unto him, and he said unto him, What d

f Horeb was not the place in which God expected to find such a servant as Elijah, and th

ready to give up the hopeless struggle, crying to God, "It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life;" and then it shows us how God dealt with him in that solitude; we hear the Divine voice pleading in him again, bearing its Divine

us, and not once only, but many times over, this hour of darkness; and it will continue to come so long as the flesh is weak. And it is at such moments that a man is the better for going with the prophet into this Horeb, the mount of God, making Elijah's vision his own vision, and renewing his strength, at the same Divine source. How often it happens to men, to boys, to all alike, that they flee into the desert, away from the post of present duty, away from the face of difficulties which they cannot or will not stand up against, away from the moments of trial and discipline. A

tion, "What doest them here?" is the e

refusing to be silenced, piercing through all the false notions about a man's relationship to his

around us run on anyhow, as if we didn't care how it ran, or whenever in obedience to any impulse,

depends on the answer we give to such spiritual questi

in, or when we waste our opportunities in some form of idleness, or when we stand by in co

but because it is the easy way, and I cannot bring myself to face the harder and more manly course of duty. I hear the voice; I cannot get away from it; it haunts me with its inquiries, when my heart is hot within me, as

ble to answer our Heavenly Father when He questions us, as Elijah was able to answer: "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts." If we live as those who are jealous for

ose beside him; it is in this way that he who is industrious, as a duty, makes industry more prevalent

have been jealous for the Lord God of Hosts. So the youngest boy and the oldest man may become fellow-labour

ealous, even your presence will banish sin, silencing the evil tongue, strengtheni

earthquake, and the fire, revealing it yet more intimately in the sound of the still small voice. So He sent Him out again with a new commission; and so we, too, may learn our lesson, if we care to learn it. And the lesson is this, that God renews our wavering strength, that He lifts up our drooping spirit, and opens our dull eyes and gives us afres

d dangers and difficulties. Has any one of us ever shrunk from any post of duty in life, or strayed from any straight course? Then if God has in His mercy visited us with the warning call, "What doest thou here?" or laid the call of a new message upon us, it is almost sure to have been a call to return and take the straight path, or to take our stand at the dese

, the thought may rise in you that you seem to be fighting alone, and that everything is against

in the faith of their fathers, untouched and untainted by adverse influence, and the recollection of it

of God, and go forward where duty calls us, sometimes f