But doubtless there was more than this. I believe it is our privilege to discern, in the natural properties with which God has endowed those creatures which move in the waters, certain spiritual qualities which belong to the Christian life. If a fish needs a "fin" to enable him to move through the water, and "scales" to resist the action thereof, so does the believer need that spiritual capacity which enables him to move onward through the scene with which he is surrounded, and, at the same time, to resist its influence--to prevent its penetrating--to keep it out. These are precious qualities. The fin and the scale are pregnant with meaning--full of practical instruction to the Christian. They exhibit to us, in ceremonial garb, two things which we specially need, namely, spiritual energy to move onward through the element which surrounds us, and the power to preserve us from its action. The one will not avail without the other. It is of no use to possess a capacity to get on through the world if we are not proof against the world's influence; and though we may seem to be able to keep the world out, yet if we have not the motive-power, we are defective. The "fins" would not do without the "scales," nor the "scales" without the "fins." Both were required, to render a fish ceremonially clean; and we, in order to be properly equipped, require to be incased against the penetrating influence of an evil world, and, at the same time, to be furnished with a capacity to pass rapidly on. The whole deportment of a Christian should declare him a pilgrim and a stranger here. "_Onward_" must be his motto--ever and only onward. Let his locality and his circumstances be what they may, he is to have his eye fixed on a home beyond this perishing, passing world. He is furnished, by grace, with spiritual ability to go forward--to penetrate energetically through all, and carry out the earnest aspirations of his heaven-born spirit. And while thus vigorously pushing his way onward--while "forcing his passage to the skies," he is to keep his inward man fenced round about and fast closed up against all external influences. Oh, for more of the onward bent--the upward tendency! for more holy fixedness of soul and profound retirement from this vain world! We shall have reason to bless the Lord for our meditations amid the ceremonial shadows of the book of Leviticus if we are led thereby to long more intensely after those graces which though so dimly portrayed there are nevertheless so manifestly needful for us.