SERMON

OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF

REV. ROBERT MEANS,

OF FAIRFIELD DISTRICT, S. C.

PREACHED IN THE SALEM CHurch, on the SECOND SABBATH IN JUNE, 1836,

BY GEORGE HOWE,

Professor of Biblical Literature in the Theological Seminary, at Columbia, S. C.

SERMON.

2 KINGS ii. 12.

And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.

THE character of the prophet Elijah is marked with the elements of strength and grandeur, more entirely than almost any other which is portrayed in the sacred volume. God caused his powerful mind and amiable heart to exist, at a period when his service required such talents; and under his providence this mind, with all its affections, was so disciplined in a school of trials, that it was prepared for the noble part, which it was to perform. Elijah lived in a day when religion was depressed, and skeptical notions, of foreign origin, had been imported into the Jewish realm, and were enthroned in the high places of power and royalty. With Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, whom Ahab had married, was brought in the Phoenician worship, which was sustained by all the ingenuity

of that wicked queen, who affords to the reader of sacred history a lively illustration of the fatal power which can be wielded by one bad woman, placed in the centre of attraction and influence. Instigated by her, Ahab erected a temple and altar to Baal in Samaria his capital, and built a grove consecrated to his cruel rites, while she maintained a crowd of idolatrous priests as a part of the royal household, and sent them portions from her table.

Meanwhile the spirit of infidelity pervaded the community, and because they preferred to have it so, the evidences of revealed religion were obscured and hidden from the minds of the people, and consequently all that was corrupt among them acquired new power. At last, the popular mind became prepared for the formal overthrow of the true worship, as has been the case at a later day in the French nation; and Ahab, prompted doubtless by his wife Jezebel, slew all the prophets of the Lord who did not escape by flight from the hand of violence. Amid a population of 4,000,000 of people, 7,000 only were reserved by God, who escaped the vigilant eyes of persecuting idolatry, and maintained the true religion, perhaps unknown to each other, refusing to bow the knee to Baal.

Elijah himself eluded the hatred of the king, and kept beyond the reach of his vengeance. But called at length from his seclusion by the irreligion of the times, he challenged the priests of Baal to a bold trial of the divine original of the two religions, on the mount of Carmel. He erected an altar, according to the account given in the Bible, and made the startling proposition that the God who answered by fire from heaven, should be acknowledged the God of the nation. I forbear to repeat the graphic history of this event. The result you know. The fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the

stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, The Lord he is God; the Lord he is God. The tide of popular feeling was then changed, and Elijah perceiving it, seized on the priests of Baal, who by introducing another worship, had committed what under the theocracy was the crime of treason; and taking them to the brook Kishon, he slew them there.

The office of the prophet in the old dispensation, was different from that of the pastor in the Christian church. The prophet was the pastor not of a single congregation, but of the nation. He was the guardian of the theocracy, and stood as a watchman to see that the fundamental laws of that species of government were never violated. Such was the office of Elijah; and he was blessed by God, and honored as the instrument of recovering the people from their apostasy to idols. He interested himself in founding schools of the prophets, where the youth were educated in religion and literature beneath his care. And after a life of unexampled usefulness, he was carried up in a whirlwind to heaven. He walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. Elisha, his disciple, his assistant and successor in the prophetical schools, was with him at that moment. "And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." The same words were uttered by Joash, king of Israel, in reference to Elisha when he was about to depart. In the thirteenth chapter of 2d of Kings, the death of Elisha is thus narrated. "Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness And Joash the king came down unto

whereof he died.