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.” CHAPTER XXIX FROM DAMASCUS TO THE SEA OF GALILEE.