ss rises strong in you, then Christ is speaking to you.
Whenever your heart burns within you with admiration of some noble
action, then Christ is speaking to you. Whenever a chance word in
sermons or in books touches your conscience, and reproves you, then
Christ is speaking to you. Oh turn not a deaf ear to those
instincts. They may be the very turning-points of your lives. One
such godly motion, one such pure inspiration of the Spirit of God
listened to humbly, and obeyed heartily, may be the means of putting
you into the right path thenceforward, that you may go on and grow
in strength and wisdom, and favour with God and man; till you become
again, in the world to come, what you were when you were carried
home from the baptismal font, a little child, pure from all spot of
sin.

SERMON IX. OBADIAH

1 Kings, xviii. 3, 4. And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the
governor of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly: for
it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that
Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave,
and fed them with bread and water.)

This is the first and last time throughout the Bible, that we find
this Obadiah mentioned. We find the same name elsewhere, but not
the same person. It is a common Jewish name, Obadiah, and means, I
believe, the servant of the Lord.

All we know of the man is contained in this chapter. We do not read
what became of him afterwards. He vanishes out of the story as
quickly as he came into it, and, as we go on through the chapter and
read of that grand judgment at Carmel between Elijah and the priests
of Baal, and the fire of God which came down from heaven, to shew
that the Lord was God, we forget Obadiah, and care to hear of him no
more.

And yet Obadiah was a great man in his day. He was, it seems, King
Ahab's vizier, or prime minister; the second man in the country
after the king; and a prime minister in those eastern kingdoms had,
and has now, far greater power than he has in a free country like
this. Yes, Obadiah was a great man in his day, I doubt not; and
people bowed before him when he went out, and looked up to him, in
that lawless country, for life or death, for ruin or prosperity.
Their money, and their land, their very lives might depend on his
taking a liking toward them, or a spite against them. And he had
wealth, no doubt, and his fair and great house there among the
beautiful hills of Samaria,