ophets of Baal, and upbraiding the people of
God in their idolatries, fasting and faint under junipers, or covering
his face with his mantle at the still small voice of the Lord his God,
he would again have prayed, "O Lord God, take away my life, for I am no
better than my fathers." 'Let me not wait longer for my promised
translation; let me die as my fathers did; for wherein am I better than
they?' So weary had he grown of life. Blind and weak do these fifty
strong men seem to us, in searching for this ascended prophet, this
traveller over the King's road in royal state, one of the only two who
might not taste of death; the companion, in heaven, of Enoch, with a
body which fills all the ransomed spirits there with joyful expectation,
because it is a pledge and earnest of "the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of their bodies." If, amid the new wonders and raptures of
the heavenly world, he had had one moment to look down upon those
"fifty strong men," as they searched for him, he might well have used,
in cheerful irony, something like his old upbraidings of the priests
near Baal's altar: "Search deeper, ye 'strong men,' in the thickets and
caves; peradventure I sleep in the brakes, and must be awaked; call,
with your fifty voices together, that I may be startled from my trance;
will ye give over till ye bring me back to Jericho? Will ye search but
three days? Shall I lose the remnant of my life on earth?"

And while they grew weary and discouraged, and concluded that, if he
should be found, it might be in the far distant hills of Moab, or the
wilds of Philistia, or they knew not where, and went back with hearts
unsatisfied, and debating whether he were yet a wanderer upon earth, or
whether so impossible a thing as they deemed his translation to heaven,
without dying, had taken place, the glorified Elijah was with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, with Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David. But even
Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like him. There, with a body
like unto Christ's own future glorious body, he sat, with but one
compeer--Enoch, and he, transcending all the hosts of the redeemed in
the foretasted glories of the resurrection. Adam, by whom came death,
sees in him that which he himself is to share, when by one Man, also,
shall come the resurrection from the dead. Abel, whose feet first trod
the dark, cold stream, leaving his murdered body behind him, beholds
with love and wonder him who passed the river of death (