FOOTNOTE:
[A] The Temple standing at the time of our Lord’s death was not Solomon’s, which had been burnt more than six hundred years before.
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.
“Perhaps mamma would take away from me the making of the embroidered curtains altogether,” thought Dora, “and give it to Agnes instead; and then all the family would know the reason, and I should be lowered in the opinion even of little Elsie! Oh, how dreadfully ashamed I should feel, and what a bitter disappointment it would be to see the work in the hands of another, after I have taken such pains to draw out that beautiful pattern! Worst of all, Aunt Theodora would hear of my fault when we go to be with her at Christmas. She would be sure to ask why I had not embroidered the veil and the curtains, for she thinks that I embroider so well. Oh, I could not bear that the aunt whom I love so much—who loves me so much—should know what I have done! No, no, there is no use in speaking about the matter at all; I will punish myself by the tiresome unpicking, and then all will be right.”
Would all be right? Were Dora to punish herself ever so severely, would all be right? No, dear reader, no! self-punishment cannot wash away sin.
“Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone,
Thou must save, and Thou alone.”
Dora was only deceiving herself now, as she had an hour before deceived her indulgent mother.
In the evening, after tea-time, the family assembled again in the study. Their usual employment on Sunday evenings had been to sing hymns with their mother, each in succession choosing a favorite hymn; but the whooping-cough had for weeks past put a stop to all singing, and it had cost Mrs. Temple some thought to find a way of making the evening Sabbath hour as pleasant to her family as it had usually been. The searching in the Bible for types had been a new kind of occupation, and had made the afternoon seem less long to the young prisoners at home than it might otherwise have appeared during the absence of their mother at church. The family circle looked a very happy one by the light of the fire round which they gathered; for autumn was beginning, the weather, though not very cold, was damp; and the illness from which the children were recovering made warmth and dryness so desirable, that the fire was always lighted at sunset.
“I like when we sit so cosy together before the blazing fire!” exclaimed little blue-eyed Elsie, cuddling close to her mother. “I hope that Eliza won’t bring in the candles; no one wants candles to talk by. Agnes, you won’t cough so badly if you put your feet here on the fender; please, Lucius, give the fire a good stir, and make the red flames leap up and dance. Are we not a happy party!” she added, squeezing tightly her mother’s hand in both of her own.
Smiling faces gave the reply. There was but one face that wore no smile. Dora sat on the other side of her mother, but the girl had drawn her chair a little back from the half-circle before the fire, and held a hand-screen before her face, not really to protect it from the scorching blaze, but that it might not be seen by the fire-light. Dora was glad, though not for the same reason as Elsie, that Eliza did not bring in the candles.
X.
Dead Faith and Living Faith.
“MAMMA, I’ve been trying to find a type; I’ve been looking all through my Bible pictures,” said blue-eyed Elsie.
“And did you succeed in finding a type, my darling?” asked Mrs. Temple, smiling at the gravity of the child, whom she thought scarcely likely to be able to discover the meaning of the most simple Scripture figure.
“I don’t know—I’m not sure,” said little Elsie; “but I’ve found two pictures—one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament—and they are rather like each other; so, you know, dear mamma, it seemed as if one might be a sort of a type.”
“And what were your pictures about, Elsie, pet?” asked Lucius, stroking the hair of his youngest sister, of whom the schoolboy was very fond.
“One picture was of Elijah raising the poor widow’s son, and the other was of the Lord’s raising a widow’s son. These were two things like each other,” said Elsie; “but,” she added, shaking her curly head thoughtfully, “I can’t tell if there was any type.”
“I daresay that little Elsie is right, and that Elijah was a type of the Lord!” cried Lucius, “for did they not both fast forty days in the wilderness?”
“I thought that Elijah was rather a type of John the Baptist,” observed Agnes.
