66 my departed master, that if I should see him in his last passage, a double portion of his spirit should be upon me: I followed him with my eyes in that fire and whirlwind: now therefore, O God, make good thy gracious word to thy servant; show some token unto me for good: make this the first proof of the miraculous power wherewith thou shalt endue me; let Jordan give the same way to me that it gave to my master." Immediately the stream, as acknowledging the same mantle, though in another hand, divides itself, and yields passage to the successor of Elijah. This arreption was sudden; yet Elisha | therefore, whether he were no less the heir sees both the chariot, and the horses, and of that spirit, than of that garment, he took the ascent; and cries to his now changed the mantle of Elijah, and smote the wamaster, between heaven and earth, "My ters, and said, "Where is the Lord God father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and of Elijah?" Elisha doth not expostulate the horsemen thereof." Shaphat of Abel- and challenge, but pray; as if he had said, meholah hath yielded this title to Elijah," Lord God, it was thy promise to me by the natural father of Elisha, to the spiritual: neither of them may be neglected; but, after the yoke of oxen killed at the farewell, we hear of no more greetings, no more bewailings of his bodily parent; and now, that Elijah is taken from him, he cries out, like a distressed orphan, My father! my father!" and, when he hath lost the sight of him, he rends his clothes in pieces, according to the fashion of the most passionate mourners: that Elisha sees his master half way in heaven, cannot take away the sorrow of his loss. The departure of a faithful prophet of God is worthy of our lamentation: neither is it private affection that must sway our grief, but respects to the public. Elisha says not only, "My father," but, "the chariot and horse-lated in body, hath yet left his spirit behind men of Israel." That we have foregone a father, should not so much trouble us, as that Israel hath lost his guard. Certainly the view of this heavenly chariot and horses, that came for Elijah, puts Elisha in mind of that chariot and horsemen which Elijah was to Israel. These were God's chariots, Elijah was theirs: God's chariot and theirs are, upon the same wheels, mounted into heaven. No forces are so strong as the spiritual; the prayers of an Elijah are more powerful than all the armies of flesh. The first thing that this seer discerns, after the separation of his master, is the nakedness of Israel in his loss. If we muster soldiers, and lose zealous prophets, it is but a woful exchange. Elijah's mantle falls from him in the rising: there was no use of that whither he was going; there was, whence he was taken. Elisha justly takes up this dear monument of his glorified master: a good supply for his rent garments. This was it which, in presage of his future right, Elijah invested him withal upon the first sight, when he was ploughing with the twelve yoke of oxen; now it falls from heaven to his possession. I do not see him adore so precious a relic: I see him take it up, and cast it about him. Pensive and masterless doth he now come back to the banks of Jordan, whose stream he must pass in his return to the schools of the prophets. Erewhile he saw what way that river gave to the mantle of Elijah; he knew that power was not in the cloth, but in the spirit of him that wore it. To try, The fifty sons of the prophets, having been afar off witnesses of these admirable events, do well see that Elijah, though trans him: These young prophets are no less full of zeal than reverence; zeal to Elijah, reverence to Elisha. They see Elijah carried up in the air; they knew this was not the first time of his supernatural removal: imagining it therefore possible, that the Spirit of God had cast him upon some remote mountain, or valley, they proffer the labour of their servants to seek him. In some things, even professed seers are blind: could they think God would send such a chariot and horses for a less voyage than heaven? Elisha, knowing his master beyond all the sphere of mortality, forbids them; goodwill makes them unmannerly; their importunity urges him till he is ashamed: not his approbation, but their vehemence, carries at last a condescent, else he might perhaps have seemed enviously unwilling to fetch back so admired a master, and loath to forego that mantle. Some things may be yielded for the redeeming of our own vexation, and avoidance of others' misconstruction, which, out of true judgment, we see no cause to affect. | so foul an annoyance: not therefore the ancient malediction of Joshua, not the neighbourhood of that noisome lake of Sodom, was guilty of this disease of the soil and the waters, but the late sins of the inhabitants : "He turneth the rivers into a wilderness, and water-springs into a dry ground; a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein." How oft have we seen the same field both full and famishing! how oft the same waters both safe, and, by some eruption, or new tincture, hurtful! Howsoever natural causes may concur, heaven and earth, and air and waters, follow the temper of our souls, of our lives, and are therefore indisposed because we are so. Jericho began now to make itself capable of a better state, since it was now become a receptacle of prophets. Elisha is willing to gratify his hosts; it is reason that any place should fare the better for the presence of divines. The medicine is more strange than the disease: "Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein." Why a cruse? why new? why salt in that new cruse? How should salt make water potable? or, if there were any such virtue in it, what could a cruseful do to a whole current? or, if that measure were sufficient, what was the age of the cruse to the force of the salt? Yet Elisha calls for salt in a new cruse. God, who wrought this by his WATERS, CURSING THE CHILDREN,-RE- prophet, is a free agent ; as he will not bind The messengers, tired with three days' search, turn back as wise as they went. Some men are best satisfied when they have| wearied themselves in their own ways: nothing will teach them wit but disappointments. Their painful error leads them to a right conceit of Elijah's happier transportation. Those that would find Elijah, let them aspire to the heavenly paradise; let them follow the high steps of his sincere faithfulness, strong patience, undaunted courage, fervent zeal: shortly, let them walk in the ways of his holy and constant obedience; at last, God shall send the fiery chariot of death to fetch them up to that heaven of heavens, where they shall triumph in everlasting joys. CONTEMPLATION VI.