Being, to Whom the companionship of
sinful man is so little needed, is there to meet with man; and is
pleased not to look upon His violated law, but to command that a slab,
inestimably precious, shall interpose between it and its Avenger. By
whom, then, shall this most holy floor be trodden? By the official
representative of him who gazes, and longs, and is excluded. He enters
not without blood, which he is careful to sprinkle upon all the
furniture, but chiefly and seven times upon the mercy-seat.

Thus every worshipper carries away a profound consciousness that he is
utterly unworthy, and yet that his unworthiness has been expiated; that
he is excluded, and yet that his priest, his representative, has been
admitted, and therefore that he may hope. The Holy Ghost did not declare
by sign that no way into the Holiest existed, but only that it was not
yet made manifest. Not yet.

This leads us to think of the priest.

CHAPTER XXVIII

_"THE HOLY GARMENTS."_

xxviii.

The tabernacle being complete, the priesthood has to be provided for.
Its dignity is intimated by the command to Moses to bring his brother
Aaron and his sons near to himself (clearly in rank, because the object
is defined, "that he may minister unto Me"), and also by the direction
to make "holy garments for glory and for beauty." But just as the
furniture is treated before the shrine, and again before the courtyard,
so the vestments are provided before the priesthood is itself discussed.

The holiness of the raiment implies that separation to office can be
expressed by official robes in the Church as well as in the state; and
their glory and beauty show that God, Who has clothed His creation with
splendour and with loveliness, does not dissever religious feeling from
artistic expression.

All that are wise-hearted in such work, being inspired by God as really,
though not as profoundly, as if their task were to foretell the advent
of Messiah, are to unite their labours upon these garments.

The order in the twenty-eighth chapter is perhaps that of their visible
importance. But it will be clearer to describe them in the order in
which they were put on.

Next the flesh all the priests were clad from the loins to the thighs in
close-fitting linen: the indecency of many pagan rituals must be far
from them, and this was a perpetual ordinance, "that they bear not
iniquity and die" (xxviii. 42-3).

Over this was a tight-fitting "coat" (a shirt r