his wife
and children and home; but there he was. He had put on a strange and
particular garb, so that anybody coming near him might know that he
was unclean. And when he saw any one approaching him he had to raise
the warning cry, "Unclean! unclean! unclean!" Aye, and if the wife of
his bosom were to come out to tell him that a beloved child was sick
and dying, he durst not come near her, he was obliged to fly. He might
hear her voice at a distance, but he could not be there to see his
child in its last dying moments. He was, as it were, in a living
sepulchre; it was worse than death. There he was, dying by inches, an
outcast from everybody and everything, and not a hand put out to
relieve him. Oh, what a terrible life! Then think of him coming to
Christ, and when Christ saw him, it says He was moved with compassion.
He had a heart that beat in sympathy with the poor leper, He had
compassion on him, and the man came to Him and said, "Lord, if Thou
wilt, Thou cant make me clean." He knew there was no one to do it but
the Son of God Himself, and
THE GREAT HEART OF CHRIST
was moved with compassion towards him. Hear the gracious words that
fell from His lips--"I will; be thou clean!" and the leprosy fled, and
the man was made whole immediately. Look at him now on his way back
home to his wife and children and friends! No longer an outcast, no
longer a loathsome thing, no longer cursed with that terrible leprous
disease, but going back to his friends rejoicing. Now, my friends, you
may say you pity a man who was so badly off, but did it ever strike
you that you are a thousand times worse off? The leprosy of the soul
is far worse than the leprosy of the body. I would rather a thousand
times have the body full of leprosy than go down to hell with the soul
full of sin. A good deal better that this right hand of mine were
lopped off, that this right foot should decay, and that I should go
halt and lame and blind all the days of my life, than be banished from
God by the leprosy of sin. Hear the wailing and the agony and the woe
that is going up from this earth caused by sin! If there is one poor
sin-sick soul filled with leprosy here to-night, if you come to Christ
He will have compassion on you, and say, as He did to that man, "I
will; be thou clean."
THE DEAD RAISED.
Well, now we come to the next picture that represents Him as moved
with compassion. Look into that little home. There is a poor widow
sitting there. Pe
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