The Children's Tabernacle
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Mrs. Temple purposely chose the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, a very difficult chapter to the young, but one likely specially to interest her family at a time when the subject of the Tabernacle in the wilderness was uppermost in the minds of all. It will be noticed that Dora did not join at all in the conversation which followed the reading.
“Mamma, that chapter comes nearly at the end of the Bible, and is about our Lord and his death,” observed Lucius; “and yet it tells us about the Tabernacle, and its ark, and the high priest going into the Holy of holies. Now, what could the Tabernacle in the desert have do with our Lord and His dying, – that Tabernacle which was made nearly fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, and which was no longer of any use after Solomon’s temple was built?”
“The Tabernacle, the ark, the high priest, the sacrifices were all TYPES or figures of greater things to come,” replied Mrs. Temple. “There was a secret meaning in them all, referring to our Lord, His work, and His death, and the glorious heaven which He was to open to all believers.”
“I don’t know what a type is,” said Elsie.
“It is not clear to me either,” observed Amy.
“Unless we quite understand what a type means, we shall lose much of the lesson conveyed by the wanderings of the children of Israel, and the long account of the Tabernacle, what was in it, and what was done there, which we find in the books of Moses,” remarked Mrs. Temple.
“It always seemed to me as if that Tabernacle were quite a thing of the past,” said Agnes, “and that it belonged only to the Israelites of old. I never could make out why Christian people in England, thousands of years after the Tabernacle had quite disappeared, should care to know anything about it, the ark, or the altar.”
“But you say that all these things were types,” observed Amy. “Now, what is a type, dear mamma?”
“A kind of shadow or picture of something usually greater than itself,” replied Mrs. Temple.
“I don’t understand,” said Elsie, raising her blue eyes gravely to the face of her mother.
“You know, my love, that before you came to live in this house, when none of the family but myself had seen it, you still had some little knowledge of what it was like.”
“Yes, mamma, for you brought us little pictures of the house, both of the back and the front,” said Agnes.
“We knew that it was a pretty white house, and had a little tower on one side, and that trees were growing in front, and creepers all up it!” cried Elsie.
“Now, I might have described the place to you in writing, but you would not have known its appearance as well as you did from the pictures,” observed Mrs. Temple.
“No, from a mere description I should not have been able to find out the house directly as I did when I walked alone from the station,” cried Lucius. “There are several white houses near this, but the remembrance of the pictures made me know in a moment which was the right one.”
“Now, my children, just what a picture is to the object which it represents, so is a type to its antitype; that word means the real thing of which it is a likeness,” observed Mrs. Temple.
“I am afraid that I am very stupid in not making out what you mean at once, dear mamma,” said Amy; “but if you would explain just one type in the Bible, I think that I might understand better.”
“Let us take, then, the innermost part of the Tabernacle, the Holy of holies,” replied Mrs. Temple. “It was a very beautiful place, full of the glory of God, into which no objects were allowed to be but such as were precious and pure; there was the mercy-seat like a throne, and there were the bright cherubim spreading their golden wings. Now, my children, if we compare small things to great things, cannot you of yourselves find out of what this Holy of holies was a picture or a type?”
“A type of heaven!” exclaimed several voices at once; but Amy looked distressed, and murmured softly, “I hope not a type of heaven.”
“And why not?” asked Lucius, quickly.
“Because no one was ever allowed to go into the Holy of holies save one man, and he only once in the year,” replied Amy, sadly.
“And that not without blood,” said Lucius, pointing to the seventh verse of the chapter which his mother had just been reading.
“Go on reading, Lucius,” said his parent, and Lucius, as desired, went on. “Not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the errors of the people, the Holy Ghost thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest.”
“Or, in simpler words,” said Mrs. Temple, “that the way into heaven was not yet made plain. When Christ, our great High Priest, had gone into heaven, neither by the blood, of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
“Then, mother, the high priest must have been a TYPE of the Lord Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Lucius.
“No,” interrupted Agnes, “the sacrifice was the type, the sacrifice whose blood had been shed.”
