144 



THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



ing the miserable better, we have made them more un- 

 grateful and improvident, and we have made ourselves 

 callous, world-bound, and deeper sunk than ever in the 

 very barbarism of our prosperity. In spite of the mul- 

 titudes of our societies and our innumerable efforts, the 

 dead body of the misery that is in the world is as cold 

 and impassive as ever ; and we are ready to despair of 

 its ever being raised to life at all, and can think of 

 nothing better than to let it slowly disappear, by its 

 own corruption and disintegration, off the face of the 

 earth. 



2. But there is a more excellent way the personal 

 method of doing good, as illustrated by Elisha stretching 

 himself upon the dead body of the child. When the 

 prophet learned the failure of Gehazi's application of his 

 staff to the corpse, he went himself to the upper cham- 

 ber where the child was laid out stiff and cold on his 

 own bed ; and there, along with fervent prayer to God, 

 repeatedly and pressingly presented, he used the most 

 elaborate means to restore the life that had fled. He 

 stretched himself upon the dead child ; each part of his 

 own body being laid upon the corresponding part of the 

 body of the child. He put his mouth upon his mouth, 

 his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands. 

 In this way he did all he could to revive the pulses and 

 restore the functions which had been frozen into immo- 

 bility by death. He strove to impart his own vital 

 caloric, and so make the body plastic for the use of the 

 spirit when it should come back " to heat the iron upon 

 which the hammer of the Almighty was about to strike." 



