Can there be a more absurd course of action than that recorded in our
text? 'When Ephraim saw his sickness, then went Ephraim to Assyria.' The
Northern Kingdom sought for the healing of their national calamities
from the very cause of their national calamities, and in repetition of
their national sin. A hopeful policy, and one which speedily ended in
the only possible result! But that insanity was but a sample of the
infatuation which besets us all. When we are conscious of our unrest,
are we not all tempted to seek to conceal it with what has made it? Take
examples from the grosser forms of animal indulgence. The drunkard's
vulgar proverb recommending 'a hair of the dog that bit you,' is but a
coarse expression of a common fault. He is wretched until 'another
glass' steadies, for a moment, his trembling hand, and gives a brief
stimulus to his nerves. They say that the Styrian peasants, who
habitually eat large quantities of arsenic, show symptoms of poison if
they leave it off suddenly. These are but samples, in the physical
region, of a tendency which runs through all lire, and leads men to
drown thought by plunging into the thick of the worldly absorptions that
really cause their unrest. The least persistent of men is strangely
obstinate in his adherence to old ways, in spite of all experience of
their crooked slipperiness. We wonder at the peasants who have their
cottages and vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius, and who build them,
and plant them, over and over again after each destructive eruption. The
tragedy of Israel is repeated in many of our lives; and the summing up
of the abortive efforts of one of its kings to recover power by
following the gods that had betrayed him, might be the epitaph of the
infatuated men who see their sickness and seek to heal it by renewed
devotion to the idols who occasioned it: 'They were the ruin of him and
of all Israel.' The experience of the woman who had 'spent all her
living on physicians, and was nothing the better, but rather the worse,'
sums up the sad story of many a life.
But again the sense of sin sometimes seeks to conceal itself by
repetition of sin. When the dormant snake begins to stir, it is lulled
to sleep again by absorption of occupations, or by an obstinate refusal
to look inwards, and often by plunging once more into the sin which has
brought about the sickness. To seek thus for ease from the stings of
conscience, is like trying to silence a buzzing in the head by standing
beside Niagara thundering in our ears. They used to beat the drums when
a martyr died, in order to drown his testimony; and so foolish men seek
to silence the voice of conscience by letting passions shout their
loudest. It needs no words to demonstrate the incurable folly of such
conduct; but alas, it takes many words far stronger than mine to press
home the folly upon men. The condition of such a half-awakened
conscience is very critical if it is soothed by any means by which it is
weakened and its possessor worsened. In the sickness of the soul
homoeopathic treatment is a delusion. Ephraim may go to Assyria, but
there is no healing of him there.