SERMON VIII. AHAB AND ELIJAH. LINCOLN'S INN, 4TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.-FEB. 1, 1852. 2 KINGS, I. 3. But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, "Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go up to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?" THE worship of the calves which Jeroboam set up in Bethel and in Dan, is carefully distinguished in Scripture from the [worship of Baal, which was introduced by Ahab into Samaria. Jeroboam wished to separate the ten tribes from those which followed the house of David, by giving them sacrifices and priests of their own. From the words which he is said to have used, "these are thy gods, oh! Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," it is probable that he affected to restore the idolatry which Aaron had sanctioned in the wilderness. He or his priests would suggest the thought to the people, or their own hearts would suggest it to them, that what the high priest approved could not be very wrong, that Moses had no right to break the calf in pieces, that the people in Jerusalem who followed 124 HOW FOREIGN WORSHIP BEGINS. [Serm. the law of Moses were really departing from a good old example, that they were returning to a national service. The step from this ultra local worship to a foreign Phœnician worship seems a very long one. Yet it was natural and easy. We cannot tell exactly what the calf signified to the Egyptian, still less what it signified to the Hebrew slave in the desert, or to the revolted tribes. It may have been merely adopted as a traditional symbol, no special force being attached to it. But a people trained in the law of Moses must have associated some recollection of an unseen Being even with the most worthless image. How strong such associations may be in any mind, how long they may continue, we have happily no means of determining. We only know that the conscience of the idolater becomes at once stupified and sensitive; more and more incapable of appreciating moral distinctions; more and more alive to terrors. The thought of a righteous Being is appalling; from an object of trust he passes into an object of horror. How to appease Him is the question. The old forms may not be the right. Other nations which seem happier and more prosperous, have other gods and sacrifices. It might be well to try them. The most powerful neighbour must be most worthy of imitation. A king like Ahab meets the demands of a people in this state. The Scripture which speaks of the cities which he built, and his ivory house, and his might, and the wars which he warred, leaves the impression upon our minds that he was intellectually superior to his predecessors, of a higher ambition, less narrow in his notions. He had not the dread which Jeroboam felt of intercourse with Jerusalem, he cultivated the friendship of Jehoshaphat. At the same time he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, VIII.] JEZEBEL AND BAAL. 125 king of the Sidonians. And with her he naturalized a worship certainly very much more august and imposing than that which had been practised by the kings that were before him. There may, or may not, have been animal forms connected with the service of this God of Ekron. The name would seem only to impart a comprehensive notion of lordship, a notion which might express itself in a number of different symbols, which certainly would not be limited to the one of the calf, or be likely to adopt that as its favourite. Baal would become Baalim; the general lord and ruler would soon be multiplied and divided into a number of lords and rulers; but there would be attached to them all a much grander feeling of dominion than could ever have entered into the mind of one who was bowing to the likeness of a calf which eateth hay. Ahab would therefore seem to himself, as well as to a great many of his people, an improver and expander of the popular faith. Foreign priests, with much more knowledge probably than those lowest of the people whom Jeroboam had consecrated, would come into the land. A number of the native priests would be quite ready to adopt the worship which the king and queen favoured. Though they might have some new rites to learn, though they might not like the strangers, or might be despised by them, yet they would not be conscious of any great change in themselves or their devotions. In their dark groves, on their hill altars, they had been seeking to propitiate some unknown fearful divinity. For that divinity they had now found a name. The Egyptian idol might suggest thoughts sometimes of the dark power, sometimes of Him who had made a covenant with their fathers; the Phoenician taught them to understand the distinction, to feel 126 POWER IDENTIFIED WITH EVIL. [Serm. and know that they were invoking another than the Lord God whose presence Solomon had prayed might fill his temple. You see then why Ahab is said to have provoked the Lord God of Israel more than all that were before him. The Baal worship was essentially the worship of mere power. I do not say that abstractedly or originally it was the worship of an evil power. But it was the worship of power as distinguished from righteousness. It was the worship therefore of that which man sees without him in nature, not of that which he feels within speaking to himself. It may not have been wholly disjoined from the acknowledgment of an order and succession in nature. It is hard, almost impossible, for man to conceive of power apart from some order and government. But these ideas become exceedingly weak when they are derived from nature to man, not through man to nature. When we think that the things themselves exercise the power, and do not receive it from One in whom dwells eternal justice and rectitude forms which denote the most violent and inex Some plicable outbursts of fury, the fire and the tempest, are speedily thought to represent the nature of the Baal or Baalim, of the lord or lords of the universe. At all events these are what man must address himself to. joyous feasts may be celebrated with wild and reckless licence to the gentler and humaner powers which manifest themselves in the propitious breeze, the quiet evening, the sun that ripens the autumn fruits. But the most serious services, the sacrifices which those very enjoyments have made necessary, the libations of blood, must be presented to some malevolent nature which would destroy unless it were soothed. Thus the worship of power becomes literally the worship of evil. By a regular and awful process Baal or VIII.] THE MORALITY OF AHAB. 127 Baal-zebub became in the minds of his devout servants, what his name imported to Jews of later time-the Prince of the Devils. Ahab and his people may only by slow degrees have learnt to see their god in this portentous aspect. But the first conception of him as naked power is sufficient to explain all the acts which are imputed to the king as well as the slavery and cowardice of his subjects. The story of Naboth's vineyard sets forth in one instance the history of the reign. The king desires some land which belongs to another man; he is ready to pay for it. But Naboth will not sell the inheritance of his fathers. Ahab is wroth and will not eat bread. Jezebel wonders at his weakness. "Dost thou now govern Israel," she says, " Arise and be merry. I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite." The elders of his city are told in sealed letters to proclaim a fast, to set up Naboth on high among the people and to say, "Thou didst blaspheme God and the king." The command is faithfully executed. Naboth is stoned till he dies. Ahab enters and takes possession. Here as elsewhere, the man has still a troublesome conscience checking an evil will. "I dare not waits upon I would." The female adviser cuts the knot. She sees what his heart is, and if he has power, what should hinder him from carrying his purpose into act? She is perfectly sure that the nobles of the city will not refuse obedience to a request of their master if it only involves perjury and murder. The king and queen avail themselves of a religious act as the most obvious and easy means of accomplishing and hallowing their design. And it was the most fitting means of accomplishing such a design. It showed how deeds of this kind are generated and made possible. The worshipper has made |