“No more going out alone, if you please. We once took the case into our own hands, and I remember how many of us fell sick, and how we cried to Elisha: ‘Master, there is death in the pot!’ And he kindly took up a handful of meal, sprinkled it into the vessel and restored its healthfulness. The pot was relieved of all the disease which it had contained, and the meal most happily proceeded.” We should remember our blunders, and learn from them. We are always safer in the company of the old and wise than when we are in our own society. Happy is the man who takes counsel with his elder neighbors, and who can sometimes renounce himself and say unto wise men: “Such and such are my circumstances; now, what would you advise me to do?” Elisha and the young men have now gone down to the Jordan. Elisha felled no tree but he did his own particular kind of work. The Syrian king could not rest. In his heart he hated or feared the king and the hosts of Israel. There was chronic war between Israel and Syria. The king of Syria said: “I will fix my camp in such and such a place.” Of this the sacred record says: “And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying: ‘Beware that thou pass not such a place, for thither the Syrians are come down.’” There is a ministry of warning. Men may not go themselves to battle, and yet they may be controlling the fortunes of war. We need statesmen, spiritual interpreters, religious teachers, men of thought and men of prayer; and they may be doing more practical work than is being done by those who are engaged in the physical work of leading armies and commanding military hosts. This is what Elisha did. He felled no tree; he wielded no sword. Yet, alike in the building of the college and in the direction of the war, his was the supreme mind. The prophet saved the king. This must always be the case. The great man of the nation is the man who can think most profoundly and most comprehensively. The architect is a greater man than the builder. The prophet is a greater man than the king. He reads more; he sees farther; he grasps a larger field. He is master of metaphysical principles, which alone endure. They wear the clothes of the present time; they adopt the form of the passing generation, but they go on from age to age--themselves always the same, their adaptations being addressed to the immediate and pressing necessities of the people. We have been told that “Justice is not an intermittent apparition.” That is perfectly true in one sense; but justice is often a deferred creditor, and sometimes that may be done tomorrow which can not be justly done today. The prophet sees all this. He looks ahead; he has a larger horizon than is accessible to the vision of other men. So let it stand, an eternal lesson, that the greatest men in any nation are the men who can think most, pray best, feel most deeply and penetrate the metaphysics and the inmost reality of politics and of civilization.