the unburnt bush told him first of a new
kind of fire, uncatalogued on the Nile. The fire of a Presence burned
daily, not consuming him, but only the dross _in_ him, as he led his
race from Egypt to Sinai, out from the slavery of men up to the freedom
of the presence of God. And then for six weeks, twice over, he was in
the Presence of Flame on the Mount.

This it was that utterly changed him into the strongly gentle, patient,
tender-hearted, wise man who taught and trained, lived with and led, the
immature men and women whom God would weld into a nation, a God-nation.
He never got over those two long visits to the Mount, nor has the world.

It was nothing else than this, long years later, that made the rugged
man of the deserts brave the traitorous Ahab in his luxurious,
licentious court. Without it, the sight obscured, the vision lost, he is
a coward fleeing like a whipped dog before a bad woman, thinking only of
saving his own skin. It showed himself, his weak, cowardly self, to
himself.

A fresh vision that early morning in the mouth of the desert cave made
the yet deeper more radical transformation. That unutterably gentle
sound of stillness, too exquisite to be told, only to be felt by a
spirit in tune, _that_ left him not a whit less willing to brave danger
than before, but made over now into another sort, like him whose
Presence in the cave so melted him down.

This new, gentled, mellowed, strengthened Elijah reappears in the man
who received the birthright portion of his spirit. We know the new
Elijah by the spirit that swayed Elisha. The old spirit, fiercely
denouncing, calling down fire, slaying the priests, but with no
grief-broken heart under these stern needful things,--this we think of
familiarly as the Elijah spirit.

The new spirit, healing, teaching, sympathizing, leading, feeding,
fathering, the greatness of gentleness and patience, these
characteristics of Elijah's prophetic heir tell of the deep radical
transformation by the wondrous unseen Presence that early morning in the
mouth of the cave. This is the birthright gift of Elijah to Elisha.
Elijah had a spirit-sight of God, and he never got over it. He became
like Him into whose face he looked.

Heart Stimulant for the Brain.

But time fails, and words fail immensely more, to tell this thing. Let
him who would know that transforming sight get quietly alone with Isaiah
in the temple, and on bent knees linger unhurriedly, and listen, and