The materialism of Mr. N.'s mind is extraordinarily shown out in the two following objections, as to God's visiting Abraham, and feeding Elijah by means of ravens. The gracious intimacy and intercourse of God with Abraham, which gained for the latter the glorious title of "friend of God," to him is nothing but a physical question of eating. It is astonishing how this system debases everything it touches. There is not a lovelier picture to be found than the gracious condescension (fitted, indeed, to man's childhood in revealed blessings) of God to Abraham; while the mystery in which it was clothed added to the solemnity, and exercised faith, and indeed instructs us now in the relationship of God with the earth in Christ. Abraham was unfit to know the high spiritual privileges for which this very condescension prepared the way; but Elohim in this did the principal thing that was needed. He assured the heart of His servant, in a way in which he could seize and feel it, of His interest in him, of His affection and, I may say, confidence. Now this is everything with us. No doubt this is known now by fuller, more spiritual means; but the assuring the heart of it was the great thing-the assuring it in practical exercises. We see the effect in Abraham's pleading for Sodom.
It was the same in feeding Elijah by means of the ravens, during. the famine by which Israel was judged. Would Mr. N. prefer indifference on God's part to those He had called to trust in Him, and who were suffering for Him? Now temporal care was the sign then of mercy. So the touching interest shown by angelical ministry to His weary-hearted servant in the lengthened journey his impatience had cast on him. And here the peculiar fitness of God's dealing is evident. Had he been, like Moses or Christ, sustained by a kind of abstraction from a human state, it would have been out of place. Elijah, though a man of extraordinary faithfulness and devotedness, at this moment quailed before the dangers that beset the faithful, and retired to Sinai to complain to God. His journey there was in one sense ordered of God. Man could not restore the authority of a broken law. Elijah, who sought to bring back Israel to faithfulness, to Jehovah, and His law, has to go to Jehovah and tell Him it is in vain. No means could be more appropriate than the sense of failure in him who attempted it; yet he returns to Sinai as a divine witness of this failure. Hence he comes to God with the peculiar solemn separation from the world, in a measure, which marked the intercourse of Moses with God, and the temptation of Jesus; but while there was something of this solemnity in the intercourse, yet, as he was flying through failing courage to God, it was not the moment for unmingled manifestation of power. Was he to be repulsed? No. What he failed in was the adequate sense of God's interest in His people. Hence, if there was not all the peculiar glory of the forty days' abstraction from the conditions of human existence which were found in Moses and in Christ, there was what showed this tender regard of God, and care over the smallest circumstances which concerned His people, and sustained them for the difficulties of the way to come to God. The ways of God are perfect; they have been ever condescendingly suited to men's, in circumstances which spoke great principles to the heart, and were immaterial save as sheaving the nearness, condescension, tenderness of God, and His interest in His people-most unspeakably precious, as having this character in a human way, which could alone give the intimacy and the nearness to human thought which was fully realized in Christ. To the infidel it is a question of cakes! This is quite worthy of the system which shuts out God in His gracious nearness to man, and therefore never rises, in judging of circumstances, above the low necessities of the human mind. " Sir, give me of this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw," is the level of an unreached conscience. Conscience must be reached, to get the intelligence which can perceive that it is a prophet, and that there are higher thoughts to be had than these.