NAAMAN lived in Damascus. “Now Naaman, captain of the host of Syria, was a great man” with his Master, and “honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria; he was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.” So Naaman left Damascus, and went down to Samaria to see Elisha, that the prophet might heal him of the leprosy. Elisha told Naaman to go and dip himself seven times in the Jordan. The haughty Syrian became indignant at the idea, and it was natural that he should. The people of Damascus are now, and have always been, proud of their rivers. They sing about Abana and Pharpar, as also about the shades, fruits and flowers of the valley.

Old Naaman was a true Damascene. So, when told to bathe in the Jordan, he said: “Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are they not better than all the waters of Israel?” He wanted to go back to his own native city, and there bathe in the fountain of the gods, whose pearly waters had rolled themselves through his heart and cut their channels there. Finally Naaman was persuaded to follow Elisha’s directions, and was healed of his leprosy. But, strangely enough, his house in Damascus was turned into a leper hospital, and remains one to this day.

Having heard so much of this loathsome disease, I am anxious to see it. So I call out, “Abraham, Abraham.”

“Sir?”

“Bring out the horses, and let’s go to the hospital.”

“Yes, sir.”

He brings out three horses—ears about fifteen inches long—and Johnson, Abraham and I are off for the “lepers’ den.” On the way, Johnson says: “Whittle, how long has the leprosy existed?” My reply is, “History traces the disease back to twelve or fifteen hundred years before the Christian era.”

Johnson. “Where did it originate?”

I explain that the origin of the leprosy is, to some extent, shrouded in mystery; that I was reading the other day from Strabo, a Greek author, who says that leprosy was generated in Egypt among the Jews, while they were in bondage under the Pharaohs. He says the Jews were banished to rock-quarries, where they had been getting stone to build pyramids and walled cities; that, having double burdens to perform, and half rations to live upon, they killed and ate diseased hogs which gave rise to a disease among the people known as the leprosy. For this reason the Jews passed a law that all Hebrews should ever after abstain from eating flesh of swine. That law, we know, is still observed, but Strabo’s account of the origin of the leprosy is probably a myth.

Johnson asks: “Does the Bible throw no light upon this subject?”

“None at all. The Good Book has much to say about the disease, and the ceremonial law concerning the treatment of lepers is strict and explicit. As to its origin, however, not a word is said.”

Leprosy is the most fearful disease that was ever visited upon the human family. Never yet has a case of it been cured without the direct intervention of God. Man’s skill is powerless to stay its ravages on the human frame and system. If there were no leprosy on earth to-day, probably there never would be any. It is not now, so far as can be ascertained, generated anew and afresh. It is inherited from one’s parents, and in this way it is handed down from generation to generation. It is absolutely impossible for leprous parents to give birth to a child who will not die of leprosy, unless, perchance, the babe die before the disease breaks out. The child may possibly remain sound and healthy until he is six or even sixteen years old; but the fearful disease is in his bones and blood and system, and it is coming to the surface—it is coming to stay, to eat up the body and “steal away the life o’ the building.”

Leprosy warns its victim of its approach by a cold and chilly sensation, which alternates with fever. Then a purple fleck or blotch, with a hard lump under it, comes on the face. The blotches now come thick and fast. Blotch meets blotch, until the bloated face is covered, and the cheeks look like purple clusters of grapes. The blotches finally swell, itch, fester, burst and pour forth an immense amount of pus and corruption. Then they heal up for a while, only, however, to itch, swell and burst again.

About a mile and a half from the centre of the city, we see a great rock wall, enclosing twenty or more acres of land, rising up like the walls of a penitentiary, twenty-five or thirty feet high. Pointing to this wall, Abraham says: “There is the hospital.”

I respond, “Yes, there it is, but I want to go in it.”

“Want to go in it?” said he.

“Yes, Abraham, and I want you to go with me.”

With a strange look in his face, and a tremor in his voice, he answers, “You don’t mean that, do you?”

“Most emphatically, I do. I want you to go in with me.”

“Well, sir,” he continues, “I can’t do it.”

“But,” said I, “look here, Abraham, I have paid you my money. You are my guide. You have promised to show me through the city.”

“Yes, sir, but I didn’t promise to go into the tomb with you,” was his response.

Turning to Johnson, I request him to accompany me. I show him a book which says that it is questionable whether leprosy is at all contagious; that it is possible for one to shake hands with a leper without any ill effects. Besides, I tell him that we will arm ourselves so as to keep them away from us—that we will fill our pockets with coins, and, if the lepers come close to us, will strew them like seed corn on the ground, and while they stop to gather them up, we will get a good look at them. I explain further to my companion that even if the lepers were disposed to come up to us, we could fight them off with our heavy canes.

After placing these arguments before him, I make a final appeal; “Johnson, don’t desert me. Nerve yourself and go in with me.” Seeing that he is wavering and hesitating, I say: “Johnson, screw your courage to the sticking point, and let’s go in.”

He responds: “It won’t stick.”

“Try it again!”

He repeats, “It won’t stick!”

By this time we are at the heavy, iron gate which is locked, and guarded by two strong and stalwart Arabs. I say to one of them: “Will you let me in?”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“Will you let me out?”

After a long pause, he responds in a deep, husky voice, “Y-e-s.”

I repeat the question, and receive the same significant frown and gutteral sound as an answer. I hardly know what is meant. I do not know but that the idea is to get me in, and then lock the gate and exact so much money before letting me out. I have not “so much money” to give.

Turning to my guide, I say, “Abraham, Abraham, I charge you by the money I have paid you, by your sense of honor and manhood; I charge you by him whose name you bear, let not this gate close until I come out.”

With an honest emphasis, he responds, “I will guard the gate.”

