his brethren in the present state: but they became related to the whole process by association with him in whom it has been wholly accomplished, and in the end they will become the subjects of its entire operation.

They become identified with the sin-offering stage in being baptised into the death of Christ. Christ "suffered without the gate,' as the bullock was burnt outside the camp; and they go forth to him without the camp bearing his reproach." Any man in a hearty manner identifying himself with the death of Christ in the way provided in the gospel, and rejoicing in it as acceptable to God, and certain to lead to unutterable good in the end, will certainly find himself "without the camp," even in Gentile society-both as regards his acceptability with Gentile friends, and as regards their suitability for his society. But he can bear it if he remembers it is of Divine appointment. It helps him to remember this when he thinks of the body of the sin offering carried outside the camp under Moses, and when he thinks of the antitype in Christ, who was "rejected of men," and conveyed out of Jerusalem to be crucified, that sin might be condemned in the flesh.

He becomes identified with the burnt-offering "sweet savour stage when he rises from baptism to "present his body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God" through Christ, who has become "the Lord, the Spirit," by transformation; and he becomes identified with the ram of consecration, with all its adjuncts in the wave-offering, when he goes forth in the diversified activity of a life consecrated to God.

This is the measure of his experience of the Mosaic significance for the time being. It is no small measure when realised in the full intelligent joy of the truth-in faith and hope. Still, it is nothing by comparison with Christ's actual experience in the Spirit-state-which every true worshipper in the sanctuary will be permitted to share in the change from this burdened mortal-state to the glory of the incorruptible at the coming of Christ.

One aspect of that experience is pleasant to contemplate activity. This was the feature of the wave-offering as distinguished from the other sacrifices. There was action; and the nature of the action is betokened by the unleavened bread, oil and cake, and wafer waved with it "righteousness and holiness." These were all consumed by the altar-fire all taken into Spirit-nature. Popular theology thinks of the saved state as a state of passive "bliss." It is evident from the type before us that the life of Spirit-nature will be a life of active service in holiness. This is confirmed by what is testified concerning

"Bless

the angels with whom the saints are to be raised to equality: the Lord, ye his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening to the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye

his hosts, ye ministers of his that do his pleasure.

This is a charming prospect. We are liable to think of the Kingdom as a place of rest. This it will truly be, but not the rest of inaction. Nothing is more irksome to a state of strength than inactivity. 'Tis only infirmity that delights in the ease of the couch : 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles: they shall run, and not be weary: they shall walk, and not faint" (Is. xl. 31). Immortal energy will want suitable scope, though doubtless allied with the ability of a perfect self-composure when required. And this scope it will find, to the constant joy of its possessors. What will be its forms of activity in detail, we cannot know in advance, except that they will have to do with the government of men and the worship of God. We may be sure that "the pleasures of the chase" (so exhilarating to the children of the flesh) will form no part of their delights, whose chief joy is to confer blessing on even the meanest of creatures. "The unleavened bread, the oiled cake and wafer," tell us of joy in righteousness, holiness, and kindness, whose forms will be infinitely diversified in a perfect and holy state.

While the bulk of the ram of consecration was consumed on the altar as 66 an offering made by fire unto the Lord," part of it, after being waved, was to be eaten, with unleavened bread from the basket in the holy place (Lev. viii. 29, 31). The cooking and the eating were to be done by Aaron and his sons at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and any flesh or bread remaining uneaten was to be burnt (32). The meaning of this we may see if we reflect that the consecrated state in its final development is the immortal state, into which "the forerunner hath for us entered." The entrance into this state is by the eating now at the door. None will be found in the consecrated state who have not now availed themselves of the means of consecration in the spiritual eating of the flesh provided-("My flesh which I give for the life of the world "-JESUS)-eaten, too, 'not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor. v. 8). And when the whole family have eaten, the surplus flesh and bread will be burnt with fire, destroyed in judgment: withdrawn in anger: the door shut: no further admission to the consecrated state. Many will run eagerly after the grace of God in Christ when his glory is revealed-to be met only with the fateful words: "Too late!"

And all this consecration work was to be gone through for seven days in succession: "Ye shall abide at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation day and night seven days." "Ye shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle of the congregation in seven days until the days of your consecration be at an end, for seven days shall he consecrate you. As he hath done this day, so hath the Lord commanded to do, to make an atonement for you" (verse 35, 33). We may see in this the larger shadowing of the reconciliation work. In its completeness, it extends over seven thousand years, embracing the whole family of God that will people the earth as its ransomed population in the endless ages. The family in this sense are at the door of the tabernacle for seven days of a thousand years each-the seventh a Sabbath of rest, but still a day of atoning work.

