through the precious stones, which were probably set clear-so the light and love of Jesus in the heart will be evident, especially to brethren in Christ, the "household of faith," who know for themselves the Divine source of such illumination.

But to return from the ephod to the tabernacle. All things in the Tabernacle had spoken of Christ -in symbol-in symbol to Israel-in vivid types to us, for we can look back upon the Old Testament by the light of the New. A symbol was a sign, which might refer to past, present, or future; a type was always prefigurative. God ordered symbolic actions in the prophets. Jeremiah's breaking a potter's vessel (Jer. xviii. 2, 10), and his hiding a girdle in a rock on the banks of the Euphrates, which when looked for proved to be rotten, signified destruction shortly to befall the abandoned Jewish people (Jer. xiii. 1-7). The building of the temple was a symbolic prophecy prefiguring the incarnation of God in the person of Christ, and of the raising up in Him of a spiritual house that should be an "habitation of God through the Spirit." (Ephes. ii. 20-22.

The old Tabernacle of the wilderness is spoken of in the first book of Samuel, as the "house," or the "temple" of Jehovah, and, indeed, the Temple of Solomon was neither more nor less than the exact repetition of the pattern "which God showed to Moses in the mount," only it was erected of more durable materials, and was just double the size of the holy tent in the wilderness; therefore a knowledge of the meaning of the symbols in the one structure is necessary to understand the other.

The outer court of the tabernacle was formed by pillars of brass, with capitals of silver, five cubits or seven feet seven inches high, and the same distance

apart, to which were attached, by hooks of silver, white curtains, it is supposed of network, so as to permit the tribes around to witness the proceedings within. These curtains enclosed a space which was a double square twenty-five yards broad and fifty yards long. The entrance on the eastern side was fifty cubits or twelve and a half yards wide, through curtains wrought with needlework of gorgeous colours, blue, purple and scarlet, on a white ground-all which also spake in symbol to the Israelite. The white was to cause him to think of God's holiness and purity fencing and surrounding His house; the blue lifted his eyes to the sapphire sky, God's throne and the blue riband prescribed for the hem of his own garment reminded him that he was God's servant while upon earth; the purple was the colour of kings, and spoke to him of the presence of a Royal Master; while the scarlet (blood-colour) told him that that holy and heavenly and royal Presence could only be approached by an offering of the shed blood-the blood of the Lamb "slain from the foundation of the world."

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The lamb which was to be offered as a burnt-offering for the sins of the people, every morning and every evening, on the brazen altar, was the first object that struck the eye on entering the outer court of the Tabernacle. On this altar was always burning the fire which had been kindled by a flash from the Schechinah, or Presence within the Vail; it "came out from before the Lord" (Levit. ix. 24), and this fire was never to go out. This altar spoke to the Hebrews of pardon for sin through perpetual sacrifice.

The second object in the outer court was the laver of brass, at which the priests were to wash their hands and their feet. The altar was the place of

pardon and justification through the blood of Christ, the laver of purification was the sign of sanctification through the Spirit.

Then, on entering the Tabernacle itself, which only the priests might do, there were again symbols of the same things. The little table of shewbread, with twelve loaves upon it, one for each tribe, to be renewed every seventh day, and a double one on the Sabbath, prefigured the Saviour who declared that He was the bread of life, which bread He broke for His disciples in symbol of His body broken on the accursed tree. The place of worship was to be the place of spiritual food and light, and communion with God, as it should be to this day.

The interior of the Tabernacle was dark, but for the light of the seven-branched golden candlestick, signifying the illumination of the Holy Ghost. The form of this sacred candlestick is preserved to us to this day on the arch of Titus, the Roman conqueror, who destroyed Jerusalem for the last time seventy years after Christ, and sculptured the trophies of its holy things on the triumphal arch which was to endure to his pagan glory even to this present day. You have in the frontispiece a fine wood-cut, made from a noble photograph of this treasure of treasures among the relics of antiquity.

Rome shows on this tablet that in the first Christian century she held in pawn, as it were, the holy things of God, as a heathen power. Where she hid the originals none can tell. The precious candlestick revealed not to her the glorious meaning of the table of shewbread, or of the golden altar of incense, ascending before the vail of the Temple, and which signified the place of communion with the unseen and invisible. We might think that the Book of Leviticus contained nothing for us, till the Book of

Hebrews points us back to the consideration of all these symbols, or figures, and what they signify. See the whole ninth and tenth chapters of Hebrews, and then turn to the sixteenth of Leviticus, and watch the offering of the Scapegoat.

Two goats are taken by the priest, both alike in age and beauty, and lots are cast upon them. One is sacrificed; upon the other Aaron lays his hands, and makes over it a confession of the sins of the people, and then sends it far into the wilderness. Christ is typified by both these goats. They signify two acts of Christ. I. His sacrifice of Himself for the sins of the people. II. His bearing away our sin into a land not inhabited by us, even into heaven, whither He ascended, and is looked upon by God as bearing our sin. The Hebrew name for the scape-goat is Azazel, which means "the bearer off, the carrier away." "The whole figure represents not only the dying of Christ for our sins, but His rising again: "He rose again for our justification." A single goat could not have represented both ideas; the disappearance of the goat is the type of the blotting-out of our sins, which God will remember no more. When He forgives He forgets. We cannot do this. We sometimes forgive, and yet remember; but God blots out, and for ever.

Aaron was to take the blood of the first goat that he killed, before the dismissal of the second, and bring it within the vail, and sprinkle it on the mercyseat and before the mercy-seat, and also upon the horns of the brazen altar. There was to be no man in the Tabernacle while he did it; but the Awful Presence of the Lord would be there; and he was to take a censer full of burning coals from off the golden altar of incense before the Lord, and to sprinkle the incense on the fire, that the cloud of

the incense might rise up and cover the mercy-seat of the ark of the testimony, as it is said, "that he die not." He waved the censer that the clouds of incense might be as a vail before that exceeding brightness, which would otherwise glare him into blindness, and then he sprinkled the blood on the mercy-seat, and seven times on the floor-and when God saw the blood, as in Egypt, He passed over the sin of priest and people.

This was done on the great Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventeenth sacred month, Tisri, between the Feast of Trumpets and of Tabernacles.

The Commands of Leviticus, you will remember, were delivered at Sinai in the beginning of the second year of the wanderings, when it was supposable that the Israelites would be obedient, and march directly for Canaan; but they rebelled at Kadesh Barnea, and were condemned to wander for thirtyeight years in the wilderness. For all these years they were under a ban-out of favour with Godand that generation all died in the wilderness. They could not even fulfil the requirements of the Levitical law. It was not intended for a rebel people in the desert, but for an obedient people in Canaan. When they passed into the land with Joshua, the Levitical law awoke with the resurrection of the people, and to the devout Israelite must have suggested many meanings beneath the surface of its letter. But it has been well observed "that the hieroglyphics of the Levitical law could never have been fully intelligible till the Holy Spirit deciphered them. In the first days of the Gospel the literal requirements of the Law were fulfilled and done away with in Christ. They fell off like the husks of swelling seed, or the blossoms of