tabernacle for reconciliation, and the congregation outside destitute of His friendship, unless they conformed to the institutions and appointments related to that tabernacle. The lesson thus doubly enforced is unmistakable, and leaves no alternative but that of complete submission, which God requires and reason demands. The acceptable attitude is often enjoined in the Scriptures, and clearly expressed in God's own words: "To this man will I look that is humble and contrite in heart and trembleth at my word" (Isaiah lxvi. 2).

Returning to the tabernacle, we perceive that, after the altar of burnt offering, there is a laver, or large vessel, filled with water, at which the priests have to wash (or lave) before entering into the tabernacle to perform its services. As the Lord Jesus and the saints are the antitypical Aaron and his sons, the significance bears on them; and bearing on them, bears also on all who will finally be reconciled to God, through them, on the principle that, whatever is true of the first fruits, is true also of the harvest coming after. After sacrifice, washing-purification, making clean. This is no accidental order of events. In the popular conception of things, sacrifice would be enough, for the whole burden of their preaching (where there is any earnest preaching at all) is that the blood of Christ is the only essential for a sinner's salvation. As their hymn says: "The sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains." As they exclaim-"Only the blood; nothing but the blood!"

seen.

This is not an enlightened statement of the case. The blood is only an ingredient in the process of reconciliation : in what way, we have After reconciliation must come reformation, if the reconciliation is to continue in force. The sinner must "walk worthy of the vocation to which he is called" (Eph. iv. 1), and if he do not, he will be rejected; so Paul says (Heb. vi. 8), and, in preaching thus, he only re-echoes the plain teaching of Christ, who says, "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit will be taken away" (Jno. xv. 2). "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love" (Jno. xv. 10). The unprofitable servant is to be cast out (Matt. xxv. 30). We must walk as children of light (Eph. v. 8) otherwise "we shall die" (Rom. viii. 13). The Lord is our judge at last as to whether we are what he describes as "fit for the Kingdom of God" (Luke ix. 62). We appear before him for this purpose, at his appearing-that he may render to us according to our deeds (2 Cor. v. 10; 2 Tim. iv. 1).

Life after introduction to Christ is, therefore, a probation. This is the lesson of the laver. It is not enough to have God's righteousness declared in sacrifice, and endorsed in our baptism into the death of Christ we must wash in the laver. : We must conform to the

exhortation, "Wash you, make you clean put away the evil of your doings" (Isaiah i. 16). Literally this is done by subjecting the mind to the influence of the word of God. The word of God is always spoken of as the cleansing power (Jno. xv. 3; Psa. cxix. 9; Eph. v. 26), and, in actual experience, it is found to be so. Kept clean by the word, we shall be qualified for admission into the holiest, in the change to the incorruptible.

Thus the analogy of the Mosaic parable to the realities in Christ is complete. The process of drawing men from alienation to glorification is clearly discernible in all its appointments. Humility of mind -circumcision of heart-enters the Christ-gateway, on receiving the gospel; offers the Christ-sacrifice, in being baptised into the death of Christ; washes in the Christ-laver in coming under the purifying power of his commandments: enters the preliminary "holy" place of the divine Tabernacle, in becoming a member of the body of Christ; to radiate the candlestick light of the truth, and offer the incense-sacrifice of praise continually, and eat of the bread of Israel's hope, and wait for the manifestation of the glory of God in the great day of atonement, when all things reconciled will be gathered together in the "holiest " under one head-even Christ: and the true tabernacle of God will be with men, and there shall be no more curse and no more pain and no more death.

But just as there are many details in the course of human progress from the alienated state established at the beginning, to the perfectly reconciled state that will be reached at the end, so there are many other types in detail, connected with the attire of the priests, the ceremonies observed in connection with various sacrifices and the purging of various offences, and the forms of various approaches to God, both national and individual, both priestly and private.

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CHAPTER XVII.-THE PRIESTS AND THEIR ATTIRE.

HE appointment of a Tabernacle and its various appurtenances

as a meeting place between God and Israel (for such God. declared it to be -Ex. xxix. 43), necessitated the appointment also of an order of men to act as intermediaries: how otherwise could

Israel acceptably draw near. Israel was unfit to draw near. Even as early as the manifestation of Yahweh on Mount Sinai, before Moses had received directions for the construction of the tabernacle, God had forbidden the people to touch the Mount on pain of death (Ex. xix. 12). Their unfitness was alleged to consist of their "6 uncleanness (Lev. xv. 31)-a term expressive both of their physical and moral defilement—the character of the entire human race--the one growing out of the other. Man is an unclean and corruptible organisation, physically considered, living or dead: and his thoughts and actions are of the same complexion. We see him in his true nature when we compare him as he is, even at his best, with what he is promised to be the pure, incorruptible, spiritual, ever living, and glorious nature of the Lord Jesus and the angels.