On the eighth day, there was a specially imposing ceremony which we can scarcely err in regarding as the typification of what will occur at the close of the Millennial phase of the kingdom, when "the Son shall deliver up the kingdom" to the Father, "that God may be all in all " (1 Cor. xv. 24, 28). Moses gave directions as to certain things to be done, and said to Aaron and the elders, "To-day (the eighth day) the Lord will appear unto you." The things being done, "the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people. And there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt-offering and the fat, which, when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces " (Lev. ix. 1, 4, 23, 24). Could there be a more perfect type of that final filling of the whole earth with the glory of the Lord, which has been the burden of promise from the beginning?

We know little practically of the state of things that will prevail on the earth in the eighth millennium from Adam's expulsion from Eden and onwards. But we know this, that "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying" (Rev. xxi. 4). We know that "the throne of God and the Lamb will be " established; and "His servants shall serve Him and they shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there, and they need no candle nor light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Rev. xxii. 3-5). What more fit illustration of such a state than the spectacle of Israel on their faces in the presence of the manifested glory of the Lord on the eighth day after the commencement of the consecration work?

It

The nature of the preparations made on the eighth day for this manifestation may appear to interfere with such an application. was a re-offering of the dedicatory sacrifices: for Aaron, a calf and ram, for sin-offering and burnt-offering respectively for the people, a

kid of the goats for sin-offering, and a calf and a lamb for burntoffering, and a bullock and a lamb for peace-offerings, with their appropriate meat-offerings. It may be asked what parallel could there be in the deathless state reached after the thousand years, to the offering of

"Lambs and bullocks slain ?"

The answer does not seem difficult. There will always be the antitype to these things. It will never drop out of truth or memory that the salvation attained through Christ is a salvation achieved by sacrifice. It will always be a theme of joyful celebration among the glorified righteous that they owe their position "to him that loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood." Would it not, then, be in perfect keeping with the attainment and the nature of the perfect ages that will succeed the kingdom of the thousand years that they should be inaugurated by some special recognition of the sacrificial foundation upon which the glory stands?

Every form of God's work hitherto and what has been revealed concerning the constitution of the age to come, supplies an affirmative answer to this question. First, the individual privileges of faith in this present state have always been associated with sacrifice, from the very gate of Eden to the divine condemnation of sin in the flesh on Calvary. Second, wherever the gospel savingly comes, it brings the broken body and shed blood of the Lord in the memorial supper to be partaken of by the most enlightened believers. Third, in the midst of all the glories of the restored kingdom of David under Christ in the age to come, the Lord's death is memorialised in the restoration of sacrifice on the most elaborate scale, in the offering of which, the Lord himself takes prominent part, "for himself," too, as expressly declared (Ezek. xlv. 22).

What the form of the inaugural ceremony of the perfect age in this respect will be, we may not know exactly but in view of the type before us, and the considerations just referred to, we shall not wander far from very strong probability if we suppose-(when the post-millennial Gog and Magog have been destroyed, and the mighty congregation of the responsible dead have been dealt with before the Great White Throne)-that there will be some great ceremonial reassertion of the righteousness of God as sacrificially accomplished in Christ and ratified by every living soul present, preliminary to that wondrous transfer of the visible headship from the Son to the Father, that "God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 24-28).

CHAPTER XX.-THE ROUTINE SERVICE of the TabERNACLE.

T

HE Tabernacle was ready for congregational use after the dedicatory services considered in the last two chapters. It was "holy unto the Lord," and no one could intrude without being guilty of sacrilege on pain of death. Not even the priests could approach the altar without washing at the laver, or the inner holy without sacrificial blood.

It is all meaningless mummery to a mere naturalist. To the enlightened state of mind that comes from taking all facts into view, and not those of nature merely, it must appear as a powerful means of creating and developing the sentiment of reverence and the conception of holiness. This is the highest grace of which human character is capable. To the merely natural mind, there is nothing to revere : no holiness to cultivate but only things to know and sensations to feel -under the bias of which, human character sinks into coldness and grossness, and barrenness. The ordinances of the law were designed to draw the mind up to a higher level, on which worship in holiness warms and expands and beautifies the character. Its typical nature was a secondary element reserved for later elucidation by the Spirit of God in the apostles. Its immediate object was to bring Israel near to God in holiness. It succeeded in this as regards a class in all their generations; and even as regards the unsanctified bulk, it kept them in a certain outward shape and attitude of separateness, which was subservient to the Divine purpose in calling them out of Egypt and organising them as a nation on the basis of the law. The law was a schoolmaster (not "to bring unto" Christ as the interpolated words of King James's version of Gal. iii. 24 expresses it, but to prepare the way for Christ). Without the preliminary effects engendered by the long previous currency of the law of Moses, the situation would not have been suitable for his manifestation.

The mechanical sanctities of the tabernacle and its service have been misapplied in the ecclesiastical corruption of the gospel that set in, after the apostolic age, through the influence of the Judaising class that arose in the very days of the apostles through the circumstance that the bulk of gospel believers in the first place was composed of Jews under the law, and included even a great company of the priests." (Acts vi. 7; xxi. 20). It is a practice of "the church " to