The Temple Ministry and Services at the Time of Jesus

PREFACE 7
priest, and, above all, as at the Feast of Tabernacles,
applying to Himself the significant rites of the
Sanctuary. And, as we follow on, we witness the birth
of the Church on the day of Pentecost we mark the
;
frequent illustrations of spiritual realities by Templescenes,
in the writings of the apostles, but more
especially in
the Book of Revelation, whose imagery
is so often taken from them ;
and we still look for
the
accomplishment of the one yet unfulfilled type
the Feast of Tabernacles, as the grand harvest-festival
of the Church.
I
have thus placed the permanent Christian interest
in the foreground, because it
occupied that place in
my own mind. At the same time, from the nature
of the subject, I hope the volume may fulfil yet
another and kindred purpose.
Although
it does not
profess to be a Handbook of Biblical Antiquities, nor
a treatise on the types of the Old Testament, both
these subjects had to be constantly referred to. But
to realise the gorgeous Temple ritual, in all its details,
possesses more than a merely historical We
interest.
are indeed fascinated by it we live over
;
again, if not
the period of Israel s
temporal glory, yet
that of
deepest interest to us ;
and we can vividly represent
to ourselves what the Temple had been before its
services had for ever passed away.
But beyond this,
stretching far back through the period of prophets
and kings, and reaching up to the original revelation
of Jehovah amid the awful grandeur of Sinai, our
holiest recollections, and the very springs
of our