The general signification of these ordinances is evident. The priest, by whom alone the cleansing rites could be administered, was the official representative of our great high-priest, Christ Jesus. The two birds were with the priest a complex type of him who offered himself without spot to God, who was dead and is alive for evermore, and by the merits of whose blood and the power of whose Spirit remission of sins and the new life of holiness are given to men. The first self-washing symbolized the duty of the redeemed to turn from their old ways and walk in holiness. The continued exclusion, for seven days, from his house and the sanctuary was a testimony that for the present we are pilgrims and strangers, and that only at the end of earth’s trials and purgations can we enter our “house which is from heaven.” The seventh day’s washing indicated the final putting off of all evil in the resurrection; and the offerings of the eighth represented the way whereby, in the regeneration, God’s redeemed people shall have access to his presence and communion with him, through the blood of Jesus. We are now able to understand why the cleansing of the healed leper was thus separately ordered, and not included in the provision which we shall presently see was made, in common, for all other cases of seven days’ uncleanness. The extraordinary and frequently supernatural character of both the disorder and its cure rendered it proper and necessary to take it out of the category of ordinary uncleannesses, and place it under the immediate jurisdiction of the priests. This was necessary, alike, in order to a judicial determination at first as to the existence of the leprosy, and afterward as to the cure. And the priestly administration of the rites of cleansing was equally important, as constituting an official and authoritative proclamation of the healing and restoration of the leper. SECTION XV.—_Baptism of those defiled by the Dead._