are
the commandments which he ought to have kept. And his conscience tells
him of ingratitude, and a broken covenant; by the law is the knowledge
of sin.

It is therefore a sinister and menacing thought that immediately above
this ark of the violated covenant burns the visible manifestation of
God, his injured Benefactor.

And hence arises the golden value of that which interposes, beneath
which the accusing law is buried, by means of which God "hides His face
from our sins."

The worshipper knows this cover to be provided by a separate ordinance
of God, after the ark and its contents had been arranged for, and finds
in it a vivid concrete representation of the idea "Thou hast cast all my
sins behind Thy back" (Isa. xxxviii. 17). That this was its true
intention becomes more evident when we ascertain exactly the meaning of
the term which we have, not too precisely, rendered "mercy-seat."

The word "seat" has no part in the original; and we are not to think of
God as reposing on it, but as revealing Himself above. The erroneous
notion has probably transferred itself to the type from the heavenly
antitype, which is "the throne of grace," but it has no countenance
either in the Greek or the Hebrew name of the Mosaic institution. Nor is
the notion expressed that of gratuitous and unbought "mercy." When
Jehovah showeth mercy unto thousands, the word is different. It is true
that the root means "to cover," and is once employed in Scripture in
that sense (Gen. vi. 14); but its ethical use is generally connected
with sacrifice; and when we read of a "sin-offering for _atonement_," of
the half-shekel being an "_atonement_-money," and of "the day of
_atonement_," the word is a simple and very similar development from the
same root with this which we render _mercy-seat_ (Exod. xxx. 10, 16;
Lev. xxiii. 27, etc.).

The Greek word is found twice in the New Testament: once when the
cherubim of glory overshadow the _mercy-seat_, and again when God hath
set forth Christ to be a _propitiation_ (Heb. ix. 5; Rom. iii. 25). The
mercy-seat is therefore to be thought of in connection with sin, but sin
expiated and thus covered and put away.

We know mysteries which the Israelite could not guess of the means by
which this was brought to pass. But as he watched the high priest
disappearing into that awful solitude, with God, as he listened to the
chime of bells, swung by his movements, and announcing that still he
lived, two conditions