When the insolent priest Pashur smote Jeremiah in the face, and put him for a night and a day in the common stocks, the prophet--after telling Pashur that, for this awful insult to God's messenger, his name, which meant "joy far and wide," should be changed into Magormissa-bib, "terror on every side"--utterly broke down, and passionately cursed the day of his birth.[673] And yet his trials were very far from ended then. Homeless, wifeless, childless, slandered, intrigued against, undermined--protesting apparently in vain against the hollow shams of a self-vaunting reformation--the object of special hatred to all the self-satisfied religionists of his day, the lonely persecuted servant of the Lord ended only in exile and martyrdom the long trouble of his eternally blessed but seemingly unfruitful life. I dwell on this incident in the life of Elijah because it is full of instructiveness. Scripture is not all on a dead level. There are many pages of it which belong indeed to the connected history, and therefore carry on the general lessons of the history, but which are, in themselves, almost empty of any spiritual profit. Only a fantastic and artificial method of sermonising can extract from them, taken alone, any Divine lessons. In these Books of Kings many of the records are simply historical, and in themselves, apart from their place in the whole, have no more religious significance than any other historic facts; but because these annals are the annals of a chosen people, and because these books are written for our learning, we find in them again and again, and particularly in their more connected and elevated narratives, facts and incidents which place Scripture incomparably above all secular literature, and are rich in eternal truth for all time, and for a life beyond life. It is with such an experience that we are dealing here, and therefore it is worth while, if we can, to see something of its meaning. We may, therefore, be permitted to linger for a brief space over the causes of Elijah's despair, and the method in which God dealt with it. FOOTNOTES: [667] LXX., 1 Kings xix. 2. [668] The touch "which belongeth to Judah" shows that the Elijah-narrative emanated from some prophet in the northern schools. In later days it was much visited by pilgrims from the Northern Kingdom (Amos v. 5, viii. 14). [669] Matt. xxvi. 36. [670] 1 Kings xix. 4, 5, אֵחָת רֹתֶם; Vulg., _subter unam juniperum_. The plant is the _Genista monosperma_, with papilionaceous flowers. Not "juniper," as in Luther (_Wachholder_) and the A.V. LXX., ῥαθμὲν φύτον. See Robinson, _Researches_, i. 203, 205. It gave its name to the station Rithmah (Numb. xxxiii. 18) and the Wadies Retemît and Retâmah. [671] Comp. Moses (Numb. xi. 15), Jonah (Jonah iv. 3). [672] Pope's epitaph on Mrs. Elizabeth Corbet, in St. Margaret's Westminster. [673] Jer. xx. 1-18. CHAPTER XL. _ELIJAH'S DESPAIR._