The priest shall examine it, and if it appears to be beneath the skin and the hair in it has turned white, the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a diseased infection that has broken out in the boil. Sermons I. ITS LOATHSOMENESS. It is quite possible that the leprosy from which the Israelites suffered was a contagious disorder. It is also possible that the dread of contagion, though there was no actual danger (as in cholera), may have had its influence in the matter. But there is no convincing evidence that it was contagious. There are indications that it was not (action of the priests, etc.); and the exclusion of the leper from the camp is fully accounted for in another way. The loathsomeness of the disease is a sufficient explanation. Whoever has seen any one suffering acutely from a kindred malady will perfectly understand and appreciate this legislation on that ground alone. It is difficult, if not impossible, to recover altogether from the mental effect of so shocking and so repulsive a spectacle. The vision haunts the memory for years. In this aspect leprosy is a striking picture of sin; for that is a thing odious and abominable in the last degree - loathsome to the Holy One of Israel, hateful to all holy souls. In its viler forms it is a thing which we - even with our imperfect purity - cannot "look upon" (Hebrews 1:13); holy much more horrible and hateful must it be in his sight whose thoughts of holiness as well as of mercy are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:9)! II. ITS DIFFUSIVENESS. Though not, probably, contagious, leprosy was diffusive and communicable from parent to child. It was one of the crucial tests in the case that it spread over the skin (verses 7, 8), that it "spread much abroad" (verses 22, 27). As this typical disease spread from one part of the body to another, from one limb and organ to another, until it sometimes covered the entire frame, so sin, of which it was the divinely chosen type, is a thing that spreads. It is an emphatically diffusive, a communicable thing. It spreads: 1. From faculty to faculty of the same human spirit; one sin leads on to another, as theft to violence, or drunkenness to falsehood, or impurity to deception. 2. From parent to child. 3. From man to man, through the whole "body politic." It spreads much abroad through any and every body, civil or ecclesiastical, into which it enters. III. ITS SEPARATING EFFECT. "He shall dwell alone: without the camp shall his habitation be" (verse 46). Leprosy separated between husband and wife, parent and children, friend and friend; it sundered one human life from that of the commonwealth, and was a source of sad and, so far as the preciousness of life was concerned, a fatal loneliness. Sin is the separating power. 1. It comes between man and God (Isaiah 59:2). It places him outside the gates of the spiritual kingdom; it deprives a man of all fellowship with the heavenly Father; it leads him out into a "far country" of alienation, of dread, of dissimilarity. 2. It comes between man and man. It is the endless and bitter source of estrangement, animosity, war; it makes lonely the life that should be full of sweet and elevating fellowship. IV. ITS PITIFULNESS. Who could see the poor leper, with rent clothes, with bare head, with covered lip, passing through the camp, crying, "Unclean, unclean!" on his way to a dreary and, it might be, life-long solitude and not be affected with a tender pity? He might be "unclean," but he was miserable, he was lost; the light of his life had gone out. Sin is not more condemnable than it is pitiable. Blame the erring, reproach the faulty, remonstrate with the foolish and the mischievous (1 Timothy 5:20), but pity those whom sin is shutting out from all that is best below, and will exclude from all that is bright and blessed above. Remember the "great love (of pity) wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins" (Ephesians 2:4, 5), and pity with a profound compassion and help with an uplifting hand those who are still down in the mire of sin, still far from the kingdom of God. - C.
The plague of leprosy. I. THE LOATHSOME AND GHASTLY SPECTACLE OF A LEPER.1. A leper was extremely loathsome in his person. But let me remind you that this, fearful as it seems to be, is a very poor portrait of the loathsomeness of sin. If we could bear to hear what God could tell us of the exceeding wickedness and uncleanness of sin, I am sure we should die. God hides from all eyes but His own the blackness of sin. 2. The leper was not only loathsome in his person, but was defiled in all his acts. If he drank out of a vessel, the vessel was defiled. If he lay upon a bed, the bed became unclean, and whosoever sat upon the bed afterwards became unclean too. All that he did was full of the same loathsomeness as was himself. Now this may seem to be a very humiliating truth, but faithfulness requires us to say it, all the actions of the natural man are tainted with sin. Whether he eats, or drinks, or whatsoever he