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| Chapter VI
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Chapter VI.
This, I
believe, makes the greatness of the prophet Elias, and of him who
afterwards appeared in the spirit and power of Elias, than whom
“of those that are born of women there was none greater1376
.” If their history conveys any other
mystic lesson, surely this above all is taught by their special mode of
life, that the man whose thoughts are fixed upon the invisible is
necessarily separated from all the ordinary events of life; his
judgments as to the True Good cannot be confused and led astray by the
deceits arising from the senses. Both, from their youth upwards, exiled
themselves from human society, and in a way from human nature, in their
neglect of the usual kinds of meat and drink, and their sojourn in the
desert. The wants of each were satisfied by the nourishment that came
in their way, so that their taste might remain simple and unspoilt, as
their ears were free from any distracting noise, and their eyes from
any wandering look. Thus they attained a cloudless calm of soul, and
were raised to that height of Divine favour which Scripture records of
each. Elias, for instance, became the dispenser of God’s earthly
gifts; he had authority to close at will the uses of the sky against
the sinners and to open them to the penitent. John is not said indeed
to have done any miracle; but the gift in him was pronounced by Him Who
sees the secrets of a man greater than any prophet’s. This was
so, we may presume, because both, from beginning to end, so dedicated
their hearts to the Lord that they were unsullied by any earthly
passion; because the love of wife or child, or any other human call,
did not intrude upon them, and they did not even think their daily
sustenance worthy of anxious thought; because they showed themselves to
be above any magnificence1377
| 1377 σεμνότητος; not as Galesinius renders, “asperitate quadam
gravi.” | of dress, and made
shift with that which chance offered them, one clothing himself in
goat-skins, the other with camel’s hair. It is my belief that
they would not have reached to this loftiness of spirit, if marriage
had softened them. This is not simple history only; it is
“written for our admonition1378
,” that
we might direct our lives by theirs. What, then, do we learn thereby?
This: that the man who longs for union with God must, like those
saints, detach his mind from all worldly business. It is impossible for
the mind which is poured into many channels to win its way to the
knowledge and the love of God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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