the weak things of the world,” He did confound with them “the things which are mighty.” The big trees in California have sprung from seeds each of which is no larger than a grain of wheat; and the river which at its source is a tiny tinkling rill over which a child may stride, is at its mouth broad enough and deep enough to bear a navy on its bosom.

It used to be thought that the upheaval of the continents and the rearing of the great mountains was due to cataclysms and conflagrations and vast explosions of volcanic force. It has long been known that they are due, on the contrary, to the inconceivably slow modifications produced by the most insignificant causes. It is the age-long accumulation of mica-flakes that has built up the mighty bastions of the Alps. It is the toil of the ephemeral coral insect that has reared whole leagues of the American Continent and filled the Pacific Ocean with those unnumbered isles

Which, like to rich and various gems, inlay

The unadorned bosom of the deep.

It is the slow silting up of the rivers that has created vast deltas for the home of man. It has required the calcareous deposit of millions of animalculæ to produce even one inch of the white cliffs along the shores.2 [Note: F. W. Farrar.]

Some time ago I was in Stirling Castle, and the guide pointed out to me the field of Bannockburn, and revelled in his description of the bloody fray. I turned from the contemplation of material strife and I saw John Knox’s pulpit! I allowed the two symbols to confront each other, and they enshrined for me the teaching given to Elijah in the days of old. The ghostly power suggested by the pulpit was of infinitely greater import than the carnal power suggested by the battlefield. I remember one day passing along the road, by the far-stretching works of Messrs. Armstrong, that vast manufactory of destructive armaments. I was almost awed by the massiveness of the equipment and by the terrific issues of their work. Near by I saw a little Methodist Chapel; it could have been put in a small corner of Armstrong’s works, but it became to me the symbol of the enduring and the eternal. The ghostly breathing was in the plain little edifice, and the creations of its ministries will be found when the bristling armaments have crumbled into dust.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

III

A Voice

All through the ages God has manifested Himself as a Voice, as the voice of conscience in the hearts of men. He has left no man utterly without guidance. Often, however, the voice is almost silent, because dulled by its faulty medium, man. But to-day we are not dependent on the voice of conscience alone.

1. There is the voice of the human Jesus. Was not Jesus God’s “still small voice” when in His human garb He walked the plains of Galilee, and declared His Father’s glory and His Father’s will? The bruised reed He never broke; the smoking flax He never quenched. He did not strive, nor cry, nor lift up His voice in the street. Despised in His littleness, that “voice” was, nevertheless, the great power of Jehovah; and, calm as were those loving lips, they uttered the mandates that all worlds obeyed. Evil spirits cowered at His presence; sickness, and sorrow, and death fled before Him. Against the dark background of the penal law, He declared the Gospel’s peace. And when, on the Mount of Beatitudes, that “voice,” long silent, began, in its own gentleness, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Sinai’s trumpet grew silent! And when He stood, and called so lovingly, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”—who remembered, then, any more, the blackness, and the darkness, and the tempest? And when, at last, His dying lips spoke those words of Godhead, “It is finished,” did not every adoring angel, as he stooped to the sound, confess that all the displays that had been made of God, in His own universe, were in magnificence as nought to that one “still small voice” of Calvary?

If we ask what gives us assurance of the truth and justice of God, the answer is, the life and death of Christ, who is the Son of God, and the Revelation of God. We know what He Himself has told us of God, and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from perfect truth; nay, this goodness itself is the only conception we can form of God, if we confess what the mere immensity of the material world tends to suggest—that the Almighty is not a natural or even a supernatural power, but a Being of whom the reason and conscience of man have a truer conception than imagination in its highest flights. He is not in the storm, nor in the thunder, nor in the earthquake, but “in the still small voice.” And this image of God as He reveals Himself in the heart of man is “Christ in us, the hope of glory”; Christ as He once was upon earth in His sufferings rather than His miracles—the image of goodness and truth and peace and love.1 [Note: B. Jowett.]

2. There is the voice of the risen Lord.

(1) This voice draws. Other religions have books: Muhammadanism has a book, and a grand old book it is, called the Koran. Some of its stories are almost equal in beauty to the stories of the Book of Genesis. But Muhammadanism has no voice. Muhammad is dead, and his voice is silent in the tomb. Hinduism has books, and interesting books they are, called the Veda and Shaster. They are full of hymns and precepts. Some of them are almost equal in purity and spirituality to some of the Old Testament Psalms and Proverbs. But Hinduism has no voice. The great prophets of Hinduism who thought out the books are dead, and their voices are heard no more. Christianity also has a book. It is more beautiful than the Veda or Shaster. But the book of Christianity is also a voice. The Prophet of Christianity is not dead. Christ is alive, and fills all the words of the Bible with a living voice. He speaks again, through His Spirit, the very words which He spoke when on earth. Herein is the great difference between the Bible and every other book. Other books contain the thoughts of their authors at a particular period in their life, but they may have changed their opinions after writing them, or they may have died. Their voices cannot speak the very words they have written. We read Shakespeare and Milton, but we do not hear them. We hear Christ; His opinions are unchangeable, and He is ever living. He speaks the sweet words of mercy to every generation.

