Saint Elijah of Tishbe

The name Thesbite, which is given to him, lets us know that he was fro m Thes Thesbé City of origin of Elijah in the land of Gilead. bé, a small town bordering Palestine and Arabia, in the land of Gilead. Saint Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, says he was of the tribe of Aaron, which can be understood either generally as the Levitical tribe, which was that of Aaron, or specifically as the family of Aaron within that same tribe. Some authors give him as a father Achimaas, son of the high priest Zadok and brother of the high priest Jehoiada, whom their merits have made so famous in the Holy Scriptures, and as a mother, Basemath, daughter of King Solomon, whom Scripture assures us married the prince Achimaas. But the same Saint Epiphanius calls his father Sobach and does not speak of this illustrious genealogy.

According to Saint Epiphanius, Abbot Dorotheus in his Abridgment of the Life and Death of the Prophets, and Simeon Metaphrastes, at the time of his birth, his father saw around him angels in human form and dressed in white garments, who swaddled him in fire and gave him fire to eat. This was a presage of his zeal. Some authors even conclude from this that Elijah had been sanctified from his mother's womb, just as Jeremiah and Saint John the Baptist, because the angels would not have rendered these duties to a child who was an enemy of God and stained by original sin. He was called Elijah, which means God, Lord, to mark the excellence of his vocation, and

that his sole exercise would be to manifest the greatness of God, to cause His majesty to be adored, to destroy the enemies of His name, and to establish His domain and His worship in all the nations of the earth. After remaining only a short time in his parents' house, he embraced the way of life of the Nazarites and withdrew with the servants of God, who were called Prophets; extraordinarily filled with the spirit of prophecy, he shone among them like a sun in the midst of the stars. At that time, the promised land, which had been given in possession to the Israelites, was divided into two kingdoms, one of which, called the kingdom of Judah, belonged to the posterity of David through his son Solomon, and the other, called the kingdom of Israel, belonged to the successors of Jeroboam, who had usurped it from Rehoboam, son of the same Solomon. The worship of God had been somewhat maintained in the first kingdom, where the temple, the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the sacred vessels, and the right of sacrifice were; but the malice of the kings of Israel, who gave themselves over to idolatry, had almost entirely banished it from the second, and they were not content with adoring the two golden calves that Jeroboam had set up in Bethel and Dan; but they also adored all the abominations of the surrounding peoples, among others Baal, a demon who made himself recognized as God among the Sidonians. These execrable impieties exercised the zeal of the divine Elijah for a long time. Although Scripture does not report what he did before the reign of Ahab, nevertheless, since it presents him at the beginning of this reign as a man who had already made himself formidable to princes and kings, and whom everyone revered as an extraordinary prophet, it gives us reason to believe that he had already preached with zeal, and that God had performed through him surprising actions that distinguished him from the common run of other Prophets.

Ahab, Achab King of Israel marked by idolatry and impiety. son of Omri, having ascended the throne and married Jeze bel, da Jézabel Queen of Israel, instigator of the cult of Baal and persecutor of Elijah. ughter of the King of the Sidonians, went even further than the superstition of his predecessors; and, to satisfy this wicked woman, who joined fury to idolatry and cruelty to impiety, he had a temple built and a grove planted in honor of Baal, and designated eight hundred and fifty priests to sing his praises and offer him sacrifices. Elijah, unable to suffer this abomination, came to find him in the spirit of God, and, judging all preamble useless in the presence of this hardened heart, he said to him: "As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand! There shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by the word of my mouth." Then, in order to escape the anger and the searches of this prince, he withdrew into the desert, on the faith of the same voice that said to him: "Go toward the East, hide yourself by the brook Cherith, opposite the Jordan; you shall drink from the brook; I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." There, evening and morning, ravens brought the Prophet the meat and bread necessary, and the running water provided his drink. Some time later, the brook dried up; for the sky was like bronze, and no rain fell from it. Then the friendly voice of the Prophet said to him: "Leave these places, go to Zarephath, amon g the S Sarepta City in Phoenicia where Elijah performed the miracle of the flour and the oil. idonians, and dwell there; I have commanded a widow woman to feed you there." He who gives life and food to a weak insect, and who has clothed the sun in such brilliant splendor, never abandons man, the noblest of his visible creatures, and when the ordinary laws of nature seem to betray the views of his providence, always full of tenderness, he sometimes supplements them with wonders that are but a play of his powerful arm, but which become for us the irrefutable proof of his intervention in the course and development of our destinies; for, if he performs a miracle to send to man the material bread that sustains the life of the body, what would he not have done to send him the truth, that spiritual bread which, in the form of the word, communicates life to souls?

