That is not all. There is a second stage. The promise is given; the
possibility is opened before the king, and now all depends on the
question whether he will rise to the height of the occasion. So the
prophet says to him, 'Take the sheaf of arrows in your hand'; and he
takes them. And then he says, 'Now smite upon the ground.' It is a
test. If he had been roused and stirred by what had gone before; if he
had any earnestness of belief in the power that was communicated, and
any eagerness of desire to realise the promises that had been given of
complete victory, what would he have done? What would Elisha have done
if he had had the quiver in his hand? This king smites three
perfunctory taps on the floor, and having done what will satisfy the
old man's whim, and what in decency he had to do, he stops, as if
weary of the whole performance. So the prophet bursts out in
indignation on his dying bed--'Thou shouldst have smitten five or six
times; then hadst thou conquered utterly. Now thou shalt conquer but
thrice.' A strange story; very far away from our atmosphere and
latitude! Yet are there not obviously in it great principles which may
be disentangled from their singular setting, and fully applied to us?
I think so. Let us try and draw them from it.

I. Here we have the power communicated.

Now the story seems to indicate that it was only for a moment that the
prophet's hands were laid on the king's hands, because, after they had
been so laid, he is bidden to go to the window and fling it open, and
the bedridden man could not go there with him; then he is bidden to
draw the bow, and another hand upon his would have been a hindrance
rather than a help. So it was but a momentary touch, a communication
of power in reality or in symbol that the muscular young hand needed,
and the wasted old one could give. And is that not a parable for us?