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Updated: May 2, 2025
Since this was done, the accumulated refuse collected from the periodical cleansings of the house, during a term of nearly three years including, of course, the ashes from the fires kept burning, for the greater part of the year, in the library and the picture-gallery have been poured upon the heap, and have buried the precious morsels of paper deeper and deeper, day by day.
Thus went the days by, the weeks and the months; four days in the front line, the harassing journey to and from it, the monotonous sentry-go, the spy-hole on the plain, the mesmerism of the empty outlook and of the deserts of waiting; and after that, four days of rest-camp full of marches and parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations.
In calling the Law the elements of the world Paul refers to the whole Law, principally to the ceremonial law which dealt with external matters, as meat, drink, dress, places, times, feasts, cleansings, sacrifices, etc. These are mundane matters which cannot save the sinner. Ceremonial laws are like the statutes of governments dealing with purely civil matters, as commerce, inheritance, etc.
I could but think how many a lesson we may learn from the small as well as the great creations of God's hand habits such as this little animal possessed might, in the way of cleanliness, lead to the prevention of endless diseases, if imitated by those who never dream of daily cleansings as being necessary to health and life.
Be this as it may, we find the ancient Persians resemble the Jews in sacrificing upon high places, in paying divine honor to fire, in keeping up a sacred flame, in certain ceremonial cleansings, in possessing an hereditary priesthood who alone were allowed to offer sacrifices, and in making their summum bonum the possession of a numerous offspring."
He went on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but, instead of splashing around in the Thames solely for the fun of it, he began to find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it afforded.
It is a common quality of primitive religions that they are apt to lay stress on merely ceremonial cleansings, for example. The ceremony is gone through for the sake of pleasing a deity. There are abundant indications of this same purpose in the ceremonies of the early Hebrews, but there is even more abundant indication that the ceremonies were aimed at a good result for the worshiper himself.
He knew that his hearers would understand the meaning of the ceremony. He had reason also to believe, that on account of the nature of his mission, they would expect it. Hence the Sanhedrim, to whom the cognizance of the legal cleansings belonged, when they were informed of the baptism of John, never expressed any surprise at it, as a now, or unusual, or improper custom.
He once ordered a leper to go to the priest, and to offer the gift for his cleansings. At another time , he ordered a blind man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam; but he never ordered any one to go and be baptized with water.
There are two such cleansings recorded in the Gospels; this one His first public act, and another, omitted by John, but recorded in the other Gospels, which was almost His last public act.
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