The Prophet of Fire, The Life and Times of Elijah - CCS by James MacDuff and published by Classics Publishing.
The author hesitated in committing these pages to the press, for the same reason which he believes has deterred others, viz., that the life of the greatest of the Prophets of the kingdom of Israel has been already so graphically portrayed, and its sacred lessons enforced, in the admirable volume of Dr Krummacher. It is not certainly with the presumptuous expectation of either rivallng or excelling that well-known work, that he has ventured to occupy the same ground.
The gifted and now venerable pastor of Elberfeld, whose writings have enjoyed a long and deserved popularity, will always retain his own peculiar pedestal in the Christian Church as the biographer of the Tishbite. But what is true in all departments of literature, is surely specially so in the case of sacred literature and Bible biography, that no human works - not the very best can possibly be exhaustive: there are always harvest-gleanings, if not sheaves, for the diligent reaper.
A character like that of Elijah, at once so unique and so complex, and a life so varied in incident, must ever be suggestive of new lines and phases of thought.While the writer, therefore, has endeavoured to give as faithful a photograph as he can, of “the grandest and most romantic character Israel ever produced,” he has made it his special aim, to draw manifold practical and gospel lessons from a history so replete with evangelic truth, as well as so suggestive of noble life - thoughts for this earnest and busy age.