-ELISHA HEALING THE LIEVING THE KINGS. It is good making use of a prophet while we have him. Elisha staid somewhile at Jericho ; the citizens resort to him with a common suit: their structure was not more pleasant than their waters unwholesome, and their soil by those corrupt waters: they sue to Elisha for the remedy. Why had they not all this while made their moan to Elijah? Was it that they were more awed with his greater austerity? or was it, that they met not with so fit an opportunity of Iris commoration amongst them? It was told them what power Elisha had exercised upon the waters of Jordan, and now they ply him for theirs. Examples of beneficence easily move us to a request and expectation of favours. What ailed the waters of Jericho? Surely, originally they were not ill affected: no men could be so foolish as to build a city where neither earth nor water were useful: mere prospect could not carry men to the neglect of health and profit. Hiel the Bethelite would never have re-edified it with the danger of a curse, so lately as in the days of Ahab, if it had been of old notorious for his power to means, so will he, by his power, bind unlikely means to perform his will. Natural properties have no place in miraculous works: no less easy is it for God to work by contrary, than subordinate powers. The prophet doth not cast the salt into the channel, but into the spring of the waters. If the fountain be redressed, the stream cannot be faulty; as, contrarily, the purity and soundness of the stream avail nothing to the redress of the fountain. Reformation must begin at the well-head of the abuse. The order of being is a good guide to the method of amending. Virtue doth not run backward. Had Elisha cast the salt into the brooks and ditches, the remedy must have striven against the stream to reach up to the spring; now it is but one labour to cure the fountain. Our heart is a well of bitter and venomous water; our actions are the streams: in vain shall we cleanse our hands, while our hearts are evil. The cruse and the salt must be their own; the act must be his, the power God's. He cast the salt into the spring," and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these 46 waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barrenness." Far was it from Elisha to challenge aught to himself. Before, when he should divide the waters of Jordan, he did not say, Where is the power of Elisha, but, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? And now, when he should cure the waters of Jericho, he says not, Thus saith Elisha, but, Thus saith the Lord, "I have healed these waters." How careful is the man of God that no part of God's glory should stick to his own fingers! Jericho shall know to whom they owe the blessing, that they may duly return the thanks. Elisha professes he can do no more of himself than that salt, than that cruse: only God shall work by him, by it; and whatever that Almighty hand undertakes, cannot fail, yea, is already done: neither doth he say, I will heal, but, "I have healed." Even so, O God, if thou cast into the fountain of our hearts but one cruseful of the salt of thy Spirit, we are whole; no thought can pass between the receipt and the remedy. As the general visitor of the schools of the prophets, Elisha passeth from Jericho to that other college at Bethel. Bethel was a place of strange composition: there were at once the golden calf of Jeroboam, and the school of God; true religion and idolatry found a free harbour within those walls. I do not marvel that God's prophets would plant there; there was the most need of their presence, where they found the springhead of corruption: physicians are of most use where diseases do abound. "As he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said to him, Go up, thou baldhead; Go up, thou bald-head." Even the very boys of Bethel have learned to scoff at a prophet; the spite of their idolatrous parents is easily propagated: children are such as their institution; infancy is led altogether by imitation; it hath neither words nor actions, but infused by others; if it have good or ill language, it is but borrowed, and the shame or thank is due to those that lent it them. What was it that these ill-taught children upbraided to the prophet, but a slight natural defect, not worthy the name of a blemish, the want of a little hair; at the best a comely excrement, no part of the body. Had there been deformity in that smoothness of the head, which some great wits have honoured with praises, a faultless and remediless eye-sore had been no fit matter for a taunt. How small occasions will be taken to disgrace a prophet! If they could have said aught worse, Elisha had not heard of this: God had crowned that head with honour, which the Bethelitiso children loaded with scorn. Who would have thought the rude terms of waggish boys worthy of any thing but neglect! Elisha looks at them with severe brows, and, like the heir of him that called down fire upon the two captains and their fifties, curses them in the name of the Lord. Two she-bears out of the wood, hasten to be his