5. He that touched the dead was defiled seven days. This tactual defilement typified not only the guilt and depravity which _we_ derive from Adam, but, especially, the contagion of man’s guilt which came on the Lord Jesus, by becoming the Son of man, born in our nature. Though he knew no sin, yet was he laden with our curse. He signified this very thing, when in the days of his flesh, he defiled himself by touching the lepers and the dead, that he might restore them to soundness and life, at the price of his own life;—“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.”—Matt. viii, 17. The same thing was set forth by the fact that the priest that sprinkled the heifer’s blood, each assistant at the burning and gathering of the ashes, and he that sprinkled the water of separation, all became thereby unclean until the even. They, together, represented the Lord Jesus, in the exercise of his mediatorial office, which involved his taking his people’s curse upon him, to free them. The seven days of this defilement have been already explained, as typical of our native condition of depravity and guilt, which, if not purged, involves continuance and condemnation in the seventh, the last day, when the sentence will be uttered, “He that is filthy let him be filthy still.”—Rev. xxii, 11. 6. The ashes of the heifer were as familiar to the religious life of Israel as was the blood of sacrifice. But the significance of the blood is so much more familiar to us, that a pause is here proper, to call attention to the wonderful propriety and instructiveness of the ashes. In the blood we see the penalty of sin paid, and justice satisfied. But it is satisfied at the price of life, and leaves death in possession. But, in the ashes, Israel saw the sacrifice come forth from the exhausted fires of justice, unconsumed and unconsumable. On them, the fire could no more take hold; but, mingled with the living water, they represented Christ—the law satisfied and the curse exhausted in his blood—coming forth by the Spirit, from the expiring flames, robed in life and immortality. “Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.”—Acts ii, 24. 7. The ashes were mingled with running water. Prior to the baptism of Israel at Sinai, we hear of no sacramental rite setting forth the office and work of the Holy Spirit. But the living water, then ordained in the divers baptisms of the Mosaic system, became thenceforward the standing representation and type of the Third Person of the Godhead, as the Spirit of life, shed down from heaven by the Mediator.