Published by Request.
LONDON:
BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1868.
PREFACE.
This Sermon was preached in the common course of the Sunday Services, and without any idea of its being noticed beyond the circle of its hearers. As, however, the interest of the subject, far more, certainly, than anything in its treatment, has called some attention to the Sermon since its delivery, I have thought it right to comply with the request of some respected members of the Congregation, and commit it to the chances of publication. In so doing, I have made no attempt to supply its many deficiencies, nor have I even removed from its opening sentences an allusion to other Sermons of which it formed the continuation.
Doncaster,
September 4, 1868.
A SERMON.
Why repair ye not the breaches of the house?
2 Kings xii. 7.
The House is the Temple. We have travelled, therefore, from the north to the south of Palestine, from the capital of Israel to the capital of Judah. As soon as the two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, are no more, the interest of the story centres no longer in the kingdom of the ten tribes: it reverts to the stock of David, and finds its latest gleam of beauty and glory in the national reformations and personal pieties of Hezekiah and Josiah.
Elisha is not yet dead: but he has ceased to occupy the sacred page after the anointing of Jehu, until he appears once more, and finally, in the striking incidents of his death-bed and his grave.