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."