stand aloof and let the tide around us run on anyhow, as if we didn't
care how it ran, or whenever in obedience to any impulse, whether of
selfishness or of timidity, we try to persuade ourselves that some duty
may be left alone.

"What doest thou here, Elijah?" The quality of our life depends on the
answer we give to such spiritual questioning day by day; for the Divine
voices are never silent.

"What doest thou here?" The voice cries to us when we linger in the
neighbourhood of any sin, or when we waste our opportunities in some form
of idleness, or when we stand by in cold or timid indifference, refusing
help or consolation to any soul which seems to need it.

"What doest thou here?" It is possible that some of us hardly like to
shape our answer in plain words lest we might have to say: "I am here
lingering in my present way of life, not because I feel it to be the
right way, but because it is the easy way, and I cannot bring myself to
face the harder and more manly course of duty. I hear the voice; I
cannot get away from it; it haunts me with its inquiries, when my heart
is hot within me, as it is sometimes, while yet I am burying the light
that is in my soul." If it should be so with any of you, consider, I
pray you, how by such hanging back you strengthen the force of evil in
the world and weaken the good.

As the hour of reaction, weakness, flight, came to Elijah, so we must
expect it to come to any of us; but the aim and purpose of our life
should be that in such an hour we may be able to answer our Heavenly
Father when He questions us, as Elijah was able to answer: "I have been
very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts." If we live as those who are