Mrs. Temple did not appear to be much the worse for her shopping in the
rain. Her children knew nothing of the aching in her limbs and the pain
in her face which she felt, as she bore both quietly and went about her
duties as usual. Dora did not trouble herself even to ask if her mother
were well. It was not that Dora did not love her kind parent, but at
that time the mind of the little girl was completely taken up by her
embroidery in scarlet, purple, and blue.
As the children might not go to church, Mrs. Temple read and prayed
with them at home, suffering none but Lucius to help her, and letting
him read but little, for fear of bringing back his cough.
All through the time of prayers, though Dora knelt like the rest of
the children, and was as quiet and looked almost as attentive as any,
her needlework was running in her mind. If she thought of the happy
cherubim, it was not of their crying “Holy, holy, holy!” in heaven, but
of the forms of their faces and wings, and how she could best imitate
such with her needle.
I will not say that the other children thought about the Tabernacle
only as a holy thing described in the Bible, from which religious
lessons could be learnt,—little plans for sewing, measuring, or making
the model would sometimes intrude, even at prayer-time; but Lucius had
resolutely locked up his knife, and he and three of his sisters at
least tried to give full attention to what their mother was speaking
when she read and explained the Word of God.
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 place[A] 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.”