Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," he could scarcely have hoped that the all-pure would exercise more than His will as a means of effecting his recovery. Jesus, however, touched him. That very touch was unnecessary: it proved His infinite love for the diseased petitioner.

My brother, is the literal leprosy more loathsome to God than the moral leprosy of sin? Assuredly not. We can never know fully how utterly vile we all are in His sight, before Christ has "touched" us, and put away our sins far from us. But how infinitely comforting it should be to us to see in this little narrative that He is the author and finisher of our purification. We have but to feel our sin as the leper did to shrink from its loathsomeness, to sink down dejectedly under its weight, to appeal heartily, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean,"and we may rest assured that He who is ever the same will be merciful to us as He was to the diseased Jew. Have you yet known yourself as a leper? If so, are you willing to throw yourself at the feet of Jesus, and to own yourself to be one? Do this, and though you may be morally diseased one moment, the Lord Jesus, responding to your faith in Him by touching you with His precious blood, and thus bringing you into health-giving union with Himself, will in the next, make you "clean every whit." There are many earnest-hearted men and women

who, from the constant sight of their own sinfulness, will not be brought to feel, perhaps, that the leprosy has been put away from them by Jesus, through their faith in Him, which was His own precious gift, until the long eternal day has set in. But in the light of glory, when faith has been eclipsed by perfect light, all will be made clear to them, and they will see how, because of the poverty of their faith, they went mourning all their days on the earth, when they ought, instead of this, to have been full of joy and peace in believing, and to have been assured-notwithstanding all inward appearances to the contrary-that in the moment of their entire self-dedication to the service of God, in the moment of their really genuine appeal to Christ for pardon and sanctification, through the Spirit, their "leprosy was cleansed.”

The centurion told his trouble in another way. He did not even venture to ask for its relief, but merely pointed to its existence. But the Lord, in His perfect Omniscience, read "long before" all that was labouring at his heart. He saw in the Gentile before Him one whose humility made him. careful in his approach to the dear Saviour, lest he should seem in any way to be presumptuous to One so holy and so mighty. His faith led him to feel that the Lord would certainly heal His servant; but, on the other hand, his lowliness of mind led him to

suggest the means to the Divine Physician-such as he felt would serve his own purpose at the cost of the least possible trouble to his Benefactor. "I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof." The beauty of this faith and humility glows forth all the more brightly from the fact that our Lord had just promised a visit to his abode. Oh that you and I may be as lowly in our own eyes. Oh that we may again and again, by faith, behold our Deliverer nigh by faith throw ourselves in the centurion's humble spirit at His feet again and again, and on each occasion-whatever may be our burden-hear His inward voice proclaim "Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee." Let us never, however, forget that the fitting close of every petition offered up to God in Christ's name, is "Thy will be done."

Whether the visit of Jesus to Peter's house was by that disciple's own prayer, or at the Lord's own option, we cannot tell; but it furnishes us with another exemplification of the truth that He wrought His miraculous cures in many ways. Most frequently He healed in the way suggested by the petitioner's own faith. It is very precious and soul-reviving to the sick believer in these days to hear of his Lord going beneath the roofs of sinful and afflicted men for the purpose of performing ministries of love and mercy. If you believe in Him, and earnestly seek

to love Him, my brother, He will, though unseen, visit you in your sick chamber. Let not the lack of evidence on the part of the outward senses, as to this truth, tempt you into unbelief. Trust me, you will know by and bye, if you are faithful unto death, that the Lord has never forgotten His promise, and that He has ever kept it—" Lo I am with you alway, even to the end of the world:" and that, as He "loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus," and would occasionally visit their humble abode, so will He act in the case of those whose hearts he weans away from this present evil world to Himself. Oh may the evident tokens of the Lord's sympathy with human sorrow, of which we have been reading, comfort and re-assure your heart. You suffer nothing of which He is not fully aware; nothing in which He does not fully feel for you and with you, for He and His people are One. "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." Do not repine. Look forward constantly to human nature's renovation-time. The signs of the times appear to show that it is very near. None among the Lord's people shall say "I am sick," when He has once taken them to Himself. They must, however, expect tribulation in the world. Pray that your's, through God's grace, may be the language of the apostle who, though he was "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings

often, in cold and nakedness," and in innumerable other trials, loved his ever-adorable Lord none the less, but clung to Him the more on that account. As the follower of "the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," he gloried in the tribulation of the cross: he sought above rest from trouble, and found rest in trouble, by being one with his Lord. This was the secret of his being enabled to say so cheerfully"I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere, and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me." Christ had he seen by the way: by Christ had he been taught the Gospel, through express revelation and he felt that Christ was in him and above him, and around him at all times.

Prayer.

HOLY and blessed Lord Jesus, who, when on earth, didst display Thine Almighty Power, most chiefly in shewing mercy and pity-in cleansing the lepers, in healing the sick, and in raising the dead-give