Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud, &c.— Nothing can be imagined more poignant and sarcastic than these words of the prophet, in which he ridicules in the finest manner possible their wretched, false, and derogatory ideas of the Deity. The two last notions of being asleep, and not at home, how absurd soever they may be when applied to the Deity, were certainly such as several idolaters conceived of their gods, as appears from various passages in Homer, in one of which, Iliad i. ver. 423 the poet tells us, that Thetis could not meet with Jupiter, because "he was gone abroad, and would not return in less than twelve days;" and at the conclusion of that book he gives us an account of the manner in which the deities went to sleep:
"Then to their starry domes the gods depart, "The shining monuments of Vulcan's art; "Jove on his couch reclin'd his awful head, "And Juno slumber'd on the golden bed." POPE.
How debasing ideas these, compared with that awful intelligence which Revelation gives us of a Deity, who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth; but who, every where present, is, at all times, conscious even of the secrets of the heart; at all times ready to hear and able to grant the petitions of his people!