20. The figures of speech corresponding to the forms of sprinkling and pouring appear everywhere in the Old Testament. Pervading and determining the entire structure of the ritual law, they reappear continually, in the historical records, in the devotional and penitent utterances of the Psalmist, the discourses of the Preacher, and the expostulations and warnings of the prophets, and in their glad anticipations of the grace of the coming Messiah. With one and the same spiritual meaning everywhere, these figures pervade and control the whole texture of thought and mode of expression of the sacred writers. 21. This rite of purification by sprinkling was not only thus familiar to Israel, but, under corrupted forms, it had been disseminated throughout the civilized world; so that when the apostles went forth to carry the gospel to the nations, the ideas of sin and guilt, defilement and cleansing, thus nourished, were a very important element in the providential preparation of the world to appreciate and accept the salvation of Christ. While such was the case, the fact is equally significant that among the nations contiguous to Israel there is no trace of ritual purification by immersion,—a form of observance which, had it existed in Israel, could not have failed of imitation by her idolatrous neighbors. Thus assiduously and multifariously were the people of Israel taught, and trained—by instructions, by warnings, by promises, by rites and ceremonies, enjoined and observed at the sanctuary and at home, which laid hold upon them in every relation of their being and every function of their lives—to conceive of themselves in all their sinfulness and need, and of the coming Messiah in his offices of grace, in the light of this ordinance, and according to the similitude embodied in it. For fifteen centuries these influences were continually at work, until the very bent and tendency of their thoughts and conceptions, in so far as they yielded themselves to the divine agencies thus applied, were moulded to the forms of those rites.