for good.” Commentators, in general, make very light of this, and her answer to Elisha’s message in my text. Some suppose she has a reserve in her breast, when Gehazi asks after her family, that this “well” only refers to her husband and herself. Others think it is but a transition to something farther, which she was in haste to say; as if she had said, “All is well do not hinder me, I have urgent business with your master Elisha, and cannot stay to talk farther with you upon any matters.” This is the sense which most annotators incline to, which, I confess, I the more wonder at, because all agree, that the apostle’s words in part refer to this story, Heb. xi. 35. “Women received their dead raised to life again.” How they received them is there specified; namely, by or “through faith.” Faith, not as some carry it, in the prophet, but in the persons who had their dead restored to them; or else there would have been no need to make mention of any by name. Now wherein this woman’s faith appeared, my text and context make manifest. Here was a dependance upon God’s promise, an abiding by that, God had promised her a son; a son, not to lose him but to have comfort in him; and, as if she had said, “As for God, his work is perfect, he does not use to raise his people’s expectations for nothing; to give and immediately take away again. My son is dead, but God, all sufficient liveth; why should I mourn as though I had no hope? As for God’s power and faithfulness there is no abatement in them.” Therefore, she makes no preparation for his burial tells her husband nothing of his death, but seeks to God by the prophet, and expects help from him, See how she expresses herself: “Is it well with thee?” (and says Gehazzi,) “Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?” and she answered, “It is well”. Here is the greatest submission in the greatest distress: Her son, her only son, the son of all her love, the son of her old age, he is taken away with a stroke, and yet all is well. There is nothing amiss in the dispensation; had she been to choose it, it is well; she has nothing to object. Here are submission and faith both discovered in their sweet exercise; submission to what God hath done; faith in what he is able to do, and in what she believed he would do: “By faith women received their dead raised to life again;” so that the words, thus explained, afford us this plain and useful observation. OBSERV. Faith in God’s promise and power will bring a man to submit to the sorest and most trying dispensations of his Providence; or thus, Faith where it is in exercise, will teach a Christian to say of all God does, “It is well.” In discoursing on this proposition, I will endeavour to show what submission is, or how and in what sense we are to understand the expression in my text, “It is well.”