“Yes, he was so,” said Mrs. Temple. “Our Lord’s own words show that John, ‘the Voice crying in the wilderness,’ came in the spirit and power of the prophet Elijah, though John worked no miracle. Yet in the two instances which your brother and Elsie have noticed, the raising of the dead and the forty days’ fast in the desert, Elijah’s history shadows forth that of One far greater than himself. Has my dove Amy thought of any Scripture type?” said the mother, turning towards her young daughter.
Amy hesitated a little; she was always distrustful of herself, and in this was a great contrast to Elsie. Mrs. Temple smiled encouragingly upon her little girl. “I see that there is something in your head,” said the mother; “tell us, my love, what you have thought of. If you have made a mistake, I will try to set you right; we are at least likely to gain some increase of Scriptural knowledge by talking over such subjects as these.”
“I thought at first that I should never find out anything,” said Amy; “though you explained to us so much about types this morning, dear mamma, I felt quite puzzled when I tried to make out one for myself. At last a verse from the third chapter of John came into my mind, and I wondered whether our Lord Himself taught Nicodemus in it something about a type. Perhaps Nicodemus understood the Lord’s meaning, but I could not understand it—that is to say, not clearly—so I thought that I had better ask you about it, mamma.”
“What is the verse?” asked several voices at once.
Amy folded her hands reverentially as she repeated the sacred words once spoken by our blessed Redeemer. Mrs. Temple would never allow her children to gabble over carelessly any verse of Scripture.—“‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth Him should not perish, but have eternal life,’” (John iii. 14, 15.)
“Most certainly, our Lord spoke then of a most remarkable type,” said Mrs. Temple. “To what coming event in his own life did our Saviour refer in the expression ‘be lifted up’?”
“To His being lifted up on the cross,” said Amy, in a low tone of voice.
“And why was the Son of God lifted up on the dreadful cross?” asked her mother.
“That we—that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life,” replied Amy Temple.
“It was indeed as a type of this great salvation from eternal death that the brazen serpent was lifted up by Moses,” said the lady. “Do you remember what had happened to the Israelites to make the raising of the brass serpent needful to save them from destruction brought on by sin?”
As Amy did not immediately reply to the question, Elsie eagerly put in her word.
“You told us all about it last Sunday, mamma; I remember the story quite well. The people had been wicked, very wicked, and so fiery serpents came amongst them and bit them; and many—I don’t know how many—Israelites died, because no doctor knew how to cure them.”
“Were those deadly bites a type of sin whose wages are death?” asked Lucius.
“They were so, my son,” said his mother. “Man had no way of saving those who had received the deadly wound, so God himself showed Moses a way. The Lord bade him lift up on high a serpent of brass, and promised that whoso looked upon it should live.”
“I cannot imagine how mere looking could do the least good to a person dying of the poison of a snake-bite,” observed Agnes.
“The Almighty willed that it should be so,” said Mrs. Temple; “He willed that the look of faith should bring healing to a sick body, as the look of faith at a crucified Saviour still brings healing to the sin-wounded soul. When I read how my Lord says, through the prophet Isaiah, ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah xlv. 22), I think of the brazen serpent, and know that I have but to believe in Christ and be saved.”
“What do you mean by the look of faith?” inquired Agnes.
“Faith is simply believing,” replied Mrs. Temple. “To look to Christ is to believe that He is able and willing to save us, and that none can save us but He.”
Dora, who had chosen, as we know, to sit a little drawn back from the circle, and with a screen in her hand, now dropped the screen on her lap, and leant forward, so that the red flickering gleam of the fire-light shone on her face as she anxiously asked, “Then are we quite, quite safe, sure never to be punished for anything evil that we have done, if only we have faith that the Lord will save us?”
“Yes, if the faith be real, living faith,” replied Mrs. Temple.
“Are there then two kinds of faith?” inquired Lucius.
“Yes,” answered his mother; “we read in the Bible of two kinds of faith or belief—one dead and one living.”
“I cannot understand that at all,” said Amy.
