SQLite format 3@  ii!%%atableTopicsTopicsCREATE TABLE Topics (Title NVARCHAR(100), Notes TEXT)nV)01 Introduction-Contrasted Rivers{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par INTRODUCTION\emdash THE CONTRASTED RIVERS\par \par "Aren't the Abana River and Pharpar River of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel put together? Why shouldn't I wash in them and be healed?" l  l9QPar \par One gospel memory alone is connected by clear inference with the Abana and Pharpar, but that is a very interesting one. It must have been in the waters of these rivers of Syria which Naaman loved so well, that Saul of Tarsus was baptized into the name of "that same Jesus" who met him on the Damascus highway, and transformed the persecutor into a chosen vessel of mercy. In these days when so much stress is laid on "sacramental efficacy" and the alleged virtue of "apostolic succession," it is surely worthy of note, that the holiest of saints, the greatest and most eminent of inspired apostles, had the baptismal rite administered to him, not from the sacred streams of Kedron, or Siloam, or Jordan, or other waters in the land of his fathers, but from "the golden river" of pagan story. Moreover, as there was no real or imaginary charm in the element, neither was there in the administrator of the ordinance. He received the sacramental sign by sprinkling or immersion, not from Peter, or James, or John\emdash not from any apostle, or boasted "successor of the apostles," but from the hands of a humble, lowly, unknown disciple\emdash "one Ananias"\emdash whose best apostolical succession was his simple faith and brotherly love (Acts 9:17, 18). Surely that one act of Christian baptism, specially appointed by God Himself for His greatest disciple, minister, and missionary, conveys an impressive testimony and rebuke to all "who teach for doctrine the commandments of men," that "neither is he who plants anything, neither he who waters, but God that gives the increase" (1 Cor. 3:7).\par \par Nor can we wonder that the comparison on the part of Naaman, between the one only river of Palestine and these mountain streams of Syria, should have been depreciatory as regards the former. Art, combined with the foregone conclusions of enthusiastic travelers, has done its best to make the "Waters of Israel" beautiful and picturesque. But these (and we speak of the Jordan specially)\emdash though ever enshrined, independent of all accessories and surroundings, in the sanctuary of holiest thought\emdash must be content, so far as 'natural attractiveness' is concerned, to accept the unchanged verdict of the Syrian commander. Disguise it as we may, no memory of Palestine is so disappointing. The Jordan, at its most consecrated portion\emdash the spot where in all likelihood the miraculous crossing took place, possibly not very far from the still holier locality of the Savior's baptism, and with greater prob ability still, where at the summons of the Baptist "there went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins" (Matt. 3:5)\emdash is uninteresting in the extreme. Its waters are flanked by enormous mud-banks, partially and poorly hidden by coarse vegetation; a reedy jungle relieved by no pebbly shore\emdash no rocks tinted with lichen and moss\emdash no bright foliage to hang in graceful tresses over the brown torrent. It is with a shock, those who are conversant with the clear, limpid waters of other countries, gaze for the first time on the stream associated to them with recollections so hallowed\emdash whose very name, in manifold ways, has been incorporated in sacred-hymn and song\emdash "the Border river," washing the shores of "the Better Land"\emdash the "shining fields" "on the other side Jordan." In one word, after having visited both the streams of Syria and of Palestine, we can emphatically endorse the verdic t pronounced 2800 years ago\emdash "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?"\par \par But we hasten from these features of mere local and geographical interest, to illustrate the "imperishable spiritual lessons" suggested and unfolded in this graphic tale of the pilgrimage of a Gentile soldier from his distant Lebanon home to the land of Israel. That river of which we have just spoken, transmuting barrenness into fertility, life into death, was to hav e its moral counterpart in the case of this cleansed leper and heathen chief.\par \par The 'votary of Rimmon' is made a 'trophy of Divine grace', and, by loyal adhesion and allegiance to Israel's God, becomes the first of that "handful of grain in the earth upon the top of the mountains," the fruit whereof is one day to "shake like Lebanon" (Ps. 72:16).\par \par The writer, fully conscious, in the subsequent pages, of his shortcomings in the treatment of an interesting subject, cannot better draw these introductory remarks to a close, than in the words of D. Rogers, an old and quaint divine of the seventeenth century, who has written a copious volume on the incidents of this same chapter, and who thus terminates his dedicatory epistle\emdash "Therefore, to conclude, I shall desire you, good reader, to apply yourself with your best care and prayers to peruse what God has herein presented you withal; and if you pick anything out, bless Him, and pray for me."\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } 0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par THE LEPER-WARRIOR\par \par "Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria\emdash he awas also a mighty man of valor; but he was a leper."\emdash 2 Kings 5:1\par \par "The king of Aram had high admiration for Naaman, the commander of his army, because through him the Lord had given Aram great victories. But though Naaman was a mighty warrior, he suffered from leprosy."\emdash 2 Kings 5:1\par \par Many are the pleasing and graphic incidents interspersed throughout Old Testament story, which have the scene of their occurrence laid in the Land of Promise. In the narrative, however, whose lessons are at present to engage our attention, we are called to cross the northern boundary of Lebanon to the contiguous kingdom of Syria, the long and troublesome rival of Israel. A period of quiescence had now happily supervened between the Hebrew tribes and their hereditary foe. King Benhadad and Joram were, for the time, on amicable terms, and a peaceful domestic picture opens to us, like a gleam of sunshine amid the storms of war.\par \par Every country in the world has been proud of its illustrious soldiers. We may well believe that the empire of which Damascus was the capital, would not be behind in doing homage to military genius\emdash that her highest honors would be heaped on "a mighty man of valor." Such was NAAMAN, the most conspicuous among the group of figures in our narrative chapter\emdash "the Earl marshal," as an old writer calls him, "to the King of Aram"\emdash the commander-in-chief of the Syrian hosts, the favored idol of a warlike race. Not long before, he had returned flushed with triumph at the head of his troops from the land of Israel. "By him," we read, "the Lord had given deliverance to the Syrians." According to Jewish tradition (in the Midrash Tehillim ) it is he who is spoken of in the last chapter of 1st Kings, as the "certain man who drew a bow at a venture, and smote Ahab between the joints of the harness," thereby deciding the fortunes of the day at Ramoth Gilead. By others, he is described in person as of colossal stature\emdash the Goliath of the north\emdash a giant cedar in Lebanon. We may picture him, at all events, as a man of consummate abilities\emdash the trusted adviser of his king\emdash the pride of the army\emdash his name a household word alike in the palaces of Damascus and among the hamlets of Syria; invested, doubtless, by his master with the most distinguished insignia in the power of royalty to bestow\emdash badges of "barbaric pearl and gold" conferred alone on rare personal prowess and in recognition of illustrious deeds.\par \par His home, we may farther imagine, would be one of the "paradises" in that 'wilderness of gardens,'\emdash a palatial dwelling, furnished and beautified with richest fabrics from looms of the old city\emdash trophies of victory adorning its walls, shields and bucklers and spears that had been gathered as spoil in many a hard won fight\emdash with all in external nature that could minister pleasure to eye and ear\emdash the murmur of streams, the music of birds, the floral wealth of the most productive "climate of the sun."\par \par So far, too, as we can gather from a few scattered hints contained in this brief narration, if we except the quick resentment and impatience of contradiction incident to the training of one born to be obeyed, Naaman's character seems to have been a noble one. He was not only "a great man with his master," but "honorable"\emdash of an unblemished reputation. We may, moreover, claim for him (what is rare in such a proud position of eminence and power), traits of amiability, benignity, goodness. His was not the haughty and arrogant demeanor which forbade confidential freedom of communion with those in lowlier station. His servants were not afraid to call him "My father;" nor did a Hebrew slave tremble (as she would have done in the presence of a tyrannical superior) to offer kindly counsel on his behalf. Her affectionate interest in his circumstances, at once bespeaks her favorable regard for her master.\par \par But there is something preying on that lofty soul. NAAMAN is supposed to mean "beautiful," "lovely," "goodly to look upon." Alas! the name in his case was little else now than a cruel mockery. A foul worm is shriveling up the gourd which trellised the earth-bower of his glory\emdash a pestilential touch has turned his gold into base alloy. The most dreaded of Eastern diseases, and that, too, in its most malignant form, has assaulted his body, and will soon convert it into a living, loathsome charnel-house. If he had been a Hebrew by birth, he would have been doomed to cheerless solitude\emdash shut up night and day, the lonely tenant of a darkened chamber, separated hopelessly from the outer world, and denied communion with his own domestic circle\emdash warning all who came near him of the contagious nature of his plague, by the utterance of the cry, "Unclean! unclean!"\par \par "Room for the leper! Room! And as he came,\par The cry passed on.\par Forthwith, aside they stood\emdash\par Matron and child, and pitiless manhood\emdash all\par Who met him on his way, and let him pass.\par And onward through the open gate he walked\par A leper, with the ashes on his brow,\par Sackcloth upon his loins; he seemed like one\par Whose heart is with an iron curb repressed,\par Crying, 'Unclean! unclean!'"\par \par Although it is evident from the narrative, that this rigid seclusion, so imperative in the case of the Jew, was not enforced in the country north of Hermon (for Naaman continued to discharge the duties of the highest civil office of the state), yet his must necessarily have been the most miserable of existences. The red spot, the well-known herald symptom, must at least have appeared, which would end in the ulcered face, the shriveled skin, the croaking voice, the glaring eyes, the decayed fingers (soon rendering him unable to draw the bow which had served him heir to his renown), the wreck of memory, the premature decay of a tortured body, the depression and despondency of mind, the constant dread of imparting to others the terrible disease, the feverish and chronic restlessness which made life a burden. That ever-present thought\emdash rather, we should say, that terrible reality\emdash would pursue him everywhere, dogging his heels like a hideous spectre. It would haunt him as he sat with his chiefs by watchfire and camp on the tented field. It would dim and fret and darken the hour of triumph, when amid the blare of trumpets and shout of citizens, he rode in the chariot of victory through the streets of Damascus. When he headed the festal throng, and entered Rimmon's Temple with his master, it would seem as if the grim idol, in some fit of wanton, retributive vengeance, had set upon him this terrible brand\emdash selected him as victim of the supposed curse-mark of earth's avenging deities, which even the Hebrews considered to be Jehovah's visible scourge, and which they called "the finger of God." Of no avail to him were the thousand charms of his Eden-home. Each setting sun, as it tipped Hermon's crest with gold, chronicled the nearer approach of the enemy his valor could never vanquish.\par \par Such was NAAMAN. "He was a great man with his master, and honorable, BUT he was a leper."\par \par 1. Let us learn from this touching history, the vanity of all earthly glory. On the lintels of that princely home in Aram's princely capital, are written the words, "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass." He who seemed to have been once "fair" and "beautiful" as he was brave and generous, may have the Prophet's wail appropriately uttered over him\emdash "How is the staff broken, and the beautiful rod!" His beauty "consumes away like a moth." Our hero, whose martial deeds the matrons and damsels of city and village, like those of Israel, had celebrated with timbrel and harp, would envy the lot of the fettered captive or squalid beggar in the cells or streets of Damascus.\par \par "Put not your trust in princes, nor in man, in whom there is no help." "Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity!" In vain have courtly physicians lavished on him their skill. In vain have the balsam-orchards of the Abana distilled their healing treasures. In vain have sorcerers and magicians exercised their occult arts. In vain has he, again and again, in piteous supplication bent his knee in the national sanctuary, and loaded the shrine of the idol god with propitiatory bribes. The malady is inveterate. That plague-spot embitters every hour of life, and throws the shadows of despair on an anguished future. Earth has no remedy to soothe his tortured spirit; he looks forward to the quiet rest of the grave as the only and welcome release from his load of misery. As the vile worm, in a long future age, refuted the asserted divinity of King Herod; (Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with a sickness, because he accepted the people's worship instead of giving the glory to God. So he was consumed with worms and died)\emdash so did this cruel monitor whisper the humbling lesson in the ear of the warrior\emdash "Let not the mighty man glory in his might!"\par \par "BUT he was! a leper." True picture of human life! Go the round of existence\emdash mark these varying waves which fret and chafe on its shores. Who is there that has not to tell of some similar shadow projected on an otherwise bright\emdash it may be the brightest path\emdash some flaw in the strong building, some blot on the fair temple pillar? Let us gather a few testimonies.\par \par Here is one who has all that the world can bestow; BUT, as in the case of Naaman, disease is blanching his cheek, and app"ointing him wearisome days and restless nights. What to him, his ingots of gold and lavish luxuries and lordly palaces, with these weary vigils of pain and suffering, which rarest skill and tenderest affection strive alike in vain to mitigate and abbreviate?\par \par Here is another (Daniel 5), with full health and strength; the magic circle of home is unbroken; no olive plant is missed around his table. He had boasted, moreover, in the multitude of his riches; he had won his coveted place amid #'the aristocracy of wealth'\emdash the golden gate and key had been, as he thought, securely reached and won, opening into pleasure, ease, and splendor. But, "in the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the palace wall, 'Mene, God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it!'" His worldly means, which he was a lifetime in amassing, have taken wings to themselves and fled. One wave of adversity has strewn the beach with the fragile ruins. S$eated amid the wreck of his gilded treasures, he pursues in silence the monotone of wounded pride and disappointed ambition\emdash "All is vanity and vexation of spirit;" while an inward voice, like the whisper of some avenging angel, seems to take up the parable, "Look here, you rich people, weep and groan with anguish because of all the terrible troubles ahead of you. Your wealth is rotting away, and your fine clothes are moth-eaten rags. Your gold and silver have become worthless. The very wealth you w%ere counting on will eat away your flesh in hell. This treasure you have accumulated will stand as evidence against you on the day of judgment." (James 5:1-3).\par \par Here is another, into whose lap the fabled horn of plenty has been poured. In addition to the possession of that mere vulgar wealth which is the satisfying goal of so many, he has honors, family possessions, pride of rank, resources of intellect, cultivated tastes. He has risen to honorable distinction, and enjoyed the pageantry &of power. Before him Fame has blown her trumpet. He is drinking, apparently to the full, luscious draughts of earthly glory; fondled and caressed by fawning crowds, the world points its finger, and says of him, "There, at least, is a happy man!" BUT, alas! it knows not the secret wound that is preying on his spirit and poisoning the fountains of life. It knows not how he has to lock up in the depth of his heart of hearts\emdash the story of his profligate son; how his very affluence is extorted to pay the' wicked debts or to feed the riot and excess of a profligate life.\par \par Here is another, occupying some similar coveted pinnacle of distinction, who has reached the goal of success, and outdistanced his fellows in the uncertain race. BUT, muffled from the world's eye and estimate, "the heart knows its own bitterness." That very success has roused the spleen of jealous rivals. Maligned, misunderstood, vilified, he is doomed to bear in silence the shafts of envy\emdash it may be, the treachery( and detraction of trusted friends.\par \par Here is another, who has health and wealth, and unbounded material prosperity. Poverty has never darkened his dwelling; the whisper of malice has never ruffled his peace; troops of true-hearted associates gather around his hearth; the widow and the orphan have been blessed out of his abundant treasure, and he himself has been made richer thereby. BUT, ah! another and more terrible foe has made sad incursions on his homestead. The names to him most fam)iliar and best beloved have been carved on tombstones. "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not." He can add his sorrowful testimony to myriads of broken hearts, that no golden key or golden gate can exclude the sleepless foe\emdash no golden bridle can rein in the "pale horse." His "but"\emdash his soliloquy\emdash is the saddest of all\emdash "You have put lover and friend far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness!"\par \par We need not enlarge. That little exceptional word "but" qualifies every* condition of life, whatever the characteristics of that condition may be. It blurs the gilded ceilings of the rich; it leaves its impress, in diversified form, on the dwellings of the poor. It clips and ruffles the soaring wing of proud intellect. It puts its drag on the triumphal chariot in the hour of ovation. It is God's voice addressing the crowd of weary humanity\emdash "Arise, and depart, for this is not your rest; it is polluted!"\par \par 2. This leads us to note, as a second general le+sson, that we should regard our trials as designed by God for our good. Naaman's trial was indeed no ordinary one. Of all humiliations, what to him could be more chafing and galling? We know how captivating in the eyes of Orientals, were outward attractions\emdash personal form and lordly demeanor and bearing. How touchingly the minstrel king laments the "beauty" of Israel\emdash the twin heroes fallen in high places, who were "swifter than eagles and stronger than lions." Here was "the beautiful"\emdash ,the admired leader of the Syrian armies\emdash who was accustomed to be foremost in the fight, and last in the field\emdash about to become helpless as a child, fit to be occupant not of the martial tent but of the lazar-house\emdash "from the sole of the foot even unto the head no soundness in him, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores" (Isa. 1:6). And yet in his case the parable was expounded\emdash "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness" (Judges 14:14). From- that leper's couch there rose, as in the patriarch's night-vision, a ladder reaching to heaven. He, who, in an earthly sense, here renounced and forfeited the name "beautiful," was to be clothed upon with the beauty of the God of Israel, and to have a name given him better than that of sons or of daughters!\par \par And is it not so with the Lord's people still? His dispensations are often incomprehensible. His name to them is that which He gave to Manoah\emdash "Wonderful," "Secret," "Mysterio.us." That wearing sickness, that wasting heritage of pain, these long tossings on a fevered, sleepless pillow; where can there be love or mercy there? But the silence and loneliness of the sickbed is the figurative "wilderness," where He "allures" that He may "speak comfortably unto them, and give them their vineyards from thence" (Hosea 2:14, 15), rousing them from the contemptible dream of earthly happiness, from the sordid and the secular, from busy care and debasing solicitude, to the divine and the h/eavenly!\par \par Or, that unexpected heritage of poverty\emdash the crash of earthly fortune\emdash the forfeiture of earthly gain\emdash the stripping the walls of cherished and familiar treasure, and sending those 'nursed in the lap of luxury' penniless on the world\emdash where is God's mercy or love here? But it is through this beneficial, though rough discipline, that God weans from the enervating influence of prosperity, leading them to exchange 'the mess of earthly pottage' for 'the brea0d of life'\emdash perishable substance for the fine gold of heavenly gain and durable riches.\par \par Or, that cruel blighting of young hope and pure affection\emdash the withering of some cherished gourd\emdash the opening of early graves for the loving and beloved; holiest ties formed, but the 'memory' of which is all that remains. Where is God's kindness and mercy in creating bonds only to sever them; raising up friends only to bury them?\emdash the plaintive experience and utterance of the 1lone mother in Israel, that of many\emdash "Call me not Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me!" (Ruth 1:20).\par \par But the 'shallow rills' are dried by Him, in order to lead to the 'great Fountainhead'; the links of earthly affection are broken, in order that stronger and more enduring ones may be formed above; the rents have been made in the house of clay, only to render more inviting "the building of God\emdash the house not made with hands"\emdash stimulatin2g to live more for that world where there are no "buts"\emdash where all is perfection\emdash where we shall stand without a "but" and without a fault before the throne.\par \par Yes, suffering Christian! believe it\emdash your trials are designed by Him who sent them, as in the case of Naaman's leprosy, to bring you nearer Himself. They are His own appointed gateways, opening up and admitting to great spiritual blessings. The mother eagle is said purposely to put a thorn into her nest to compel3 her young brood to fly. If God gave us no thorn\emdash if He never disturbed the downy nest of our worldly ease, we might be tempted to remain grovelers forever. He knows us better; He loves us better. The day will come when these "buts" in our present lot, will extract nothing from us but grateful praise; when we shall joyfully testify, 'Had it not been for these wilderness experiences\emdash that leprosy\emdash that protracted sickness\emdash that loss of worldly position\emdash the death of that cheri4shed friend, I would still have been clinging to 'earth' as my portion, content with the polluted rill and the broken cistern, instead of drawing water out of the wells of salvation.'\par \par As it was Naaman's malady which revealed to him his wretchedness and misery, and impelled him to cross the heights of Lebanon to the Prophet's home in Israel; so are God's children, by means of diversified trial, roused to the conscious reality of their spiritual danger\emdash aye, and often too, to the pr5esence and power of foes, fiercer than the beasts of prey which haunted these Syrian mountains. Thus are they prepared to listen, as they would not otherwise have done, to the Divine voice, as Naaman listened to it, though in another acceptation of the words, "Come with me from Lebanon\emdash look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards. \'85Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire with spikenard; 6spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices\emdash a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon" (Sol. Song 4:8, 13-15).\par \par 3. We may gather a third lesson\emdash Not to envy others; but to be content with our own lot, whatever that may be. We little know what trials may be lurking in what seems an enviable position of life\emdash what 'adders' may be sleeping in the flowery bank, or ami7d the bed of roses\emdash what rottenness and decay may be under the covering of virgin snow. "I was envious at the foolish," says Asaph, "when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They are not in trouble, as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency; for all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.\'85When I thought to 8know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely You did set them in slippery places; You cast them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors" (Ps. 73:12-19).\par \par Let us not be covetous of earthly greatness or exaltation\emdash of climbing higher the 'dizzy pyramid of human opulence or ambition'. If we reached the envied summit, we might in all likelihoo9d find new vexations and trials to which we are strangers in a humbler and lowlier lot. Though God has appointed a diversity in human rank, we believe there is a greater equality, a nicer proportionate adjustment in human happiness, than is at first supposed. The increase of riches or of honors brings too often only new cares, anxieties, and responsibilities. True substantial happiness is not dependent on circumstances, but on mind and character. Pass from many a splendid mansion in city or suburban life,: its inhabitants pampered with all that wealth and luxury can give, but where, at the same time, there is pride or jealousy, or the smouldering fires of guilty passion\emdash pass from this to some shepherd's hut in one of our lonely mountain glens, the abode of honest toil, essential virtue, and simple religion\emdash where the debasement of malignant envy, and the effeminacy of demon vice are unknown\emdash around whose frugal table a group of Nature's children are lovingly gathered\emdash and say, whet;her true sterling happiness is found under the gorgeous glitter\emdash or under the smoky rafter? Rather have the cottage with the "great gain" of godliness and contentment, than the palace without them. "A little that a just man has, is better than the riches of many wicked." Whatever be our earthly condition; whether it be at the extremes of opulence and poverty, or the commoner lot of lowly mediocrity, be this our alone object of aspiration and ambitious desire\emdash to have God as our portion\emdash ation and flattery; moreover, with the scar of leprosy to stir into rebellion, every feeling of his better nature? It would seem easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for this commander of the hosts of Syria to seek for mercy at the hands of the God and the Prophet of a hated race! But that God had loved him with an everlasting love; and He will take His own means of saying "to the north, Give up," and of bringing this son "from afar." God goes to this poor victim of a loathsome diseas?e, racked with torture amid the splendid mockeries of regal garments, and downy pillow, and tapestried chamber, (yet truly a bed of sackcloth and ashes), and says, "Though you have laid among the pots, yet shall you be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold" (Ps. 68:13). Oh, how wondrous are these sovereign purposes and decrees of Jehovah! Who can resist, "who has resisted His will?"\par \par We love to think, that all events are in His hand\emdash from the@ creation of worlds and the revolution of empires, to the fall of the raindrop and the sparrow\emdash and that the complicated wheels of providence are ever revolving and evolving nothing but good. Is it nations, hatching schemes of wicked war, and wild ambition, and aggrandizement? How comforting to think that there is an eye upon every such seething cauldron of human passions! that there is a hand covering the craters of these slumbering volcanoes, preventing the imprisoned fires bursting forth until thAe Lord gives the word. No, more, that when the lava-stream breaks forth on its mission of desolation and judgment, it is only for an appointed season and an appointed reason; and that His own Church will come forth from the fierce boiling cauldron "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." There is One in heaven who has the hearts of kings in His hands, and who turns them even as He turns the rivers of waters. "O Assyrian, the rod of my anger, and the staff in their hand iBs mine indignation. \'85Behold the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, shall lop the bough with terror, and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled! And He shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and LEBANON shall fall by a mighty One" (Isa. 10:5, 33, 34).\par \par And He who rules over worlds and empires, rules over the individual human spirit; controls, in the case of each, the empire of thought and the fitful human will. See how, by the power of His omnCipotent Spirit, He led this haughty soldier of Damascus; how in time He conquered the pride of rank, the pride of fame, the pride of riches, the pride of heathen religion, the pride of self-independence, and made him a monument of His grace and mercy! As we gaze upon Naaman in his solitary chamber, with ulcered body and reddened eye, shunned by his fellows, weary and desponding of life\emdash moreover, the votary of a pagan divinity, and shrinking, as we would have thought, from recognizing the hand and oDwning the power of the tutelary deity of his country's enemies\emdash we may well, on all human calculations, adopt the hopeless words of the Prophet in more than their literal sense\emdash "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" But what is impossible with men is possible with God! By a variety of simple coincidences in His providence, He is to bring the leper-warrior, like the Hebrew king, to disown all human confidences, and to say, "In the Lord put I my trust!" (Ps. 11:1).\par \par Shall we, moEreover, ask\emdash What was it that recommended Naaman to the notice and regard of the Jehovah of Israel\emdash leading Him to select that 'wild olive tree among the rocks of Syria', to be grafted into the true olive tree? Was it his valor, his victories, his warlike demeanor and noble bearing, his political sagacity or astute statesmanship, or brilliant talents? No! these were but the qualities of earth; there was nothing god-like about them; they won only the hosannahs of this world. Personal claim on GFod's favor\emdash he had none. The whole secret of His selection is thus unfolded\emdash "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." "I will call them my people who were not my people" (Rom. 9:25). God had, in the sovereignty of His own divine decrees, from all eternity inserted the name of this Aramite chief in higher and better than any military roll-call\emdash one among a noble army of spiritual warriors who have since in every age "fought the good fight of faith, and laid hold on eternal life."\paGr \par It is worthy of remembrance that the Divine Redeemer, in the course of His earthly ministry, took this same story of the Syrian soldier to enforce and illustrate the theme of which we speak. "And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed\emdash only Naaman the Syrian." (Luke 4:27). The lepers of the covenant-nation were passed by. The leper of a Gentile kingdom\emdash and that kingdom, too, the sworn foe of Israel\emdash wasH selected. Still does the same Lord, "who is rich unto all that call upon Him," love to manifest and magnify His sovereignty, and the sovereignty of His grace, in hardened hearts which He breaks, and stubborn wills He subdues, and proud spirits He brings to lie low and submissive at the cross of His Son! Still He can fashion the unlikeliest and unshapeliest stones for His heavenly temple, and show that it is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of Himself who shows mercy. "Who are you, O great Imountain? before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain." "This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty" (Zech. 4:6, 7). "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to nothing things that are\emdash ThatJ no flesh should glory in His presence" (1 Cor. 1:27-29). Side by side with Rimmon's shrine, is to be erected a new altar-stone, with the strange inscription carved upon it by a proud heathen, "JEHOVAH ROPHI"\emdash "I am the Lord that heals you."\par \par Are there any who read these pages, to whom the taint of a deeper and more malignant disease than that of Naaman is adhering, which is excluding them, as effectually as did the leprosy among the Jews of old, from all holy fellowship; and speciKally from fellowship and communion with the Great Father of Spirits\emdash leaving them "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise?" All that you have, in the shape of material bliss, will avail you nothing in this dreadful self-isolation from goodness and from God\emdash an isolation in which you feel you cannot in happiness live, and in which you dare not expect in peace to die. You may, like Naaman, have the world smiling on you\emdash Fortune strewing your patLh with her capricious favors\emdash your name borne on the plaudits of the multitude; but there is a fretful ulcer, a moral virus within, which poisons and destroys all outward good. Is there no voice of mercy, no message of peace for you, and such as you? "Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?"\par \par Yes! the gospel discloses a wondrous way, by which the spiritual leper\emdash (and that, too, even if his case should be the worst\emdash apparently excluded hopelessly from tMhe camp of the true Israel), may have a new name given, and become in the true sense of the word\emdash "Naaman," "beautiful." He who is the alone Ideal of "the Beautiful"\emdash who appropriates to Himself the name of "the Beautiful Shepherd," who gave His life for the sheep (John 10:11), thus addresses you\emdash "Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest"\emdash "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; and though they be red like crimson (red and Nrevolting, like the hue on the skin of leprosy), they shall be as wool" (Isa.1:18).\par \par A deep sense of the vileness of sin, and a longing to get rid of it, combined with the realized consciousness of your own inability to do so, are the only conditions of acceptance and cure. It is said in a striking verse, "He will beautify the meek with salvation;" and yet again, "The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His way." "The meek"\emdash who are they? The contrite, the loOwly, the broken-hearted\emdash those who, like the Syrian warrior, are willing to cast all their own grounds of cobweb-confidence "to the moles and to the bats"\emdash who, turning their back on the Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, and their face toward the waters of Israel, are ready to say, in the words of one who keenly felt the pain and bitterness, in a spiritual sense, of the leper's separation from the camp of the true Israel, and longed, above all, for reinstatement in the forfeited love and fellowship of Him whose favor is life\emdash "Purge me with hyssop" (the leper's appointed means of purification), "and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow\'85Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me\'85For You desire not sacrifice, else would I give it; You delight not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit\emdash a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise" (Psalm 51:7, 10, 16, 17).\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } {{V)01 Introduction-Contrasted Rivers{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par INTRODUCTION\emdash THE CONTRASTED RIVERS\par \par "Aren't the Abana River and Pharpar River of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel put together? Why shouldn't I wash in them and be healed?" 2 Kings 5:12\p 77Qu04 The Pilgrimage{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\_uY03 The Little Captive Maid{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par THE LITTLE CAPTIVE MAID\par \par Now groups of Aramean raideRO]Q02 The Leper-Warrior{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue Srs had invaded the land of Israel, and among their captives was a young girl who had been given to Naaman's wife as a maid. One day the girl said to her mistress, "I wish my master would go to see the prophet in Samaria. He would heal him of his leprosy!" 