3. Every meat-offering was to be garnished with frankincense. This has passed into universal recognition as the type of praise and commendation. Every gift must be offered with praise. Men like praise, and so does God; but there is this difference: men have no claim to praise because they have received from God whatever they have: whereas God is entitled to praise because all excellence expressed or manifest in any way in heaven or earth is but the reflection or incorporation of that which is innate with Him. God has given us the capacity to enjoy praise in subordinate relations; He never intended it to exclude praise that belongs only to Him. Where it does so, men are an offence to Him. "Of Him and through Him and to Him are all things." It is, therefore, no mawkish cringe, but the attitude of true reason to say, Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory." It is no mere pietism that Paul utters, but the inculcation of robust good sense when he says, "Let no man glory in men but him that glorieth glory in the Lord. The words are words of pure and undiluted reason that say, not the wise man glory in his wisdom: let not the mighty man glory in his might let not the rich man glory in his riches but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth ME (Jer. ix. 23). The day of pure goodness upon earth will never be till the earth is filled with His glory (His praise) as the waters cover the sea-a covering so complete as only to correspond with the mystic scene which John witnessed in Patmos: "and every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb, for ever."

"Let

4. Every meat-offering had to be "seasoned with salt" (Lev. ii. 13). "Thou shalt not suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering. With all thine offerings, thou shalt offer salt." This was part of the literal directions with which it would be the pleasure of every faithful Israelite to comply. The meaning of it is not far out of the way. Salt arrests decomposition, and preserves for use and for savoury use. It therefore stands for the opposite of corruption in nature and nauseousness of taste. It would represent sound, wholesome savoury principle. Jesus uses it in this sense: "Have salt in yourselves," but adds he, in depreciation of a mere formal godliness, "if the salt have lost its saltness, it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be trodden under foot of men.” To require salt in all meat-offerings was therefore an intimation that their acceptability depends upon their being offered with a hearty,.

pleasant-tasting, zestful, loving intelligence. A listless, savourless, formal, dead compliance with custom is of no pleasure to God or man. In this we may see the force of the expression, "the salt of the covenant of thy God." In the type, the literal salt was so designated: but why? It is one of the shadows. The substance is to be found in the state of mind, which is one of the conditions which God exacts as a ground of covenant with man. The saltness of a moral zest, a quick, enlightened earnestness, is a very condition of the Covenant. The whole ground is covered by the precept: "My son, give me thine heart," expanded in the words, "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," and again in the exhortation, "Be not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding": "Seek wisdom, seek understanding": "When wisdom is pleasant to thy soul, then shalt thou find favour." The principle in its latter application finds expression in the strong words of Christ on the subject of loving him to the extent of hating our own lives. It is a reasonable requirement of the divine service that men be hearty in it as the result of a love that springs from discernment. Its perfected form in the day of the true "immortals" will show us a community animated to its fingertips with the glow of this moral and intellectual beauty.

5. "No meat-offering which ye shall offer unto the Lord shall be made with leaven." Why leaven-the principle of fermentation-should be employed to represent evil, we are not informed. That it is so employed is beyond question, as Paul's expression shows: "The leaven of malice and wickedness (1 Cor. v. 8). It is probably because it is a self-propagating thing, and tends by the process of gaseous cellularization to change and deteriorate the constitution of the substance it acts

upon.

A thing that is leavened is inflated and on the road to corruption. Leaven, therefore, offers a considerable analogy to the operations of "malice and wickedness," which are of spontaneous generation, so far as the workings of the brain are concerned and which, if once allowed a lodgment, spread and spread till the whole mind or a whole community is clouded by their influence.

At all events, here is the express intimation by type that an act of liberality to God is of no acceptability in His eyes if it is at all inspired by a wicked mind. It might seem as if such an inspiration could not attach to such an act. Both experience and Scripture indication are decisive in the opposite direction. I have known--any of us may have known-acts of ostensibly religious service performed in the spirit of acrimony and jealousy and strife. As "men abhorred the offering of the Lord" under the iniquitous administration of Eli's sons, so the ordinances of apostolic assembly have been made to stink in

the hands of carnal emulation. The Scriptures speak of "the sacrifice of the wicked being (in any case) an abomination to the Lord, how much more when he bringeth it with a wicked mind!" The presence of leaven in the meat-offering deals, therefore, with a case by no means hypothetical. Its prohibition is the typical enforcement of the numerously otherwise asserted principle that God accepts gifts and approaches only when tendered in the meek spirit of a righteous obedience. Even their being offered on the altar, with a plentiful soaking of oil, did not secure acceptance if leaven was in the flour of the offering of which we see the parallel in the thought that even being in Christ with gladness is not enough for acceptability with God if malice find lodgment in the heart.

6. Honey also was forbidden in the meat-offerings (Lev. ii. 11). What can this mean? Honey is sweet to human taste, and stands even in the ordinary intercourse of men for all that is of self-gratifying character. That it should be banished from the altar along with leaven stands in striking contrast to the appointment of bitter herbs as an ingredient in the passover sacrifice. It is probably the obverse of the same idea. Self-denial is an indispensable part of divine submission, so self-gratification is a prohibited element. But this has to be applied with qualifications. It is the extreme application of this principle that has led to the sterile asceticisms of ecclesiastical practice. There are enjoyments permitted. How could it be otherwise? You cannot breathe or walk in the sunshine, or eat or drink or sleep without enjoyment if you are in health. "The tender mercy of the Lord is over all His works." He designs nothing but pure joy at the last.

