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will, and assistance in performing it, so endeavour to remember your Creator, your Redeemer, and Sanctifier, in the days of your youth. His yoke is not heavy, nor His ways grievous to those who early learn to be inured to them. By His blessing your present earnestness of purpose may be the means of setting you upon a holy line of conduct for the rest of your lives. You are pledged to be His faithful soldiers and servants in your baptism, you have recently renewed that pledge and promise in the solemn office of confirmation. God grant that you may go to His holy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ with true faith and repentance, and be enabled by His grace to serve Him more acceptably during the remainder of your lives!

SERMON XX.

THE TEN LEPERS.

ST. LUKE Xvii. 11-19.

"And it came to pass, as He went to Jerusalem, that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God: and fell down on his face at his feet, giving Him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And He said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”

THERE are few more instructive passages in the New Testament than this one which I have chosen for my text. Perhaps it is the more instructive, because it contains not an imaginary or fictitious narrative, not a parable addressed only to those

who have "ears to hear," but the record of an actual event, a transaction of real characters. And certainly the circumstances of the story have all the appearances of reality about them. The ten lepers, though they were, as we shall soon see, men of very different states of mind, all stood afar off.

This they probably did, not in obedience to the Mosaic direction contained in the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus; that is, not after having been pronounced unclean by the priest, but merely because being notoriously leprous, no man would join their company. And they lifted up their voices to beseech Christ to help them. Affliction and sorrow soon turn people towards God; and many seem to others, and think themselves religious, because when distress or sickness come upon them, they feel disposed to lift up their voices, and say, " Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."

As soon as Jesus saw them, He said unto them, "Go shew yourselves unto the priests."

By the Mosaic law, as we read in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the book of Leviticus, it was ordered that if any persons were afflicted with symptoms of leprosy, they should go and shew themselves to the priests, who should look upon them, and, if they saw the marks of the disease, pronounce them unclean. In like manner, when they were recovered, they were directed to present themselves again to the priests, and, with the offering of two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood,

scarlet and hyssop, to be sprinkled, and re-admitted to the congregation. It appears, from various small indications in the present narrative, that the ten lepers had not shewn themselves to the priests for the first time. This may be argued from Christ's desiring them, unhealed, to go to the priest, and not directing them to take the customary offering with them; and because it does not appear that they went to the priests; whereas, in the other case of cleansing the leper, recorded in the fifth chapter of St. Luke, our Lord first healed the sick man, and then sent him with his offering to the priest.

If this be so, then it appears that these ten lepers had neglected the regular means of purification, and thought that they might go directly to Christ, and obtain the cure they needed. Perhaps, too, they might know of that other miracle already performed "in a certain city," which, as the comparison of the passages shew, was also in Galilee, and probably not very far from the lake. In this case, too, their conduct is very like that of many men. For we often see men jealous of one another. They think they can judge as well for themselves as a priest, or minister of God, can judge for them. They say, the signs are clearly described, why cannot I distinguish them? The doctrines and will of God are clearly written in the Bible, why cannot I read them? They forget that when God is pleased to institute means and ways, by which He desires

that things should be done, it is a matter of obedience to Him, and may be made effectual to bring about the object which we have in view, to use them submissively and humbly, however small and weak they may be in their outward appearance.

"And it came to pass, that as they went they were cleansed."

So far, then, all these ten lepers seemed to be alike; they had stood together, apart from our Lord and His company; they had lifted up their voices together to beseech His mercy; they had all received the same rebuke for not obeying the law in shewing themselves to the priests, and all alike were cleansed by Christ's miraculous power, as they were going to use the regular means of purification. But here the similarity ceases. One returns, falls on his face, with as loud a voice as that with which he had called for mercy, glorifies God, and gives thanks to Christ, and that one an outcast, a stranger, a Samaritan; one whom nothing, but companionship in a loathsome disorder had brought into society with his nine fellows. Here, again, is the very reality of human life: where one acknowledges blessings, nine neglect it; where the proud and privileged children of God are often more thankless, in proportion as they are more blessed, the truest gratitude and love are often felt by those who have comparatively few blessings to be grateful for.

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