Laying my hand upon my companion’s shoulder, I address him thus: “Johnson, I, to some extent, commit my life into your keeping. I charge you by the sacred memory of mother, home and Heaven, by the golden ties of friendship, I charge you, Johnson, let not this gate close until I come out.”

With tears in his eyes, and his great heart welling without him, he replies: “Whittle, if necessary, I will block this gate open with my dead body until you come out.”

My mind is now made up. I am determined to enter. You naturally ask, “Why go into such a place?” I can hardly tell you why, unless forsooth, I am something like Mamie. Mamie wanted to go into the garden and see the flowers. Her mother said, “Well, my child, you may go into the garden to see the flowers, but you must not eat any of those berries on the currant-bush.”

“No, ma’am, I won’t.”

Twenty minutes later Mamie emerges from the garden, licking out her tongue and smacking her lips, while her face is stained with the berries.

“Did you eat any of those berries, Mamie?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Come, my child, don’t tell me a story.”

Crying and trembling with fear, Mamie says, “Well, mamma, I did eat a few of ‘em.”

“Why did you disobey mother?”

“Because I couldn’t help it,” was Mamie’s response.

“Why could you not help it?” said the mother.

“‘Cause the devil tempted me.”

Mother. “Why did you not say, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’?”

Mamie. “I did say, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ and he got behind me and pushed me right into the bush.”

So I am tempted, not like Mamie, by one, but by a half dozen devils. I say: “Get thee behind me, satans.” At this, some get behind, while others get before me. The spirit of adventure, or something else, catches hold of the lapels of my coat. Now they push and pull and shove and drag me in, until finally I wake up on the inside of a living tomb.

Going in some distance from the gate and around one or two houses, I see a great number of lepers, lying on the ground, sunning themselves. A few of the miserable creatures are sitting up. Seeing me, they make a strange and hideous noise. This arouses the others.

They rise—three here, four there, a half dozen, yea, a dozen, yonder—still they rise. It looks almost as if judgment had come; as if the tombs are opening and the graves are giving up their dead skeletons. They form a semi-circle about me. Ah, what a ghastly sight! Men, women and children in all stages of the leprosy. Some of them look more like fiends than human beings. Skin and flesh gone from their hands and arms, from their brows and cheeks! The working of their jaw-bones can be seen, as they vainly attempt to talk.

Here they are—gums swollen, teeth gone, palates fallen, one eye, or one ear missing. One finger—two fingers—may be all the fingers gone from one hand, or, perchance, the hand itself is off at the wrist, or the arm at the elbow. What arms and limbs and fingers they have, are frequently gnarled and twisted like grape-vines. They are close enough. Rushing my right hand into my pocket, I strew the coin far and wide like seed wheat. The poor diseased creatures, with pewter plates in hand, hobble around here and there as best they can, pushing and shoving each other right and left, each trying to get all the coins and to keep his neighbor from getting any.

Stepping forward, I strew out more coin and then recede. On come the victims of this loathsome disease. Oh, what a ghastly sight! Flesh gone, bones exposed and all twisted out of shape, great knots protruding from the face and body, joints decaying and dropping away,—human beings coming unjointed and falling to pieces! On they come, until I find myself half surrounded by hideous, dreamlike spectres! horrible hobgoblins! living corpses! walking skeletons! green-eyed monsters! fiery-eyed fiends! coming up, crowding up around me, thrusting out their long arms and bony fingers, apparently eager and anxious to hug me, like a phantom, to their loathsome and rotting bosoms!

For the first time in life, I am rooted to the earth. My blood, like Hamlet’s, is curdled in my veins. My knees, like the knees of Belshazzar, smite one against the other. My hair, like the quills of the fretted porcupine, stands on end. My mind wanders, my heart sickens, my body reels, and I stand “like a ruin among ruins, meditating on decay.” In gesture, as well as in words, I say: “Avaunt! avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide you! Your bones are marrowless; your blood is cold; and ye have no eyes in those sightless sockets with which ye do glare at me!”

I feel that I would give all that I have, or hope to have, if I could, once for all, blot this awful scene from my mind. But no; it is there. It is indelibly stamped upon the landscape of memory. And often, instead of sleeping soundly, I will dream about it. I will dream that I am still in here; that the gate is locked and barred, and that I am a doomed man; that these decaying folk have entirely surrounded me, and are intertwining their arms and limbs with mine, almost like hissing serpents in the hair!

O, my dying fellow mortal, do you know that leprosy is typical of sin? How, oh! how, would a man feel, if, while sitting in his parlor, a half dozen lepers should come in, reeling and staggering—falling to pieces? He would shrink back and call upon the earth to swallow him, or the mountains to fall upon and hide him from the face of nature.

How, then, I ask, would God and the angels feel, if one unconverted soul should enter into Heaven, into the presence of that God who can not look upon sin? One sinner, walking the golden streets, falling to pieces with moral putrefaction, would cause the redeemed to shudder, the angels to flee away; at his approach, darkness would surround the throne and Heaven would be turned into hell.

But, O friend, my heart thrills with joy akin to that which the angels feel in Heaven, when I say:

“There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.”

So, when the gospel is proclaimed in your hearing, go not to the Jordan, as Naaman did; but go fling yourself into that stream opened up in the house of David for the cleansing of the human family. After Naaman had dipped in the river, his skin and flesh grew back as the skin and flesh of a little child. So you, when you have bathed yourself in the stream of God’s forgiving mercy, will be clad in the spotless robes of Christ’s righteousness. You will be sinless as a little child. And I am sure the angels will strike their golden harps, and the music will go ringing and reverberating adown the aisles of eternity, as they shout, “Halleluiah, halleluiah, one more sinner redeemed—washed in the blood of the Lamb.”