REGULATIONS OF MOSES RESPECTING LEPROSY.

531 towards me their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates-in a word, I was horrified. I subsequently visited their habitations, and made many inquiries into their history. It appears that those unfortunate beings have been perpetuated about Jerusalem from the remotest antiquity. One of my first thoughts, on visiting their dens of corruption and death, was that the government should separate them, and thus in a few years extinguish the race and the plague together; and I still think that a wise, steady, and vigilant sanitary system might eventually eradicate this fearful malady. But it cannot be so easily or expeditiously accomplished as I then thought. It is not confined to Jerusalem, for I have met with it in different and distant parts of the country. And what is particularly discouraging is that fresh cases appear from time to time, in which the leprosy seems to arise spontaneously, without hereditary or any other possible connection with those previously diseased.

It is evident that Moses, in his very stringent regulations respecting this plague and its unhappy victims, had in view its extinction, or at least restriction within the narrowest possible limits. Those who were merely suspected were shut up; and if the disease declared itself, the individual was immediately removed out of the camp, and not only he, but everything he touched, was declared unclean. For all practical purposes the same laws prevail to this day. The lepers, when not obliged to live outside the city, have a separate abode assigned to them, and are shunned as unclean and dangerous. No one will touch them, eat with them, or use any of their clothes or utensils, and with good reason. The leper was required by Moses to stand apart, and give warning by crying unclean! unclean! Thus the ten men that met our Saviour stood afar off, and lifted up their voice of entreaty.' They still do the same substantially, and, even in their begging, never attempt to touch you. Amongst tent-dwelling Arabs the leper is literally put out of the camp.

Tacitus has some strange stories about the leprosy and the Jews. When he comes to speak of the Jewish war in the time of Vespasian, he takes occasion to give an account of the origin of

1 Luke xvii. 12, 13.

that people, in which there are almost as many fables as sentences. He then goes on to say that "one thing is certain. The Jews, when in Egypt, were all afflicted with leprosy, and from them it spread to the Egyptians. When the king, Bochorus, inquired of Jupiter Ammon how his kingdom could be freed from this calamity, he was informed that it could be effected only by expelling the whole multitude of the Jews, as they were a race detested by the gods. He accordingly drove them all forth into the desert, where one Moses met them, and succeeded in bringing them all into obedience to himself," with a great deal more of such nonsense. He accounts for the rejection of swine's flesh amongst the Jews by the fable that the leprosy was caught from swine.' This much, I think, can be safely inferred from a careful study of the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Leviticus, that the Hebrews were actually afflicted with the awful curse of leprosy beyond all modern example -leprosy of many kinds: in their persons; leprosy in garments-in the warp and in the woof-leprosy in the skins of animals; leprosy in the mortar, and even in the stones of their houses. It is probable that some obscure traditions of these things, which were afloat in the world, furnished the materials out of which the fancy of the historian worked up his malignant libel on the Hebrew nation.

Have you any explanation of this very obscure disease, and especially in reference to leprosy in garments and walls of houses?

For many years I have sought in every possible way to get at the mystery, but neither learned critics nor physicians, foreign or native, nor books, ancient or modern, have thrown any light upon it. I have suspected that this disease, which, like the anthropophagous ghouls of the Arabs, leisurely eats up its victims in one long remorseless meal, is, or is caused by, living and self-propagating animalculæ; and thus I can conceive it possible that those animalculæ might fasten on a wall, especially if the cement were mixed with sizing, as is now done, or other gelatinous or animal glues. Still, the most cursory reference to the best of our recent medical works suffices to show how little is known about the whole subject of contagion, and its propagation by fomites. One finds in them abundant and incontestable instances of the propa

1 Tacitus, Ann., book v.

NAAMAN THE SYRIAN.

533

gation of many terrible constitutional maladies, in the most inexplicable manner, by garments, leather, wood, and other things, the "materies morbi" meantime eluding the most persevering and vigilant search, aided by every appliance of modern science, chemical or optical. This much, however, about leprosy is certain, that there are different kinds of it, and that fresh cases are constantly occurring in this country. What originates it, and how it is propagated, are points enveloped in profound darkness.

ease.

But, though we cannot comprehend the leprosy or cleanse the leper, there are many things to be learned from this mysterious disIt has ever been regarded as a direct punishment from God, and absolutely incurable, except by the same divine power that sent it. God alone could cure the leprosy. It was so understood by Naaman the Syrian, who came from Damascus to Samaria to be cured by Elisha; and this is implied in the strong protestation of the King of Israel when Naaman was sent to him: "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?"" And when Naaman's flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, he said, "Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel." It is a curious fact that this hideous disease still cleaves to Damascus, the city of Naaman, for there is a variety of it there which is sometimes cured, or apparently cured, even at this day. I have met with cases, however, where the cure was only temporary, and perhaps it is so in every instance.

