r 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 sai