OK..so I know we already talked about all this in class, but I just got my LR/Blogging situation straightened out, so here is the post I could not post before!
I viewed The Altar differently than some of the other bloggers, because I saw the altar as a metaphor for the human body. In the first section of the poem the poet says that “no workmans tool hath touch’d the same.” This rings metaphor because only God can create men, where no other workman can use tools to create life.
I took this poem more as a prayer of an individual for the Lord to take his heart (his offering) from his body (his altar). I saw this particularly in the last section of the poem with the line “That, if I chance to hold my peace, these stones to praise thee may not cease” To me this person is saying if my heart is quiet, and does not praise you, may my body never cease to praise you. The altar here is a permanent symbol of praise, the sacrifice is the ceremonial aspect of the praise. So even if the ceremony is overlooked, or forgotten, the symbol still remains. It is interesting, as I think about this more, that after the crucifixion of Christ, the ultimate sacrifice, the ceremony of sacrifice was no longer of any value. The whole point of a sacrifice was to change the gods minds about man, but a relationship with God is based on the fact that God’s mind is already made up about man. His mind was made up when he sacrificed his son, so it is in fact that man’s idea of God needs to change. So this poet takes the image of a Christian making a sacrifice and makes it applicable to modern Christian practice by asserting that the sacrifice he offers is himself, not in death, but in life.
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