crown, and having gold-covered staves always in the rings ready for use. All these features would have the meanings we identified in connection with the ark in the last chapter. They represented the same community but in a different state and time-namely, now instead of then; in the mortal instead of the immortal. Incense we saw to symbolise acceptable prayer. The altar of incense represents the sacrifice of prayer offered with Christ-fire on the gold-plated foundation of faith, without which it is impossible to please God (Heb xi. 6). The presence of this altar in the Mosaic Holy and the daily consumption of incense upon it is a powerful inculcation of this truth from God, which is otherwise so often declared in the Scriptures, that men are not acceptable to Him who do not "pray without ceasing," and in "everything give thanks," offering "the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name" (Heb. xiii. 15)-" a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations." No strange incense was to be used. Only God's own promises and God's own commandments must be breathed in prayer. God's own truth is the only acceptable basis of approach. Man's thoughts and inventions are odious to Him. This is only natural, as we might say; great men can only be acceptably approached by inferiors on the basis of the great men's own views of what is proper. How much more must man conform to God. "I will be sanctified in them that approach unto me" was His comment on the destruction of Nadab and Abihu when they presumed to offer strange fire.

The altar of incense, though wholly a symbol of prayer, was associated with atonement, in being touched once a year with “the blood of sin-offering" slain and offered outside (Ex. xxx. 10), which is an intimation that prayer is not acceptable except at the hands of those who have come into contact with the sacrifice of Christ in the way appointed the understanding, belief and obedience of the gospel, in being baptised into his death. Men who worship apart from this are worshippers on the outside of the tabernacle, and invoke death in presuming to come near without the blood of the sacrifice required. The altar of incense had no relation to the stranger in any sense or way. It was in the holy, which no stranger dare enter, and it was both anointed with the holy oil and sanctified with the atoning blood, with which the stranger has not come in contact. Also it was to be served only by the priests, with whom the stranger has no connection. It is only those who have submitted to the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus that are "a royal priesthood," qualified to acceptably "show forth the praises of Him

who hath called them from darkness into His marvellous light, which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God" (1 Pet. ii. 9).

On the right-hand side of the holy place, against the inner side of the south wall of the chamber, stood a table about 3 ft. long, 18 in. broad, and 2 ft. 3 in. high, made of hard wood covered with gold (Ex. xxv. 23). On it were placed two piles of cakes, of fine flour, six in a pile, twelve in all. On each pile (or row) was placed a vessel containing a quantity of frankincense in process of burning. The cakes were to be renewed every sabbath, and the old ones eaten by the priests in the holy place. They were called the shew bread (Ex. xxv. 30), because always on show "before the Lord." But what were they there to show? First, the national constitution in twelve tribe subjection to the law of Moses. We learn this from their number, which connects them with the "twelve tribes of Israel,” and from the statement that the cakes were to be considered as taken from them as an offering for a memorial (Lev. xxiv. 7-8). This clue unites with certain apostolic expressions in attaching an Israelitish character to the whole economy of true religion and hope and holiness, as existing in this imperfect state. The holy place figures this economy, and it is meet, therefore, that it should contain the insignia of its national association. We know who said "Salvation is of the Jews" (Jno. iv. 22), " to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants, and giving of the law, and the promises " (Rom. ix. 4). We are all familiar with Paul's description of the hope of the gospel as "the hope of Israel" (Acts xxviii. 20), "unto which hope," as he further said, "our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come (xxvi. 7).

The moderns have entirely forgotten this aspect of the salvation which the gospel discloses and offers. The twelve cakes of the show bread may suffice to recall them to the truth in this matter. "The bread of God" (as the show bread is called, Lev. xxi. 6) "is he that cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world" (Jno. vi. 33); but the shape of it is Israelitish, not only as to its historical associations, but as to its future development. We not only see in Jesus a Jew (Jno. iv. 9), "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matt. i. 1) ; but as we look forward, we see him enthroned in Zion, on David's throne, as King of Israel and Lord of the whole earth (Mich. iv. 7; Isaiah ix. 6; Jer. xxiii. 5; Zech. xiv. 9). We not only see the twelve cakes piled on the table in the Mosaic holy place to "show" the truth; but in the finished antitype we see twelve thrones for the twelve apostles, over the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 30).

Thus the law and the prophets and the gospel coincide in exhibiting this much-forgotten feature of divine truth.

The divine plan is one from the beginning. his seed" is the basis of blessing laid.

