ABLUTION, the ceremonial washing, whereby, as a symbol of purification from uncleanness, a per son was considered—t. to be cleansed from the taint of an inferior and less pure condition, and initiated into a higher and purer state ; 2. to be cleansed from the soil of common life, and fitted for special acts of religious service ; 3. to be cleansed from defilements contracted by particular acts or circumstances, and restored to the privileges of ordinary life; 4. as absolving or purifying himself, or declaring himself absolved and purified, from the guilt of a particular act. We do not meet with any such ablutions in patriarchal times : but under the Mosaical dispensation they all occur.
A marked example of the first kind of ablution occurs when Aaron and his sons, on their being set apart for the priesthood, were washed with water before they were invested with the priestly robes and anointed with the holy oil (Lev. viii. 6). To this head we are inclined to refer the ablution of persons and raiment which was commanded to the whole of the Israelites, as a preparation to their receiving the law from Sinai (Exod. xix. to-15). We also find examples of this kind of purification in connection with initiation into a higher state. Thus those admitted into the lesser or introductory mysteries of Eleusis were previously purified on the banks of the Ilissus, by water being poured upon them by the Hydmnos.
The second kind of ablution was that which required the priests, on pain of death, to wash their hands and their feet before they approached the altar of God (Exod. xxx. 17-21). For this purpose a large basin of water was provided both at the tabernacle and at the temple. To this the Psalmist alludes when he says—' I will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I compass thine altar' (Ps. xxvi. 6). Hence it became the custom in the early Christian church for the ministers, in the view of the congregation, to wash their hands in a basin of water brought by the deacon, at the commence ment of the communion (Bingham, Antiq. bk. xv. c.3, 4); and this practice, or something like it, is still re tained in the eastern churches, as well as in the church of Rome, when mass is celebrated. Similar ablu tions by the priests before proceeding to perform the more sacred ceremonies were usual among the heathen. The Egyptian priests indeed carried the practice to a burdensome extent, from which the Jewish priests were, perhaps designedly, exonerated; and in their less torrid climate, it was for purposes of real cleanliness, less needful. Reservoirs of water
were attached to the Egyptian temples; and Hero dotus 37) informs us that the priests shaved the whole of their bodies every third day, that no insect or other filth might be upon them when they served the gods, and that they washed themselves in cold water twice every day and twice every night: Porphyry says thrice a day, with a nocturnal ablution occasionally. This kind of ablution, as preparatory to a religious act, answers to the simple I-Vada of the Moslems, which they are required to go through five times daily before their stated prayers. This makes the ceremonies of ablution much more conspicuous to a travelier in the Moslem East at the present day than they would appear among the ancient Jews, seeing that the law imposed this obligation on the priests only, not on the people. Connected as these Moslem ablutions are with various forms and imitative ceremonies, and recurring so frequently as they do, the avowedly heavy yoke of even the Mosaic law seems light in the comparison.
In the third class of ablutions washing is re garded as a purification from positive defilements. The Mosaical law recognises eleven species of un cleanness of this nature (Lev. xii.-xv.), the purifi cation for which ceased at the end of a certain period, provided the unclean person then washed his body and his clothes; but in a few cases, such as leprosy and the defilements contracted by touching a dead body, he remained unclean seven days after the physical cause of pollution had ceased. This was all that the law required: but in later times, when the Jews began to refine upon it, these cases were considered generic instead of specific—as repre senting classes instead of individual cases of defilement—and the causes of pollution requiring purification by water thus came to be greatly in creased. This kind of ablution for substantial uncleanness answers to the Moslem ^ ghash, in which the causes of defilement greatly exceed those of the Mosaical law, while they are perhaps equalled in number and minuteness by those which the later Jews devised. The uncleanness in this class arises chiefly from the natural secretions of human beings and of beasts used for food; and, from the ordure of animals not used for food; and as among the Jews, the defilement may he communicated not only to persons, but to clothes, utensils, and dwell ings—in all which cases the purification must be made by water, or by some representative act where water cannot be applied.