executioners, and tear two-and-forty of them in pieces. O fearful example of Divine justice! This was not the revenge of an angry prophet, it was the punishment of a righteous judge. God and his seer looked through these children at the parents, at all Israel; he would punish the parents' misnurturing their children, to the contemptuous usage of a prophet, with the death of those children which they had mistaught. He would teach Israel what it was to misuse a prophet; and, if he would not endure these contumelies unrevenged in the mouths of children, what vengeance was enough for aged persecutors ? Doubtless some of the children escaped to tell the news of their fellows. What lamentation do we think there was in the streets of Bethel! how did the distressed mothers wring their hands for this woful orbation! and now, when they came forth to fetch the remnants of their own flesh, what a sad spectacle it was to find the fields strewed with those mangled carcasses! It is an unprofitable sorrow that follows a judgment. Had these parents been as careful to train up their children in good discipline, and to correct their disorders, as they are now passionate in bemoaning their loss, this slaughter had never been. In vain do we look for good of those children, whose education we have neglected. In vain do we grieve for those miscarriages which our care might have prevented. Elisha knew the success, yet doth he not baulk the city of Bethel. Do we not wonder that the furious impatience of those parents whom the curse of Elisha robbed of their children, did not break forth to some malicious practice against the prophet? Would we not think the prophet might misdoubt some hard measure from those exasperated citizens! There lay his way; he follows God without fear of men, as well knowing that either they durst not, or they could not act violence. They knew there were bears in the wood, and fires in heaven, and if their malice would have ventured above their courage, they could have no more power over Elisha in the streets, than those hungry beasts had in the way. Whither dare not a prophet go when God calls him? Having visited the schools of the prophets, Elisha retires to Mount Carmel, and, after some holy solitariness, returns to the city of Samaria. He can never be a profitable seer, that is either always or never alone. Carmel shall fit him for Samaria; contemplation for action: that mother city of Israel must needs afford him most work; yet is the throne of Ahaziah succeeded by a brother less ill than himself, than the parents of both. Ahab's impiety hath not a perfect heir of Jehoram: that son of his hates his Baal, though he keeps his calves. Even into the most wicked families it pleaseth God to cast his powerful restraints, that all are not equally vicious. It is no news to see lewd men make scruple of some sins; the world were not to live in, if all sins were affected by all: it is no thank to Ahab and Jezebel that their son is no Baalite. As no good is traduced from parents, so not all evil: there is an Almighty hand that stops the foul current of nature at his pleasure; no idolater can say that his child shall not be a convert. | The three kings of Israel, Judah, Edom, together with their armies, are upon foot: they are no sooner come into the parching wilds of Edom, than they are ready to die for thirst. If the channels were far off, yet the waters were farther: the scorching beams of the sun have dried them up, and have left those rivers more fit for walk than entertainment. What are the greatest monarchs of the world, if they want but water to their mouths? What can their crowns, and plumes, and rich arms, avail them, when they are abridged but of that which is the drink of beasts? With dry tongues and lips, do they now confer of their common misery. Jehoram deplores the calamity into which they were fallen, but Jehoshaphat asks for a prophet. Every man can bewail a misery; every man cannot find the way out of it: still yet I hear good Jehoshaphat speak too late; he should have inquired for a prophet ere he had gone forth: so had he avoided these straits. Not to consult at all with God, is Jehoram's sin; to consult late, is Jehoshaphat's: the former is atheous carelessness, the latter forgetful oversight. The best man may slacken good duties; the worst contemns them. Not without some specialty from God, doth Elisha follow the camp; else, that had been no element for a prophet. Little did the good king of Judah think that God was so near him; purposely was this holy seer sent for the succour of Jehoshaphat and his faithful followers, when they were so far from dreaming of their delivery, that they knew not of a danger. It would be wide with the best men, if the eye of Divine Providence were not open upon them, when the eye of their care is shut towards it. How well did Elisha in the wars! The strongest squadron of Israel was within that breast: all their armour of proof had not so much safety and protection as his mantle. Though the king of Israel would take no The affinity betwixt the houses of Israel and Judah holds good in succession: Jehoram inherits the friendship, the aid of Jehoshaphat; whose counsel, as is most likely, had cured him of that Baalism. It was a good war whereto he solicits the good king of Judah. The king of Moab, who had been an ancient tributary from the days of David, falls now from his homage, and refuses to pay his hundred thousand lambs, and hundred thousand rams with fleeces, to the king of Israel: the backs of Israel can ill miss the wool of Moab; they will put on iron to recover their cloth. Jehoshaphat had been once well chid, well frighted, for joining with Ahab against Aram; yet doth he not stick now again to come into the field with Jehoram, against Moab: the cause is more favourable, less danger-notice of the prophet, yet one of his courous: Baal is cast down; the images of the false gods are gone, though