Homilist 2 Kings 8:13 And Hazael said, But what, is your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered… I. THE SENSE OF VIRTUE IN HUMAN NATURE. When the prophet with tears told Hazael the heartless cruelties he would perpetrate — he seemed to have such a sense of virtue within him that he was shocked at the monstrosity, and said, "What! is thy servant a dog?" We need not suppose that he feigned this astonishment, but that it was real, and that it now produced a revulsion at the cruelties he was told he would soon perpetrate. Every man has a sense of right within him; indeed, this sense is an essential element in our constitution, the moral substance of our manhood, the core of our nature, our moral ego; it is what we call conscience. II. THE EVIL POSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN NATURE. This man, who was shocked at the idea of perpetrating such enormities at first, actually enacted them a few hours afterwards. The elements of the devil are in every man, though he may not know it. The vulture eggs of evil are in all depraved hearts; it only requires a certain heat of the outward atmosphere to hatch' them into life. The virtue of many men is only vice sleeping. The evil elements of the heart are like gunpowder, passive, until the spark of temptation falls on them. The greatest monsters in human history were at one time considered innocent and kind. "Many a man," says a modern author, "could he have a glimpse in innocent youth of what he would be twenty or thirty years after, would pray in anguish that he might be taken in youth before coming to that." What is the moral of this? The necessity of a change of heart. III. THE SELF-IGNORANCE OF HUMAN NATURE. How ignorant of himself and his heart was Hazael when he said, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing?" Men do not know what they are. Self-ignorance is the most common of all ignorance; the most culpable of all ignorance; the most ruinous of all ignorance. IV. THE RESILIENT VELOCITY OF HUMAN NATURE. To-day this man seemed in sympathy with the just and the good, to-morrow his whole nature is aflame with injustice and cruelty; to-day he soars up with the angels, to-morrow he revels with the torturing fiends. Souls can fall from virtue swiftly as the shooting stars. One hour they may blaze in the firmament, the next lie deep in the mud. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria. |
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