Leprosy in Ancient and Modern Times.

Or all the maladies to which the human race is liable, there is perhaps not one more generally dreaded or more revolting in its operations than the Oriental plague of leprosy. Under some conditions incurable, contagious, and hereditary, it is almost the only disease which necessarily expels its victim into a hopeless banishment, while bone, muscle, and integuments are consumed by a painful and protracted ulceration. From its visitation no condition of life is exempt, and for its ravages the experience and science of forty centuries have yet devised no positive remedy. Wisely have the successive legislations of Jewish, Mahometan, and Christian government been directed to its suppression, and fitly from its character has it been chosen in Sacred Writ to be the type of original sin.

Like most hereditary diseases, this does not at once display itself upon the body of the infant. The leprous child is often fair, well-conditioned, and intelligent; nor is there even till boyhood any indication of the latent curse. But about the twelfth year a sickly pallor appears in patches upon the skin, most frequently on that of the breast and arms, small itching pustules come and die, and the epidermis scurfs off in white pulverulent scales, or becomes brown, thick, and rough, like JUNE, 1869.

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the bark of a tree (λɛñoòs), from which the scientific name of the disorder is derived.

Then follow other and more alarming symptoms, precisely as detailed in the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus. Red, heated swellings spot the whitened skin; these increase, and spreading, in a longer or shorter period resolve themselves into fretting confluent ulcers. The hair has long fallen off, and now the nails blacken, From the useless extremities, swollen and shrunk alternately, sense and volition depart. Then, joint by joint, the morbid bones decay; and while the superior parts of the body, the nostrils, the eyes, and the lips, are blended into a hideous foetid mass, the mortification increases, till the more vital organs already deranged are attacked, and a welcome death super

venes,

But painful and inevitable as is the ultimate catastrophe, years may and do elapse between every stage; a partial improvement takes place, a return to health and vigour seems apparent; but is, alas! rapidly and unexpectedly succeeded by a relapse of the well-known symptoms, and the leprosy spreads more fatally for its brief suppression. A few sad years of pain, of weary lingering torture, and then the end comes.

Apart from his fellow-men has the leper lived, apart from them he has worshipped, worked, and wept; now, apart from them, his body moulders into dust, or is cast hastily by his suffering brethren into some sandy cleft, to become the foul hyena's prey.

This compulsory excommunication leads to some singular results, and as similarity of affliction is recognised as a sort of relationship, the lepers congregate together, and their families often form camps and villages of their own.

Here they cultivate fields which, if not strictly theirs, they are tacitly allowed to retain, and supplement the profits of labour by the eleemosynary gifts of compassionate travellers, who, terrified by being met by ragged groups of men, women, and children, flourishing handless arms, or crawling in the roadway with distorted limbs, bestow invol untarily the backshish craved, and hurry from the scene.

For centuries regarded more with feelings of aversion than sympathy, their dire complaint has been their sole defence in a country of injustice and oppression; and uncared for and debarred the offices of religion, the unhappy lepers have been, and in many places still are, without medical, temporal, or spiritual aid. To associate with them was to suffer ever after; yet recently some self-devoted Moravian missionaries have settled among them, dedicating themselves to a life-long exclusion and the probable contagion of a loathsome disease, and by their example and energy the spirit of Christian love has ameliorated in some degree the leper's forlorn condition.

It must, however, be remembered, that while leprosy is the most aggravated and terrible form of skin disease in the East, yet all cutaneous diseases are not leprous, although many of their appearances are strongly similar, and as a consequence the most curious explanations are given of these symptoms by the person afflicted, one of which, as it

is both original and authentic, is worth recording. In a caravan returning from the Faioum in 1844 was a sturdy old man, whose sun-burnt breast was streaked with a singularly large blanched splotch. One of the company after some conversation alluded to this appearance, when the Arab thus accounted for its presence:-" While I was sitting in my tent drinking a bowl of milk, the news of my daughter's death was brought to me; rising up in grief and haste I spilt the liquid upon my chest. Shortly afterwards I became very ill, and wherever the milk had touched my body it left the marks you notice."

The illustration at the head of this article represents a group of lepers squatting in abject misery outside the city gate, precisely as described in 2 Kings vii. 3, and as they are continually to be seen at this day.

W. R. C.

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THE MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN.

An Address to Sunday Scholars.

BY THE REV. H. T. HOWAT, LIVERPOOL.

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OUTSIDE the gates of the city of Jerusalem a great crowd has assembled. They have brought with them a prisoner. Even in that calm, beautiful face, as it had been the face of an angel," you can read the character of the man who is described as 66 a man full of faith" and "full of the Holy Ghost." Stephen has been preaching. In one of the open courts of the temple he has given his accusers a very faithful sermon. has told them of God's dealings with their church and nation in every successive stage, from the call of Abraham. So long as he gave them simply the facts of history, they listened; but the moment his address became rebuke, there was a general outburst of rage, which reached its height, even a yell, when unfolding what must have been a revelation to Stephen's eye alone, he exclaimed that away up through that temple's open court he saw an opened heaven and a risen Saviour, as if while His servant was suffering that Saviour could not sit, but stood up to assure him of His sympathy, and receive him to Himself.

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It was enough: nay, it was too much; Stephen must die, and die like his Master, after the mockery of trial, the victim of savage fury. Blasphemy" was the false accusation (Acts vi. 13); and, like every blasphemer, according to the severe penalty of Moses (Deut. xvii. 7), he must die, outside the city, crushed by stones "at the hands of all the people."

