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lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn incense upon it; a perpetual incense before the Lord, throughout your generations."*

In the blessing of Levi, therefore, Moses, the man of God, said of his sons, "They shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar."+ When solomon sent to the king of Tyre, for materials for building the temple, he informed him, that it was to be dedicated to God, to burn before him "sweet incense," as well as the burnt-offering, morning and evening. When Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, in the war which was waged against him by the revolted tribes, asserted the justice of his cause, he reminded them, that on his side the priests, which ministered. unto the Lord, were the sons of Aaron, and that "they burned unto the Lord, every morning and every evening, burnt sacrifices and sweet incense." And Luke informs us, respecting Zacharias, that "while he executed the priest's office before God, in the order of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord: and the whole multitude of the people were praying without, at the time of in, cense."§

It will be remembered, in illustration of these associated rites, (the bleeding lamb and the priest present

* Exod. xxx. 6-8.
2 Chron. xiii. 11.

† Deut. xxxiii. 10.
§ Luke i. 8-10.

ing the censer of incense), that when Noah came forth from the ark, and again took possession of the earth, from which the deluge had swept every living thing that had breathed upon it; his first work was to build an altar to the Lord. Of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, which had been preserved with himself and his family in the ark, he offered burnt offerings upon the altar. And then, with the prospect of man's renewed apostacy before him, and implying that a sacrifice has power to avert a deserved curse, and secure the perpetuation of undeserved blessings, it is immediately added, "And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for" (because that) "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”*

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Now, to the Jews, for their own meditation and instruction, as well as that they might preserve it for future ages, and ultimately for universal circulation, was committed this portion of the oracles of God. And when, while the lamb which had been slain before

* Gen. viii. 21. 22. ; ix. 1.

them, was consuming upon their own altar, they saw also the fragrant cloud of incense from the censer of the priest ascend, and spread itself over the vail, which concealed from the eye the glory of the Shechinah; by what they saw, and by the wide-spreading odour of the incense which they inhaled, they must have been reminded of the inspired declaration, that when Noah's sacrifice was offered, "the Lord smelled a sweet savour." They had the testimony of their senses to the fact, that with their sacrifice a sweet-smelling odour was coming up before God whom they worshipped. Here also they saw the way in which the punishment which their own sins deserved (for there is no man which sinneth not) was to be adverted, and the undeserved blessings which they needed, were to be obtained. It was, by the interposition between them and God, of a lamb which had been slain; and of a priest, who was living to present the odour of the sacrifice before him. Let it be remembered, that these associated rites were repeated every morning and every evening in the temple, at the hour when the people assembled for prayer; and that whether the people were many or few ;-the company of those, who like Anna were never absent from the temple at the hour when its daily services were performed; or the more numerous assembly of those who dwelt within a Sabbath-day's journey of the holy place, and contented themselves with a weekly attendance on its courts; or the multitudes who came to it in the be

ginnings of the months; or the general concourse of the nation three times in the year;-still the continual burnt offering was ever the same: one lamb for the altar of burnt offering, and one priest with his censer for the altar of incense. Neither the additional lambs on the Sabbath, nor the bullocks and lambs in the beginnings of their months, nor the multitudinous victims at the festivals, were ever to interfere with the simple institution of the daily service, nor to alter its character; they were to be presented beside the continual burnt-offering.*

And, as there was but one altar of either kind for burnt offering or for incense, and from the latter but one censer at a time sent up its fragrant perfume; where, we may ask, on the desecration of that altar, and the rending of the veil before which it stood, is the authority by which another altar of any description has been reared in any other place, or another censer of incense any where enkindled to present before God? The Jewish priests could not rear an altar wherever they chose, nor enkindle the incense as often as they pleased. God had confined them to one place for their service, to one altar for their burnt offerings, to one altar for their incense, to one fire (the fire which he himself had enkindled) in which to consume their sacrifices; to the time at which the incense was to be enkindled, and the manner in which it was

* Vide Numb. xxviii.

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to be presented. It was death to deviate from his ap-
pointment. Fire from his presence consumed the
men who engaged in unauthorised rites, or enkindled
the incense with any but sacred fire. How comes it
to pass,
that altars may now be as numerous as places
of worship? that they may stand side by side under
the same roof, reared to the Virgin, and to the saints,
as well as to the Creator? that the sacrifice of the
mass can be offered as often as people like to pay for
it? that instead of one lamb for many people, there
may be many masses for one person? that the censer
of incense may be enkindled whenever the priest
chooses to officiate, and with whatever fire he likes to
employ? We ask, why? and by what authority all
this is done? but no answer can be given more satis-
factory, than that which Aaron gave to Moses, when
he said, “I cast the gold into the fire, and there came
out this calf !"*

* No better authority is there for the altars of the Roman-catholic church, than there was for that which Aaron built before the golden calf; or that which Jeroboam built at Bethel, and on which at length, in fulfilment of the inspired prediction, and as an expression of divine displeasure against the innovation, the priests themselves, who had burned incense upon it, were offered. If it be said, that Gideon, and David, and Elijah, each one in his day, built an altar, besides the one which God had appointed for the people, it is answered, That neither of these were priests— that each one of them had received a special commission

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