"How shall we wash in it then?" the teacher asked, still looking at Matilda.
"If we trust him?"—she began.
"To do what?"
"To forgive,—and to take away our wrong feelings."
"For his blood's sake!" said the teacher. "'They have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.' And as the sacrifices of old time were a sort of picture and token of the pouring out of that blood; so the outward cleanness about which the Jews had to be so particular was a sort of sign and token of the pure heart-cleanness which every one must have who follows the Lord Jesus.
"And so we come back to Daniel. If he eat the food sent from the king's table he would be certain to touch and eat now and then something which would be, for him, ceremonially unclean. More than that. Often the king's meat was prepared from part of an animal which had been sacrificed to an idol; to eat of the sacrifice was part of the worship of the idol; and so Daniel and his fellows might have been thought to share in that worship."
"But it wouldn't have been true," said a boy in the class.
"What would not have been true?"
"He would not have been worshipping the idol. He didn't mean it."
"So you think he might just as well have eaten the idol's meat? not meaning any thing."