his retreat once more to confront Ahab, and this time to promise rain.  As the most diligent search had been made in every direction, but in vain, to find Elijah, with a view to his destruction as the man who “troubled Israel,” Obadiah did not believe that the hunted prophet would voluntarily put himself again in the power of an angry and hostile tyrant.  Yet the prime minister, having encountered the prophet, was desirous that he should keep his word to appear before the king, and promise to remove the calamity which even in a pagan land was felt to be a divine judgment.  Elijah having reassured him of his sincerity, the minister informed his master that the man he sought to destroy was near at hand, and demanded an interview.  The wrathful and puzzled king went out to meet the prophet, not to take vengeance, but to secure relief from a sore calamity,—­for Ahab reasoned that if Elijah had power, as the messenger of Omnipotence, to send a drought, he also had the power to remove it.  Moreover, had he not said that there should be neither rain nor dew but according to his word?  So Ahab addressed the prophet as the author of national calamities, but without threats or insults.  “Art thou he who troubleth Israel?” Elijah loftily, fearlessly, and reproachfully replied:  “I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house, in that thou hast forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and hast followed Baalim.”  He then assumes the haughty attitude of a messenger of divine omnipotence, and orders the king to assemble all his people, together with the eight hundred and fifty priests of Baal, at Mount Carmel,—­a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet high, near the Mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs.  He gives no reasons,—­he sternly commands; and the king obeys, being evidently awed by the imperious voice of the divine ambassador.

The representatives of the whole nation are now assembled at Mount Carmel, with their idolatrous priests.  The prophet appears in their midst as a preacher armed with irresistible power.  He addresses the people, who seemed to have no firm convictions, but were swayed to and fro by changing circumstances, being not yet hopelessly sunk into the idolatry of their rulers.  “How long,” cried the preacher, with a loud voice and fierce aspect, “halt ye between two opinions?  If Jehovah be God, follow him; but if Baal be God, then follow him.”  The undecided, crestfallen, intimidated people did not answer a word.

Then Elijah stoops to argument.  He reminds the people, among whom probably were many influential men, that he stood alone in opposition to eight hundred and fifty idolatrous priests protected by the king and queen.  He proposes to test their claims in comparison with his as ministers of the true God.  This seems reasonable, and the king makes no objection.  The test is to be supernatural, even to bring down fire from heaven to consume the sacrificial bullock