CHAPTER II. THE CHURCH AND THE TEMPLE Under the Patriarchal and Jewish dispensation there were numerous animal sacrifices by divine appointment. Not only so, but the people generally, who knew not the true God, have, all down the ages, poured sacrificial blood upon altars innumerable. This must have come about by the perversion of divinely-appointed sacrificial institutions, or from the felt need of fallen man for some way of mediation and of approach to God. That the need was felt by true worshipers is not open to doubt, for if sacrifice were devised by man, it would only have arisen from a sense of that need; and, on the other hand, if ordained of God, it could only have been acceptably offered under a consciousness thereof. Sacrifices, altars and priests have generally stood together; and so long as they have been upon divine lines have been highly beneficial. But it has been alleged that priests have been a curse rather than a blessing to the nations, and I am not prepared to dispute the allegation. But neither God nor the Bible is responsible, because the priesthood as instituted by the Jews was a good and not an evil to that people; while, on the other hand, the priestly system has no place in Christianity. The priests of heathendom and of Christendom are not of God. Then how widely different, how completely opposite, is the unpriestly worship of the Church of Christ from the sacerdotal ceremonies of the Jewish economy. There we find the costly temple, in the construction of which were gold, silver, precious stones and costly fabrics in unrestricted abundance; sacred places over which the people may not pass, and which the feet of priests and Levites only may tread; ceremonials which bring death to those who touch them with other than priestly hands; altars and fires, blood and incense, and priests, all of divine ordering, so that we read: Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before Jehovah. And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. And the priests stood, according to their offices; the Levites also with instruments of music of Jehovah, which David the King had made to give thanks unto Jehovah (for his loving kindness endureth forever), when David raised by their ministry; and the priests sounded trumpets before them; and all Israel stood. Moreover Solomon hallowed the middle of the court that was before the house of Jehovah; for there he offered and burnt offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings, because the brazen altar which Solomon had made was not able to receive the burnt offering, and the meat offering, and the fat.