Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/46

 at first sight appears. The wickedness of Ahab, and his abominable reign, brought on a spiritual famine in the church! knowledge had decayed! righteousness of life was gone, and spiritual truth, the wine of the kingdom, no longer gave joy and refreshment to the soul! Thus, "All joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone." (Isa. xxiv. 11.) The famine in the church was shadowed forth by the famine in the land; for when falsehood is loved, Truth is neglected and despised. Falsehood interrupts the current flow of Truth, putting darkness for light, and bitter for sweet; thus there is neither dew nor rain: no truth is received to fertilize and bless the years or states of human life. Wickedness also burns as an oven, so that there is nothing good or pure to sustain spiritual life—there is no bread. In this state of the church, the prophet is to be viewed as a sign to the house of Israel. There was among the people no reception of heavenly goodness and truth, of the bread and water of life; and to shew forth this famine, the prophet ate nothing but the coarse food brought to him daily by ravens. The raven, a large black carnivorous bird, is mentioned in Scripture as unclean. (Deut. xiv. 14.) Nothing unclean was to be eaten, or offered in sacrifice; instructing us that no unclean affection or thought was to mingle with our spiritual sacrifices, or in our prayers and devotions. Ravens, therefore, from their black colour and carnivorous habits, are emblems of those fallacious persuasions of the merely sensual mind which pervert the truth of heaven, and check all progress in the life of wisdom.

The bread and flesh brought by ravens to sustain the prophet during the famine, was a type of that