The careful reader of those portions of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers which give the plan of the tabernacle, the ritual of the priests and Levites and the minute detail of numerous sacrifices and offerings and purifications, will not need the suggestion that in many respects the interest and the value of these details have mostly passed away. Of prime importance in that age; vital to the proper construction of the tabernacle; vital to the due consecration of priest and Levite and to their instruction in duty; entirely essential to the ends of a ritual system which was to be the religious law of a great people――they were all in place then and were indispensable; but in most respects this interest and value have long since ceased. Whereas in the time of Moses not one word of this minute detail was superfluous, not one point could be safely omitted; now, it may be passed over with only brief notice. Few will care to read all its particulars. Yet two points deserve remark: 1. That this very minuteness of detail is the strongest evidence of the genuineness and antiquity of these books. They were certainly written at the time of the events they record. They never could have been gotten up in any age subsequent to the events. The specifications for the tabernacle and for all its furniture had a purpose then; but could have had no purpose to justify such minuteness after the construction was finished. It would be the supremest folly to forge such documents ages after the events had passed. No man in his senses ever attempts such a forgery. Men never submit to such labor without an object; and the case precludes the possibility of any object _after_ the tent was built and after the ritual was fully understood and wrought into established usage. 2. While these minute details neither require nor reward particular investigation in our day, yet taken in whole _they are pregnant with great moral lessons for all time_. (1.) There was a perpetual inculcation of cleanliness, external purity; and the most careful avoidance of whatever was defiling. The ceremonial washings and cleansings, the removal from the camp, or as the case may be, the seclusion from the court of the tabernacle for a term of purification, occur frequently. By a natural law of mind, sin is associated with uncleanness; crime is defiling. Hence, with almost infinite pains the Lord was impressing upon his people the great idea that their God who deigned to dwell among them “was of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” He could not abide with them save as they kept themselves clean and pure.