And if ever men have any doubts or misgivings regarding this, or if the time of discouragements and fears comes to them, and they look with longing to the multitudes who act together, while they think of themselves as just a few, bearing testimony for the truth against error and sin, they may encourage themselves with Mr. Matthew Arnold’s doctrine of the remnant, or better yet, by remembering the great Solitary, Jesus Christ. How lonesomely He walked His way; seeing what no other soul was seeing; standing alone for the great truth which He uttered, and at last meeting death upon the cross alone; one of His disciples having betrayed Him, another having three times denied that he ever knew Him, and all the others having left Him and gone away! And yet as we look back, we see that lonely cross ruling the whole world, and that forsaken figure men are clothing now with the crown of everlasting light, and His name is above every name. All that we are asked to do is simply to follow in His train, to take up the truth which He opened, and for that truth to be willing to live, and, which is far easier, if need be, to die. Our lives are ours for this one thing, that through them, without compromise with error or with sin, God may bear testimony to Himself, and whether He does that through many years or through few, through peaceful personal service or through storm and tragedy, is of no consequence. The one thing that is of consequence is that we should know and be true to God. But there is a better way to set forth and commend this principle as a law of life than by arguing it in these general terms. Let the principle put on flesh and live before us in a man: “And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord, the God of Israel, liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” The old man who spoke these words was one of the four great characters of the Old Testament. He and Moses and Samuel and David stood apart in the thought of the Hebrew people. Indeed, there was a sense in which he and Moses were in a class by themselves. The appearance of those two with our Lord on the Mountain of Transfiguration was only an illustration of the place which they held in the imagination of Israel.