.
Then he inquired who was the preacher, and he found out it was the
very man that he said he would not hear--the man he disliked. The
very man he had been talking against was the very man God used to
convert him.

Whilst Naaman was thus wavering in his mind, and thinking on what
was best to be done, one of his servants drew near and made a very
sensible remark:

"My lord, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest
thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith to thee,
Wash, and be clean?"

There is a great deal of truth in that.

If Elisha had told him to go back to Syria on his hands and knees,
one hundred and fifty miles, he would have done it and thought it
was all right. If he had told him to go into some cave and stay
there a year or two, he would have done it and thought it was all
right. If he had told him that it was necessary to have some
surgical operation performed, and that he had to go through all the
torture incident to it, that would have suited him. Men like to have
something to do about their salvation; they don't like to give up
the idea that they can't do anything; that God must do it all. If
you tell them to take bitter herbs every morning and every night for
the next five years, they think that's all right, and if he had told
Naaman to do that he would have done it. But to tell him merely to
dip in the river Jordan seven times, why, it seemed absurd on the
face of it! But this servant suggested to him that he had better go
down to the Jordan and try the remedy, as it was

A VERY SIMPLE ONE.

Now, don't you see yourselves there? How many men there are who are
waiting for some great thing; waiting for some sudden feeling to
come stealing over them; waiting for some shock to come upon them.
That is not what the Lord wants. There is a man that I have talked
to about his soul for a number of years, and the last time I had a
talk with him, he said:

"Well, the thing hasn't struck me yet."

I said: "What?"

"Well," says he, "the thing hasn't struck me yet."

"Struck you; what do you mean?"

"Well," said he, "I go to church, and I hear you preach, and I hear
other men preach, but the thing hasn't struck me yet; it strikes
some people, but it hasn't struck me yet."

That was all that I could get out of him. There are a good many men
who reason in that way. They have heard some young converts tell how
light dawned upon them like the flash of a meteor; how they