“I will try to explain,” said the lady “and I ask you, my children, to give me your full attention, for this is a matter of the greatest importance. You all believe, do you not, that there is an Emperor of Germany?”
“Yes, yes,” replied the children: and Elsie added with a little nod, “I believe there is such a man, though I never have seen him.”
“Now does your belief in the existence of the Emperor—that is, your faith in it—does it make the smallest difference in your actions, or words, or feelings?” inquired Mrs. Temple.
“No, why should it?” cried Lucius.
“The Emperor does not care for us; he knows nothing about us,” said Elsie.
“Then your faith in the Emperor is a dead faith, it has no effect on your hearts,” observed Mrs. Temple. “And this is the kind of faith which many persons, alas! have in the Lord. They believe in a careless sort of way that Christ once lived in the world, and died on the cross, but they believe only with the head, not with the heart. And this is dead faith, a kind of faith which never can save us.”
“But what is living faith, then?” asked Amy.
“When our belief makes us really love Him who first loved us,—when the thought of Christ’s dying for sin makes us hate sin, that cost Him so dear, then our faith must be living faith; and thus looking to the Lord we are saved.”
Dora sighed and drew her head back again into the shadow. Hers was not a faith that had kept her from sin—hers was not a faith that made her now obey the whisper of conscience, confess her fault to her mother, and make what amends she could for what she had done.
“Depend upon it, that when an Israelite had been cured of his wound by looking at the brazen serpent, he did not go and stroke and play with the fiery reptile that had bitten him,” observed Lucius, who had the clearest head amongst the party, and best entered into the meaning of types.
“No, he would run away from the horrid creatures, or try to kill them; he would put his foot upon the fiery serpents and crush them—crush them,” cried Elsie, stamping her little foot on the hearthrug, to add force to her words.
“So every one who has living faith dreads and hates sin, and tries to destroy it,” observed Mrs. Temple. “We will not carelessly trifle with it if we believe from our hearts that our blessed Redeemer suffered because of our sins.”
“What a very holy thing was that brazen serpent which Moses set up on a pole!” exclaimed Amy. “Did he not afterwards put it into the ark, that the Israelites might carry it about with them wherever they went, and treasure it as they did the tables of stone on which the Commandments were written?”
“We do not read of Moses putting the brazen serpent into the ark,” replied Mrs. Temple; “but the Israelites must have carried it with them in their wanderings through the desert, and have taken it into the Promised Land, for we read of the brazen serpent being greatly honored by the people more than seven hundred years after it was lifted up.” (1 Kings xviii. 4.)
“It was quite right that the Israelites should honor it very, very much,” cried Elsie, “because the brazen serpent had saved so many people from dying.”
“You mistake, my child,” said her mother. “The brass image had no power in itself to save a single creature from death; it was of no use at all but as a means appointed by God. The brazen serpent was a type of salvation; and when the Jews took to burning incense to the mere type, that is, when they paid to it the honor which is due to God alone, they fell into sin.”
The younger children looked surprised; and Amy murmured, “Then can even a holy thing lead men to do what is wrong?”
“Men do wrong, exceedingly wrong, when they put anything, however holy it may seem in their eyes, in the place of God,” observed Mrs. Temple. “When good king Hezekiah saw that his people were honoring the brazen serpent too much, what do you think that he did?”
“Perhaps he locked it up, so that no one could get at it,” cried little Elsie.
“Hezekiah took a much stronger measure than locking up the image,” said her mother. “The good king broke the brazen serpent into pieces, and called it Nehustan, or a piece of brass, to show both by word and deed that the most holy and interesting relic may lead to the sin of idolatry, if it draw away our thoughts and our hearts from the Lord who alone can give us salvation.”
XI.
Leprosy.
“AS we seem to be giving in our types youngest by youngest, it is Dora’s turn now to tell us which she has chosen,” said Lucius.
“Ah! Dora will have found out the most interesting type of all, Dora is so clever!” cried Elsie, who had great faith in the intelligence of the brighter of the twins.
