And not only in the sacrifices, but throughout the whole Levitical economy, the idea of purity pervaded all its ceremonies and observances. The camp was purified--the people were purified--everything was purified and re-purified; and each process of the ordinances was designed to reflect purity upon the others; until finally that idea of purity formed in the mind and rendered intense by the convergence of so many rays, was, by comparison, referred to the idea of God; and the idea of God in their minds being that of an infinitely powerful and good Spirit, hence purity, as a characteristic or attribute of such a nature, would necessarily assume a moral aspect, because it appertained to a moral being--it would become _moral purity_, or _holiness_. Thus they learned, in the sentiment of Scripture, that God was of too _pure_ eyes to look upon iniquity. That the idea of moral purity in the minds of the Israelites was thus originated by the machinery of the Levitical dispensation, is supported, not only by the philosophy of the thing, but by many allusions in the Scriptures. Such allusions are frequent, both in the writers of the old and of the new dispensations; evidencing that, in their minds, the idea of moral purity was still symbolized by physical purity. The rite of baptism is founded upon this symbolical analogy: the external washing with water being significant of the purifying influence of the Holy Spirit. St. John saw in vision the undefiled in heart clothed with linen pure and white; evincing that, to the mind of the Jew, such vestments as the high priest wore when he entered the holy of holies, were still emblematical of moral purity. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is an apostolic exposition of the spiritual import of the Levitical institution, so far as that institution particularly concerns believers under the New Testament dispensation, we have the foregoing view of the design of ceremonial purification expressly confirmed. 'It was, therefore, necessary,' says Paul to the Hebrews, 'that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these (that is, with these purifying processes addressed to the senses), but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.' The plain instruction of which is, that the parts and processes of the Levitical economy were patterns addressed to the senses of unseen things in heaven, and that the purifying of those patterns indicated the spiritual purity of the spiritual things which they represented.