The whole principle is divinely laid out for us in fullest detail by the exactitude of tabernacle typology. The tabernacle was assembled for this purpose and is scientifically precise in all the details of Redemption and Atonements it presented to Israel. It was really a house of God adapted to Atonements. The throne upon which He sat under the cloud, manifesting Himself in glory beneath the wings of the cherubim as the Shekinah, was only called the Mercy Seat because upon it every year was sprinkled the blood of the Atonement and for no other reason. By bestowing upon it this name, the Lord deliberately related the throne to the altar whereon blood was daily poured and burnt. The blood was the link between the two and by this means God was trying to show Israel the indispensability of the principle of sacrifice; how far He succeeded who can tell? The throne and the altar were one; they still are and always have been one. In the same way that sacrifice is the basis of the one life in the three persons of God, so also sacrifice had to be both the basis of the national life of Israel and the basis of relationship between God and each individual Israelite. God was showing them that He could only live and dwell on earth with men upon this principle. Therefore He ordered them to sprinkle blood upon His throne that it may be turned by them into an altar for Him. This being done, He abode thereon in living glorious fire among them. By night over the top of that throne, towering away into the heavens as an immovable pillar and suitably adapted to human vision, that fire could be plainly seen. By day the glory was clouded and veiled, by night the fire was in full view. It was the sacrifice being consumed under that column of fire which caused it to burn with such eternal intensity. But there was no body of animal or man within that Holiest place; why then this steady, unending, powerful fire which seemed to leap so spontaneously from earth to heaven? Whence came it and how? The answer is Jesus. There was no body of flesh and blood and no fat to burn within the sanctuary of sanctuaries; that is why the pillar, though of fire, was not of smoke. Instead, isolated in splendour within the veil of inward holiness right in the centre and at the head of all, stood the Ark of the Covenant of God. It represented Christ Jesus: He was the altar there just as He was the altar of the Court gate. Altar and throne are one, all is Christ. Out there at the gate, the flesh and blood and fat could be seen and smelt, the body could be handled and the fire heard, but in the Holy of Holies there was no voice or smell or sight of burning, it was a different altar; God's is an eternal sacrifice; everything there was spiritual, original, unchanging, fundamental.