ael of which he took no account. Like many other governments, this
Israelitish monarchy was unaware of its own resources, because it did
not condescend to reckon what was spiritual. Frequently in civil
history you find governments brought face to face with matters for
which they are, with all their resources, incompetent. In modern
Europe, and as much in our own country as in others, everything gives
place to politics. Nothing stirs so much excitement. Differences in
religion do not sever men as differences in politics do. We should,
therefore, recognise what is here suggested, and should
counter-balance an undue regard for political movements and political
power by the remembrance that the hardest tasks of all are
accomplished by quite another power, and by a power which the
politician often overlooks. What have we seen time after time in our
own Parliament, but the civil power rending its garments over evils
which it cannot cure? Are not the remedies which have been proposed
for prevalent vices absurdly incompetent? And it is the Church's
shame if she cannot step forward and confidently say, You cannot deal
with such things; hand them over to me. There must always be
"distempers of society" which rot the very life out of a nation, and
for which legislation and criminal law are wholly inadequate.
Honest-minded men who will not trifle with alarming abuses, who will
not pretend they have found a remedy, must simply rend their garments
in their presence. And it is well that in our day, as in others,
there are men who, trusting in personal effort and Divine aid,
practically say to Government, "leave these things to us." Christian
charity and practical wisdom have, in our day effected a good deal
more than the healing of one leprous grandee, even if as yet the
spiritual force that resides in the community is only spasmodically
and partially applied to existing evil.

Elisha's treatment of Naaman was intended to bring him into direct
and conscious dependence on God; or, in other words, to produce
humility and faith. Some persons are crushed and mastered by pain and
sickness, and some gain in spiritual worth what they lose in physical
strength. But Naaman's disease had as yet done little to instruct
him. He came as a great man, with his servants, and chariots, and
piles of money, to purchase a cure from a skilled man. He did not see
what Elisha plainly saw, that if this blessing came at all, it must
come from Israel's God, a