does, he continues to sin against his God. 3. Being thus the medium of contagion and defilement wherever he went, the Lord demanded that he should be shut out from the society of Israel. Living apart from their dearest friends, shut out from all the pleasures of society, they were required never to drink of a running stream of water of which others might drink; nor might they sit down on any stone by the roadside upon which it was probable any other person might rest. They were, to all intents and purposes, dead to all the enjoyments of life, dead to all the endearments and society of their friends. Ay, and such is the case with the sinner with regard to the people of God. 4. Once more, the leper was wholly unable to come up to the house of God. Other men might offer sacrifices, but not the leper; others had a share in the high priest's great sacrifice, and when he went within the veil he appeared for all others; but the leper had neither part nor lot in this matter. He was shut out from God, as well as shut out from man. He was no partaker of the sacred things of Israel, and all the ordinances of the Tabernacle were as nothing to him. Think of that, sinner! As a sinner full of guilt thou art shut out from all communion with God. True, He gives thee the mercies of this life as the leper had his bread and water, but thou hast none of the spiritual joys which God affords to His people. II. I shall now BRING THE LEPER UP TO THE HIGH PRIEST. Here he stands; the priest has come out to meet him. Mark, whenever a leper was cleansed under the Jewish law — the leper did nothing — the priest did all. My text asserts that if there was found any sound place in him, he was unclean. But when the leprosy had covered him, wheresoever the priest looked, then the man became by sacrificial rights a clean leper. Now, let me bring up the sinner before the great High Priest this morning. How many there are, who, as they come up hither, are ready to confess that they have done many things which are wrong, but they say, "Though we have done much which we cannot justify, yet there have been many good actions which might almost counterbalance the sin. Have we not been charitable to the poor, have we not sought to instruct the ignorant, to help those that are out of the way? We have some sins we do confess; but there is much at the bottom which is still right and good, and we therefore hope that we shall be delivered." I put you aside in God's name as unclean lepers. For you there is no hope, and no promise of salvation whatever. Here comes a second. "Sir, a month or two ago I would have claimed a righteousness with the very best of them. I, too, could have boasted of what I have done; but now I see my righteousness to be as filthy rags, and all my goodness is as an unclean thing. As for the future, I can make no promise; I have often promised, and so often lied. Lord, if ever I am made whole, Thy grace must make me so." III. Having thus brought the man before the priest, we shall now briefly turn our attention to THE CEREMONIES WHICH THE PRIEST USED IN THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 1. You will perceive, first, that the priest went to the leper, not the leper to the priest. We go not up to heaven, first, till Christ comes down from His Father's glory to the place where we as lepers are shut out from God. Thou dost take upon Thyself the form of man. Thou dost not disdain the Virgin's womb; Thou comest to sinners; Thou eatest and drinkest with them! 2. But the coming of the priest was not enough, there must be a sacrifice, and on this occasion, in order to set out the two ways by which a sinner is saved, there was sacrifice mingled with resurrection. First, there was sacrifice. One of the birds was taken, and its blood was shed in a vessel which was full, as the Hebrew hath it, of "living water" — of water which had not been stagnant, but which was clean. Just as when Jesus Christ was put to death, blood and water flowed from His side to be "of sin a double cure," so in the earthen vessel there was received, first, the "living water" and then the blood of the bird which had just been slain. If sin is put away it must be by blood. There is no way of patting sin from before the presence of God except by the streams which flow from the open veins of Christ. The leper was made clean by sacrifice and by resurrection, but he was not clean till the blood was sprinkled on him. Christians, the Cross does not save us till Christ's blood is sprinkled on our conscience. Yet the virtual salvation was accomplished for all the elect when Christ died for them upon the tree. IV. THAT AFTER THE LEPER WAS CLEANSED, THERE WERE CERTAIN THINGS WHICH HE HAD. TO DO. Yet, until he is cleansed, he is to do nothing. Tim sinner can do nothing towards his own salvation. His place is the place of death. Christ must be his life. The sinner is so lost that Christ must begin, and carry on, and finish all; but, when the sinner is saved then he begins to work in right good earnest. When once he is no more a leper, but a leper cleansed, then, for the love he bears his Master's name, there is no trial too arduous, no service too hard; but he spends his whole strength in magnifying and glorifying his Lord. I will not detain you further than to notice that this man, before he might further enjoy the privileges of his healed estate, was to bring an offering, and the priest was to take him to the very door of the Tabernacle. He never dare come there before, but he may come now. So the pardoned man may come right up to God's mercy-seat, and may bring the offering of holiness and good works. He is a pardoned man now. You ask me how? Not by anything he did, but by what the priest did, and that alone. