ELIJAH'S SACRIFICE.

In the third year of the famine with which God had visited the land of Israel on account of the impiety of Ahab, who encouraged the most abominable idolatries among his people, the Almighty sent Elijah to inform the wicked king that he should shortly send rain upon the earth. When Ahab first saw the prophet he began to upbraid him as the cause of the calamity under which his countrymen were then suffering; but Elijah, recriminating, fearlessly charged it upon the sins of the king. Ahab being a worshipper of Baal, the Tishbite declared that the gods which he worshipped were false gods, and that he would undertake to prove this if Ahab would summon his people to meet upon Mount Carmel, and bring thither the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, together with the four hundred priests of Astarte, who were supported at Jezebel's table. This was accordingly done, when the prophet made the following proposal: that the priests of Baal should take an ox, cut it into pieces, lay it upon an altar, on which there was no fire, and that he would do the same, they calling the while upon their Gods and he upon his. Then the God who consumed the sacrifice by a fire from Heaven, whether Baal or the Lord Jehovah, should be confessed by the whole assembled multitude to be the only true God. This proposal was unanimously agreed to. The priests of Baal immediately prepared their oblation, and, after calling loudly upon Baal, cut themselves with knives to render him propitious, while Elijah mocked the impotence of their fanaticism. Their invocation remained unanswered. Elijah having prepared his sacrifice, called upon the God of all the earth, when fire descended in a stream from Heaven, "consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench *.” Thus the prophet triumphed, and all the false priests of Baal were immediately slain.