So the Prophet listened to his fellow-prophet, instead of obeying God, and he turned back and went in, and ate and drank. But when he had finished the meal, the Word of the Lord came to the Old Prophet, with a terrible message to the disobedient man. "Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the Lord, and hast not kept the Commandment which the Lord thy God commanded thee . . . thy carcase shall not come to be buried in the sepulchre of thy fathers." So the Old Prophet gave the message, and he sorrowfully saddled the ass of the disobedient Prophet, and sent him forth on his return journey. But very soon a lion met him in the way, and slew him; and his body lay by the roadside, and the lion and the ass stood by, but the lion did not eat either of them. By and by people passed that way, and they hastened to the city to tell what they had seen. [Illustration: THE DISOBEDIENT PROPHET.] Then the Old Prophet told his sons to saddle his ass, and he hurried along the road until he came to the spot where the dead Prophet lay. And he found all as he had been told, and saw that the Lord had not allowed the lion to touch the dead man, or the ass. Then the old man laid the body of the Prophet on his ass, and brought him back to bury him in his own grave; and he mourned bitterly for him, for he knew he had tempted him, and had been the cause of his death. He charged his sons, that when he came to die, they were to bury him in the same grave with the Prophet; and he added a solemn assurance that the words of God which the Prophet had uttered against King Jeroboam's altar in Bethel, and against the other idolatrous places which he had built, should surely come to pass. All this was literally fulfilled three hundred years after, in the reign of Josiah, the good young King. We read the account of it in three verses in 2 Kings 23.15-18. But King Jeroboam, knowing of this Prophecy, remembering as he must that his withered hand had been healed by God, did not set his heart to seek God and to find forgiveness. He went on in his evil ways all his life, until at length we read in the Bible the name by which he was known after his death, "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin." This long ago story speaks an ever-living lesson. The God who commands will enable us to obey. Let us seek Him with all our hearts: let us learn His will in the Bible, and then the promise to each one of us will come true— "To him that soweth righteousness, shall be a sure reward." [Illustration] XXVI. THE LORD ANSWERS ELIJAH BY FIRE 1 KINGS 18, 19 THEN after a long time, the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year of the famine, saying to him, "Go, show thyself to Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth." So Elijah went back from Zarephath, and came down to Samaria to show himself to Ahab; and the famine was very sore there. Ahab had a trusted servant called Obadiah, who was governor of his house; and this man "feared the Lord greatly."