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If the altar, the seat of expiation, itself needed expiation, how imperfect its worth must be! If the cleansing fountain is foul, how shall it be cleansed, or how shall it cleanse the offerers?
Chronicles speaks only of the 'tax, that is, the half-shekel, but Kings mentions two other sources, one of which is purely spontaneous gifts, and these are implied by the tone of verse 10, which lays stress on the gladness of the offerers. That is the incense which adds fragrance to our gifts.
Bent says that these people are treacherous in the extreme, worshippers of devils, offerers up of human sacrifices, and cannibals, though not so bad as the people of Fiji, the next islands we are to visit. The chiefs all this time are kept in durance below. I have seldom seen four finer men in figure and feature.
In all nations beyond the limits of Israel the sacrifices of living victims spoke not only of surrender and dependence, but likewise of the consciousness of demerit and evil on the part of the offerers, and were at once a confession of sin, a prayer for pardon, and a propitiation of an offended God.
Each family took it in turn to provide food, and they feasted until it had gone the round of the village. The family who had a great display of good things was praised; but the stingy, stinted offerers were cursed. After all had prayed and partaken for the day, nothing was kept for another meal. Whatever was over was thrown away or buried.
And when he had gathered the multitude together again, he ordained that they should offer half a shekel for every man, as an oblation to God; which shekel is a piece among the Hebrews, and is equal to four Athenian drachmae. Whereupon they readily obeyed what Moses had commanded; and the number of the offerers was six hundred and five thousand five hundred and fifty.
As he looks round, and looks upwards, on the prodigy of design, and skill, and perseverance, and tributary wealth, he may image to himself the multitudes that, during successive ages, frequented this fane in the assured belief, that the idle ceremonies and impious superstitions, which they there performed or witnessed, were a service acceptable to heaven, and to be repaid in blessings to the offerers.
Now, of such sacrifices the offerers used to eat, as is clear by the lamb of the passover, and many other offerings: so that these words seem to be but a renewing of their former privileges, not a granting new liberty to the world. "Every moving thing." "Even as the green herb." And this liberty might afresh be here repeated, from some scruple that might arise in Noah, &c. Ver. 4.
"We were struck by the remark of Mr. Wade, that, while he regarded the prayers of Christians in this country as indispensable to the success of the mission, he could not but fear that prayers such as he had sometimes heard would avail them or their offerers little. The fervor of love, the expectancy of hope, and the persevering constancy of faith were the spiritual qualities wanted.
Now though these sacrifices were offered, yet they were not offered to the end they should make the comers to, or offerers thereof, perfect; but the things were to represent to the world what God had in after ages for to do, which was even the salvation of His creatures by that offering of the body of Jesus Christ, of which these were a shadow and a type for the accomplishing of the second covenant.
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