the power of that touch. Leprosy, wasting issues, death-these are the memorials and tokens of the ein that ie the fatal heritage of our fallen race; and one who would know our need of redemption cannot do better than meditate on them ae they are set forth in the Levitical law. Leprosy, wasting issues, death-these evils our bleseed Lord went up to in hie ministry ; he touched them, and their flight the instant that they felt his touch gave, and continues still to give, assurance to men that he is indeed the Saviour. He can forgive sin; he can make us clean; he is the resurrection and the life.-B. Vera. 1-4.-The public exclusion of the unclean. Thie law, like many others, in part a sanitary law; but also educational in spiritual truth, and typical of eternal realities. Two truths taught:- 1. THE HOLINESS OF Goo. This lesson, so hard to the Israelites, was impressed on them in many ways, e. g., sacred men ministering in sacred places, on sacred days, &c. This holy God dwelt in the midst of their tents, and walked among them (Levit. xxvi. 11, 12). The God of life and purity was utterly alien from death and impurity. Defilement, whether wilful or unavoidable, could not be tolerated in bis presence. If the polluted are retained, God withdraws. Sin is "the abominable thing" which God hates. He is "of purer eyes than to behold evil" (Jer. xliv. 4; Hab. i. 13). II. THE EXCOMMUNICATING POWER OP' SIN. The consequences to the excluded Hebrews, though limited, were by no means light. They had to suffer loss of privileges, ceremonial and spiritual, and a sense of humiliation from the notoriety of their position. For the time they were out of communion with God and his people. Thus sin has an isolating power. Apart from an act of ecclesiastical excommunication or Divine judgment, its tendency is to separate us from the people of God through want of sympathy. We cease to enjoy their privileges even if not debarred from them. We lose self-respect when sin is exposed, if not before. We are out of communion with God, into whose presence we cannot truly come with sin indulged in our hearts (Ps. !xvi. 18; Ezek. xiv. 3). God's salvation is from sin, not in sin. No wonder, therefore, that the impure are sentenced-(1) to excommunication from the Church o~ earth (1 Cor. v. 9-13, &c.), (2) to llXClusion from the Church in heaven (Rev. xx1. 27).-P. Vera. l-4.-Things that de.file. The book up to this point is occupied with the counting' and discipline of the people, both those for war and those for tabernacle service. Now the cleansing of the camp is to be attended to. I. THE CLASSES WHO WER& D&CLABED UNCLEAN. Certainly we must not be too curious in our inquiries here, or we may eoon pass the verge of what is edifying. But there are some points of note with regard to all three classes. The leper. Why· should he be declared unclean? Perhaps as suffering from a more manifest disease than others, maybe a peculiarly offensive one, o.nd one of the most difficult to cure. These are conjectures which give a little light, hut the grent reason for ceremonial uncleanness in the case of human beings, as in the case of lower animals, is to be found in Jehovah's positive injunction. Leprosy was thus to be one of the great types in the body of the defiling effect of sin upon the soul. It is clear that in the course of ages the idea got fixed in the Israelite mind that the cure of leprosy was to be considered as a cleansing. Jesus commanded his apostles to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers. The leper was not a common victim, but singled out to impress the fact that the ultimate cause which produces disease is a strange and polluting thing; no necessary element in human nature, though now it be actuully present in us all. The pel'son with an issue. Thus uncleanness is connected with birth as well as with death. Whenever a child is bom, a being is brought into the world, which certainly will add something to the evil in it, though possibly it may e.dd much to the- good. The saintliest of believers has had in him the _possibilities of the worst of unbelievers. Human nnture is truly the creation of God, fearfully and wonderfnll made; but there is also the fact of birth from sinful human parents to be remembere . ' This is a great mystery, to be delicately ho.ndled; but the uncleanness here indicated may be taken as intended to remind pnrents how one generation transmits not only nature, but sinful nature, to another. The person defiled by the dea.d. There is great D2 THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [cH. V. 5-10.
significance in being made unclean by the dead. Of all things in the world that mnnifest the effects of sin, this is the greatest-death. By sin came death. All lesser results lead up to this. A dead body, in one sense as sacred a thing as there is in the world, is yet also one of the most unclean. As long as there is life there is something to protest against the reign of sin, and resist it; but life being gone, sin riots and revels in the corruption of what was once fair and strong. The coffin and the gravestone hide, but they only hide. It was one of our Lord's most terrible words to the Pharisees to compare them to whited sepulchres. II. THE LINE OF SEPARATION. There are large details in Leviticus respecting all these instances of uncleanness (chs. xii.-xv.). The line of separation was clearly marked, sternly enforced. To go out of the camp meant much personal inconveni- ence, perhaps pain-suffering added on to existing suffering. Imagine tho mother tending her sick child, waiting its expiring breath, closing its eyes, composing its body, then compelled to go without the camp. This typical ceremonial 1mcleanness indicates the sharp separation between good and bad men. The word of God accords in all its references to this. There are two classes, and only two-the clean and the unclean, the sheep and the goats, the wheat and tares, the children of God and the children of wrath. It also indicntes the extent to which disci,pline can be carried in the Church of Chnst on earth. There are some offences so plain that the guilty may at once be cut off from outward communion. But there may be others quite as unworthy who yet do and must escape, because their life makes no crying scandal. Many a professed and long-continued adherent to the true Church is, nevertheless, as worldly, hard, and selfish as any of the ungodly. God reckons all such outside the camp. He alone has the knowledge and authority to reckon. Learn then the danger of all spiritual uncleanness. That so much was declared typically unclean, shows that spiritual uncleanness is a verJ great danger. The boundary between the Church and the world cannot be too strictly kept. Since we are all advancing to death, it is proof of the power of sin in our nature. We are all unclean with the worst of uncleanness. It only waits for us to feel all the evil, and the way is clear to the remedy (1 J,,hn i. 7-10).-Y. •