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Naaman starts back to Damascus a very different man than he was when he left it. The dark cloud has gone from his mind; he is no longer a leper, in fear of dying from a loathsome disease.
"Oh," you say, "I love leprosy, it is so delightful, I can't give it up; I know God wants it, that He may make me clean. But I can't give it up." Why, what downright madness it is for you to love leprosy; and yet that is your condition. "Ah," says someone, "I don't believe in sudden conversions." Don't you? How long did it take Naaman to be cured?
If his act needed forgiveness, it should not have been done, nor thus calmly announced. It is vain to ask forgiveness beforehand for known sin about to be committed. Elisha is not asked for his sanction, and he neither gives nor refuses it. He dismissed Naaman with cold dignity, in the ordinary conventional form of leave-taking.
A second class of conversions on private judgment consists of those which take place upon the sight or the strong testimony of miracles. Such was the instance of Rahab, of Naaman, if he may be called a convert, and of Nebuchadnezzar; of the blind man in John ix, of St. Paul, of Cornelius, of Sergius Paulus, and many others. Here again the act of judgment is of a very peculiar character.
But Naaman was wroth, and went away. 2 KINGS v. 10,11. These two figures are significant of much beyond themselves. Elisha the prophet is the bearer of a divine cure. Naaman, the great Syrian noble, is stricken with the disease that throughout the Old Testament is treated as a parable of sin and death.
But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow; and many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saveing Naaman the Syrian."
Bowing in the house of Rimmon meant nothing new to Naaman; it was not worship; it was no more than turning round a street corner when the king had hold of his arm. To him the idol was now, as to Paul, "nothing in the world." But if the king had said, "You must bow to show the people that you worship Syria's god," then plainly the bowing would have been unjustifiable.
A deeper faith would have said, 'Perish court favour and everything that hinders me from making known whose I am. But Naaman is an early example of the family of 'Facing-both-ways, and of trying to 'make the best of both worlds. But his sophistication of conscience will not do, and his own dissatisfaction with his excuse peeps out plainly in his petition that he may be forgiven.
People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimmon.
And when the hard frost came, it brought a friend to my door. It was Mr Stoddart. He entered my room with something of the countenance Naaman must have borne, after his flesh had come again like unto the flesh of a little child. He did not look ashamed, but his pale face looked humble and distressed.
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