such, it is absurd to object to all allusions to it in other
literature. Yet the tendency of which these extracts are examples is not
merely toward allusion, but desecration of solemn and sacred thoughts:
it is the conversion of incense into perfumery.

There is another development of the same tendency, by no means modern,
noted by the prophet when he complains that the message of God has
become as the "very lovely song of one who hath a pleasant voice and
playeth well on an instrument." Wherever divine service is only
appreciated in so far as it is "well rendered," as rich music or stately
enunciation charm the ear, and the surroundings are aesthetic,--wherever
the gospel is heard with enjoyment only of the eloquence or
controversial skill of its rendering, wherever religion is reduced by
the cultivated to a thrill or to a solace, or by the Salvationist to a
riot or a romp, wherever Isaiah and the Psalms are only admired as
poetry, and heaven is only thought of as a languid and sentimental
solace amid wearying cares,--there again is a making of the sacred balms
to smell thereto.

And as often as a minister of God finds in his holy office a mere outlet
for his natural gifts of rhetoric or of administration, he also is
tempted to commit this crime.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] For it is incredible that, in a catalogue of furniture which
included Aaron's rod and the pot of manna, this altar should be omitted,
and "a golden censer," elsewhere unheard of, substituted. The gloss is
too evidently an endeavour to get rid of a difficulty. But in idea and
suggestion this altar belonged to the Most Holy. That shrine "had" it,
though it actually stood outside.

CHAPTER XXXI.

_BEZALEEL AND AHOLIAB._

xxxi. 1-18.

Next after this marking off so sharply of the holy from the profane,
this consecration of men to special service, this protection of sacred
unguents and sacred gums from secular use, we come upon a passage
curiously contrasted, yet not really antagonistic to the last, of
marvellous practical wisdom, and well calculated to make a nation wise
and great.

The Lord announces that He has called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri,
and has filled him with the Spirit of God. To what sacred office, then,
is he called? Simply to be a supreme craftsman, the rarest of artisans.
This also is a divine gift. "I have filled him with the Spirit of God in
wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of
workman