of time to hear more. The lesson went on. The carrying
away of Daniel and his companions was told of, and "the learning and
the tongue of the Chaldeans" was explained. Gradually the question came
round to Matilda again. Why Daniel and the other three noble young Jews
would not eat of the king's meat?

Matilda could not guess.

"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."

"_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