All eyes were turned towards Dora as she sat in the shadow, but Dora’s own eyes were bent on the hearthrug. She had been so much taken up on that Sunday, first with her embroidery, then with the conversation between her mother and Lucius, and the painful struggle in her own mind with an upbraiding conscience, that Dora had not even thought of looking out for a type in Scripture.
“What have you chosen, Dora?” asked Lucius.
“I have not chosen any type yet, I have not had time,” stammered out Dora, confused and mortified to find herself behind even little Elsie, who looked astonished at the words of her sister.
“Not time! why, you have had as much time as any of us,” said Agnes. “What were you doing all the afternoon while mamma was at church?”
“Nothing particular,” said Dora, with a little confusion. Again a pang shot through the heart of the conscious girl for she knew that she was again staining her lips with untruth.
“You don’t mean to say that you were sitting from two o’clock till five, with your hands before you, and thinking about nothing at all,” said Lucius.
“Perhaps Dora was reading that interesting book about the poor French Protestants,” suggested Amy.
Dora did not speak. She was too well pleased, alas! that her family should believe that she had been thus engaged, though she knew that she had not so much as opened the volume in question.
“It would have been better, my love, for you to have entered into the occupation which interests your brothers and sisters,” said Mrs. Temple, in a tone of gentle reproof. “Even reading a nice Sunday book like the one Amy mentioned may become a selfish amusement, if it keeps us from adding a little to the general pleasure.”
“I never knew Dora take such a reading fit before,” muttered Lucius; “she generally likes to use her fingers more than her head.”
The remark was a very commonplace one, yet it added to Dora’s confusion. Mrs. Temple, noticing her daughter’s look of annoyance, though she attributed it to a different cause than the true one, turned the conversation by asking Agnes whether she had thought of a Scriptural type.
“Yes, mamma,” replied Agnes. “I believe that leprosy is a type of sin, and the cure of lepers a type of the cure of sin just as the looking up at the brazen serpent was a cure for the deadly bites.”
“You are perfectly right, my dear girl,” said her mother.
“What is leprosy?” asked little Elsie
“A dreadful kind of illness,” replied Agnes; and as she seemed disinclined to say more, perhaps from fear of bringing on her cough by speaking, her mother continued the description of this terrible type of sin.
“This frightful malady is still well-known in the East,” said Mrs. Temple. “Your uncle, who came lately from India, has told me that he has seen many poor lepers there. The leprosy makes them loathsome to the eye; it creeps over their bodies; it wastes their flesh; when it fastens on their hands, it will make the very fingers drop off!”
“Oh, how dreadful!” exclaimed all the children.
“Dreadful indeed, but not so dreadful as the sin which it represents,” said their mother sadly; “for the soul’s sickness is more dangerous, its effects infinitely more lasting.”
“I don’t quite see how leprosy is a type of sin,” observed Amy.
“I think that we are led to believe it to be such by the very particular commands regarding it which we find in the law of Moses,” said Mrs. Temple.
“Did poor people with leprosy never get well again?” asked Elsie, with pity expressed on her round little face.
“Yes, they did sometimes recover,” said her mother, “but not by such means as are used in cases of other sickness. Not a doctor, but a priest, was to judge whether the leper were really cured, or, as it was called, clean; and he had to bring a special offering to be sacrificed to the Lord.”
“I suppose the offering was that sheep which we see in the picture?” said Elsie, for the illustrated Bible had again been brought and placed upon Mrs. Temple’s knee, and the firelight was sufficiently bright to show a picture representing a cured leper coming to the high-priest, to find which illustration Mrs. Temple had turned over the pages.
“That picture shows but a part of the offering,” replied Mrs. Temple. “When the candles come in, I will read to you from the ‘Pictorial History of Palestine,’ written by the famous Dr. Kitto, a description of a very peculiar ceremony which took place before the sheep and two rams were slain as a sin-offering.”