2 Kings 5:2-3\par \par The God of heaven has high purposes of love and mercy in store for this idolatrous leper!\par \par How is he to be reached? By what means, and through what instrumentality, is he to be brought up out of the horrTible pit and the miry clay, and have a new song put into his lips? We are irresistibly led to recall the case of another "great and honorable man"\emdash "as touching the righteousness of the law blameless"\emdash who was arrested many ages afterwards, within sight of the same Syrian palace and capital; when a glorious light from the midday skies struck him blinded and speechless to the ground, and unfolded to his inner gaze the adorable Lord, whom he was persecuting. Will the God of Israel employ a similUar miraculous agency and intervention now? Will He make bare His holy arm in the sight of heathen Damascus\emdash congregate the prophets of Rimmon by the banks of Abana and Pharpar, as He did those of Baal, not many years before, on the heights of Carmel\emdash and demonstrate, by the instantaneous cure of their hero, that "Jehovah alone is the Lord"?\par \par Varied are the arrows in His quiver. He can, if He will, adopt great means to effect small purposes; and He can use the weakest and feebVlest instrumentality to secure great purposes. He commits, in the present case, the treasure to a tiny earthen vessel, that the excellency and the power may appear to be altogether of Himself.\par \par Among the 'trophies' of conquest in the halls of this warrior, there is a living one. During the last campaign, the victorious troops of Benhadad, when ravaging the towns and villages of Israel, had taken, as part of their booty, a little girl, who had become a maid in Naaman's household. Like anoWther northern chieftain of more ancient date (Judges 5:30), the commander-in-chief of the armies of Damascus may have claimed as his prescriptive right, possession of the young Hebrew captive; and, either from sympathy to her fate, the attractiveness of her disposition, or the grace and loveliness of her person, (possibly all combined), he gave her over to his wife, to become one of her slaves or female attendants.\par \par Perhaps, however, it is not needful for us to infer, from the narrative,X any such regular incursion and plunder of the Syrian soldiers, to account for her presence in the home of Naaman. She may more probably have been the victim of lawless private adventurers\emdash seized by one of those marauding bands (here spoken of as "groups of Aramean raiders"), who kept the mountain borderland of Israel in a state of chronic terror. In those crude and savage times, more especially were the passes of Lebanon infested with plunderers, who waylaid caravans to and from Damascus, or made Ya sudden midnight attack on the defenseless villages of the Hebrews, carrying off their children, and selling them as slaves in the markets of Syria.\par \par The brevity and simplicity of the Scripture account, leaves untold and unrecorded those circumstantials, which, in other narratives, would have given pathos and romance, to the story of this raid and captivity of the young girl. We are left to surmise all the young creature must have felt on that wild night of terror, when, wrenched by theZse pitiless mercenaries from the arms of those she loved, she was hurried in cruel indignity across the rough gorges of Hermon, ignorant alike of her own destiny and of the fate of the cherished ones she left behind\emdash the bitter memory cleaving to her sensitive spirit of their ineffectual tears and stifled, unavailing prayers\emdash the cry, it may be, of parental anguish ascending unheeded amid the flashing of swords and the bursting of smoke and flame\emdash involving hamlet, vineyard, and oliveyar[d in mournful desolation and ruin. Then, perhaps, the sad sequel of being conveyed for sale to the slavemarket of the capital, where the most recent travelers to Damascus tell us there is conducted, at this hour, the same despicable trade.\par \par Be all this, however, as it may; whether as part of the spoil of a victorious army, or a private purchase from a slave-dealer, this we know, that the God who had directed the steps of that captive maid to an alien land, had a high purpose to subserve \in appointing as her destiny the dwelling of the Syrian warrior.\par \par As has already been incidentally observed, we think it may be inferred from the whole story, that she had become affectionately attached to Naaman, and was sincerely touched by his misfortunes. Moreover, she had carried with her to the place of captivity many sacred and devoted memories of the land of her birth. She had probably been the inhabitant of a pious Hebrew home, where the name of her father's God was adored, and ]His prophets were reverenced. She had witnessed her new master's sufferings. She may have listened to his many mournful soliloquies, as with hurried step he paced his solitary chamber by day, or made its walls resound with his moans by night. If she had been the 'down-trodden flower' which most of the heathen slaves at that age of the world were, she must have muffled her own feelings of tender pity, and allowed her tears to flow in silence; dreading him, moreover (from her hereditary impressions), as bea^ring in his person the outer and visible symbol of a divine judgment. But it betokens the kindly and friendly atmosphere in which she moved, when we see this little captive hastening unabashed to her mistress, and with all the fullness of a sympathizing heart, and the tear of kindly devotion trembling in her eye, exclaiming, "I wish my master would go to see the prophet in Samaria. He would heal him of his leprosy!"\par \par Had she seen the illustrious successor of the Tishbite? This we know no_t. As the prophets of Israel (and none more so than Elisha) were continually on the move, going from city to city, and from hamlet to hamlet, it is possible her youthful imagination was full of remembrances of his venerated form and holy words. At any event, she had heard of what Israel's God had done by his hand; and when she thought of the miracles wrought by his instrumentality, and which had filled Palestine with his fame\emdash dividing the waters of the Jordan with the mantle of Elijah\emdash transf`orming into sweetness the bitter fountains of Jericho\emdash and above all, restoring to life the Shunamite's son, we need not wonder at her young and ardent faith and love kindling at the thought, "Can He, who has thus stormed death itself, and spoiled the great spoiler of his prey, not cure my master? I shall at least seek to requite his kindness towards an unprotected slave, by making the attempt!"\par \par Her childlike nature has an instinctive assurance, that the God of her fathers is not athe exclusive, unloving, isolated Being which then, as now, stern sectaries and narrow bigot Rabbis would make Him\emdash that He had lately revealed Himself to the greatest of all the prophets\emdash not in the tempest, nor earthquake, nor fire, but in the "still small voice" (1 Kings 19:11, 12). Her footsteps, perhaps, may at first have faltered; her young heart may have been full of misgivings. Many in her position would have been repelled with the thought, that to venture on such a suggestion would beb unwarranted and rash presumption. "But the thing is from the Lord." She is willing, with a heroine spirit, to brave and dare all\emdash the smiles of the incredulous, the frowns of the disapproving, the scorn of fawning courtiers. No time can be lost\emdash delay may be fatal. The horrible disease is already projecting on the path of Naaman, the shadow of death. So, committing her cause to a Mightier than all the mighty ones of earth, she ventures into the presence of her mistress and makes her unselfishc and impassioned plea.\par \par There are many LESSONS to be derived from this simple incident. Let us note\emdash\par \par 1. God often works by FEEBLE means. A girl\emdash "a little maid"\emdash a hated Hebrew\emdash a slave. What influence can she have on a man whose name was so lately the pride and terror of all Syria? As well speak of an infant uprooting the monarch oak tree, or turning the course of the roaring mountain-torrent.\par \par Not infrequently, by small, and dapparently inadequate instrumentality, does the Divine Being magnify His own greatness and power. Even in the natural world, great results are often accomplished by trifling agencies. It is a little insect that rears in the sea-caves its tier on tier of coral rocks\emdash the wreckers of navies, and the dread of the mariner. The snow-flake, which drops with velvet footfall to the earth, loads the avalanche which bears terror and destruction among Alpine valleys and their smiling hamlets. It is the tiny aceorn, of which the child can make a plaything, that is the germ of the giant oak\emdash the former wooden-wall of our island home\emdash the old type and safeguard of a great nation's strength.\par \par So the Almighty, at times, uses the feeblest and unlikeliest means to effect His purposes. He who employed the crowing of a rooster to melt the heart of Peter, and the dumb donkey speaking with man's voice to rebuke the madness of the Prophet, can consecrate the humblest, and even lowest things, tfo be the ministers of His will and the preachers of His truth. Who need ever despise the day of small things\emdash when we see a young maiden from the valleys of Palestine, preparing, by a few simple words uttered in faith, a pathway for a royal chariot\emdash and better still, leaving to all subsequent ages the legacy of a story of grace, which has interested and moved every heart where the Bible is known and loved?\par \par Yes, it is often not the powerful sermon\emdash not the wasting sickngess\emdash not the desolating bereavement. These are often allowed to pass unheeded; their echoes falling fainter and yet fainter on the soul, like the dying reverberations of the retreating thunder. But how often is "a word in season"\emdash a child's look or saying, a simple tract, a passing funeral, a loving memory from the grave, the tender and sincere ways of the departed, the hymn of infancy, the mother's prayer lisped at a time we almost fail to recall\emdash how often are these slender arrows winghed with unutterable blessings! These are the "little maids" of Naaman's house\emdash little wedges inserted that rend the rocky heart in pieces\emdash little levers, which, in the hand of God, elevate and regenerate the whole moral being.\par \par 2. Learn, that ALL of us, in our varied spheres, may exert an influence for good. Let none say, "My sphere is worthless, because limited; my influence is unavailing, because restricted and circumscribed. Who would listen to so feeble a voice\emdash whoi would be swayed by so humble an example as mine?"\par \par Who dare say so\emdash after perusing the story of the Hebrew maid? If ever one seemed to be excluded, by her position, from doing anything influential, it was this helpless slave-girl\emdash this forgotten flower\emdash this 'exotic' in a heathen palace, drooping its dewy leaves in an alien soil. But the law of kindness was in her heart; and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth spoke. Out of the mouth of this babe, God perfectedj praise because of her enemies, that He might still the enemy and the avenger (Ps. 8:2). Her gentle, unselfish, self-denying conduct is worthy of all note. If she had been like many\emdash like most\emdash plucked crudely away from her paternal hearth and home, and doomed to a life of slavery\emdash she would have resented the injury. If feelings of retaliation had influenced her, she would have watched with malicious pleasure the progress of the disease that was sapping her master's frame. She would havek kept secreted, in the depths of her heart, the knowledge of the great Prophet who might in the name of his God bid it forever away. But acting on those 'gospel motives and principles', afterwards revealed, of "love to an enemy"\emdash "overcoming evil with good"\emdash with no resentment in her bosom, but with that bosom bleeding only at the sight and cries of a fellow-sufferer, she rushes to her mistress, and with earnest tones offers her plea\emdash "I wish my master would go to see the prophet in Samalria. He would heal him of his leprosy!"\par \par Perhaps we may be warranted to infer more from the narrative. Who knows, but in that lowly, childlike bosom, the good seed of everlasting life may have early been sown and taken root; that the blessings of her father's God may have lighted up her own soul with peace and joy, and that she may have long been yearning with desire, to impart to her heathen master and mistress those glorious truths regarding Israel's Jehovah, which had made her own coumntry and her own heart what they were? Perhaps, in her solitary hours, the imprisoned bird may have wondered with herself\emdash "How can I sing the Lord's song in this strange land? When shall I have the favorable opportunity of unlocking the long pent-up secret, which, for weary months I have been desirous of telling to this darkened household?"\par \par She may often have gone, as an attendant on her royal mistress, to the house of Rimmon; and gazing there in sadness on the senseless idol, thne psalm of her own minstrel-king may have come to mind\emdash "For our God is in the heavens, and He does as He wishes. Their idols are merely things of silver and gold, shaped by human hands. They cannot talk, though they have mouths, or see, though they have eyes! They cannot hear with their ears, or smell with their noses, or feel with their hands, or walk with their feet, or utter sounds with their throats! And those who make them are just like them, as are all who trust in them." Psalm 115:3-8\par \opar The opportunity she has long desired seems at last to offer itself. Now is the time for that caged "nightingale" to warble the notes that had long struggled for utterance, and "to sing the songs of Zion in the darkness of Syria." Her prayers are heard. It is said in one of the Psalms, "The Lord gave the word, great was the company of those who published it." But now, when the Lord gave the word, feeble was the voice of her that published it. Yet "as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so pare children of the youth" (Ps. 127:4). How much was dependent on that proclamation!\emdash how much was bound up in the few words that fell from the mouth of that child!\emdash how many were destined to be affected by them! Syria\emdash her king\emdash her hero-chief\emdash his household\emdash his soldiers\emdash multitudes in Israel\emdash and we in every age.\par \par We know not where her dust was laid at her decease, whether in Naaman's mausoleum at Damascus\emdash resting side by side witqh the warrior's ashes\emdash or in her own native valley in Palestine\emdash "gathered to her fathers." But this we know, that her epitaph has been in all lands and in all hearts, and that at this hour she "being dead, yet speaks."\emdash That little wave, rising at the gate of Syria, is rippling still!\par \par Would that we might all fully realize the lesson which is here taught us\emdash that there is no such thing as a person without any influence. We must either be like the aromatic plant, rdistilling fragrance, or like the upas-tree, casting around us the shadow of death. Let us seek to live, that while we live, the world may be the better for us, and when we die, the world may miss us.\par \par Remembering too that it is small things, done from pure beneficent motives, which often stir the main tides of human feeling. It was a little matter for a slave-girl to think kindly and considerately of her master; but unless it had been for that thought and utterance, the vast cavalcade wse shall come by and by to notice, with royal implications, closing with a miraculous deed, would have been unknown, and the world would have missed one of the most touching interludes in the inspired drama. God promises to those who are faithful over a few things, that they shall be made rulers over many things. "He accepts according to what a man has, and not according to what he has not."\par \par 3. May we not, akin to this, and arising out of it, be taught another lesson\emdash the value of tlittle kindnesses? It is only the few in the world who are able to afford the large and munificent gift. But all are capable, in some way or other, of making their fellows happier, by gracious words and ways and deeds. That Syrian slave had neither silver nor gold. If she had, they could have been of no avail in smoothing Naaman's anguished brow. She had nothing but a feeling heart\emdash sympathy for a wretched sufferer. One thing only in the world could she do for him\emdash she could tell him of an oldu prophet in Israel, whose word might, in the name of her God, cure him, when all the skill of Damascus had failed. She lisps, in a few simple words, the kindly thought; and no sooner has she done so, than the servants and chariots are ordered to be in readiness. She has planted the 'seeds of hope' in that 'bosom of despair'.\par \par How many there are, who, so far as the world's wealth is concerned, have little in their power\emdash many who sigh for more than they have, honestly believing thatv if they had more, they would be more bounteous in their liberality and more munificent in their deeds of kindness than their present limited means will allow! To such be it said\emdash Do not covet the gifts you do not have\emdash but make use of what you do have. If you cannot give your golden tributes of generosity, you can do, what in God's sight is equally acceptable\emdash you can, by tender deeds of lowly love, by unselfish interest in the sufferings and needs and sorrow of others, cast largest porwtion of all into His treasury. The daily visit to a bereaved neighbor\emdash an unobtrusive call at a poor man's home\emdash kindly advice to the young and inexperienced\emdash the little attention shown to the unbefriended orphan or stranger\emdash the small meal taken to the bedside of the invalid\emdash devotion to the tottering steps of age, or bearing with its infirmities\emdash these are a few of the thousand little kindnesses which in the sight of God and man are of great price!\par \par xWe might see the replica of this little slave of Naaman's household\emdash speaking gently to the morose and peevish, and returning good for evil. Or, climbing the dark stair where poverty languishes in misery and rags, carrying the feeble pittance which love has spared, or giving to the palsied hand the cup of cold water. Or, the Sabbath-school teacher plying his or her humble labors, where all, perhaps, seems cheerless and unpromising. Or, perhaps the little daughter in a household smoothing the brow fuyrrowed with pain, calming with loving looks and loving ways the fretted bosom, carrying music in her step and sunshine on her face, and causing, by these thousand winning ways, the irritabilities of natural temper to fade and melt at her approach like the mists before the beams of the morning.\par \par You to whom God has given the will and the way of exercising this blessed law of kindness\emdash do not covet greater or costlier possessions. You have the noblest of fortunes. Your wealth is inexzhaustible. The wealth of the hand we do not depreciate (the rich may be noble almoners of God's bounties). The wealth of the head we do not depreciate. Intellect\emdash sanctified, exalted intellect, is treasure greater than gold ingots. But the wealth of the heart is the greatest of the three. You may have neither money nor intellectual gifts\emdash but if you have the large soul (loving and beloved) you will be remembered when gold will have perished, and intellectual sky-rockets will have melted into d{arkness. Having a golden heart, you will be "like Jesus." You will resemble Him who "pleased not Himself"\emdash who "went about continually doing good." It was a saying of one of the world's greatest men, "Caesar and Alexander conquered by weapons\emdash Jesus Christ conquered by love."\par \par And above all, how noble the mission of those, who, by little ways and little agencies, are the means, like the Hebrew maid, of saving a soul from death\emdash leading even one spiritual leper to better| than all the waters of Syria! Young man! young woman! let the story of one, in age like yourselves, tell you what may be done by "a word spoken in due season." Shall we give wing to our imagination, and travel down to that Day of God\emdash when small and great shall stand before Him? Yes! Naaman the Syrian warrior is there, waving the palm-branch of better than all earthly triumphs\emdash and as he casts his blood-bought crown at the Redeemer's feet, his eye ranges along the white-robed multitude until }it rests on one who is a slave no more. With exulting heart he bears testimony\emdash 'That was the angel of mercy whom God sent to my soul\emdash and her message of love was blessed, not only to me, but to many in my land!'\par \par The Almighty Judge puts a star into her crown; and that feeble candle, which of old shed its trembling light in an earthly household, shines henceforth as the brightest of the skies\emdash yes, and having turned many unto righteousness, "as the stars forever and eve~r!"\par \par 4. Let us learn, as a closing lesson, to be slow in interpreting, or rather in misinterpreting, the providence of God. Never was providence darker, apparently, than when that young maid, nestling, as we have pictured her, in some quiet home, or, like a young gazelle, roaming in her innocence the pastoral valleys and mountains of Naphtali\emdash was snatched away by ruffian hands in war or raid\emdash compelled to exchange her freedom for slavery or worse, in a land and city of aliens\emdash her youth and sex, her tenderness and tears pleading in vain with her captors to avert so miserable a fate. Where is the Jehovah of Israel? Can He wink at the barbarous deed? Can He allow villainy and wrong to triumph over goodness, purity, and truth? Why has He left unanswered these prayers of disconsolate Hebrew parents? Why is this Rachel left to weep for her child uncomforted\emdash the cry of one of His own chosen flock over her stolen lamb, unheard by the ear of the Shepherd of Israel?\par \par Yes! picture the feelings of that maiden's mother as she looked down from some crag in Lebanon on the burning cottage, and saw\emdash worse than smoke and flame\emdash her youthful child slung on the saddle-bag of some Syrian horseman\emdash away from her sight forever, to endure a life of drudgery, infamy, shame! How would she pray that the sods of the valley might rather cover that loved one's form; and, beating her bosom in the anguish of despair, exclaim, "Has God forgotten to be gracious, and has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?"\par \par But, fear not, disconsolate one! Dry your tears! The Lord is her keeper\emdash He will give His angels charge concerning her. He has a great end to serve, which only He can discern through that smoking hamlet and those piercing cries. That flower plucked from your bosom is to be planted by the rivers of heathen waters, to bring forth its fruit in due season, and to fill with its fragrance a heathen palace. Yes, this little censer is to scatter its perfumes through all ages. For wheresoever this Bible is read, and this Old Testament gospel preached, that which this Hebrew child has done, will be told as a memorial of her!\par \par So, are we not often led, in premature haste, to harbor guilty surmises as to the rectitude and wisdom and faithfulness of the divine procedure? Confronted with baffling providences, the reason of which puzzles and perplexes our best ingenuity, are we not tempted at times to ask\emdash "Why these unanswered\emdash no, defeated prayers? Why is the urgent plea not only left unheard, but responded to in the very way we most dreaded and deprecated?"\par \par Remember the very case suggested by the story of the captive maid! Many a mother pleads, in earnest faith and importunate supplication, that God may so overrule, so as to prevent her son going to some place or position of peril or temptation. How is her prayer at times answered? Her child is sent to the distant, dreaded 'Damascus', instead of being continued under the happy fostering influences and salutary restraints of home. In silence and solitude, and under the bitter consciousness of frustrated wishes, she is driven to give way to the plaintive soliloquy, "Surely my way is hidden from the Lord, and my cause is disregarded by my God!" Just so, thought and reasoned an illustrious name in the roll of Christian parents\emdash Monica, the devout mother of Augustine. He tells us in his "Confessions" that she had prayed earnestly\emdash pleaded night and day, that the God she served would not permit her son to fulfill his own wish and intention of leaving his home and going to Italy. She too truly feared the vices and contaminations of the Roman capital. Yet her prayers were not heard. To Italy he went, and in Rome he sojourned; and the yearning heart he had left behind, could only picture, in her hours of lonely agony, the moral shipwreck of all that was dearest to her. But the journey and the resort so dreaded, became to Augustine his spiritual birthplace. That city of moral darkness was made to him a Bethel for the visions of God, where he erected his life-altar, and vowed his eternal vow.\par \par God's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways. "A man devises his own ways; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand." Oh that we could believe that at times the denial of our prayers may be the best\emdash the kindest\emdash the paternal answer to them; that when crossed and thwarted in our aspirations after what we think is for our good, we are tempted to pronounce, with the patriarch, the hasty verdict\emdash "All these things are against me!"\emdash we could trust the All-loving to guide our steps, not according to our finite and fallible wisdom\emdash but according to the counsel of His sovereign yet gracious will. Many of His own children, like that little maid, have had to confront what was bitter and painful\emdash leaving the quiet nooks and valleys, for the storm-clouds of Lebanon and the stern trials of Damascus life. Let them trust their sure, unfaltering Guide, that He will bring light out of darkness; and show that, as in her case, in an apparently adverse destiny, there are undreamed-of blessings in store, either for themselves or for others. Many is the Christian, who, in the calm retrospect of life, can tell, that either light first broke on his own clouded spirit, or messages of mercy and support were borne to others, "as he journeyed towards Damascus!\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par THE PILGRIMAGE\par \par So Naaman told the king what the young girl from Israel had said. "Go and visit the prophet," the king told him. "I will send a letter of introduction for you to carry to the king of Israel." So Naaman started out, taking as gifts 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothing. The letter to the king of Israel said: "With this letter I present my servant Naaman. I want you to heal him of his leprosy." When the king of Israel read it, he tore his clothes in dismay and said, "This man sends me a leper to heal! Am I God, that I can kill and give life? He is only trying to find an excuse to invade us again." 2 Kings 5:4-7\par \par "I wish my master would go to see the prophet in Samaria. He would heal him of his leprosy!" 2 Kings 5:3\par \par This artless child-utterance opens an unexpectedly door of hope to the diseased and despairing hero, and puts a new guiding-star into his midnight of darkness.\par \par Who that has witnessed can ever forget the occasion, as relatives are gathered around some couch of sickness, where the sands of dear life are fast running out\emdash the pulse feebly ebbing, the parched lips and languid eye proclaiming too surely that the Valley is at hand\emdash when suddenly there occurs a change for the better; the signs are observed of returning animation; the sinking strength rallies and revives; and anxious ears listen to the soft whisper that passes from the physician's lips\emdash "There is hope!" Or who that has been out in a storm at sea, the waves running mountains high, the tempest roaring through the shrouds, the bravest and manliest abandoning themselves to blank despair\emdash who can ever forget that moment, when the contending elements, as if weary and worn with conflict, listen to the mandate, "Peace, be still!" Anon, the wind changes; there is a break in the troubled sky, and the helmsman, lifting his voice amid the moanings of the blast, announces the joyful tidings, "Out of danger!"\par \par Akin to such feelings must have been the emotions of the Syrian chief, as this young ministering angel of hope, in the guise of a domestic slave, drops these strange, mysterious, scarcely credible balm-words of comfort. And such, too, but in a far more intensified form, are the feelings of every soul, when it passes from a condition of danger and peril and death, into a state of peace and safety and life\emdash when, "dwelling in darkness and in the shadow of death," it first catches up the music of that divine message\emdash "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy!" "There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." "Whoever believes on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."\par \par Yes; blessed be God, these and similar declarations are addressed to every spiritual leper in this sin-stricken world\emdash to all the diverse crowd in its leper-house of morally diseased, whatever their circumstances or social position; whether clothed in luxury or in rags; whether, like Naaman, having "the boast of nobility, the pomp of power," or their only birthright, that of poverty. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." As with the warrior of Damascus, so with them\emdash they have a gracious "invitation," a "letter of commendation" to the King of kings. There is a Greater than the greatest Prophet in Israel, who can "recover them of their leprosy."\par \par We may pause for a moment to note, in the case of her master, what we have already done in the preceding chapter in connection with the story of the little captive servant\emdash that God works by means. He might, if it pleased Him, perform His will and sovereign behests immediately; but He does it mediately\emdash by methods, sometimes complex, sometimes simple. He might, by a verbal mandate, have demolished the walls of Jericho; but He appointed the instrumentality of the Ark procession, the blast of rams' horns, and the shout of the soldiers. He might at once have routed the hosts of Midian in the Valley of Jezreel; and with the breath of His mouth scattered them as chaff before the whirlwind. But He commanded His elect hero to employ the similar instrumentality of pitchers and lamps, trumpet-soundings, and battle-cry.\par \par We may wonder, indeed, at first sight, what was the cause of so cumbrous and protracted a plan for effecting the leper's cure, as is here described to us\emdash what the object and necessity of preparing these chariots and horsemen, these bags of gold, and changes of clothing; subjecting the sufferer to a long and tedious journey across the northern passes of Palestine, through the forests and villages of Naphtali and Ephraim. Why not rather send the Prophet of healing to the palace of Damascus? or, easier still, let the Jehovah of Israel exercise His own supreme prerogative, and the glow of health would in a moment thrill through the hero's veins. As with the slave of another pagan soldier in later times, He had only to "speak the word," and he would have been made whole.\par \par In addition, however, to its being His customary and normal method of operation, God had special reasons, in the case of Naaman, for the employment of such varied instrumentality\emdash He was desirous of manifesting His power in the sight of a whole people. The omnipotent utterance would have been sufficient for the leper's own cure; some delegated messenger from heaven might easily have been sent to that solitary chamber on the mission of restoration, and the recovered warrior thus have been brought to recognize the divine sovereignty.\par \par But the Great Being, "who works all things after the counsel of His will," would have the captive Hebrew maid become a preacher to Naaman's nation. He would magnify His own name in the eyes of Syria\emdash yes, and in the eyes too of disloyal and degenerate Israel, who had been lapsing year after year into an entire apostasy. The military cavalcade is mustered. The Aramite princes and heathen priests may laugh it to scorn\emdash they may smile at the credulity of their chief, thus giving heed to the sayings of a slave-girl\emdash selling himself, even more ignominiously than a brother chieftain of a former age, into a female's hands (Judges 4:9); but he is before long to head that returning procession back in triumph, the mountain-passes of Hermon and Lebanon resounding with song\emdash "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles" (Ps. 34:6). "They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their bands in sunder. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!" (Ps. 107:13-15).\par \par But to proceed with the verses placed at the head of this chapter.\par \par 1. Naaman's first impulse, before setting out on his journey, was to go and tell the King\emdash "So Naaman told the king what the young girl from Israel had said." (ver. 4). Before he can adopt the suggestion of the young Hebrew, he feels it his duty, though the most exalted of Benhadad's subjects, to go to his sovereign, make him acquainted with his design, and receive the royal sanction.\par \par This reads us the preliminary lesson, regarding even the minor, ordinary, everyday details of life\emdash to be careful in observing its proprieties and courtesies. "Be courteous"\emdash "Let all things be done decently and in order," are alike moral and religious obligations. No one was bolder and braver, had a loftier sense of independence or a profounder scorn of hollow conventionalities, than the Great Apostle of the Gentiles. Yet see his Christian etiquette\emdash his refined and delicate consideration for the rights and feelings, it might be even prejudices of others, illustrated in that beautiful Epistle to Philemon\emdash the epistle which has so well been designated "the letter of the Christian gentleman."\par \par Rudeness and boorishness, lack of respect for seniors and superiors, proud self-assertion and presumptuous dogmatism, especially in youth, are as much opposed to the spirit of the gospel as anger and wrath. The believer has been likened to an anagram which is capable of being read up and down\emdash every way, and in all lights. Moreover, we believe it will generally be found that the manliest and noblest are the most courteous. It is the vulgar, the upstart, the shallow thinker, who is the self-willed and presuming\emdash who crosses and violates the civilities of life, and refuses to concede "honor to whom honor is due."\par \par In the case and conduct of Naaman, whose position might have tended to nurture other feelings, we have a pleasing instance, alike of the soldier's chivalrous obligation of duty to his king, and the citizen's deference to his superior, when, on the first blush of this strange pilgrimage, on so strange an errand\emdash "So Naaman told the king."\par \par But is there not also a higher spiritual lesson here for the Christian in his hour of difficulty and peril? When environed with perplexing paths and providences, and at a loss which to follow, swaying between the opposing forces of inclination and duty, may he not\emdash ought he not, like Naaman, to resort to to the King of kings\emdash "So Naaman told the king!" of what is burdening his spirit? How important before embarking, like the Syrian chief, on any arduous undertaking, deciding on any important enterprise of life, to spread out our case before God, and bring our doubts and perplexities to the test of prayer. Let a skeptic world in these days deride and dispute, as it may, the efficacy of such petitions; those who have had personal experience in the past of the divine guidance and direction, know the blessedness of access to the Throne of Grace\emdash the assuring touch of the Golden Scepter\emdash whether it be in deciding on a profession, or in entering on some new opening of business, or in emigrating to the distant colony, or in forming the marriage relation. They know how alike sacred is the duty, and how comforting the privilege, of repairing to the presence-chamber of the Great King in heaven, and saying, "Lord, what will YOU have me to do?"\par \par If others there are whose plans and purposes are unsanctioned and unsanctified by prayer\emdash who, unlike the Father of the Faithful, pitch their tents before they pitch their altars\emdash who enter on duties and form connections without once seeking Heaven's blessing; those who are "taught of God" know how differently they can brace themselves for life's journey and pilgrimage, for crossing its Hermons, traversing its valleys of Achor and Baca, if they have listened to the inviting voice, "Come with ME from Lebanon, with ME from Lebanon."