“Both high priest and sacrifice were types of our blessed Saviour,” replied Mrs. Temple. “The Lord was the victim offered, and He was also the high priest who made the offering, for He laid down His life of Himself, since no man had power to take it from the Almighty Son of the Most High.”
“Was there any particular meaning in the veil of the Temple being rent in twain from the top to the bottom, as soon as our Lord died on the cross?” inquired Agnes, who had been listening with serious attention.
“We cannot doubt it,” answered her mother. “The Temple was the far larger, more substantial building which took the place1 of the Tabernacle of the wandering children of Israel; it, too, had its veil of rich work to shut out from mortal view the Holy of holies. But as soon as the One great Sacrifice had been offered on the cross, when the dying Lord could cry out ‘It is finished,’ then followed the rending asunder of the hiding veil, as a sign and type that all the Lord’s people, through His precious blood, might freely enter heaven, the real Holy of holies, and appear without dread of meeting His wrath in the presence of God the Father.”
VII.
Drawn Aside
THE subject of the preceding conversation had been so exceedingly solemn that even little Elsie had a grave look of awe on her round rosy face, though she could understand but little of the great mysteries of which her mother had been speaking. Elsie could only gather that a type was like a picture of something much greater and more wondrous than itself, and said in her simple, childish way, “Is not a type like your very tiny photo, mamma, so little that we could not make out that there was any picture at all till we held it up to the light, and then we could see the Queen’s great palace quite plain?”
“Elsie has given us a type of a type!” cried Lucius, clapping his little sister on the shoulder.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Agnes.
Lucius was puzzled to explain his own meaning, which was perhaps not very clear to himself, so his mother came to his help.
“Elsie’s very minute photograph is not a bad illustration of what Bible types are,” remarked Mrs. Temple. “They look small, and might almost escape notice, until the eye of faith sees them in the clear light of God’s Word, and then what seemed little more than a speck, may be found to be a likeness of something grander far than a royal palace.”
“It would be interesting to find out some other Bible types,” observed Agnes.
“I was just going to propose that while I attend afternoon service, you should all occupy the time of my absence in each finding a type, which we can talk over in the evening,” said Mrs. Temple.
“I should like that!” cried Lucius; “I am glad of anything to make the afternoon less dull; for I know that as it is damp to-day we shall all have to keep within bounds,” he added, Agnes having just begun a fit of coughing.
“I should like to find a Bible type if I could, but I’m afraid that I am too stupid,” said Amy.
“You and me, we’ll try together,” cried Elsie, laying her plump dimpled hand on that of her sister.
“Ah! you think that union is strength, Pussie!” cried Lucius; “and that you two youngest of the party will together be a match for any one of the rest.”
Little Elsie’s brain had now been quite long enough on the stretch, and after jumping upon her mother’s knee to give her “a good tight kiss,” the child ran off to play with her Noah’s Ark. The family then dispersed to various parts of the house, soon to reassemble at the cheerful sound of the dinner-bell.
After Mrs. Temple had started for church, Lucius, Agnes and Amy took up their Bibles to search in them for types, while little Elsie amused herself with a book of Scripture pictures. Dora went to the room called the study, in which the children usually learned their lessons in the morning, and amused themselves in the evening, and in which they kept their workboxes and desks, and most of their books. Dora found no one in the study, and sauntered up to the side table, covered with green cloth, on which stood her neat little workbox.
“Of course I am not going to do one stitch of my embroidery to-day, because this is Sunday,” said Dora to herself. “But there can be no harm in just looking at my pretty pattern, and seeing whether it is likely to do for the inner curtains and veil.”
Dora opened the box, and took out the pattern which lay on the neatly-folded piece of linen which her mother had given to her just before the twins had gone up-stairs to bed. Dora admired her own pattern, which was realty drawn out with some skill, but she saw that it was not quite perfect. Her pencil lay close at hand; Dora could not, or did not, resist the temptation to put in a few touches to this and that part of the drawing.
“I wonder how I should arrange the colors,” thought Dora; “I wish that I had more scarlet in my reel, and I think that my blue skein is too dark; Agnes has some sky-blue sewing silk, I know. Perhaps that would be better, or both shades might have a pretty effect, mixed with the scarlet and purple.”
