roof; implying that its top was fashion- | mikbar), and there is not the least ed like the flat roofs of eastern houses. mention made of cleansing the Altar These were furnished with parapets, from ashes, or of any thing to receive battlements, or balustrades, to which them. The incense was not burnt upon the border or crown of the altar bore, a grate, but in a golden censer which on a small scale, a striking resem- was placed, filled with coals, upon the blance. The rendering of the Gr. expav, Altar, so that no ashes or refuse whathearth, and the Lat. Vulg. 'Craticula' ever fell upon the Altar.¶ The grate, is entirely erroneous, as the orig- sides thereof. Heb. ¬¬¬ kirothauv, inal word is different from that applied his walls; in continued analogy with to the grate of the brazen altar (the structure of a house.

The mystical design of the Altar of In- | are the prayers of saints. Again, Rev. cense now demands attention. Its primary use is sufficiently evident from its name, and from what is said in the subsequent verses. As the Table was for the Bread, the Candlestick for the Lights, and the brazen Altar for the Sacrifices, so the golden Altar was for the Incense which was to be burnt upon it. Now that the general import of incense as a symbol was that of prayer, cannot be questioned by any one who casts his eye over the following passages; Ps. 141. 2, 'Let my prayer be set forth hefore thee (as) incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Rev. 5. 8, 'And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them lamps and golden vials full of odors, which

1

8. 3, 4, 'And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.' Here it is evidently implied that while the sacerdotal angel was officiating at the golden Altar, the saints were to be at the same time engaged in offering up prayers which might, as it were, mingle with the fragrant incense, and both come up in a grateful and acceptable cloud before God. In like manner it is said, Luke, 1. 9, 10, that while Zechariah was 'executing the priest's office according to

Still it may be doubted whether the full and complete design of the golden Altar as a symbol can be reached, without assigning to it, as well as to the Candlestick and the Table, a prospective reference. Can it be in keep

the custom, his lot was 'o burn incense | clouds of incense, which every mornwhen he went into the temple of the ing and evening filled the holy place Lord. And the whole multitude of the of the sanctuary with its grateful perpeople were praying without at the fume. time of incense.' Here the two services were performed together, the one being an emblem of the other. As then the idea of prayer is prominent in the symbolical purport of the act of offering incense, we may safely consider the intercessory office of Christ in heavening with the rest of the furniture of as primarily shadowed forth by the the Tabernacle, unless it points to the golden Altar and its Levitical uses. As heavenly state as yet to be developed ? the brazen Altar which was placed There no Altar of sacrifice is found, without the sanctuary typified his sa- because the one offering of the Savior crifice, which was made on earth, so was consummated in his oblation of the Altar of Incense stationed within himself upon the cross. But the Altar the sanctuary represented his interced- of Incense is there, and it bears a name ing work above, where he has gone to ( mizbëah), the leading idea of appear in the presence of God for us, which is that of slain sacrifice. Why and where his intercession is as sweet- is this idea to be carried forward into smelling savor. This is to be inferred the upper sanctuary in connexion with from the fact that it occupied a place a structure intended mainly as a shadow directly before the mercy seat-which of prayer, thanksgiving, and praise? represented the appropriate sphere of Why, but to intimate that there is still, the Savior's present mediatorial func- and is ever to be, to the saints a real tions. Whatever service was perform- and indissoluble connexion between the ed by the priests within the precincts atonement of Christ and the praises and of the Tabernacle had a more special doxologies in which they are engaged and emphatic reference to Christ's work in heaven?-between acquittal from in heaven; whereas their duties in the guilt and acceptance to favor? Were it outer court had more of an earth- not for the virtue of his atoning sacrily bearing, representing the oblations fice how could they be in heaven to which were made on the part of sinners, praise him at all? In the ministraand on behalf of sinners, to the holy ma- tions of the earthly sanctuary, the coals jesty of Jehovah. As, however, scarceon which the incense was burnt on the ly any of the objects or rites of the golden Altar were to be taken from the ancient economy had an exclusive typ- brazen Altar. This taught the Israelite ical import, but combined many in one, from whence the efficacy and acceptso in the present case, nothing forbids ableness of their prayers and praises us to consider the prayers and devotions was derived. So in the heavenly sanctuof the saints as also symbolically rep-ary, the instrument of incense is call. resented by the incense of the golden ed by the otherwise inappropriate name Altar. As a matter of fact, they do pray below while Christ intercedes above; their prayers mingle with his; and it is doing no violence to the symbol to suppose their spiritual desires, kindled by the fire of holy love, to be significantly set forth by the uprising VOL. II. 17

