Is it in the power of language to teach us more impressively than this incense-altar does, that we should come with the utmost care and preparation to present to God our prayers and worship? Think not that any thing and every thing you may bring as incense will be accepted. Vain will be your lip-service; vain your cold, heartless offerings. Strange incense it is you profess to burn when the soul still harbors its evil passions, when pride and worldliness and sensuality are cherished there. There may be the bowed head, and the bent knee, and the solemn utterance of devotion; but God's immediate eye is on you, and will detect the emptiness of all your service. Such service is a profanation of the holy place. Such incense only provokes the Most High to anger. Beware lest the fire you kindle to burn it with break forth upon you and consume you, for says Jehovah, "Ye shall offer no strange incense" upon my altar. What then must be the state of our hearts in order that we may bring a pure offering of incense before God? What is necessary to acceptable prayer and worship? To answer this, come once more by the altar and examine its position. It stands in the holy place of the tabernacle. To reach it the worshipper must come through the outer court--must pass the altar of burnt-offering. There he learns that there is no access to God except by blood. There he learns of atonement through the sacrifice of Christ. There he stands as a sinner who needs an expiation. There he makes his confession, and lays his hand upon the head of the sacrificial victim. He can get to the incense-altar only after he has stood there and found a propitiation for his sins. Learn then, that if you would assay to approach God, you must come first of all to the cross. You must find an atonement for your sins through the Lamb of God. There is no other way of access to him but by faith in the blood of Jesus. Come first to Calvary, and gaze upon the great propitiation, the Victim dying amid the altar-fires of divine justice. Come as a sinner, for pardon and purification. Come with his blood sprinkled upon you, with faith in his merits only, or else you cannot gain access to God.