My Church, my Church, my dear old Church! I love her ancient name, And God forbid a child of hers Should ever do her shame. Her mother-care I'll ever share, Her child I am alone, Till He who gave me to her arms Shall call me to His own.
And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.--_1 Kings 18, 21._
It was a remarkable, but wise decision that King Solomon once rendered in a difficult case which was brought before him. Two women came to him with an infant to which they both asserted a mother's claim, the one contending that the other had overlaid her child, and taken hers from her before she was awake, and laid her own dead child in its place, whilst the other asserted that the contrary was the truth, saying, "The dead child is hers, and the living is mine." And now it was for the King to decide. But how was it to be done? Solomon calls for a sword. "Divide," he commands, "the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other." Then spake, says the Holy Record, the woman whose the living child was unto the King, for her bowels yearned upon her son, "O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it." But the other said, "Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it." Solomon instantly recognized the true mother's heart. "Give her the child," he said. The same it is with God, our true heavenly Parent. He does not want His children divided; He will have them entirely, as a whole living sacrifice, or not at all. The sum of His commandment and will regarding us, as repeated in to-day's Gospel lesson, is: "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with _all_ thy heart, and with _all_ thy soul, and with _all_ thy mind." Of that would we remind ourselves in our present worship, taking for our instruction the Scripture read as our text.
With the aid of the Holy Spirit we note Elijah's challenge on Mount Carmel,--_A call to Christian decision_. _I. The question at issue: "Is the Lord God?"_ _II. The obligation involved, "Then follow Him."_
Israel had had many wicked kings since the suicide of its first monarch, Saul, upon Mount Gilboa, but none more so than Ahab. The crowning iniquity of this unprincipled and despicable prince was the introduction of the idol called Baal into Israel. Baal signifies governor or ruler, and was the name given in the East to the chief male idol of the heathen. To the honor of this idol, temples were erected, bloody sacrifices offered, and the most shameful things perpetrated. Ahab had married Jezebel, the daughter of the idolatrous King of the Sidonians, and under her sway the worship of this idol had become sinfully popular in Israel. Four hundred and fifty priests served at his altar, and nearly an equally large number were appointed to the worship of his mate, Ashtaroth, for every male idol was wont to have his goddess. This abominable form of idolatry was going on in the land where God had thundered from the sides of Sinai as His first requirement: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and had declared: "My glory will I not give to another, nor my praise to graven images"; and in consequence the judgments of Jehovah were not slow to follow. No rain or dew had fallen for the space of three years, the heaven was as brass, and the earth like a nether grindstone.--Famine stalked throughout the land, when one day, as Ahab was wandering up and down the country searching for food, he met the stern and fearless prophet of Jehovah, Elijah, called the Tishbite. "Art thou he," asks the King, "that troubleth Israel?" Elijah retorts: "Not I have troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandment of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim."