Christ, the ceper, and the Soldier.

Matt. viii. 1-13; Mark i. 40-45; Luke v. 12-16; vii. 1-10.

HERE was no variety of situation, no shade of character, no kind of employment, no type of disease, with which the Saviour did not come into beneficial contact. He touched our race at every point, and left the evidences of a power and goodness and loving kindness without precedent in the past, or parallel in the present history of our world.

When Jesus came down from the mountain, from which He had pronounced so many beautiful benedictions, "great multitudes followed Him." Whether the ministry of Jesus. was blessed to multitudes or not, we cannot say; we are told only"multitudes followed Him." He spake to the common people, and, whoever went away, "the common people heard him gladly." These multitudes may have followed from questionable motives, but it is so far well that they did follow; and, if they followed from wrong motives, they may have got, and many of them did get, in their pursuit, better, true, and nobler ones.

There came to Him, among the very first, a leper, who must have had great confidence in his power, or he would not have broken the restrictions, or the limits that were assigned to him by the laws of his country. This leper said to Him, "If Thou wilt" -if Thou hast the will, I know Thou hast the power to make me clean. Now, leprosy was regarded as the special affliction of God; its cure was the alone act of God; and such an address to

Jesus of Nazareth indicated that the leper had learned somewhere, or suspected that He was God manifest in the flesh. Jesus, not afraid of the contagion that was supposed to be inseparable from this disease, and still less afraid to break the mere ceremony that restricted the leper to a place, and prevented any contact with him on the part of the healthy, "touched him, saying, I will”—what a proof of the presence of a God!" be thou clean '—what evidence of the power of God! "And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." This cure is not a dead fact in the past, but a foreshadow of what will be in the future-an earnest and a specimen of that universal healing of which all humanity will be the subject, when the great Physician and Redeemer shall lay his tender hand upon nature's aching heart, and say, "I will; be thou holy and happy for ever and ever."

When he was healed, Jesus said unto him, "See thou tell no man"—that is, at this moment tell no man of your cure; but go first to the priest, who was divinely appointed, not to heal the leprosy, but to pronounce the leper clean, or unclean; for the priest did not cure, but only decided from proofs whether the victim was cured of God or not. This unveils to us a very important truth, which I wish some who seem to be ignorant of it would learn. In the original Hebrew language, when the treatment of a leper is spoken of, if I were to translate the words in Leviticus literally, they would stand thus, "The leper shall go to the priest, and the priest shall cleanse him;" or, "The leper shall go to the priest, and the priest shall uncleanse him;" but we know from the ceremony that the priest neither cleansed nor uncleansed literally; he merely pronounced clean or unclean as he saw evidence. Now, this is just the explanation of, and the light in which we are to read these words, "Whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained; and whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven;" that is, whose sins ye pronounce retained, from evidence of their rejecting the Saviour, are retained;

and whose sins ye pronounce to be forgiven, by the person giving evidence of his faith in Christ, these sins are forgiven. Jesus wished him to go to the priest first, that his cure might be tested, that there might be no misconstruction or misrepresentation of it, and that by the priest's official examination and certificate it might be seen that there was an actual cure. And secondly, He did so, in order to obey all righteousness, not wishing nor attempting to break the law of the land in which He was, or of the church of which He was then a member.

Let us also notice what is added, "Show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift." He assumed that if he showed himself to the priest he would be pronounced clean; and therefore He adds, in anticipation, "Offer the customary thank-offering which is due and proper upon that occasion." Sin is pardoned judicially by God alone, to Him only the sinner must look through Jesus only.

When He had reached Capernaum, there came to Him, not a leper from the hospital, but a soldier from his barracks; and the centurion said, "Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented." The statement of the malady was enough for Jesus. Blessed thought, that we need but tell Him how fallen we are, in order to receive from Him the restoration that we need, and that He can give! And how interesting, too, that this soldier brought not himself, but his servant. If a soldier might bring his sick orderly to Jesus, a parent may surely bring his sick child, a brother his sick brother, a sister her sick sister; and He who listened to a master's intercession for a servant's cure, will not turn a deaf ear to such petitions as these. Jesus said to him at once, "I will come and heal him." The soldier was so struck with this, that he said, "This is more than I expected; I never dreamed of such a thing; I am not worthy; I am a poor simple Gentile, I am not a Jew-I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my

roof; but I am quite certain of this, that if Thou wilt only speak the word, then my servant will be healed;" and he gave an illustration of this, and the illustration was perfectly beautiful, “For I am a man under authority; I am not the commander-in-chief, but colonel, or captain, or lieutenant. I have soldiers under me, and by the law and usage of military discipline, I say to one man, Go, and he goeth; and to another man, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. Well then, if my soldiers thus readily obey me who am their superior, I know that wind and wave, and all the elements of nature, will obey Thee, who art the Commander-in-chief of all the hosts of heaven and of all the inhabitants of the earth; and therefore," he argued, "if thou, blessed Master, wilt only say the word, the very winds will hear that word, and that word, descending into my servant's heart, will instantly operate a cure."

Now, when Jesus heard this, He marvelled, and expressed his wonder, for He knew what was in the heart; and He said, "Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." "I have not found such Christianity as this," as if He had said, "in the Church of Christ; I find in this Gentile a simplicity of faith that I have not found under the phylactery of the Pharisee, or n the heart and conduct of the loudest professor that I have met with." He adds a very striking thought, "That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out;" that is, many a Gentile shall be found in heaven, who was thought by us to be an alien, while many a loud professor will be missing there, who was pronounced infallibly by popes, and synods, and bishops, to be a true Christian. Many will be there we never expected to meet, and some at least will be missing we made certain of finding there. It is not sect, it is not system, it is not latitude or longitude, that are the limits of

Christianity. God has his own hidden ones, where the world least suspects them. "And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it unto thee. And his servant was healed in the self-same hour." The hospital, the barracks, the coalpit, the shop, the warehouse, alike testify, each for itself, Christ was here.

Christ and the Widow of Rain.

Luke vii. 11-17.

HIS is a touching and impressive incident in the life of the Son of God. It shows He is the Lord of Life as truly as the Man of Sorrows. He never went forth in the streets, the fields, or on the sea, save to leave lasting blessings on those that needed them most.

"It came to pass the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with Him, and much people." It accidentally happened, as the world would say-though we have no belief in accidents at all, for the accidents of man are the missionaries of Godthat "when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out." The reason why he was carried out was this that in ancient times, with all their faults, they were more civilized in one respect than we very recently were in modern times we are too prone to bury the dead among the living, and we think it is a very beautiful, and holy, and right thing; the ancient Jew and Gentile never buried the dead among the living, but always outside the walls of the city; and thus showed that they