Elijah left for Zarephath. It was a small town in Phoenicia, placed between Tyre and Sidon, but closer to the latter city, on the shores of the Mediterranean, at the foot of graceful hills covered with greenery, facing the jagged peaks of Lebanon. Upon his arrival, before entering Zarephath, the Prophet caught sight of a woman who was gathering wood. He called to her: "Give me a little water to drink." And, as she was going to fetch it, he added: "I pray you, bring me also a little bread." He understood, no doubt, by the eagerness of this woman, that it was the widow whose hospitable charity God had led him to hope for. But she replied: "As the Lord your God lives! I have no bread; I have only a little oil in a small jar, and as much flour as can be held in the hollow of the hand. I am gathering a few pieces of wood to prepare a last meal for my child and myself, and we shall wait for death." The drought had brought famine, and the kingdom of Sidon, homeland of Jezebel, participated in the punishments as well as the crimes of the kingdom of Ahab. "Fear nothing," said the Prophet to the destitute widow; "go, do as you say; but from the rest of the flour prepare for me first a small cake baked under the ashes, and bring it to me; then you shall prepare for yourself and your son. For thus says Jehovah, King of Israel: 'The jar of flour shall not be empty, and the small vessel of oil shall not diminish, until the day the Lord sends rain upon the earth.'" The woman believed this promise of the stranger and followed his orders. From that day on, in reward for her faith and to verify the word of the Prophet, the flour did not fail, the oil was not diminished in the widow's house, and what barely sufficed for one meal sustained, for three years, the existence of Elijah and his hosts.

It happened, in this interval, that the widow's son was attacked by a violent illness and expired. Distraught by grief, the poor mother addressed reproaches to Elijah, as if he had been the cause of such a great calamity. "What have I done to you, man of God? Have you come to my house to make heaven remember my iniquities and call death upon my son?" And she held the child to her breast and covered him with her tears. "Give me your child," said the Prophet, deeply moved by pity. He received him from his mother's arms, carried him into the room where he lived, and laid him on his bed. "Jehovah, my God," he cried out, "this widow who takes care to feed me, will you afflict her to the point of taking her son from her? Jehovah, my God, I pray you, let the soul return to animate this body." And he lay down, three times, upon the child, shrinking, so to speak, to the measure of the corpse, as if to warm it and rekindle life within it. His prayer was heard, and the corpse revived. Elijah returned to the room where the inconsolable mother had remained, and said to her: "Here is your son; he is alive!" Then the eyes of this woman felt struck by a light superior to that which the resurrected child saw; and addressing the man of wonders: "I recognize by this, now, that you are the man of God and that you have on your lips the true word of the Lord."

This child awakened from the sleep of death by the life-giving contact of the Prophet, is he not the symbol of humanity plunged into the death of the soul, and toward which God lowers himself and descends by the incarnation, when he becomes man and shortens in some way his majesty veiled under the proportions of the creature, to recall to heavenly life our intelligence wrapped in darkness as in a shroud, and our heart buried in its perversity as in a tomb? And this destitute woman, who, without belonging to the people of God, receives from the very mouth of a great Prophet the teachings of the true religion, does she not show, as an expressive testimony, the rich and sovereign action of Providence, which refuses no one the necessary help, but does not forbid itself privileged affections, and which, far from establishing in all the rigid equality foolishly dreamed of by men, strikes all worlds with the reflections of its infinite thought and casts into them the most pronounced and harmonious distinctions; here, enlightening with faith a soul unknown to the learned; there, bringing down genius or beauty into the hut of a shepherd; elsewhere, attaching to the brow of the stars a diadem of incorruptible light, and pouring upon the fragile flowers long streams of perfume.

