Directions are then given to provide staves wherewith to carry the Golden Altar; signifying that the basis of worship is to accompany us in our wanderings down here, They indicate that worship like the Ark or Mercy-seat—is not to be a matter of one locality, but of all localities; though indeed there is only one “place of worship,” and that is within the veil. In like manner the sailor carries his compass all over the world, but it always connects itself with the center of the heavens where the pole-star shines; otherwise it is useless.
The pilgrim fathers, the Huguenots and many others, have been scattered over the face of the earth; but though they had to leave their household possessions, every remnant of them could carry the golden altar with them by its unseen staves, yet there was but one altar:
Our hearths we abandon, (our lands we resign:
But Father we kneel to no altar but Thine.”
Worship is, however, an exercise of so holy a nature that a means is next introduced by which the worshippers are required to cleanse themselves of any defilement that they may have contracted before approaching the throne of divine majesty. This was the Laver, a large reservoir of water, with a “foot” underneath into which some of it flowed from above as required and in it the intending worshipper was commanded to wash his hands and feet.
This signifies the practical purification of the general course of conduct (“walk” —the feet) and of all definite actions (the hands) by means of “the water of the word.” It is therefore the second and practical side of sanctification, a thing continuously needed, whereas the first aspect of sanctification, the complete submergence already described, never needs repetition. Peter in a mistaken modesty declined to allow his feet to be washed until the Lord told him that it must be done:
“ If I wash thee not thou hast no part with me.” Then the ardent disciple made another mistake.: he said, “Lord, [wash] not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” But that would be to repeat what is not to be repeated. The Lord replies, “He that is bathed [lit.] needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.”
There is a tendency to overlook this need of purification: the callous and ignorant will rush in where angels fear to tread. Hence the material of which the laver was constructed was brass, which speaks of the searching of divine judgment. Moreover the laver was made from brass mirrors (Ex. 38:88And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. (Exodus 38:8)) and thus it represented that character of the word by which a man sees himself reflected in all his need of cleansing, and at the same time, which from its own resources affords means of cleansing.
That mirror-like faculty in the word of God is one reason why so many have an enmity against it. They find themselves reflected in it in a very unflattering light, “warts and all,” as Cromwell told the painter. But it is a necessity in any true religion, as Pascal says, that it should know human nature: Il faut, pour qu'une religion soit vrai, qu'elle ait connu noter nature. Therefore they assail it, only to find, like Praxiteles when he broke the mirror that offended him by revealing his mutilated face—that all the broken pieces took up and reflected the same representation (so that there were now twenty unsightly Praxiteles' instead of one). It is a mirror which, if it be broken, only multiplies its testimony; and they had thought it to be like that little glass toy, the “Prince Rupert drop” which will explode and vanish if you give it ever so slight a scratch! No, that is the difference between truth and error perhaps. What is that phrase that says though Truth is run over by a locomotive and crushed out of all shape, yet she will eventually recover, whereas Error dies of mortification from a pin-scratch? May be so; I only know that Error is an unconscionably long time dying, and that Truth is being run over all the time.
This purification by the laver is very stringently commanded. If it were omitted, the approaching worshipper was cut off by death. This would be in the antitype of course spiritual—there would be no spiritual vitality in the exercise. There may be much of fluent and complaisant verbosity—or even eloquence—that assumes to be ministry and worship; but unless there be a practically purified course of life and action in those through whom it comes, it is all vapid and lifeless; and there ascends but an odor of death and decay instead of a fragrant incense.