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.”