"In Abraham and There has been no departure from the purpose formed at the beginning. There have been adjustments and accommodations arising out of Israel's disobedience, but the main plan has been steadily pursued even in the calling of the Gentiles to be grafted into the good olive tree (Rom. xi. 24). But because they are not all Israel that are of Israel," the vast majority in their generations having been rebels like those who fell in the wilderness under Moses, the main position has become obscured, and many have jumped to the conclusion deprecated by Paul, that "God hath cast away His people whom He foreknew." The fact is that in the midst of all the confusions inseparable from an enterprise operating on flesh and blood, there have always been a remnant like Elijah's seven thousand. This remnant in our age is mainly to be found among adopted Israelites (Gentiles adopted through Christ). Still, even these are the same class spiritually, and will be incorporated with the accepted natural remnant in the day when the plan is brought to its full completion.

CHAPTER XV.-INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE TABERNACLE.

HERE are one or two minor analogies connected with the shewbread which a brief word may suggest before passing on to the remaining aspects of the Tabernacle. The smoking frankincense on the twelve cakes may tell us that the class in Israel who are reckoned as the true and final commonwealth of Israel are those only who are as an odour of a sweet smell to the Creator in the genuine thanksgiving and praise that ascend continually from their circumcised and enlightened minds. It is not enough to have Abraham's blood; there must also be Abraham's faith and obedience.

The fact that the cakes were eaten by the priests touches the truth at three points. 1. Only the class of mankind who are called and constituted "priests unto God " are the qualified and destined partakers of the hope of Israel. 2. This hope can only be eaten in the holy place to which the truth calls men, by the gospel and baptism, outside of which men are "without Christ, and having no hope," as Paul alleges in Ep. ii. 12. 3. In the final evolution of things natural, Israel in their twelve tribes disappears by absorption in the priestly order, who, largely recruited in numbers at the close of the thousand years, become at last the sole and immortal survivors of earth's population in the perfect state to which the whole purpose is tending.

Turning our eyes from the two piles of shew-bread, a-smoke with the fragrant fumes of the prayer-incense, the only other feature challenging our attention before we retire through the curtained door of entrance (of which a word presently) are the walls of the holy place. These walls were formed by the inner surfaces of the goldplated boards, which supplied the frame-work of the tabernacle. Presumably, the gold-plating of the boards would be polished. The interior would therefore be resplendent with the glory of a burnished surface reflecting the light of the seven-branched lit candlestick— itself gleaming with a similar radiance, as also the incense altar and table of shew-bread. The splendour of such an interior would be softened a little by the veil at one end, and the entrance curtain at the other, and also by the roofing of similar material thrown across, and by the earth-floor of the apartment. Still, the general effect would be

dazzling; and when we consider the spiritual significance of the material yielding this lustre, the glittering interior of the holy place becomes a speaking parable of the mental condition that renders men acceptable to God-without which, it is pointedly declared, "it is impossible to please God" (Heb. xi. 6)—a faith true as gold, precious as gold, shining as gold. The nature of faith enables us to understand why it should have such a prominent and emphatic assertion in the symbolism of the holy place; and this symbolism is the most powerful condemnation imaginable of the present attitude of all ranks of society towards divine things.

Faith is confidence in the testimony of God concerning Himself and His purposes, and therefore is "the substance of things hoped for" (Heb. xi. 1). It is unmistakably illustrated in the remark of Paul concerning Abraham's belief in the promise that he should have a son by Sarah when she was past age. "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was STRONG IN FAITH being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform " (Rom. iv. 20). Considering this, we are justified in regarding the shining walls of the holy place as a proclamation of the fact that no man is acceptable to God who is not characterised by an unhesitating faith in all God's declarations and appointments; or, to put it positively, that the anti-typical holy place is composed of men and women whose first and most powerful moral characteristic is implicit, cordial and childlike belief in the word of God, and resultant conformity to its requirements, and that faithless and disobedient doubters are no part of the gold of the sanctuary.

How is it possible it could be otherwise? If man resents unbelief or doubt in man as a personal affront --if man exacts confidence and credence as a condition of friendship with mann-how could we expect the Eternal God, against whom we have sinned, to have any pleasure in us if we stand aloof in unsympathetic unfaith towards Himself, or doubt or indifference concerning His promises? Some are ignorant enough to expect it, if we are to judge by the views and doctrines that are so prevalent in our day; but the truth is not altered by popular misapprehension, however widespread. The essentiality, the indispensability of faith is proclaimed not only by the shining gold in every part of the Mosaic Tabernacle, but by the vision of the Holy City to John in Patmos, "which was pure gold, like unto clear glass," and concerning which it was expressly proclaimed that "the fearful and unbelieving" had no place therein. God will condescend to man if man believe; but the world is unbelieving, and therefore "the enemy of God." "How can ye believe that receive