Article November 5, 1904 Issue

The Story of Naaman

E. C. MOSES.

Among the very interesting Biblical narratives, the true meanings of which have been unfolded to me by the light of our text-book, Science and Health, none have impressed my thought more forcibly than the story of Naaman in Second Kings. A review of Naaman's character, and of the incidents attending his experience, brings out the fact that human nature is fundamentally the same now that it was twenty-eight hundred years ago. It also shows how mortal mind, then as now, seemingly swayed by gross materialism and by ideas of self-will and self-satisfaction, desires to secure relief from the ills of the flesh by almost any other means than that of childlike trust in the Father, who forgiveth all our iniquities; who healeth all our diseases.

Naaman was captain of the host of the king of Syria. He was a man of honor, a good and courageous warrior, but, in common with many of his fellow-mortals, both among the high and the low, he was a leper. His wife had in her service a little captive maiden, an Israelitish girl who knew something of the prophet Elisha and of his demonstrations of Mind-healing, and one day she said to her mistress, "Would God my Lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy."

Naaman was probably suffering and therefore receptive, and after securing a commendatory letter from the king of Syria he went with it to the king of Israel. The tenor of this letter indicates that the king attributed such possible healing to necromancy, even as some to-day erroneously hold that Mind-healing is a process or a result of hypnotism.

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