2 Kings 13:19

IT is a very difficult task to show the meeting place of the purpose of God and the free agency of man. One thing is quite clear—we ought not to deny either of them, for they are both facts. It is a fact that God has purposed all things both great and little. Neither will anything happen but according to His eternal purpose and decree. It is also a sure and certain fact that, oftentimes, events hang upon the choice of men. Their will has a singular potency.

IT is a very difficult task to show the meeting place of the purpose of God and the free agency of man. One thing is quite clear—we ought not to deny either of them, for they are both facts. It is a fact that God has purposed all things both great and little. Neither will anything happen but according to His eternal purpose and decree. It is also a sure and certain fact that, oftentimes, events hang upon the choice of men. Their will has a singular potency. In the case before us, the arrows are in the hands of the king of Israel and, according to whether he shall shoot once, twice, three times, or five or six times, so will the nation's history be affected. Now, how these two things can both be true, I cannot tell you. Neither, probably, after long debate, could the wisest men in Heaven tell you, not even with the assistance of cherubim and seraphim! If they could tell you, what would you know, and in what way would you be benefited if you could find out this secret? I believe that it would be as difficult to show that these two things do not agree, as it is to show how they can agree. They are two facts that run side by side, like parallel lines. Things are often left to the will of men, yet everything does come to pass, in the end, according to the will of God! Can you not believe them both? And is not the space between them a very convenient place to kneel in, adoring and worshipping Him whom you cannot understand? If you could understand your religion, it would be one that did not come from God—it would have been made by a man of limited capacity, like yourselves, who was, therefore, able to make what you can comprehend. But inasmuch as there are mysteries in your faith, to the top of which you cannot climb, be thankful that you need not climb them. But sometimes a practical question about these two points does arise.

THAT deathbed scene speaks volumes for the power of holiness. Elisha was the Prophet of God—a man of no honorable station except that he is always honorable whom God calls to serve Him. Joash the king of Israel—who has often rejected Elisha's admonitions and continued to worship in the groves of Baal though Elisha had denounced them and had proclaimed that Jehovah, alone, was their God. Now the Prophet is about to die at the good old age of ninety and Joash comes to weep at his bedside. It was something remarkable for the king to come there at all. Kings do not often visit deathbed scenes, especially the deathbeds of God's servants! But it was something more remarkable for that king to stand and look upon the decaying form of the aged Prophet and to weep over his face. More notable still was the language in which the king expressed his sense of the value of the Prophet to the State—"O my Father, my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." He felt as if now all his strength was cut off. The king had trusted in his cavalry, though he had but a slender force, and he compares the Prophet to that which he looked upon as being the strongest arm of his military service. Or he looks upon the State now as being a chariot with wild horses and no stately Prophet to stand erect and hold the reins. Now have the reins dropped and where will the chariot go? It will soon be overturned and the mad coursers will drag it here and there. So the king, out of a sort of selfish respect for the Prophet—for it was respect and yet it was selfishness—stands and weeps over Elisha's dying bed.