Chapter III: THE POWER OF POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE.--John had been dead for many

months, but the stream he had set flowing continued to flow; the harvests he sowed sprang into mature and abundant fruitage; the wavelets of tremulous motion which he had started circled out and on.

How many voices are speaking still in our lives--voices from the grave! voices from dying beds! voices from books and sermons! voices from heaven! "Being dead, they yet speak." Let us live so that, when we are gone, our influence shall tell, and the accents of our voice linger. No one lives or dies to himself. Each grain on the ocean-shore affects the position of every other. Each star is needed for the perfect balance of the spheres. Each of us is affecting the lives of all that are now existing with us in the world, or will exist. To untold ages, what we have been and said will affect all other beings for good or ill. We may be forgiven for having missed our opportunities, or started streams of poison instead of life; but the ill effect can never be undone.

Parents, put your hands on those young childish heads, and say pure, sweet words of Christ, which will return to memory and heart long after you have gone to your reward! Ministers of religion, and Sunday school teachers, remember your tremendous responsibility to use to the uttermost the opportunity of saying words which will never die! Friend, be true and faithful with your friend; he may turn away in apparent thoughtlessness or contempt, but no right word spoken for Christ can ever really die. It will live in the long after years, and bear fruit, as the seeds hidden in the old Egyptian mummy-cases are bearing fruit to-day in English soil.

XVII.

The Spirit and Power of Elias.

(LUKE I. 17.)

"Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity;
In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self;
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."

The Old Covenant and the New--Elijah and the Baptist--A Parallel--The Servant inferior to the Lord--The Baptism of the Holy Ghost--The Indwelling Spirit

Great men are God's greatest gifts to our race; and it is only by their interposition that mankind is able to step up to higher and better levels of life. The doctrine of evolution is supposed to explain the history of the universe. Men would have us believe that certain forces have been set in motion which have elaborated this great scheme of which we are a part, and the evolutionist would go so far as to say that man himself has been evolved from protoplasm, and that the brains of a Socrates, of a Milton, or of any genius who has left his mark upon the world, have simply emanated from the whole process which culminates in them. We believe, on the contrary, that at distinct points in the history of the universe, there has been a direct interposition of the will and hand of God; and it is remarkable that in the first chapter of Genesis that august and majestic word _create_ is three times introduced, as though the creation of matter, the creation of the animal world, and the creation of man, were three distinct stages, at which the direct interposition of the will and workmanship of the Eternal was specially manifest. Similarly, we believe that there have been great epochs in human history, which cannot be accounted for by the previous evolution of moral and religious thought, and which must be due to the fact that God Himself stepped in, and by the direct raising up of a man, who became the apostle of the new era, lifted the race to new levels of thought and action. It is in this light that we view the two illustrious men who were, each in his own measure, the apostles of new epochs in human history--Elijah in the old Covenant, and John the Baptist in the new.

It is remarkable that the prophet Malachi tells us that the advent of the Messiah should be preceded and heralded by Elijah the prophet; and that Gabriel, four hundred years after, said that John the Baptist, whose birth he announced, would come in the spirit and power of Elijah. This double prediction was referred to by our Lord when, descending from the Mount of Transfiguration, in conversation with the apostles, He indicated John the Baptist as the Elijah who was to come. And, indeed, there was a marvellous similarity between these two men, though each of them is dwarfed into insignificance by the unique and original personality of the Son of Man, who towers in inaccessible glory above them.