(Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity.)
Luke xvii. 17, 18. Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the
nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save
this stranger.
No men, one would have thought, had more reason to thank God than
those nine lepers. Afflicted with a filthy and tormenting disease,
hopelessly incurable, at least in those days, they were cut off from
family and friends, cut off from all mankind; forced to leave their
homes, and wander away; forbidden to enter the houses of men, or the
churches of God; forbidden, for fear of infection, to go near any
human being; keeping no company but that of wretched lepers like
themselves, and forced to get their living by begging; by standing
(as the Gospel says) afar off, and praying the passers-by to throw
them a coin.
In this wretched state, in which they had been certain of living and
dying miserably, they met the Lord: and suddenly, instantly, beyond
all hope or expectation, they found themselves cured, restored to
their families, their homes, their power of working, their rights as
citizens; restored to all that makes life worth having, and that
freely, and in a moment. If such a blessing had come to us, should
we have thought any thanks too great! Would not our whole lives
have been too short to bless God for his great mercy? Should we
have gone away, like those nine, without a word of thanks to God, or
even to the man who had healed us? What stupidity, hardhearted-
ness, ingratitude of those nine, never to have even thanked the Lord
for their restoration to health and happiness.
Ay, so we think. Yet those nine lepers were men of like passions
with ourselves; and what they did, we perhaps might do in their
place. It is very humbling to think so: but the Bible is a
humbling book: and, therefore, a wholesome book, profitable for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And I am
very much afraid that when the Bible tells us that nine out of ten
of those lepers were ungrateful to God, it tells us that nine out of
ten of us are ungrateful likewise.
Ungrateful to God? I fear so; and more ungrateful, I fear, than
those ten lepers. For which of the two is better off, the man who
loses a good thing, and then gets it back again; or the man who
never loses it at all, but enjoys it all his life? Surely the man
who never loses it at all. And which of the two has more cause to
thank God? Those lepers had been through a very miserable time;
they had had great affliction; and that, they might feel, was a set-
off against their good fortune in recovering their health. They had
bad years to balance their good ones. But we--how many of us have
had nothing but good years? Oh consider, consider the history of
the average of us. How we grow up tolerably healthy, tolerably
comfortable, in a free country, under just laws, with the power of
earning our livelihood, and the certainty of keeping what we earn.
Famine we know nothing of in this happy land; war, and the horrors
of war, we knew nothing of--God grant we never may. In health,
safety and prosperity most of us grow up; forced, it is true, to
work hard: but that, too, is a blessing; for what better thing for
a man, soul and body, than to be forced to work hard? In health,
safety and prosperity; leaving children behind us, to prosper as we
have done. And how many of us give God the glory, or Christ the
thanks?
But if these be our bodily blessings, what are our spiritual
blessings? Has not God given us his only-begotten son Jesus Christ?
Has he not baptised us into his Church? Has he not forgiven our
sins? Has he not revealed to us that he is our Father, and we his
children? Has he not given us the absolutely inestimable blessing
of his commandments? Of knowing what the right thing to be done is,
that we may do it and live for ever; that treasure of which not only
Solomon, but the wise men of old held, that to know what was right
was a more precious possession than rubies and fine gold, and all
the wealth of Ind? Has he not given us the hope of a joyful
immortality, of everlasting life after death, not only with those
whom we have loved and lost, but with God himself?
And how many of us give God the glory, and Christ the thanks? Do we
not copy those nine lepers, and just shew ourselves to the priest?--
Come to church on the Sunday, because it is the custom; people
expect it of us; and God, we understand, expects it too: but where
is the gratitude? Where is the giving of glory to God for all his
goodness? Which are we most like? Children of God, looking up to
our Father in heaven, and saying, at every fresh blessing, Father, I
thank thee. Truly thou knowest my necessities before I ask, and my
ignorance in asking?--Or, like the stalled ox, which eats, and eats,
and eats, and never thanks the hand which feeds him?
We are too comfortable, I think, at times. We are so much
accustomed to be blest by God, that we take his blessings as matters
of course, and feel them no more than we do the air we breathe.