No men, one would have thought, had more reason to thank God than those nine lepers.  Afflicted with a filthy and tormenting disease, hopelessly incurable, at least in those days, they were cut off from family and friends, cut off from all mankind; forced to leave their homes, and wander away; forbidden to enter the houses of men, or the churches of God; forbidden, for fear of infection, to go near any human being; keeping no company but that of wretched lepers like themselves, and forced to get their living by begging; by standing (as the Gospel says) afar off, and praying the passers-by to throw them a coin.

In this wretched state, in which they had been certain of living and dying miserably, they met the Lord:  and suddenly, instantly, beyond all hope or expectation, they found themselves cured, restored to their families, their homes, their power of working, their rights as citizens; restored to all that makes life worth having, and that freely, and in a moment.  If such a blessing had come to us, should we have thought any thanks too great!  Would not our whole lives have been too short to bless God for his great mercy?  Should we have gone away, like those nine, without a word of thanks to God, or even to the man who had healed us?  What stupidity, hardhearted-ness, ingratitude of those nine, never to have even thanked the Lord for their restoration to health and happiness.

Ay, so we think.  Yet those nine lepers were men of like passions with ourselves; and what they did, we perhaps might do in their place.  It is very humbling to think so:  but the Bible is a humbling book:  and, therefore, a wholesome book, profitable for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.  And I am very much afraid that when the Bible tells us that nine out of ten of those lepers were ungrateful to God, it tells us that nine out of ten of us are ungrateful likewise.

Ungrateful to God?  I fear so; and more ungrateful, I fear, than those ten lepers.  For which of the two is better off, the man who loses a good thing, and then gets it back again; or the man who never loses it at all, but enjoys it all his life?  Surely the man who never loses it at all.  And which of the two has more cause to thank God?  Those lepers had been through a very miserable time; they had had great affliction; and that, they might feel, was a set-off against their good fortune in recovering their health.  They had bad years to balance their good ones.  But we—­how many of us have had nothing but good years?  Oh consider, consider the history of the average of us.  How we grow up tolerably healthy, tolerably comfortable, in a free country, under just laws, with the power of earning our livelihood, and the certainty of keeping what we earn.  Famine we know nothing of in this happy land; war, and the horrors of war, we knew nothing of—­God grant we never may.  In health, safety and prosperity most of us grow up; forced, it is true, to work hard:  but that, too, is a blessing; for what better thing for a man, soul and body, than to be forced to work hard?  In health, safety and prosperity; leaving children behind us, to prosper as we have done.  And how many of us give God the glory, or Christ the thanks?