Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ELISHA. "NTO two men are linked together more closely "" in Scripture history than Elijah and Elisha, and no two are in character and the circumstances of their lives more sharply opposed to each other Elijah stands before us suddenly, without one note of preparation, in the fulness of the prophetic office as " the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead;" startling Ahab in his pride of power as though called by the king's sins out of the earth on which he stood; and denouncing judgment on him in the name of " the Lord God of Israel before whom I stand." We have no hint of the training for the prophet's office which preceded this its sudden development, though we may conjecture that his frame was hardenedon the mountain ranges of Gilead, and his spirit attuned by solitary musings to the notes of power and judgment which marked all his prophetic utterances. Elisha, on the contrary, comes before us with a touch of circumstance which almost reveals to us the history of his youth. He is " Elisha the son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah." Instead of the child of the desert, full of the wild strength bred of lonely wanderings amidst the ranges of Gilead, we have the child of a peaceful, wealthy agricultural home in the rich valley of the Jordan. His call to the prophet's office finds him full of the employments which belonged to such a life. Elijah's homeward course from the marvels which had surrounded him at Horeb was ordered for him by the divine voice through the plain of Jordan. As he passes up it he reaches one of its pleasantest scenes, where the wood-tangled banks of Jordan, and the stern acacia groves open out into the rich arable plain, and the laughing brightness of a river-bordered meadow. He is at Abel-meholah, the "meadow of the dance," well known to the dark-eyed daughter...