Part 145

Putting both these together, we learn, as another has said, “that any one who has to do with the sin of another, though it be in the way of duty, to cleanse it, is defiled; not as the guilty person, it is true, but we cannot touch sin without being defiled.” And we learn also that in order to lead another into the enjoyment of the cleansing virtue of Christ’s work, I must be in the enjoyment of that cleansing work myself. It is well to remember this. Those who applied the water of separation to others had to use that water for themselves. May our souls enter into this. May we ever abide in the sense of the perfect cleanness into which the death of Christ introduces us, and in which His priestly work maintains us; and, oh, let us never forget that _contact with evil defiles_! It was so under the Mosaic economy, and it is so now.