Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/678

Rh 640 ALTAR well known, and it might almost be thought that tney were retained from the older ritual, according to which they were used to bind the victim that was slain upon the altar. The second temple having suffered greatly in the wars between the kings of Syria and Egypt, and been plundered by the Romans, was almost rebuilt by Herod, the restora tion occupying forty-six years. The altar of burnt -offering erected then is thus described by Josephus (De Bell. Jud. v. 5, 6) : &quot; Before this temple stood the altar, 15 cubits high, and equal both in length and breadth, each of which dimensions was 50 cubits. The figure it was built in was a square : it had corners like horns, and the passage up to it was by an insensible acclivity from the south. It was formed without any iron tool, nor did any iron tool so much as touch it at any time.&quot; A pipe was connected with the south-west horn, through which the blood of the victims was discharged by a subterraneous passage into the brook Kedron. Under the altar was a cavity to receive the drink-offerings. This was covered with a marble slab, and cleansed from time to time. On the north side of the altar several iron rings were fixed to fasten the victims. Lastly, a red line was drawn round the middle of the altar to distinguish between the blood that was to be sprinkled above and below it. The second altar belonging to the Jewish worship was the altar of incense, the golden altar (Ex. xxx. 1). It was placed in the holy place, between the table of shew-bread and the golden candlestick. This altar, in the tabernacle, was made of shittim-wood overlaid with gold plates, 1 cubit in length and breadth, and 2 cubits in height. It had horns of the same materials ; and round the flat surface was a border of wrought gold, underneath which were the rings to receive &quot; the staves, made of shittim-wood overlaid with gold, to bear it withal;&quot; (Exod. xxx. 1-5; Joseph. Antiq. iii. 6, 8). The altar in Solomon s temple was similar in form, but made of cedar overlaid with gold (1 Kings vi. 20). It is a question whether it was hollow or filled up with stones, the construction of the Hebrew being doubt ful, but the former supposition appears the more probable. The altar in the second temple was taken away by Antiochus Epiphanes (1 Mace. i. 21), and restored by Judas Maccabaeus (1 Mace. iv. 49). The archangel Gabriel stood at the right side of this altar when he announced the birth of John the Baptist to Zacharias, who was burning incense upon it (Lukei. 11); and it is alluded to in the vision shown to St John (Rev. viii. 3), where it is immediately &quot; before the throne,&quot; the veil, which under the Mosaic dispensation had separated it from the holy of holies, having been rent asunder at the crucifixion. On this altar incense was offered twice every day, and this was the only use of incense under the Levitical ritual; for though the word &quot; censer&quot; is repeatedly used in our common translation of the Old Testament, neither in the Hebrew nor the Greek has the word any connection with incense, but denotes the fire-pan in which the burning charcoal was carried from the brazen altar to be emptied out upon that of incense. The true equivalent for censer is only used of sinful or heathen worship (2 Chron. xxvi. 14; Ezek. viii. 11, and perhaps 2 Chron. xxx. 14). The fire pans used as censers in the story of Korah, and of the atonement subsequently made by Aaron burning incense among the people, do not belong to the Levitical ritual, but were to prove whether it was to be observed or not. The single exception to the exclusive use of the golden altar for incense was on the great day of atonement, when the high priest went into the holy of holies, carrying a fire-paa containing lighted charcoal from the great altar, and having set it down, threw incense upon it, and left it for some time before the ark while he went and came back once and again to sprinkle it with the blood of the sacrifices. This fire-pan is accordingly called a golden censer by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 4); but even this is no precedent for the swinging censers which have been used for so many centuries in the Latin churches. Incense, indeed, was put on the loaves of shew- bread ; but it does not appear that it was burned upon that table, which is nowhere called an altar. More pro bably, when the loaves were taken away, the incense Avas burnt on the proper altar. But the shew-bread was so completely special an appointment of the Mosaic ritual that it is impossible to class it among sacrifices. Among the early Christians, alike in the East and West, Christiai that on which the bread and wine were put in the celebra- altars. tion of the Eucharist appears to have been regarded as an altar, and accordingly sacrificial words were used in connec tion with it, such as &quot; offering,&quot; &quot; unbloody sacrifice.&quot; It should be observed, however, that the Greek fathers scarcely ever apply the word /3w/xos to Christian altars, confining themselves to flucriacrrryptov ; while in the West there seems to have been a preference for altare rather than ara, though the latter term is often found. As the Christians generally shrunk from disclosing to the heathen the details of their worship, their enemies used to taunt them with having neither temples nor altars, and some of the apologists admit this ; but all they meant by this was that they had no such altars as the heathen had, altars for slain beasts and for the burning of their bodies. From the privacy with which the early believers had to meet, their altars at first would naturally be simple and unobtrusive. We have seen that the Levitical altars were four-square, but Christian altars seem to have been always longer than they were broad, and to have been placed &quot; athwart&quot; the length of the basilica or church, so as to present one of the broad sides and both the sacred vessels to the eyes of the great body of the worshippers. There does not seem to have been any rule as to the material of which altars might be made. At first they appear to have been mostly of wood, as being easily pro cured and fashioned. But when the persecutions ceased, and the Christians began to erect churches for worship, there seems to have sprung up some diversity of usage, each province following its own traditional custom, which perhaps was affected in some degree by the nature of the building-stone found there, and the use commonly made of it. It seems that in Egypt and the region afterwards called Barbary the altars were of wood ; and there is a tradition that this was also the case originally at Rome. On the other hand, in the latter half of the 4th century, they were made of stone in Asia Minor. Early in the Gth century a council, held at Epaone in Burgundy, ordered that only altars made of stone should be consecrated with the chrism, which shows that wooden altars also were still made in that province. In England the change from wood to stone seems to have taken place about the time of the Norman Conquest, Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, being mentioned as having introduced it in his diocese. No doctrinal significance can be ascribed to the change, which was simply in keeping with the greater costliness of the whole structure, when the cessation of the inroads of the Scandinavian sea-kings allowed the nations of Western Europe to accumulate wealth, of which a portion was dedicated to religion. A few exceptional instances are mentioned of altars of silver, and they were sometimes even covered in part with plates of gold ; but the current set in steadily in favour of stone as the most suitable material, and by degrees the legislation of the Latin church on this point grew more definite. The altar could only be of stone ; not that it was necessary that the whole struc ture should be so, for it was enough if there was a slab of