Leviticus 11:1

PURITY AND IMPURITY IN ANIMALS.

1 . ) The sacrifices have been instituted, the ritual of the altar has been ordained, the Aaronic priests have been consecrated, and under the supervision of Moses have performed their first official service. The nation, typically purged from sin, must be led along the path of holy living. To attain this end the people, unable through lack of intellectual and moral development to grasp broad principles and apply them to their own conduct, must be put into the school of manifold and minute rules of life. Fleshly ordinances were made, to a great extent, the channels of spiritual instruction, and for bringing perpetually into remembrance the grand distinctions of the law respecting good and evil. It was necessary that this should be spread out into a vast variety of forms, as the Mosaic dispensation admitted so very sparingly of direct instruction. The Israelite in the very food he ate must have something to remind him of the law of his God, and feel himself enclosed on every side with the signs and indications of that righteousness which it was his great duty, as a member of the covenant, to cherish and exemplify. Hence the nation in its childhood must be “under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father.” It must be thrust into “bondage to weak and beggarly elements” until the great Emancipator shall proclaim “the royal law of liberty.” As a man’s character is greatly affected by what he puts into his mouth, through the mysterious connexion between body and mind, the divine Lawgiver begins at the foundation and regulates the food of the chosen people. We cannot regard as wholly fanciful the suggestion of Wunderbar, that the animal element may only with great circumspection and discretion be taken up into the life of man, in order to avoid debasing that human life by assimilation to a brutal level, animalizing the affections and disqualifying the soul for drawing near to God. This should be regarded as a limitation to our Saviour’s announcement that “there is nothing from without a man that entering into him call defile him.” For the depression of the moral tone and the darkening of the spiritual intuitions by an improper treatment of the body are of the nature of a defilement.