However, the famine was horrible in Samaria, and a drought of three years was causing animals to perish in droves. "Go, show yourself to Ahab," God said to the Prophet; "I will send rain upon the earth." Elijah obeyed. "Is it you," Ahab said to him upon seeing him, "who troubles Israel?" — "It is not I who troubles Israel," replied the man of God; "but it is you and your father's house, for you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. Now therefore, send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Ca rmel, and t mont Carmel Place of retreat for the hermits for whom the rule was written. he four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of the sacred groves, who eat at Jezebel's table." When all were gathered, Elijah so proved his mission and the ridiculous impotence of the idols that the people, struck with admiration, cried out: "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!" — "Then," replied the burning avenger of the rights of the Eternal, "seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one escape." Indeed, they were all immolated at the foot of Carmel, on the banks of the Kishon. The appeased sky opened, and, at the prayer of Elijah, an abundant rain flooded the earth.

Jezebel, having learned from Ahab himself of the massacre of her priests, fell into a new fury and swore that she would take vengeance upon the head of Elijah. The Prophet was afraid; for he knew what one might fear from the vindictive temper and wounded pride of a woman as bitter in vengeance as was Jezebel. In his terror, he fled, irresolute and troubled, he who had been seen so full of assurance and courage before Ahab. It is that original weakness always betrays itself in some way, even in great men and in Saints, whether because the burden of an illustrious destiny makes them stagger, or because God leaves them, in their own imperfections, a preservative against pride, like those magnanimous Romans who placed official insulters beside the triumphator, to remind him that he was a man.

Elijah reached the southern extremity of Palestine, and, after sixty leagues of travel, he found himself in the deserts of Arabia Petraea. He walked there for a whole day; finally, exhausted by fatigue, he sat down under a juniper tree and wished for death: "Lord," he said, "it is enough; take my life, for I am no better than my fathers." This harsh journey, the consummate wickedness of Ahab and Jezebel, the religion dying out in the kingdom, the oppression of the just and the prosperity of the wicked, all made existence bitter and unbearable to the Prophet. Under the shade of the juniper tree, he fell asleep. An angel came, touched him, and said to him: "Arise and eat." Elijah looked, and saw placed near his head a bread baked under the ashes and a vessel of water; he therefore took a little food and fell asleep again. A second meal followed this second sleep. Then, fortified by the heavenly food, the traveler, at the end of forty days, reached Mount Horeb, near Sinai, a region full of marvelous memories, where God, having descended in the form of a flame into a burning bush, deigned to converse with his servant Moses; where, carried by the thunder, he shook the summit of the mountain under his fiery chariot, and came to promulgate his law to the ears of a whole nation.

Near Horeb, Elijah had a vision: God appeared to him. An impetuous wind passed, then there was an earthquake. Finally, the flame sparkled, as if to show, no doubt, that the Lord can, at his will, strike down, break, and blast the wicked; but no voice came from the bosom of these troubled elements. Soon after, a soft and gentle wind arose; under this symbol was hidden the strength of God, which is mercy and patience. And a voice said: "Resume your journey, and go through the desert to Damascus; having arrived there, you shall anoint Hazael king of Syria. You shall also anoint Jehu, son of Nimshi, king of Israel, and you shall anoint Elisha, son of Shaphat, who is from Abel-mehol Élisée, fils de Saphat Biblical prophet cited in comparison for the miracle of the water. ah, as Prophet to succeed you. Whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill..."

There is some appearance that he executed the first two orders of the Lord only through the ministry of his disciples. As for the third, he executed it himself soon after; for, on his return from the mountain of Horeb, he met Elisha in the field where he was busy plowing the earth, and put his mantle on his shoulders, as a sign of divine election, and as if to invest him with the prophetic spirit. Elisha understood this language: a mysterious commerce had just been established between the two souls. He left the plow: "Let me," he said to Elijah, "kiss my father and my mother, and I will follow you." — "Go, and return," replied the energetic interpreter of God; "as for me, I have done what I had to do." Elisha, giving to understand that he was renouncing ordinary life without return, killed his oxen, cooked their flesh on his broken plow, and distributed it to his neighbors, as a way of saying farewell. Then he followed Elijah with the docility of a disciple who attaches himself to his master.

