"You remember that the Jews, as the Lord's people, were required to keep themselves ceremonially clean, as it was called. If they eat certain things or touched certain other things, they were not allowed to go into the temple to worship, until at least that day was ended and they had washed themselves and changed their clothes. Sometimes many more days than one must pass before they could be 'clean' again, in that sense. This was ceremony, but it served to teach and remind them of something that was not ceremony, but deep inward truth. What?"
Mr. Wharncliffe abruptly stopped with the question, and a tall boy at one end of the class answered him.
"People must keep themselves from what is not good."
"The people of God must keep themselves from every thing that is not pure, in word, thought, and deed. And how if they fail sometimes, Joanna, and get soiled by falling into some temptation? what must they do?"
"Get washed."
"What shall they wash in, when it is the heart and conscience that must be made clean?"
"The blood of Christ."
"How will that make us clean?"
There was hesitation in the class; then as Mr. Wharncliffe's eye came to her and rested slightly, Matilda could not help speaking.
"Because it was shed for our sins, and it takes them all away."