A Consecrated Life
Bishop W. C. Magee. Luke 2:11 For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Not so long ago the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands were sorely smitten and plagued by leprosy. They resolved at last to gather all the lepers from the islands round about, all tainted with the slightest symptoms of leprosy, and banish them to one island, where they should dwell and perish slowly, while the rest of their fellow. citizens were saved from the plague — and they did so. And this band of pilgrims, on a pilgrimage of death, were gathered on the shore of one of these islands, about to depart by a ship which would carry them away for life, and standing on the shore was a priest, a Roman Catholic priest, and he saw this multitude going away without a shepherd to care for their souls, and he said, "Take me, let me go amongst them; I will dwell amongst these lepers, and will give them the ministrations of religion which otherwise they would be without." He went, and for some time his courage sustained, and his ministrations blessed that people amongst whom he had cast his lot for life, for he might never leave that place; and then we hear in a letter, written by himself calmly and cheerfully, how that the disease has at last assailed himself, and that his hours of labour are numbered, and before him lies the death of slow and hideous decay to which he had doomed himself that he might save others. In that man was the heart of the priest; in that man was to be seen a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ, the Anointed One; full surely on that soul rested the Divine unction that strengthens and blesses men for noble deeds of sacrifice; and there is not one of us who, in our boasted Protestantism, might be disposed to look down upon "the benighted priest," there is not one of us who might not say, "Let my soul be with his soul in the day when men will have to give an account before the judgment seat of God." (Bishop W. C. Magee.) Parallel Verses KJV: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. WEB: For there is born to you, this day, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.