James Nisbet Commentary - 2 King 13:21 - 13:21

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James Nisbet Commentary - 2 King 13:21 - 13:21


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE

‘When the man was let down, and touched the hones of Elisha, he revived, and stood upon his feet.’

2Ki_13:21

The miracle described in these verses—a man being revived by contact with another’s dry bones—is one that is being continually repeated. It takes place every day before our eyes.

I. Shakespeare says that ‘the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.’—I am glad that the last part of the sentence is not true. A great and good man is a volcano that never becomes extinct. ‘I shall never die,’ said Horace, more than eighteen hundred years ago; and even at the present day he sends forth streams of quickening and vitalising energy. Although John Brown’s bones lay mouldering in the dust, his influence was as real, vital, and inspiring to the people of North America as if he had been alive. How many a man has become a painter through contact with Raphael, a musician through contact with Handel, a poet through contact with Shakespeare, a sailor through contact with Nelson, or a missionary through contact with David Livingstone?

II. We live in a soft and enervating age, and are too ready to sacrifice conscience for comfort and principle for patronage.—Contact with such men as John Robinson and John Bunyan should do much to strengthen and rouse the young people of this generation. But it is only by touching the Christ upon the Cross that souls live. It is at the Cross our chains are broken; it is at the Cross our sins are forgiven; it is at the Cross our stubborn hearts are melted.

Rev. Prebendary Gordon Calthrop.

Illustrations

(1) ‘Whatever authority there may have been for this strange incident, the historian has put it down as a testimony to the veneration in which the prophet was still held years after he had passed away. It is unlike any other Bible miracle, and of itself it has little moral or spiritual significance, but it witnesses that the memory of the just is blessed. The saints’ true relics are not their bones, but the memories of their faith and godliness.’

(2) ‘There is a legend which says that when the Empress Helena was searching for the true Cross three crosses were found. Which of these was the Cross of Jesus could not be told. Then they brought sick people and laid them in turn upon the different crosses, and when they touched the Cross on which Jesus had died they were restored. They brought a dead body and laid it in turn upon the crosses. When it rested upon the true Cross, it became alive. This is only a legend, but it illustrates the truth that the power of Christ always gives life and healing.’

(3) ‘A good man’s influence lives after him. Those who live a good and useful life never die. For years and years the memory of their name remains among those who knew them, and the things they did remain as blessings in the world. There is a story of an old monk who was shipwrecked and cast upon a desert island. He had with him a package of seeds which he scattered upon the bare island. Soon after he died there, but twenty years later, some persons coming to the island found it covered from side to side with waving harvests and luxuriant fruit trees, the result of the scattering of the seeds from the monk’s hand twenty years ago. So it is with those who live well—wherever they go they drop seeds which spring up into beauty.’