But we must draw this section to a close, and shall merely add a word on the closing verses of our chapter. “And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes, and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even. And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean, and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.” (Chap. xix. 21, 22.) In verse 18 we are taught that it needed a clean person to sprinkle the unclean, and in verse 21 we are taught that the act of sprinkling another defiled one’s self. Putting both these together, we learn, as another has said, “that any one who has to do with the sin of another, though it be in the way of duty, to cleanse it, is defiled; not as the guilty person, it is true, but we cannot touch sin without being defiled.” And we learn also that in order to lead another into the enjoyment of the cleansing virtue of Christ’s work, I must be in the enjoyment of that cleansing work myself. It is well to remember this. Those who applied the water of separation to others had to use that water for themselves. May our souls enter into this. May we ever abide in the sense of the perfect cleanness into which the death of Christ introduces us, and in which His priestly work maintains us; and, oh, let us never forget that _contact with evil defiles_! It was so under the Mosaic economy, and it is so now. CHAPTER XX. “Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin, in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.” (Ver. 1.) The chapter which now opens before us furnishes a very remarkable record of wilderness life and experience. In it we see Moses, the servant of God, passing through some of the most trying scenes of his eventful life. First of all, Miriam dies. The one whose voice was heard, amid the brilliant scenes of Exodus xv, chanting a hymn of victory passes away, and her ashes are deposited in the wilderness of Kadesh. The timbrel is laid aside. The voice of song is hushed in the silence of death. She can no longer lead in the dance. She had sung sweetly in her day; she had very blessedly seized the key-note of that magnificent song of praise sung on the resurrection side of the Red Sea. Her chorus embodied the great central truth of redemption.—“Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.” This was truly a lofty strain; it was the suited utterance for the joyous occasion.