XX. ELIJAH AND THE TWELVE BARRELS OF WATER

I Have already advanced several arguments for the truth of that remarkable portion of Scripture which tells the history of the great prophet Elijah, and showed, that, on comparing some of the reputed events of his life with the political and domestic state of his country at the time, the reality of those events was established beyond all reasonable doubt. But I have not yet done with this part of my subject; and I press on the notice of my readers once again, as I have repeatedly pressed it before, the consideration that these casual indications of truth, found in the very midst of miracles the most striking, give great support to the credibility of those miracles; that the portions of the history on which these seals of truth are set, combine with the other and more extraordinary portions so intimately, that if the former are to be received, the latter cannot be rejected without extreme violence, and laceration of the whole; that standing or falling, they must stand or fall together.

I spoke before of the flight of Elijah, and gave my reasons for believing it. I speak now of a trifling incident in that magnificent scene which is said to have been the prologue to his flight. This it is. Twelve barrels of water, at the command of the prophet, are poured upon the sacrifice, and fill the trench. But is it not a strange thing, that at a moment of drought so intense, when the king himself and the governor of his house, trusting the business to no inferior agent, actually undertook to examine with their own eyes the watering-places throughout all the land, dividing it between them, to see if they could save the remainder of the cattle alive [1 Kings 18:5.] ; when the prophet had been long before compelled to leave Cherith, because the brook was dried up, and for no reason else, and to crave at the hands of the widow-woman of Zarephath, whither he had removed, though a land of danger to him, a little water in a vessel that he might drink; is it not, I say, a gross oversight in the sacred writer, to make Elijah, at such a time, give order for this wanton waste of water above all things, whereof scarcely a drop was to be found to cool the tongue; and not only so, but to describe it as forthcoming at once, apparently without any search made, an ample and abundant reservoir [Bishop Hall in his Contemplations shows himself aware of the difficulty in this passage, but not of its probable solution. B. xviii. Contempl. 7.] ? How can these things be? Let us but remember the local position of Carmel, that it stood upon the coast, as an incidental remark in the course of the narrative testifies; that the water was therefore probably seawater; and all the difficulty disappears. But the historian does not trouble himself to satisfy our surprise, being altogether unconscious that he has given any cause for it; he, honest man as he was, tells his tale, a faithful one as he feels, and the objection which we have alleged, and which a single word would have extinguished, he leaves to shock us as it may, nothing heeding. But would not an impostor have preserved the keeping of his picture better, and been careful not to violate seeming probabilities by this prodigal profusion of water, whilst his action was laid in a miraculous drought, for the removal of which, indeed, this very sacrifice was offered—or, if of these twelve barrels he must needs speak, by way of silencing all insinuation, that the whole was a scene got up, and that fire was secreted, would he not have studiously told us, at least, that the water was from the sea which lay at the foot of Carmel, and thus have guarded himself against sceptical remarks? Now when I see this momentous period of Elijah’s ministry compassed in on every side with tokens of truth so satisfactory; when I see so much in his history established as matter of fact, am I to consider all that is not so established, merely because materials are wanting for the purpose, as matters of fiction only? Or, taking my stand upon the good faith with which his flight, at least, is recorded, an event which, in itself, I look upon as proved beyond all reasonable doubt by a former coincidence; or upon the good faith with which his challenge at Carmel is recorded, an event not unsatisfactorily confirmed by this coincidence; or rather upon the veracity of both facts, shall I not feel my way along from the prophet’s recoil on setting foot in Judah, to the anger of Jezebel, with whom Judah was then in close alliance; from this anger of hers, to the cause assigned for it in the slaughter of her priests; from the slaughter of her priests, to the authority by which he did the deed, himself a defenceless individual, in a country full of the inveterate worshippers of the God of those priests; and thus, finally, shall I not ascend to the mighty miracle by which that authority was conveyed to him, God in pledge thereof touching the mountain that it smoked?