light ; and that, if he should do this thing of himself, he might appear to be unfaithful to his convictions, and to have relapsed into idolatry : he therefore entered, as it were, a protest against any such surmises, and gave a public pledge that he would do nothing that should be inconsistent with his professed attach- ment to Jehovah.
In this view of the subject, his question was every way right and proper. The honour of God and the salvation of his own soul depended on his not doing any thing that should be incon- sistent with his profession ; and therefore he did right to ask advice : and lest he should by any means cast a stumbling- block before others, he did well in explaining his views and intentions beforehand. What terrible evils had well nigh arisen from the neglect of such a precaution, when the tribes of Reuben and of Gad erected an altar on the banks of Jor- dan ^\ On the other hand, what e\dls were avoided,
when Paul explained his sentiments in the first instance pri- vately to the elders of Jerusalem, instead of exciting prejudice and clamour by a hasty and indiscriminate avowal of them in pubhc ^ ! It is thus that we should act with all possible cir- cumspection, not only avoiding evil, but " abstaining as much as possible from the very appearance of it*";" and not only doing good, but endeavouring to prevent " our good from being evil spoken of ?."]
The import of the answer given to it —
[This answer is not to be understood as a connivance at what was evil, but as an acknowledgment that Naaman might expect the divine blessing whilst pursuing the conduct he had proposed. Can we imagine that Naaman at that moment saw the thing to be evil, and yet desired a dispensation to commit it ? Did he, at the very moment that he was rejecting all false gods, and acknowledging Jehovah as the only true God, and determining to build an altar to Jehovah in his own country, and desiring earth from Jehovah's land to build it upon, did he then, I say, at that moment ask for a licence to play the hypocrite ? and can we suppose that he would confess such an intention to Elisha, and ask his sanction to it? or can we ima- gine that Elisha, knowing this, would approve of it, or give an evasive answer, instead of reprobating such impiety ? Assuredly not : the request itself, as made on that occasion, must of necessity have proceeded from an upright mind ; and the pro- phet's concession is an indisputable proof, that the request, made under those particular circumstances, was approved by him. Elisha saw that Naaman was upright: he knew that
f Josh. xxii. 9 — 34. e Gal. ii. 2.
f 1 Thess. v. 22. g Rom. xiv. 16.