\par \par If the altar were erected first, and then the tent, how many tears and trials might afterwards be saved! Look at Lot, in his selection of the well-watered plains of Sodom. In the resolve of that moment of impulse, he took no heed\emdash no account, of his soul's best interests. He came not to the choice direct from his bended knees. He rushed with a carnal spirit down to the rich pasture-lands and luxurious capital. And what was the result? A life of insult; mocking for himself\emdash worldliness for his family; linked to an ungodly partner\emdash his daughters married to the vile and degraded; his home at last a mass of charred ruins; his wife a calcified pillar; his own old age blackened with unparalleled infamy. Had he sought the Lord's will at that memorable hour, when he stood with his patriarch-uncle on the heights of the future Bethel, surveying the land he had in his choice, he might have been guided to a decision that would have rescued his name from degradation and shame. But, the divine blessing unsolicited, he ventured on the brink of temptation\emdash He was "a brand" "in the burning;" the mercy of his God alone plucked him from it, and made his spiritual history\emdash the epitaph on his tomb\emdash to be this\emdash "Saved, yet so as by fire!" (1 Cor. 3:15).\par \par 2. Observe Naaman's departure and journey. "So," we read, "Naaman started out" (ver. 5). His promptitude, in the true soldier-spirit of instant surrender to duty\emdash "Go, and he goes," is noteworthy. No sooner does he hear the proposal of the young Hebrew maid, than he immediately takes measures to reach the Prophet in Israel. There are no delays, no questionings, no procrastination. Had he given way to such, the project would in all likelihood have been rejected and abandoned. Insuperable obstacles would have presented themselves. The length of the road; reasons of policy and state; the humiliation involved in a great Syrian warrior going to seek a favor at the hands of a Hebrew prophet; the ridicule such an expedient might bring upon him among his own countrymen\emdash more than all, the utter hopelessness of such a pilgrimage. The disease had advanced too far\emdash it had baffled the best skill in Damascus\emdash it was known to be incurable.\par \par But he confers neither with himself nor with others. No sooner is the possibility of a remedy mentioned, than he grasps, like a drowning man\emdash this rope that has been unexpectedly thrown for his rescue. The proximity of the Hebrew territories must have doubtless made him familiar with the miracles accomplished by the hand of the prophets of Jehovah. He believed that what had been done in the case of others, could be done in his; and strong in faith\emdash giving glory to a God yet unknown to him, except by name, this Gentile stranger leaps into his chariot, and pursues his way. We feel already sure it will be a prosperous mission. When conviction passes into resolution, and resolution still farther into action, the battle is always more than half won. As we see the train of horses, servants, and chariots winding through the passes of the Lebanon, we feel that this moral hero has already obtained his double conquest, and that we shall in due time hail him as a monument of mercy and grace!\par \par How unlike the case of many in spiritual things; who stagger through unbelief; allowing solemn warning and conviction to pass unheeded\emdash conjuring up to themselves some supposed necessity for postponement and delay\emdash resolving to set out on the pilgrimage at some time, but "not yet"\emdash imagining the chariots and horses of salvation to be at their call whenever they wish, and their malignant leprosy a thing that may be safely postponed for a deathbed cure. As Naaman felt, so well may they\emdash that restoration may be with them "now or never."\par \par The king said to the sufferer, "By all means, go!" It is thus our Lord speaks. This is the Great Physician's prescription to the seeking soul\emdash Wait not a moment\emdash linger not in all the plain\emdash confer not with any earthly adviser. Let the chariots be ordered. Hasten! flee for your life! "By all means, go!" for a long eternity is suspended on the resolve.\par \par And yet, while we have thus abundant reason to admire and imitate the faith and promptitude, the boldness and tenacity of purpose in this half-enlightened heathen; let us merely advert, in passing, to what will be more specially noted by and by\emdash how hard it is for the natural man to receive the salvation of the gospel as a FREE gift. We go not in the 'empty chariot of faith'; but we must take along with us our wagon-load of gifts and treasures to strengthen our claim, and to count as some equivalent, if not payment, for our cure. We go, as if the astounding spiritual gift\emdash the unbought and unpurchasable blessings of the covenant, were to be obtained with money. Our query is that of the young man in gospel story, "What good thing shall I DO, that I may inherit eternal life?" (Matt. 19:16).\par \par Brilliant and attractive as was the spectacle of all this gay company moving through the land of Israel, we would rather have seen Naaman sitting alone in his chariot (like the Ethiopian Treasurer of a future age), with nothing in his hand or in his bag, but "the King's letter."\par \par Yes; how reluctant we are to resort to the great Heavenly Healer "just as we are"\emdash needy bankrupts and beggars in His sight\emdash saying, "Silver and gold have I none"\emdash money and changes of clothing, good deeds and merits, gifts and attainments, virtues and amiabilities\emdash I leave them all behind me in this pilgrimage of grace. I come with no mental, or material, or moral bribe in my chariot\emdash I have nothing but this King's letter\emdash this Bible, in which is written, as my title and passport, "The GIFT of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).\par \par Naaman "started out." In order to give vividness to the unique story, we are tempted to allow rein to imagination, and endeavor to picture, in thought, that brilliant procession as it issues forth from the western gate of Damascus\emdash the same gate, probably, which assumes at this day the somewhat imposing and high-sounding title of "THE GATE OF GOD." Conspicuous would be the chariot of the chief himself, the war-armor now replaced by some appropriate emblem of peace. Like all eastern cavalcades (and we may well believe specially on such an occasion as this), the royal caravan would comprise a vast retinue of servants, wearing their rich turbans and costly hats\emdash with fine horses and camels and donkeys to convey tents and provender, with the already-mentioned gifts\emdash ingots of gold and silver from the Treasure-house of the capital\emdash and ten sets of the best clothing\emdash holiday suits or state dresses of silk.\par \par We may further imagine, that, as in most similar expeditions, in order to escape the intolerable midday heat, they would start at early morn, or rather while many of the brighter stars were lingering in the heavens. They have crossed the long level plain\emdash the northern plain of the Sahara\emdash athwart which the mists of night are still brooding, disclosing here and there the graceful tops of palm-trees, like floating islands in a lake of cloud. The sun is just beginning to light up the distant mountain peaks of "many-headed" Lebanon, and to tip the dewdrops gemming the tangled shrubs which line the way, as we see them commencing the long ascent by the stream of Pharpar up the flanks of Hermon. If Naaman had been in the habit of listening, in his Syrian home, to some of the songs of Zion on the lips of the Hebrew captive, he might now have appropriately transferred "the traveler's psalm" to his own circumstances, as the great border mountain rose high above them\emdash "the tower of Lebanon which looks towards Damascus" (Sol. Song 7:4); "I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth" (Ps. 121:1, 2).\par \par They have wound their way along the rugged steep\emdash strewn doubtless then, as now, with fragments of black tar; and, crossing the watershed, begin to descend by the swift torrent of the Hasbeya river. The land of Israel is soon fully in view; already their eyes fall on places associated with illustrious deeds. The old walls of Hazor, which, with their military memories of Barak and Sisera, could not fail to be interesting to a warrior, are at their right\emdash the plateau of Bashan is on their left\emdash while the mountains of Naphtali and the more distant hills of Ephraim and Samaria lie between, and blend their summits with the horizon.\par \par There are spots, too, close at hand, which in the future, are to receive a still holier consecration. Some height among those gigantic spurs or eminences, with the winter snow still visible in the crevices, was, in a far distant age, to form the scene of an incident of surpassing and unparalleled splendor, converting, for the time being, this "Hill of God" into the vestibule\emdash the gate of heaven; for it was on this "high mountain" that the Lord of glory was in the days of His incarnation transfigured; when His face, and the very garments of those that were with Him, vied in brightness with the snow on the ridges above.\par \par As they continued their descent, the green knolls and patches of pasture-ground are interspersed here and there with gigantic forest-trees and underwood\emdash the haunt of the or the timid gazelle. They have now reached the base of the kingly mountain; pausing, perhaps, as is the custom of caravans to this hour, by the gushing fountain, around which, in subsequent times, rose the palaces of Caesarea, and where Herod, on a picturesque cliff, amid groves of olive and oak trees, erected a temple to Augustus. Leaving upon their left the ancient city and sanctuary of Dan, they would skirt the reedy jungle which borders the lake of Merom (the scene of Joshua's last battle with the confederate Canaanite chiefs), tapering tufts of papyrus, mingling with thickets of oleander and sycamore. Thence their route would lie, either along the course of the Jordan to the then secluded lake of Gennesaret, or, more probably, by the great western itinerary which led through the soft undulating hills which enshrined the Refuge city of Kedesh, the sanctuary and capital of its tribe\emdash a city which doubtless then (as we venture from personal inspection to pronounce it now, in its desolation and ruin), must have been the most "beautiful for situation" and surroundings, among the towns of northern Palestine.\par \par As they emerged from the park of oaks and terebinths which clothed the foot of Tabor, one place unseen, towards the right, nestling amid its green hills and oliveyards, would, to the Chief of the expedition, had he known its future, been of surpassing interest. For it was in the synagogue of NAZARETH that lips which "spoke as never a man spoke" mentioned him by his name\emdash "Naaman the Syrian" (Luke 4:27). The Good Shepherd, whose mission was "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," there made personal reference to one of those "other sheep" not of His fold, "whom He was also to bring," and cause to "hear His voice"\emdash the first fulfillment of the gracious words, "He calls His own sheep by name, and leads them out." "I have called you by your name, you are mine" (John 10:3; Isa. 43:1).\par \par They have now crossed the plain of Esdraelon, alike the great battlefield and granary of Palestine\emdash the most extensive stretch of fertile land on which their eyes had rested since they left the gate of Damascus. Tabor, the Kishon, Gilboa, Jezreel, and other names familiar in Israelitish story, are around them, all bristling with warlike recollections. Similar remembrances there must have been also, though unrecorded in the sacred narrative, of scenes in which the leader of the band had been himself conspicuous. He must have been gazing on the very hill-tops which recently possessed a very different significance to him, when blazing with the watchfires of the hostile Hebrews. Strange must have been the thought, that he was now a humble suppliant in the very territories of those, with whom the soldiers at his side may have met, not long before, in deadly conflict\emdash now a helpless patient and invalid, seeking the merciful aid of a Jewish prophet! Strange, too, must that brilliant equipage have seemed to the primitive villagers as it swept along\emdash the chariot devoid of those hostile emblems with which, a short time previously, they had been so sadly familiar; neither bowman, nor spearman, nor armor-bearer; the servants only carrying weapons sufficient to protect the wagons which contained the regal presents\emdash "750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothing."\par \par But, not to indulge in further conjectural detail; Naaman's pilgrimage has, in a higher metaphorical sense, a parallel and counterpart in the case of every true believer\emdash the soul in its quest after God, and salvation, and peace. Various are the experiences of that journey, from the earliest hours of struggle and disquietude, when first brought face to face with the unsolved problems of death and what is after death\emdash when the reality and virulence of the 'spiritual leprosy' is revealed, for which no earthly remedy is adequate\emdash onwards to the time, when, at the cross of Christ, and in the revelation of the Father's love in Him, feverish unrest is quieted, and the inquiry of aching spirits is answered\emdash "What must I do to be saved?" Happy they, who in the chariot of faith have been led to undertake that momentous journey which is at last to end with the outburst of praise for "salvation found"\emdash "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that You are that Christ, the Son of the living God" (John 6:68, 69).\par \par 3. Let us note Naaman's RECEPTION. The journey is accomplished; the chief and his entourage have reached Samaria, the capital of Israel, situated on its steep hill; a city "which combined, in a union not elsewhere found in Palestine, strength and beauty." Naaman sends one of his troop to the palace of Jehoram with the royal letter of Benhadad. The monarch reads it. Commencing, doubtless, with the customary oriental complimentary salutations, it continued\emdash "With this letter I present my servant Naaman. I want you to heal him of his leprosy."\par \par The perusal leads to a burst of indignant anger. It seemed little else than an insult; an arrogant imposition on royal credulity; the studied, designed occasion of a fresh quarrel. He and his people were just recovering from the staggering blow dealt, not long since, by the hand of Benhadad. He sees in the letter only a pretext for starting war again\emdash for anew ravaging his territories and deluging his valleys with blood. By the customary method of giving expression to strong emotion, Jehoram tore his clothes in dismay; and treating the proposal as the taunt of a blaspheming heathen masking his own political ends\emdash "This man sends me a leper to heal! Am I God, that I can kill and give life? He is only trying to find an excuse to invade us again." Alas! will the monarch of Israel\emdash the head and ruler of the theocratic tribes\emdash refuse to give glory to whom, as it specially became him to testify, glory is due?\par \par As we have already observed, Naaman could not fail to have heard of the astounding miracles which the God of the Hebrews and His prophets had performed in former as well as recent times; how their national annals were a record of marvelous supernatural agency and deed\emdash and if worship of the calves of Bethel had not blinded and demoralized him, the eye of Jehoram, from his kingly capital, might have lighted on more than one eminence suggestive of miraculous intervention in the past. The comparatively recent wonders wrought by the hands of the Great Tishbite might now have been vividly before him; and when this miserable leper, the wreck of military glory, stood in his presence, passing strange that he did not call to mind that beneficent servant of the Most High, on whom Elijah's mantle and spirit had fallen; who recently had power delegated to him, that in the case of the Shunamite's son, he was able to resuscitate from the dead. The leper's hopes seem in a moment to be frustrated and extinguished, his errand fruitless, his pride wounded, his journey an ignominious failure.\par \par How often does this accord with everyday experience! Just when our worldly anticipations seem brightest\emdash the long journey successfully terminated\emdash the aspirations of a lifetime on the eve of accomplishment\emdash some unexpected reverse crosses our wishes, gives the lie to all our dreams of happiness, and we are left apparently, like Naaman, to retrace our lonely way.\par \par In spiritual things, too\emdash the way to the cross, and beyond the cross to the crown\emdash from the gate of earth to the "Gate of God" in the true Canaan, is not all smooth. It is a journey, with all the vicissitudes of a pilgrimage\emdash effort and toil; sunshine and shade; mountains of difficulty; valleys of humiliation; bright gleams and golden sunsets, alternating with somber clouds and murky vapors; Hermon-dews of divine influence and sustaining strength, with fainting and thirst of the arid land\emdash a treeless desert, where no water is\emdash the marching forth with timbrel, lute, and song of praise one day; the next, encountering narrow strait and extremity of peril; when, like Israel, with the sea on one side and the bluff cliffs on the other, our cry is, "We are entangled, the wilderness has shut us in!"\par \par Yes, through what hosts of spiritual foes and hindrances that chariot of faith has to find its way\emdash skeptic doubts; demon passions; depressing and depraving worldliness; the pride of nature; the arrogance of reason; the tyranny of self; the moral weakness which cowers and vacillates under the world's frown, and dreads the world's censure\emdash "truly, a great fight of afflictions."\par \par But, still, on the chariot moves; and faith, imparting fresh courage, inspires the song, "O my God! Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember your kindness\emdash from Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar. I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. Through each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life." Psalm 42:6-8\par \par Thus does the pilgrim-soldier, hindered, but not baffled; wounded, but not overcome; "cast down, but not destroyed;" pass onwards, through all hard experiences, into the paradise of God's peace\emdash "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ"\emdash "peace through the blood of the cross."\par \par We may imagine, in the case of Naaman, the 'conflicting feelings' that burned in his bosom as his faith was now thus severely put to the test. He has allowed himself to be duped and deceived; the toil of that journey has only mocked him in the sight of Syria and Israel; or, what was worse, served to stir up a fresh quarrel between the rival kings. Must he now turn his horses' heads, and, sick at heart, sullen and morose, retrace his way to a dishonored grave amid the cypresses of Damascus? With his confidence shattered in all he had heard of Israel's God, is he to die a blinder votary than ever, of the helpless god Rimmon? What is he to do? He has come to a standstill. It is humiliation either to remain or to return. Benhadad has failed him\emdash Jehoram has failed him. The lesson is anew read to that disconsolate warrior\emdash "Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils."\par \par But man's extremity is God's opportunity. He who "leads the blind by a way they know not," will fulfill, in the case of this earnest seeker, His own promise\emdash "Commit your way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass\emdash and He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday\'85Though he falls, he shall not be utterly cast down\emdash for the Lord upholds him with His hand" (Ps. 37:5, 6, 24). There is no cause for despondency. The last word of his royal master may have sounded in his ears (as, in a spiritual sense, it ought in ours), "Bu all means, go!" or, like Moses' call to Israel in their moment of terror and apparent defeat, "Go forward!"\par \par Yes, brave warrior! continue your journey with undaunted soul across these Hebrew mountains. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning" (Ps. 30:5). The Sun of Righteousness will before long arise upon you with healing in His beams. There is one, at all events, praying in your behalf in distant Damascus; and the effectual fervent prayer of a Hebrew slave-girl, as well as of a righteous man, avails much. Her prayer is to be answered. Healed in body and restored in soul, she is yet to welcome you back through "The Gate of God," with the new song in your lips\emdash "I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord." Psalm 118:17-19\par \par \par \par \par \cf1\fs23\par } he will learn that there is a true prophet here in Israel." So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and waited at the door of Elisha's house. But Elisha sent a messenger out to him with this message: "Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of leprosy." But Naaman became angry and stalked away. "I thought he would surely come out to meet me!" he said. "I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord his God and heal me! Aren't the Abana River and Pharpar River of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel put together? Why shouldn't I wash in them and be healed?" So Naaman turned and went away in a rage.\par \par In some lowly dwelling, situated near the forest of palms by the banks of the Jordan, near Jericho, the great Prophet of the times was at present sojourning. The character of Elisha presented a marked contrast to that of his distinguished predecessor, Elijah. Elijah was bold, stern, impetuous\emdash his life and mission had their appropriate emblem in the earthquake and tempest and flame, on which he gazed from the mouth of his cave in Horeb. Even the remarkable close of his existence was in keeping with his previous history\emdash swept to heaven in a whirlwind, with horses and chariots of fire. The life of Elijah's successor was symbolized by "the still, small voice" which followed the other manifestations of the divine Presence. The one has been well called the Peter, the other the John, of the prophetic age. The soul of Elisha, however, like all true and noble natures, was stirred to its depths by any infraction on the honor of his God. Gentle as a lamb in his daily walk and conversation, when the name and glory of the Great Being he served were at stake, this righteous man was bold as a lion.\par \par The journey to Palestine of the warrior of Syria was of too much importance and interest to have its fame confined to Samaria. A rumor of the pilgrimage of the illustrious Aramite had reached the forest-home of the prophet. It may possibly be, he had learned the purpose of Naaman's mission by express communication from heaven; as also, that Jehoram, who ought to have known that there was both a God and a prophet in Israel, had only in a fit of unworthy petulance and passion rent his clothes, and put the final extinguisher on the Gentile's cherished hopes.\par \par Elisha cannot brook the insult done to Jehovah. Unless prompt measures are taken, the disappointed soldier may return in sorrow and despair to his heathen land more idolater than ever, and the innocent Hebrew slave may have to pay the forfeiture of her young life for her rash and unavailing counsels. Many of the world's gigantic wars have been born of trifles. Many battlefields have sprung from alleged petty wrongs\emdash "injured sensibilities." May not all Syria, in the present case, be roused into new conflict to resent the indignity offered to her hero?\par \par Independent, however, of this, it is enough for the Man of God to hear, that there is a soul at unrest\emdash a sufferer who has come so many leagues from his home, seeking that help which his own deities were impotent to afford. Accordingly, a messenger (probably Gehazi, or one of the young men of the School of the prophets) is despatched to the Palace of Samaria, with a message to the Israelitish monarch, saying, "Why are you so upset? Send Naaman to me, and he will learn that there is a true prophet here in Israel!" Noble is the attitude and bearing of Elisha; he speaks God's word before kings, and is not ashamed; no, he ventures to withstand his anointed monarch to the face, because he was to be blamed. All the magicians and soothsayers and physicians of Syria had been unable to render aid to the leper. But this humble man, in his quiet retreat amid the jungles of the Jordan, stands forth like another Daniel to interpret the dream, and to magnify the power of "the most High God, who rules in the kingdom of men."\par \par Nor can we fail at this point to admire the conduct of Naaman, considering his constitutional impatience. Baffled and duped and crest-fallen, with his pride stung to the quick, we might have expected that the peremptory mandate of a Jewish Prophet would have been received with disdain; that he would have turned at once, and retraced his steps to his Damascus home. 'If the king of Israel' (so we may imagine the soliloquy of the injured Chief) 'gives me such poor encouragement, and vilifies the letter of my royal master, what am I to expect from the Teacher of Gilgal?' He wisely, however, muffles his inward feelings of irritation and wounded vanity. "Skin for skin; all that a man has will he give for his life." This abject sufferer is not to be deterred in the prosecution of his pilgrimage by an initial discouraging reception. The utterances of the Hebrew slave outlive the chilling words which dropped in his ear from the throne at Samaria. He resolves forthwith to repair to the Prophet's home. Accordingly, in the next incident of the story, we see him setting out there, with his horses and servants and chariot.\par \par He reads, in this, a needful lesson and rebuke to us, alike with regard to earthly and spiritual concerns. Is it the lower and more subordinate earthly view? How many an important position in life has been forfeited by injured pride, or paltry wavering and irresolution. One step more, and the goal would have been reached. But a fit of passion, a momentary yielding to hesitancy or selfishness, a morbid dread of the world's censure, or even, it may be, a feeling of mistaken duty or false sentiment, has lost the one golden opportunity, and there is found no place of repentance, though it be sought carefully with tears.\par \par So too in spiritual things. By reason of doubts and misgivings\emdash fightings within, and adverse providences without\emdash how many are like the disciples of old, who, on listening to what appeared to them the Master's "hard sayings," from that time walked no more with Him" (John 6:66); like the children of Ephraim, "armed and carrying bows," yet turning defector in the day of battle; putting their hand to the plough, yet looking back, they have this verdict pronounced by unerring lips on their desertion\emdash "Unfit for the kingdom of God." Naaman, and those who inherit in its higher, diviner sense, Naaman's spirit, are at this juncture of his story like the Magi of old, who, though they lost for a while their guiding-star, still journeyed on, assured it would again gladden them with its radiance. It did reappear; and "when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." In the case of the Syrian hero, and in the case of all, who, to withstand in "the evil day," have taken to themselves "the whole armor of God," the gracious promise is fulfilled\emdash "Wait on the Lord, be of courage, and He shall strengthen your heart."\par \par Nor was it Naaman alone, whose heart was strengthened in the present emergency. Elisha, in his own case, and as the type and representative of all God's faithful ambassadors in every age, would receive fresh encouragement and heart-cheer in the prosecution of his life-labors. He had sent the authoritative direction (of which we have spoken) from his dwelling at Gilgal. But with all his apparent boldness and magnanimity, he must have had his own secret misgivings as to how it would be received. In all likelihood, laughed to scorn, or treated with contemptuous silence, he would retire to his solitary chamber to bewail, through discouraging tears, the complaint of many before and since\emdash "Who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Little do ministers of the gospel know, when often, in the weakness of their own faith, they may have rushed to the hasty inference that their words are not received, and their work is not prospering; when their hands are hanging down, and their knees are feeble, because no visible response comes to their message\emdash little do they know the Naamans there may be\emdash anxious, perplexed, fevered spirits\emdash who, all in earnest about their souls and heaven, are anxiously listening for needed guidance in their search of the healing waters.\par \par Nothing is told regarding the particulars of the journey to Gilgal. We are left to surmise, that after leaving the beautiful capital of Samaria, with its vine and olive-clad terraces, the cavalcade would probably sweep along the valley flanked by the memorable slopes of Ebal and Gerizim, where another son of Damascus\emdash old Eleazar\emdash had, centuries before, encamped with his master under "the Terebinths of Moreh." If the leper-chief had passed the mouth of that valley nine hundred years later, he would have listened, from the lips of a Greater than Hebrew prophet, to words that would have exactly met his case\emdash "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me to drink; you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water" (John 4:10).\par \par Continuing, possibly, by Bethel, with its dream-memories, they would proceed down the long descent of Ai and Michmash among the mountains of Benjamin\emdash the gorge which is known by the modern name of the Wady Suweinit, now comparatively bare\emdash then covered with a dense forest; and at the time that Naaman passed, doubtless associated with the recent terrible assault, made on the mocking youths of Bethel, by the bears which roamed its thickets. In due time they would reach the north-eastern side of the extensive palm-forest adjoining the old "City of Palms." There Gilgal stood, on a rising ground or 'swell;' and, surrounded with this sylvan sanctuary, looked down, five miles distant, on the waters of the Jordan. No difficulty would be experienced in finding the lowly home of the Prophet. His name, in all that region, was familiar as a household word. Specially would it be held in grateful remembrance in connection with the spring, which, as "the Fountain of Elisha," bubbles up to this day fresh and clear; the healing of whose waters, by his miraculous agency, conferred so inestimable a blessing on the dwellers in that sultry plain.\par \par "So Naaman," we read (ver. 9), "went with his horses and chariots and waited at the door of Elisha's house." What was the reception accorded to him? We expect, from all we know of the gentleness and goodness of Elisha's character, that he will not be lacking in politeness or civility, to the Syrian noble. We expect to find him on the outlook for the distinguished stranger; ready to receive him with that honor, to whom (from his rank) honor was due. In the immediately preceding incident in the Prophet's history, when he observed, in the distance, the Shunamite approaching his other home at Mount Carmel, he was not contented with patiently waiting her arrival. He hastened to meet her; and not being so swift of foot as his servant Gehazi, he gave him instructions to run with all speed, and to inquire, "Is it well with you? is it well with your husband? is it well with the child?" (2 Kings 4:26).\par \par But where is Gehazi now? There is neither appearance of prophet, nor of prophet's servant, nor of prophet's son, coming through the glades of the forest to do homage to the great captain of the armies of Damascus. The troop is allowed to wend its way unnoticed up the gentle slope which was crowned by the prophet's house. Moreover, when they do arrive, the Prophet does not personally appear. He contents himself with sending what, at first, seems an uncourteous message by the lips of another. Never, doubtless, had the ear of that warrior been similarly welcomed at the gates of castle or palace\emdash much less at the door of a lowly cottage.\par \par We may well believe there was a reason for this. We repeat, we may feel assured that when one of the great men of the earth stood at his door surrounded with a stately retinue, Elisha, both as a citizen and as a prophet, would not, by lack of deference to one of eminent rank and position, have wantonly violated alike a social obligation and a divine ordinance. What, then, it may be asked, was the cause of the unceremonious message and reception?\par \par We answer, first of all, the Prophet may probably have felt (to use a common but expressive phrase) that there were "times for everything". All this pomp and circumstance might have been appropriate enough for a season of jubilee\emdash for the ovation of a conqueror\emdash but it was unseemly and unsuitable for the present occasion, that a miserable leper should come decked out in the trappings of state. It would have been more befitting to ask an audience with dust on his head, and sackcloth on his loins. Further, Naaman perhaps undertook, and now was completing, his pilgrimage, under the impression that his rank and fame and renown\emdash backed up with that wagon-load of costly gifts and treasure\emdash gave him an irresistible claim on the services of the Prophet, and on the Prophet's God. He came to Gilgal, more with the feeling that he was honoring Elisha by allowing him to effect his cure, than cherishing emotions of gratitude in anticipation of the healing he expected to receive at his hands.\par \par "What!" (might be his thought, as he alighted at the modest doorway), "is it the inhabitant of such a dwelling as this, that is to restore me? Verily, it will be the proudest deed of his life!" The man of God was not one of those servile, subservient spirits who would barter principle or duty by a base truckling for favor. If he had been a fawning flatterer of the world, influenced by the common weaknesses and frailties of a weak nature\emdash he would have gone forth from his cottage, bending before the imperial chariot. He would have condoned the warrior's pride and haughty bearing; and overlooking the untimely and ostentatious display of splendor, would have said, "Behold your lowly servant, O Naaman! Speak your will, and it shall be done."\par \par His conduct, however, was regulated by the sublime maxim, which, in future ages, molded and swayed a greater than Elisha\emdash that if he pleased man, he was not worthy to be called the servant of his Lord. He would have the princely petitioner at his gate to know, and would teach us also, that, in the Divine sight, every human creature occupies spiritually the same humiliating level\emdash that in matters which concern the soul, God is "no respecter of people."\par \par The first and the last lesson of the gospel is HUMILITY. In every shape, and under every phase and guise, "God resists the proud." It is the saying of the Redeemer Himself, "Except you become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven."\par \par By this reticence, with its tacit reproof, the Prophet would further tell, that "the kingdom of God comes not with observation." "The battle of the warrior is with garments rolled in blood." Earthly conquests are marked by pomp and parade, with floating banner and flourish of trumpet and beat of drum. But the moral world has been turned upside down (yes, the little world of thought and feeling within every individual bosom), is regenerated and revolutionized\emdash by what? By means of an ancient Book written by vinedressers and herdsmen, fishermen and publicans; or rather, by the secret, remedial influence of a great principle which that Book unfolds. The Jewish Temple which crowned the summit of Moriah, rose in mysterious silence\emdash "There was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house while it was in building" (1 Kings 6:7). The Church of Christ, God's living Temple, is not reared amid noise and pomp and plaudits. It is not dependent on wealth, or grandeur, or eloquence; on pride of rank, dazzling ritual, force of intellect and parade of learning\emdash "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty" (Zech. 4:6). "The Lord is in His holy Temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him" (Hab. 2:20).\par \par But to pass to the next point which claims our attention in the narrative. Let us listen to Elisha's MESSAGE\emdash "But Elisha sent a messenger out to him with this message: "Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be cleansed of leprosy." 2 Kings 5:10\par \par There is the gospel\emdash the gospel message, the gospel remedy\emdash "Go and wash." Unto every spiritual leper we are empowered and commissioned to echo the words of the Prophet. Yes, and to add the sure promise, the glorious sequel and certainty, "And you will be clean." It is not the word of man, it is the declaration and assurance of God Himself.\par \par Observe these two things regarding Elisha's directions for cure.