and healing hand on his foulness.

True pity always instinctively leads us to seek to come near those who
are its objects. A man tells his friend some sad story of his
sufferings, and while he speaks, unconsciously his listener lays his
hand on his arm, and, by a silent pressure, speaks his sympathy. So
Christ did with these men--not only in order that He might reveal God
to us, but because He was a man, and therefore felt ere He thought.
Out flashed from His heart the swift sympathy, followed by the tender
pressure of the loving hand--a hand that tried through flesh to reach
spirit, and come near the sufferer that it might succour and remove
the sorrow.

Christ's pity is shown by His touch to have this true characteristic
of true pity, that it overcomes disgust. All real sympathy does that.
Christ is not turned away by the shining whiteness of the leprosy, nor
by the eating pestilence beneath it; He is not turned away by the
clammy marble hand of the poor dead maiden, nor by the fevered skin of
the old woman gasping on her pallet. He lays hold on each, the flushed
patient, the loathsome leper, the sacred dead, with the all-equalising
touch of a universal love and pity, which disregards all that is
repellent, and overflows every barrier and pours itself over every
sufferer. We have the same pity of the same Christ to trust to and to
lay hold of to-day. He is high above us and yet bending over us;
stretching His hand from the throne as truly as He put it out when
here on earth; and ready to take us all to His heart in spite of our
weakness and wickedness, our failings and our shortcomings, the fever
of our flesh and hearts' desires, the leprosy of our many corruptions,
and the death of our sins,--and to hold us ever in the strong, gentle
clasp of His divine, omnipotent, and tender hand. This Christ lays