CHAPTER XXX.

"HE, BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKETH."

"And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet."-2 KINGS xiii. 20, 21.

WHO that in life has ever spoken to his fellow-men, by word or by deed, is silent in death, and after death? For good or for evil, he still speaketh. In a sense, even that part of our life which has been spent on earth is immortal, like the soul which gave to that life its character. At least, it endureth so long as anything upon earth endureth. Nothing around us ever perisheth, it only lives in other forms; the flower, the leaf, the dust—all are imperishable. No movement ever wholly dies out. Every life, even the humblest, has its influences; some known, most unseen, and perhaps unfelt, but all real and lasting. And so we continue to live upon earth, and to speak, long after we have ceased to live, and our lips have been sealed in death. What solemn import does this give to every action, that its influence must for ever continue, not only so far as we, but so far as others also are concerned. I blessing or in cursing, in brightness or in guilt, for God or for Satan, even the lowliest life endureth. The sin and shame, or else the purity and faith, of the past, sow their seed in the present, and our earth ripens its harvest, to be reaped at last by the heavenly mowers. And so, while

for the present we may "rest," each shall "stand in his lot at the end of the days."

That which Elisha had spoken, both living and dying, he yet spake "being dead." It was: that the Lord God of Israel reigneth, that He is the Living and the True God. This was the meaning of his first exclamation, when entering on the prophetic office; this was the object of his mission, and the bearing of all his prophetic deeds; and this was the lesson of his last interview with Joash. The prophet might depart; the God of the prophet remained. Whether the prophet were present or absent, the power and grace which he represented would continue. And when, as we are told in this narrative, a dead body, hastily thrown upon the bones. of Elisha, was restored to life by the contact, it would remind all men of what Elisha had said and done, and of Elisha's God; and so he, being dead, yet spake.

It is strange, how ofttimes the end of our lives resembles their beginning. Thoughts of childhood, and of first opening. purpose, gather around us with the shadows of evening, and when we stammer our last farewell to life, we often speak it in the long-forgotten language which first we had learned. It almost seems as if the curving lines were to bend into a circle, and thus beginning and end to meet. The first public act of Elisha was in connection with Moab, and at the last these sons of the desert again came as witnesses around his grave. From the first, Elisha was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, as Elijah had been of His precursor, and at the last he appears to foreshadow, in his grave, the power of that empty tomb in which Jesus had lain, and the reality of that life and resurrection which have sprung from it. And so this miracle of deed, seemingly the last wrought in Israel, stood out as a finger-post, pointing forward, through many centuries, to Him Who was to come, and to that greatest miracle of

deed, in which all former miracles were to be summed up and fulfilled.

Elisha had died, and, as tradition informs us, been buried with great demonstrations of reverence. For, in all centuries men have loved to build the sepulchres of the prophets, whose living word they, as well as the men of the former generation, rejected. It seems not only an act of justice to the dead, but to mark our own advance on those who had failed to understand departed worth, thus gratifying both to our self-consciousness and to our self-righteousness. As if in the higher sense these men had departed, and as if our resistance to their testimony gave not the lie to the hypocrisy of our pretensions! Thus some of the historical philosophers of our days profess to have made discovery of "the mission" of the Reformers, of the great and earnest men of old, of a Wesley or a Whitfield-some higher mission to which these men, if they were upon earth, would certainly feel themselves strangers-while they still obstinately reject that which had been their conscious object in life. Would the Apostles be more readily listened to, if they reappeared on the spot to which the tradition of their last resting-place attracts thousands of ignorant worshippers? Would their words be heard where their letters are not even allowed to be read? Or would Wesley and Whitfield be received in the simplicity of their Evangelical faith, and with the burning ardour of their earnestness, by many of those who deplore the coldness which drove them from the sacred edifices to the fields and the wayside? Truth is ever the same, and the most satisfactory test of our appreciation of that which was in the past lies in our reception of that which is offered in the present. They had probably placed the honoured remains of Elisha in the niche of some rock-hewn vault, not coffining them in, as our practice is, to make the narrow bed a narrower prison,

but laying them as in rest on a bier, and rolling a large stone before the entrance, or closing a door upon it. Winter had passed, and many feet had entered and left that grave-yard. And now a fresh green mantled it again, and unplanted flowers, sown by an unseen Hand, were springing. They are ever the sweetest tokens of remembrance-not of man's, but of God's remembrance of the earth, quite as symbolical as those thistles and thorns which mark its curse. Yet they were days of sore calamity to Israel. For although the Syrians were reduced, the land now lay open to other enemies. As the narrative bears, marauding bands of Moabites, wild Arabs from their desert homes across Jordan, swooped like birds of prey over the land, and swept before them every green thing and every living thing. Their terror had fallen. upon the unarmed, unresisting people, who at their approach precipitately fled, preferring to leave their all rather than encounter such enemies.

It was spring-time; as always, a spring-time of sorrow as well as of joy. They carried one to his last resting-place. Sadly the procession moved to the grave-yard; the same where Elisha lay. How many sorrowing hearts in that assembly which would refuse to be comforted! Yet how near is sometimes deliverance, travelling on swift wing, when least it is expected. A rude disturbance threatened to put an end to the last sacred rites of affection and friendship. The rays of the sun were revealing what in the distance might seem a fast-moving cloud. But these rays were soon reflected from the poised lances of a troop of Moabites, rapidly bearing down upon the company of mourners. There was no time for deliberation; present danger banished thoughts of past sorrow. The great stone was rolled away from the nearest vault; and the body hastily laid in the niche, upon bones already there deposited. Then, both they

Y

who had come to bury and they who mourned, fled from the Moabites. No one remained to look into the tomb where they had laid the dead man. If they had stayed but a few moments, not even the fear of Moab would have driven them from the spot. For it had been the vault of Elisha, and oh, wonder of wonders, "when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet." The Moabites had come and were gone; the man, restored to life, yet bearing the vestments of death, had returned from the grave-yard; and, having been dead, yet spake of Elisha, of Elisha's God, of the Resurrection and of the Life; spake to the men of his generation; to those who lived and died after him; speaks to us, and will speak till He cometh, Who is the Resurrection and the Life. Truly a miracle this, the greatest as the last connected with the history of Elisha.

And what are the final lessons of this event, and, with it, of the whole history of Elisha, of which it may be regarded. as the appropriate conclusion?

I.

1. It was a Divine acknowledgment of, and a testimony to, Elisha's past life. If Elijah had been owned in dying, Elisha was yet more publicly acknowledged after his death. God put His seal to that life, and publicly showed before Moab and before Israel that it had been a true life. Nothing in it was to be lost. Even after death the lessons of that life were to continue. And nothing in a true, Christian, spiritual life shall be lost. God will give testimony to it. Though contradicted, opposed, and disregarded by men, such lives are treasured by the Lord. "And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up My jewels." How wonderful, that all our lives, who are sinners, may become such; how precious is sovereign grace that first makes, and then owns them as His; that first gives, and then