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) II. BUT IT WILL BE REJOINED BY SOME: SURELY IT WERE GROSS EXAGGERATION TO APPLY THIS HORRIBLE SYMBOLISM TO THE CASE OF MANY WHO, ALTHOUGH INDEED SINNERS, UNBELIEVERS ALSO IN CHRIST, YET CERTAINLY EXHIBIT TRULY LOVELY AND ATTRACTIVE CHARACTERS (see Mark 10:21). But this fact only makes leprosy the more fitting symbol of sin. For another characteristic is its INSIGNIFICANT and often imperceptible beginning. We are told that in the case of those who inherit the taint, it frequently remains quite dormant in early life, only gradually appearing in later years. How perfectly the type, in this respect, then, symbolises sin! No comfort can be rightly had from any complacent comparison of our own characters with those of many, perhaps professing more, who are much worse than we. No one who knew that from his parents he had inherited the leprous taint, or in whom the leprosy as yet appeared as only an insignificant bright spot, would comfort himself greatly by the observation that other lepers were much worse; and that he was, as yet, fair and goodly to look upon. Though the leprosy were in him but just begun, that would be enough to fill him with dismay and consternation. So should it be with regard to sin. III. And it would so affect such a man the more surely, when he knew that the disease, however slight in its beginnings, was CERTAINLY PROGRESSIVE. This is one of the unfailing marks of the disease. And so with sin. No man can morally stand still. Sin may not develop in all with equal rapidity, but it does progress in every natural man, outwardly or inwardly, with equal certainty. IV. It is another mark of leprosy, that sooner or later it AFFECTS THE WHOLE MAN; and in this, again, appears the sad fitness of the disease to stand as a symbol of sin. For sin is not a partial disorder, affecting only one class of faculties, or one part of our nature. It disorders the judgment; it obscures the moral perceptions; it either perverts the affections or unduly stimulates them in one direction while it deadens them in another; it hardens and quickens the will for evil, while it paralyses its power for the volition of that which is holy. And not only Scripture, but observation itself, teaches us that sin, in many cases, also affects the body of man, weakening its powers, and bringing in, by an inexorable law, pain, disease, death. V. It is another remarkable feature of the disease that, as it progresses from bad to worse, the victim becomes MORE AND MORE INSENSIBLE. A recent writer says: "Though a mass of bodily corruption, at last unable to leave his bed, the leper seems happy and contented with his sad condition." Is anything more characteristic than this of the malady of sin? The sin which, when first committed, costs a keen pang, afterward, when frequently repeated, hurts not the conscience at all. Judgments and mercies, which in earlier life affected one with profound emotion, in later life leave the impenitent sinner as unmoved as they found him. VI. Another element of the solemn fitness of the type is found in THE PERSISTENTLY HEREDITARY NATURE OF LEPROSY. It may indeed sometimes arise of itself, even as did sin in the case of certain of the holy angels, and with our first parents; but when once it is introduced, in the case of any person, the terrible infection descends with unfailing certainty to all his descendants; and while, by suitable hygiene, it is possible to alleviate its violence, and retard its development, it is not possible to escape the terrible inheritance. Is anything more uniformly characteristic of sin? The most cultivated and the most barbarous alike, come into the world so constituted that, quite antecedent to any act of free choice on their part, we know that it is not more certain that they will eat than that, when they begin to exercise freedom they will, each and every one, use their moral freedom wrongly — in a word will sin. VII. And again, we find yet another analogy in the fact that, among the ancient Hebrews, the disease was regarded as INCURABLE BY HUMAN MEANS; and, notwithstanding occasional announcements in our day that a remedy has been discovered for the plague, this seems to be the verdict of the best authorities in medical science still. That in this respect leprosy perfectly represents the sorer malady of the soul, every one is witness. No possible effort of will or fixedness of determination has ever availed to free a man from sin. Neither is culture, whether intellectual or religious, of any more avail. VIII. Last of all, this law teaches the supreme lesson, that as with the symbolic disease of the body, so with that of the soul — sin SHUTS OUT FROM GOD AND FROM THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY (see Revelation 21:27; Revelation 22:15). (S. H. Kellogg, D. D.) 2. That the discipline of the Church be advisedly exercised, not rashly precipitated. 