The two Prophets retired to Mount Carmel, into caves, the principal one of which still bears the name of Elijah today. Carved by human hands into the shape of a square room, high and vast, it overlooks the sea, which makes the roaring of its waves heard from afar: it is the only sound that resonates in this austere dwelling. Near there, on a fragrant slope of the mountain, among aromatic shrubs, flows a fountain that has carved out, here and there, basins in the living rock: an image of the religious life that passes unknown to men, but fully laden with celestial perfumes, and which makes a place for itself at the foot of the throne of God. Henceforth, Elijah intervened in the public affairs of the nation only to announce the approaching end of Ahaziah, a worthy son of Ahab and Jezebel, and to oppose lightning to the soldiers sent against him. His supreme occupation was to inaugurate and strengthen that great school of spiritualism which, withdrawing life from the outside to bring it back within, calls the earth an exile, heaven a homeland, and fills the soul with a grave melancholy and an immortal hope: a noble school where one finds the remnants of the language spoken in Eden by our first ancestor, and the preludes to the hymn repeated endlessly by the elect and the angels in the celestial city.

Shortly after, King Ahab, swollen with pride following a famous victory that God had miraculously given him against Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, took it into his mind to enlarge the orchards of a magnificent palace he had in Jezreel; but, as the pi Naboth Owner of a vineyard, unjustly put to death by Jezebel. ous Naboth refused to sell him, for this purpose, a vineyard he had near his enclosure, because it was the ancient inheritance of his fathers and marked the succession of his family, Jezebel could not suffer this resistance, which afflicted her husband; she found a way to have this man accused of the crime of divine and human lèse-majesté, and, upon this calumny, to have him put to death with his children. The king had no part in this wickedness; but when he had learned of it and saw that Naboth's vineyard no longer had a master, he went very contentedly to Jezreel to take possession of it. Then our great Prophet, having received the order from God, went to meet him, and, in the ardor of his zeal, he said to him: "You have killed and you have possessed; but, listen to the terrible word of the Lord: In this very place, where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, they will also lick your blood." — "What have I done to you," Ahab said to him, "to make such a terrible imprecation against me: have you recognized me as your enemy?" — "Yes," replied Elijah, "because you have sold yourself to do evil. Do you know," said Jehovah, "what I will do? As I destroyed the house of Jeroboam and Baasha, without anyone of their races remaining, because they excited my indignation, so I will destroy you and all your house. If you die in a city, the dogs will devour you, and if you die in the countryside, the birds of prey will eat you; and Jezebel, your wife, will also be eaten by the dogs in the field of Jezreel, where Naboth was executed." The king was terrified by these threats; he humbled himself before God, tore his clothes in sorrow, covered himself with sackcloth on his bare skin, fasted rigorously, and would no longer sleep except on a sack; which caused the ruin of his house to be deferred until the reign of his second son. However, the prophecy of Elijah was fulfilled: for the dogs licked his blood in the field of Jezreel, and, since then, the cursed Jezebel, having been thrown down by the order of Jehu from the top of a window, was also devoured and eaten almost alive by these same animals.