When I have seen an idol arrayed in traditionary terrors, and magnificently paraded through the streets of a large native town, and in the night too; and when ten thousand human beings have pressed near to worship amid the gleaming of innumerable torches of coloured light, and rockets and candles of every device shooting up into the air; and when the priests have sung in solemn cadence, and the multitudes have shouted their acclamations, I have caught the prevailing awe. With all my better knowledge I could not resist the terror and beauty of the spectacle. But the Lord was not there. The multitudes returned to their homes with an intoxicated sense and a fevered imagination; yet with no silent voice to instruct and win them to God. But I have taken one of those Hindus whom the wind and the earthquake and the fire had dazzled, but not changed; I have drawn him away from the three signs and invited him to wait with me for the fourth; and while we listened, a still small voice spoke in our hearts; and when he heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle, and cried, “What must I do to be saved?” And the effect of that voice was a new heart and a new life. It was the silent winning of Calvary, and not the fiery testimony of Carmel: it was not Moses or Elijah thundering forth the Law upon the senses, but Jesus breathing truth and grace into the soul.1 [Note: E. E. Jenkins.]

(2) It is a voice which guides. There was and still is in the soul of every man who has not by long-continued sin succeeded in stifling it that which the early Friends called the “Light Within,” or the “Divine Seed”; that which we in our generation, by a mode of expression which comes more naturally to us, call the Voice of the Lord speaking to the soul of man. “Do you mean the conscience?” is a question which is often asked when we plead for the continued existence of this Divine gift. Yes, the conscience, which has certainly had a mighty part to play in the drama of the re-making of man; but also something much more than the conscience; the existence in man of a hearing ear, which has often enabled him to distinguish which of two modes of action, neither in itself wrong, it is his Lord’s will that he should choose; in short, that which our forefathers so often spoke of as “the perceptible guidance of the Holy Spirit.”2 [Note: T. Hodgkin, Human Progress and the Inward Light, 28.]

I hear it often in the dark,

I hear it in the light,—

Where is the voice that comes to me

With such a quiet might?

It seems but echo to my thought,

And yet beyond the stars!

It seems a heart-beat in a hush,

And yet the planet jars!



Oh, may it be that far within

My inmost soul there lies

A spirit-sky, that opens with

Those voices of surprise.

Thy heaven is mine—my very soul!

Thy words are sweet and strong;

They fill my inward silences

With music and with song.



They send me challenges to right,

And loud rebuke my ill;

They ring my bells of victory;

They breathe my “Peace, be still!”

They ever seem to say: “My child,

Why seek me so all day?

Now journey inward to thyself,

And listen by the way.”1 [Note: W. C. Gannett.]

That individual and immediate guidance, in which we recognize that “the finger of God is come unto us” seems to come in, as it were, to complete and perfect the work rough-hewn by morality and conscience. We may liken the laws of our country to the cliffs of our island, over which we rarely feel ourselves in any danger of falling; the moral standard of our social circle to the beaten highway road which we can hardly miss. Our own conscience would then be represented by a fence, by which some parts of the country are enclosed for each one, the road itself at times being barred or narrowed. And that Divine guidance of which I am speaking could be typified only by the pressure of a hand upon ours, leading us gently to step to the right or the left, in a manner intended for and understood by ourselves alone.2 [Note: Caroline Stephen, Quaker Strongholds.]

When we have crossed to the other side of the gulf that separates the seen from the unseen we shall find that nothing has ever mattered except faithfulness to that voice. Place does not matter—one might gain all the glory of the world and yet be a stranger to one’s own soul; fame and station count for nothing in that mysterious beyond towards which we are all hastening; the only possession we can carry there is what we are. Can we not live now as though our hearts were set only upon eternal values? Can we not do with our lives now what we would do if we knew for certain that nothing shall live but love? Can we not gaze calmly at the destructive effect of earthquake, wind, and fire, when we know that the still, small voice is whispering, “Well done, good and faithful servant”? Above all, we shall not be tempted to think that success or failure depends in the least upon what the world can see.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]

Loud mockers in the roaring street

Say Christ is crucified again:

Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet,

Twice broken His great heart in vain.

I hear, and to myself I smile,

For Christ talks with me all the while.



