WHEN Moses guided the children of Israel, helping to establish them as worshipers of the one God, he laid down for their use many minute instructions. By these their habits of life were to be governed, that they might maintain their integrity as God's chosen people, who had been led out of the bondage of Egypt's darkened thought into the freedom of a more spiritual understanding of God.
In observing these rules they were to separate themselves from the demoralizing influence of the nations among which they dwelt, that they might not lose the import of the never-to-be-forgotten experience of their deliverance. No phase of their daily activities or ceremonial worship seems to have been forgotten in the thoroughness of these instructions; and no subject receives more detailed attention in these rules and ordinances than purification. Very clearly was the line drawn in the law between "clean" and "unclean," covering all matters involved in daily living.
With Jesus, demonstrating the Christ, "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error," as defined by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583), the concept of purification changed. It was lifted out of the realm of matter and physical activity altogether, into that of divine Mind and its activity.