“Ah! here come the candles—just when we want them!” cried Elsie, as Eliza made her appearance.
“I’ll get Dr. Kitto’s big book!” exclaimed Lucius, jumping up from his seat by the fire.
The candles were placed on the table near enough to Mrs. Temple to enable her to read without quitting her warm seat, but merely turning her chair round to the table. She then read aloud the following extract from the work of the learned doctor:
“‘When a person was reported to be free of his leprosy, a priest went out of the camp and subjected him to a very strict examination. If no signs of the disorder appeared upon him, the priest sent a person to bring two living birds (doves or young pigeons), cedar wood, scarlet wool, and hyssop, with which he performed the ceremonies of purification, to admit the party to the privileges of the Hebrew Church and communion.’”
“What does that mean, mother?” ashed Lucius.
“That the man was no longer to be cut off, as were lepers in Israel, from worshipping the Lord within the camp, or mixing with the rest of the people,” replied Mrs. Temple.
“Oh, mamma, might not a poor leper do that!” exclaimed Amy. “To be shut out from praying with one’s friends and relations would be almost the worst trial of all!”
“Remember, my child, that the dreadful disease was infectious; there was need of the greatest care lest it should spread in their camp. Lepers had to wear a particular dress, and to live apart from all who were yet in health. If any one drew near to a leper unawares, the afflicted one had to cry out ‘Unclean! unclean!’”
“I don’t think that I will ever again complain of being shut up from friends and playmates because of this whooping-cough,” cried Lucius. “It is disagreeable enough to be kept as we are even from going to church, but fancy what it would be to have to cry out ‘Unclean! unclean!’ if any one chanced to come near us!”
“Please, mamma, go on with the account of what the priest had to do with the two birds which he sent for when he found that the leper was quite well again,” said Amy.
Mrs. Temple continued her reading:
“‘He slew one of the birds, and received its blood in an earthen vessel. Into this he dipped the cedar wood, the scarlet wool, and the hyssop, and therewith sprinkled seven times the once leprous person. The other bird was then permitted to escape, as a symbol that the man was now free of his leprosy.’”
“Oh, how joyful the bird must have been when allowed to fly free up—up high into the air!” exclaimed Elsie.
“Not more glad than the poor cleansed leper, of whom that bird was a type,” observed Mrs. Temple. “Think of his joy at being free to return to his family—his wife and his children; and his thankful delight when worshipping once more with his former companions in the court of the Tabernacle of his God!”
“It seems to me that there is a verse in one of the Psalms which shows that David had the cleansing of a leper in his mind when he prayed to the Lord to forgive him his sin,” remarked Lucius.
“I was just thinking of the same when mamma read about the hyssop,” said Amy. “It made me feel sure that Agnes was right when she chose leprosy as a type of sin.”
“What is the verse to which you allude?” asked the mother.
Lucius was the one to reply, but the lips of Amy silently moved, as she repeated the same verse to herself from the fifty-first Psalm—“‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow!’”
“Oh, mamma! I remember the story of the poor leper who came to the Lord Jesus,” said Elsie, “and how he cried, ‘Lord if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean!’”
“How much more deeply interesting is the Saviour’s reply, ‘I will, be thou clean,’ if we look upon leprosy as a type of sin,” observed Mrs. Temple. “The Lord was able and willing to heal, not the poor man’s body alone, but also his soul; and make him free from all stain of sin as well as from all taint of disease.”
XII.
Naaman.
“THE leper story which has always interested me most is that of Naaman the Syrian,” said Lucius, when he had put back Dr. Kitto’s large volume in its place in the bookcase.
“O yes, yes,” interrupted little Elsie; “I know that story too, quite well. I know that Naaman was a great man, and rich, and a famous general besides, but he had the dreadful sickness which no doctor could cure. I remember how Naaman came in a grand chariot with prancing horses to the house of the good prophet Elisha, and how angry he was when only a servant came out and told him to wash seven times in the river Jordan.”
