Our young people, our children, our servants that minister to our comfort, our assistants and clerks that multiply our personal activities and help to build up our fortunes, is there no danger to their spiritual life in being exposed as they are to the spiritual influences which we give off every hour? They see the cavalcades of wealth, they gaze at the ingots of gold and the great white silver bars; they look with longing eyes at the silks with colours that come and go like the iris on the dove's neck. The luxuries of meat and drink appeal to them. The temptation to live for these things assaults them.
And what help does Gehazi get from Elisha to-day? What help do young men in offices and shops get from masters and heads of departments? What help do servants in London homes get from the daily examples of mistresses? What are the inferences drawn in the kitchen from things heard and seen in the dining or drawing-room? and what in the nursery? Does a young man who sees to the very core of your business say to himself, "The master's profession of religion is hypocrisy—all religion is hypocrisy?" Then may God help him, for he is smitten with the leprosy of Elisha; and may God help you, for it is a sorry business to evangelise Asiatics and send your own servants forth from your presence lepers white as snow.
Let every master and mistress pray, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
HAZAEL
BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
"But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"—2 KINGS viii. 13.
Hazael was the chief minister and prime favourite of Benhadad, the Syrian king. He had been raised from a humble lot and promoted to that high post by the partiality of his sovereign, who had doubtless discerned his exceptional abilities, and certainly placed implicit trust in him. Just now the king was dangerously ill, and Hazael had been sent to inquire of the prophet of Israel as to the probable issue of the sickness. He put the question with seeming anxiety: "Will my master recover?" He spoke as if that was his dearest wish; perhaps he did wish it. But there were evidently other thoughts half-formed, lurking and hiding themselves in the background. Suppose the king should die and leave the throne vacant, what then? May there not be a chance for me? Elisha read these hidden thoughts, and looked the man in the face long and steadfastly, until the face turned crimson and the head was lowered with shame. And then the prophet said, "Thy master need not die of the sickness; nevertheless, he will die, and I see you filling a throne won by murder, and I have a picture before me of the terrible things which you will do to my dear land of Israel." And as this vision passed before the prophet's eyes, he wept. Then Hazael gave the answer which stands at the head of this paper.
It is open to two interpretations. The Authorised Version gives one and the Revised Version the other. According to the first, it is an indignant denial; he recoils with horror from the picture of perfidy, cruelty, and enormous criminality which the prophet has sketched for him. I am not capable of such a thing, he says; "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?" According to the other reading it is not the crime that he revolts from, but the kingship and the greatness that he refuses to believe in. It seems so improbable and all but impossible that he, a man of obscure birth, should climb to such eminence. He exclaims against it as a piece of incredulous and extravagant imagination. "What is thy servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?"
Now, I doubt not that both readings may be allowed. For certainly both thoughts were in the speaker's mind. He did not believe at that moment that he could ever be brought to commit such infamous deeds, and he did not believe that he could ever attain such high ambitions and power. There was a dark moral depth predicted for him to which he was sure he would never fall, and there was a certain grandeur and elevation to which he was confident he would never rise. To both things he said, "It is impossible," and yet the impossible came to pass.
Now I would have you observe that this is one of the prominent lessons of the Bible; on many a page does it bring out an unexpected development like this. Again and again it is the unlikely that happens in the lives which figure on its pages. They rise or they fall in a way that no one looked for, and which they, least of all, anticipated themselves. We seem to hear them saying with Hazael, "Impossible," and then, before we get far, the thing is done. Impossible, we say, that king Saul should ever descend so low as to deal in witches; or that Solomon, the wise, God-fearing youth, should give himself up to the sway of lustful passions and idolatries. Yet that comes to pass. Impossible, we say, that the cunning, lying Jacob should ever develop into a man of prayer; and the outcast beggar, Jephthah, ever grow into a hero-patriot and king. Yet we see it. In the Bible stories greatness always comes to those who have neither marked themselves out for it, nor deemed themselves fit for it; and, on the contrary, its most infamous deeds are done, and its most shameful lives lived, by those who have given promise of fairer things, and who in their early manhood would have scouted the possibility of descending so low. The men whom it describes have no suspicion, to begin with, of the great power for good that is in them, or the equally great possibilities of evil. Tell the shepherd youth, David, that he has in him the making of a king and an immortal poet, and he will think you are poking fun at him. Tell him that he will one day fall into the crimes of adultery and murder, and make all Israel blush for him, and he will be indignant enough to strike you to the ground. Speak to the fisherman, Peter, of the commanding influence which awaits him in some coming kingdom of God, and he will think you are beside yourself: and then tell him that he will one day deny and curse his sworn Master and kindest Friend, and he will ask you, Do you think I am a dog or a devil that I should do this? Impossible! And yet the thing comes off.