Dora took out her reels and skeins, and placed them beside her pattern, and tried to imagine the effect of the different combination of color. Would it be well for the cherubim to be worked in purple or blue, or entirely in thread of gold, like their wings? Dora was inclined to think the last plan best, only gold thread is so stiff, and difficult to manage.
“I shall never go to rest till I have made up my mind about this,” muttered Dora to herself, “and how can I decide what will be best till I try? And why should I not try?” Dora, with her colored silks before her, was, like Eve, looking at the forbidden fruit, and listening to the voice of the Tempter, who would persuade her that evil was good.
“There are some things which even mamma says are quite lawful to be done on Sundays, such as charitable works. Mamma herself dressed the cook’s scalded arm upon a Sunday, and put in a stitch or two to keep the bandages firm. That was surely sewing on a Sunday, but then that was a work of charity. Well, but mine is a work of charity, too.” Thus Dora went on, while the dangerous current of inclination was gradually drifting her on towards breaking in act the Fourth Commandment, which she had all day long been breaking in thought. “Our Tabernacle is to be the model of a holy – a very holy thing, just the kind of a thing which it is right to think about on Sunday. Then it is to be made for a very charitable purpose. I am sure that bandaging the cook’s arm is no better work than helping a ragged school; I don’t think that it is really as good, for aunt’s poor little pupils are taught to love God and read the Bible. No, it surely cannot be wrong to assist such an excellent work on any day in the seven.”
Dora unrolled a length of blue silk, took out a needle and threaded it. She had almost succeeded in silencing conscience, at least for a time; she had almost persuaded herself that in amusing herself she was helping a holy cause; and that God would not be displeased at her breaking His commandment, because she was going to work for the poor. There is, perhaps, no more dangerous error than to think that the end justifies the means – that it is lawful to a Christian to do evil that good may come. Oh, dear young reader! if you ever find yourself trying to quiet conscience by the thought that to do a great good you may do a little harm, start back as if you caught sight of the tail of a snake in your path! Yes, for the serpent who deceived Eve is trying to deceive you also. If Dora had been honest and candid with herself, she would have seen, as her fingers busily plied the needle, that she was really working for her own pleasure; that her embroidering a piece of linen was an utterly different thing from her mother’s bandaging a badly-scalded arm, and relieving a sufferer’s pain. To cases of necessity such as that, the Saviour’s words truly applied – “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath-day;” but there was nothing to justify Dora in following her own inclination, and working on the day appointed for holy worship and rest.
If there was really no harm in what she was doing, why was it that Dora started so when she heard her mother’s voice at the door of the study, and why did she so hurriedly thrust linen, pattern, and silks back into the workbox as her gentle parent entered the room?
Dora’s back was turned towards the door, so that, from her being between it and the table, Mrs. Temple could not see the cause of the little bustling movement which she noticed on coming into the study.
“What are you doing, my love?” asked the lady.
“Nothing,” answered Dora quickly, as she succeeded in shutting down the lid of her workbox. The word was uttered in haste, without reflection; but the instant after it had passed her lips a pang shot through the young girl’s heart, for she was aware that, perhaps for the first time in her life, she had uttered a downright falsehood. Conscience could be silenced no longer; the second sin into which Dora had been drawn by her fear showed her in a strong light the nature of the first, into which she had been drawn by her love of amusement. If she had not been doing what was wrong, she would not have been afraid lest her occupation should be found out by her tender, indulgent mother.
Mrs. Temple never doubted the word of one of her children, but she could not help thinking that the manner of Dora was strange, and she would probably have inquired further into its cause, had she not just then been followed into the study by Lucius. The boy had his Bible in his hand, and a thoughtful, perplexed look on his face, which at once fixed the attention of Mrs. Temple. Dora was glad that her mother’s attention should be drawn by anything from herself, for otherwise she could not have hidden her confusion. She seated herself on a stool by the window, with her face turned away from her parent, and there remained a silent listener to the following conversation between Mrs. Temple and her son. Whether that conversation was likely to make Dora’s conscience easier or not, I leave the reader to judge.
