Of all the grand personages in the Old Testament, there are few or none, I think, grander than the prophet Elijah.  Consider his strange and wild life, wandering about in forests and mountains, suddenly appearing, and suddenly disappearing again, so that no man knew where to find him; and, as Obadiah said when he met him, ’If I tell my Lord, Behold, Elijah is here; then, as soon as I am gone from thee, the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not.’  Consider, again, his strange activity and strength, as when he goes, forty days and forty nights, far away out of Judea, over the waste wilderness, to Horeb the mount of God; or, as again, when he girds up his loins, and runs before Ahab’s chariot for many miles to the entrance of Jezreel.  One can fancy him from what the Bible tells us of him, clearly enough; as a man mysterious and terrible, not merely in the eyes of women and children, but of soldiers and of kings.

He seems to have been especially a countryman; a mountaineer; born and bred in Gilead, among the lofty mountains and vast forests, full of wild beasts, lions and bears, wild bulls and deer, which stretch for many miles along the further side of the river Jordan, with the waste desert of rocks and sand beyond them.  A wild man, bred up in a wild country, he had learnt to fear no man, and no thing, but God alone.  We do not know what his youth was like; we do not know whether he had wife, or children, or any human being who loved him.  Most likely not.  He seems to have lived a lonely life, in sad and bad times.  He seems to have had but one thought, that his country was going to ruin, from idolatry, tyranny, false and covetous ways; and one determination; to say so; to speak the truth, whatever it cost him.  He had found out that the Lord was God, and not Baal, or any of the idols; and he would follow the Lord; and tell all Israel what his own heart had told him, ‘The Lord, he is God,’ was the one thing which he had to say; and he said it, till it became his name; whether given him by his parents, or by the people, his name was Elijah, ‘The Lord is God.’  ‘How long halt ye between two opinions?’ he cries, upon the greatest day of his life.  ’If the Lord be God, then follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’  How grand he is, on Carmel, throughout that noble chapter which we read last Sunday.  There is no fear in him, no doubt in him.  The poor wild peasant out of the savage mountains stands up before all Israel, before king, priests, nobles, and people, and speaks and acts as if he, too, were a king; because the Spirit of God is in him:  and he is right, and he knows that he is right.  And they obey him as if he were a king.  Even before the fire comes down from heaven, and shows that God is on his side, from the first they obey him.  King Ahab himself obeys him, trembles before him—­’And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?  And he