together to represent the twelve
tribes, cut a bullock in pieces, laid it on the wood, made a trench
around the rude altar, which he filled with water from an adjacent well,
and then offered up this prayer to the God of his fathers: "O Jehovah,
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hear me! and let all the people know
that thou art the God of Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I
have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, Jehovah, hear me! that
this people may know that thou, Jehovah, art God, and that thou hast
turned their hearts back again." Then immediately the fire of Jehovah
fell and consumed the bullock and the wood, even melted the very stones,
and licked up the water in the trench. And when the people saw it, they
fell on their faces, and cried aloud, "Jehovah, he is the God! Jehovah,
he is the God!"

Elijah then commanded to take the prophets of Baal, all of them, so that
not even one of them should escape. And they took them, by the direction
of Elijah, down the mountain side to the brook Kishon, and slew them
there. His triumph was complete. He had asserted the majesty and proved
the power of Jehovah.

The prophet then turned to the king, who seems to have been completely
subjected by this tremendous proof of the prophetic authority, and said:
"Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of abundance of
rain." And Ahab ascended the hill, to eat and drink with his nobles at
the sacrificial feast,--a venerable symbol by which, from the most
primitive antiquity to our own day, by so universal an impulse that it
would seem to be divinely imparted, every form of religion known to man
has sought to typify the human desire to commune with Deity.

Elijah also went to the top of Carmel, not to the symbolic feast, but in
spirit and in truth to commune with God, reverentially hiding his face
between his knees. He felt the approach of the coming storm, even when
the sky was clear, and not a cloud was to be seen over the blue waters
of the Mediterranean. So he said to his servant: "Go up now, and look
toward the sea." And the servant went to still higher ground and looked,
and reported that nothing was to be seen. Six times the order was
impatiently repeated and obeyed; but at the seventh time, the youthful
servant--as some think, the very boy he had saved--reported a cloud in
the distant horizon, no bigger seemingly than a man's hand. At once
Elijah sent word to Ahab to prepare for the coming tempest;