night the angel of God
whose I am." He was saved by an intimate and personal sense of the
Divine Presence. Elijah had lost this sense of the Divine. Hence the
deep, dark night of utter discouragement was upon him.

Thus utterly wearied and his old intimacy with the Lord gone, the worst
naturally followed. All his hopes seemed to fall about him. There
came to him a heart-breaking sense of personal failure. He sobbed out
the complaint: "I am no better than my fathers. They allowed Israel to
drift into idolatry. I have not been able to bring it back. I have
accomplished nothing. I toiled long and hard, dreaming that at the end
I would clasp the warm, radiant hand of success and victory, but in
reality I only clasp the skeleton hand of failure."

Have you ever had a feeling that you were of no account and never would
be; that in spite of all that God had done for you, you were a failure?
There are few things more fraught with heartache and bitterness and
discouragement than that. That is something that makes you want to sob
and give over the fight utterly. And there are a lot of folks that
allow themselves to come to that dismal conviction. They work, and
nobody seems to appreciate it. They toil, and nobody compliments them.
Then they decide that they do not amount to anything, and they feel
like giving over the fight.

I read the other day a fascinating essay from Frank Boreham. In this
essay the author spoke of a certain discouraged friend of his. He
declared it his purpose to help this friend by sending him a present.
And the strange present that he was going to send him was an onion.
Yes, he was going to wrap this onion in lovely tissue paper and put it
in a beautiful candy box and tie it with pink ribbon and post it to his
friend at once.

Now, why send him an onion? Well, for the simple reason that though an
onion is one of the most valuable of all vegetables, though it is the
finest of relishes, though it has added piquancy to a thousand feasts,
yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right
here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on
daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet
who could write about a louse and a field mouse, but where do you find
a poem about an onion? What orator waxes eloquent in its praise? What
bride ever carries a bouquet of onions as a bridal bouquet?

This is true, of course, but why is it true? No