\par \par (1.) It was a simple method. Nothing surely could be more so. The Jordan was seen flowing amid its reeds, willows, and oleanders, a few miles from the prophet's door; a brief hour would have completed the sevenfold washing. Nor was this repeated washing anything strange and uncommon to Naaman. As an Oriental, he was accustomed to it every day in Syria. Copious marble baths and fountains, fed from the streams of Lebanon, formed the adjuncts of every dwelling; much more so of a palatial home like his.\par \par (2.) It was a cure that involved no labor. It demanded no bodily austerities, no mental torture, no material penalty. Not a mule or camel need be unladen of its burden; not a bag need be opened; not a robe shaken from its folds. "Go and wash"\emdash that is all! Who does not expect to see and hear the leper, in the ecstasy of the hour, first invoking blessings on the head of the Prophet, and then, calling to his charioteer\emdash "Lose not a moment! give rein to the horses! Slack not their speed until you get to the banks of the Jordan! Israel's God helping me, this night, before the sun set on the hills of Benjamin, I shall be myself again, and on my way back to Damascus with a new song on my lips." With the swiftness of another Jehu, the son of Nimshi, we are prepared to see the impatient soldier driving impetuously down the gentle slopes to the river's brink.\par \par 2 Kings 5:11\endash But Naaman became angry and stalked away. "I thought he would surely come out to meet me!" he said. "I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord his God and heal me!"\par \par We have had chiefly cause to admire the Syrian hitherto. Up to this point we can even make allowance for his weaknesses and foibles, considering he was an idolater, taking into account also other extenuating circumstances. But we must now alter and modify our verdict.\par \par Poor human nature, unexpectedly, but too truthfully, reveals itself. Those infirmities are dragged to light which are the same in all countries, and under every variety of skin. He feels himself an injured man. He had expected that the Prophet would have come forth from his dwelling with dignified demeanor; that, after the manner of an Oriental magician or sorcerer, he would "wave his hand" (or enchanter's rod), pronouncing a series of mystical words, calling upon the God of the Hebrews in some such imposing manner as doubtless he heard Elijah had done upon the heights of Carmel, on the occasion of the defeat of Baal's prophets.\par \par And then, if any direction had been given, or any miracle wrought, he supposed it would be something on a great scale\emdash something involving vast agency, startling and overpowering in its accompaniments and effects. To employ the graphic description of Krummacher\emdash "He expected that the commencement would be made with a variety of formalities and strange phenomena; that then the wonder worker would appear arrayed in an unusual dress, and with an awe-inspiring countenance, his gestures mysterious and dreadful, his steps measured, his movements solemn and enigmatical, many dark sayings and proverbs in his mouth, and in his right hand a staff, a golden censer, or something of the kind. Then, after having drawn a magic circle, that he would proceed to conjure invisible things, call upon the name of God, and that finally there would be a handling of the leprous person in a solemn manner, a majestic imposition of hands, a significant touching of the wounds and ulcers, and such-like imposing and fantastic ceremonies. Such was the kind of fanciful image that presented itself to Naaman's soul."\par \par But, when the simple washing seven times in Jordan was all that was mentioned, he stalked away in wonder, his eye flashing with resentment at the supposed insult. "What!" we may imagine were his thoughts, if not his words, "dare he thus speak to me, a Noble of the Syrian court, the idol of my army, the confidential adviser of my sovereign? Dare he offer me a wanton affront by so beggarly a prescription? I came thinking this to be a land of miracles, where the heavens were opened, and angels traveled up and down on celestial ladders, and chariots of fire were seen on its mountain-sides. But I am befooled! I was sent first to the King\emdash he took my letter as the pretext for a fresh quarrel. I come now to his Prophet\emdash he has not the civility even to receive me at the door of his dwelling. When he sends his servant to me, it is with the child's message\emdash to go and wash this leprosied body in yonder foul Jordan\emdash which I could do, better far, at home, in Abana and Pharpar. I have been foiled, cajoled, and hoodwinked\emdash made the butt for both nations' scorn\emdash tossed like a broken reed on the waters!" Thus saying, he beckoned his charioteer to turn the horses' heads, "and he went away in a rage."\par \par How difficult for many to be humbled even under the severest dispensations of providence! Sickness, leprosy, bereavement\emdash do not of themselves necessarily soften the heart, or lead with the teachableness of children to the acknowledgment of no way and will but the divine. Sad it is when the effect of these is the reverse\emdash to sour the temper, and to foster pride, murmuring, and rebellion. It is the Holy Spirit alone who can curb the wayward spirit, mold the stubborn will, and bring us to sit in filial submission at the feet of our Great Master.\par \par It is evident that Naaman had settled in his own mind, the manner in which his cure was to be effected. The Prophet's method was far too ordinary and commonplace. He would himself have liked some participation in the remedy. And as to the particular direction regarding the Jordan immersion, his eye falls on the turgid river wending through mudbanks in the valley below, and then his memory reverts to the pure, clear, crystalline streams murmuring amid the groves and avenues of Damascus. "If I wash at all," he says, "I shall do it in my native golden rivers. This despicable Hebrew river shall not have the glory of my restoration."\par \par Is not the feeling of Naaman, and the offence of Naaman, the "offence" of the gospel still? To the pride of the carnal heart, it is too simple a thing to be saved by faith\emdash to be indebted from first to last, for our eternal welfare, to the doing and dying of Another. And also, it is an unlabored cure. The self-righteous legal spirit will cleave, if possible, to the old terms of "work and win." Human nature, (as we had occasion to observe in the preceding chapter in connection with Naaman's gifts) desires something of its own, with which to enforce and substantiate its claim on the divine favor\emdash prayers, virtues, self-denials, charities. As in the case of the Roman Catholic, or Mohammedan, or Pagan devotees (for the principle is the same, despite of all creed diversities), there is a desire for the performance either of some great achievements or of some painful austerities. Let it be the trumpet of chivalry summoning crusaders to wrest the Lord's tomb from the hand of the infidel\emdash let it be a pilgrimage to Mecca with bare and bleeding feet, over hot, burning sands\emdash let it be the votaries of Brahmah, or Vishnu, or Kali, holding up their arms until these become rigid and withered in their sockets\emdash let it be a lonely existence of mortification in monastery or hermit's cell, severed and secluded from the amenities of life\emdash let it be the bestowment of manifold goods to feed the poor, casting with lavish hand golden gifts into God's treasury\emdash it matters not. The longing and ambition with many is\emdash instead of presenting the true "King's letter," signed and sealed with the King's own signet, and having these gratuitous contents\emdash "By grace are you saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God"\emdash to be able at last to knock at the gate of heaven with a chariot-load of good works and merits, and, pointing to them, to say, "Behold, Lord, what I have done to purchase and secure my crown!"\par \par Yes, we repeat, how hard it is to strip away all pleas of self-righteousness, to disown all creature-confidences, all "deeds of law"\emdash to ignore in thought as well as word the utterance of the presumptuous pleader in the Temple of old\emdash "God, I thank You that I am not as other men are!"\emdash and to come as needy beggars to the foot of the cross, saying, in the words of our best-known hymn\emdash\par \par "Not the labor of my hands\par Can fulfill Your law's demands;\par Could my zeal no respite know,\par Could my tears forever flow,\par All for sin could not atone\emdash\par You must save, and You alone!"\par \par Whoever you be whose eyes fall on these pages\emdash old or young, rich or poor, convicted of many sins or few sins, we have but one prescription\emdash "Go and wash!"\emdash "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." Mix up nothing of your own with His. Abana and Pharpar are rivers, but not the river. It is very notable that though the directions to Naaman were simple, they were precise, stringent. He was to wash in Jordan; and then he was to wash, not five times, or eight times, but seven times. There is but one way\emdash God's gospel way, the specific way, the revealed way, and "neither is there salvation in any other." See that you refuse not him who speaks. See that you perish not, with safety in view. This Syrian was within sight of healing\emdash yet, in the rash pride of his heart, he was about to forfeit his only remaining chance of cure. The divine word was sounding in his ears, the waters of Jordan were gleaming before his eyes; yet, by one heedless, impetuous resolve, he was on the point of forfeiting all the good of his long pilgrimage\emdash ready to turn his back on an offered favor, and to rush to a leper's grave in a heathen land.\par \par How many have their too truthful portraiture reflected in his! By manifold ways, and through manifold instrumentalities, in this Christian realm; by press and by pulpit, by the living voice and by the silent volume, they have the streams of salvation pointed out to them\emdash aye, flowing at their side. They are "almost persuaded to be Christians;" but by reason of pride and self-righteousness and guilty procrastination, they reject the offered mercy, and lapse into their old self-complacency and indifference. Reversing the direction of the chariot, and flinging the reins loose on the coursers' necks, their sad history is thus briefly chronicled\emdash "The way of peace they have not known;" "You knew not the time of your visitation" (Rom. 3:17; Luke 19:44).\par \par It is, moreover, a mournful reflection, how small and insignificant are often the causes which lead those of fair promise to make shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience. It is sad enough the wreck of the noble vessel, wrestling with the storm far out in the trough of the sea\emdash but it is sadder still, to see it go down within sight of the harbor, when the voices of distress can be heard on shore. It was sad, of old, for the manslayer to be overtaken by the avenger of blood on his way to the Refuge-city, but sadder still to be cut down, just as he was within shadow of the gate, and the citizens were crowding the walls cheering on his lagging and wearied steps. Reader, take home the solemn admonition, "Beware lest you also, being carried away by the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness." "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call you upon Him while He is near." "If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever!"\par \par \cf1\fs23\par }  05 The Remedy and Its Rejection{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par THE REMEDY AND ITS REJECTION\par \par 2 Kings 5:8-12\par But when Elisha, the man of God, heard about the king's reaction, he sent this message to him: "Why are you so upset? Send Naaman to me, and on the name of the Lord his God and heal me!" 2 Kings 5:11\par \par In the preceding pages, we have described Naaman's journey from Damascus\emdash his discouraging reception by the King of Israel\emdash the message sent from Elisha which brought him with his chariot, horses, and servants to Gilgal\emdash and his haughty rejection of the cure propounded to him by the prophet.\par \par Before we pass to consider other historical incidents in the sequel, the three simple words which are placed at the head of this chapter arrest our attention. The lips of the Syrian captain were not the only ones that have uttered them. They are, it is to be feared, a formula used by thousands and tens of thousands among ourselves. Let us suspend, for a little, the thread of the narrative; and, standing in imagination by that lowly door on the heights of Jericho, gather a few solemn reflections from the exclamation of the leper-chief\emdash "Behold, I thought!"\par \par (1.) How often are these words employed with regard to the dealings of PROVIDENCE. In the midst of mysterious dispensations which befall us, whether as individuals or as communities, how apt are we to impugn the Almighty's faithfulness, question the wisdom of His procedure, and set up our wills in opposition to the divine. Is not this oftentimes the silent utterance of the misgiving heart\emdash "Behold, I thought"\emdash it were better had such an event been ordered otherwise?\par \par "Behold" (to take no unfrequent illustration, in which not personal interests but the welfare of the Church seems involved), here was an honored Ambassador of Christ, a faithful witness of the truth, unwearied in his endeavors to awaken the careless, comfort the mourner, soothe the suffering, and befriend the dying. Though others might be arrested in the midst of health, and laid on couches of languishing, "I thought," that for the world's good, and the glory of the Master he served, a rampart of defense would have been thrown around a life of earnest love and zeal and unselfishness like this! Yet while other weaklings and "Ready-to-halts" are spared, this standard bearer\emdash this Asahel, swift of foot and daring in deed, has fallen in the field, just when his courage and heroism and example were most needed to nerve his comrades and turn the tide of battle.\par \par Many decayed, gnarled 'trees' are left to occupy their place in the forest, while the strong of stem, and green of leaf, and majestic in form, are rooted up. O ld crumbling 'pillars' are allowed to remain, while polished shafts, fresh from the quarry, have been struck and shattered with lightning. Where is He who guides with unerring rectitude the destinies of the universe? "Has God forgotten to be gracious?" "Surely the Lord does not see, neither does the God of Israel regard!"\par \par Or, to take the case which comes most deeply home to the individual heart, where is the mercy or tenderness in that sudden vanishing of life's summer dream\emdash that crude demolition of the most cherished vision of earthly bliss? "Behold, I thought" that His dealings to His own, were those of a Father; not retributive and judicial, but paternal\emdash that I could see no hand and hear no lullaby but love. Why has the promised parental solicitude been superseded by the harsh voice and the rebuking rod? Why has the All-loving belied His own saying, "Lord, look down from heaven and see us from your holy, glorious home. Where is the passion and the might you used to show on our behalf? Where are your mercy and compassion now? Surely you are still our Father! Even if Abraham and Jacob would disown us, Lord, you would still be our Father. You are our Redeemer from ages past." (Isa. 63:15, 16).\par \par What is the answer to these and suchlike unworthy surmisings? "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord" (Isa. 55:8). To the eye of sense, however baffling and mysterious be the ways of the Supreme Disposer, it is not for us t o "think," but to believe; not to question, but, like Job, to kneel and to adore\emdash not to say, "Behold, I thought" that Your judgments are right, and I have been deceived; but, I know that they are right, and that You in faithfulness have afflicted me\emdash not, "I thought" that "all things are working together for good;" but, "I know" they are so. If we allowed our own shortsighted wisdom to sit in judgment on the divine procedure, each one of us would at times be a Naaman, tempted to turn away in  sullen discontent and anger from many a providential message.\par \par The disciples on their way to Emmaus were cherishing such a spirit. With their back to their Lord's cross, and their faces bent on the ground, they muttered in despair, "We had hoped ('behold, we thought') it had been He who would have redeemed Israel." Little did they dream, amid these pensive musings and carnal reasonings, that the Messiah of their nation and of the world was walking by their side! Martha and Mary were cherishing such a spirit, when they rushed to the uplands of Bethany and gazed with wistful eye across to the Moab mountains, "as to a world beyond the grave," for a tarrying Lord. If their inmost souls had been disclosed\emdash if we could have listened to their words, we should have heard them thus pouring out their disconsolate soliloquy\emdash '"Behold, we thought" Jesus would not have lingered so; we thought His omniscient eye and omnipotent love would have discerned and pitied our tempest-tossed bark in its sea of sorrows. It is unlike His kind heart thus to mock our grief. It is unlike His righteous wisdom thus to single out His and our loved brother for a premature grave. "Behold, we thought" that, darkened and desolate as other homes in Judea might be, the last light He would have extinguished would be that in our Bethany dwelling\emdash the last star expunged from the skies, one so bright with promise.' No, hush, unbelieving one, your thoughts; "Did I not say unto you, if you would BELIEVE, you should see the glory of God?"\par \par Oh for an unquestioning faith! Naaman "thought" when, in the circumstances, he had no right to think; when alike his privilege and his duty was to listen to and obey the voice of Jehovah's prophet. So ought it to be with us; not venturing to arraign the faithfulness and love even of dispensations the most inscrutable; but rather, in reverent submission to say, amid crossed wills and frowning providences, "I will hear what God the Lord will speak. He will speak peace to His people and to His saints."\par \par (2.) But these three brief words admit of more solemn interpretation, and more solemn lessons still\emdash if we connect them with the sinner and with an eternal world\emdash or rather, with that Great day when God's mundane providential government\emdash the season of probation being ended, He shall judge the world in righteousness, and apportion everlasting awards; rendering "to every man according to his deeds\emdash to those who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, and honor, and immortality\emdash eternal life; but unto those who are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that does evil." If we can dare, at such a crisis of the spirit's history, to suppose a remonstrance, would it not be framed or prefaced by this\emdash "BEHOLD, I THOUGHT?"\par \par Let us anticipate the scene. Let us conjure up some of those "thoughts" which, up to that moment, may have deluded and deceived\emdash but which will then dissolve like a rope of sand.\par \par "Behold, I thought," we may suppose one to say, "that I was as good as my neighbors." I saw no reason for curbing passion and leading an overstrict life. I brought myself to regard the tendencies and vices of a corrupt nature as 'pardonable weaknesses', too readily crediting the condoning verdict of my fellows, as they laughed at my scruples, and told me that there was no great harm after all in indulging these failings and foibles\emdash that I was but a child of Adam at the best, and that no perfection was to be looked for here. If I were selfish and worldly, or the victim of lawless appetites, I thought I was at least no worse than crowds of loveless, narrow-minded, depraved souls around me, who had no higher law dominating their actions than this\emdash "All seek their own." I was satisfied with conforming to the conventional habits and tastes and maxims prevalent in the society among which my lot was cast. Associating religion with sackcloth, self-denial and gloom, I shook off the oppressive burden, and came to glory in my imagined freedom, trusting\emdash "thinking"\emdash that all would go well with me at the last."\par \par And is not this the very dream which many are daily cherishing\emdash the false and fatal rationalization, which is lulling and luring them to destruction? They are content to measure themselves by themselves, and to compare themselves among themselves. With blunted moral sensibilities, and confounding moral distinctions, they invoke upon themselves the doom of the prophet\emdash "Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness!" Their lives are regulated and their characters molded by the principles and practice of the world around them. In the quaint words of an old writer, "they set their souls by the town clock, and not by the sun in the heavens." Their creed is, "Religion may be well enough in its way, but we must keep it in its own place;" and they mandate it as an intruder, into the poorest and lowest corner of their daily life. They hear its warnings as they listen to some funeral bell tolled on rare occasions. Flippant pleasure, keen moneymaking, unrighteous mammon, seductive vice\emdash these are the guests to whom they throw open house and hall, while the other is treated as the beggar at their doors, to whom they toss a coin to get rid of intrusive importunity.\par \par  "Why"\emdash we may interpret their inward musing\emdash "why this grim strictness, this 'puritanical punctilio' about the moralities of life? A plentiful and lenient allowance must be made; and will be made, at the last, for constitutional frailty and passionate impulse. If betrayed into deflections from the path of duty and rectitude\emdash if the TEKEL of the old palace-wall be written on the chambers of conscience, it is the motto which belongs to millions as well as ourselves. We have looked behind the world's hollow pretenses and gilded professions, and our comfort is, that we are at all events, not worse than the average specimens of frail humanity. Let others, if they please, dwell within curtains of sackcloth and in the tents of Mesech; be it ours to fill the luscious bowl of pleasure\emdash with the old Epicurean, to "live while we live"\emdash to enjoy life's capricious sun while it shines\emdash the haunt of folly, the dazzle of amusements, the jovial song, the sparkling wine-cup. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."\par \par Should there be one whose eye traces these lines, who may be harboring, even in a modified form, such perilous fallacies, trusting to such refuges of lies\emdash risking the bridging of the eternal abyss with a few rotten and worthless planks\emdash thus tempted to say, with multitudes of self-deceived, "Behold, I THOUGHT I was standing all secure." My brother! take home to yourself this timely word of warning\emdash "When you THINK you stand, take heed lest you fall." "Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know this\emdash that for all these things God will bring you into judgment" (Eccles. 11:9).\par \par Let us again take our place amid the congregation at the Great Assize. Another, we may suppose, will then be ready to say, "Behold, I thought" I might with safety procrastinate. I thought I could presume on a strong pulse and vigorous arm and unwrinkled brow. I thought I had a long future yet to build upon\emdash not an autumn-tint seemed to be on the leaf\emdash the sun was yet far from the western sky\emdash I was floating down the stream with arms folded, apparently secure in my bark, little imagining that the waterfall was around the bend. I was convinced of my folly, when I found myself suddenly in the swirl and vortex of the dark waters. I am here to bear dreadful testimony to the truth often listened to, but listened to in vain, that "as men live, so do men die!"\par \par And is not this, too, the daily reasoning of multitudes? Procrastinator! if the hand of death were now to arrest you; if you were now to be laid on the pillow from which you are never again to rise\emdash the dream of life, with all its vanities and hopes and schemes vanishing in an instant, what would you say? Would it not be, "Behold, I thought it was yet time enough; I never anticipated a summons so sudden as this. True, conscience, the unsparing monitor and messenger, visited other doors\emdash the gloomy funeral-crowd I saw passing along the street, ought daily to have reminded me of my own certain mortality. But I did not expect the 'fatal rider' would so soon drive his steed at my own dwelling. My 'golden castles' were not completed; my fields were not yet added to. I was weaving for the future, endless purposes regarding a religious life\emdash but death has come when I was all unprepared and unready\emdash like the leap of the forked lightning, or as the lurking assassin. Oh! I never dreamt of this rush and invasion of "the thief in the night! Behold, I thought"\emdash and the voice fails and falters; it cannot complete the sentence. The swiftly moving spirit from the region of thought, passes at a bound into the region and world of dread realities!\par \par Why, it may be asked, revert so often to this unwelcome theme of 'the peril of postponement'? Just because it forms the submerged rock that has strewn  the sea of life with more of mournful wrecks than any other. Every returning Lord's-day, sermons in thousands of British churches are preached, in which the danger of delay is made special subject of faithful monition\emdash God's servants enforcing the abstract lesson by instances in their own experience\emdash strong frames prostrated, gleaming eyes dimmed, young voices silenced, the boom of the great billows thus brought solemnly and impressively near. Yet what is the effect? Awed into solemnity while !the message is delivered and the warning brought home, how many go away worldly and callous\emdash neglectful and godless as ever! Tomorrow finds the impressive exhortation stifled and overborne in the hum of business, just as if it had never been spoken\emdash or, if it does recur, the old soliloquy will recur along with it, and hush it into new oblivion\emdash "Soul, you have goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, and be merry!"\par \par Moreover, what often tends to foster procrastination "in the case of such, is, that the crude "thought" and theory of the spiritual life which they entertain, is a false and defective one. That "thought" frequently shapes itself into a 'religion' consisting in a series of outward impersonal acts\emdash or, to express it differently, enrolment in a spiritual society called "the Church"\emdash that enrolment involving little more than subscription to a few doctrinal truths and formulas\emdash a mechanical process which can be satisfactorily effected at any tim#e\emdash thus leading to rest in the comforting anticipation of what is called "a deathbed repentance"\emdash a safe and ready transportation into a world of spirits, aided by priestly absolution and the supposed efficacy of sacramental grace. (MacDuff is here referring to the "Sacrament of the Sick" which Roman Catholics depend upon to convey them to heaven\emdash editor.)\par \par We dare not limit the power and sovereignty of divine grace, even at the close of a misspent life. Doubtless it is$ a possible thing for a soul (like the Prophet's predicted nation) to be "born in a day"\emdash for the spiritually blind, like our own globe emerging from its enshrouding chaos, to be translated at once out of darkness into marvelous light. But not so is God's 'customary and normal method' of procedure. Moreover, religion is an education\emdash the outcome of a life. The mature Christian is not he, who, a stranger to all spiritual progress and development, is content with being fenced round with orthodox% articles of faith, unimpeachable dogma and forms. But rather, one who has set before him, as his grand object and goal, conformity to the divine character\emdash assimilation to the divine image.\par \par The crude and shapeless block, as it comes fresh from the quarry, is not fashioned and transformed by a touch\emdash for its place in the heavenly temple. Only after laborious efforts in the workman's hands, is it fitted to be a cornerstone, "polished after the similitude of a palace." A day o&f solemn reckoning will wake up many to the consciousness of present self-deception, who are now cherishing the delusion that they can safely and indefinitely relegate to a dying hour, the work of soul preparation\emdash in other words, the remolding and reconstruction of their spiritual character\emdash and by the muttering of a confession at life's close, pass at once into the fruition of a holy heaven and a holy God!\par \par True it is (we cannot too often reiterate the cheering truth), that' the unlimited invitation is given, irrespective of all times, unhampered by all conditions\emdash "Him that comes unto me, I will never cast out." True it is, the faithful trader even on one talent, will not be excluded from the promised recompense of the Great Creditor. The hired laborers of the eleventh hour will not be forgotten or disowned by the Lord of the vineyard. True also it is, that in the Father's house there are many mansions. There are those who are "least" as well as "greatest" in the king(dom; those who are to move in distant orbits, as well as those who are to bask in the near radiance of the Central Sun\emdash yes more, we doubt not many a prodigal, on whom we may have uttered our harsh verdict of exclusion, will find his way to the paternal halls, and be hailed with the paternal welcome. But yet, nevertheless, neither dare we fail to remember the words of "Him that is holy, Him that is true; who opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens." Listen to these words! In the blaze of )that righteous tribunal they will flash condemnation on many daring and presumptuous ones\emdash "Him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me on my throne." "Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." "Then shall the righteous" (those who have made it their aspiration to reach the lofty divine ideal) "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."\par \par Again, let us pass down the gulf of time to the same solemn hour. We may imagine the avowal of another to be* this\emdash "Behold, I thought that God would be too merciful to punish. I thought that He would never surely visit such stern retribution on the creature of His own hands. I thought, when I came really to confront His bar, that He would either modify His recorded threatenings\emdash or else, perhaps, by a great unbounded exercise of His love, would grant a universal reprieve and amnesty. I thought, when I gazed on His outer visible creation\emdash I saw no hieroglyphic of wrath. I saw love pencilled on +every flower\emdash I heard it murmured in every breeze, sung in the chorus of birds, proclaimed by the gleaming sun by day, and serenaded by the silent stars at night. Moreover, in looking around me on the moral world, I imagined some dim foreshadowings might be seen of the divine oblivion of sin and reluctance to punish. Sentence against an evil work was not, in the earthly economy, executed speedily. I saw, ofttimes virtue languishing unrewarded, and vice raising unrebuked her brazen forehead. When the, Almighty did these things, and 'kept silence', behold, I thought that He was 'altogether such an one as myself!' I dreamt not of the necessity of the exercise of His justice\emdash that though He pities the sinner, the holiness of His nature requires him to punish sin. The first glimpse of His righteous judgment-seat has dissipated the delusion. I am brought to read in the name and memorial of a merciful God\emdash that He will by no means clear the guilty."\par \par To refute similar "thought-s," to which, it is feared, multitudes are clinging, and who, in doing so, reduce the unchangeable Creator to a level with the vacillating creature\emdash it is enough, surely, to point to the Incarnation and Passion of the Divine Redeemer, and the dreadful lessons which cluster around them. Can we\emdash dare we, for a moment venture on the supposition, that God would have visited His innocent Son with such unparalleled anguish\emdash that He would have inflicted on Him that shameful death, if He could o.therwise have revoked the penalties annexed to transgression\emdash if that mercy which endures forever, could have silenced the voice of righteous retribution, and conferred on the sinning, an unconditional pardon? The entertainment of the idea is equivalent to representing Gethsemane's garden and Calvary's cross as two superfluous scenes of woe\emdash and the Eternal Father (we say it with reverence) as subjecting the Prince of Life and Lord of Glory to a needless tragedy of blood and suffering!\par \p/ar Let that "cross and passion" read another and far different lesson. If sin required so dreadful an expiation from the Innocent, what will it require from the guilty? If God poured out the vials of imputed wrath on the head of a spotless Immaculate Surety\emdash what will He do to the bold, defiant scorner of His grace\emdash the rejecter of "so great salvation." "If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?"\par \par Once more. From another crowd in that Gr0eat day of retribution, there will be heard the utterance of a more fearful "thought" still\emdash "Behold, I thought that the whole world of spiritual realities was a myth\emdash that religion was a falsehood\emdash that God and heaven were illusions of fond fancy\emdash that hell was 'a tale and nightmare of priestly terror'\emdash Revelation a repertory of artful and antiquated forgeries which superstition had palmed from age to age on a gullible world. I thought that there was light enough in my own i1ntellectual nature to guide me. I heard the priests of the Temple\emdash the recognized interpreters of the oracles of God\emdash proclaim truths which were unaccredited and unauthenticated by any other testimony. External nature seemed to belie them. They spoke of 'the end of all things'\emdash the dissolution of the existing world order\emdash the coming of the Son of God in the clouds of heaven. I looked abroad on the material earth, with its canopy of skies\emdash it seemed to anticipate and echo my o2wn skeptic thought\emdash "Where is the promise of His coming?" All things continued as they were. There was no cloud in all the horizon\emdash no shadow to warn of coming vengeance. Seasons revolved, and suns rose and set, and men bought and sold\emdash the world seemed as buoyant with youth as ever. I thought to myself\emdash Why practice a life of self-denial, as I see others do, on a 'mere possibility'? The visible testimony of the globe I live on, is more reliable than the conjectures of some old par3chment scrolls and devout dreamers. I shall take my chance of these alleged premonitions of coming wrath. Reason shall be the priestess of my altar, and Pleasure the enshrined goddess. Mine shall be the happy creed, of death an eternal sleep, and the grave a last, long home, whose slumbers no fictitious trumpet-peal of Judgment shall ever break!"\par \par How many, in this age of rampant infidelity and unbridled licence, are deluding themselves with these very "thoughts"\emdash the infidelity of4 the head, stimulated by the worse infidelity of the heart, (for it is "in his heart" the fool has said, "There is no God"). None, doubtless, who peruse these pages, are thus wrecked on such unhappy shoals of error; despite of an outward religious profession, clinging to the horrible creed and vague hope, that, after all, there may be no personal Deity\emdash no retributive judgement\emdash that death may be annihilation\emdash eternity a blank! But we may well give the needful word of warning\emdash "Tak5e heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief!" "Beware lest you also, being led away by the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness."\par \par There is no subject more important than the relation of 'Reason' to 'Faith'\emdash and Faith to Reason. We do not dethrone the latter from her own place\emdash her God-assigned place\emdash in the moral economy; "We speak that we do know." Reason, if rightly employed, ought to have her own mission; not as the antagonist\emda6sh but as the sister and handmaid of Faith. But the command of Christ is not, "REASON yourself unto me," but, "Come unto me." "BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." Do not begin, first, to cavil at the doctrine\emdash to raise up mists of unbelief between you and the Sun of righteousness\emdash to find out flaws and scars in the temple-pillars. Enter the sacred shrine. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." The Divine injunction, with refer7ence to those skeptic imaginations, is a message of tender compassion and love\emdash "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his THOUGHTS, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and unto our God, and He will abundantly pardon!" (Isa. 55:7)\par \par Finally, what is the great lesson to us all from this subject? That it is now time to take God at His word. Like Naaman, we "think," and pause, and hesitate, when the divine injunction and exhortation is, 8"Only believe." When a child receives a command from his parent, he does not first weigh, and ponder, and question its propriety\emdash he does not say, "Behold, I thought" that so and so would have been better; but he DOES it; he obeys. With him the parent's word is law. Reader, that is what God expects and demands of you. Not to subject to a hard and rigid analysis His dealings either in providence or grace, but simply to ask, "Lord, what would You have me to do?"