No more unto the stubborn heart

With gentle knocking shall He plead,

No more the mystic pity start,

For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.

So in the street I hear men say,

Yet Christ is with me all the day.

Literature

Banks (L. A.), Thirty-One Revival Sermons, 87.

Bersier (E.), Sermons, 2nd Ser., 244.

Bersier (E.), in The Foreign Protestant Pulpit, 1st Ser., 285.

Blackwood (A.), Conference Memories, 179.

Brooke (S. A.), The Old Testament and Modern Life, 285.

Butler (H. M.), University and other Sermons, 342.

Campbell (L.), The Christian Ideal, 18.

Campbell (R. J.), Thursday Mornings at the City Temple, 59.

Cheyne (T. K.), The Hallowing of Criticism, 123.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, 6th Ser., 334,

Davies (T.), Sermons and Homiletical Expositions, 2nd Ser., 23.

Fletcher (R. J.), The Old Law and the New Age, 129.

Fotheringham (D. R.), The Writing on the Sky, 108.

Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, 1st Ser., 179.

Jenkins (E. E.), Sermons, 218.

Macnutt (F. B.), The Riches of Christ, 116.

Moore (E. W.), The Spirit’s Seal, 146.

Newman (J. H.), Sermons on Subjects of the Day, 367.

Nicholson (M.), Redeeming the Time, 198.

Rankin (J.), Character Studies in the Old Testament, 214.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxviii. (1882), No. 1668; lv. (1909), No. 3171.

Taylor (W. M.), Contrary Winds, 107.

Thomas (J.), Sermons (Myrtle Street Pulpit), ii. 192.

Wise (I. M.), in American Jewish Pulpit, 127.

Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 60.

Wynne (G. R.), In Quietness and Confidence, 95.

Christian Age, xlii. 178 (La Bach).

Christian World Pulpit, ii. 122 (Macnaught); viii. 362 (Bainton); xx. 314 (Mursell); xxxii. 174 (Horder); xl. 374 (Williams).

Church of England Pulpit, lxii. 445 (Fotheringham); lxiii. 124 (Cooper).

Church Pulpit Year Book, ii. (1905) 223 (Vaughan).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Lenten Season, v. 81 (Mackay); Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, xi. 304 (Vaughan).

Clergyman’s Magazine, New Ser., i. 312 (Proctor); 3rd Ser., iv. 88 (Youard).

Examiner, 30th March 1905 (Jowett).



Naaman

And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?—2Ki_5:13.

1. The history of Naaman, though it fills only one chapter of the Bible, has much that makes it peculiarly attractive. He possessed nearly every requisite to worldly success and the full gratification of the highest ambition. He had the genius of a great commander; under his leadership the armies of Syria had won great victories. Besides this gift of leadership, he had the personal courage and the heroic daring of a popular hero admired and extolled as “a mighty man of valour.” Because of his great services to the State he enjoyed to an unusual degree the favour and confidence of his king, who lavished upon him the rich gifts and great offices which monarchs confer upon their favourites.

Tradition says that it was Naaman whose hand shot the arrow that smote between the joints of Ahab’s armour, so that he fell down dead in his chariot. Such a man as sometimes comes to the front in the desperate needs of a nation—daring, wise, splendid in heroism, seeing the thing to be done and doing it swiftly and well: his name an inspiration to his forces, and a terror to his foes—how much can such a one do, carrying in his hands the destinies of nations. Here is greatness: great in himself, great in his position, great in his possessions, great in his achievements, great in his authority: no element of greatness is lacking.1 [Note: M. G. Pearse.]

2. But Naaman was a leper.

We can scarcely imagine the greatness of this calamity,—the anguish that overwhelmed his proud spirit, the sorrow that pervaded his house. “The basest slave in Syria,” says Bishop Hall, “would not change skins with him, if he might have his honour to boot. Thus hath the wise God thought wise to sauce the valour, dignity, renown, victories of the famous general of the Syrians.” No wonder that the little slave girl who attended upon his wife was touched with pity, and, remembering the miraculous power of the great prophet of her country, said to her mistress, “Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria!”

Leprosy was feared and fled from in Israel as the stroke of God. Leprosy was the most fearful and the most hateful disease known to man. Leprosy was so loathsome, and so utterly incurable and deadly, that it was not looked on as an ordinary disease at all, but rather as a special creation in His anger, and a direct curse of God, both to punish sin, and, at the same time, to teach His people something of what an accursed thing sin really is; till the whole nature of leprosy and all the laws laid down for its treatment, and the miraculous nature of its so seldom cure, all combined to work into the imagination, and into the conscience, and into the heart, and into the ritual, and into the literature of Israel, some of her deepest lessons about the terrible natu