But there are enjoyments forbidden: there are mortifications enjoined. Here is where the exclusion of the honey comes in. The law of the Lord is the regulator on all points. For want of this discrimination, many an honest soul is in a state of slavish fear and restraint which is wholly without cause. I have known such in fear to enjoy their meals, in forgetfulness of the fact that the bounties of the table are "created," as Paul says, "to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." Pleasure-seeking, the gratification of the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life," appears to be the antitypical honey which is out of place on the altar of the Lord. These may be summarised in the phrase "self-complacency"—which is odious even in human intercourse, and, therefore, much more out of place in the service of God. It is this phase of self-contemplation and selfenjoyment that appears to be identified with the figurative use of honey in the Proverbs: "It is not good to eat much honey: so for men

in

to search their own glory is not glory" (xxv. 27). This would suggest that the thing condemned in the typical prohibition of honey from the neat-offering was self-glory. It is certain that for a man to come in his spirit to God will ensure repulse. The one thing required by. His glorious majesty and called for in true reason, is the mental attitude more than once defined by Him in the words : "Humble and contrite of heart and that trembleth at my word."

When all the conditions were perfect, the meat-offering was to be handed to the priest. What became of it then? Part of it was to be burnt on the altar for a memorial of the offerer, and what was left was to be appropriated by the priest (Lev. ii. 9-10). But the whole of it was reckoned "most holy," and accepted for the offerer. The priest and the altar represented the two departments of the divine service: the visible and the invisible: the human and the divine-for when a thing was burnt on the altar, it had no further use or existence while what remained for the priest was not only visible, but contributive to the service in its human element. To both departments, all acts of divine service are related. There are words and gifts and services given to man for God's sake. Both are holy and acceptable and necessary. The men who in the sublimity of a divine abstractedness think it meritorious to forget or despise man, have forgotten that God has conjoined the two in acceptable worship. Love the Lord thy God, but forget not that He requires of thee to love and serve thy neighbour also.

If a man chose, in the abundance of his gratitude, to bring an oblation of the first-cut corn, at the time that the single sheaf of firstfruits was to be waved in the sanctuary at the feast of the first-fruits, his oblation was to be accepted, but, like the sheaf, was not to be burnt(verse 12) -only waved Was this because the earliest firstfruits represented Christ, as we have seen, who was to be an exception to all the redeemed of the Lord" in that he was not at all to see corruption, but, with the exception of the brief rest in Joseph's tomb till the morning of the third day, was to be ever before the Lord in active service, from the moment of his introduction into the world? This is a probable meaning.

A man might offer a meat-offering made from the first-cut corn; this might be burnt like the other meat-offerings (verse 16). But it was to consist of " green ears of corn dried by the fire, beaten out of the full ear," which was a product of the first fruits and not the first-fruits in sheaf form. If the waved sheaf of first-fruits represented Christ, we cannot but recognise in these green ears beaten out of the sheaf state and ripened by fire that they might be suitable for offering, the

fire of persecution, for

apostolic community coming after him and out of him, ripened in the offering as "the sacrifice and service of faith" as Paul expresses it. There must have been a reason for the distinction between the two; and this is a strong and natural distinction.

THE PEACE-OFFERING.

The meat-offering was the communion of friendship with God-as when friend gives a gift to friend out of pure love. But the peace

offering by its very name imported the idea of making peace, and, therefore, of removing cause of dispeace. The cause would be on the offerer's side wholly, for there is never cause of dispeace from God when men walk in harmony with his requirements. A man might feel cause of dispeace without being guilty of any overt act of trespass. He might not feel bad enough, as we might say, to bring a sin-offering or a trespass-offering, which would be for some particular act of nonconformity with the law yet he might feel a sense of general shortcoming sufficient to make him fear the divine disapproval: or he might feel special cause for thanksgiving which he had not fully met. He might in such case bring a peace-offering. His offering in such a case must be more than a mere present. It is only man that can be propitiated with a gift. We cannot give anything to God in this sense-in the sense of enriching Him. We must give Him that which pleases Him; and in the case of fault, it is not giving Him something that can conciliate Him: It is abasement even unto death. Hence, a peace. offering had to be a living creature for sacrifice: the recognition of God's greatness and prerogative: the acknowledgment that the continued life of the owner was by favour and not of right.

The peace-offering might be of the cattle, sheep, or goats, and, as regards the two first, it might be male or female (Lev. iii. 1, 6, 12) in which latter point, there is a distinction between the peace-offering and the sin-offering, and all the leading offerings instituted; in these, a male without blemish was the requirement: but here "male or female." We have already considered the meaning of the male element in sacrifice: how are we to understand the admissibility of the female element in the peace-offerings? It certainly shows that woman is not excluded from the work of salvation, though she was not to figure in the first degree. It was a man that was to be the saviour, yet the man was to be by the woman. She was to contribute her part. If woman was the means of man's downfall in Eden, she was the means of his redemption in Bethlehem. See her bending over the manger. This was evidently the relation of ideas before the mind of Paul when he said: "Adam was not deceived, but the