Elisha and Gehazi were master and man.  They were more.  They were almost father and son.  Elisha calls him “my heart,” just as Paul calls Onesimus his heart.  Yet they parted so.—­“He went out from his presence a leper.”  The punishment was terrible.  Was it deserved?  Had the master a right to pass this sentence? “The leprosy of Naaman”—­yes! but had Gehazi caught nothing from Elisha?

Most commentators fall on Gehazi with one accord.  He is pilloried as a liar.  He is branded as a thief.  He is bracketed with Achan, and coupled with Judas.  They flatter the master, they are hard on the man.  But this is surely a very false reading of facts.  By clothing the prophet in spotless white, and tarring Gehazi a deep black all over, we violate the truth of things and miss the lesson of the story, which, like the sword-flames at Eden’s gate, turn many ways.

To take but one out of its numerous suggestions, we have here a story for servants of all sorts, and for masters and mistresses too, of all kinds.

The section is rich in domestic interiors.  Servants have always formed important members of the household, and often their service has risen to be a beautiful and holy ministry.

We see here, for example, a great Eastern lady, Naaman’s wife, and her little Jewish maid, whom the fortunes of war had swept from her home “in the land of Israel.”  In the division of the spoil, this human mite had fallen to Naaman’s share, and drifted into his lady’s service.  The slave-child has evidently reached the woman, perhaps the hungering mother’s heart, in her mistress; and the sorrow of the woman, for alas! she is a leper’s wife, has touched the servant’s heart.  The burning sense of the wrong to herself is cooled and quenched by the pity she feels for her master; and the expedition that brought health to Naaman, and unspeakable joy to Naaman’s wife, was the outcome of a word she spoke.  She knew of Elisha, she said what she knew, and great things came of it.

She did this, not as a slave of Naaman’s wife, but as a free human soul, and servant of God.  No tyranny could extort this service.  No wealth could pay for this golden secret.  Sometimes a character appears but once in the course of a great drama.  The man or woman, comes on the stage to deliver one message, and then disappears.  But that one brief word has its place in the playwright’s scheme, and its effect on the action of the piece.  This child was sent to Syria to utter one speech, to speak one name, and because she spoke her little speech, kindly and clearly, things went better with ever so many people.

“A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” but let there be more than money in the wage, and more than labour in the service.  Let no one, in being a servant, cease to be a free human soul.  Do you serve in Syria?  Is your lot cast among those that know not the Prophet?  Well, but you are from the land of Israel; speak your speech, tell out the Prophet’s name.  Be more than servant, more than clerk, more than a “hand,” an apprentice, a journeyman; be a soul, an influence, a link with higher things, a reminder of God, a minister of Christ.