"He shall put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and he shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with the linen mitre shall he be attired: these are holy garments; therefore shall he wash his flesh in water, and so put them on." (Ver. 4.) Aaron's person, washed in pure water, and robed in the white linen garments, furnishes a lovely and impressive type of Christ entering upon the work of atonement. He is seen to be _personally_ and _characteristically_ pure and spotless. "For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." (John xvii. 19.) It is peculiarly precious to be called, as it were, to gaze upon the Person of our divine Priest, in all His essential holiness. The Holy Ghost delights in every thing that unfolds Christ to the view of His people; and wherever we behold Him, we see him to be the same spotless, perfect, glorious, precious, peerless Jesus, "the fairest among ten thousand, yea, altogether lovely." He did not need to _do_ or to _wear_ any thing in order to be pure and spotless; He needed no pure water, no fine linen; He was, intrinsically and practically, "the holy One of God." What Aaron _did_, and what he _wore_--the washing and the robing, are but the faint shadows of what Christ _is_. The law had only a "shadow," and "not the very image of good things to come." Blessed be God, we have not merely the shadow, but the eternal and divine reality--Christ Himself. "And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin-offering, and one ram for a burnt-offering. And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house." (Ver. 5, 6.) Aaron and his house represent the Church, not indeed as the "one body," but as a priestly house. It is not the Church as we find it developed in Ephesians and Colossians, but rather as we find it in the first epistle of Peter, in the following well-known passage: "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a _spiritual house_, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (Chap. ii. 5.) So also in Hebrews--"But Christ as a Son over His own house; _whose house are we_, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." (Chap. iii. 6.) We must ever remember that there is no revelation of the mystery of the Church in the Old Testament. Types and shadows there are, but no revelation. That wondrous mystery of Jew and Gentile forming "one body," "one new man," and united to a glorified Christ in heaven, could not, as is obvious, be revealed until Christ had taken His place above. Of this mystery Paul was pre-eminently made a steward and a minister, as he tells us in Ephesians iii. 1-12, a passage which I would commend to the prayerful attention of the Christian reader.