HE had just returned from a visit to India, and the account we heard from his own lips was so extremely interesting, that I feel sure you would like to hear a little about it too.
He had gone to that far-off land, counting neither the cost nor the distance, expressly to see the poor outcast lepers in that vast continent. For deep in the heart of the speaker, God had implanted a real compassion and interest for the afflicted lepers in India. He had marveled at the special way in which the Lord Jesus had singled them out as the objects of His mercy when He was on earth, and he sought to follow in the footsteps of his Divine Master.
When John the Baptist sought assurance from the blessed Lord that He really was the long looked for Messiah, He replied with far different proofs from what the natural mind would have suggested, “Tell John,” said the patient Saviour, “the lepers are cleansed.” He pointed out to John that the interests of the Son of God were amongst those who were the most suffering, and who most needed Him (Luke 7:2222Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. (Luke 7:22)). And when He commissioned His twelve apostles, sending them forth to preach the gospel and to heal diseases, He specified one class of human suffering in a peculiar way as He charged them to “cleanse the lepers.”
This long journey, covering several thousand miles, was not undertaken by a curiosity to explore “India’s coral strand,” or to attend the brilliant and gorgeous ceremony of the Durbar. He went solely because he cared for the welfare of those whom he called “my friends the lepers.”
After traveling three whole days through the jungle, he reached the spot he desired. Which of us can have the slightest idea of the delight such a visit could be to these poor outcasts. For outcasts they were everywhere—loathed, shunned, and avoided by everyone. The maxim of the world is ever to avoid infection of any kind, and in a relentless merciless way they were driven forth to die. To have a visitor in that isolated locality was a very infrequent occurrence, and here was one who had traveled to them all the way from the land of their great and good Empress. They resolved to give him the best welcome they could afford. Odd pieces of colored rags were hung out as bunting, and when at last the gentleman arrived, the whole colony of lepers had turned out to greet him. His description of their poor distorted features quite baffles repetition, for the ravages of that awful disease make them almost unrecognizable as human beings. They were drawn up in two lines, the leper men on one side of the path and the leper women and little children on the other, and as he approached there burst on his ear their song of praise―
“What can wash away my stain?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
Oh precious is the flow,
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”
What a touching scene! What a spectacle for the angels to behold! What grateful melody to the ear of God! Far sweeter this to Him than any fully-surpliced cathedral choir. For the well white Englishman and the dusky diseased Indians had met on a common ground, and that the precious blood of Jesus. The outcast Hindoo lepers and their kind friend from far-off England found a theme of sweetness to all alike in singing the praises of Him who had died for each one. His, love had embraced black and white equally, so they could say together, “Christ hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us” (Eph. 5:22And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savor. (Ephesians 5:2)). Verily, for the moment, the wilderness did rejoice and blossom as the rose.
How much we read about the leper in Sacred Scripture. Leprosy was the most fearful complaint and fraught with the direst consequences to the poor victims. The holiness of God, whilst He dwelt in the midst of the children of Israel, demanded the absolute expulsion of every leper from the camp. The inexorable law concerning them was: “Put out of the camp every leper... He shall dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be.” It was an awful doom! Pity the poor fellow! Driven from all he loved, deprived of every comfort, with an incurable lingering disease to which nothing but a slow coming death can end its tortures. Joint after joint decays and rots off, the sight perishes, and with his head bared, exposing his deformity to all around, you listen to his mournful plaint, “Unclean! unclean!”
God is holy, God is light, and cannot have sin in His presence, and these severe measures with leprosy—the type of sin—were to impress man with the fact of his need of cleansing before approach to God is made possible. Neither rank nor royalty provided any escape from this condemnation. Uzziah, the haughty King of Israel, when smitten by the Lord with leprosy, had to forego all his purple glories, and after abdicating the throne in favor of his son, dwelt in “a several house.” Nor did death even end the reproach, for he was afforded no royal tomb with the other kings in the city of David, but was buried in a field, “for they said, He is a leper” (2 Chron. 26:2323So Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they buried him with his fathers in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings; for they said, He is a leper: and Jotham his son reigned in his stead. (2 Chronicles 26:23)).