This prince having died, Ahaziah, his eldest son, succeeded him. He was again the subject of the zeal and reprimands of our prophet. In a troublesome illness that he had, he sent to consult Beelzebub, who was worshiped in Ekron, to know if he would recover from it. Elijah was warned of this by an angel; he went to meet his deputies, and, having stopped them, he said to them: "Is there no God in Israel, that you go to consult an idol or rather an evil demon in Ekron? Return to your master, and tell him, on behalf of the God he has despised: You will not rise from the illness that torments you, but you will surely die of it." They returned to the palace and told Ahaziah what they had just heard. The latter asked them what the one who had spoken to them looked like. "It is," they said, "a bearded man, and who has a leather belt around his loins." — "Alas!" he replied, "it is Elijah the Tishbite." At that very instant, he ordered a captain of fifty men to go and seize him and bring him to him. This captain went there without respect, and having caught sight of him on the mountain, he said to him: "Man of God, the king commands you to come down and come to find him." — "If I am a man of God," replied Elijah, "let fire descend from heaven, and let it consume you and your fifty men." A terrible imprecation, but full of justice and equity, since there was nothing more just than to punish the ministers and accomplices of the wickedness of this idolatrous prince. Thus, these words were no sooner finished than fire descended from heaven and consumed all these armed men. Such a lamentable punishment did not soften the hardness of the king. He did not fail to send another captain with fifty other soldiers to Elijah to make him come; these having imitated the insolence of the first, also received the same treatment; they were all burned by the fire from heaven. One saw then how far the blindness of an unfaithful man can go; Ahaziah, adding crime to crime, ordered a captain with his company to force the Prophet to come and find him. The latter, instructed by the misfortune of the others, was no sooner near him than he knelt down, and, humbly representing the order he had received, begged him to save his life. Then our holy Prophet, warned by an angel, went down with him, and, without fearing the fury of the prince, which the death of so many soldiers had further inflamed, nor that of Jezebel, his mother, came to find him at his bed, and, after having represented to him his impiety, his rebellion against God, and his other crimes, he assured him again that he would not recover, and that at the tribunal of the justice of God, the sentence of death was given irrevocably against him. Such great firmness frightened the whole court, and no one dared to seize him; he left it triumphant, and returned to the mountain where he was accustomed to dwell.

Holy Scripture tells us nothing of his private life, nor of the religious exercises he practiced in particular, or in the company of those divine men who are called the sons of the Prophets; but it is highly probable that those who dwelt at Bethel, or at Jericho, or on Mount Carmel, or in the other lands of Palestine, recognized him as their superior and received his instructions and precepts as orders from God and oracles come from heaven. Indeed, why did God command him to anoint another prophet in his place, if not to provide a prelate for his dear disciples whom he was about to leave as orphans? Why did these sons of the Prophets take such great pains to search for him when he appeared no more, if not because they could not bear to be separated from a master and director of such great merit? Why, having learned that Elisha had been doubly clothed with his spirit, did they cast themselves at his feet and submit to his guidance, if not because they recognized in him the legitimate succession of their father and patriarch, Saint Elijah? When the Holy Spirit did not remove our Saint from the land of Israel, and did not hide him from the eyes of all men, he undoubtedly applied himself to forming these great servants of God and inspiring them with religious virtues. Thus, the holy Fathers have always spoken of Elijah as the prince and head of hermits and cenobites. Saint Athanasius, in the Life of Saint Anthony, assures us that this excellent solitary wished for monks to live by the example of the divine Elijah. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus reports of himself, in one of his homilies, that he always had in his Spirit the Carmel of Elijah and the desert of John the Baptist as the models of the religious Order. Saint Jerome, in his Epistles to Paulinus and Rusticus, exclaims: "Our prince is Elijah, our leader is Elisha, our captains are the sons of the Prophets." Sozomen says, in a word, that it is these great men who gave rise to the monastic life; and Tostatus, on the fourth book of Kings, speaking of the mountains of Judea, says that one saw there colleges of prophets similar to our religious communities, of which Elijah was the prelate and father.