\par \par Oh! let there be no hard thoughts on your part with reference to Him. His thoughts, towards you, are thoughts of mercy. "How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God; how great is the sum of them. If I could count them, they are more in number than the sand." Be it yours to breathe the prayer of simple faith, docile reverence, filial love\emdash "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know MY THOUGHTS, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } 06 Man's Thoughts and God's Thoughts{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par MAN'S THOUGHTS AND GOD'S THOUGHTS\par \par But Naaman became angry and stalked away. "Behold, I thought he would surely come out to meet me! I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call;ia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par SEASONABLE ADMONITION\par \par "And his servants came near, and spoke unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid you do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather then, when he says to you, wash, and be clean?"\emdash 2 Kings 5:13.\par \par To resume the narrative. We left the Syrian warrior when he had just received the hummdash and spiritual guides, like Elisha, faithfully directing their way. But God has mercifully borne with their folly\emdash manifesting patience and forbearance, where there might righteously have been rejection and abandonment. He has not cast them off\emdash though they were on the point of casting Him off. He has sent His 'servants', like those of the Aramite chief\emdash to reason and expostulate\emdash to warn of guilt and danger\emdash to put a restraint on demon-passion\emdash and turn the helm\e?mdash when the rocks would have been otherwise struck and the ship hurried in the blinding tempest to irrevocable doom. Yes, how many have to tell\emdash But for these messengers appointed to plead with us\emdash a faithful Friend, Sickness, Affliction, Bereavement\emdash we might this day have been journeying backwards, each to his own Damascus, with the fouler gangrene\emdash the deeper taint of moral leprosy\emdash claiming us as its hapless victims!\par \par But let us proceed to gather, fro@m the verse heading this chapter, a few plain, practical LESSONS chiefly bearing on everyday conduct and life.\par \par 1. Let us mark the effect of timely ADMONITION. The caravan has commenced its retreating movement; the procession is actually wending its way from the Prophet's watchtower up the pass of Ai, soon to be lost from view among the glens of Ephraim\emdash when Naaman's Syrian attendants duteously approach the side of the chariot, saying, "My father, if the prophet had bid you do somAe great thing, would you not have done it? how much rather then, when he says to you, Wash, and be clean?"\par \par The first impulse of these servants might have been very different. Nor could we have wondered, or condemned them, if they had keenly felt and promptly resented a supposed insult\emdash venting their indignation against the discourteous prophet who had so duped both their leader and themselves. Sulkily falling back in the rear of the procession, and leaping on their saddles, they mBight have held on their way in sullen silence. Or, taking a more favorable view of their feelings; supposing they had not thought so hardly of the Prophet's message as their master had done, we might, at all events, have imagined them saying to one another, "Would that he had assented to the directions of this Hebrew! But we dare not interfere. It would ill become us to interject our opinion. It would be the height of presumption to venture an admonition. It is to be regretted that a gust of ill-timed pasCsion should ruin the whole object of the journey. We are, however, only menials and dependants; our duty, in any circumstances, is to remain passive. It would be at our peril to incite such a hurricane. It might be instant death to intermeddle with the 'chafed and galled lion'. Let matters take their course\emdash he will be the sufferer\emdash it is nothing to us."\par \par Not so! Theirs might be the more daring and riskful, but it was "the most excellent way." They exemplified, by their conduDct, the truth of the saying, "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" Ah! how much evil in the world (yes, too, and in the little world of our individual influence) might often be averted by well-timed admonition! How often, by a guilty silence, do we allow great opportunities for good to pass away! How many vessels, driven on the sands of unbelief or profligacy, might, humanly speaking, have been saved, had the beacon been pointed out in time, and the voice of counsel and warning been judiciously lEifted up! Had that parent been more faithful in checking the incipient tendency to dissipation; had that employer, to that friendless young man environed with the temptations of city life, spoken solemnly and seriously, now that he was removed from the hallowed restraints of the old homestead. Yes; and those poor, hapless wrecks of society, who dishonor their name and sex\emdash wretched outcasts from virtue and peace\emdash how often might they too have been snatched as brands from the burning, if some eFarnest, tender, faithful word had been whispered in their ears\emdash if a cruel world, in the first moment of suspicion, instead of turning its back coldly upon them, hurling envenomed darts of slander and reproach and scorn, had acted the nobler and more Christian-like part\emdash of pleading with the yet unseared and sensitive conscience\emdash urging instantaneous return to the good old paths\emdash saying, as the great Lord of conscience did to one such pining, withered flower, whom others had mercilGessly trodden and trampled under foot, "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more."\par \par 2. A second lesson we may learn is, to beware of the latent pride of the human heart. The servants of Naaman, in their admonition with him, seize at once on the reason of his disappointed and outraged feeling. "My father, if the prophet had bid you do some great thing, would you not have done it." Their master would have preferred, and doubtless expected, some instruction that would have been flatteriHng to his pride and vainglory. It was, as has been already noted, the insignificance of the Jordan washing that was offensive and distasteful to him. If the Prophet (as we have had also occasion to illustrate in a previous chapter, but which again meets us more appropriately here)\emdash if the Prophet had required of him the performance of some great feat, or subjected him to some great privation, or demanded some costly sacrifice, he would probably have unhesitatingly assented. Had it been the toil and Ieffort of a lengthened pilgrimage, or the pain of bodily penance\emdash had it been the charging of royal fees from his Syrian possessions\emdash herds of cattle, the pride of Lebanon's cedars, or the wealth of olive-groves by the Abana\emdash he would, without much reluctance, have taxed his princely revenues to liquidate the debt. But to undertake all that tedious journey, and simply to be told at the end of it, and as the result of it, to "wash in Jordan"\emdash there was no heroism, no chivalry, aboutJ that! It was what the humblest Jew who lived near its banks was in the habit of doing daily. To obey such an injunction, would be to put himself on a level with the peasants and farmers and slaves in the Hebrew villages around. The old blood of the warrior was roused\emdash the resolve was taken\emdash and the homeward journey commenced.\par \par The conduct of Naaman has here, too, its faithful analogy and counterpart in the opposition of many to the gospel plan of salvation. They have no ideaK of being saved in the same manner and on the same conditions, as the vilest and most abandoned. Give them some special and exceptional recipe and prescription for their acknowledged spiritual maladies; let them get into heaven by the entrance which admits the honest, and virtuous, and reputable, and charitable. But to put them on the same footing\emdash to make them walk in the same pathway and to bathe in the same stream as yonder profligate and drunkard and liar\emdash men once of demoralized habits, dLegraded principles, and vicious life\emdash the pride of nature revolts at the thought! They must have a 'respectable method' of restoration, or they will reject and repudiate the revealed one.\par \par It was for this reason the gospel proved to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness. The son of Abraham, with his long pedigree, his pride of national descent, his covenant privileges, and punctilious performance of ritualistic ceremony\emdash the Greek, with his boasted worldly wMisdom and his systems of refined philosophy\emdash could not tolerate the idea of being placed on a level with the ignorant and vile\emdash with slaves and publicans, sinners and harlots\emdash and of being brought to own, as their Savior, the crucified Son of a Hebrew laborer\emdash a lowly carpenter of Galilee!\par \par This, however, is that gospel's first and indisputable lesson\emdash to count all native excellencies and graces and endowments and virtues\emdash as loss, for the excellency oNf the knowledge of Christ Jesus. At His cross the rich and poor must meet together, for He, the Lord, is the Redeemer of them all. Great and base\emdash noble and despised\emdash the man of fair character and irreproachable life\emdash as well as the lowest profligate bathed in tears of penitence and shame\emdash all must endorse the one utterance and employ the one prayer\emdash "God be merciful to me a sinner!" The hungry He fills with good things, while the rich (in their own estimation) He sends emptyO away!\par \par 3. We may also learn here that God is glorified by obedience to His will in LITTLE things. Naaman was willing enough to do "a great thing." He was unwilling to stoop to do a little one. How many there are\emdash and that, too, in "the religious world"\emdash who are ready and eager to enlist in some bold and startling enterprise\emdash ready for a life of high consecration in a large and influential sphere, but who dwarf and dwindle into inaction and listlessness in a small and lPimited one. In some prominent position on the Church battlements, they are all ardor and devotion, all activity and zeal; but they have no taste nor patience for subordinate place or lowly duty; prepared to undertake the toilsome pilgrimage, or to embark in the herculean task\emdash but ready with a refusal, whenever anything so insignificant is mentioned as the Jordan washing.\par \par We believe we have abundant warrant for the assertion, that those most glorify God, who, without the often falQse stimulus of outward and secondary motives, perform gladly that class of humble, unostentatious deeds and services, which, requiring no intellectual effort, no brilliant gifts, are unacknowledged by the world's approval\emdash unapplauded by the world's hosannahs. Such, assuredly, will not be unowned or rejected by the Great Recompenser, because they have nothing better or costlier to offer.\par \par While it is said of "the mountains" (the Church's great ones) that they shall "bring peace to Rthe people," "the little hills" (the Church's humble, unknown, obscure ones) are to do so also "by righteousness" (Ps. 72:3). Let none be coveting opportunity for the execution of ostentatious labors, or for occupying conspicuous positions, as if these enjoyed a monopoly in the divine favor and approval. The hewer of wood and drawer of water in the Tabernacle and Temple of old\emdash if (what might be deemed) his drudgery were performed from a principle of obedience and lowly fidelity\emdash served the GoSd of the temple, as much as the High Priest with his breastplate gleaming with the Urim and Thummin.\par \par Motive is everything with the omniscient Heart-searcher! And He is satisfied, if we fulfill with a good conscience our apportioned place and destiny, whatever that may be. The little firefly illuminating the darkness in the balmy plains of the south, is one of the tiniest lamps in God's magnificent Temple of night\emdash a mere glimmering spark compared with other and nobler Altar-fires Tof moon and stars in the same great sanctuary. But that insect does not refuse to rise on its wings of flame, because unable to emit a greater amount of light; it is content to shine with the luster assigned to it in its humble place in the universe, and the Creator is glorified thereby.\par \par The insignificant, "nameless rill" does not refuse to sing its way to the ocean, because, on the opposite side of the mountain or valley, a mighty torrent is thundering along, and bearing in its course Ua larger and wealthier volume. It carries its appointed tribute to the sea; and He who "sends forth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills," expects from it no more. "She has done what she could," is the divine word of approbation. The one lowly talent conscientiously traded on, will receive its own, with interest. The widow's mite and the cup of cold water are owned and accepted, and the intention and desire would be accepted, if there were no mite and no cup to give.\par \par "VI would not have the restless will\par That hurries to and fro,\par Seeking for some great thing to do,\par Or secret thing to know;\par I would be treated as a child,\par And guided where I go.\par \par "So I ask You for the daily strength\par To none that ask denied,\par And a mind to blend with outward life\par While keeping at Your side;\par Content to fill a little space\par If You be glorified.\par \Wpar "And if some things I do not ask\par In my cup of blessing be,\par I would have my spirit filled the more\par With grateful love to Thee;\par More careful than to serve You much,\par To please You perfectly."\par \par 4. Let us learn, from the servants of Naaman, a similar lesson to that which we drew, in a former chapter, from the example of the little captive maid\emdash the divine art of speaking kindly. If these servants had, with coaXrse and blustering demand, assailed their master, the likelihood is they would only have added fuel to the flames and augmented his anger. But, though naturally irritable, and from his rank and preceding behavior, impatient of contradiction, they knew Naaman was not ungenerous nor inaccessible to courteous and well-meant admonition. Coming up, therefore, to the side of his chariot, they addressed him by the affectionate term, "My father."\par \par Let it be our uniform endeavor to cultivate, in Ydaily communion and conversation, this 'grace of manner and speech'\emdash this gentle, kind consideration for the feelings, it may even be the foibles and infirmities, of others. Some there are, wittingly, others unwittingly, who cannot convey a remark or an advice but in rough and rugged tones\emdash harshly grating on feelings that may be more delicately strung than their own\emdash leaving behind unpleasing memories\emdash sometimes inflicting wounds that a lifetime cannot heal.\par \par On Zthe other hand, what a winning power there is in kindness! How softly and musically the wheels of daily life revolve, when they are touched and softened with this "excellent oil!" What conquests it can win over the morose and sullen, the selfish and irritable!\par \par The moral of the old fable is true to the letter, which describes the conflict between the wind and the sun, as to which one would induce the traveler, most readily to part with his cloak. The tempest takes the initiative. But the[ whirlwind of passion\emdash stormy rage, and angry tones\emdash only lead to the wrapping of the cloak more closely around. The other competitor plies, in turn, his milder influences. The sun shines\emdash the gentle, glowing beams of kindness begin to play\emdash fold by fold is unloosed\emdash the triumph is complete.\par \par In the iron viaduct, greater is said to be the bending caused by the solar rays, than when the heaviest train is passing over it. So the genial influence and sunshine o\f kind words, can bend and subdue when nothing else can. As in the great war of the elements among the cliffs of Horeb\emdash what the earthquake, the hurricane, and the fire fail to effect, is often compassed and insured by "the still, small voice."\par \par A gentle child, to recur to a former illustration, smoothing the furrowed and anxious brow, can ward off tears and summon smiles, and bend and alter stern purposes, which the world's cold reasoning, dogged mandates, and imperious tones coul]d never accomplish. "Be kind one to another\emdash tenderhearted." "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love." Speak gently\emdash act gently. It is an inexpensive way of dispensing blessings\emdash a cheap road to favor and regard\emdash whether it be master to servant, or parent to child, or neighbor to neighbor, or friend to friend. We need the interchange of loving sayings and doings, amid the rough contacts and blasts of life. When wagons on the world's highway come into collision\emd^ash when the wheels are locked and the bales tumble into the mud\emdash the gospel method is not for the wagoners to pull up the team and to vent on one another a hailstorm of wrath, when both are likely to have a share of the blame\emdash but to see, rather, who will be the first to leap down, extricate the goods from the mud, and do their best to make the thoroughfare smooth again.\par \par Alas! that lack of courteous, considerate, gentle dealing, by word and deed, is often "the fly in the ap_othecary's ointment," which spoils and injures character otherwise estimable, and takes happiness and brightness from otherwise favored homes. Let us again remember here, the conduct and example of the Great Master. Prophecy had, ages before the Incarnation, prepared the world for the advent of One into whose lips "grace (kindness) was poured;" who would not "strive nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets;" who "would not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax." How exactly di`d the character and actions of the Christ of Nazareth accord with the prefiguration! "And all bore Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth" (Luke 4:22). See Him in His hour of deepest abasement, when He most needed the presence and wakeful sympathy of His trusted followers\emdash how graciously and tenderly, even when administering a rebuke, He tempers it with a merciful apology for their slumbering and unwatchfulness\emdash "The spirit indeed is willing, but the falesh is weak." And when the most faithless and renegade of their number has, with cruel aggravation, disowned and denied Him\emdash see, when confronted on the shores of Tiberias, how his injured Lord, oblivious of all the past, has no harsher reproof to utter than that contained in the thrice-repeated refrain\emdash "Simon, son of Jonah\emdash do you love me?"\par \par 5. Once more; the same lesson again claims our attention, in the case of these Syrian servants, which we have, also in an earliber chapter, deduced from the story of the captive maid\emdash the possibility on the part of all (however lowly their rank, and however secular their calling) of exercising a beneficial influence. It is one of the many heresies of modern days\emdash not in the region of dogma, but of practice\emdash that effort and work, whether religious or philanthropic, belong mainly, if not exclusively, to those who are invested with priestly and ministerial gifts and qualifications, and that, outside these accreditedc 'orders', responsibility ceases. How different are the teachings of Scripture, both in the Old Testament and in the New! Naaman, this imperious Syrian captain, is soothed, calmed, made to relent\emdash by whom? Not by God's Prophet\emdash Elisha does not interfere\emdash he keeps within the walls of his Gilgal dwelling, and attempts personally no admonition with the irate warrior.\par \par It is the word of the servants, which arrests the chariot, and alters the petty and otherwise fatal resolvde. If these servants had reasoned, as many now-a-days do, they would have said, "If the man of God chooses to reject the cure, let him do so. That leprosy being connected with sin, the dealing with it is a religious matter. We do all that is required of us, if we faithfully perform our secular work, whether it be that of bodyguard, or camel-driver, or charioteer. It is not for us to usurp the office of teacher or judge. Business has its allotted and recognized sphere and season, and so has religion. We keeep to our province, let the priest keep to his." Or, translating it into modern phraseology\emdash We have to do only with buying and selling, with bargaining and trading, with bills and exchange, with business and counter.\par \par Or\emdash Are there servants in our household doing our drudgery\emdash strangers, it may be, from distant homes, who might be the better now and then for a kindly word, a pious advice, or salutary warning?\emdash this is the vocation of their religious instructors, fnot ours; the less we meddle with their ways and affairs the better.\par \par Or\emdash There is one we know who is undergoing severe family affliction; we cannot fail to be cognizant of the cheerlessness of his position, and the solitariness of his heart. A word, or letter, or message of sympathy, would tend to soothe his anguished spirit. That unused book in our library, that "Afflicted Man's Companion," might prove a comfort and solace as he sits down at night by his lonely fire, and misses tghe face of wife or children. But this is not our concern. To be "sons of consolation" is no work of ours.\par \par Or\emdash Yonder is our early friend; his presence was often used to gladden our home, and we valued his cheerful society. He has, as the world calls it, "forgot himself." He is trembling on the brink of the precipice. We might, by timely stretching out our hand, or by a judicious word now spoken, yet save him from perhaps sadder deterioration. But what business, after all, is it ofh ours to interfere, or what thanks shall we get for our pains? Let the chariot move on, and the leprosy-spot increase\emdash if his minister's visit and the Sunday sermon cannot reclaim him, what chance have we?\par \par The servants of Naaman furnish us with a more hopeful\emdash a more brotherly view than this. No, we would venture to aver, that agency and intervention akin to theirs, often reaches and succeeds, when, what might be deemed and called "influential instrumentality" fails and faltiers. Perhaps, even if Elisha had come out on the present occasion, and pled with that galled and fretted Syrian, he could not have prevailed half so powerfully, as his own personal servants. His interposition might have been spurned and rejected, while theirs was accepted and triumphed.\par \par Specially under the higher and nobler spiritual dispensation under which we live, let us never forget, as members of the Christian priesthood, our individual responsibility in the sphere which we are caljled to occupy. To each one, whatever be his position or circumstances, the command of the Great Husbandman is imperative, "Son, go work in my vineyard" (Matt. 21:28). Nor is it unworthy of note, for the encouragement of those whose sphere is limited, that all throughout this inspired narrative of the Syrian leper, we have nothing but a series of humble agencies. The chariot of the warrior was set in motion by a little Hebrew slave. The next personage mentioned was a potent and influential one\emdash Joramk, king of Israel\emdash he could do nothing. The next was the servant of this unostentatious prophet, sent to invite Naaman to Gilgal. Then, we have his own personal attendants here remonstrating. And finally, we have the washing in Jordan\emdash an unworthy stream, compared with the Abana and Pharpar of his own Damascus.\par \par Who dare decry or depreciate the smallest and unlikeliest instrumentality? "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation" (Isa. 60:22). Lowly may be the means God employs in speaking to us, as He did to Naaman. As our chariots move on in life's highway, let us listen meekly to the humblest providential voices; and regard them as divine delegates, beckoning us to turn our back no longer on the waters of salvation, but to close with the free invitation; or, if we have already thus closed, to cling with greater trustfulness and faith to the sublime simplicity of the gospel plan and message\emdash "Wash, and be clean!"\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } ]u908 The Crisis and the Cure{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par THE CRISIS AND THE CURE\par \par "Then he went down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God\emdash and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a mSmI07 Seasonable Admonition{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georg:nlittle child, and he was clean! And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came and stood before him."\emdash 2 Kings 5:14, 15.\par \par Naaman's stormy passion is calmed. In accordance with the direction of Elisha, and yielding to the advice of his faithful attendants, he submits to the appointed means of restoration. We may picture in thought, the cavalcade moving from the Prophet's door along the low level plain towards the banks of the river. Shall we farther venture the osupposition, that the time was at the approach of evening, when the sun was setting, and the Moab mountains were already assuming those purple and roseate hues so familiar to travelers at this day\emdash one of the few features indeed in outer nature, unchanged since the times of the Syrian.\par \par There are, generally, one or more, signal and momentous epochs which occur in every life, and especially in the lives of those who have left their mark and impress on the world. The night when Abrahpam was led out by his Almighty Protector to gaze upon the glories of an eastern sky, as the emblem and prophecy of his vast progeny. The night when Jacob wrestled with the angel-God at Peniel, and came forth halting, yet victorious; inspired with new and nobler impulses for the future. The, noontide hour, when the woman of Samaria owned the Pilgrim at the well of Sychar as the expected Messiah, abandoned forever her immoral life, and drank of the living water. The season and spot when "the anxious inquireqr" in the desert of Gaza (Acts 8:26-39), had the darkened page he was reading illumined with glorious light, and when, the quest of a long pilgrimage gained, "he went on his way rejoicing."\par \par Among historical instances in the Christian Church, we may instance the hour when Augustine obeyed the irresistible impulse awakened by the divine voice\emdash "Take it up and read\emdash take it up and read;" or when Luther, overtaken in the storm of thunder, and a lightning-bolt bursting at his feert, felt encompassed by the terrors of death; and throwing himself on his knees on the highway to Erfurth, became from that hour an altered man.\par \par Similar, also, are individual experiences of everyday occurrence; when the favorable turn takes place in alarming sickness; when the life of some dear child, "balanced in a breath," is unexpectedly restored; when the preaching of the gospel comes home "in demonstration of the Spirit and with power," and the guilt and folly of a futile, wasted, nseglected past is vividly realized, tearfully bewailed, and earnestly renounced. These, and similar critical seasons, become the birthday of nobler purposes and resolutions\emdash "I will fulfill my vows to you, O God, and offer a sacrifice of thanks for your help. For you have rescued me from death; you have kept my feet from slipping. So now I can walk in your presence, O God, in your life-giving light." (Ps. 56:12-13).\par \par Such was the crisis we have reached in the story of Naaman, when wte read of him (ver. 14), "Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God\emdash and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." We may picture the conflict of emotions, while, stepping down from his chariot, he disrobed himself of his gorgeous attire, and was about to plunge into the muddy stream\emdash the expectant crowd of soldiers gathered around, all anxiety as to the result. It is done! The Lord of the Hebrewsu has been true to His word\emdash "He shall deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and he who has no helper" (Ps. 72:12). The words of Joshua, uttered in a former age, near the same spot, have a new application and significance with reference to the Gentile chief\emdash "Behold the Ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth passes over before you into Jordan!" Naaman was henceforth included among "the sons of the stranger who join themselves to the Lord" (Isa. 56:6), on whom the divine prvomise is bestowed\emdash "I will give them\emdash in my house, within my walls\emdash a memorial and a name far greater than the honor they would have received by having sons and daughters. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear!" (Isa. 56:5).\par \par As he emerges from the waters, he feels the glow of new health tingling in his veins. No flower-bud, if gifted for the moment with sensation, could so feel the transition, when the closed petals bursts open at the wsummons of spring and sunshine, and blooms in loveliness and beauty. No creeping caterpillar could so feel the transition, when, from the dull and torpid cocoon, it becomes cognizant of "the tremble and flutter of its golden wings" and soars aloft in resurrection attire. If that man clasps his deliverer in tearful gratitude, who has snatched him from a watery grave, and brought him dripping to the shore; what must have been Naaman's emotions of "wonder, love, and praise" to that God who had delivered him xfrom so great a death, and replenished him with joyous life?\par \par Nobler and better too than outward healing, he felt, from that hour onwards, that he was renovated in soul as well as in body. Rimmon and his brotherhood of lying deities were henceforth abjured\emdash a bill of divorcement was written against them all\emdash "In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold to the moles and to the bats." In the words of Krummacher, "the obstinate heathen with his 'I thouyght,' is left behind in the watery grave of the Jordan. The crude warrior, who was almost beside himself with rage and vexation, died; and a person, gentle and peaceful as a dove, has risen from his ashes."\par \par 'Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.' Thus speaks the man who, a few hours before, went about in the fetters of the most deplorable darkness. The infernal charm is dissolved; the snare is broken; the bird has escaped. A new creature, born of God, sztands in unveiled beauty before our eyes." That triumphal band, inconspicuous in numbers, which wound its way from the fords of the Jordan up to the heights of Gilgal, possessed elements of lofty and sacred interest which belonged to no Roman procession ascending the steps of the Imperial Capitol in its palmy days. Naaman himself was familiar with the jubilant throngs that were used to welcome his own victorious legions through the gates of Damascus; but grander and diviner hosannahs than those of earth w{ere greeting that chariot of peace, and its crowned and "beautified" conqueror.\par \par Indiscernible to human vision, as were the chariots and horses of fire disclosed by the Prophet of Gilgal on the mountain at Dothan, the angels of God were now encamping round this new 'trophy of divine power and mercy'. Clad in nobler armor, and richer attire than could be furnished by spoils of earthly conquest, he could take up, in spirit, words which were before long to be sung by the great prophet-minst|rel\emdash "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness " (Isa. 61:10).\par \par But without farther anticipating, let us endeavor to gather one or two of the more palpable practical reflections which this new turning-point in the story suggests.\par \par 1. Observe the power of God's upholding and sustaining grace. We have already commented on the sovereign}ty of that grace, in choosing a wild olive-tree from the soil of heathendom. We have now to note how that same grace, in another form, shielded the rash, impetuous warrior, when he had seemingly entangled himself in the toils of the great adversary, and his romantic pilgrimage was about to be ingloriously cut short by an outburst of wounded pride. "Surely in vain," says the Wise Man, "the net is spread in the sight of any bird" (Prov. 1:17). The Jehovah of Israel had not only, as we have seen, marked that~ Gentile Syrian from all eternity as His own, but, as in the case of each of His true people, having begun a good work, He will carry it on. For a moment, indeed\emdash to follow the metaphor of the Hebrew philosopher\emdash the net seems to have been too successfully and fatally spread; the ensnared victim\emdash that haughty eagle from the cliffs of Lebanon\emdash lies, apparently, with broken pinion and ruffled plumage, fluttering in the dust\emdash or rather, when the cage was opened for freedom and flight, he dashes the wings of passion against the enclosing bars, rejecting in his folly, the offered blessing. We can well imagine, that if there was one person in the Valley of Jericho, less likely than another to listen to the calm words of 'reason', it was this blinded, imperious, unreflecting child of nature. If Naaman had been left to himself, he never would have returned to Damascus, the leper he had left it\emdash with the foul spot on his brow, and disappointed rage, like a demon from the abyss, torturing his spirit\emdash the last state of that man would have been worse than the first!\par \par But "is there anything too hard for the Lord?" "The wisdom of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." As we see the chariot retracing its way to the Hebrew Prophet's dwelling, and the hero of the armies of Damascus already reaping that hardest of victories\emdash over his own selfishness and pride\emdash are we not constrained to feel that it is no mere power of human persuasion and admonition that has effected the change of purpose, stilling the waves of that stormy soul, and saying, "Peace, be still!" We behold in it the interposition of Him who "makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrains the remainder of His wrath." When nature was ready to fail\emdash the vessel about to founder on the rocks\emdash grace came to his aid, and effected the needed rescue. "He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might He increases strength."\par \par  Some, possibly, as they ponder the narrative, may mark in its features notable resemblances to their own past experience; how at some memorable period of their history, when, forgetful of the way of duty and obedience, the too pliable chariot-wheels, obeying the impulse of passion and prejudice, selfishness and unbelief, were speeding onwards to destruction\emdash a hand, stronger than human, reined in the wild steeds\emdash some mysterious influence (call it what they may), confronted them, like the messenger of old, who, with glittering sword stood in the pathway of the Moabite Prophet, and a voice louder and diviner than that of either ministering or avenging angel was heard saying, "Turn! turn! why will you die?"\par \par Truly "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance;" that is, they are independent of all human caprice, willful waywardness, fitful passion. But for His sustaining and restraining grace, how many would have been swept down, like rotten trees, before the hurricane. How many have reason to make the confession on life's retrospect, "Unless the Lord had helped me, I would soon have died. I cried out, 'My foot is slipping!' and your unfailing love, O Lord, supported me." (Ps. 94:17, 18). How many have to point to words which, in an age long subsequent to that of Naaman, were uttered by divine lips to one who partook not a little of the mingled elements in Naaman's complex character\emdash "Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat\emdash but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not" (Luke 22:32).\par \par 2. Let us mark the difference between relenting and unrelenting passion. Naaman "went away in a rage." This was reprehensible enough. Anger has been well called "a short madness." Few things are more humiliating than to see a man the deplorable and misguided victim and slave of his own irascible, ungovernable feelings\emdash his bosom the crater of a burning volcano pouring down its hot lava-stream, a torrent of liquid fire\emdash and that, also, too patent and visible to all around.\par \par But worse, is the case of sullen, implacable anger. Bad enough is the fierce eruptic outburst of passion which expends itself in its own vehemence. But, sadder far, is the calm, vindictive, settled feeling\emdash the confirmed, chronic malevolence\emdash the devil-spirit, which seems to defy being exorcized; which no persuasion can melt, and no approach of kindliness can mollify or subdue. You might as well attempt to move the world, as turn the wheels of that man's chariot. All the while he thinks himself a martyr. There is to his own apprehension an imagined heroism and chivalry about his stubborn, unrelenting anger. With morbid, sullen self-complacency he encircles himself within these moats of wounded pride\emdash pitied by none but himself.