of altar (sacrificatory) to keep its blessed inhabitants in mind of the fact, that the blood of atonement and the fire of sacrifice, must be for ever that which imparts all its grateful fragrance to the songs, ascriptions, and hallelujahs of the ransomed throng in glory.

4 And two golden rings shalt thou | 7 And Aaron shall burn thereon make to it under the crown of it, d sweet incense every morning: by the two corners thereof, upon when he dresseth the lamps, he the two sides of it shalt thou make shall burn incense upon it. it; and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal. 5 And thou shalt make the staves of shittim-wood, and overlay them with gold.

10 And g Aaron shall make an atonement upon it throughout your atonement upon the horns of it generations: it is most holy unto once in a year, with the blood of the LORD. the sin-offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make

g Lev. 16. 18. & 23. 27.

had appointed; and special care was to be taken to make no confusion between the offerings belonging to the respective altars, of which the one kind was for atonement, the other for acceptance only. So when drawing nigh to God in prayer, we are not to bring the fervor of mere animal spirits, which may easily be mistaken for true devotion; but a broken and a contrite heart, which alone sends forth an odor that is wellpleasing to God. Nor are we to imagine that by our prayers, or by any thing else that we can bring to God, we can atone for sin, or contribute in the least degree towards the efficacy of Christ's atonement. These must be kept quite distinct; and whilst our prayers are offered on the Altar of Incense, our pleas must be taken solely from the Altar of Burnt-offering.

11

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

of the golden Altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.' The question is, What is implied in the fact of this voice being represented as proceeding from the four 'horns of the golden Altar?' In answer to this it may be observed, that the cases mentioned Ex. 21. 24. 1 Kings, 1. 50. 1 Kings, 2. 28, clearly evince that the horns of the Altar were constituted an asylum for those who had been guilty of undesigned transgressions. It is true indeed that in these instances allusion seems to be had more especially to the Altar of holocausts standing in the court of the Tabernacle, but as the blood of atonement was sprinkled in like manner upon the horns of both the brazen and the golden altar, it is to be infer 10. Aaron shall make alonement upon red, we imagine, by a parity of reasonthe horns of it once in a year. This was ing that the horns of the Altar are in to be upon what was called the great day general a symbol of divine protection, of Atonement, of which a full account or of a secure sanctuary for those whose is given Lev. 10. 1-28. The ordinance crimes are of a remissible nature. But was peculiarly striking, as it intimated as the sin to be punished by the voice that all the services performed at it of the sixth trumpet was that of idolwere imperfect, that the Altar itself atry, as appears from Rev. 9. 20, 21, had contracted a degree of impurity which in a whole people is less parfrom the sinfulness of those who min- donable in the sight of God than any istered there, and that even the very other, the voice issuing from the four odors of the daily incense needed to be horns of the golden Altar, is a virtual sweetened by a fresh infusion of the proclamation that God was about to savor of the blood of sprinkling.—This withdraw his protection from a portion mention of atonement made upon the of idolatrous Christendom, and to send horns of the Altar affords a fair occa- upon it a plague of far more desolating sion for an attempted explication of a character than that of the locusts which passage in the Apocalypse, c. 9. 13, 14, had preceded. For in the case of the which commentators have for the most locust-wo, commandment was given that part passed over with a very superficial men should be tormented, but not killnotice; 'And the sixth angel sounded, ed. But in that of the sixth trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns the Euphratean horsemen were appoint