"However, the time approached when this man of God was to be taken up into heaven." This is how Scripture speaks; he wished, beforehand, to visit the disciples he had at Gilgal, at Bethel, at Jericho, and along the Jordan, thus performing the functions of a true superior until the end of his pilgrimage among men. When he had rendered them this duty of charity, wishing to cross the Jordan, he rolled up his mantle and struck the waters with it, and at the same time they divided and left him a free path. He crossed it therefore on dry ground, and with him his disciple Elisha, who had never wished to abandon him. Then this incomparable father, judging him w orthy Élisée Biblical prophet cited in comparison for the miracle of the water. to be his heir, said to him: "Ask me what you want, so that I may grant it to you before I am separated from you." Elisha, inspired by God, asked that his double spirit, that is to say, the grace of prophecy and the gift of miracles, be communicated to him, or rather that his spirit, which contained a great number of graces, might be doubly in him. "You have asked a difficult thing," said Elijah: "nevertheless, if you see me taken up into heaven, it shall be granted to you." A short time later, as they were speaking together, a chariot of fire and horses all aflame separated them from one another, and Elijah, having mounted into this chariot, was carried to a place that we do not know, and upon which it would be quite useless to form conjectures. Elisha, seeing him ascend, cried out with all his might: "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its driver." But he was soon deprived of his sight. At the same time, the mantle of this heavenly man fell from the chariot of fire, like a precious inheritance that the master was sending to his disciple. It was the mantle with which he had covered him to make him a prophet, and which had divided the waters of the Jordan. He gathered it up with great respect, considering himself infinitely richer to possess this great treasure than if he had become master of all the riches of the earth. He soon experienced its virtue: for wishing to recross the Jordan, to join the sons of the Prophets of whom he had become the father, he struck the waters as he had seen Elijah do; and, although the first time the waters did not divide, nevertheless, when he struck them a second time, saying: "Where is now the God of Elijah?" they separated and gave him a free passage in the middle of the river.

This is, in brief, the whole history of this wonderful man, worthy of a happier century than the one in which he lived on earth. He disappeared, according to the Chronology we have followed, around the year 880 before the coming of the Son of God. Ten years later, Joram, king of Judah, received a letter from him, in which he reproached him for his impieties, his idolatries, and his parricides, and made terrible threats to him, the effects of which his impenitence soon made him feel. We have this letter in the second book of Chronicles, ch. XXI. But it is not said there where it came from, nor by whom it was brought. Some believe that Elijah wrote it in the place to which he had been transported, and that he sent it by some heavenly messenger. Others believe that he had written it before being taken away, through a prophetic knowledge of the future disorders of this wicked prince, and that he had entrusted it to a faithful messenger charged with presenting it to the king when it would be necessary. The Gospel teaches us that Elijah appeared on Tabor, with Moses, at the time of the Transfiguration of the Savior; but in a different manner than that of Moses: for Moses, who was dead, appeared there only with an aerial body, with which his soul was clothed; and as for Elijah, who was alive, he appeared there with his own body, which the angels transported there. Ecclesiasticus, in chapter XLVIII of his Moral Instructions, remarks that he is destined to warn of the Last Judgment, to soften, at that time, the indignation of God, and to bring the tribes of Israel back into the true religion. Thus, from the Old Testament, it was a common tradition that Elijah would come to earth before the end of the ages, to prepare men for this great day which will decide their eternal happiness or misfortune. Our Lord, in the Gospel, confirmed this belief when he said "that Elijah would surely come and that he would restore all things." It is also of him and of Enoch, according to the sentiment of the Fathers of the Church and sacred interpreters, that he speaks in the Apocalypse, when he says "that he will give extraordinary virtue to his two witnesses, and that they will prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, or three years and a half, clothed in sackcloth; that they will carry in their mouths a devouring fire with which they will consume all their adversaries; and that they will have the power to close the sky to stop the rains, to turn the waters into blood, and to afflict the earth with all kinds of plagues, to punish the criminals."

The holy Doctors have also given great praise to our holy Prophet, especially Saint Bernard, who calls him the defender of the faith and the truth, the advocate of the poor, the eye of the blind, the tongue of the mute, the refuge of the miserable, the glory of the good, the terror of the wicked, the father of kings, the scourge of tyrants, the God of Ahab, and the thunderbolt of idolaters. The Carmelite religious, who recognize him as their Founder and their first Patriarch, are those who have most extensively praised him. They celebrate his feast with great solemnity on this day.

He is represented: 1st, carrying in his hand a flaming sword to recall the proud and decisive language with which he defended the honor of God more than once; 2nd, taken up in a chariot of fire; 3rd, fed by ravens that bring him food every day near the torrent of Cherith; 4th, resurrecting the son of the widow of Zarephath; 5th, in hermit's costume; 6th, in the company of Elisha, his disciple and successor; 7th, receiving bread brought to him by an angel; 8th, holding in his hand a scroll that unrolls and where one reads his salient prophecies; 9th, throwing his mantle to Elisha; 10th, with Jesus Christ and Moses, in all the subjects of transfiguration painted or sculpted.

