Incense
a perfumed vapor usually of smoky appearance. Sir G. Birdwood considers that religious censing of persons and things grew out of purificatory fumigation. The marbles of Nineveh furnish examples of offering incense to the Sungod; and the Hindus employed it from the remotest antiquity.
Jewish. Qetoreth, qetorah. This is sometimes confounded with lebonah, frankincense, which is the name of a plant. Incense was compounded of stacte, onycha, galbanum, and pure frankincense, an equal part of each by weight. Any one making a similar composition was to be cut off from the people of God (Exod. xxx: 34-38). Incense was to be burnt every morning and evening on the "altar of incense." (Exod. xxx: 7, 8).
Christian. In the Roman and Greek Churches it is used in all the solemn offices. It is mentioned in the first Ordo Romanus, probably of the 7th century.
It is also used in the Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Anglican Church the use of incense was gradually abandoned after the reign of Edward VI. till the ritualistic revival of the present day; but it has never been formally prohibited.