, that they found thee not.

{117}{118}

[Illustration]
ROCK OF ELIJAH'S ALTAR ON MOUNT CARMEL AND OUTLOOK
NORTH OVER PLAIN OF ESDRAELON.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood and used by special permission.

But it is as sanctuary that the long hill of Carmel is best remembered
in history. In its separation from other hills, its position on the
sea, its visibleness from all quarters of the country; in its
uselessness for war or traffic; in its profusion of flowers, its high
platforms and groves with their glorious prospects of land and sea,
Carmel must have been a place of retreat and of worship from the
earliest times. It was claimed for Baal; but, even before Elijah's
day, an altar had stood upon it for Jehovah. About this altar--as on a
spot whose sanctity they equally felt--the rival faiths met in that
contest, in which for most of us all the history of Carmel consists.
It is not without interest to know that the awful debate, whether
Jehovah or Baal was supreme lord of the elements, was fought out for a
full day in face of one of the most sublime prospects of earth and sea
and heaven. Before him, who stands on Carmel, nature rises in a series
of great stages from sea to Alp: the Mediterranean, the long coast to
north and south, with its hot sands and palms; Esdraelon covered with
wheat, Tabor and the lower hills of Galilee with their oaks,--then,
over the barer peaks of Upper Galilee and the haze that is about them,
the clear snow of Hermon, hanging like an only cloud in the sky. It
was in face of that miniature universe that the Deity who was
Character was vindicated as Lord against the deity who was not. It was
over all that realm that the rain swept up at the call of the same God
who exposed the injustice of the tyrant and avenged the wrongs of
Naboth.
[End illustration]

{119}

"And now thou sayest, 'Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.' And
it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the spirit
of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come
and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy
servant fear the Lord from my youth. Was it not told my lord what I
did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the Lord, how I hid an hundred
men of the Lord's prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread
and water? And now thou sayest, 'Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is
here': and he shall slay me."

And Elijah said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth, b