p. 82 | Touching Him

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 15, 1883

Touching Him.

WHEN our Lord Jesus put forth his hand and touched the leper, it was a representative act. In laying his hand on the man who was loathsome to the eye, retaining scarce a trace of humanity, and who was, ceremonially, unclean and vile, our Lord laid his hand on all humanity. He declared his sympathy with all born of woman, however degraded.

This sympathy is one of the rarest of qualities. Even with the good, even with our nearest friends, even with our closest kindred, our fellowship is very imperfect. Like a heap of cannon balls, we touch each other only at a single point. We are too selfish to feel for each other and with each other.

Even where there is a good deal of charity and humanity, it by no means follows that there is sympathy. Often we are willing to give to the sufferer everything but the one thing for which he most hungers—sympathy. It was not hard to find men enough who would speak for the African, give for him, labor for him, fight for him, die for him, but who would not break bread with him. Many would plan a home for the incurables, and would deny themselves in order to give to it money, time, care, labor, who yet would not bend over and kiss the lips of the sufferers.

This sympathy is peculiarly rare when the barrier that separates persons is one of moral character. We shrink with almost unconquerable loathing from the vile. The women who would found a reformatory for the prostitute, would yet draw their garments about them lest the prostitute should touch the hem of their robes. A philosopher, immortalized by Bulwer, has said: "I can only pity guilt; but I can sit down by the side of misfortune."

But the man Christ Jesus sat down beside misfortune, ignorance, guilt, vileness. He laid his hand not only on the bodily diseased, but on the moral lepers. When he became a member of the race, he did not draw back; he was a brother of man. To-day, he lays his hand on the drunkard, on the prostitute, on the profane, on the impure, on the convict, on the Pharisee. He would cleanse them all, they will but allow him. To each of them he says: "I have become your brother; will you not in turn become my brother?"

This is not an affected, unreal sympathy; it is actual; it is from the heart. He sympathizes because he loves. And it is largely in this loving sympathy that his power of doing good to men resides. In matter, it is only through the closest contact that the tide of magnetism may flow. And it is because he enters into such tender sympathy with man, that goodness flows from him through the race. The moment that touch, firm yet tender, was felt by the leper, that moment the blood began to flow free from the dreadful taint that had come down from a former generation, and that would else have poisoned generations to come. If we will but allow him to put his hand on us, if we will but exclaim with the leper, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean," how quickly should we, too, be free from the leprosy of the soul.

And is there not here a lesson for every Christian laborer and every Christian disciple? If he laid his hand on the leper, we must not shrink from touching our fellow-sinners, the vilest even. After all, in the eye of God, it is likely that the difference between us and those we call "vile," is less than we think. They may be a shade darker than we, but it is only a shade. And the difference of a shade may be owing to many circumstances, may be due to their more overwhelming temptations, to their blasting parentage, and their debasing education. We must learn to say, "We sinners," not "You sinners."

—National Baptist.