to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor ?"

After rebuking his unmanly fears, we perceive that in the latter part of his message, in which he speaks the language of positive assurance, as became one who had received his instructions from God, he relieves the mind of the king from his ill-founded apprehensions, "He shall know that there is a prophet in Israel," if Israel's king forgets it. Elisha was evidently eager to avail himself of the opportunity of glorifying his Divine Master, and of showing the infinite superiority of Jehovah to all the "gods many and lords many" of heathen Syria. This would be done when the miraculous cure was effected; of the certainty of which we may well believe the prophet was assured, if the conditions demanded were all complied with.

The line of conduct adopted by Elisha was but a faint pre-shadowing of that which has been pursued by a greater than he. Man, in the difficulties and dangers and woes to which his transgressions of the divine law have brought him, seeks not God to deliver him. No cry from his burdened and bleeding heart is directed to the ears of the truly beneficent and

compassionate One, who "delighteth in mercy, and waiteth to be gracious." "God is not in all his thoughts." He seems to forget his existence; or if he remember it, he is ashamed to call upon him; imagining that on account of his previous neglect of God, he will be met with an utter indifference, even to his most earnest and agonizing appeals.

Man thus judges of God as he would of his fellow man; but that judgment, by anticipation, Jehovah deprecates; "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." In the fulness of his divine mercy he makes the first overtures to the sinner; offering the aid without which he must inevitably perish. He graciously reasons with him on the folly of his conduct, and shows the necessity for an immediate repentance—that is, a change of mind. He assures him, that no matter what the amount or aggravation of his guilt in the past, it can be removed; and, by the intervention of the divine Redeemer, shall, in the case of every one that believeth: that however disturbed and wretched the mind of man may

have been, through that Redeemer, it shall realise a peace "that passeth understanding," a rest that is the portion of the people of God. Thus, from the throne of light, ever come forth voices of encouragement, words of pity, breathed in tones of the deepest tenderness, and addressed to the guiltiest: "Let him come now to me." "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Yes, "God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Naaman appears to have been made acquainted with the message of the prophet, and immediately perceiving the mistake into which both he and his royal master had fallen, with reference to the person by whom the cure was to be wrought, he "came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha."

Here was one of the great ones of the earth,

a mighty man of renown, waiting, as an applicant for a precious boon, at the door of the dwelling of an Israelitish ploughman! Is there not something in this of unusual signification? Is there not, independent of the fact that the latter is the man in whose hands are supposed to rest his life and happiness,—and this might justify the court paid to the prophet-a deeper truth set before us? that worldly rank and splendour confer not upon any man the true greatness which spiritual gifts and graces bestow. Elisha, to whom prophetic knowledge had been communicated, on whom the mysterious influence of the Holy Ghost had rested, who was favoured with intercourse with the King of Kings, and on whose eyes the grandeurs and glories of a world to others invisible had flashed again and again, was surely a man occupying a far higher and nobler position than Naaman could be said to fill, with all his rank, and wealth, and honours. And this fact seems to have revealed itself, in the position assumed and the conduct exhibited by the prophet, which, as we shall see, tended rather to the annoyance of Naaman and to the wounding of his self-love.

Elisha was evidently careful not to allow the Syrian to imagine that he thought there was any condescension exhibited by him in this visit; and the mode of proceeding which the former adopted was doubtless so determined on, in order to set Naaman right upon a point in which he was evidently wrong. Elisha taught him the grand lesson, that in the sight of God, and in the sight of all his true servants, in matters pertaining to God, there is no respect of persons; that Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, bond and free, are equal all.

This truth was unquestionably shadowed forth under the old dispensation, as witness the divine command* for the offering of the halfshekel by every man unto the Lord, as a ransom for his soul: "the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the Lord, to make atonement for their souls."

But how gloriously it is presented in the gospel! That is emphatically a "common salvation" which it proclaims; and princes and peasants, if they would participate in its favours, must alike be found in the same posture, at the

* Exod. xxx. 11-16.