HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. The dia,gnosis of sin as i1lustrated in the leprosy. Ch. xiii.; cf. 2 Kings v. ; Ps. lxxxviii. ; Matt. viii. 1--4; Luke v. 12-15. The preceding chapter brings forward sin as an inheritance through ordinary generation. No thorough sense or treatment of sin can be reached unless it is recognized as a nature. But God went further in bis education of his people. He took one disease with unmistakable characteristics ; he legislated about it, doomed the possessor of it to a certain treatment, and so made plain to all his attitude towards sin. The case of Naaman (2 Kings v.) demonstrates that leprosy was not treated in Syria as it was among the Jews. Though a leper, he could enjoy the society of his family, wait upon his king, aad command the army. The disease entailed no penalties at Damascus such as existed in Samaria. No sanitary solution, therefore, of this Mosaic law will satisfy the conditions; we must look to moral and spiritual considerations for the solutioa.1 Hence we are constrained to start with the canon of interpretation that leprosy was a disease selected for treatment among the J ewe to illustrate the treat. ment of sin. L As BOON AS THE DISEASE IS BUBPEOTED, THE PERSON IS TO GO, OR BE BROUGH'l', NOT TO A PHYSICIAN, DUT TO ONE OF THE PRIESTS. This took it out of the category of diseases curable by ordinary means. Hence the term for "leprosy " (MJl.'W, from 111¥, to strike down) signifies "the stroke of God." It was deemed a Divine infliction, which, if not divinely cured, would terminate fatally, and, though not disseminated by contact, was transmissible from parent to child. In handing it over in such circum- stances for religious treatment, there was afforded one of the most striking illustrations of the nature of sin. Sin is a disease which none but the Divine Physician can cure. .All effort at self-cure, all effort after merely human cure, is unavailing. Of course, sinners are induced to believe in the curability of the incurable, else there would be no sale for many a "patent medicine," and Ill> opening for many a spiritual imposture. But God has made it sufficiently plain, by statement and illustration, that sin ¼I a 1 . Cf. Trench • On the Mi.raoles,' the chapter on ' The Cleansing of the Leper.' OB. XDI. 1-46,] THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS. 201
disease with which only he himll8lf can deal, Hence he handed its symbol, the leprosy, to e. priest, and not to e. physician. II. THE PRIEST, m INVESTIGATING THE DISEASE, IS TO ASCERTAIN WHJ,:IHEB 1T IS BUPERFICliL OR VITAL. It may be only a "scab" or a "burning boil," a mere superficial eruption, in which case the priest is to comfort the patient with the assurance that he is clean. But if the disease is seen to go down into the vitals of the patient, to be deep and hidden, then the priest is to pronounce him unclean. For sin is no superficial matter, but a vital and fatal evil. It eats below the app.,ar- ances into the very vitals of the being, and, unless divinely checked, must run its fatal course. !IJ. THE PENALTY OJ!' PRONOUNCED LEPROSY IS A LIVING DEATH, AND A CONSEQUENT • EXCLUSION FBOM THE CAMP OF GoD. " The leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry Unclean, unclean, All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be" (vers. 45, 46). It is instructive to analyze this sentence. And- 1. The leper was to regard hiTMelf as virtually a dead man. This is implied by the rent clothes and the bare head, the signs of Oriental mourning, He wa.s to be his own chief mourner. The same idea was carried out in the Middle Ages, when the mass for the dead was said over the leper. Longfellow refers to this in his ' Golden Legend,' when he says of Prince Henry-
" Why, in Saint Roohua They made him stand, and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus-pocus. First, the mass for the dead they chaunted, Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of churchyard clay, Baying to him, as he stood undaunted, 'This is a sign that thou art deo.d; Bo in thy heart be penitent I' And forth from the chapel door he wen• Into disgrace and banishment, Olothed in a cloo.k of hodden gmy, And bearing a wallet. and o. bell, Whose sound ahould be a perpetuo.l knell To keep all travellers 11way,"
In the leper we have, therefore, the finest possible illustration or what spiritual death is. It is not a state of unconsciousness, but a state of consciousness. A sense of hopeless doom goes to make up this living death, Here have we vividly presented what "dead in trespasses and sins" must mean. 2. The leper was to cry out as he viet a passenger," Unclean, unclean I" That is, he was to encourage the.consciousness of personal uncleanness. In no way could a penitent spirit be more powerfully illustrated. A perpetual humiliation was thus kept up, a sense of vileness and uncleanness, which is wholesome for the soul. Doubtless the sense of uncleanness might be impenitent; the poor leper might regard himself as a victim of providence instend of one deserving the stroke. But his cry is a very vivid representation of what humiliation for sin should be. 3. 'l.'he leper must isolate him$eif from the society of the pure, and dwell without the camp. Isolation is what the leper is required to enter, and what we may be sure he does enter willingly. To a doomed man like him, contact with the clean and pure would be painful. Isolation would be easier to bear than society. So is it with sin. It is an isolating, repellent power. The sinner would not choose the society of the holy. Heaven would be a more painful place for a sinful soul than Gehenna itself. Hence we find in Rev. xxi. that while the new Jerusalem is to have nothing thnt defileth within it, no precaution to ensure this is needed; the gates remain open, for sinners would not, even if they could, court the society of the holy. The isolating power of sin may bo illustro.tod from the co.se of Byron. Two quota- tioD.11 a.re worth giving in this connection. 202 THE HOOK OF LEVITICUS. [CH, Xlll, 1-46,