\par \par It might have been so with Naaman. He might have muffled himself in his warrior-cloak, and the frown which gathered on his brow at the Prophet's door might have deepened as he proceeded on his way. In dogged silence he might have listened to his servant's admonitions, or ordered them, in a tempest of rage, back to their camels. He might have entered Damascus cursing the God of Israel, and vowing summary vengeance against the hated Hebrews and their lying prophets. But the voice of kindly admonition had prevailed. "A man's pride," says the Preacher, "shall bring him low; but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit" (Prov. 29:23). This "great and honorable man" is willing to be reasoned with, even by inferiors, and by them to have the folly and infatuation of his rage pointed out. The chariot is turned, and the next moment he is on his way down to the Jordan Valley. "He who rules his own spirit is greater than he who takes a city." "Be angry, and sin not\emdash do not let the sun go down upon your wrath."\par \par Who does not recall a nobler example for imitation? Think of the "Greater than Solomon"\emdash across whose pure human soul no gust of angry passion ever passed its sirocco-breath\emdash "Who when He was reviled, reviled not again\emdash when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed himself to Him who judges righteously" (1 Pet. 2:23).\par \par 3. Let us observe, farther, the recompense of childlike obedience and unquestioning faith. "So Naaman went down to the Jordan River and dipped himself seven times, as the man of God had instructed him." 2 Kings 5:14\par \par It may have been a great struggle for the baulked and humbled hero thus to return. It may\emdash it must, have cost him no small effort to carry out these second thoughts. But it is "the instruction of the man of God"\emdash and that is enough. Perhaps, too, when he reached the banks of the muddy river, and discerned, more vividly than he could do at a distance, the contrast with the crystal streams of Damascus, inclination would renew its promptings to cancel his purpose and resume his homeward journey. But, again, he remembers "it is the instruction of the man of God." The child-spirit has risen to the ascendant; the better nature and better resolve are dominant\emdash on he proceeds, staggering not through unbelief.\par \par Be it ours to cherish a similar devout, unquestioning reverence for the commands of God's inspired servants in His Holy Book; recognizing in their contents, not what man's wisdom teaches, but what the Holy Spirit teaches. Not receiving just so much as suits our dispositions and inclinations, or that squares with our carnal reasonings, and rejecting the rest. Not exclaiming, as Naaman in his folly did, "Behold, I thought!" (the essence alike of modern rationalistic philosophy and theology) but as he came to say, in his better mind, "Behold, I believe." Reason, untempered and unchastened by the spirit of faith, turns many a chariot in these days, from the door of the prophet and the prophet's God\emdash indulging in the defiant spirit of the scoffers in the time of Ezekiel\emdash "Ah, Lord God! does he not speak mysteries."\par \par Others, venturing on more daring assertion, can see in the sublime simplicities of Scripture teaching, only the worn out and effete truisms and crudities of bygone centuries, out of harmony with an age of boasted advancement\emdash an age which demands that revealed doctrines be accepted or rejected by what is called "the inner consciousness." God's inspired utterances dare not thus be degraded, by being subjected to the caprice of human manipulation. The true principle of the philosophy, applied to spiritual as to material things, ought to be this\emdash not, "What do you think?" but, "What do you read?" not carving out our own hypotheses and conceptions on the sacred tablet of truth, but seeking, modestly and humbly, to decipher the divine hieroglyphics already there, and to the interpretation of which, faith and prayer together, afford the golden key.\par \par Our use and treatment of the secular, in life's everyday experience, may well teach us a lesson in the higher regions of divine speculation. We do not analyze the bread we eat, or the water we drink, or the rays of the sun in which we bask, before venturing to enjoy the nutriment and refreshment of the one, or the brightness and warmth of the other. So it should be in our dealings with God's Holy Word. If we approach it with a carping, dogmatic, skeptical spirit, we shall never turn the wheels of the chariot in the direction of the waters of salvation. Once deflected from the old path of childlike docility and reverential submission and teachableness, there will be little chance of return. There are things, doubtless, in Revelation, which, to our limited reason, are "hard to be understood." It was not to be expected that "the deep things of God" could be all made patent and perspicuous, in a present economy, to our limited apprehension. Whatever is really needful for our personal salvation, is revealed in the pages of the lively oracles as with the light of a sunbeam. And if there be other vexed questions or unsolved problems there, trust the divine Author of the Book that He will one day be His own interpreter; and vindicate, regarding His inspired words, the truth of the Psalmist's saying regarding His works, that they are "right" and "done in truth." Meanwhile, let it be ours to recognize in these utterances, not merely the sayings of the men of God, but the statements of "holy men," who "spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (1 Pet. 1:21).\par \par The quickening power of the Word, be it remembered, is the special result of the operation of that divine Agent on the receptive heart. "The Lord opened" the heart of Lydia, "that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul" (Acts 16:14). We may well say, with the Ethiopian eunuch, as, seated in his chariot he read the Scriptures, "How can I understand, unless someone should guide me?" But was it not the Savior's own promise, with reference to the great gift of the Paraclete contingent on His ascension\emdash "He will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13); "He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you" (16:14); "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance" (14:26); "He will show you things to come" (16:13).\par \par Oh for docility of faith to follow the instructions and leadings of that Holy Spirit, though these, at times, may refuse to dovetail with our preconceived theory and cherished speculation\emdash wounding the pride of nature, and turning the impatient steeds and their chariot from the beaten highways down to places of humiliation! The vision of divine influence and power, seen by one of the minor prophets, was not among the cedar-clad heights, but "among the myrtle trees growing in the valley" (Zech. 1:8).\par \par 4. Let us gather, as a fourth lesson, the divine faithfulness, as manifested in the completion of Naaman's cure\emdash "And his flesh was restored, like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." It was all as the Prophet, under divine direction, had declared.\par \par We have already pictured in thought the scene. The leper descending into the waters of the Jordan\emdash his servants remaining in suspense on the river-bank, watching with bated breath during these critical moments. Again and again, in obedience to the command of the Hebrew Prophet, does he plunge overhead in the stream. Six times has the immersion been repeated. But the faith and obedience which triumphed over pride and self-will, have as yet no indication of recompense. The leprosy still asserts its cruel sway over the ulcered body. Unbelief may have been tempted to make a final assault on the warrior, and, if possible, to carry defeat in the very moment of victory\emdash just perhaps, as of old, within sight of the same spot, when, after six successive "encompassings," not a few hearts among the host of Joshua would be tempted to discredit the success of the divine injunction for the leveling of Jericho's ramparts. But, as on the seventh appointed round of that strange procession of the Covenant symbol, accompanied with trumpet-blast and shouting, Jericho, the capital of the Jordan Valley, became a ring and a heap of ruin\emdash so was it now with Naaman.\par \par Plunging boldly, for the seventh time, into the turbid waters, he proves that the word of God is unchangeable. He comes forth a healed man! The Ethiopian has changed his skin, and the leopard his spots\emdash no, not only so, he stands before his servants, as we have already noted, a trophy and miracle of grace! A deeper taint than that of earthly leprosy has been purged away from his soul. The allegorical "great sheet" of a later age, in which the entranced apostle of Joppa saw clean and unclean animals indiscriminately mingled\emdash is anticipated in the case of this Gentile of the Gentiles. In a truer and higher sense than appertaining to his mere physical frame, "he is not to be called common or unclean," "an alien from the commonwealth of Israel." "Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new."\par \par Have we not the same ground to confide in the faithfulness of God to His declarations? "Your testimonies are perfect; they are entirely worthy of our trust." (Ps. 119:138). In outer nature, we have a standing and continual pledge and guarantee for the divine veracity\emdash the regular alternation of day and night; sunset followed by morning dawn; spring treading on the heels of winter, and summer waiting with elastic step and beaming countenance, to pour her treasures into the lap of autumn. The stars in their courses move as obediently to the divine command at this hour, as they did 3000 years ago\emdash "They continue this day according to Your ordinances\emdash for all are Your servants" (Ps. 119:91). If God's volume of external nature be so undeviating, truthful, unerring\emdash surely much more may we trust the volume of Revelation. All the promises therein are yes and amen. Jehovah himself, in a remarkable passage in the book of Jeremiah, takes the one covenant charter, written in visible characters on the material scroll, as a security for the fulfillment of the provisions in the charter of grace\emdash "Thus says the Lord, If you can break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, and that there shall not be day and night in their season, then" (but not until then) "may also my covenant be broken with David my servant" (Jer. 33:20, 21). "He is faithful who promised" (Heb. 10:23).\par \par On that same memorable occasion when, in the synagogue of Nazareth, our blessed Redeemer made reference to the case of "Naaman the Syrian"\emdash it is added, "All bore Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth" (Luke 4:22). How many in bygone centuries\emdash how many among ourselves, would be ready and able to bear similar attestation to the fidelity as well as graciousness of these divine utterances? Naaman himself, could he be summoned from his silent sepulcher among Aramite warriors, would be the first to offer his assenting testimony\emdash acknowledging (what he may have been unable to see at the time)\emdash the necessity and fitness of the various preliminary steps in the procedure of the God of Israel. Would he not say to each trembling, misgiving heart, "Trust that God of Israel\emdash He will be better than His word. I came seeking only cleansing for the body, He has delivered my soul from death:" He has "forgiven all my iniquities" as well as "healed all my diseases, and redeemed my life from destruction." He has "satisfied my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Ps. 103:3-6); "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! blessed is the man who trusts in Him" (Ps. 34:8).\par \par Reader! have you thus "known and believed" the love and the word of God? Have you tested His faithfulness, specially in the promise of all promises\emdash the gift of all gifts? Have you gone, like Naaman, to wash in the river of redeeming grace\emdash the fountain of a Savior's atoning blood? or are you forfeiting the blessing, by indulging unnecessary misgivings as to your warrant to appropriate it? Be not faithless, but believing. Conjure up no erroneous impressions as to the inapplicability of the sure word of promise to you. It embraces all. All are warranted, all are welcome\emdash "Him that comes unto me I will never cast out" (John 6:37).\par \par On the other hand, reject this way of salvation, and there remains "no more," no other, "sacrifice for sin." Oh, if this Gentile idolater listened to the voice of a humble Hebrew prophet, turned his chariot, and submitted to what must have been, to his proud spirit, a humiliating cure\emdash "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" But why should any continue thus either to neglect or to reject? Why not credit God, that "He says what He means, and means what He says"\emdash and laying your finger on the immutable, uncancelled, promise of the divine Promiser, thus urge the plea of an old pleader at the Mercy-seat\emdash "Do as you have said!" (2 Sam. 7:25). Why not respond to the simple exhortation (quoted in the title-page) of one, who, in his God-given gifts of bodily healing, has earned the lasting gratitude of thousands in a suffering world, not to speak of the healing leaves which he loved to pluck and to give from the Tree of Life\emdash "Can you not stoop down, wash like Naaman, and come out clean\emdash come out a king?"\par \par 5. A farther point we may notice is, the GRATITUDE of the restored warrior. If he had been influenced by any remains of a spirit of selfishness and domineering pride, he would at once, after obtaining the cure, have given orders to his charioteer to evade the dwelling at Gilgal, and drive, by the nearest road, back to Syria. 'The Prophet,' he might have said, 'refused to grant me a personal audience. I need not now hold myself his debtor. I felt slighted by his not according me the homage to which, from my position, I was entitled\emdash sending merely one of his servants with an oral message. I shall have my retaliation now for his discourtesy. Besides, why need I linger in this land of the Hebrews? I have got what I wanted. Why tarry to perform a mere piece of formal civility? After all, there may be no miracle in the matter. It may be some peculiar sanitary virtue in these Jordan waters which required neither Prophet nor priest to impart.' And so, he might have hastened to his Damascus home, to bow once more in the Temple of Rimmon, and forget all he owed to Jehovah and His Prophet.\par \par No!\emdash He went back to the man of God "clothed with humility;" to lay at his door the tribute of a grateful heart, and to make one of the noblest confessions a once blinded idolater ever uttered.\par \par May we not learn from Naaman's example, the simple but often-forgotten lesson, how grateful and fitting is the remembrance and acknowledgment of kindness. Nothing is baser or more unworthy than to requite good deeds and loving labors\emdash it may even be generous friendships\emdash with coldness, rudeness, indifference, neglect. How often in this selfish world are those to be found, who have not a smile of thankfulness nor a word of gratitude for gifts conferred\emdash heartless, pulseless, loveless beings\emdash who grasp and take all they can get, as matters of course; proving, it may even be, at the end, like the frigid serpent of the fable, which stung the warm hand of the benefactor whose pity had reanimated it. Or, like the ten lepers of gospel story, whom our blessed Lord healed, but only one of whom returned to render thanks for deliverance. By all truly magnanimous souls, acts of goodness and beneficence can never be ignored or forgotten.\par \par Look at David's gratitude for the many proofs of Jonathan's kindness, after that generous heart had long ceased to beat. How he loved the limping cripple Mephibosheth for the sake of his friend, and gave the daily substantial evidence of these uncancelled obligations, by having a seat reserved for the orphaned youth at the royal table! Or look at a later example in the same beautiful life\emdash David's royal gratitude in the hour of returning prosperity and triumph\emdash an hour when such debts are often, by ignoble people, apt to be forgotten. Barzillai, a brave old chieftain from the glens of Gilead, came to meet the restored sovereign near the very spot where Naaman now was, in order to offer his congratulations, and see the King of Judah safely across Jordan. He had come, not long before, with timely support and refreshment, when, in a season of humiliation and disaster, the son of Jesse was a fugitive from his throne and palace. The moment of ovation has not dimmed the memory of these seasonable gifts, and the still more seasonable sympathy of the benefactor. To this Patriarch Sheikh is also offered a special place at the royal table, and a heart-welcome to the royal dwelling in Jerusalem. Barzillai pled exemption, on account of his years, from the distinguished honor. But the king would not allow him to depart until he had imprinted on his furrowed cheek the kiss of grateful affection\emdash "And all the people went over Jordan. And when the king was come over, the king kissed Barzillai, and blessed him; and he returned unto his own place" (2 Sam. 19:39). Nor did death itself extinguish these memories. In his last testamentary words, the names of Barzillai's children were commended, in sacred legacy, to the gratitude and love of David's successor (1 Kings 2:7).\par \par Or, to do no more than simply refer to a New Testament illustration\emdash listen to the prayer and benediction of one of the noblest hearts that ever beat in a human bosom\emdash "May the Lord show special kindness to Onesiphorus and all his family because he often visited and encouraged me. He was never ashamed of me because I was in prison. May the Lord show him special kindness on the day of Christ's return. And you know how much he helped me at Ephesus." (2 Tim. 1:16, 18).\par \par To the Great Almoner of blessings, alike temporal and spiritual, are we as thankful as we should be? After some special token of providential goodness to ourselves or our households\emdash when the Almighty Disposer in His infinite mercy, relieves our fears, and with gracious deliverances crowns our fondest hopes and prayers\emdash when, for example, raised up from protracted sickness, during which, the hope of restoration was faintly cherished, and the shadows of death appeared to be gathered ominously around\emdash as the result of His restoring mercies\emdash have the chariot-wheels always returned to the door of the Lord God of Elisha with tributary gifts of acknowledgment\emdash whether these be in the shape of material thank-offerings poured into His treasury\emdash or the better and more acceptable sacrifices of a purer, diviner life-consecration\emdash we, as grateful recipients, exclaiming\emdash "The living shall praise You, as I do this day!" "Your vows are upon me, O God, I will render praises unto You!"\par \par Or rather, while the prayer has been heard and strength is restored, has the recorded vow of the sick-bed been forgotten, and the reproof too truthfully merited\emdash "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto you? O Judah, what shall I do unto you? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away" (Hosea 6:4). The Christian's whole life, in the present world, may well be an anthem of gratitude; and its twofold theme will be prolonged and perpetuated in the Church above for the Redeemed in heaven are represented as still employed in singing "the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb"\emdash the song of Providence and the song of Grace (Rev. 15:3). Yes\emdash however feeble and stinted it may be here, the believer's gratitude will then rise to its true and noble proportions, as, in the fullness of the divine vision and fruition, it contemplates the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of the love of God in Christ!\par \par 6. Finally, let us deduce from the passage a new illustration of individual influence\emdash "Then Naaman and all his company went back to the man of God. They stood before Elisha." 2 Kings 5:15\par \par Unless Naaman had reconsidered his resolution, retraced his steps to Jordan, and washed in its waters, his attendants could not have been spectators of the miraculous cure. They would have gone back to Syria, like himself, bigoted idolaters as they came. But having witnessed the immersion and its supernatural results, they gladly accompanied him to the house of the Prophet, to join in the tribute of thanksgiving.\par \par Is it a bold or unwarranted supposition, that the captain of that company was not the only one then and there brought to confess that there was no true God save the God of Israel? Is it not more than probable, that some of these heathen attendants had been led, in consequence of their master's restoration, to a similar acknowledgment\emdash that they returned to their land, all of them profoundly impressed with the might of the Hebrew Jehovah\emdash a few, it may be, resolved to bow in the Temple of Rimmon no more, but to exchange the impure and licentious rights of Astarte and Baal, for the simple worship of the God who dwells between the Cherubim?\par \par How often do we find that those, like Naaman, as he is now pictured to us anew standing at the door of Elisha\emdash or like penitent sinners resorting to a Greater\emdash come not alone? They come "with a company." A minister of God, himself baptized with a fresh baptism of the Spirit, is personally raised and transfigured into a higher and diviner life\emdash but his people\emdash it may be a great congregation\emdash are led to share also in the new consecration. A godly master, who has earned the appellation alike by precept and exalted character, brings his workmen to know of better than worldly wages, and to embark in their daily toil under the sway of loftier principles. A parent, by exemplary piety, consistency of conduct, singleness of motive, integrity of life, is made instrumental in securing as the name of his household "Jehovah Shammai"\emdash "The Lord is there"\emdash training and preparing the family on earth to become one family in heaven. A godly officer\emdash one of the Naamans of modern times\emdash who has himself fought the good fight of faith and laid hold on eternal life, has sounded in camp and barracks, a better than military bugle-note\emdash numbers, alike among rank and file, rally responsive to the summons, and a higher victory and purer kingdom is won!\par \par We dare not, however, forget the solemn converse. There is an ungodly as well as a godly influence. There are ungodly masters sowing profligacy and infidelity among their workmen. There are ungodly parents, traitors to an immortal trust, neglectful of the best interests of those committed to them\emdash by their own mournful aberrations, deflecting their children's footsteps from the path of duty and the ways of God. There are ungodly pastors, not heeding to feed their flocks with understanding and the fear of the Lord; either keeping back the saving truths of the gospel, or setting up a low standard of piety\emdash preaching smooth things\emdash the trumpet giving forth an uncertain sound\emdash and the slumbering multitude entrusted to their care, are unprepared for the battle.\par \par The picture of the 'rich man' in the parable is surely one of the most impressive in sacred story. His own misery seemed to be nothing, compared with the consciousness of the evil influence he had exercised on others\emdash the dread of having involved those of his own flesh and blood, who would naturally be molded by his example, in his own guilt and doom\emdash "I beg you, therefore, that You would send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment!" (Luke 16:27, 28).\par \par But let us not close with words or pictures of terror. Let the eye rather fall, once more, on the restored and regenerated Syrian, hastening with a new song on his lips across the plain of Jericho. Let us listen to old Jordan as it murmurs along, uttering, through the sacramental scene just witnessed on its banks, the great New Testament truth, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin." In Naaman we have a living epistle\emdash a glorious Old Testament attestation to the power of God and the grace of His gospel. In one who, as the leader of their hereditary foe, had shed the blood of Israel and bowed in the temple of an obnoxious idol\emdash we have an encouraging assurance that no adverse position, no unfortunate circumstances, can keep us back from the healing waters. No previous sin\emdash no previously erroneous "religious views"\emdash can disqualify us from seeking and obtaining salvation.\par \par Let us only, like him, be brought to renounce all personal claim and title to the exercise of a mercy and grace whose glory it is to be free\emdash leaving nature's laden chariot behind us, and listening to the beautiful words of the great Hebrew Prophet and preacher of a subsequent age\emdash words which still ring in undying echoes, as they speak of unbought and unpurchasable blessings flowing from better than all earthly streams\emdash "Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money\emdash come, buy and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price!" (Isaiah 55:1)\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } \*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par CONSECRATION\par \par 2 Kings 5:15-17\par Then Naaman and his entire company went back to find the man of God. They stood before him, and Naaman said, "I know at last that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. Now please accept my gifts." But Elisha replied, "As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept any gifts." And though Naaman urged him to take the gifts, Elisha refused. Then Naaman said, "All right, but please allow me to load two of my mules with earth from this place, and I will take it back home with me. From now on I will never again offer any burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other god except the Lord.\par \par No longer, as before, does NAAMAN, in unsubdued pride of spirit, remain seated in his chariot at the door of Elisha. With every trace of his disease obliterated\emdash his recently loathsome flesh and skin changed into that of a little child, he stands in the presence of his benefactor, calling himself "your servant;" and surrounded with his retainers, gives utterance to the sentiments of a full and jubilant heart. If, on the former occasion, the lesson on his conduct was this, "God resists the proud;" we are called now to see how "He gives grace unto the humble." The alabaster box is broken, and the fragrance of the soul's best ointment ascends to God and man. As we see him already bringing forth fruits fit for repentance, we are reminded of the inspired metaphor\emdash "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which brings forth his fruit in his season" (Ps. 1:2).\par \par While doubtless he would consider that a debt of deepest obligation was due personally to the Prophet, it is equally evident that he recognized in the man of God, only the delegate and envoy of a Greater. Behind the direction of the human agent, "Go, wash in Jordan," he listened to "Thus says the Lord." The feelings of his heart and of the hour, were they interpreted, could not be more appropriately expressed than in the opening strain of the later song of the children of the captivity, "Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good\emdash for His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their bands in sunder. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!" (Ps. 107:1, 2, 14, 15.)\par \par Let us note these two points, as they are here brought before us in succession\emdash Naaman's avowal of his faith, and the expression of his gratitude.\par \par I. Naaman's confession of FAITH\emdash "And he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel." This was no ordinary acknowledgment, when we remember by whom it was made. It was a confession, moreover, not whispered confidentially into the ear of the Prophet of Israel, but made, boldly and unblushingly, in the presence of his own heathen servants. Well might the warrior dread the consequences, on his return to Syria, of the adoption of an alien religion. It would, in all probability, compromise his position at Damascus. It might draw down upon him the displeasure of Benhadad, and alienate the goodwill of princes and nobles. Would he not be regarded as a traitor to his country\emdash a wretched apostate from the faith of his ancestors, who had publicly dishonored the guardian divinities of the nation? His life might be the penalty for his religious defection. But he has counted the cost, and is prepared to abide by his resolution.\par \par Observe also, that is it not a mere temporary renunciation of his pagan creed, or a nominal adhesion to that of the Hebrews. He has resolved to renounce idol-worship forever\emdash "Your servant will henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord." He may forfeit, in the eye of his countrymen, his illustrious name and reputation. He may be no more "honorable" with his master. He may be subjected to misrepresentation, ridicule, and scorn. He may, and doubtless will, feel himself in that most trying of positions, where he has to fight the battle and stem the current alone. But how can he dare forget or renounce the Great Jehovah of Israel, who had "answered him, and set him in a large place"\emdash the Almighty Being to whom he owes his life? What are the honors which a grateful people may have conferred\emdash what the value of the jeweled emblems which glitter on his bosom, compared with all that has been bestowed by Him whom he has been taught to regard and revere as "King of kings and Lord of lords."\par \par "From henceforth," says Paul, "let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" (Gal. 6:17)\emdash words in which he may probably allude to the infirmity of 'defective vision' from which he had suffered, ever since his eyes were blinded by the blaze of the Shekinah glory on the way to Damascus; as if Christ\emdash his new Master\emdash had from that hour 'marked,' or "branded" him, as his slave and servant. So could Naaman\emdash though in an opposite sense\emdash say, regarding his purified physical frame, freed from the degradation-marks of suffering and misery. When he thought of the living servitude, temporal and spiritual, from which he had been mercifully delivered, he might well say, "O Lord, truly I am Your slave; I am Your slave, You have loosed my bonds. Gentile and idolater as I once was, You have marked me as Your own. And shall I dare now cowardly to deny You? After such indubitable proofs of Your power and mercy, shall I go back a fettered spiritual captive, to offer, with a debauched and demoralized conscience, a hypocritical sacrifice to a senseless idol?" No! at all risks, he casts in his lot with the true children of Abraham. He avows, as Ruth did to Naomi, "Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me" (Ruth 1:16, 17).\par \par He returns to Damascus, determined to re-enter on the faithful discharge of his military duties\emdash laying his sword, as before, at the feet of Benhadad\emdash rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but equally resolved to render to the true God the things that are His. Great would be the trial of his faith and constancy, when his solitary altar was set up in the midst of a city wholly given to idolatry, and, when thousands were doing homage at the great festivals of Rimmon, to find his voice alone silent amid the festal throngs. But he will prove "a mighty man of valor" in fighting these, as well as other and far different battles. He resolves, "Whatever others do, as for me, I will serve the Lord." In the case of an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, the divine promise is to be fulfilled\emdash "They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank. Some will proudly claim, 'I belong to the Lord.' Others will say, 'I am a descendant of Jacob.' Some will write the Lord's name on their hands and will take the honored name of Israel as their own." (Isa. 44:4, 5)\par \par What a rebuke to many, who, from cowardly motives, or from unworthy reasons of carnal expediency, shrink from making a bold and decided avowal before the world, of loyalty and allegiance to their heavenly King, the Savior who died for them. Assuredly, if Naaman had been swayed and victimized by that severest of all temptations\emdash the dread of human censure\emdash he would have returned to Damascus idolater as he had left it; buried all the memories of Gilgal and Jordan in ungrateful oblivion, and burned incense, as aforetime, before the shrine of Rimmon. But God has not given to him "the spirit of fear, but of power" (2 Tim. 1:7). He cannot so degrade and humiliate himself at the bar of his own conscience, as to return to his native city with a lie in his right hand. He could not distrust the evidence of his own senses. Jehovah had wrought in his behalf, alike for soul and body, what all the sorcerers and magicians, all the conjurors and necromancers, all the medicines of Damascus had failed to accomplish\emdash and he resolves to return, a missionary and propagandist of the new faith. For so doing, he may forfeit office and influence, name and fame. He may no longer lead the troops of Syria out to battle and victory\emdash the garlands that wreathe his brow may be removed, and given to some subordinate, staunch in his fidelity to the traditional faith of his country\emdash ready to defend alike her hearths and altars. But he rises superior to these, and such like possibilities of national dishonor and humiliation awaiting him. As his chariot is turned from the land of Israel towards the Syrian metropolis, he could say, in the words of a later spiritual hero, "Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be destroyed, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe." (Heb. 12:28)\par \par Reader! go and do likewise. Let the example of a brave Gentile soldier nerve you to range yourself openly under the standard of the Great Captain of your salvation, and manfully to make the avowal before the world\emdash "I serve the Lord Christ." We know well (especially in the case of the young) the taunt and ridicule which such an avowal may often involve. Peculiarity of position and circumstance may render it no easy matter, in the name of your God, to set up your banners. The weapon with which Satan has defied\emdash aye, too, and defeated multitudes, is the weapon of ridicule\emdash we are not ignorant of his devices. But He who is for you, is greater than all that are against you. Resolve to adhere to the maintenance of Christian principle, undeterred by sneer and frown, ridicule and reproach. Trust God, and He will disarm all difficulties and cover your head in the day of battle\emdash out of weakness making you strong, enabling you to wax valiant in fight, and to turn to flight the armies of the aliens. Thus letting "your light," (not the light of sectarian rivalry, or intemperate bigotry, or offensive parade of goodness and godliness; but the light of a Christian profession and creed endorsed and countersigned by a pure, holy, consistent life)\emdash letting such a light "shine before men," others will "see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."\par \par II. Naaman's GRATITUDE. Note his gratitude to the human agent. It was not the mere thank-offering of the lip. He desires the Prophet to receive some substantial proof of his heart-sincerity. From these bags of gold and silver, and changes of clothing, which loaded mule and camel in his cavalcade, he says, "Take a gift from your servant." But Elisha, doubtless courteously, but peremptorily, refused the offered gift\emdash "As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none; and he urged him to take it, but he refused."\par \par What were the Prophet's reasons for this refusal? They were probably twofold.\par \par (1.) He wished that God should have all the glory of the leper's cure. Had he assented to the proposal, and received the gift, it might have led to the inference that he arrogated some of the honor of the miracle to himself\emdash that it was the arts of priestcraft, some mystic charm in the directions he had given, which had made the washing effectual. Elisha would have Naaman to know that he was the mere earthly vessel\emdash the instrument in the hand of a Mightier, by whom the stricken chief now stood in perfect soundness in the presence of them all. His language, as he repudiates the offered benefaction is\emdash Not unto me, not unto me, but unto the God I serve, give glory for His mercy and for His truth's sake!\par \par (2.) Had he accepted the present, it might have damaged and compromised, in distant Syria, his own character as Jehovah's Prophet. Not without semblance of justice, he might have been charged with some mercenary, ulterior motive, when he volunteered the message to the King of Samaria\emdash "Let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel." When the warrior had gone back to Damascus, and his servants had told how costly a memorial and recompense had been left at the Prophet's dwelling, a hundred tongues might have been ready to denounce the covetous spirit of the Hebrew magician and wonder-worker\emdash the old taunt might have been launched on the lowly occupant of the dwelling at Gilgal, that in his vaunting message to the King of Samaria to send the leper to him without delay, he was only desirous to make a gain of godliness.