Bible Biographies
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all whom his influence shall reach. Example has wonderful power; and
when cast on the side of the evil tendencies of our nature, it becomes
well-nigh irresistible.
The strongest bulwark of vice in our world is not the iniquitous life
of the abandoned sinner or the degraded outcast; it is that life which
otherwise appears virtuous, honorable, and noble, but in which one sin
is fostered, one vice indulged. To the soul that is struggling in secret
against some giant temptation, trembling upon the very verge of the
precipice, such an example is one of the most powerful enticements
to sin. He who, endowed with high conceptions of life and truth and
honor, does yet willfully transgress one precept of God’s holy law, has
perverted his noble gifts into a lure to sin. Genius, talent, sympathy,
even generous and kindly deeds, may thus become decoys of Satan to
entice souls over the precipice of ruin.
This is why God has given so many examples showing the results
of even one wrong act. From the sad story of that one sin which
“brought death into the world and all our woe, with loss of Eden,”
to the record of him who for thirty pieces of silver sold the Lord of
glory, Bible biography abounds in these examples, set up as beacons
of warning at the byways leading from the path of life.
There is warning also in noting the results that have followed upon
even once yielding to human weakness and error, the fruit of the letting
go of faith.
[151]
By one failure of his faith, Elijah cut short his lifework. Heavy
was the burden that he had borne in behalf of Israel; faithful had been
his warnings against the national idolatry; and deep was his solicitude
as during three years and a half of famine he watched and waited
for some token of repentance. Alone he stood for God upon Mount
Carmel. Through the power of faith, idolatry was cast down, and the
blessed rain testified to the showers of blessing waiting to be poured
upon Israel. Then in his weariness and weakness he fled before the
threats of Jezebel and alone in the desert prayed that he might die. His
faith had failed. The work he had begun he was not to complete. God
bade him anoint another to be prophet in his stead.
But God had marked the heart service of His servant. Elijah was
not to perish in discouragement and solitude in the wilderness. Not
for him the descent to the tomb, but the ascent with God’s angels to
the presence of His glory.