Significant, also, is the dismay of Joram, King of Israel, when he received the letter bidding him find healing for Naaman.  So little did he believe in Elisha’s power that he concluded the King of Syria sought to pick a quarrel with him by asking him for a favour he knew he could not grant.  But while the king is helplessly tearing his clothes in a passion of despair, Elisha sends him a message which, at least for the present, gives him some calmness:  “Why hast thou rent thy clothes?  Let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.”  Elisha is ashamed that the King of Israel should have exhibited such weakness before a foreign potentate.  He feels that the honour of Israel’s God is implicated, and boldly takes upon himself the responsibility of the cure.  Bold it certainly was, and tells of a confident faith that God will be faithful to His servants.  The king had no such faith.  There was a power resident in Israel 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.