Pursuing the subject of the natures of creatures in Lev. 11, we have man brought before us in the succeeding chapters. In the twelfth we find him to be of such a nature—shapen in iniquity... conceived in sin— as to require that there should be a sin offering even in connection with his birth, before he had committed any action good or bad, and then under the figure of the leper we have a truly frightful picture of that which a sinful man may become.
This horrible and melancholy disease is not, I think, so much a type of sin in general—other diseases typify that—but of some of the worst forms of sin, especially in respect of its loathsomeness and corruption, its contagion and its impossibility of cure, save by the direct power of God.
That the type is of this character, and not, as has been so frequently supposed, a type of sin in general, is shown by the fact that the leper is invariably shut out from the camp. Now “the thought of foolishness is sin;” but it would be very wrong to suppose that one should be shut out of the assembly for that or any such offenses as those for which milder forms of discipline are prescribed. On the other hand the apostle refers to various kinds of sin with which if professing Christians were corrupted, they were not to be kept company with, not so much as to be eaten with. Thus Peter, guilty of an error of judgment and a lapse of moral cowardice that even such a wise and brave man at times falls into, commits a most sectarian offense in refusing to associate with certain Gentiles. He is rebuked, but it would have been outrageous to expel him from the assembly for that. Whereas the incestuous man in the church at Corinth they were peremptorily commanded to put away from amongst them; and the same extreme treatment was necessary in cases where the corruption was of a spiritual rather than a moral character, as with the blasphemers Hymenus and Alexander; or where it was of a doctrinal character, as for instance in the case of the Nicolaitanes, Spinitualism, Blavatskyisin, &c.
This action has to be taken, not from harshness and severity, but because of the corrupt and deadly nature of the contagion. There is place enough indeed for compassion and sorrow. The subjects of such disease—whether spiritual or physical—are of all the afflicted race of mankind the most to be pitied. There is no condition more terrible except one; and that is the condition of those who could shut a leper out of the camp, or a sinner out of the church without sorrow and reluctance. Angels must look on such beings as these with indignation, and devils with complacency.
But is the thing itself so very bad? for so many are constantly saying that the disease is not infectious or contagious at all. At St. Kitts they thought so till lately when they find the number of lepers nearly doubled in the last few years through their being allowed to pass to and fro amongst the people. So now there is “great alarm” and will probably be a reaction toward stringency like the reactions in former centuries, when there were laws such as those in Scotland, where one who escaped from a leper asylum was hanged or buried alive. M. Pasteur lately said that the Swedish Dr. Hankel had found the microbe; but two years ago at a meeting of the Epidemiological Society, high medical authorities, speaking in vigorous terms of warning as to the increase of the disease in India and England, brought in two London lepers and showed the leper germ in their saliva by a microscope. Dr. Thompson, who had had charge of a leper hospital, said his experience satisfied him that the disease was contagious. Other authorities testified to the same effect. Pere Damien, it is said, received the disease through flies settling on a part of his head where the flesh was abraded. In Robben Island they distinctly traced the contagion in the cases of two boys lately. That is a terrible place, Robben Island. Conceive an abode of maniacs, convicts—half of whom are murderers—and lepers. “We passed through one ward, and then another and another,” says a visitor. “Here one could see a poor fellow sitting huddled up on his bed, ceaselessly rocking himself to and fro to ease the pain.... A truly awful sight was a poor man with both eyes gone... In a corner, working quietly was a leper tailor....”
In dealing with the matter, the first thing necessary is to prevent contagion and therefore anything resembling the disease was regarded with suspicion and the patient for a time secluded. While things are even doubtful, it is so desirable to be on the right side that a state of quarantine is requisite. Precise and elaborate tests were given by which to distinguish the disease from ailments which resembled it in appearance. These are detailed, but the importance of the inquiry hinders them from being trivial. A mother sometimes looking at her sick child, will feel her heart beat with a suffocating anxiety as she watches the doctor examining the little pimples upon it. If they are rose-colored, it is only chicken-pock; if they are red colored it is the smallpox. The mark of leprosy is at first the “white bright” spot It doesn't look at all so bad in beginning. The Roman poet had a good deal of reason for saying that, if Sin were only to be seen in her natural deformity, instead of being disguised with all false attractions, men would hate her instead of loving her (though I think this is chiefly true at first; after awhile all her foulness does not repel). Leprosy does not look at all bad—at first.
There must be the utmost deliberation and care in judging. It is either malice or wicked thoughtlessness to attach so horrible a stigma, whether in a physical or spiritual sense, without entire certainty. When the professing church shut out Arius (notwithstanding his eloquence and accredited piety), I believe it was entirely right. When it shut out men like Luther and Wesley, it discredited itself and not them. The same is true as to private judgments. The main test of leprosy was that, whereas the other ailments tended to become better and more restricted as they were watched and cared for, leprosy always tended to become worse and to spread. Everyone who has noticed the course of leprous and zymotic morals or doctrines will recognize the accuracy and importance of the similitude.
Bacon says it is of the philosophia prima that, whereas in medicine when a disease is at its height, it is less likely to be communicated than when it is in progress, so also in morals, when a man's life is quite abandoned in wickedness, his example is much less likely to be pernicious than the example of one in whom vice has not yet extinguished all the good qualities. Macaulay, while objecting to this being regarded as a first principle, says that it is a” very happy similitude.” Undoubtedly the principle illustrates the striking verses in Lev. 13 where it was commanded that when “the leprosy covers all the skin of him that hath the plague from his head to his foot,... the priest shall... pronounce him clean.” It was on the distortion of a principle like this that the Spartans used to thoroughly intoxicate their slaves in order that their children, seeing them in their debasement might be shocked and repelled. Had they however only partially intoxicated them, their children might have been only amused and attracted.