this is deemed now, as in the days of Abraham, one of the most serious calamities. A childless house is supposed to have a curse upon it.

66

Disappointment and sorrow so preyed upon the mind of the young wife that her health gave way and she drooped like a flower. She was recommended by her friends and spiritual advisers to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Saidnâya. She did so. For a whole day and night she sat on the cold marble before the idol; she was carried out insensible, and in a few days she was a corpse!"

The idol here mentioned is a pretended picture of the Virgin Mary, said to have been painted by St. Luke, but no one is allowed to see it, because the monks of the Greek church say, "None could look on that picture and live."

How much happier, than this poor victim of a corrupt church, was Hannah; she knew and loved the one true and living God, and she went straight to Him in her trouble, as we have seen, and the Lord heard her prayers. May you, dear friends, always follow her example, trusting in the promise: "Call upon me in the day of

trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt

glorify me." (Psalm 1. 15.)

How vainly would you seek to hide
From God's all-piercing view;

His eyes are as a flame of fire,

To search you through and through.

"Well may you tremble then to die,
While sin is unforgiven;

For no uncleansed, unpardoned soul
Can dwell with God in heaven.

"But listen to the gracious plan
The gospel brings to view,
How God, the holy and the just,
Became a Saviour too.

"A new and living way to Him
Was opened on the cross,
When Jesus suffered willingly
The wrath deserved by us.

"He loves to wash poor sinners clean
In His most precious blood,
And make them fit to stand in peace
Before a holy God.

"And they shall spend eternity

Beneath their Saviour's smile;

A brighter home than Eden theirs,
Where nothing can defile."

CHAPTER IX.

THE WIDOWED MOTHER OF ZAREPHATH.

1 Kings xvii. xviii. 1-6.

In the seventeenth chapter of the first book of Kings we have written all that we know of the widowed mother of Zarephath. The particular period of her history, which is given us, is when the Israelites were in great trouble, under the reign of their very wicked king Ahab, whose character is thus described in the sixteenth and twentieth chapters of this same book:

"And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up."

As a punishment for the wickedness of this king and his people, the Lord sent a famine upon the land, and Elijah the prophet was commanded to deliver the following message to king Ahab: "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." And so great was the distress for food of all kinds, caused by this judgment, that we find from the next chapter that king Ahab himself and Obadiah, the governor of his house, travelled over the land to search for grass, to save, if it were possible, some of the horses and mules; for it is said: "And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts. So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself."

Ahab and his wicked queen Jezebel were, as you may suppose, very angry indeed with Elijah, the good prophet of the Lord, for pronouncing this judgment upon them, and they would have

killed him, if the Lord had not hidden him and taken care of him. "And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee. there." The prophet did as the Lord commanded: "And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook." But after a time "the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land;" and then it was that the prophet received this direction: "Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there; behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee."

Do you not think it was strange that Elijah should be told to go to a widow in this time of distress and scarcity? It would have appeared to us, and perhaps to him, much more reasonable if the Lord had said: "Arise, go to one of the rich merchants of Zidon, for I have disposed his heart, out of the abundance which I have given him, to provide for thy necessities." But, dear