It seems pitiless to put the leper out from the camp, but in reality it is in pity that it is done, pity to others. Moreover there are some evidences that God has a special consideration for the dreadfully unfortunate creatures thus expelled from the company of their fellows, and that—on some occasions at least—He reveals Himself in an especial nearness to the Banished, as in the case of that ecstatic vision to the exiles of Judah in the forty-fifth Psalm. And here is matter for thought: “Where God can go, I may go,” say some; but no; not always. To go there may mean defilement to the disciple, but He can no more be defiled by any contamination than the sunbeams which fall on the pestilent swamp. The Lord who touched the lepers without contracting defilement goes where and does what He pleases: we should go where and do what we are told.
But we have not learned the first rudiments of Christianity if our sympathies do not go out after the outcast and afflicted, to pray and desire that their way may be through darkness to light, through sorrow to joy, through misery to God. How must the celestial light of the gospel seem to shine with unutterable brightness in a place like the Leper Settlements in Molokai or Robben Island, like a constellation in the blackness of a midnight sky. These poor wretches who have no hope on earth have appeared to be especially ready to welcome the proffer of hope for a future life, and divine sympathy. The four lepers shut out of Samaria reached the spoil first after all, and became privileged ambassadors: the ten lepers of Samaria lifted up their blighted eyes and saw One approaching them whom the princes of the earth shall seek in vain. There may be more compensations than we know of in some of these afflicted lives, especially if we join on time to eternity, for the one is not complete without the other.
Here is a chord sounded in the bass,—discordant, jarring, wailing, repelling... Wait, till we sound this treble chord with it... Ah, that is different; now it is a complete concord; the higher clef is joined on to the lower, interblends with it, explains and harmonizes it. The celestial answers to the terrestrial and resolves its wailing discords. It may be that the higher chord is a long and weary time withheld... and meanwhile the jarring and wailing goes on, “No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own:
“Responds—as though with unseen wings
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers in its song,
Where hast thou stayed so long?”
When shall we cease to reason within ourselves as though time were all and death ended all. It transfigures everything to lengthen our view and widen our horizon, to see that eternity is joined on to time, that our journey does not cease at the cold disconsolate wharf, but stretches out beyond over the illimitable and infinite sea. In the poem beginning “La tombe dit A. la rose,” the grave inquires of the flower what becomes of all the “tears” that fall upon her bosom in the dawn, and the rose replies that she transforms them into a perfume “d'ambre et de miel.” She demands then what the grave does with all those who fall into its ruthless maw, and the grave says he transfigures them into celestial spirits. Death does not end all. It is merely the line which comes between the bass and treble clefs.
Is there not a special design and appeal of the heavenly invitation to those who have a miserable destiny in this world? “The poor have the gospel preached unto them.” Christ is specially at home in the Lazarettos. He can contract no contamination and His sympathizing words give present consolation and future hope. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. I think of the times when the Black Death, the Plague, and Cholera stalked, grim and ghastly, through the habitations of men, and of the red cross painted on the plague-stricken houses, with the words “Lord have mercy upon us” underneath; and think how strange it is that this Roman gibbet, once the infamous symbol of a penal death, should be now a universal symbol of sympathy and mercy. What misery has it covered through the long dark ages! What consolation it has yielded! I cannot easily forget what a Negro once told me of the Christian leper assemblies in the West India Isles; what solace it is to them in all their misery to have a hope and portion in Christ; how they fulfill His dying request to eat bread and drink wine together in remembrance of Him; how the bread had to be broken and placed on the wrists of some, because their hands were gone!...
Resuming consideration of the matter typically, we find that God has made especial and elaborate arrangements to meet the desperate need of persons in this terrible condition. There were four things required, namely, Healing, Pardon, Cleansing, and Consecration. As to the first, men have tried many things but there seems no authentic case of real leprosy cured by human means on record. Dr. Koch's injections are the latest means used in Robben's Island, but without the slightest success. We think we know everything now that they tell us that the white blood-corpuscles or phagocytes eat up the disease germs. We have only to increase the number of phagocytes and disease is killed; yet somehow men still suffer and die. Nor would we in any way undervalue the skill and service of those who have advanced the medical science in the van of all the others; but simply say that leprosy, or sins of leprous types, God alone has been able to cure, and—so far as we at present know—God alone by direct power ever will be able to cure.
But there was much more besides curing. “This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought unto the priest, and the priest shall go forth out of the camp. . .”
It is not a thing that is to take place in heaven by-and-by, but now and here (as to the antitype). “And behold if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper.” Then succeeds a long and elaborate, though happily familiar and well-understood, series of types; concerning which it is perhaps simplest to say that when our blessed Savior stretched out His hand and touched the leper with the words “I will, be clean,” He fulfilled them all and supplanted them all.
Peace with God is a state of mind in the unclouded consciousness of what God is (but necessarily according to His nature) to us according to the value of Christ's work, and in Him.
There is another order of peace from the conformity itself to this nature—a subjective peace. “The mind of the Spirit is life and peace.”