to us in these words with which he is introduced to us, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand." Out there in the barrenness of the desert beyond the Jordan, Elijah had come to believe in a God Who was alive, and before Whom he lived his life. The deserts have never bred polytheism. The great polytheistic systems have sprung from the lush jungles of the tropics. The great monotheisms have been born in the deserts. And out on the lonely sands beyond the Jordan, beyond the hills and amid the great level places where there was no one but God, Elijah came to know that He was and to know that his life stood in Him.
This was the principle of the man's life—the consuming conviction of a living God and of the commission of His uncompromising service. Indeed we are not sure that we know Elijah's name. It is possible that the name by which we think we know him is only a pseudonym—Elijah, "My God is Jehovah." It may be that from the very repetition of this phrase to which he was addicted, "The Lord God of Israel, before whom I stand," men came at last to call him by the opening note of his message, "the man of the living God."
Now what that message meant to Elijah was just this: that the Lord God was no dead force, no unknown cause of things, that the Lord God was alive, and that a man was to have dealings
