2. But Naaman was a leper.
We can scarcely imagine the greatness of this calamity, — the anguish that overwhelmed his proud spirit, the sorrow that pervaded his house. "The basest slave in Syria," says Bishop
1 M. G. Pearse. 459
46o NAAMAN
Hall, " would not change skins with him, if he might have his honour to boot. Thus hath the wise God thought wise to sauce the valour, dignity, renown, victories of the famous general of the Syrians." No wonder that the little slave girl who attended upon his wife was touched with pity, and, remembering the miraculous power of the great prophet of her country, said to her mistress, " Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria ! "
^ Leprosy was feared and fled from in Israel as the stroke of God. Leprosy was the most fearful and the most hateful disease known to man. Leprosy was so loathsome, and so utterly incur- able and deadly, that it was not looked on as an ordinary disease at all, but rather as a special creation in His anger, and a direct curse of God, both to punish sin, and, at the same time, to teach His people something of what an accursed thing sin really is ; till the whole nature of leprosy and all the laws laid down for its treatment, and the miraculous nature of its so seldom cure, all combined to work into the imagination, and into the conscience, and into the heart, and into the ritual, and into the literature of Israel, some of her deepest lessons about the terrible nature and the only proper treatment of sin.^
3. At this distance we may pass lightly over his misfortune and think of his^jcJiaracter, which still lives before us in that page, so fiery and generous, so proudly sensitive, and yet so responsive to the voice of reason, till, as we dwell on this, we feel a touching appropriateness in the blessing which he receives, when his flesh comes again like the flesh of a little child. And have we not also felt the impressive contrast of worldly and spiritual grandeur, of that which fills the imagination and that which commands the soul, when the great captain comes with his chariot and his horses and stands before the door of a plain man's dwelling, and the prophet without moving from his seat sends forth his message by another ?
It was then that Naaman learned a lesson which many an ingenuous heart like his has learned through suffering, though some pass through life without learning it — that the truest bless- ings, the truest gifts, are often those which we are tempted to despise as common. It is a lessqp. which only experience can teach to those who need it, and yet it is not in vain to repeat it
' A. Whyte.
2 KINGS V. 13 461
often in a time when it is much forgotten, and when the marvel- lous, the exciting, the new and striking, are taking the place of the wise and just and true.
/ ^ Men have been saved from ruin by a grasp of the hand, a vkind word, a generous deed. A bunch of flowers in a dingy and dirty tenement has started thoughts and memories that have meant the resurrection of a soul. A tear, a smile, have done for some spirits in the prisons of sorrow or sin what all the wealth of the Indies could never do. So possible is it to pack untold wealth into such small bulk. A ray of sunshine from some bright life will work a rainbow upon the tears of some forlorn sufferer. The best gifts are, after all, the easiest given.^
^ I have sometimes thought that there seems to be a peculiar potency in the smaller gifts, representing, as they often do, the greatest, most devoted sacrifice. Could we trace the intricate crossings of the lines of influence in the web of life, we would be awed many times at the potency of the giving that is small in amount but tinted red with the Ufe-blood of sacrifice.^
A chance remark, or a song's refrain.
And life is never the same again !
A glimpse of a face in a crowded street.
And afterwards life is incomplete.
A friendly smile, and love's embering spark
Leaps into flame, and illumines the dark;
A whispered " Be brave " to our fellow-men.
And they pick up the thread of hope again.
Thus never an act, or word, or thought,
But that with unguessed importance is fraught;
For small things build up eternity.
And blazon the way for a destiny.
T.
Naaman's Angee.
The directions given by the prophet were plain and specific. " Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean." Could anything be more explicit ? One would have thought that Naaman would have been glad to have had a certain cure promised him on such easy condi-
^ C. Silvester Home, in Youth and Life, 68. ^ S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 180.
462 NAAMAN
tions. But no. His pride had been humbled ; the prophet had not shown him proper respect ; he had proposed a condition which was ridiculous on the face of it. If the prophet had nothing better for him, he might as well turn home at once.