SAUNTERING down the Jaffa Road, on my approach to the Holy City, in a kind of dreamy maze, with, as I remember, scarcely one distinct idea in my head, I was startled out of my reverie by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, “sans eyes, sans nose, sans hair, sans everything.” They held up towards me their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates — in a word, I was horrified. Having never seen a leper nor had my attention drawn to the subject (for, a quarter of a century ago, Jerusalem and its marvels were not so well understood as they are now), I at first knew not what to make of it. I subsequently visited their habitations. It appears that these unfortunate beings have been perpetuated about Jerusalem from the remotest antiquity. Leprosy is not confined to Jerusalem, for I have met with it in different and distant parts of the country. And what is particularly discouraging is, that fresh cases appear from time to time, in which it seems to arise spontaneously, without hereditary or any other possible connection with those previously diseased. The fact, however, has not yet been fully established. It has ever been regarded as a direct punishment from God, and absolutely incurable, except by the same divine power that sent it. God alone could cure the leprosy. It was so understood by Naaman the Syrian, who came from Damascus to Samaria to be cured by Elisha; and when “his flesh came again as the flesh of a little child,” he said, “Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.”
It is a curious fact that this hideous disease still cleaves to Damascus, the city of Naaman, for there is a mild kind there (which is sometimes cured, or apparently cured) even at this day. I have met with cases, however, where the cure is only temporary, and perhaps it is so in every instance. There is nothing in the entire range of human phenomena which illustrates so impressively the divine power of the Redeemer, and the nature and extent of his work of mercy on man’s behalf, as this leprosy. There are many striking analogies between it and that more deadly leprosy of sin, which has involved our race in one common ruin. It is feared as contagious; it is certainly and inevitably hereditary; it is loathsome and polluting; its victim is shunned by all as unclean; it is most deceitful in its action. New-born children of leprous parents are often as pretty and as healthy in appearance as any, but by and by its presence and working become visible in some of the signs described in the 13th chapter of Leviticus.
Medicine has no power to stay the ravages of this fell disease, or even to mitigate sensibly its tortures, and finally the miserable victim sinks into the grave, and disappears.
Who can fail to find in all this, a most affecting type of man’s moral leprosy? —The Land and the Book.