Often there is a reredos behind it; it is also fenced in by rails to preserve it from profanation of various kinds.
The last two passages agree in speaking of the capture of Jerusalem, the first declares Zion inviolable, and its capture an impossible profanation.
The holiness of Israel centres in the sanctuary, and round the sanctuary stand the priests, who alone can approach the most holy things without profanation, and who are the guardians of Israel's sanctity, partly by protecting the one meeting-place of God and man from profane contact, and partly as the mediators of the continual atoning rites by which breaches of holiness are expiated.
Calvinists allowed these to communicate in the species of bread only, touching the cup with their lip; a course which was deemed a profanation by the Lutherans.
As a rule their initial consecration goes back beyond memory and tradition; we can rarely seize it in the making, as in the case of a Roman puteal, or spot struck by lightning, which was walled round like a well (puteus) against profanation, being thenceforth a shrine of Semo Sancus, the god of lightning.
