Characteristic Difference between profane and sacred History--the Shunammite introduced--her Hospitality--Proposes to her Husband to accommodate Elisha with a Chamber--the Gratitude manifested by the Prophet in offering to speak for her to the King--her Reply expressive of Contentment--various Considerations calculated to promote this Disposition--Advantages of a daily and deep Impression of the transitory Nature of our Possessions, and of keeping another Life in view. How strikingly different is the course of profane and sacred history! The former, searching out the most prominent characters that figure upon the stage of life, exhibits them in pompous language, and, by emblazoning their actions with the lustre of high-wrought description and extravagant panegyric, conceals from view those moral blemishes which a nearer inspection, through the medium of a more dispassionate narrative, would discover in all their enormity. Hence the Alexanders and Cæsars of the world, whose mighty ambition, in marching to take possession of unoffending empires, has trampled on the rights of man, the fruits of industry, and the comforts of domestic life, and whose laurels are died with the blood of humanity, have nevertheless had their names transmitted with loud applause from age to age. High station, noble birth, great talents, or marvellous exploits, though associated with daring crime, constitute a sufficient passport to the historic page, which too often extols where it ought to censure: and instructs us to venerate a name which should rather be execrated. Sacred history pursues a different course. It records, indeed, the actions of the unworthy as well as of the pious; not that we should be roused to rapturous admiration of their achievements, but, by tracing the dreadful outline of their characters, and the fatal consequences of their guilt, be incited to avoid their vices. In general, those individuals whom civil history overlooks, are found in the inspired records, while "the mighty" and "the noble" remain unnoticed. Some few instances, indeed, of the lives of great men, in point of station and rank, furnish exceptions to this observation; but they are introduced, not because they were _great_, but because they were _pious_; or, if impious, because they stood connected with the church of God. Scripture does not so much furnish the history of the world as the history of the church and of human nature. It aims to instruct, not to amuse or astonish; and that, by the exhibition of characters remarkable in any respect for their efforts to oppose or to promote the purposes of eternal wisdom, or for the exhibition, in a private sphere, of those principles, the knowledge of whose diversified operations might prove useful to posterity.