Prominent in the guilty deed that is about to happen we find a young man. Many years after he tells us himself, "When the blood of Thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by and consenting unto his death” (Acts xxii. 20); and to show that he was really a leader in the transaction, he adds that when Stephen's murderers, according to Eastern usage, stripped themselves of their clothing, in

order to have greater facility for their hideous work, "I kept the raiment of them that slew him." How mysterious are the ways of God! how singular the crossings of Providence in the world!

What

a strange meeting-a meeting which was probably the first, which certainly at any rate was the last-was this between Stephen and Saul! the one the representative martyr, the other the future representative apostle of the Gentile world. Paul never forgot the stoning of Stephen. It made a profound impression on his mind. I like to dwell upon the thought that the martyrdom of Stephen had something to do with the conversion of Saul, and to believe in one of the earliest traditions of the Church that Christianity under God owes Paul to the preaching and especially to "the dying prayer" of Stephen.

The holy man is brought out to the place of execution. His persecutors place him in the centre of a circle. They surround him, each with a bundle of stones gathered from the heaps that lay about the walls of Jerusalem, or from the limestone rocks of the adjacent Mount of Olives. It has often been said that he was a bold Jew

who first stepped down into the Red Sea. Do my young friends think that he was less bold who first ventured to give his life for the cause of Christ? Speaking in ordinary language, Stephen was the first martyr, although it may be more strictly correct to say-and this surely will be a very interesting thought for Sunday scholars-that the first martyrs for Christianity consisted of the helpless little children whom Herod slew in Bethlehem. Still Stephen was the first who suffered for a direct act of his own on behalf of Christ; and as we see him in the centre of that circle we find him equal to the occasion— the calmest and most self-possessed of all.

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There comes the first volley of stones; and how does Stephen meet it? By prayer. And two things are remarkable about that prayer. First of all, the words are almost the very same as those employed by our blessed Lord himself upon the cross; and, secondly, they are addressed to that divine Saviour as Stephen in his holy vision, “looking up," sees Him "standing on the right hand of God." "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," is the prayer. Nothing could have been more beautiful. Stephen dies in the spirit of Christ, and in this, his last and most solemn moment, commends his soul to God the Son, as once, in the last and most solemn moments of Calvary, God the Son had commended His soul to God the Father. Stephen breathes up Christ's own prayer; he breathes it up to Christ himself; there is nothing finer in all the roll of martyrs. Nay, it may have been with the memory of these words before him, "the young man Paul," thirtythree years after gave the young man Timothy, and through Timothy gave to all, both young and old, that beautiful specimen of calm confidence in the hour of approaching death; "For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day" (2 Tim. i. 12).

But now there comes another volley. How many there may have

been between I cannot tell.

But with this crash the martyr falls upon his knees. He utters a piercing cry. He prays again. Again it is the The prayer then was this: "Father,

imitation of Christ on the cross.

forgive them, for they know not what they do;" the prayer now is"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Stephen's death was not merely a death of prayer: it was a death like his Master's, of prayer for pardon to his persecutors. The sandal tree sheds a perfume on the axe that fells it. The more certain flowers are bruised in the hands, the richer and sweeter is their fragrance. So with Stephen, and these " men of blood:" they murder him, he prays for them. Can human love go farther ?

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I once saw a rainbow come out after a thunderstorm in mid-winter among the mountains. It was about the strangest contrast one could imagine; that arch of peace appearing after the blackened clouds, and the lightning's flash, and the roar of wind and hail. But so it was; and the presence of the gentle stranger, the little streak that grew into a many-coloured span, hushed and closed the evening scene. Will my young friends not see even a stranger contrast in Stephen's death of peace, amid the violence and fury by which it was accomplished? And when he had said this, he fell asleep." This beautiful description of death had been employed before by our blessed Lord in the case of the daughter of Jairus and others, but this is the first time the word is used by any New Testament writer to describe the Christian's departure from earth. To this remark another may be added,—namely, that no such word is ever applied to the death of Christ himself. Death to Him was a terrible reality; and hence in His case there is no softening or toning down of the idea. It is always the strongest and harshest terms that are employed: "crucified," "slain," "delivered into the hands of sinful men,' "the accursed cross." The death of Christ, however, has taken the sting away from death in the case of all His believing children; and whatever the manner of their death, even as in Stephen's case, death in its roughest and sternest form, they simply fall asleep." A dying Christian minister was once asked by his only daughter, if he thought there was any danger. Calmly he replied, "Danger, my dear? don't use that word; there can be no danger to the Christian, whatever may happen; all is well, because God is love, everlastingly well, everlastingly well." "So He giveth His beloved sleep." Many a time, dear children, unseen by you, your dear mothers, before retiring to rest themselves, have gone to the couch where you, their son or daughter lay, folded in peace, your eyelids closed, perhaps a smile playing over your features, as some pleasant vision glided by. The parent has kissed her slumbering child, and satisfied, has gone away. And so to the child of God the place of graves is only the place of slumber. One is watching there, and repeating his old words: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." We go to sleep at night, but we rise in the morning; after the shadow comes the dawn.

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There only now remains the martyr's funeral. "Devout men" took up the bruised and bleeding body, for even under the eyes of that