3. Of the wholesome power left to the Church, of binding and loosing, and of obedience to be given thereunto. 4. The law declares men's sins, but does not heal them. 5. Of the diversity of censures in the Church. (A. Willet, D. D.) 1. Sin the cause of diseases.2. To take heed of the least sins. 3. Ministers to rebuke sin. 4. Not to go forward in sin. 5. Not to sin against the conscience. 6. Not to be swift to judge others. 7. To shun the company of the wicked. 8. Against pride in apparel. (A. Willet, D. D.) Sin is a corrupting and disorganising disease, as well as a brutal degradation and hereditary uncleanness. It is a loathsome putrescence of the whole nature. It is a sickness of the whole head, and a faintness of the whole heart. Deliverance from it is called a cure and a healing, as well as a pardon. Notice its beginnings. Leprosy was, for the most part, hereditary. After doing its work in the parent it was very apt to break out in the child. Sin began in Adam, and having wrought nine hundred years in him he died; but the taint of it was left in all who sprang from him. But leprosy was not always hereditary. Hence the necessity of a special symbol on the subject of innate depravity, such as we have in the preceding chapter. The germ of all human sin is derived from our connection with a fallen parentage. But leprosy, whether hereditary, or contracted by contagion or otherwise, began far within. Its seat is in the deepest interior of the body. It is often in the system as many as three or a dozen years before it shows itself. How exactly this describes sin l Nero and Caligula were once tender infants, apparently the very personifications of innocence. Who that saw their sweet slumbers upon the bosoms of their mothers would ever have suspected that in those gentle forms were latent seeds which finally developed into bloody butchery, and tyranny, and vice, at which the world for ages has stood amazed! And little do we know of those depths of deceit which we carry in ourselves, or to what enormities of crime we are liable any day to be driven. The taint of leprosy is within, and nothing but watchfulness and grace can keep it from breaking out in all its corrosive and wasting power.1. The first visible signs of leprosy are often very minute and inconsiderable, and not easily detected. A small pustule or rising of the flesh — a little bright red spot like that made by a puncture from a pin — a very trifling eruption, indentation, or scaliness of the skin — or some other very slight symptom, is usually the first sign which it gives of its presence. And from these small beginnings the whole living death of the leper is developed. How vivid the picture of the fact, that the worst and darkest iniquities may grow out of the smallest beginnings! A look of the eye, a desire of the heart, a thought of the imagination, a touch of the hand, a single word of compliance, is often the door of inlet to Satan and all bell's troops. 2. Leprosy is also gradual in its development. It does not break out in its full violence at once. Its first manifestations are so trifling that one who did not understand it would consider it nothing at all. No man is an outbreaking and confirmed villain at once. People are shocked, and hold up their hands in horror at scandalous crimes; but they forget that these are only the easy sequences of little indulgences and sins of which they take no account. They need to be told that there is a close interior brotherhood and cohesion between sins, and that he who takes one to his favour is at once beset with all the rest. 3. Again, leprosy is in itself an exceedingly loathsome and offensive disorder — a kind of perpetual small-pox, only more deeply seated and attended with more inward corruption. 4. Again, leprosy under this law carried with it a most melancholy condemnation. f Jewish leper was not only horribly diseased, but also fearfully cursed in consequence of his disease. He was pronounced unclean by the law and by the priests. Such is the type, and it is the same with the antitype. Every sinner is condemned as well as diseased, and condemned for the very reason that he is diseased. There is a sentence of uncleanness and exclusion upon him. He has no fellowship with the saints, and no share in the holy services of God's people. He is a spiritual outcast — a moral leper — unclean, and ready for the realms of everlasting banishment and death. 