VIII.
Sacrifices
“I HAVE been looking out for a type, mamma, as you wished us to do,” said Lucius, seating himself on the sofa on which his parent had taken her place, and resting his Bible upon her knee. “I am not sure whether I may not have heard already from you that Abraham’s sacrificing his dear son is a kind of shadow of God’s sacrificing His only Son; at any rate, I thought of this as the type which I should choose to speak of in the evening.”
“You could hardly have chosen a more remarkable type, my boy. I believe that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son not only to try the fond father’s faith and obedience, but also that Isaac ascending Mount Moriah with the wood for the burnt-offering on his shoulder, might be to the end of time a type of the blessed Saviour bearing the cross on which He was to suffer on Calvary.”
“Ah! mother, it is all that suffering and sacrificing that is such a difficulty to me!” exclaimed Lucius. “Why is so much suffering needed at all?” The boy looked earnestly into his mother’s face as he spoke.
“It is a sad mystery, Lucius; we do not fully understand it; but one thing is certain, not only from what we read in the Bible, but from what we see in the world around us, and that thing is that sin and suffering are bound together, we cannot separate them; suffering is the shadow of sin and must follow it; THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH (Rom. vi. 23).
“But you have taught us that God is love,” said Lucius, thoughtfully.
“Surely God is love,” replied Mrs. Temple; “God loves man, but God hates sin, which is the greatest enemy of man. It is God’s merciful will that man should be saved both from sin here, and from its most terrible punishment hereafter.”
“The Holy of holies is a difficulty to me,” observed Lucius; “why should no man, save the high priest, be suffered to go in, or draw near the mercy-seat of God?”
“Ask yourself what lesson this would have taught you had you been one of the children of Israel,” said Mrs. Temple. “When you beheld the Tabernacle with the wondrous cloud resting upon it, and gazed through the opening in front on the veil which hid from your eyes the more dazzling glory within – that glory which was a sign of the immediate presence of God, into which on pain of death you dared not enter – what would have been the thought uppermost in your mind?”
“The thought that God was terribly holy, and that no human being was fit to come near Him,” replied Lucius, gravely.
“But one man was allowed to draw near,” observed Mrs. Temple.
“Only the high priest, and that with the blood of a sacrifice,” said her son.
“And so mankind were taught that there is a way to approach a holy God, but only one way; they were taught that sacrifice was needful, that WITHOUT SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION (forgiveness of sin), Heb. ix. 22.
“But, mother, surely God does not require the blood of bulls and goats!” cried Lucius.
Mrs. Temple in reply turned over the leaves of the Bible, till she found the fortieth Psalm, and then read aloud,
“Burnt-offering and sacrifice hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo! I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O my God.” It is the Lord Jesus Christ who says this by the mouth of David. The blood of lambs and other creatures was worthless, save as signs and pledges of the precious blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin, (John i. 7,) the blood of Him who is indeed the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world (John i. 29).
“It seems so sad that the Lord, who had done no sin, should have to bear all that agony on the cross,” murmured Lucius.
“Christ bore it in our STEAD,” said Mrs. Temple; “He suffered the punishment for sin, that sinners, repenting and believing, might be saved, forgiven, and made happy forever.”
“I still cannot clearly make out the use of sacrifices – I mean of animals,” said Lucius.
“They taught that one being may suffer instead of another,” replied Mrs. Temple, speaking slowly, that her son might weigh well every word. “When an Israelite brought a lamb for sacrifice it was just as if he had said, ‘O holy God, I know that I am a sinner, and that I deserve to suffer for my sin; but in mercy accept the life of this lamb instead of mine.’ It was to teach this same lesson that Aaron the high priest was commanded to lay his hands on the head of a living goat, and confess over him the sins of all the children of Israel. The scape-goat (as it was called), was then sent away into the desert, bearing away with him all the sins which had been solemnly confessed over him by the high priest of God. With a thankful heart and lightened conscience must every faithful Israelite have seen the scape-goat led away from the camp. ‘My sins are taken from me, far as the east is from the west,’ he might say, ‘I shall never, never have to bear that terrible burden myself.’”