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That God should dwell with men at all was esteemed by Solomon a great condescension on the part of a Being to whom it is humbling Himself "to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth” (Psa. cxii. 6). That He should dwell with unclean and rebellious man seemed contrary to the fitness of things. In a sense it was so, as is shown by the reservations by which the condescension was safe-guarded. The erection of the Tabernacle was an intimation of His willingness to be approached by man for mercy, but not at the sacrifice of his holiness, or his authority, or his majesty. Hence, familiar and indiscriminate approach was not invited : I will be sanctified in them that approach unto me." He would be approached in a consecrated and concealed recess, and that only once a year, and that only by blood shed, and that only presented by a man of His own choice, assisted by men of His own appointment, and attired in a way prescribed by Himself.

Moses was directed to "take Aaron, thy brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office." The priesthood was to be Aaron's, and his successors by a perpetual ordinance: any stranger obtruding himself upon the sacred office was to be put to death (Num. xviii. 7). The

sons were to be assistants: the father only was to be high priest: all were to be physically without blemish. Any disfigurement was to be a disqualification, though not for the eating of the sacrifices (Lev. xxi. 17-23). They were to live by the offerings made to God by the people : they were not to have any land inheritance: God was to be their inheritance (Num. xvii. 12-20). They were to stand between God and the people.

This was all part of "the figure for the time then present (Heb. ix. 9); part of "the form of (divine) knowledge and of the truth" (Rom. ii. 20).

Its general significance is scarcely to be missed. We have seen it in other connections: that man cannot approach God except in God's own way that this we can only learn by the revelation of His mind, and that all other so-called religion is the mere device of human ignorance and presumption.

Its particular significance concerns Christ, who is the substance of all these preliminary shadowings (Col. ii. 17). In Him we see a chosen mediator (1 Tim. ii. 5)-not self-appointed: "No man taketh this honour to himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron" (Heb. v. 4). It was God who said, "Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek (Psa. ex. 4). We see him offer blood-not the blood of bulls and goats, but his own blood: he alone entering the holiest "heaven itself, there to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb. ix. 24). We see Him the perfect one, without spot, without sin, without superfluity, or incongruity-and this, his character from the beginning yet assisted by his originally blemished sons in the ultimate development of his priesthood; for his children-his seed-the forgiven saints, are to reign with him as priests as well as kings (Heb. ii. 13-14; Isaiah liii. 10; Rev. v. 10). When they live as the immortal priests in the great mediatorship between God and man, they will live not as other men live-by the fruits of the ground-but by Christ, the power of God, and the great offering, whom they will eat daily by a figure in partaking of his life and subsisting in the constant communion of his love. Their former sins-all blotted outwill be no flaw in their position; though blemish in this respect would have been fatal in the high priest.

The whole Mosaic shadow tells us how far away are the people who think to commend themselves to God, by fair moral behaviour apart from Christ. It proclaims with loud confirming voice what Christ testified of himself: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." It preaches the gospel that Peter preached: "There is none other name given under heaven whereby we must be saved" (Acts iv.

12): and that Paul preached, "Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins" (Acts xiii. 38). It even gives us the gospel of the Kingdom in the constant presence of the purple in all its fabrics.

The men chosen as priests were not only to be of a certain family, but they were to be dressed in a particular way, which is minutely prescribed. Their outfit, when complete, was to be "for glory and for beauty." It is said so several times (Ex. xxviii. 2: 46).

There is a good deal condensed into this expression which is as much a part of the Mosaic parable as any other ingredient in it. It cannot be that "glory and beauty" of dress were aimed at in the sense that would commend itself to a child, or a savage, or a fop. Yet, as a matter of fact, the attire of the high priest would be highly picturesque it would be pleasing to the eye as regards symmetry of form and combination of colour: indeed, with the addition of the frontal-plate of pure gold, the shoulder-buckle of gold-set onyx stone, and the glitter of the twelve rich-set precious stones in the breast-plate, it would be nothing less than splendid. "Glory and beauty" describes it all.

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What do we see in this but the fact that glory and beauty are the attributes of Divine wisdom, whether we regard it intrinsically or in its living expression in all experience. Qualities are best discerned by contrast. Baseness and hideousness are the reverse of "glory and beauty." We have but to look at the ways of men apart from God to see how inglorious and ugly they are-in all ways and senses. The man who is the slave of vice: the community that is given over to lust and violence: the nation that is sunk in superstition, idolatry, and darkness - are extreme illustrations of the ugliness that belongs to human nature divorced from light and law- -an ugliness that extends to the faces and persons, as well as the minds of men. But there are many intermediate shades-from the partial insipidities of the common people to the ornamental brilliancies of high life. Even the fair aspects of average refinement are but the picturesque wrappage of that which is unbeautiful in itself. In a word, the natural man, in all his manifestations, is an ugly creature. He is indebted for the little ameliorations that we see in modern life to the indirect scintillations of the glory and beauty that belong to revelation. There is more profound philosophy than people imagine in the Bible classification of "the works of the flesh" and "the works of the spirit;" and on James's apparently narrow-minded declaration, that "every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of Lights." It will be found upon a broad and full study of the subject that the natural man left to himself is fruitful of all ingloriousness and