The _same precautions_ obtain in our own times, although nearly 3400 years have elapsed since they were first insisted upon by Moses. Thus, we are told by Dr. Thompson, an eminent American writer on the Holy Land (where he resided many years), that lepers are everywhere regarded as unclean, and that at Jerusalem (where there is always a considerable number of them) a separate quarter in the city is assigned to them, to which they are rigidly confined. Dr. Thompson says: “I have seen them cast out of the villages where they resided, and no healthy person would touch them, eat with them, or use any of their clothes or utensils, and even the Arab tent dwellers cast them out of camp. The leper beggars stand apart, and never attempt to touch you, even as it was in the time of the Saviour, when the ten lepers stood afar off and lifted up their voice of entreaty.” The same writer furnishes us with the following graphic description, which, as coming from an eye witness, we have deemed worthy of notice:— “Sauntering down the Jaffa road, on my way to the Holy City, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, sans eyes, sans nose, sans hair, sans everything; they held up their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates, and, in a word, I stood horrified, when, for the first time, I found myself face to face with a leper.” He then goes on to say: “For many years I have sought to get at the mystery of its origin, but neither books nor learned physicians have thrown any light upon it. I have suspected that this remorseless enemy originates in some self-propagating animalcules, and thus I can conceive the possibility of the contagion reaching the walls of a dwelling. No one has spoken with authority, as to what it proceeds from or how it is generated. “New born babes of leprous parents are often as pretty and healthy in appearance as other children, but the ‘_scab_’ comes on by degrees, the hair falls off, joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink up, the gums are absorbed, and the teeth fall out and disappear; the nose, the eyes, the palate are slowly consumed, and finally the wretched victim sinks into the earth under a disease beyond the control of medicine, which cannot even mitigate its tortures. “To my mind there is no conceivable manifestation of Divine power more triumphantly confirmatory of Christ’s divinity than the cleansing of a leper with a word.”[2] ----- Footnote 2: