"May we really venture," asks Canon Cheyne, "to _look_ out for answer to prayer? Did not Elijah live in the _heroic_ ages of faith? No; God still works miracles. Take an instance from the early history of Christian Europe. You know the terror excited by the Huns, who in the sixth century after Christ penetrated into the very heart of Christian France. Already they had occupied the suburbs of Orleans, and the people who were incapable of bearing arms lay prostrate in prayer. The governor sent a message to observe from the ramparts. Twice he looked in vain, but the third time he reported a small cloud on the horizon. 'It is the aid of God,' cried the Bishop of Orleans. It was the dust raised by the advancing squadrons of Christian troops."[665] A much nearer parallel, and that a very remarkable one, may be quoted.[666] It records--and the fact itself, explain it how men will, seems to be unquestionable--how a storm of rain came to answer the prayer of a good leader of the Evangelical Revival--Grimshaw, rector of Haworth. Distressed at the horrible immoralities introduced among his parishioners by some local races, and wholly failing to get them stopped, he went to the racecourse, and, flinging himself on his knees in an agony of supplication, entreated God to interpose and save his people from their moral danger. He had scarcely ceased his prayer when down rushed a storm of rain so violent as to turn the racecourse into a swamp, and render the projected races a matter of impossibility. FOOTNOTES: [660] LXX., ὅτι φωνὴ τῶν ποδῶν τοῦ ὑετοῦ. Perhaps, with reference to this reading, Josephus afterwards describes "the little cloud" as "no bigger than a human footstep" (οὐ πλέον ἴχνους ἀνθρωπίνου). [661] LXX., τῷ παιδαρίῳ αὐτοῦ. [662] LXX., 1 Kings xviii. 45, Καὶ ἔκλαιε καὶ ἐπορεύετο Ἀχαὰβ ἕως Ιεζράελ. [663] Menander of Ephesus (Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. xiii. 2). [664] Eisenlohr, _Das Volk Israel_, p. 162. [665] He refers to Gibbon, iv. 232. [666] See Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brönte_. CHAPTER XXXIX. _ELIJAH'S FLIGHT._ 1 KINGS xix. 1-4. "A still small voice comes through the wild, Like a father consoling his fretful child, Which banisheth bitterness, wrath and fear, Saying, 'Man is distant, but God is near.'" TEMPLE.