THE FEATS OR ELISHA.
The marvelous deeds of Elisha appear to be, to a considerable extent, a mere repetition of those of Elijah. Like his predecessor, he raised a dead child to life, increased the supply of oil for a widow after it had run short, and also increased the quantity of good water for the people by a supernatural process, though not by a shower of rain, as Elijah did, after a three years drought. There is evidently a disposition to imitate and outdo his predecessor: hence he brings water without the process of rain. There are two or three incidents in his history worthy of notice:—
1. When Elijah took his perilous flight heavenward, and left him alone, we are told he rent his garments. This act, although customary among "the Lord's holy people," was rather an insane way of manifesting his grief. A man in this age doing so would be taken to the insane asylum.
2. The second performance of Elisha, deserving particular notice, was an act of malignant revenge upon some frolicsome boys reminding him that he was bald-headed. For this simple, childish, though rude, act of calling him "bald-head," we are told he caused "two bears to come out of the woods, and tear forty-two of them to pieces." Why the other children escaped this fate, we are not told. This conduct on the part of the prophet evinces a morose, cruel, and revengeful disposition, instead of a philanthropic and benevolent one, as we should have expected the Lord's chosen prophet to manifest. If the story were a credible one, it would be a stigma upon his character while it stands on the page of history.
3. There is one circumstance related in the history of Elisha which seems to indicate that he was a man of rather gross habits. It is stated, that, when he killed a yoke of oxen for food, he "boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen," and gave the people to eat (1 Kings xix. 21). We infer, from this lan guage, that the oxen were thrown into the cooking-vessel whole, without being skinned or cleaned. It most have been rather a rare dish, and a tough one also.
4. We will notice one more remarkable incident in the history of this remarkable prophet. We are told, that, as some men were felling some trees on the banks of the Jordan, one of them, by accident, let his ax fall into the stream. On the case being reported to Elisha, he soon relieved the man of his trouble by throwing a stick into the water, which caused the ax to swim. Here is another specimen of the philosophy of the Christian Bible. Heathen mythology is full of such lawless stories. When the boat in which a Hindoo was rowing capsized, and threw his dinner into the Indus, a fish was accommodating enough to arrest it in its descent, and bring it to the surface, and restore it to the hungry boatman. A very accommodating fish! as much so as the stick!
We will now take a view of the moral bearing of the stories of these great "God-chosen" and "God-favored prophets," as one Christian writer styles them. We must assume that God would not suspend the action of those laws which secure order and harmony throughout nature to perform such miracles as these prophets are represented as performing, unless some great and important end was to be accomplished by it. Well, let us see if this was the result; if not, we must assume that these miracles were never performed. According to Dr. Lardner, miracles were always designed to accomplish some great good, and generally to remove the skepticism of unbelievers, and to convince them of the mighty power of God. But we do not find that any such effects were produced by any of the miracles here reported. The performance of Elijah did not convert Ahab nor Jezebel, nor the worshipers of Baal, either to the faith or to a life of practical righteousness; nor did those of Elisha convert Naaman; nor did either of the prophets convert or reform any of the thousands of heathen in the countries through which they traveled. The contemporary kings of Judah and Israel still continued in their ungodly course as before. In a word, nobody was benefited, nobody reformed, and no good effected by any of these miracles, only to a few individuals, which could have been accommodated in the usual way,—by ordinary means. On the other hand, bad feelings were engendered, many lives lost, and much suffering caused by their miraculous proceedings. We must conclude, then, that, so far as any agency of God is claimed in the several cases, these miracles were never performed; and we have the negative testimony of history to prove still further that these miracles were never wrought. The history of no other nation mentions them, not even the three years of drought; yet Christ speaks of it, and indorses it with all its impossibilities and all its bad consequences, which is an evidence of his ignorance of natural law. As these stories, by their stultifying absurdities, do violence to our reason, and also to our moral faculties, on account of the cruelty, injustice, bloodshed (for it shows both prophets were murderers), we hold, from these considerations, that the influence of these stories is demoralizing, and that they should not be put into the hands of the heathen, as they are every year by the thousand.