5. And yet the picture is not quite complete. It remains to be said that there was no earthly cure for leprosy. The prophet of God, by his miraculous power, could remove it, but no human power or skill could. It was beyond the reach of physician or priest. And so it is with sin. It is a consumption which cannot be cured — a cancer which cannot be extracted — a leprosy which cannot be cleansed — except by the direct power of Divine grace. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) 1. It is a work both difficult and weighty for people to discern and judge aright of their own spiritual condition. This appears by all these rules and directions.2. It is the priest's office to judge of the leprosy. Goal has given His ministers power to retain and remit sins (John 20:23). 3. Note the rules of trial, whereby the priest is to judge of the leprosy.(1) If it be but skindeep, it is not the leprosy, he is clean; but if deeper, he is unclean (vers. 3, 4, 20, 25, 30). A child of God may have spots in his skin, frailties in his life; but his heart is sound. There are other sins rooted deep in the heart, that affect the vitals.(2) Does it stand at a stay, or does it spread further and further (vers. 5-8, 23, 27, 28, 34, 36, 37)? Evil men grow worse and worse: their corruptions gain ground upon them. But it is a sign there is some beginning of healing if it stand at a stay. If the Lord be healing a sinner, mortifying his lusts, he is clean.(3) If there be proud raw flesh in the rising, he is not to be shut up in suspense; the thing is evident (vers. 9-11, 14, 15). Pride, presumption, and impatience of reproof, are bad signs.(4) If all be turned white, a man is clean (vers. 12, 17, 34).(a) The natural reason. It is a sign of some inward strength of nature, that it expels the disease, and sends it forth to the outward parts.(b) The spiritual reason. A humble acknowledgment of the overspreading corruption of our nature, and flying to Christ for help under a thorough conviction and sense of our total uncleanness and pollutedness; this is a sign the plague is healed, and the leper made clean.(5) In ease the leprosy be in the head, he is doubly unclean (ver. 44). Where sin has prevailed so far as to blind the very mind and understanding, men are more incapable of conversion than others, because so far from conviction. 4. Note the duties imposed upon the leper (vers. 45-47). (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (S. Mather.) (Bp. Babington.) (Biblical Treasury.) (H. W. Beecher.) (J. W. Bardsley.) (Sword and Trowel.) (Sword and Trowel.) (J. Spencer.) 1. Natural. 2. Moral.If natural, then it is either because the leprosy is not so infectious when it has thus come all out on the body, the hard, dry scurf not being likely to spread infection, whereas the ichor of raw flesh would (see Bagster); or, because it really is not a proper leprosy if it so come out — it is a salt humour cast out by the strength of the man's constitution, and is not deep-seated. It is rather a relief to the constitution; as when measles or small-pox come out to the surface of the body, recovery is hopeful. If it was for a moral reason, then it seems meant to teach that the Lord has a deep abhorrence of a corrupt nature — deeper far than merely of corrupt actions. We are ever ready to take home the guilt of evil deeds, but to palliate the evil of a depraved heart. But the Lord reverses the case. His severest judgment is reserved for inward depravity. And yet more. Is it not when a soul is fully sensible of entire corruption (as Isaiah 1:5) that salvation is nearest? A complete Saviour for a complete sinner? If there appeared any "raw flesh," then the man is unclean. For this indicates inward disease — not on the surface only. It is working into the flesh. But if the "raw flesh," turn and be "changed into white," then it is plain that the disease is not gone inwards; it is playing on the skin only. Let him stand, therefore, as clean. Perhaps the case of a pardoned man may be referred to again in this type. His iniquity comes all out to view, when it is thrown into the fountain opened; and the inner source of it is checked. The seat of corruption has been removed, But if, after the appearance of pardon, the man turn aside to folly (if "raw flesh" appear), he is to be counted unclean. If, however, this turning aside to folly be checked, if this backsliding be healed, then it is like the "raw flesh," turning "into white" — it evidences that his nature is sound — it has not returned to its state of thorough depravity. (A. A. Bonar.) 