## CULT AND RELICS. — WRITINGS.

The Church was a long time in deciding on the institution of a religious cult in memory of Elijah, held back, it seems, by the Rule it had made for itself never to bestow any on the living. But, subsequently, it believed it should derogate from its first sentiment in favor of Elijah who, although not yet enjoying, according to the sentiment of the greatest number of the doctors of the Church, the eternal felicity of heaven, is nevertheless no longer, since his removal, in the state that we call travelers of this earth who have not yet reached the end of their journey. It is supposed that God, after having withdrawn Enoch and Elijah from the commerce of men, confirmed them in his grace and established them in a kind of impeccability.

Since the 9th century, the feast of the removal of Elijah was fixed for July 29, throughout Greece and in the provinces of the East that had remained under the obedience of the emperors of Constantinople. It then spread to the peoples of the North who follow the Greek rite, and there was no longer any scruple in erecting altars and building temples in his name. It even seems that it was the Greeks who communicated the cult of the prophet Elijah to the Churches of the West, mainly in Italy.

One is shown, in the immediate vicinity of Damascus, the tomb of the Prophet. Saint Jerome recounts that Saint Paula found, during her pilgrimage in the Holy Land, a small tower that bore the name of Elijah: it had been built by Christians, south of the city of Zarephath, today Sarfend, in Phoenicia.

One lea gue from th Mont-Carmel Place of retreat for the hermits for whom the rule was written. e convent of Mount Carmel, in Syria, was the fountain of the prophet Elijah. To get there, one descends the mountain on the south side, then enters a small valley called the Valley of the Martyrs. One does not take long to encounter, near the path, while going back up the valley, a beautiful spring that comes out of a rock and immediately fills a fairly large square basin all carved into the rock. The origin of this fountain is attributed to the prophet Elijah.

If one makes a path through the thick brush that lines the hill, and if one climbs four or five hundred paces above the convent, one arrives at the top of the mound, in a place quite arid today, which is called the Garden of Elijah, or the Field of Melons. Here is its legend: The prophet Elijah, passing through this place, saw a man who was guarding a field of melons; as he was hungry, he asked him to give him one. "A melon?" replied this man, "I have none: what you see are stones." — "Well! let them be stones!" replied the Prophet while continuing his way. The melons were changed into stones, and since that time, one always finds them in this place, as proof of the hardness and the punishment of this man. Authors claim that one also finds there stones that have the shape of various other species of fruits. These stones, which are becoming rarer and rarer on Mount Carmel, are the size and shape of a melon; their mass is composed of a limestone rock in which there are geodes of hornstone; empty inside, their cavity is lined with quartz crystals. They have often been described, and one sees them in the main museums, which come, either from Mount Carmel, or from various other localities, notably from Saxony, Bavaria, and Transylvania.

At the top of the hill is the Greek convent of Saint Elijah. Like all the convents of the Holy Land, it is a fortress that could withstand a siege: where there is no security, one must be armed to travel and entrench oneself in one's dwelling against the attacks of the Arabs. The walls are very high, almost without openings; the door is made of iron, it is low and very strong. It is especially today that one could say to the Orientals: "He who enlarges his door, seeks his ruin." Who exalted esteems that has ruined. The windows are very high, small, and fitted with bars. On the terrace, there is a wall that serves as a parapet; it is formed of loose stones which, if necessary, can serve as projectiles.

To the right of the path, one climbs a rock on which it is said that the prophet Elijah lay down when, fleeing the anger of Jezebel, he came into the deserts of Judah.

We have lost the Apocalypse of Elijah, as well as that of Origen and Saint Jerome; the General History of all times, which the Rabbis attribute to him, and his Letter to King Joram.

We have used, to compose this biography, the Acta Sanctorum; Father Giry; the Saints of the Old Testament, by Buitiot; the Holy Places, by Mgr Mivlin; the Women of the Bible, by Mgr Darboy; and the History of Sacred and Ecclesiastical Authors, by Dom Cellier.