lifts up our drooping spirit, and opens our dull eyes and gives us afresh
the hearing ear, by communion with Himself. In the solitude of the mount
of God, through the symbols of His power, and in the sound of the inner
voices, in meditation, in prayer, we may find those refreshing influences
which give us new strength, new thoughts, new notions of God and duty,
and send us out afresh to do His work in new service to Him.

We may follow His teaching to Elijah a little further. The new message
to him began, "Return on thy way"--do such and such things. The new
message is, in fact, just as always, a new call to old duties--"Return on
thy way." And so it is for you and me. After the vision of God comes
the plain and homely work to do, as we walk in old ways, and have to meet
all our old dangers and difficulties. Has any one of us ever shrunk from
any post of duty in life, or strayed from any straight course? Then if
God has in His mercy visited us with the warning call, "What doest thou
here?" or laid the call of a new message upon us, it is almost sure to
have been a call to return and take the straight path, or to take our
stand at the deserted post. And if it should ever happen to us that the
duty which looks too hard is, as indeed it happens very often, some duty
of our social life, should we feel as if the world were against us, and
we were standing alone, let us not forget God's word of final
encouragement to his prophet, "Yet have I left me seven thousand in
Israel who have not bowed to Baal."

It is a word for all time. If ever you are fighting for the good, and
growing weary in the fight, the thought may rise in you that you seem to
be fighting alone, and that everything is against you, just because you
cannot see the seven thousand who are in the same ranks, and on your
side.