Elsie stopped almost out of breath from the rapidity with which she had spoken. All the young Temples were familiar with the account of the cure of the Syrian, which was one of their favorite Scripture stories.
“Was the leprosy of Naaman also a type of sin?” inquired Lucius.
“I believe that it was,” answered Mrs. Temple, “and I am strengthened in this belief by Naaman’s leprosy coming upon Gehazi, as a direct punishment for his sin.”
“Ah! that wicked Gehazi!” exclaimed Elsie; “he told a lie, a dreadful lie! It was right that he should be punished, was it not?” The question was asked of Dora, Elsie’s favorite sister. The child wondered at the unwonted silence which had come over Dora, and wanted to draw her into conversing like the rest of the party.
Dora winced at the question, and only replied by a slight movement of her head. But little Elsie was not satisfied by this. “Why don’t you speak?” she said bluntly. “When people are so very naughty as to tell lies, and say that they are doing nothing when they are doing something bad, don’t you think that they ought to be well punished for it?”
Forced to reply, for Elsie’s question had drawn every one’s attention towards her, Dora answered, “Of course they should be punished;” and having thus pronounced sentence upon herself, she relapsed into silence, feeling much inclined, however, to start up and escape from the room.
“Are you not well, my love?” asked her mother, who could not help noticing that Dora’s manner was different from usual.
“Quite well, mamma; only a little tired,” was the evasive reply.
“Tired of doing nothing,” said Lucius.
The conversation on the subject of Naaman was then resumed by Agnes.
“When Naaman was cleansed of his leprosy, mamma, how was it that Elisha did not tell him to go and show himself to the priest, and that we hear nothing about a sin-offering, nor of a bird being set free?” asked the elder twin.
“You must remember,” replied Mrs. Temple, “that Naaman was not an Israelite but a Syrian, a Gentile, and that he was therefore not bound to observe the ceremonial law of the Jews. I think that Naaman was a type of the Gentile church, to which belong all Christians who are not descended from Abraham and Isaac.”
“To which we then belong,” observed Lucius.
“Notice, my children,” continued the lady, “how we see, as if in a series of pictures, the history of a converted soul in the story of Naaman’s cure. First there is the man possessing all that earth can give him, but afflicted with a deadly disease.”
“Like the people who were bitten by the fiery serpents,” interrupted Lucius.
“Here in the leprous Naaman we behold a type or picture of a soul with unforgiven sin staining and corrupting it,” said his mother. “Next we find the leper at the door of the prophet. Can any one of you tell me of what Naaman now is a type?”
“A seeking soul,” replied Agnes, after a little pause for reflection.
“Ah! but the next picture is of the leper turning away quite angry because he was told just to wash and be clean,” cried Elsie.
“Then Naaman is a type of a proud soul, not content with God’s simple but wonderful plan of salvation,” continued the lady. “There are some persons now who think that they can earn heaven by doing some great thing, who believe that because of their own goodness they can be clean in the sight of God. Such persons, like Naaman, are offended and hurt when they are told that all their good works cannot take away sin; that the leper can only be saved by living faith in Him whose blood is the fountain opened for all uncleanness.”
“But Naaman did go and dip down seven times in Jordan as he was bidden,” cried Elsie; “and then he was made quite well, his flesh all soft and clean, just like a little child’s.”
“This is a picture or type of a believing, forgiven soul,” said Mrs. Temple, “the picture of one who has become a child of God, and who is resolved, by the help of His Spirit, to lead from henceforth a new life.”
“These types are really beginning to be quite plain to me now, mother,” said Lucius, “and they make the Old Testament seem to me to be very much more beautiful than it ever seemed before. I remember how puzzled I have been by some words in one of the Epistles about the rock which Moses smote in the desert, and from which the waters gushed out. St. Paul wrote ‘that Rock was Christ,’ and I never could make out what he meant, for how could the rock be the Lord? But now I understand, at least I think that I do, that the Apostle meant ‘that smitten rock was a TYPE of Christ,’ and so everything becomes plain.”