\par \par We may learn from this Old Testament story what a noble thing it is, and specially living under the light and responsibilities of a better dispensation, to manifest an unselfish spirit; ready, if need be, to surrender personal good and worldly interests for the sake of Christ; to forego anything that might, indirectly, tend to have our religion, misjudged in the eyes of others. Paul's was a noble resolve; and the apostolic maxim in this, and other things, should shape our principles of action\emdash "Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall." (1 Cor. 8:13)\par \par But not only does Naaman wish to give a token of his gratitude to Elisha; he is anxious also, by an external action, to testify the deeper and more sacred obligations under which he is laid to Elisha's God. He accordingly requests permission of the Prophet, to carry with him, back to Damascus, two loads of earth; evidently to be utilized and consecrated for some religious purpose\emdash "but please allow me to load two of my mules with earth from this place, and I will take it back home with me. From now on I will never again offer any burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other god except the Lord." 2 Kings 5:17. We are led to pause and inquire, what was the object more particularly contemplated in this unusual request.\par \par (1.) We recognize in it, his desire to render obedience to the will of Jehovah. There was a special divine injunction given to the Israelites, that their altars should be constructed of earth\emdash "An altar of earth you shall make unto me" (Exod. 20:24). It is not a little remarkable, that the command in that same passage is followed up by the promise\emdash "In all places where I record my name I will come unto you, and I will bless you." Who knows but that Naaman, now standing within the walls of a school of the Prophets, may have been informed of this very promise made by the Lord he had confessed to be his God?\emdash that if he reared in heathen Damascus his altar of earth, and there recorded Jehovah's name, that faithful God of all the families of mankind, would fulfill His part of the covenanted assurance; and make it one of the "all places" where He would come and bestow His blessing. As that promise was given strictly in connection with the "altar of earth," when the little mound of Palestine soil was shaped or enshrined for its destined purpose by the grateful Syrian, he could point to it and say, as he invoked the divine benediction, "Remember the word unto Your servant upon which You have caused me to hope" (Ps. 119:49).\par \par (2.) Another reason for the petition doubtless was, that, as a Gentile proselyte, he wished to carry with him to his own home, some permanent memorial of his visit to the country of the Hebrews, and of the wondrous cure effected on him by the Hebrews' God. It is evident this feeling must have mingled in his request; for if he had merely desired to obtain a portion of earth from the territories of Israel, sufficient for the construction of an altar, what need was there of carrying it the whole distance from Gilgal? Why not wait until he and his troop had crossed the hills of Ephraim and Naphtali, and then have laden the mules with their burden? But not only must it be Israelitish soil, it must be from the very scene of the restoration, to make it a significant memento of the miraculous healing.\par \par It would thus be, First, a perpetual remembrance to Naaman himself, of his vows and obligations. He had now publicly renounced idolatry\emdash Rimmon and all his idols he had utterly forsworn. But the restored chief knew (as who does not?) the fickleness of the human spirit. His heart was now thrilling with emotion, warm with the memory of his recent cure. But the hour might come when these memories would not be so vivid\emdash when, dimmed by time and distance, he might be basely tempted to abjure his adopted faith and rejoin the multitude in their adoration of the national idol. If ever seduced to such perjury, the Earthen Altar, strangely unique amid other Syrian shrines of marble, would read a rebuke to his faithlessness. It would remain a perpetual protest against idolatry. Every glance at that heap of alien mold would remind him\emdash "Your vows are upon me, O God."\par \par Add to this\emdash the very earth of which the altar was constructed, would be a keepsake of the land to which he owed so much\emdash a hallowed remembrance of the scene around the willows and palm-groves of Gilgal.\par \par There is a wondrous charm which Romanism has perverted for its own uses, but the spell of which lies deep in our emotional natures, in the possessing and treasuring memorials of sacred scenes and sacred spots. We speak not of a spurious veneration for those paltry relics which superstition often has enshrined in gold and silver caskets, and before which she burns her incense and waves her censers\emdash such as the bones and dust of real or imaginary saints. But who ever gazed, without interest and emotion, on bark cut from the old olives in Gethsemane, or pebbles from the shores of Tiberias, or flint and agate from the rocks around Bethlehem and the Kedron? Nor need we go for holy scenes and associations so far as to the land of Palestine. Who does not value and garner the leaves gathered from the grave of buried love? Who does not cherish the Bible, on whose flyleaf parental affection has put the imperishable inscription, when perhaps the hand that traced it is mouldering in the tomb? Who does not treasure the pilgrim-staff on which some hoary grandfather leaned, or the chair on which venerable age gave forth lessons which time cannot obliterate?\par \par It was with kindred feelings Naaman carried away his two loads of earth. He doubtless desired to retain, in sacred remembrance, that never-to-be-forgotten scene at Jordan and Gilgal. If there was no art to portray the actual landscape, here was a simple, but most impressive and significant method of fixing its memories in his heart. In the courtyard of his palace\emdash or it may be in the very hall, whose marble pavement, in the torture of his disease, he was used in former years to pace\emdash there, in the scene of his misery and despair, he rears this monument of faith and gratitude; and when his own dust mingled with that of other illustrious dead in the sepulchers of Syria, and perhaps no living voice in his household would be raised for the glory of Israel's God; here would be an enduring monument and manifesto of the faith of the old hero; he, being dead, would, in his speechless altar, still speak!\par \par Who can tell, moreover (while thus incidentally referring to Naaman's death and burial-place), but that a portion of that earth may have been specially reserved or appropriated for his funeral rites. We know how eagerly the soil of "holy places" has been, and is still, prized by Orientals in connection with sites and places of sepulture. We have heard how the Hindoo values, above all spices and ointments, the vessel filled with the reputedly sacred water of the Ganges, to be placed by his dead body, and afterwards by his tomb. We know with what fondness, for the same purpose, the Hadji pilgrims carry in the folds of their green turbans, or next their bosoms, a few grains of earth gathered at Mecca. We know the story which has given to Europe the most interesting (we are tempted to add, after personally visiting it), the most magnificent, of all her graveyards; how the Pisans, in the Middle Ages, brought, on the occasion of their invading Palestine, shiploads of soil from a spot overlooking Jerusalem; and among these "loads of earth" the most distinguished of her citizens and nobles eagerly sought the honor of interment. We know how the Jew, when poverty or age prevent him traveling back to the valley of Jehoshaphat\emdash the Valley of tombs\emdash appreciates, as the most cherished equivalent, a handful of debris from the base of Zion's Temple; that in his lonely grave in a land of exile, he may, in the last long sleep, lay his head on the consecrated soil. Who knows but some such motive may, at the time, have suggested itself to Naaman, in soliciting from the hands of the Prophet the strange request we are considering; that when he died, his own fond wish may have been fulfilled and gratified, to have his embalmed remains resting on a pillow of that earth, which his mules bore from the scene of his cure and conversion\emdash a singular, miniature "sacred spot" amid the royal tombs of Damascus?\par \par Once more; he erected this altar of Hebrew earth, possibly for the purpose of offering sacrifice. That once proud, self-righteous leper, had already, by his humility, offered one acceptable sacrifice\emdash "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." But during his present sojourn in the land of Israel, and in this brief interview with the Prophet, who can tell but that he may have been, partially at least, initiated into deeper mysteries. The offering of "cattle from a thousand hills," would probably be no strange thing to him in the ceremonial rites within the Temple of Rimmon. But in this new earth-altar there is the suggestion of "better sacrifices than these." Though even to an Israelite himself, in his dim typical dispensation, the coming Redemption was obscurely revealed, may we not imagine that Naaman, along with the materials for his earthen shrine, carried with him into heathen Syria, the foreshadowings, at least, of the great oblation\emdash "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." In that same injunction in the book of Exodus to which reference has already been made, regarding the altar of earth, it is added\emdash "You shall sacrifice thereon your burnt-offerings and your peace-offerings, your sheep and your oxen."\par \par When Naaman returned to Damascus, raised his lowly memorial, and the smoke ascended from his burnt-offering, the Lord God of Israel would smell a sweet savor. He would see, in the person of the offerer, a type of those Gentiles\emdash monarchs and warriors and mighty men\emdash who would yet cast their swords and shields, their crowns and scepters, at the feet of Immanuel, and acknowledge Him as Lord over all\emdash in accordance with that striking inscription, which, in the midst of Mohammedan bigotry gleams to this hour, in Greek characters, on the facade of the oldest and grandest temple in Damascus\emdash "Your kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations."\par \par Let this remarkable passage in Naaman's history read a lesson to us all. Are there any, on whom may have recently been bestowed gifts and pledges of the divine goodness; some special providential deliverances; some peculiar tokens of spiritual blessing? Go! gather your burden of earth\emdash take it with you to your dwelling; erect, in the midst of your family, your altar of gratitude, and write upon it the indelible inscription\emdash "What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards me." We know not what may have been the results of Naaman's piety in his Damascus home. The symbol of his faith and love (his earthen altar), may have been handed down, as a precious heirloom and keepsake, from generation to generation; his children's children may have gazed on it, and loved to rehearse to one another the story of their great ancestor's disease and cure.\par \par Let the Christian remember this; that the altar he erects\emdash in other words, the piety of a holy, God-fearing consistent life\emdash does not die with him\emdash his example descends, as the noblest of heritages, to his offspring. Nor, be it added, does anything so tend to hallow and consecrate the earthly home, as the erection of a Domestic sanctuary, where morning and evening "the voice of rejoicing and of salvation" is heard. Sad are those dwellings "unwhitened by prayer"\emdash unblest with the incense-cloud; on whose doors the entry is inscribed, "No altar here." Where shall we go to gather example and reproof for such prayerless homes? Shall it be among the dwellings and tabernacles of Israel? or in following the footsteps of prophets and apostles? Shall we enter the abodes of primitive believers\emdash the Simeons and Annas, the Marys and Lydias of gospel times? No! we travel in imagination to witness a military procession toiling along one of the steep and narrow gorges of ancient Palestine. In the rear of the imposing caravan, two mules are seen groaning under a strange earthen load. It is a heathen of a dim and unprivileged age, carrying away materials for a domestic altar whereon he may serve the true God, and around which he may gather his household.\par \par Who will dare plead the cares of family or the strain and stress of business, or worldly opposition after this? Naaman had the responsibility of the Syrian armies and the weight of government on his shoulders; yet he had time to erect his home-sanctuary and offer his daily sacrifice. Thousands of pagan eyes may have flashed displeasure upon him; but the spiritual hero fought a braver than his earthly battles, and has left a nobler than champion's epitaph inscribed on his tomb. He began his journey a leper and a heathen\emdash he washed in Jordan, and was cleansed\emdash he returned home, and reared his altar.\par \par Beautiful type and delineation of the true Christian! He begins his pilgrimage a "miserable sinner." He washes in the stream of salvation, and is cleansed. His "altar of witness" is erected\emdash the vow of allegiance and love is publicly recorded and devoutly observed. And when his journey is finished\emdash when he reaches his true home in the skies, his nobler indestructible 'altar of gratitude and love' is upreared with the inscription\emdash "thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!"\par \cf1\fs23\par } d  I10 Scruples of the New Proselyte{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched2 IY09 Consecration{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {0 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par SCRUPLES OF THE NEW PROSELYTE\par \par "However, may the Lord pardon me in this one thing. When my master the king goes into the temple of the god Rimmon to worship there and leans on my arm, may the Lord pardon me when I bow, too." 2 Kings 5:18\par \par We left Naaman, in the preceding chapter, all joy. It was with him the flush of a new springtime\emdash alike in both bodily and spiritual being. The 'torpor of winter and death' had given place to the gleaming of green woods, the release of icebound rivulets, the song of gladsome warblers as they hailed the return of grove, and flower, and sunshine\emdash "Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land" (Sol. Song 2:11, 12). Elastic with this resurrection of life and hope, and with a heart overflowing with gratitude, he stood at the door of Elisha, and made the bold avowal of his faith in Israel's God.\par \par But these spring-tides of feeling have their ebbs as well as their flows. In our highest moments of inspiration we are soon reminded that the struggle-hour is at hand. 'Transfiguration-scenes' and experiences are temporary and exceptional. "In the world" is the normal condition of the human spirit. How to bear itself amid secular and often unholy contacts\emdash and amid base, coarse, and sinful compliances, that is the stern problem which by the best must be faced and mastered.\par \par Naaman's thoughts begin to travel back from the banks of the Jordan and the Prophet's dwelling, to his distant home. Soon must he mingle once more in the crowd and din of the heathen city\emdash soon must he be back again at court, to resume the demanding duties of his station, as General of the Syrian hosts. His feelings and position were very similar to those, which from time to time the Christian, under a new and better dispensation, experiences in coming from the holy ordinance of the Lord's Supper, where his thank-offering has been presented, and his eucharistic sacrifice and vow have been made and recorded.\par \par Emerging from the sacramental waters with thoughts full of recent pledges and memorials of God's love, Naaman knows that the hum of the old Damascus world must burst upon him before long. The memories of Gilgal and the Jordan must be superseded by sterner realities, amid the duties and cares and temptations of life. Happy are those who, in such circumstances, though they have left Mount Gilgal, have taken the earth with them for their life-altar of gratitude and thanksgiving; saying, in the spirit of the old patriarch of Bethel, as he awoke from his desert-dream and poured the anointing oil on the stone\emdash "Then shall the Lord be my God; and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house" (Gen. 28:21, 22).\par \par There might well have been, in the case of Naaman, many causes of anxious foreboding in the prospect of resuming his court and military duties. But the picture presented to us in these verses is true to nature and experience, when, by some momentary and accidental association of ideas, one peculiar thought or anticipation dominates all others, and keeps for the time exclusive possession of the soul. The feeling or suggestion which now flashes across the mind of the cured warrior rankles like an arrow in his bosom, disturbing the peace of the present hour. With a childlike spirit he makes the cause of perplexity known to Elisha, and solicits his advice. Let us state what it is.\par \par He remembers that his royal master Benhadad is still an idolater; that at particular times he was in the habit of going, for purposes of worship and high festival, to the Temple of Rimmon. Moreover, that it was part of Naaman's own official duty, as commander-in-chief, to accompany the king\emdash a duty, the non-performance of which would entail the resignation of his office. The warrior has that confidence in Benhadad's magnanimity and liberality of spirit, as to feel assured that he will not, on account of a change of religion, degrade a tried and trusted officer of his household from his rank and official position. He will still continue him general of his troops as before.\par \par But what will be Naaman's own duty with regard to that heathen temple? Will he not compromise his character, as a proselyte and worshiper of the true Jehovah, by setting his foot across its threshold?\emdash dare he venture with impunity\emdash dare he, without dishonoring the great Name he has sworn to venerate, venture to join the heathen procession? No more\emdash Benhadad, on entering the temple and approaching the idol, was in the habit of leaning on Naaman's arm. When the king bowed or prostrated himself, his Naaman was obliged, in appearance, to bow also. Even this 'semblance of homage' to the Baal of Syria disturbs Naaman's sensitive conscience. Yet how can he manage to evade the duty? We repeat, he seems not to doubt or question that his master will grant him (to use a modern phrase) the fullest toleration in his creed. He would concede to him an exemption from "religious duties," from which others dared not plead exemption; but he would not be so ready to release Naaman from official attendance at this temple ceremony.\par \par Would it be lawful, would it be expedient to go, with the royal arm locked in his\emdash could Naaman, as the king's adjutant, perform this state duty without being identified as a worshiper? The troubled chief resolves to unbosom his scruples to the Prophet Elisha. "However, may the Lord pardon me in this one thing. When my master the king goes into the temple of the god Rimmon to worship there and leans on my arm, may the Lord pardon me when I bow, too." 2 Kings 5:18. Let us pause for a moment in passing, and mark\emdash\par \par (1.) Naaman's sincerity and forthrightness. He does not muffle his feelings. If he had been like many, he would have masked his doubts, concealed his difficulties, waited until he reached Damascus, and then solved them as best he could, by some questionable compromise between principle and expediency. He might have said, 'What is the use of injuring myself in the eyes of this Prophet\emdash risking his reproof and indignation. I shall put the key in the wards of my heart, and keep that scruple imprisoned there.' No! the cause of perplexity is out at once. He makes a clean acknowledgment of it, and solicits advice. His eye was single; he had a simple, honest desire to know his Lord's will, and knowing it, to do it.\par \par (2.) Mark his sensitive conscience. He had no thought of worshiping Rimmon. The old Syrian deity holding the symbolic pomegranate, was from that hour a senseless idol. It was the mere posture, the semblance of adoration\emdash and no more, which caused Naaman these scruples. But the very 'appearance of approving' an idolatrous rite aggrieved his conscience. Was not the crossing of that idolatrous threshold doubtful? Would it not seem in the eyes of his fellows\emdash of his soldiers\emdash of his king, as if he were indifferent to the honor and glory of the true God? He may possibly (and he might imagine so himself) be over-fastidious on this subtle question of conscience; but unless he had it resolved on the authority of God's Prophet, it would sorely disturb his homeward journey. His sunny dreams of Jordan and Gilgal would be haunted and scared with visions of Rimmon's Temple; and of himself, with broken vows on his head, doing obeisance at the idol shrine. He resolves to take this 'case of perplexity' to the Prophet of Israel.\par \par Would that we had more of such tenderness of conscience\emdash in business, in the world, in the everyday relations of life\emdash that we more honored and revered Conscience as God's own viceregent, feeling that in fighting against the sacred monitor, and disowning the responses of the divine oracle, we are fighting against God!\par \par (3.) Note Naaman's faith\emdash his determination, at all hazards, to cleave to Jehovah. For there is every reason to infer, that if the Prophet had given a negative to his request\emdash pronounced the accompanying his master to Rimmon's Temple to be incompatible with his religious duty, he would have acted on his decision\emdash he would have been willing to renounce pay and place\emdash surrendered all he had, rather than dishonor that holy name, and give occasion to Jehovah's enemies to blaspheme. And noble evidence it is of strength of faith and integrity of purpose, when in critical circumstances, and in those special emergencies when conscientious scruple stands confronted face to face with worldly and professional interests, we are willing to take God's word and to abide by it, even though duty demands the renunciation of material good\emdash the taking up of the cross\emdash denying ourselves earthly honor and advantage. We shall be no losers at last\emdash "Those who honor me," says God, "I will honor." It may be, like the tempest-tossed disciples on Lake Tiberias, to steer our way through boisterous wind and buffeting waves. But if it be at His bidding, He who "constrained His disciples to get into the ship" (Matt. 14:22) will bring us, sooner or later, to the haven where we would be.\par \par And how does Elisha reply to the question of the proselyte? Naaman, perhaps, would expect\emdash and perhaps we expect, to hear the Prophet's denunciation of the proposal. We look for a response in the spirit and words of the old Tishbite\emdash "How long halt you between two opinions\emdash if the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him." Are we not ready to picture the frown of stern indignation on the brow of the man of God, and to imagine him exclaiming, 'It cannot be! By thus identifying yourself with heathen abominations you would only draw down afresh the vengeance of Heaven. The leprosy now washed away in the Jordan would again cleave unto you forever, and you would go forth anew from the idol's temple, a leper white as snow. Dream not thus of dishonoring your vows\emdash of attempting to serve both God and Rimmon. Go, tell Benhadad, that rather than mock the Jehovah whom you have covenanted to serve, you will consent to be degraded to the most menial drudgery; that the keys and sword of office will readily be surrendered, before you darken the portals of the sun-god.'\par \par This, however, is not his answer. He does not indeed say, 'You may bow\emdash your conscience is too tender, you are unnecessarily sensitive and scrupulous.' He leaves it still with him an open question; and without pronouncing any final or authoritative deliverance, he gives the simple benediction, "Go in peace." Elisha knew he could place reliance on the recent convert. He could trust his new strength of purpose, his principle, his sincerity. He knew well the trials of faith to which he would be subjected on his return to Damascus\emdash the envenomed darts that would likely be hurled upon him by those who would have no sympathy with his alien religion. If Elisha had, by a withering negative, at once forbidden the request, and declared, 'Bow in Rimmon's Temple you dare not, even in semblance,' he might have greatly and unnecessarily perplexed him, in this the first hour of his spiritual experience. But he knew that "to the upright there would arise light in darkness" (Ps. 112:4)\emdash that the day would come when the anxious inquirer would have his difficulties satisfactorily solved. Meanwhile, therefore, he says, "Go in peace;" 'I know my God will go with you. He will guide you aright. He will give His angels charge concerning you, to keep you up in all your ways. I know you will never be guilty of dishonoring Him in the eyes of the heathen. He who has delivered your soul from death\emdash will He not deliver your eyes from tears, and your feet from falling?'\par \par In the words of an excellent writer, "he knew that it was not good to put 'old  wine into new bottles,' and to load the tender feelings of the weak disciple with duties most painful and difficult even to the strongest, or to expose him to the most trying of all opposition, the sneers and sarcasms of his companions. Elisha foresaw that the time would come, when the seed so lately sown, and now scarcely in the blade, would become the strong and powerful tree, and he was content to wait for this. He therefore treated the tender plant with gentleness."\par \par Let us not, howe ver, mistake the Prophet's deliverance. Let us not construe it into a formal sanction of doubtful expediency or worldly conformity. Many there are, who would willingly enlist this passage on their side, to draw such a conclusion\emdash who would make it their authority for conforming with some questionable\emdash and more than questionable\emdash maxims and practices. They would willingly retain their religious profession\emdash the outward semblance of fidelity to God and His righteousness, and yet claim the sanction to go and bow in some Rimmon-Temple.\par \par The Bible is always consistent; and there can be nothing in this isolated passage, contradictory to its manifold other express sayings and injunctions. God demands the whole heart; He will be satisfied with nothing short of it; and when any competing object comes between it and Him, that object must be removed. "No man," is the utterance of the Great Teacher Himself, "can serve two masters." "He who is not with me is against me." "If an y man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." "Let us therefore," says the apostle, "go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach." Is Naaman, then, to be made an exception to all this? Is he encouraged by the Prophet of Gilgal to act on different principles; to serve two masters; to offer allegiance alike to God and to Baal?\par \par No! it is obvious there was no such sanction given, thus to serve Jehovah in the land of Israel and Rimmon in th e land of Syria. This would have been one of the most pernicious of modern dogmas\emdash that all creeds and beliefs are the same. Neither did the convert shrink from confessing the true God before his fellows. He was ready to brave all, and, if need be, to lose all. His confession we have already listened to\emdash it was that of no lip votary, no hypocritical dissembler, no spiritual coward, whispered in a corner\emdash he made it publicly, in presence of all his heathen servants. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Taking with him in his cavalcade the two loads of earth, to form a public altar\emdash was not the deed of a man wishful to evade the light and to hide his religion under a basket.\par \par Elisha, knowing that he was dealing with an earnest soul, one who wished really to glorify the true Jehovah, tells him to proceed on his journey in "peace"\emdash that the Gracious Being he had avouched to be his God would teach him in His own good time a more excellent way. If Naaman's had been a poor, miserable, half-hearted belief and profession\emdash a compound of his ancestral and adopted faith, the Prophet might have required to meet his question with a strong prohibition. But he seems to say, 'I know, that as a learner in the school of truth, you will be instructed aright. In your case the promise will be fulfilled\emdash "The meek will He guide in judgment, and the humble will He teach His way." (Ps. 25:9). "Then shall you know, if you follow on to know the Lord."'\par \par It is the same, or a similar question to that of Naaman, which is often addressed still, and especially by those who are young in the life of faith, to their religious teachers and guides\emdash 'Can I, as a Christian, venture where pleasure and taste, and it may be companionship which it were hard to renounce, would all lead me\emdash to places of fashionable, some would say, frivolous amusement?' Again, 'Can I accept that post of advancement, or continue in it, without being suspected of selfish, calculating, carnal motives, or without being tempted to a dereliction of principle?' Again, 'Can I continue in that social circle, or prosecute that secular calling, without lowering my standard, compromising character, and dishonoring God?'\par \par We pronounce, at present, no verdict on these hypothetical cases, and especially on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of this or that worldly amusement. On the one hand, there may be, and there is with many, a morbid and unhealthy shrinking from the acceptance of much happiness in this beautiful earth of which God has made the human heart receptive\emdash the "all things" He has given us "richly to enjoy"\emdash what regales the ear and delights the eye, and refines and elevates the taste. On the other hand, it is equally certain there are manifold resorts, pleasing and pleasurable, and some of them apparently innocuous, resorting to to which, may be like treading the edge of a volcano\emdash threatening their frequenters with continual risk of being scathed with the fire.\par \par But if, in such "cases of conscience" we were dealing (as Elisha knew he was dealing), with a sensitive, honest, upright, God-fearing individual, who really wished to know the path of duty and to be divinely guided, we would say with the Prophet, "Go in peace." Do not involve yourself in needless perplexities. Your difficulties will in due time be solved and your path made plain. If you can utter the prayerful desire to the Heavenly Light\emdash "Lead me, Lord!"\emdash "Teach me the way wherein I should walk; I lift up my soul unto You"\emdash then, frequent these amusements so long as the dictates of your new and better nature accord a sanction. If such resorts run counter to your spiritual advancement\emdash if they hinder and impede your heavenly walk, and interfere with the love and allegiance you owe to Christ as your divine Lord and Master, you will soon come to discard them. You will soon have them superseded by different tastes, new likings and preferences. You will soon cease to find satisfying enjoyment, in what are counterfeits of the true. You will soon discover that there is no honey to be extracted from such "untrue rocks"\emdash no living water to be drawn from such leaky, broken cisterns. You will soon serve yourself heir to nobler aspirations and purer enjoyments. When you enter that temple of Rimmon, and witness the senseless and sinful rites, you will turn away with averted face. Your own enlightened judgment will teach you, as possibly it taught Naaman, that the two are incompatible. As you lean on your Master's arm, conscience will make a coward of you. It will whisper, 'As a spiritual Israelite, as a true-hearted Christian, you are out of your place here.' "All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1 John 2:16).\par \par We may learn, too, from Naaman's question and Elisha's reply, that our conduct\emdash what an apostle calls "our walk and conversation"\emdash will be molded and regulated according to the state of the heart with God. If the heart be right, all will come right. The stirred pool may take a while to settle into its normal state of clearness and quiescence\emdash there may, for a time, be dulled and distorted images on its ruffled surface, but soon it will become like a calm mirror, reflecting truth, purity, and righteousness.\par \par How different from Naaman were many of the characters with whom our Savior came in contact in the New Testament! How different were His dealings with Pharisees whose hearts were not right! In the external observances of the law they were scrupulously correct. They tithed their anise, mint, and cummin; they made broad their phylacteries; they whitewashed persistently the sepulchers of the prophets; they were punctilious in creed and external forms; they would not speak to a Samaritan; they would not for a moment bow in a Rimmon temple\emdash if they came within sight of it, they would shake the dust off their feet. But they devoured widows' houses; they oppressed the poor; they despised justice, judgment, and mercy. They were quick enough to discern the mote in their brother's eye; but they did not discern the beam in their own. Incarnate Truth, Purity, and Justice, could not say to such, "Go in peace." He could pronounce nothing but impending woe and judgment\emdash His withering words of condemnation were unsparing, uncompromising, sharper than any two-edged sword.\par \par On the other hand, see how tenderly He dealt with sensitive consciences. Nicodemus, who came by night seeking instruction in the kingdom of God; or the weeping penitent, who crouched at His feet, bedewing them with tears. He did not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, and laid no trial or temptation on His people heavier than they were able to bear.\par \par The subject, indeed, of this chapter, is one on which it becomes us to speak with 'extreme caution'. Let none gather from it the impression, that they can follow Naaman's example\emdash leave duty an "open question," and enter with impunity the great Rimmon-Temple of the world. True, Daniel could remain unscathed in heathen Babylon. There were saints in Nero's household; and many a brave young Christian has done noble battle with the irreligious influences among which his lot has been cast. But, to revert to the same beacon and warning selected for example in a former chapter\emdash "Remember Lot's wife!"\emdash remember Lot's family! See what contact with the irreligious and godless did! See the result of entering the gates of Sodom\emdash tampering with a world lying in wickedness\emdash trying to serve God and Mammon. There is\emdash there can be, no blast of the silver trumpet, "Go in peace," sounded in the ear of such\emdash "There is no peace, says my God, to the wicked."\par \par Remember the twofold apostolic motto and watchword\emdash the warrant for liberty and the warning against license\emdash "Use the world," (that is the sanction for liberty; in lawful enjoyment of all earthly good\emdash for stretching our sails on its summer seas and basking under its summer skies)\emdash "without abusing it," (that is the admonishing warning bell from rock or lighthouse, when these seas are treacherous, and when, unknown, we may be gliding over the unseen reef). Keep off 'debatable' ground. Keep clear of positions and situations where your faith is likely to be imperilled. Beware of living what has been called a "border life;" hovering on the confines of the kingdom of light\emdash and the kingdom of darkness. It is the irresolute of the army who are the first to break rank and flee; whereas the smallest battalion, if staunch and valorous, can stand the charge.\par \par Remember, many there are who enter the world unvisited by Naaman's scruples, who have none of Naaman's dislike for its base and sordid compliances. For such to enter Rimmon's Temple is to court certain ruin. These God addresses in language of unqualified prohibition\emdash "What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness\emdash and what communion has light with darkness\emdash and what concord has Christ with Belial\emdash or what part has he who believes with an infidel? Therefore come out from among them, and be separate, says the Lord, and do not touch the unclean thing" (2 Cor. 6:14, 15, 17).