Altar
an erection made for the offering of sacrifices for memorial purposes, or for some other object. An altar designed for sacrifice is mentioned in Scripture as early as the time of Noah (Genesis viii: 20).
At Sinai directions were given that altars should be of earth or of stone unhewn, and that the ascent to them should not be by steps (Exod. xx: 24- 26). When the tabernacle worship was established, there was an altar of wood covered with brass, designed for sacrifice, and one overlaid with gold, on which incense was burned (Exod. xxvii: 1-8; xxxi: 1-10). Both had projections at the four corners of the upper surface.
To those of the brazen altar victims were bound, and a fugitive from death seizing hold of one of these could not legally be dragged away to meet his doom.
In the early Christian centuries altars century stone was employed in the con- were generally of wood. During the 6th century struction, and this continued to the time of the Reformation.
In the Church of Rome an altar is essential, it being believed that in the mass an actual though bloodless sacrifice is offered for sin. Formerly, also, there was an upper altar (superaltare), which was a small portable one for the consecration of the communion elements.
The stone altars, which were in the churches of the Church of England when the Reformation began, were removed about 1550, and tables substituted for them.
Many of the old ethnic nations built altars for idolatrous worship on the tops of hills or in groves. The Greeks and Romans built high altars to the heavenly ALTENBURG gods, and some of lower elevation to the demigods and heroes, while they wor- shipped the infernal gods in trenches demigods and heroes, while they worshipped the infernal gods in trenches scooped out of the ground. ALTENBURG (-börg), the capital of the former Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, situated on the Pleisse, 30 miles S. of Leipsic. Standing on an almost perpendicular rock of porphyry, the old castle of Altenburg forms a striking feature in the landscape. It is memorable as the place whence, in 1455, a neighboring of Altenburg forms a striking feature in the young Saxon princes, Ernest and Albert. Before he could reach the Bohemian frontier, he was apprehended by a Brushes, woolen goods, The charcoal burner, and handed over to the executioner. gloves, and cigars are among the manu- Pop. about 45,000. factures.
Duchy became a republic in 1918.