CHAPTER XXIII.

DIVINE WORSHIP.

ANOTHER feature to be especially marked in the institution of the Church is, that God was pleased to regulate its worship. There is a great principle involved in this. The end for which all things are created is God's glory; inanimate things show forth His glory by fulfilling the purpose for which they were created :-"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handywork" (Ps. xix. 1). But conscious, thinking, free, spiritual intelligences, must give glory to God by acts of reverence and words of praise, the outward expression of their dependence upon God, and of the admiration and love which they feel towards Him.

By sin the worship of paradise was interrupted. Man, the high priest of nature, ceased to be capable of offering up the worship of the world to the glory of the Creator. At the reconciliation, God taught man a new worship, which consisted in the offering of a sin offering. When God called forth a Church, and perfected its institutions, He regulated the worship which it should acceptably offer to the glory of God. For it is not for man to worship as he thinks most suitable; it is for God to appoint the worship which He will be pleased to accept at the hands of

man.

In making a special covenant with the Church, we have seen God retained the principles of the old covenant, but gave man greater knowledge of Himself, drew him into

greater nearness, required a more complete self-devotion and a higher holiness. In regulating the worship of the Church, we find similarly the principles of the patriarchal worship retained, but the worship is made fuller and grander, the worshipper is drawn nearer to God in his worship, and doubtless carries away more abundant grace.

God regulated the worship, not only as to its general principles, but in its minute particulars. Moses was in the mount with God forty days, receiving God's instructions for the perfect institutions of the Church; and among other things God showed to Moses a pattern of the tabernacle and of all the vessels of the ministry, directed the consecration of a new priesthood, the ceremonial of the various kinds of sacrifice, the daily service and the annual festivals, dictated the words to be used by the worshippers (Deut. xxvi. 5); and in short God regulated all that related to Divine worship.

When the tabernacle was finished and solemnly dedicated to God, then God showed His approval by entering into the most holy place, in the symbol of the fire and cloud (Ex. xl. 34), and taking up His abode between the cherubims (Lev. xvi. 2). When the first burnt offering was laid upon the altar, God showed His acceptance by fire from heaven, which consumed it (Lev. ix. 24). The heavenly fire which then descended on the altar was, we are told, kept alight. The daily morning sacrifice was kept slowly consuming till the fire was trimmed anew for the evening sacrifice, and the evening sacrifice was kept consuming till the morning again, so that there was continually a sacrifice before the Lord, a symbol of the "one sacrifice for ever" of the Lamb of God.

To an understanding of the meaning of the complex system of sacrifice of the ancient Church, the following note will be helpful.

The Mosaic sacrifices were of three kinds.

1. The sin offering, by which the sinner was reconciled to God. The significant ceremony was the sprinkling of the blood before the veil of the sanctuary, the putting some of it on the horns of the altar of incense, and the pouring out of all the rest at the foot of the altar of burnt offering. Of this sacrifice the offerer was not allowed to partake, to show his unworthiness to receive the least of God's mercies.

2. The burnt offering. The idea of propitiation through the precious blood was not absent from this sacrifice, since the blood of the victim was sprinkled round about the altar; but the main idea of the offering was self-dedication. It symbolised that the offerer dedicated himself, body and soul, to God. In all solemn sacrifices no burnt-offering could be made till a previous sin offering had taken away sin, and given the worshipper access to God.

3. The meat offering. Our common use of the word "meat" for flesh, misleads the ordinary reader. The usual meat offering consisted of flour, oil, and wine. The idea of this offering was Eucharistic. It was an expression of thanks to God for His good gifts to man, and was usually an appendage to the burnt offering. Under this head of Eucharistic offerings comes also the peace offering, which was a voluntary act of devotion. Its characteristic ceremony was the eating of the flesh by the offerer (after the fat had been burnt before the Lord, and the breast and shoulder given to the priests), and this eating meant that the offerer had communion with God, at the table of the Lord.

4. Lastly, there was the offering of incense, upon the small gold-covered altar of incense, in the holy place, which was made morning and evening. It had a twofold signification: Ist, the prayers of God's people ascending to heaven; and 2nd, the intercession of Jesus Christ the Priest,

through whose mediation their sacrifices and prayers were accepted of God.

The ancient sacrifices were not merely empty ceremonies, they had a real spiritual efficacy. These sacrifices were, under that dispensation, the appointed means of obtaining the benefits procured for men by the great sacrifice—that is, they were sacramental in their character. The sinner did really obtain pardon for sin, who offered his sin offering in penitence and faith; the self-devotion of the fervent offerer of a burnt offering was accepted by God; the pious offerer of a peace offering had really communion with God through it. But they had no efficacy in themselves; all the virtue they possessed was through Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice was anticipated by God, and its benefits at once given to man.

It is easy to see that in our more perfect dispensation of the Church of God, the Eucharist takes the place of this complex system of symbolical rites. It represents and pleads the sacrifice of Christ for the remission of sin; in it we offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice; and it is a Eucharistic offering of bread and wine.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PRIESTHOOD.

UNDER the older covenants the head of each family appears to have acted as the priest of the family, the head of a tribe or nation as a kind of high priest on great occasions of tribal or national worship. There was a natural appropriateness in this. A priest was one who fulfilled a twofold function. He represented men in offering their prayers and praises and offerings to God, and he represented God in giving means of grace and teaching and blessing to men. The head of a family was its natural representative before God; the head of the family was again the fittest representative of God, creator, ruler, and benefactor, to his family and dependents.

This continued after God had called Abraham, while the patriarchs of his family were still wanderers in Canaan, and while the tribes were dwelling and multiplying in Goshen. But when the twelve confederate tribes were to become one nation and Church, God instituted a national altar and a national priesthood. It is for God to appoint whom He will to be His own representative, and it is equally for God to choose by whom He will be pleased to receive the homage of His creatures: "No man taketh this office unto himself, but he that is called of God” (Heb. v. 4). God appointed Aaron* and his sons (Ex. xxix. and Lev. viii.) to be His priests (Ex. xxviii.); all the rest of the men of the

*It seems probable that Aaron was the hereditary head and priest of the tribe of Levi.