- —"Unclean! Unclean!" From a distance they
begged of passers by a morsel of bread, an old rag to cover their sores. Men shouted after them, threw stones at them and reviled them, not because they were wicked but because they were so sorely afflicted, because they were lepers.
This poor leper knew that by coming into the city he was breaking the Law. But he had heard that Jesus of Nazareth healed every disease and every infirmity, perhaps He would have pity on Him. There he lay, his mouth in the dust of our Lord's feet, hiding his disfigured face. But as he fell down there a cry had gone up:
"Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean."
And Jesus having compassion on him stretched forth His hand and touched him and said:
"I will; be thou made clean."
A word would have been enough, but He touched him. He did not shrink from those loathsome sores. He beheld them with divine compassion, and—perhaps because the leper is the image of the sinner—He touched them with infinite gentleness. And instantly the leper was cleansed. There was no time for the indignant crowd to revile him, to catch up stones and cast at him, for before the sound of his prayer had died away he was a leper no more. "Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean." "I will; be thou made clean." The words came back like the echo of his own.
Oh, words and touch of Christ! All he had lost they restored. He felt the life blood coursing freely through his veins. The pain, the unsightliness, the misery of mind and body—all with those hideous scales had fallen from him. He was a free man once more, free to stand up erect among his fellow-men, to go back to the old home and to all he loved.