But with the birth of the Blessed Babe in Bethlehem came the dawn of brighter and better things. A new era is introduced altogether. In the Person of His beloved Son, God had come near to sinful man. No longer will He hide Himself in a thick cloud and keep man at a distance. God was now manifest in the flesh, and had come down to us in our need. Good news for the lepers! Good news for you and me! It has been beautifully expressed: “Not now does He teach the leper his leprosy by setting him at a distance, but by Himself suffering the penalty of his defilement.” God’s purpose today is to make us “NIGH by the blood of Christ.” In His blessed mission to this earth “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” His words were the words of God, His actions were the actions of God, and He expressed to the lepers what the heart of God felt for them. Hence in the pathway of the Lord Jesus how often we find Him meeting the poor stricken leper. Everyone else might avoid the poor wretch, but the Son of God was perfectly accessible to the most defiled or degraded. Did He then set aside the unalterable law of Jehovah in Numbers 5:22Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: (Numbers 5:2)? Not for one instant: He always “magnified the law and made it honorable.” But He attracted the leper to Himself, and then went to the cross and paid the righteous demands of God’s holiness. What a Saviour! Is He not exactly the One for your heart’s need?
Have you noticed with what boldness the lepers approached the Son of God? They came so close to His blessed Person that they knelt at His feet. They feared no anathemas hurled against them nor the terrors of a broken law from those lips of grace. Their need brought them to Him. His grace attracted them to Himself. Did He shrink from such close contact with their defilement? Nay, indeed, He ever values the confidence of our hearts. Those that did not hesitate to trespass on His goodness always received the greater blessing. The ten that were cleansed stood “afar off.” They asked for cleansing, and in His sovereign mercy God met them on their own ground and gave them their heart’s desire. But these received no “touch.” How perfect was the expression of His love in Mark 1:41,41And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. (Mark 1:41) “Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth His hand and touched him.” He identified Himself with all the ravages and corruption that sin had brought into the world, and later on, went to the cross and bore the whole curse of it. Do you think the leper ever forgot the magic of that “touch,” or the moment when he stood in direct personal contact with the Son of God? Methinks never was a moment in his life more sacred. None but God Himself could touch the leper and remain undefiled. If even a priest’s garment touched that which was unclean, it became contaminated. During the Levitical examination of a leper, the priest only “looked” on the suspected person. It was after he was pronounced healed that the priest touched the right ear, hand, and toe, to apply blood and oil.
Let us ponder for one instant the “I will” of the Lord Jesus in His response to the leper We have such hard unjust thoughts of God, and picture Him as “an austere man,” compassing the ruin of His creatures. Here we find God the Son revealing to us what was His will about the leper. “I will,” He says, “be thou clean.” The heart of God sought the man’s blessing, not his destruction. And what is the will of God today for you and me? Marvel of marvels, we read in 1 Thessalonians 4:3,3For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: (1 Thessalonians 4:3) “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” The heart of God is bent on doing us good.
Another touching thing is recorded at the close of the Lord’s earthly pathway. Jerusalem was all astir for the celebrations connected with the Passover, and multitudes were thronging into the city. The high priest owned his “palace” there, but not of him in his sumptuous luxury did the Saviour ask hospitality. No, had you been seeking Him that day, they would have directed you to find Him at “the house of Simon the leper.” What an address for the Son of God! The law banished the leper, and doomed him to perpetual isolation. The glad tidings of God in the gospel tell the leper that the Saviour who has died for his sins has purchased even the poor body too with His blood, making it today, in spite of all its humiliation, a temple of the Holy Ghost, with the promise of soon changing it into the fashion of His own glorious body! What a Saviour! Can you be unmoved in the presence of such surpassing grace. If any doubt still lingers in your heart as to whether He would receive you—a lost sinner in your sins—think how the leper’s Saviour treated the poor leper and COME!
I would only add one more detail about the poor lepers in India. Isolated they must be, and enforced idleness is also imperative on account of the highly contagious nature of the disease. Are they then debarred from the service of Him whose claims they love to own? No; for as holy priests they may “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, giving thanks to His name.” They also find that no impediment has, or ever can be, placed do their service of prayer; so they gather together for prayer three times a day, and thus serve not only the Lord but His people, as they plead with Him for their white brothers and sisters in England.
E. R. M.