40 And there came a leper to him, I 44 And he saith unto him, See thou
beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
41 And Jesus, moved with compas- sion, put forth Ms hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will ; be thou clean.
42 And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.
43 And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him" away ;
say nothing to any man : but go thy way, shew thyself to the Priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testi- mony unto them.
45 But he went out and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places : and they came to him from every quarter.
We read in these verses how our Lord Jesus Christ healed a leper. Of all our Lord's miracles of healing none were probably more marvellous than those per- formed on leprous people. Two cases only have been fully described in the Gospel history. Of these two, the case before us is one.
Let us try to realize, in the first place, the dreadful nature of the disease which Jesus cured.
Leprosy is a complaint of which we know little or nothing in our northern climate. In Bible lands it is far more common. It is a disease which is utterly incurable. It is no mere skin affection, as some ignorantly suppose. It is a radical disease of the whole man. It attacks, not merely the skin, but the blood, the flesh, and the bones, until the unhappy patient begins to lose his extremities,