the false images of the true God stand still; besides, this rebellious Moab had joined with the Syrians formerly against Judah, so as Jehoshaphat is interested in the revenge. After resolution of the end, wisely do these kings deliberate of the way. It is agreed to pass through Edom: that kingdom was annexed to the crown of Judah; well might Jehoshaphat make bold with his It was, it seems, a march far about in the measure of the way, but nearest to their purpose: the assault would be more asy, if the passage were more tedious. own. tiers did: "Here is Elisha, the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah." This follower of Jehoram knows Elisha by his own name, by his father's. by his master's. The court of Israel was profane and idolatrous enough; yet even there God's prophet had both knowledge and honour; his very service to Elijah was enough to win him reverence. It is better to be an attendant of some man, than be attended by many that he had poured water on Elijah's hands was insinuation enough that he could pour out water for those three kings. The three kings walked down by the motion of Jehoshaphat, to the : man of God: it was news to see three kings going down to the servant of him who ran before the chariot of Ahab. Religion and necessity have both of them much power of humiliation; I know not whether more: either zeal, or need, will make a prophet honoured. How sharply dares the man of God to chide his sovereign, the king of Israel! The liberty of the prophets was no less singular than their calling; he that would borrow their tongue, must show their commission. As God reproved kings for their sakes, so did not they stick to reprove kings for his | sake. Thus much freedom they must leave to their successors, that we might not spare the vices of them, whose persons we must spare. Justly is Jehoram turned off to the prophets of his father, and the prophets of his mother. It is but right and equal, that those, which we have made the comfort and stay of our peace, should be the refuge of our extremity. If our prosperity have made the world our god, how worthily shall our deathbed be choked with this exprobration! Neither would the case bear an apology, nor the time an expostulation; Jehoram cannot excuse; he can complain: he finds that now three kings, three kingdoms, are at the mercy of one prophet; it was time for him to speak fair. Nothing sounds from him but lamentations and entreaties: "Nay, for the Lord hath called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab." Jehoram hath so much grace as to confess the impotency of those he had trusted, and the power of that God whom he had neglected: every sinner cannot see and acknowledge the hand of God in his sufferings. Already hath the distressed prince gained something by his misery: none complain so much as he, none feel so much as he; all the rest suffer for him, and therefore he suffers in them all. The man of God, who well sees the insufficiency of Jehoram's humiliation, lays on yet more load: As the Lord liveth before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee." Behold the double spirit of Elijah! The master was not more Dold with the father, than the servant was with the son. Elisha was a subject and a prophet; he must say that as a prophet, which he might not as a subject; as a prophet he would not have looked at him, whom as a subject he would have bowed It is one thing when God speaks by him; another when he speaks of himself. That it might well appear his dislike of sin stood with his honour of sovereignty, Jehoshaphat goes away with that respect which Jehoram missed: no less doth God and his prophet regard religious sincerity, than they abhor idolatry and profaneness. What shall not be done for a Jehoshaphat? for his sake shall those two other princes, and their vast armies, live and prevail. Edom and Israel, whether single or conjoined, had perished by the drought of the desert, by the sword of Moab: one Jehoshaphat gives them both life and victory. It is in the power of one good man to oblige a world: we receive true, though insensible favours, from the presence of the righteous. Next to being good, it is happy to converse with them that are so if we be not bettered by their example, we are blest by their protection. Who wonders not to hear a prophet call for a minstrel in the midst of that mournful distress of Israel and Judah? who would not have expected his charge of tears and prayers, rather than of music? How unreasonable are songs to a heavy heart! It was not for their ears, it was for his own bosom, that Elisha called for music; that his spirits, after their zealous agitation, might be sweetly composed, and put into a meet temper for receiving the calm visions of God. Perhaps it was some holy Levite that followed the camp of Jehoshaphat, whose minstrelsy was required for so sacred a purpose. None but a quiet breast is capable of Divine revelations; nothing is more powerful to settle a troubled heart than a melodious harmony: the spirit of prophecy was not the more invited, the prophet's spirit was the better disposed, by pleasing sounds. The same God, that will reveal his will to the prophet, suggests this demand, "Bring me a minstrel." How many say thus, when they would put God from them! Profane mirth, wanton music, debauches the soul, and makes no less room for the unclean spirit, than spiritual melody doth for the divine. No prophet had ever the spirit at com. mand. The hand of the minstrel can do nothing without the hand of the Lord: while the music sounds in the ear, God speaks to the heart of Elisha: "Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches; ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain, yet that valley shall be full of water," &c. To see wind and rain, in the height of that drought, would have seemed as wonderful as pleasing; but to see abundance of water, without wind or rain, was |