ter and lights, and which is
defended by the author of "Hierurgia" in the following manner. After
having described the use of incense in the Jewish temples, he says--

"It was from this religious custom of employing incense in the ancient
temple, that the royal prophet drew that beautiful simile of his, when he
petitioned that his prayers might ascend before the Lord like incense. It
was while 'all the multitude were praying without at the hour of incense,
that there appeared to Zachary an angel of the Lord, standing at the right
of the altar of incense,'--(Luke i. 10, 11). That the oriental nations
attached a meaning not only of personal reverence, but also of religious
homage to an offering of incense, is demonstrable from the instance of the
magi, who, having fallen down to adore the newborn Jesus, and recognise
his divinity, presented him with gold, and myrrh, and frankincense. That
he might be more intelligible to those who read his book of the
Apocalypse, it is very probable that St John adapted his language to the
ceremonial of the liturgy then followed by the Christians in celebrating
the eucharistic sacrifice, at the period the evangelist was committing to
writing his mysterious revelations. In depicting, therefore, the scene
which took place in the sanctuary of heaven, where he was given to behold
in vision the mystic sacrifice of the Lamb, we are warranted to suppose
that he borrowed the imagery, and selected several of his expressions,
from the ritual then actually in use, and has in consequence bequeathed to
us an outline of the ceremonial which the church employed in the apostolic
ages of offering up the unbloody sacrifice of the same divine Lamb of God,
Christ Jesus, in her sanctuary upon earth. Now, St John particularly
notices how the 'angel came and stood before the altar, having a golden
censer; and there was given him much incense, that he should offer of the
prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne
of God; and the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended
up before God, from the hand of the angel.'--Apocal. viii.
3-5."--(_Hierurgia_, p. 518.)

To this explanation of the use of incense in the churches, I may answer by
the same observation which I have made, p. 144, on a similar defence of
the use of lights, namely, that it is a strange materialization of
spiritual ideas by embodying into a tangible shape what is simply typical,
and which is not warra