“But why have we no scape-goats and no sacrifices now?” asked Lucius; while Dora silently thought, “What a comfort it would be to see all one’s sins carried far away from us forever!”
“We need no more such sacrifices now,” replied Mrs. Temple, “because the One great Sacrifice which Christ made of Himself on the cross is so infinitely precious, that it is enough to save a world that was lost from sin. We need no scape-goat now, for when Christ went forth to die, He carried away with Him the burden of the guilt of all His people.”
“But then, mother, is every one’s sin taken away, is every one sure to enter heaven, the real Holy of holies?” asked Lucius. The question was a very important one, and poor Dora’s heart beat fast as she listened to hear what answer her parent would give to the boy.
“No, my son,” replied Mrs. Temple, “for not every one has true faith in the Lord and His Sacrifice, that faith which makes us repent of sin, be sorry for sin, confess it and try to forsake it. We know that (two only excepted) all the Israelites above a certain age never reached the good land of Canaan, but all died in the desert. And why was this? It was because they had sinned against God. They might have sacrifices but they had not true faith; they might give up lambs, but they gave not up sin; they might have God’s presence in the tabernacle to guide them, but they did not let their conduct be guided by the light of His holy Word.”
“It almost seems to me,” observed Lucius, “as if the Israelites wandering about in the desert were types of us – of all who are now called Christian people.”
Mrs. Temple smiled with pleasure to see that her son was beginning really to understand a little of Old Testament teaching by types. “Yes, dear boy,” she replied, “the history of the Israelites is just like a picture or type of what is now happening to ourselves in our journey through life towards heaven, our promised Canaan. They were first in bondage to cruel Pharaoh; we are born into the world in bondage to sin. The Israelites at the beginning of their journey passed through the Red Sea; St. Paul shows us that this was a type of Christian baptism (1 Cor. x. 2). I could go on to show you how the history of Israel is full of many other interesting types of our own, but you have heard enough for the present. There are just a few most important lessons which I would wish to impress on your mind. They are:
“First, that we all are sinners.
“Secondly, that we can only be forgiven and enter heaven through the Sacrifice of our Lord on the cross.
“Thirdly, that His Sacrifice takes away all sin from those who have true faith in their hearts; that faith whose reality is shown by its making us repent of and try, by God’s help, to give up our sins.”
IX.
Concealment
DORA felt very unhappy. She had broken the holy rest of the Lord’s day; she had repeated prayers without praying, heard God’s Word read without attending, had made a vain show of religion; and at last had worked and worked hard at her needle, as she might have done on any other day of the week. Dora had disobeyed what she knew to be the wishes of her mother, and then to hide such disobedience had uttered a lie to deceive her! The girl could not conceal from herself that she had done what was wrong – exceedingly wrong; that she had displeased a holy God, whose eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good.
“Oh, what can I – what ought I to do now!” thought Dora, as slowly and sadly she went up to her own little room. Conscience gave an instant reply, “Retrace your steps as quickly as you can, own your fault to your mother, and ask forgiveness from God.” But Dora was very unwilling to do this; she was inclined to take a kind of half-way course.
“I need not say anything to mamma about what I have done,” thought Dora. “I will not touch my pretty work any more on Sunday; and to-morrow, as soon as I get up, I will unpick every stitch of what I have been sewing to-day. That will be a good punishment for me; yes, that will be the right kind of punishment for breaking the Fourth Commandment.”
Dora half satisfied her conscience by making this resolution to undo what ought not to have been done; but the little girl made a grievous mistake in supposing that any self-inflicted punishment can take away sin. We must go straight to the Lord for forgiveness, and ask it only for the sake of the Lamb of God, who suffered to take away guilt; and when we have sinned against our fellow-creatures, as well as against our Heavenly Father, we must honestly and openly confess to them what we have done, and ask their forgiveness. Dora shrank from doing this; she was extremely unwilling to own to her mother that she had been sewing on Sunday.