\par \par God's own gracious benediction is, "Go in peace." And if, from peculiar circumstances,  you may be led at times into difficult and perplexing paths\emdash your footsteps perhaps trembling on the threshold of some questionable or forbidden resort, seek to hear His voice alone, and be prepared to follow the summons\emdash "This is the way\emdash walk in it." Looking up to Him who has promised to "keep in perfect peace" the mind which is stayed on Him, and which trusts in Him (Isa. 26:3), may this be your prayer\emdash "To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. I trust in you, my God! Do not let me be disgraced, or let my enemies rejoice in my defeat. No one who trusts in you will ever be disgraced, but disgrace comes to those who try to deceive others. Show me the path where I should walk, O Lord; point out the right road for me to follow. The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness all those who keep his covenant and obey his decrees." (Ps. 25:1-4, 10). Thus shall the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } " Elisha's servant, said to himself, "My master should not have let this Aramean get away without accepting his gifts. As surely as the Lord lives, I will chase after him and get something from him." So Gehazi set off after him. When Naaman saw him running after him, he climbed down from his chariot and went to meet him. "Is everything all right?" Naaman asked. "Yes," Gehazi said, "but my master has sent me to tell you that two young prophets from the hill country of Ephraim have just arrived. He would lik#e 75 pounds of silver and two sets of clothing to give to them." "By all means, take 150 pounds of silver," Naaman insisted. He gave him two sets of clothing, tied up the money in two bags, and sent two of his servants to carry the gifts for Gehazi. But when they arrived at the hill, Gehazi took the gifts from the servants and sent the men back.\par Then he hid the gifts inside the house. When he went in to his master, Elisha asked him, "Where have you been, Gehazi?" "I haven't been anywhere," he$ replied. But Elisha asked him, "Don't you realize that I was there in spirit when Naaman stepped down from his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to receive money and clothing and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and servants? Because you have done this, you and your children and your children's children will suffer from Naaman's leprosy forever."\par When Gehazi left the room, he was leprous; his skin was as white as snow.\par \par \par In the opening sentenc%es of last chapter, we compared the new life, natural and spiritual, infused into the restored warrior, to the revitalization of the earth, when, coming forth from her "winter dormitory," she assumes her robes of spring, and all outer Nature, with its song-burst and flower-burst, participates in a common joy. In the verses, however, which are now to occupy our thoughts, that bright spring sky is suddenly overcast; and we have to watch an unexpected cloud passing over the landscape. We seem almost to wish &that the touching story of the Aramean general, so complete and unique in itself up to this point, had closed here without any supplementary incident\emdash that the curtain had fallen as the Syrian caravan begins to move on its homeward way, and the good Prophet has poured his benediction on the head of its chief.\par \par Yet, too, ever and anon, with divine wisdom, does the Bible in its inspired narratives, by some 'qualifying statements'\emdash some 'somber touches' in its pictures, keep bef'ore us the memories and evidences of "a present evil world," and of the spirit that still "rules in the children of disobedience." Amid its notes of sweetest music, there steal, as if at measured intervals, strains of disharmony and dissonance, to remind us that the heart\emdash yes, even the heart that has been molded and disciplined by godly and godlike influences, is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9).\par \par We are mostly accustomed, doubtles(s, in pacing the sacred sculpture-gallery, to contemplate its spiritual heroes\emdash elevated characters, who present us with a lofty ideal of the saintly and spiritual life. But, intermingled here and there, as if to impart value by contrast, we have specimens also of the depraved, the demoralized, the "devilish"\emdash those who seem haunted and victimized by degraded vice and demon passion\emdash "lewd fellows of the baser sort," who have "given themselves over to a reprobate mind," and broken loose a)like from the restraints of conscience and the laws of God. Such is the iron visage, on its gloomy pedestal, we are called on now to confront amid his nobler compeers.\par \par The case of GEHAZI is one of not a few, which unfolds to us what the human spirit would be, were it uncurbed and uncontrolled by restraining grace. It utters one of the many warning voices heard from the gates of Eden onwards\emdash "When you think you stand, take heed lest you fall." If the topics suggested in our preced*ing chapters have been mainly profitable for our "instruction in righteousness," this closing one embraces more especially lessons of "rebuke and correction." While in Naaman, we have had a favorable representative of character (molded by divine influences) occupying a high social position; we have had in the little captive maid, as well as in the warrior's own camp-servants, equally favorable specimens of those in the opposite pole of the social system. Beautiful and attractive, indeed, up to this point,+ is the picture of the mutual relation subsisting between master and servants. But in Gehazi\emdash the new study which arrests our attention, we have, alas! as sad an illustration as could be furnished, whether in truth or fiction, of an unprincipled and untrustworthy dependant\emdash one who conformed to no one requirement in the triple code of the prophet Micah\emdash neither "doing justly, nor loving mercy, nor walking humbly with God."\par \par If Abraham's steward, old Eleazar of Damascus,, as a faithful, conscientious servant, had left still a fragrant name and memory in the city of his birth, not perhaps unknown to Naaman\emdash here was another, a child of Abraham, a steward also in a holy household, but all unworthy of his pedigree\emdash a withered branch of the stock of Israel, dishonoring the parent stem, "twice dead, plucked up by the roots"\emdash and who, in the same ancient capital, could hardly fail to have his own dreadful memorial in all time to come, as having made himself th-e unfortunate heir to the leprosy of the great Syrian soldier.\par \par The story, so familiar in itself, may be briefly recapitulated\emdash\par Naaman had, with a full heart, taken leave of the Prophet; and, perhaps, if there were one memory in that farewell more deeply impressed on the soul of the grateful warrior than another, as he commenced wending up the steep gorge to Ai and Bethel, it was the magnanimity of the man of God in positively refusing anything of recompense or reward.. Elisha had done his duty, and glorified his heavenly Master in the eye of a Gentile stranger. He asked no more, and would take no more, than was included in this sublime consciousness. But if the Prophet of Gilgal, in the simplicity of his nature and the strength of high principle, was willing thus to forfeit the chance of so rich a booty, there was one who saw at a glance that, by a bold stroke\emdash a skillful, unscrupulous artifice, he might outwit his superior, and realize the dream of a covetous yo/uth. These festal garments, and these bags of silver, are not everyday chances of plunder. What is to hinder seizing the glittering prize? Their possession will emancipate him from a position of dependence and poverty, and secure him an ample competency for life. His resolution is taken. Either with a blasphemous imitation of Elisha's divine watchword, or, as others have surmised, uttering the vulgar ruffian-oath on the lips of foul-mouthed Arabs to this day\emdash he thus pursues his guilty soliloquy. "M0y master should not have let this Aramean get away without accepting his gifts. As surely as the Lord lives, I will chase after him and get something from him." 2 Kings 5:20\par \par There is no time to be lost. Down he steals from the wooded height, unobserved, as he thought, by the unsuspicious Prophet. With fleet foot he follows the caravan. Naaman at once perceives and recognizes him. We are struck with the incidental touch of 'courtesy' in the highborn Syrian (is it not one of the first-fru1its of his newborn nature? the first sacrifice of the humble spirit?) It was but a few hours before, when, in his pride, he scorned to descend from his chariot at the door of Elisha\emdash now he leaps down from it to receive his benefactor's servant! He had been possibly impressed, during his brief stay at Gilgal, with the devotion and sincerity of these sons of the prophets, of whom Gehazi was one\emdash and he offers this expression of respect. "Is everything all right?" is the brief question with whic2h he addresses the young messenger who now draws breath at the side of his chariot\emdash "Is everything all right?" he asks with anxiety, for he is fearful that some sudden disaster had in the meantime overtaken the man of God.\par \par With calm composure, the response is ready and given\emdash "All is well." But his hot haste demands explanation; and this, too, is volunteered in the shape of an ingenious lie, so readily improvised, that we think it abundantly proves the utterer to be already 3adept in lying. The fabrication was this\emdash that two young men from the prophetical school on Mount Ephraim, had unexpectedly arrived at his master's house with a tale of impoverishment and need. To relieve the necessities of these two imaginary students, the sordid petitioner solicits, in Elisha's name, some of the treasure which he had so lately declined. Naaman, with no thought of trickery, is only too willing to manifest his gratitude. In accordance with the words addressed to a Gentile of a later4 age, and one in spirit not unlike himself, he takes the bread intended for the true children, and casts it to dogs (Matt. 15:26).\par \par In the generosity of his nature, he insists on doubling the amount of silver. Not only so, but two Syrian servants are told off to transport the goodly gift in safety. When they had reached the hill\emdash some hiding-place near the Prophet's dwelling\emdash the nefarious treasure is artfully concealed by Gehazi, and the Syrian transporters are quietly dismi5ssed; for the cunning and politic finishing-touch is added in the narrative\emdash "He sent the men away, and they departed."\par \par To all appearance this first part of the plot has succeeded to perfection. Not only is the spoil secured, but, better than all, the arch-plotter flatters himself he has quietly got rid of the only witnesses who could incriminate him, and that he has successfully eluded Elisha's detection. With brazen face, unabashed effrontery, "he went in," we read, "and stood b6efore his master." The Prophet, in common with noble natures, was himself open, generous, ingenuous, transparent\emdash never, probably, would Elisha have dreamed of such possibilities of treachery. But the divine voice which had on other occasions whispered in his ear more joyful communications, had apprized him of the present baseness and treachery.\par \par Indignant that truth, and the God of truth, should be thus wantonly insulted and compromised, yet without any of the vehemence of resentm7ent which the deed and moment, we might think, would have justified\emdash he puts the question to the deceiver, "Where have you been, Gehazi?" Gehazi was, however, is still equal to the occasion. And to face the suddenness of the query, another lie is ready as an auxiliary to its predecessor\emdash "I haven't been anywhere." His injured master in a moment denounces and exposes the web of deceit so artfully weaved. He tells the false-hearted delinquent and knave, how, with penetrating glance, he had read 8his inmost thoughts and tracked his guilty footsteps\emdash "Don't you realize that I was there in spirit when Naaman stepped down from his chariot to meet you?"\par \par The scoundrel's mouth is closed\emdash the withering words fall like a flash of scathing lightning upon him\emdash "Because you have done this, you and your children and your children's children will suffer from Naaman's leprosy forever!"\par \par What a change! The culprit had entered the familiar door reveling in th9e success of his iniquity\emdash the future gleaming with visions of ease, luxury, and independence. In a moment the mirage is dissolved! Through the same portals he goes forth as if smitten by an avenging angel, like another Cain with the brand of infamy upon him\emdash "a leper as white as snow." Truly, says the Preacher, "The getting of treasures by a lying tongue, is a vanity tossed to and fro of those who seek death" (Prov. 21:6).\par \par Let us endeavor to gather a few of the lessons with: which this final scene in the narrative is replete.\par \par 1. Let us note the danger of unimproved and abused spiritual privileges. Gehazi's religious advantages, in all probability, began at a date prior to the time and mission of Elisha. One tradition speaks of him as the boy who sped at the bidding of the Elijah Tishbite to the top of Carmel, to watch the rising of the expected cloud over the Mediterranean, precursive of the longed-for rain. This, at all events, we know, that seven years p;revious to Naaman's pilgrimage, he was the witness of Elisha's greatest miracle, when he brought back the Shunamite's son to life. Doubtless, during these intermediate years, he had seen many other signs and wonders authenticating his master's divine call. He had mingled with the youths\emdash his own contemporaries and fellow-students\emdash in the college of the prophets\emdash and, above all, in common with them, and more than them\emdash he had been the privileged eye-witness of the pure, exalted char his time also arrived to be gathered to his fathers.\par \par But, like Judas under a greater and diviner Master, the disciple of Elisha becomes a renegade and traitor in the midst of rarest privilege. And alike awfully sudden and humiliating is his fall. We cannot believe that such a scheming of crime was a mere impromptu act, the result of unpremeditated impulse\emdash as if some spirit from the abyss had its first grapple with a hitherto pure and holy soul, and carried it by one fierce assau?lt. We suspect, as has already been indicated\emdash that the adder must have been for long nestling and nurturing in his bosom\emdash biding its time. The process of heart-hardening had been, it may be slowly and imperceptibly, but too surely progressing.\par \par What we shall immediately find was his master-passion, gathered to its aid others that became willing accomplices and abettors. All unknown to the trustful Prophet, Gehazi had probably become restless and ill at ease under his life of@ enforced poverty, devotion, and self-denial; and when the tempting prize is within reach, and the guilty resolve is taken, he scruples at no means to gain his end. Who could for a moment have dreamt, that that privileged attendant of the holiest man of his age, was carrying, under an assumed guise, a demon's depravity, such as would have been spurned and repudiated by the lowliest camel-driver in Naaman's retinue.\par \par Alas! however, such is a mournful fact\emdash that no fall is so low andA so fearful as the fall of a man "once enlightened," and who has "tasted of the heavenly gift." No fall into sin is so dreadful as the apostasy on the part of one who has "tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come." None is so rapidly and mournfully demoralized as the Prodigal who has gone to the far country, resolved to stifle early conviction, to be oblivious of mother's prayers, and father's counsels, and summons of church bell. O saddest of all catastrophes, when "the end of thoBse things is death!" The same sun which, in the case of a healthy though leafless tree, evokes by its warming beams latent life, when it shines on the noxious pool or stagnant pond, only elicits and diffuses corruption. The religious training and pious fellowship which softens and ameliorates the docile, teachable heart; if abused and rejected\emdash will only serve to stir up the natural, innate tendencies of evil. Mournful experience testifies, that it is not familiarity with divine themes, nor communioCn with devout people, which can insure a holy walk and consecrated life. On the contrary\emdash unless God's grace be given and superadded, a man may, like Gehazi, be slumbering at the foot of a Bethel-ladder traversed with angels and music with heavenly voices, and yet be dreaming and scheming baseness, villainy, and fraud\emdash his mouth full of cursing and bitterness\emdash the way of peace unknown\emdash ready at any moment when the temptation comes\emdash to rush "against the thick bosses" of the AlDmighty's "shield."\par \par Indeed, this intimate familiarity with spiritual matters, unless watchfully guarded, may have a tendency rather to diminish their effect on life and practice; engendering unconcern\emdash culminating, it may even be, in cheerless unbelief. It has been well said, that if the mortician\emdash constantly surrounded with mementos of dissolution\emdash is liable (just because habituated to the spectacle), to be least of all men impressed with the lessons of the grave, the Euncertainties of life, the certainty of death, and the grandeur of immortality\emdash it is the spiritually privileged\emdash those breathing a holy atmosphere, and moving in the circle of holy influences, who have greatest need to cherish remembrance of the apostolic watchword, "By the grace of God I am what I am."\par \par Those who have all these outer surroundings of pious home and Christian training faithful preaching and holy sacrament\emdash temple-work and temple-life\emdash who have stoFod, like Gehazi, at triumphant deathbeds, and watched departing souls, borne in the chariots of salvation, singing the hymns of Paradise\emdash may have most need to prefer as their habitual prayer, "Hold me up, and I shall be safe!" "And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out" (Matt. 8:11, 12).\par \par Let us write "Beware" on our seasons of loftGiest privilege\emdash and on our moments of highest inspiration. "Beware" of a spirit of indifference to divine things, harboring anything that would blunt the fine edge of conscience, and grieve the Holy Spirit of God; allowing religion to become a weariness; outwardly professing godliness\emdash while inwardly in league with the world, the flesh, and the devil. If the path of destruction be once entered on, it is difficult to turn aside, or to retrace the upward way. How often those, who at first only aHllowed themselves a 'slight deflection' from duty, and who would, with a Hazael's scorn, resent the imputation of baser and fouler deeds, have gone on from weakness to weakness, until their bosoms have become a moral charnel-house\emdash a hell of guilty passion, godless lust, and hopeless despair!\par \par One of the saddest, if not the saddest of Bible utterances is this, "Ephraim"\emdash (the loved\emdash the trusted\emdash the privileged\emdash the "dear Son"\emdash God's "pleasant child")\eImdash "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!"\par \par 2. A second lesson we may learn from the story of Gehazi, is the certainty of sin's detection. It was a boldly-conceived, and a boldly-executed scheme, of the audacious criminal. As with the prophet of Nineveh, when he embarked in the opportune vessel at the port of Joppa, just sailing for Tarshish\emdash everything seemed to promise and insure him success\emdash the unsuspicious natures of the two principals, Elisha and Naaman\emdaJsh the long distance that would soon separate the warrior from the Prophet\emdash so that suspicion, even if roused, would lack 'confirmation'\emdash then the convenient hiding place, where the ill-gotten treasure was stowed away, among these limestone crags and their tufted thicket and herbage. The crafty plotter had nothing further to do, but to preserve his own look of naivety and innocence; and the first favoring moment (in the absence of his master, or at dead of night, when the other occupants of thKe dwelling were asleep), he might transfer the booty to some place of greater safety; disposing of the rich garments, in exchange for gold, to the first traveling caravan of merchants he would meet on the way to Philistia or Egypt, and investing the silver in the purchase of sheep and oxen, vineyard and oliveyard, in one of the fertile glens of Ephraim.\par \par Yes, the luxurious, independent future is all pleasantly mapped out before him. He sees himself the owner of an estate; barns built, grLanaries stored, abundance laid up for many years; servants and slaves reaping his corn, pressing his grapes, and serving his table; his life, too, of leisure and luxury.\par \par Such were the air-castles which Gehazi, in common with thousands of accomplished graduates in crime, have reared for themselves. But he forgot, or tried at least to bury from remembrance, the truth which he had embodied in his own thoughtless imprecation, that "Jehovah lives!"\emdash that there is an eye above, keener tMo detect than that of warrior or prophet\emdash that the true God of heaven has, employed in His service, retributive agents, swifter than the heathen's avenging furies, who dog the heels of crime, and do not allow the world to forget the old warning, "Be sure your sin will find you out!" "If I ascend up into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your rNight hand shall hold me" (Ps. 139:8-10).\par \par It is true, that sentence against an evil work is not always (indeed, is seldom) executed speedily. God many times seems to "keep silence"\emdash to be like the Baal of Carmel, "asleep." The daring and presumptuous venture their own skeptic conclusions on this patience of the Most High, in thinking Him "altogether such an one as themselves"\emdash "The Lord does not see, neither does the God of Jacob regard" (Ps. 94:7). If, however, there be in tOhe present state, exceptions to this great retributive law in God's moral economy\emdash if the theft, or lie, or deed of darkness perpetrated under cloud of night, escapes detection\emdash there is a day coming when every such Gehazi will be brought to stand naked in the presence of the Great Heart-Searcher, and the truth become a stereotyped reality in the next\emdash "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."\par \par And as the detection will be sure, so also will the Ppunishment be commensurate with the crime. In the case of Gehazi, most befitting was the nature of the retribution. He would rob the restored Commander of his festal garment\emdash a 'white garment', too, he shall have in return, but very different truly from the one he has avariciously taken\emdash a garment of dreadful import, which in a terrible sense shall "not wear out"\emdash for it shall go down a frightful heirloom to his children's children. It is a robe of leprosy\emdash "white as snow." "Be notQ deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap!"\par \par 3. A third lesson we may draw from the narrative is, the tendency of one sin to generate another. When the moral sense becomes weakened, and moral restraints are withdrawn, the 'horde of demons' gather strength\emdash the 'avalanche of depravity' acquires bulk as well as velocity, in its downward course of havoc and ruin. "These wild beasts\emdash the wolves of the soul\emdash may hunt at first singly, but Rafterwards they go in packs, and the greater number increases the voraciousness thereof." When the citadel of the heart is carried by assault, one bastion after another is dismantled, and its treasure abandoned to the enemy. The Reaper angels, in the final harvest of wrath, are pictured as gathering, not single stalks, or even sheaves, but bundles to be burnt."\par \par Mark the sad experience of Gehazi\emdash\par \par 1. Note his COVETOUSNESS. Avarice was the besetting sin of his natuSre\emdash the prolific parent of all the others. He was among the last, indeed, who ought to have succumbed to it. What position, one might have thought, more favored\emdash more to be envied, than his? It was angel-work, surely\emdash that to be the confidant and associate of Jehovah's greatest living prophet; away from the din and turmoil and sin of busy cities; free from the cares and anxieties of a coarse, secular calling\emdash living in an atmosphere of holy and blissful seclusion\emdash yet no unnaTtural, hermit life either; but alternating devotion and study, with active work in his often-journeyings to and from Carmel, along with him whose delight, like that of a Greater, seems to have been "going about doing good." What a school for faith, and love, and charity\emdash the nurture of generous thought and philanthropic deed!\par \par But an enemy came and sowed tares in that promising field\emdash the furrows too readily received the accursed seed, and the crop of covetousness choked the Ubetter and nobler portion. For some pieces of silver and a few costly garments, he, who might have been faithful to death as the loyal servant of the man of God, sold his honored birthright, and stooped to a deed of unparalleled lowliness. Come and read on the tomb of one whose name might otherwise have had its place on the roll of Hebrew worthies\emdash "For the iniquity of his covetousness was I angry\emdash and smote him!" (Isa. 57:17)\par \par 2. But the motive-power of covetousness roused iVnto action other depraved, and, until now, slumbering forces. We have to note next, his UNTRUTHFULNESS. Isaac Watts' child-hymn, in simplest child-language, expresses in brief the sad experience of this covetous attendant\emdash "For he who does one fault at first, and lies to hide it, makes it two."\par \par In rushing after Naaman's chariot, he accomplishes his robbery and pillage by means of a brazen falsehood\emdash a plausible, ingenious story; and then, on returning with cool effrontery toW the presence of his master, the unexpected questioning to which he is subjected, only serves to elicit another denial. When he went in to his master, Elisha asked him, "Where have you been, Gehazi?" "I haven't been anywhere," he replied. 2 Kings 5:25\par \par Among the diverse and multiform ranks of evil-doers in our fallen humanity, there are none more degraded and hopeless than those recruited by the liar. From most other sins there is ever the possibility of emancipation and recovery; but inX the case of the 'traitor to truth', conscience gets debauched and demoralized, and the moral perceptions blunted. Add to this, the convicted soon awake to the discovery, that through their unreliable words and ways, their worldly reputation and character become irreparably injured and impaired. How scrupulously should we seek to "buy the truth, and to sell it not!"\par \par Under how many specious forms and counterfeits is the beauty and purity of this "pearl of character" disfigured, by the arYtful equivocation\emdash the mental reservation\emdash the circuitous policy\emdash the disingenuous intrigue\emdash the trick of trade\emdash the gilded compliment\emdash the fashionable apology\emdash the polished evasion\emdash the unmanly insinuation\emdash the bold exaggeration!\par \par Ah, beautiful virgin Truth! when shall we see you, arrayed in your pure white garments, lighting your vestal fires in this treacherous, unreliable, overreaching world? There is a noble ring in your voice whZich cannot be mistaken\emdash truth of word, truth of character, transparency of conduct\emdash "the true life." Among the many messages needed, in a degenerate age, to be with trumpet-tongue proclaimed from press and pulpit, none is more urgent than that suggested by the Apostle's text\emdash "Therefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor."\par \par God is emphatically the God of Truth\emdash "A God of truth, and without iniquity; just and right is He." Gehazi\emdash an[d not only Gehazi, but his children's children\emdash "his descendants forever," would be a perpetual standing commentary in Israel of the Psalmist's denunciation\emdash "You hate all the workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak lying. The Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man" (Ps. 5:6).\par \par 3. Scarcely distinguishable from Gehazi's sin of falsehood\emdash akin to it, and a part of it\emdash (a sister spirit of evil)\emdash let us note still further, his HYPOCRISY. Bad\ enough and base enough was the nefarious lie; but the guilt of it was specially aggravated by his 'pretending better things'. Had he been untrained and untutored in higher duties\emdash a rough mountaineer, who did mere manual drudgery and labor of hewing wood and drawing water for the school at Gilgal\emdash or had Elisha unwittingly taken into his household service, one of the moral waifs\emdash the pests and scum of society, that doubtless haunted Judean towns and villages as they do our own\emdash we] could not have so wondered at his becoming the prey of sudden and great temptation, and even fencing round his bold sin by a bolder falsehood.\par \par But he was, as we have seen, for a long course of years, the trusted and disciplined attendant of the man of God\emdash with whom he had constantly mingled in religious and solemn duty, and borne the staff and mantle of the prophetical office\emdash no, if we mistake not, himself one of the sons of the prophets\emdash an aspirant to the sacred c^alling. He doubtless could not fail to be well known throughout all Israel. The calm and stately demeanor of the gentle Elisha could not be hidden from the youth who traveled at his side, and sped on his errands of mercy. What a shock to this kind-hearted master, when, all in a moment, his eyes were opened to the base, sordid, grasping, lying ways of him who had given proof and promise of other and better things\emdash who had abused his confidence\emdash wounded his unsuspecting nature\emdash compromised_ his integrity in the sight of Naaman\emdash done his best to brand him with having as shrewd an eye to his own interests as the most avaricious slave in heathen Syria, or the most mercenary, time-serving priest in Rimmon's Temple.\par \par This deceit and trickery, in Gehazi's case, was double treason before high heaven. He was the Old Testament parallel\emdash the living counterpart, of the 'withered fig-tree' on the road to Bethany, which received the dreadful doom from the lips of 'injured T`ruth'\emdash not so much because it was a fruitless cumberer, as because it was a base pretender. If it had been content with the avowal of its barrenness\emdash extending its 'bare' stems like skeleton\emdash mere arms in the midst of that fig-grove\emdash it would, in all probability, have been passed without comment. But it mocked the eye of the spectator with deceitful foliage; appearing as if it had gratefully yielded to the influences of spring suns, and dews, and rains\emdash an attractive rustlinga sheen\emdash but hid no fruit behind. The malediction falls upon it\emdash the blasted, withered leaves next day strew the turf of Olivet. The miracle stands forth in sacred story, the one solitary act of doom in Christ's ministry of love\emdash "Let no fruit henceforth grow upon you forever."\emdash "How soon is the fig-tree withered away!"\par \par Significant picture of the hypocrite\emdash the base alloy that would pass itself off for pure gold\emdash the false life that mimics and counterfbeits the true\emdash like the sprinkling of virgin snow that covers treacherous pit or festering corruption\emdash the man of saintly appearance, who, like Gehazi, utters his perjury\emdash "swears to his own hurt," under the garb of religious pretension and sanctimonious profession\emdash a wretched actor on the stage of unreality, who even makes these artificial disguises auxiliaries in accomplishing vile intrigue; and base, worldly schemes. No sin so heinous as this.\par \par It has often beecn noted that our Divine Redeemer, in His discourses and sayings in the days of His flesh, had words of kindness, encouragement, and mercy to the very publicans and harlots\emdash the lowest dregs of the Jewish population. The greatest outcast from purity, was allowed to kiss His feet, and bedew them with tears. The one class for whom He has nothing but withering words\emdash on whom He discharges arrows of wrath, and judgment, and woe\emdash are "pharisees! hypocrites!"\par \par But we shall notd close this series of meditations with so gloomy a theme as the stern lessons derived from the contemplation of a vicious and vitiated life. We shall rather take one parting glimpse at that cavalcade vanishing from sight amid the mountains of Ephraim, with the two strange loads of earth borne in its midst\emdash the warrior-chief and his entourage, perhaps, together waking the echoes of the valleys through which they pass with songs of grateful praise.\par \par We might have wished to know the seequel of that striking history. It would have interested us to have had further described Naaman's return to the old capital\emdash his entrance within 'the Gate of God'\emdash his meeting with his glad and wondering household\emdash his tribute of special gratitude to the little Hebrew maid\emdash his ministering angel\emdash in whose case later prophetic words had a remarkable fulfillment\emdash "The feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel off the Lord before them" (Zech. 12:8)\emdash the erection of the earthen altar, close, it may be, by the Abana, whose musical stream would now recall other and more hallowed river-memories. May we not even picture the rejoicing proselyte as High Priest in his own dwelling, gathering his family around the pile of consecrated dust, singing the new hymn of his adopted faith and trust\emdash "God is the Lord, who has showed us light. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. You are my Gogd, and I will praise You; You are my God, I will exalt You. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord\emdash for He is good; for His mercy endures forever!" (Ps. 118:27-29)\par \par On Naaman's future, however, the sacred narrative is silent; and it is not for us to attempt to lift the veil and indulge in conjecture. Doubtless he would come to know, that the new and higher life on which he had entered, purchases no exemption from struggle and conflict and fierce temptation\emdash that all who live godly musht suffer persecution\emdash that his altar, with its holy earth, would in itself be no charm against the corruptions of his own heart and the wiles of the Great Adversary\emdash that though he had returned among the mountains of Lebanon no longer the blinded pagan he had left them, there were still in their midst, in a truer and more perilous than literal sense, "lions' dens and mountains of leopards." Let us hope and believe that he lived and died, another Daniel in Babylon; maintaining a consistent and iunsullied character; against whom neither the votaries of Rimmon nor the courtiers of Benhadad could bring any weightier accusation than in the case of the other\emdash "Our only chance of finding grounds for accusing Daniel will be in connection with the requirements of his religion." (Dan. 6:5).\par \par We can with greater confidence picture Naaman, now, "on the other side Jordan"\emdash within the Gate of God\emdash in "the city which has foundations;" made "more than conqueror"\emdash his ojld name invested with a new celestial meaning\emdash "beautified with salvation"\emdash singing, in concert with the multitude which no man can number, "the new song"\emdash even the song of the crowned victors who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb\emdash "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father\emdash to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever" (Rev. 1:5, 6).\par \par Whkile, in the case of Gehazi, we have the toll of a warning bell beckoning us off the rocks in life's treacherous sea; in Naaman\emdash who by better than any earthly title or earthly promotion was "Captain of the Lord's host"\emdash we have a bright beacon-light shining on the heavenly shore, and inviting us to cast anchor in the same sheltering haven. That great salvation\emdash which, through the symbol of washing in the waters of Israel, was so free to him\emdash is equally free to us. There are chimes stealing down from the upper sanctuary, sounding in our ears the glorious invitation and welcome\emdash "Whoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." The same benediction breathed upon him, is breathed upon us\emdash a benediction proceeding from the lips of ONE mightier than Hebrew Prophet, and who surrendered His own life that He might have a right to utter it\emdash "Go in peace!" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives!" (John 14:27)\par \cf1\fs23\par }  aQ11 A Voice of Warning{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22\par \par A VOICE OF WARNING\par \par 2 Kings 5:20-27\par But Gehazi,! SYRIAN\par An Old Testament Chapter in Providence and Grace\par John MacDuff, 1873.\par \par 1. Introduction\emdash the Contrasted Rivers.\par 2. The Leper-warrior.\par 3. The Little Captive Maid.\par 4. The Pilgrimage.\par 5. The Remedy and its Rejection.\par 6. Man's Thoughts and God's Thoughts.\par 7. Seasonable Admonition.\par 8. The Crisis and the Cure.\par 9. Consecration.\par 10. Scruples of the New Proselyte.\par 11. A Voice of Warning.\par \par \par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } m 91MacDuff - Story of Naaman the Syrian (1873){\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE STORY OF NAAMAN THEm