1. "The leper in whom the plague is." Is sin your plague? Take all your worldly anxieties, tie them up in one bundle, and put them into the scale; now place in the other scale the plague of sin. Which scale goes down? If you are a spiritual leper, you will say, "Oh, it is sin, sin, that I sometimes fear will be a millstone to drown my soul in hell." And canst thou find this mark, "the leper in whom the plague is"? Is not this a very striking expression, "In whom "? I think Paul has hit the matter to a nicety; and well he might, for he wrote as a man who knew what he was writing about; he says, "The sin that dwelleth in me." Sin is not like a martin that builds its nest under the eaves, which sticks to the house, but is not in the house. Neither is sin a lodger to whom you can give a week's or a month's notice to quit; nor is it a servant whom you may call up, pay him his month's wages, and send him about his business. No, no. Sin is one of the family who dwells in the house, and will not be turned out of the house — haunts every room, nestles in every corner, and like the poor ejected Irish of whom we read, will never leave the tenement while stick or stone hangs together. Is not this the case with you? Does not sin dwell in you, work in you, lust in you, go to bed with you, get up with you, and all the day long, more or less, crave, design, or imagine some evil thing? Do you feel sin to be a plague and a pest, as it must be to every living soul? Then are you not something of a leper if the plague dwell in you? 2. But the leper's clothes were to be rent.(1) This was a sign of mourning. Grief, sorrow, is their continual portion on account of the leprosy that is in them.(2) Rending the clothes was also a sign of abhorrence. Thus "the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy," when the Lord Jesus, in answer to his question, affirmed that He was the Son of God.(3) The rent clothes, therefore, of the leper show his self-abhorrence and self-loathing. Seeing the holiness and purity of God it is with him as with Job. "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee. "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."(4) The rent clothes was also a figure of a rent and contrite heart. "Rend your hearts," says the prophet, "and not your garments"; implying that though the rent garment was a figure of a rent heart, yet the outward mark was nothing without the inward feeling. 3. But the leper was also to have his head bare. No covering from God's wrath was allowed him; bareheaded he stood exposed to the winds and storms of heaven, bare before the lightning's flash. And does not this represent the poor sinner without a covering before God; sensible that he is amenable to God's justice and eternal indignation? 4. But he was also to have a covering on his upper lip. And this for the same reason that we cover the mouth of the grave — to present the infection of his breath. If he covered but the lower lip, the breath might come forth. Have you ever thought and felt that there was sin enough in your heart to infect a world? that if every man and woman in the world were perfectly holy, and you were left freely to give vent to every thought and imagination of your carnal mind, there was sin enough there to taint every individual? It is so, felt or not; for sin is of that infectious nature that there is enough in one man's heart to fill all London with horror. Oh, when a man knows this he is glad to have a covering for his upper lip! He cannot boast then of what a good heart he has, nor what good resolutions he has made, or what great performances he means to accomplish. He has at times a very Vesuvius in him, and wants no one to come within the mouth of the crater. If a man has a covering upon the upper lip he will not boast of his goodness. 5. But the leper was to have a cry in his mouth. That cry was "Unclean, unclean." It was a warning cry. He was to shout to the passengers, if any were drawing near, "Unclean, unclean; come not near me; I am a leper; I shall pollute you; beware of my breath, it carries infection with it; touch me not; if you touch me you will be tainted with the same malady; beware of me; keep your distance; standoff!" Yes, but you say, "Come; I am not so bad as that; I am religious, and holy, and consistent. I am sure I need not cover my upper lip and cry, Unclean, unclean." Oh, no; certainly not. You are not a leper. You have had years ago a rising, or a boil, and at the priest's direction you have washed your clothes and are clean. But if you do not feel to be a leper, there are those who do; and such do cry, and ever must cry, "Unclean, unclean." And if they do not uncover all their sores to men, they can do so to God. 6. But all the (lays wherein the plague was in the leper he was to be defiled; he was unclean. Such is a spiritual leper; defiled by sin; polluted from head to foot, as long as the leprosy remains. 7. But what was the necessary consequence of this? "He shall dwell alone." A solitary religion is generally a good religion. God's tried people have not many companions. The exercised cannot walk with the unexercised; the polluted with the unpolluted; the sick with the well; the leper with the clean; for "how can two walk together except they be agreed?" (J. C. Philpot.) (J. Cumming, D. D.) (J. W. Bardsley, M. A.) Jesus Heals a Leper and Creates Much Excitement. Of the Character of the Unregenerate. The Third Commandment Leviticus |
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