ページの画像
PDF
ePub

LECTURE VII.

THE GREAT TYPICAL DISEASE.

And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. -LUKE V. 12—14.

THE disease called the leprosy is one which it is not possible, perhaps, accurately to describe; nor is it necessary to do so. Its physical characteristics and symptoms belong to the province of the physician, not to the discourse of the. minister of the gospel. I take this disease, which so often occurs, in reference, or allusion, or judgment, throughout the Scripture, to be the great typical and teaching disease. It was selected from the rest of those diseases to which humanity has been subject, not because it was

the worst of them, but in order that it should be a type, and symbol, and teacher of that more dreadful disease which has overspread the soul, the wages of which is death, and the issue of which is everlasting banishment from the presence of God.

All diseases are unnatural, monstrous, horrible. Man was never made to be diseased, nor was he meant to die. Yet there is no such phenomenon on earth as a perfectly healthy man: there is no such state. The instant we are born such seeds, and germs, and elements of disease are in us, as must eventually bring us to the grave; the instant man sinned, that moment death seized upon him. What is disease itself? It is death in its beginning. Disease is to death just what the acorn is to the oak; it is the first germ that contains all the rest. All diseases are the exponents of an inward derangement; they are the echoes, heard without, of a disorganization that is going on within. And this disease, called the leprosy, was, as I have said, selected not because it was the worst, but to be a sort of awful sacrament, as it were, of that death to which sin, the counterpart of the leprosy, leads; and to teach us that a universal plague, worse

than pestilence, famine, and sword, has fallen on all humanity; and that there is but one mode of deliverance from it, that mode which was consummated on the cross, and is preached in the Bible, and enunciated by every faithful minister of the gospel.

This disease, from its typical nature, to which I must refer by and by, was called by the Jews the "finger of God;" by others of them it was called "the stroke," from the way in which they were struck by it. It first attacked a man's house, it is said; next, his clothing; and lastly, his person and it was to be healed, mark you, (and here was its typical nature,) not by the physician's prescription, but by the priest's treatment. In this respect it is singled out and made to differ from all other diseases, and there fore it is what I have called it-a typical and significant disease.

In the case of the leprosy, it was not always the guiltiest that were its victims; just as in the case which I explained in reading the chapter this morning, it was not always the guiltiest who were most punished; although when special sins were committed against the theocracy, that is, the personal government of Israel by God himself,

we find that this disease was almost always the judgment that was inflicted. This was the case of Gehazi, who sinned so grievously against God, that he went forth " a leper white as snow." You recollect also the case of Uzziah, who, when he touched the ark, was smitten with leprosy. These were especially sinful persons visited with a special judgment; but in the case of other persons, we do not know why they were visited. In the case of the leprous man before us, we cannot say why he was afflicted. It is the foolish question that was asked of old, and is asked still, "Who hath sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" They were right in tracing the affliction to sin; wrong in supposing that in this dispensation, where there is special individual suffering, there is therefore special individual guilt. Our Lord says, in Luke, (and this is a proper corrective of people's notions still,) "Think ye that those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men?" Human nature is apt to think so. Strange it is, there is a lingering sense in the depths of man's heart of the connexion between sin and punishment that he never can get rid of; but he manifests it

wrongly, and applies his judgment indiscreetly, when he assumes that the eighteen who were made the victims of a signal punishment were sinners above all men. When you see one man

smitten down by the sword, another dropping down by disease of the heart, another by some epidemic, you are not to say, "That man was evidently the guiltiest; he was a very great sinbecause he is singled out for a special judgment." The lesson you are to learn is this, " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

ner,

I

may notice in the next place, that there is no evidence that the leprosy was what is called infectious. I say there is no evidence in the Bible that it could be communicated from one

person to another by contact. On the contrary, we find that the Levitical priests, whose duty it was minutely to examine its symptoms, and pronounce upon its existence or its removal, touched the person, and never, in any one instance, caught the disease. Where the Levitical laws were not binding, persons infected with leprosy moved with others, and took their place in society. Here was the commanding officer of a great army, Naaman, the Syrian, who laboured under the disease, and yet lived in no separ

« 前へ次へ »