NAAMAN CURED.

There is no Scripture story better known than that of Naaman, the Syrian.  It is memorable not only because artistically told, but because it is so full of human feeling and rapid incident, and so fertile in significant ideas.  The little maid, whose touch set in motion this drama, is an instance of the adaptability of the Jew.  Nothing seemed less likely than that this captive girl should carry with her into Syria anything of much value to anyone.  Possessions she had none.  Friends she might have, only if she could make them.  As a captive in a foreign land she might reasonably have put aside all hope of obtaining any influence, and might naturally have sought only to benefit herself.  But she was a girl with a heart.  She at once took an interest in her new home, and saw with sorrowful surprise that wealth could not purchase immunity from participation in the ordinary human distresses, nor guarded gates forbid disease to pass in.  Brooding from day to day over the stories she had heard of Elisha’s power, and listening to her mistress’s account of the failure of still another attempted cure, she exclaims with childlike confidence and earnestness, “Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! then would he recover him of his leprosy.”  And thus her natural interest in the troubles of other people, her cheerful and spirited acceptance of her position, and the sense that taught her to make the most of it, brought her this great opportunity of doing an important service.  No one can lay the blame of his uselessness and lack of good influence on his lack of opportunity, if he is in contact with men at all, for wherever there are human beings there are sorrows to be sympathised with, wants to be relieved, characters to be fashioned.

And while this Jewish maid was utilising her captivity, her parents, if alive, would be eating their hearts out with anxiety and anguish, imagining for their daughter the worst of destinies.  Instead of the horrors which usually follow such a captivity, she is cared for in a comfortable home.  Little did the parents, think that there was any work to be done in Syria, which none could so well do as their little girl.  The Lord had need of her, and knew that when the parents heard all they would not resent that their daughter had been thus employed.  None of us see much further into the ways of Providence than those parents saw.  Now, as then, those who are bound up in one another are separated, in order that ends even more important than the growth and gratification of natural affections may be attained.