What an extraordinary title for an article. Yes, indeed, it is, and this is how I call it so. In our Exeter papers a few days ago I read a case of a woman who had allowed’ her child to go to school in a verminous state, and, if she had been admitted; the other children would have been endangered with noisome insects. Well, this word brought to my mind a recollection of a dear old man above sixty years ago who I saved from being verminous. When young, for many years I undertook a district for the Bible Society, trying to get people to buy the Bible and to read it regularly. I found a dear old man with Gray locks, a kind, loving face, and a most courteous manner — one of nature’s gentlemen — but, poor man, he had never learned to read, so I offered to teach him, and daily I used to go to do so. It was a difficult task for him and for me, but at last, by reading the same chapter daily, he could at last spell it out aloud by himself. He was proud! I think the chapter was about the leper in Matthew 8. “If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean,” etc. I loved the dear old man, but pitied him, because, although he had a good wife, she maintained him and herself by going to service daily at one of our Exeter hotels, so that she neglected keeping her poor old husband clean.
To my horror, one day I saw something white crawling on him, and another on his neck. At once I determined to see his wife. I did, and told her I feared he was in a verminous state. Happily she listened to me, and all became well; but I am forgetting to ask you, dear reader, if you have ever had the joy that I had of bringing a dear old man to know and love the Lord Jesus. For several years his joy in his Saviour was a great joy in my heart. When he died I was in Ireland, but I look forward to meet him when we are above with the Lord.
Now there comes to my mind another thought about being “verminous.” Sin is verminous in God’s sight, loathsome as is the leper, who had to hide from man and cry out “Unclean, unclean!” if anyone approached; and so we must until we have come to Jesus and accepted His righteousness to clothe us, which He obtained for us by dying in our place. He, the Son of God, the God-Man, had to cry out for our sakes, “My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?” He felt and saw the sin so verminous, but gave up His life, saying, “‘It is finished’; they have life through My death.”
Emily P. Leakey.