"When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, if You will, You can make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." (Matthew 8:1-3)
A writer who describes a visit to one of the leper hospitals of Jamaica, in the West Indies, draws from it an encouraging lesson; for the Lord treats the leprosy of sin as the leprosy of the flesh: "A more pitiful, loathsome sight we never beheld. There were patients with fingers gone, some with portions of their feet missing, and others with faces one mass of revolting decay. One boy was treating his own decaying foot with a cleansing wash and then applying a balsam. We knew then and now, as never before, what the leprosy of the Bible means. Instinctively we turned away from disease and affliction which it was not within our power to relieve. In Jamaica the leper is free to go where he will. He can remain at this hospital and be made comfortable as long as he chooses so to do, but if he desires to return to home and friends there is no constraint put upon him. The impressions made upon us by our visit to this colony of lepers are imperishable. We find our thought returning to the subject again and again, and particularly as illustrative of the outgoing love and tender compassion of the Saviour of men for the leper. The Jew proscribed the leper, and the only attention shown him was the eagerness with which he was shunned. It was a violation of the Jewish law for a Hebrew to touch a leper."
"Room for the leper, room!" And as he came
The cry passed on: "Room for the leper, room!"
"Room for the leper!" And aside they stood-
Matron and child, and pitiless manhood, all
Who met him on his way-and let him pass.
And onward through the open gate he came,
A leper with the ashes on his brow,
Sackcloth about his loins, and on his lip
A covering, stepping painfully and slow,
And with a difficult utterance, like one
Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down,
Crying, "Unclean! Unclean!"
--Nathaniel Parker Willis, The Leper, 1831.
But there was one heart so large that it could not be hedged in, in its ministry, by any ecclesiastical tenet or conventional custom. There was one hand so pure that it could not contract defilement. And so Jesus approached the sufferer, put His own tender hand upon that leprous flesh, and with the calmness of the conqueror, but with the might of God, said, "Be clean!" and his leprosy left him for ever.--Present Truth, May 9, 1895--Timeline: IV-8 (The First Leper)--Matthew 8:1-3.