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LECTURE IV.

2 KINGS V. 10.

"AND ELISHA SENT A MESSENGER UNTO HIM, SAYING, GO AND WASH IN JORDAN SEVEN TIMES, AND THY FLESH SHALL COME AGAIN TO THEE, AND THOU SHALT BE CLEAN."

AFTER the deeply-interesting narrative which engaged our attention upon the last occasion of my addressing you, we find Elisha passing on from Shunem to Gilgal, paying another visit to the school of the prophets there, and again performing a miracle of kindness and mercy.

He then retired to his watch-tower upon Mount Carmel, returning, necessarily, through Shunem, and no doubt occupying once more his prophet's

chamber on the wall, and gladdening his heart yet again with the sight of the happy mother, and her restored and healthful child. While immersed in his beloved solitude, the providence of God was preparing for him a second visitor, differing, indeed, most widely from her of whom we have lately spoken, but about to become equally a monument of the effect of the prayers of the prophet, and of the power of God.

Before we enter upon the consideration of the important interview to which we refer, we must take a brief survey of the circumstances that led to the arrival of this new visitor, a native of a foreign country, a man of warlike pursuits, and of idolatrous practices; high in rank, haughty in demeanour, and altogether, perhaps, one of the last whom we should have expected to find an humble suppliant at the prophet's gate.

"Naaman," for it is he of whom we speak, "was," we are told,"captain of

he

the host of the king of Syria, a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance (or victory) unto Syria." It was he, so the Targum informs us, who is spoken of in Scripture as "a certain man who drew a bow at a venture," which killed Ahab, and this, no doubt, had added greatly to his renown: was also a mighty man in valourbut he was a leper." What a close is this to the catalogue of his endowments. He possessed every thing that could make this world enjoyable, “but” he possessed one thing which marred the happiness of them all. Probably the whole of Syria envied the greatness, and the prosperity, and the exploits of Naaman, and yet, in that vast empire, not the lowest slave would have been found willing to have inherited his honours, if his leprosy had been a part of the entail. So remarkably equal, in every age, have been the dispensations

of Providence. If we knew the whole of each man's lot, perhaps of all those whom we are now most inclined to envy, there is not one human being in the universe, with whom we should be willing to exchange conditions. How powerful an incitement to follow the apostolical example, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." You will observe, that even St. Paul had learned this lesson; he knew it not by nature, and most assuredly it was never taught him at the feet of Gamaliel. It is only at the feet of Christ that true contentment is ever learnt. The man of the world may be taught, by long experience, theoretically to confess its excellence; but the man of God alone is enabled practically to realize its truth. He feels that, although

in his lot, as in Naaman's, there must ever in this world be some exception, "but;" still that he has every thing who possesses Christ, for the Word

some

of God has said, "All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." He no longer, therefore, views his worldly disappointments or his mental trials, or his bodily ailments, as unmixed calamities; so far from it, that, tracing a Father's hand, and a Father's love, in every visitation, every exception to his lot, he is enabled to feel gratitude even for those very chastenings in which the world can see nothing but unmitigated misery. In advancing years, and in declining health, the most trying of all visitations to the mere man of the world, the Christian is able to look contentedly, and even cheerfully, at the shaking of the walls of that cottage of clay in which his better part is sojourning; and to smile at the thought that yet a few more years, or months, and they shall mingle with their kindred dust, and their freed inhabitant shall wing its way to brighter