MARY. Yes; the meal and oil never ran out, and they were well off all the time of the famine.

MAMA. Was this all the good effect of her faith and charity?

MARY. Oh! no; her son fell sick and died, and Elijah restored him to life. You told me this story when I was quite a baby.

MAMA. It is one so simple and affecting, my dear, that it is adapted alike for young and old. But we must try and draw a Christian moral from it; and two things strike me as remarkable. What was the immediate effect produced even on this worthy widow by her son's sickness and death? What did she think it was sent for?

MARY. She thought it came "to call her sins to remembrance."

MAMA. Here you have the gracious purpose of all such trials to God's servants. Without sin there would have been neither death nor sickness in the world, and both should ever remind us of it. Such being the wholesome effects of affliction on this mother, what were the still more precious fruits of joy for her son's revival?

MARY. She said unto Elijah, "Now I know by this, that the word of God in thy mouth is truth."

MAMA. So she became a believer in the true God. She owed to her acquaintance with the prophet the two inestimable blessings of repentance and conversion. Remember, Mary, they were both equally necessary, and can never be separated.

54

MORNING SEVENTH.

LESSON. 1st Kings, Chapter xviii. to the end.

MAMA. My dear Mary, I don't know if you are exactly aware to how deplorable a condition Ahab and his kingdom were by this time reduced, by the three years' drought foretold by Elijah. Things are sometimes parched up enough by a few weeks of dry weather, even in our cool moist climate; but a three years' want of rain or dew, in an arid stony country like Judea, must have been frightful; and under a sun, too, ten times hotter than ours! There is a terrible prophecy of Moses before his death, which surely relates to this bitter visitation. He says, in Deuteronomy, when enumerating the curses which should befall Israel on forsaking God," And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron; the Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust." A horrible picture of parching desolation any where, but much more so in a dry country,— a thirsty land," as Scripture elsewhere calls it.

How was Ahab employed, when Elijah went to him to announce welcome rain?

MARY. He was going one way through the land, and Obadiah another, to see if they could find any blades of grass still remaining by the brooks, to keep the horses and mules alive." ! MAMA. What extremities for a king, and the governor of his household, to be reduced to!. Which did Elijah meet first?

MAMA. What sort of a person was he?

MARY. It says, " He feared the Lord greatly." MAMA. A rare virtue at this time in Israel! How long had he feared him?-(A pause.)— What did we say the other day of early piety, and its blessed effects?

MARY. Mama, he " had feared him from his youth."

MAMA.

How did he shew this fear?

MARY. By hiding a hundred prophets of the Lord in a cave, and feeding them with bread and water.

: MAMA. Scarce commodities both, you will recollect, at this time of utter starvation! From whom, my dear, was he hiding them?

MARY. From Jezebel, who had cut off the rest of their brethren.

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MAMA. Do we hear of any special reward for his loyalty to God in such evil times? MARY. I don't know of any. MAMA. Unless we consider his promotion in the king's household as from God. Do you recollect any other eminent person in Scripture, who filled the same high office under a heathen king, by God's express appointment?

MARY. No, Mama.

MAMA. What! not Joseph? who was made "ruler over the house of Pharaoh ?" and, for the very same gracious purpose, that he might feed the people of God in a time of distress. Where does Obadiah say Ahab had sent to seek Elijah? MARY. "Into every nation and kingdom" of the world, Mama, to kill him, I suppose.

MAMA. Then, Mary, we may compare him also to Pharaoh, whose heart God's chastisements only hardened. And yet you see with what godly boldness the prophet set out to face the king, and bitterly rebuked him besides for his idolatries. All who have reason to dread persecution for the Gospel, should think on and imitate Elijah's holy confidence.

Now, Mary, we come to the remarkable trial which the prophet proposed to the people, to ascertain which was the true God, Baal or Jeho