“Some of our Lord’s own expressions require to be explained in the same kind of way,” observed Mrs. Temple. “When our Saviour declared that He was the Vine, and his disciples the branches, it was as if He had said, ‘A vine is a TYPE of Me, and its branches a type of My servants. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye (bear the fruits of holiness), except ye abide in Me.’”
“And when the Lord said of the bread at the last supper, This is My body, His words must have meant that the bread was a TYPE of His body,” said Amy with thoughtful reverence. She was a lowly-hearted girl, and she felt, as we all should feel, that when so very sacred a subject as the Lord’s sufferings or death is spoken of by us, it is as if, through the opening in the Tabernacle Veil, we were entering into the Holy of holies.
XIII.
The Twins.
“CAN one object be a type of more than one thing, mamma?” asked Lucius, “for there is something which we have just spoken of as being a type of what heals our souls—I mean by that, true living faith in the Lord; and I have thought of something quite different, of which it seems also a type.”
“Are you speaking of the river Jordan?” asked Agnes, through whose mind the same thought had been passing.
“Yes, the river in which Naaman dipped seven times and was cleansed,” replied Lucius. “When the Israelites, after their long wanderings in the desert, came to that same river Jordan, there was nothing but its waters between them and the Promised Land, which mother told me to-day is a type of heaven.”
“And the waters were divided to let the people pass over quite easily and safely,” interrupted little Elsie, who never missed an opportunity of bringing out any knowledge which she had gleaned.
“Hush, Elsie! you distract my thoughts,” said her brother, “and make me forget with your prattle what I was going to say. Oh, it is this! When Christians have almost got over their long life-journey, there is only one thing at last that divides them from heaven, their Promised Land; and that thing is death. Mother, is not Jordan a type of death?”
“I believe that it is,” said his mother and Amy silently thought of those beautiful verses which allude to this type:—
“Oh! could we bid our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,
And view the Canaan that we love
With Faith’s unclouded eyes;
“Could we but stand where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o’er,
Nor Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,
Could fright us from the shore.”
“I also believe,” continued the lady, “that the dividing of the waters, which enabled the Israelites to pass over without so much as wetting their feet, is a type of the terrors of death being taken away from the Christian. Safe through the atoning sacrifice and happy in the love of his Lord, the believer can peacefully pass on to his promised land—heaven—with as little cause for fear as the Israelites had in crossing the dry bed of the Jordan.”
“Ah! the Israelites were a happy people,” said Amy, softly. “Think of their having God always to guide them by the pillar of fire and cloud, and holy Moses always to pray for them; and the beautiful promised land Canaan before them, and so many wonderful miracles worked for their good! I almost wish,” she added, “that I had lived in those days.”
“Happier are Christians in these days, my child,” said her mother, “for they know more, far more, of the Saviour’s love than was ever made known to the people of Israel. We have God’s sure Word to guide us in our wanderings through the desert of life, and we have beyond that desert a far brighter land than Canaan, even heaven, promised and purchased by Him who prepares good things for those who love Him; and we have One far greater than Moses—One who ever liveth to plead for us at the right hand of God while we fight our battles against sin. Moses was a being of flesh and blood as we are; his arms grew tired, he needed to have them held up by Aaron and Hur; but the Lord Jesus in praying for His people never grows weary, and His love never grows cold. My children, when life was most like a desert to me, when your father had crossed the Jordan and left me behind, I cannot tell you what comfort and support I found in the knowledge of that prayer and the thought of that love!”
