Pleased with the man's faith, Jesus touched him, and said, "I will; be thou clean: and immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded for a testimony unto them." The Levitical Law declared, that the priests were to be judges in all cases of leprosy. Any one suspected of having this dreadful disease, was to be examined by the Priest: if the Priest pronounced his disease to be leprosy, he was at once considered unclean, and cut off from all communication with his fellow men. In like manner, if it pleased God to take away the disease, the leper was to go again to the Priest to be examined, and if he pronounced him to be cured, the poor man was then considered clean, and restored to the society of his fellow creatures. When our Lord dismissed the leper, He told him to "offer those things which Moses commanded." The ceremony of cleansing, to be observed by every one who had been cured of leprosy, was as follows:--Two live and clean birds were to be taken, with cedar-wood, hyssop, and other things; one of these birds was to be killed over a brook of running water, and its blood received in an earthen vessel: the living bird, with the other things mentioned, was to be dipped in the blood of the dead bird, and the leper was afterwards to be sprinkled with the blood. This was to show, as all sacrifices were intended to do, that sin and uncleanliness could only be done away with, by shedding the blood of the innocent and clean: and thus pointing out to all men, that the blood of Jesus Christ, the spotless lamb of God, could alone wash away the sin of man. The living bird was then to be let loose in the open fields, to signify that the leper now cleansed from his plague, was free to go where he would amongst his fellow men. This was the ceremony which Jesus bade the leper observe, and he was not to mention his cure until all was accomplished. For this there appear to have been two reasons: in the first place, Jesus did not wish His ministry to be disturbed, by the excitement which the knowledge of such a miracle would create amongst the people, who on several occasions desired to make Him their king even on earth. In the second place, the Priests were so obstinately prejudiced against our Lord, that they would have been very unwilling to pronounce the leper to be clean, had they known how his cure had been effected: but when once they had declared him to be healed, they could not unsay their own words. The healing of this leper, was the plainest proof that Christ could give of His being indeed the Son of God; for there was a tradition universally believed by the Jews, that when the Messiah should come, He would cure the leprosy.