diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala
index 70c7ff305541d..d2a6009c43edb 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/classification/NaiveBayes.scala
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ class NaiveBayes private (
     private var lambda: Double,
     private var modelType: NaiveBayes.ModelType) extends Serializable with Logging {
 
-  private def this(lambda: Double) = this(lambda, NaiveBayes.Multinomial)
+  def this(lambda: Double) = this(lambda, NaiveBayes.Multinomial)
 
   def this() = this(1.0, NaiveBayes.Multinomial)