There is nothing in the entire range of human phenomena which illustrates so impressively the divine power of the Redeemer, and the nature and extent of his work of mercy on man's behalf, as this leprosy. There are many most striking analogies between it and that more deadly leprosy of sin which has involved our whole race in one common ruin. It is feared as contagious; it is certainly and inevitably hereditary; it is loathsome and polluting; its victim is shunned by all as unclean; it is most deceitful in its action. New-born children of leprous parents are often as pretty and as healthy in appearance as any others; but by-and-by its presence and workings become visible in some of the signs described in the 2 Kings v. 7. 2 Kings v. 14, 15.

1

2

thirteenth chapter of Leviticus. The "scab" comes on by degrees in different parts of the body; the hair falls from the head and eyebrows; the nails loosen, decay, and drop off; joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink up, and slowly fall away; the gums are absorbed, and the teeth disappear; the nose, the eyes, the tongue, and the palate are slowly consumed, and finally the wretched victim sinks into the earth and disappears, while medicine has no power to stay the ravages of this fell disease, or even to mitigate sensibly its tortures.

Who can fail to find in all this a most affecting type of man's moral leprosy? Like it, this too is hereditary, and with infallible certainty. As surely as we have inherited it from our fathers do we transmit it to our children. None escape. The infant, so lively, with its cherub smile and innocent prattle, has imbibed the fatal poison. There are those, I know, who, as they gaze on the soft, clear heaven of infancy's laughing eye, reject with horror the thought that even here the leprosy of sin lies deep within. So any one might think and say who looked upon a beautiful babe in the arms of its leprous mother. But, alas! give but time enough, and the physical malady manifests its presence, and does its work of death. And so in the antitype. If left unchecked by power divine, the leprosy of sin will eat into the very texture of the soul, and consume everything lovely and pure in human character, until the smiling babe becomes the traitor Iscariot, a Nero, a Cæsar Borgia, or a bloody Robespierre. These were all once smiling babes.

Again, leprosy of the body none but God can cure. So, also, there is only one Physician in the universe who can cleanse the soul from the leprosy of sin. Medicines of man's device are of no avail, but with Him none are needed. He said to the ten lepers, who stood afar off, and lifted up their voices and cried, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us, Go shew yourselves unto the priests; and as they went they were cleansed." And with the same divine power He says to many a moral leper, "Go in peace, thy sins be forgiven thee;" and it happens unto them according to their faith. To my mind, there is no conceivable manifestation of divine power more triumphantly confirmatory of Christ's divinity than the cleans

1 Luke xvii. 13, 14.

HOUSE OF CAIAPHAS.-THE CONACULUM.

535 ing of a leper with a word. When looking at those handless, eyeless, tongueless wrecks of humanity, the unbelieving question starts unbidden, Is it possible that they can be restored? Yes, it is more than possible. It has been accomplished once and again by the mere volition of Him who spake, and it was done. And He who can cleanse the leper can raise the dead, and can also forgive sins and save the soul. I ask for no other evidence of the fact.

The first building that attracts attention outside of Zion Gate is the so-called House of Caiaphas, now an Armenian convent. Besides the tombs of the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem, and the prison of Christ, it has a small church, which, I was informed, is enriched with various choice relics.

Yes; they claim to have the identical stone which closed the door of the Sepulchre, and which was rolled away by the angels on the morning of the Resurrection. They also show the stone upon which the cock stood when he crowed three times before Peter completed that miserable denial of his Lord. You may lay these up with the myth of the thicket in which the ram was caught by the horns, and substituted on the altar instead of Isaac by the Father of the Faithful.

The only other place of note on that part of Zion is the Tomb of David, now a large irregularly built mosk, having several small domes and a single minaret. Of course it belongs to the Muhammedans, and is called by them Neby Dâûd-the Prophet David.

In the midst of this group of buildings is the Conaculum, a dreary "upper room," fifty or sixty feet long by some thirty in width. An ancient tradition says that our Lord here celebrated his last Passover, and at the close of it instituted the Supper, as recorded in the Gospels of Luke and John.' Whether there is any historic foundation for this, or for the equally old tradition that this was the place where the Apostles were assembled on the day of Pentecost, when the miracle of the cloven tongues of fire occurred, I will not inquire.

Could we be reasonably sure that somewhere within that confused group of Saracenic buildings our Lord did in very deed. spend that last night with his sorrowing disciples; that he there

1 Luke xxii. 7-30; John xiii. 1–17.