to aggravate and protract the financial distress, the depressed condition of labor and capital, for the past four years.

To this may be added as next in baleful influence our fluctuating currency, which, now that it has so nearly reached the standard of the honest money of the world through causes beyond the control of politicians or speculators, is certain, if not interfered with by Congressional tinkers, to be soon once more convertible with coin. But a large, and we fear preponderant body are striving to debase our money again to its former depreciated and fluctuating condition. What does it mean? Was ever such madness? Has God delivered us over to judicial blindness that we should be unable to see that a promise to pay a dollar binds us to pay it; or that we should be left to believe that an enactment of our rulers can make permanently irredeemable paper, silver worth ninety per cent. of gold, and gold itself equally valuable, and capable of floating side by side as currency? Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.

Art. XI. THE TYPICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ELIJAH AND ELISHA.-2 Kings ii.

By REV. W. G. KEADY, Savannah, Mo.

THAT the career of these two prophets has a more important significance than has usually been accorded to it is a conviction that many have felt. Our commentators pass over as a problem not to be touched any consideration of the peculiar place which both Elijah and Elisha fill in the development of God's designs of mercy to lost mankind. Elisha is considered as taking up the unfinished work of Elijah, and the work of both as having importance only as concerns Israel. The place of Elijah is considered as adequately established when it is said that he was the restorer to Israel of God's covenant, and that he is to be placed side by side with Moses as one of the ruling and representative characters of the old dispensation. This position is assigned him because he was with Moses at the transfiguration; and the significance of both these men appearing on that occasion is felt to be met when we regard them as representatives of the law and the prophets testifying of the Christ. But admitting the correctness of these views, which is by no means certain, they certainly do not exhaust the hermeneutical demands of the position either prophet holds in Scripture. The two questions, "What is there in the new dispensation of which they were the type?" and, "Was the type fulfilled adequately in John the Baptist?" have not been satisfactorily answered. This article is an attempt to find at least materials for an answer.

66

We will take up the case of Elijah first. The passages of Scripture in which he is mentioned are few, and we will confine our view to Scripture, without levying upon Jewish tradition for light. Once only is his name mentioned by the prophets that succeed him, and that is in Mal. iv: 5, 6, the very last utterance of the Old Testament: 'Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet," etc. It is the prophet who is to be sent, not the Tishbite; so that whether he is to come in person or not, it is his official, not his personal character, that is to be manifested. In this sense John the Baptist was an Elijah in spirit. Before John's birth it was announced that “many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.

And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah" (Luke i: 16, 17). When John was asked, "Art thou Elijah?" he answered, “I am not." "Art thou that prophet?" "No." Now John knew, from the angel's announcement to his father, that he was referred to by Malachi, and no doubt assumed the dress of Elijah as symbolic of his mission; yet he evidently knew, by inspiration, that he did not exhaustively fulfill all that was included in that prophecy, and that there was to be a future and a fuller fulfillment.

Just after the transfiguration the following conversation took place between Jesus and his three disciples: "Tell the vision to no man until the Son of man be risen again from the dead." They asked, "Why, then, say the scribes that Elijah must first come?" He replied, " Elijah truly shall come first and restore all things; but I say unto you that Elijah is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed; likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them." They understood that he spoke of John the Baptist. The plain sense of this, taken in connection with John's denial, which was honest and true, is that Elijah's coming was still future, in one sense, but that he had already come in another sense-in the person and mission of John. As there is to be another consummating coming of the Messiah himself, so there is to be one of his forerunner, Elijah; perhaps in person, as at the transfiguration, and as intimated in Rev. xi: 3-12; or, more likely in spirit and in power, as in John the Baptist. The words "Before the great and dreadful day of the Lord," show that John cannot be exclusively meant; for he came just before the day of Christ's coming in grace, though he did indeed appear previous to "his coming in terror, of which the last destruction of Jerusalem was but the type and the earnest." Elijah's coming was to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers." The angelic announcement of John's coming explains this by changing the latter clause to "and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord;" implying that "the reconciliation was to be effected between the unbelieving, disobedient children and the believing ancestry." The threat in Malachi is that if this reconciliation is not effected, Messiah's coming would prove a curse to the earth, and not a bless

ing. It proved so, at his first coming, to guilty Jerusalem and the land of Judea when it rejected him, though he did bring blessing to" as many as received him." Thus, many were delivered from the common destruction of the nation through John's preaching-the "remnant" of Rom. xi: 5. It will prove so again at his second coming to "those who obey not the gospel of God," though he comes then to be glorified in his saints. But when and who is to be the forerunner of that

event?

This prophesied coming of Elijah is the very thing that gives point to the problem of Elijah's place in Scripture, and we certainly fail to learn the lesson of his life by leaving that problem to a future solution. Especially is this the case as we try to find the significance of the events recorded in the 2d chapter of the 2d Book of Kings. What is the significance of Elijah's "taking up"? Has it only reference to him personally, or is there not a typical or representative reference? There is only one parallel case in the Old Testament, the case of Enoch before the flood. Is there anything parallel to it in the New Testament? It is generally taught, and we believe correctly, that Elijah, in his appearance at the transfiguration, in that body on which death had never passed, is the forerunner or first-fruits of the saints who shall be found alive at the Lord's second coming. If that be so, then the New Testament parallel to Elijah's "rapture" is found in 1 Thess. iv : 16, 17; "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven. with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall arise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Now, if Elijah in the transfiguration scene is the forerunner, and, therefore, the type of the Church of Christ alive at the second coming, was he not that type in all his career? When on earth was he not the type of the Church, or the body of Christ alive at any one time on the earth? We are inclined to think that just here is the key to Elijah's position in sacred history. The condition of the Church of Christ (not the professing Church, but the body of believers in Jesus, the body of Christ, scattered through all creeds) finds analogy and illustration in all the conditions of

Elijah's life. The mission of the Church in the world and to the world "out of Christ," is wonderfully analogous to the mission of Elijah to degenerate Israel. The seeming failure of that mission and its assured accomplishment in God's time is illustrated in the scene on Horeb; while the witness-bearing of the Church to the crucified Christ is illustrated by the prophet's position at Carmel. The hope of the Church which shall be alive at the coming of the Lord is to be " caught up" to heaven as Elijah was. Whether Elijah is to come in person or not, is it not true that the Church now living on earth, from her very position, is an Elijah, "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord?" Is she not, as much as John was," a voice crying in the wilderness"? Does she not fulfill the prophecy and type of Elijah as much as John did? The Church, as the ingathering of the Gentiles, has still before it a prophetic work. Israel is under the curse. Is it not probable that she shall be as successful at least as John was; nay, may not to her be given the full completion of Elijah's work-the bringing back of Israel to the broken covenant, to their rejected Messiah?

If the rule is a good one which we apply in interpreting nearly all the other Old Testament personages, making them, either in their characters or peculiar circumstances, to serve as typical or representative of New Testament characters or circumstances in these gospel times, then there is no reason why Elijah should be excluded from its operation. The view we have taken shows that his position has a much higher significance and one that has been overlooked. The place we would find for him in the history of redemption, authorized, as we believe, by all that is said of the place of the Church on earth as the body of Christ, gives each of us who are believers in Jesus a personal interest in Elijah and a connection with his wonderful history that are full of instruction. It enables us to realize our dignity and importance as witnesses for Jehovah, in a way that no definite statement of a fact could equal. Elijah's career is, as it were, an acted allegory of our position as in the world and not of it. It materializes for our inspection the hidden forces that are carrying forward Christianity to its ultimate triumph. Christianity is what it is as the consequence of the union of Jesus, the living Head, to his living body, the Church,