circumcised disciple of the law of God, in order to discern what was clean and what was not. An alien knew no difference. Thus it must ever be. It is only Wisdom's children that can justify her and approve her heavenly ways. Ere turning from the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, my reader might, with much spiritual profit, compare it with the tenth chapter of Acts, ver. 11-16. How strange it must have appeared to one who had, from his earliest days, been taught the principles of the Mosaic ritual, to see a vessel descending from heaven, "wherein were _all manner_ of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and _creeping things_, and fowls of the air;" and not only to see such a vessel so filled, but also to hear a voice, saying, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." How wonderful! No examination of hoofs or habits! There was no need of this. The vessel and its contents had come from heaven. This was enough. The Jew might ensconce himself behind the narrow inclosures of the Jewish ritual, and exclaim, "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean;" but then the tide of divine grace was rising majestically above all such inclosures, in order to embrace, in its mighty compass, "all manner" of objects, and bear them upward to heaven, in the power and on the authority of those precious words, "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." It mattered not what was in the vessel if God had cleansed it. The Author of the book of Leviticus was about to raise the thoughts of His servant above the barriers which that book had erected, into all the magnificence of Heaven's grace. He would teach him that true cleanness--the cleanness which Heaven demanded--was no longer to consist in chewing the cud, dividing the hoof, or any such ceremonial marks, but in being washed in the blood of the Lamb, which cleanseth from all sin, and renders the believer clean enough to tread the sapphire pavement of the heavenly courts.