Mrs. Temple’s voice faltered, and Amy felt the hand which she was clasping tremble. The lady now very seldom gave way to any outward burst of sorrow in the presence of her children; her manner was usually cheerful and bright; but the elder ones could well remember how great had been her grief in the first sad days of her widowhood, when their father’s useful life had been closed by a peaceful death. The young Temples all respected their mother’s sorrow, and when she paused from emotion the room was so still that the crackling of the fire and the tick of the clock were the only sounds to be heard. But Mrs. Temple was not willing to throw even a brief shadow over the cheerfulness of her little family circle, and would not now have given way to her feelings had not bodily weariness and pain made her less able to control them. Mrs. Temple very quickly recovered her usual tone, and said in her wonted cheerful manner, “My little Elsie’s eyes are growing sleepy, she can hardly manage to keep them open! My birdie had better fly up to her snug warm nest, and prepare by a good long rest for a busy to-morrow.”
“Oh, yes, to-morrow will indeed be a busy day!” exclaimed Lucius; “I mean to be up with the lark. I hope, mother,” he added, “that you won’t mind the noise of my hammer?”
Mrs. Temple with a smile assured her boy that she would not mind anything; she had not been a mother so long without becoming accustomed to noise, and she would be just as much interested in the progress of the work of her children as they themselves could be.
“You will like me to get on with my little red curtains?” said Elsie, in rather a drowsy tone.
A fond kiss was the mother’s reply; and then Mrs. Temple herself took her youngest child up to her bed-room, for the lady always liked to hear Elsie repeat her evening prayer.
About an hour afterwards all the other young Temples had wished their mother good-night, and retired to the several apartments in which they slept. The twins shared the same room. It was a very pretty one, adorned with framed pictures painted by their Aunt Theodora, and lighted by candles in elegant green glass candlesticks, which had been a birthday present to them from their mother. Both the girls were, on the night in question, more silent than usual, but from different causes.
As Agnes sat slowly brushing out her long plaits of brown hair, stopped every now and then by her cough, her thoughts dwelt much on the subject of the Israelites and their journey through the wilderness, which she was now taught to regard, not only as a historical fact, but also as a type of the life-journey of Christians.
Agnes was not by natural disposition so merry and light-hearted as her brother and sisters, and this difference between her and the rest of the family was all the more marked at the time of which I am writing, from the health of the elder twin being a good deal shaken by her illness. Agnes had naturally a peevish, passionate temper, which greatly marred her own peace of mind, and which prevented her from winning much love from her young companions. Agnes had many faults, and she knew that she had them; they were to her a trouble and burden. The young girl honestly wished to get rid of and conquer these faults, but she wanted energy and spirit to make a really good battle against her besetting sins. Agnes was too much disposed to conclude that because she was ill-tempered she must always continue ill-tempered, that there was no use in striving to subdue her evil nature. Mrs. Temple’s elder twin was wont to feel vexed and to look sullen because Lucius never cared to sit and chat with her as he would with Dora; and because Elsie never threw her arms round her neck as she would round Amy’s. It grieved Agnes to notice that no one ever called her “pet,” or seemed to take delight in having her near.
“I know that it is partly my own fault,” Agnes would often say to herself, in bitterness of soul; “but I don’t think that if I were to leave home for months, there is any one but mamma who would miss me or want me back.”
Such thoughts had only the effect of making the poor girl’s temper more cross, and her manner more peevish; it is so hard for the face to look bright and sweet when gloom is within the heart.
But better thoughts were in the mind of Agnes on that Sunday night, as she sat silently brushing her hair. Sweet and comforting was the reflection that she was not left to fight her battle alone, that there was One who would not only hear her prayer, but who would Himself pray for His feeble child—who would both watch her struggle against sin, and give her strength in that struggle. It was sweet to poor Agnes, when she afterwards knelt down to pray by the side of her bed, to feel that if she was, like an Israelite, bitten by the serpent of sin, she knew where to look for a cure; that if she was like Naaman the leper, there was the Fountain open to her, in which she could wash and be clean. Hope had sprung up in the young girl’s heart, and with hope came increase of courage. Agnes remembered that the Lord who had supplied all the need of the Israelites could supply hers also; and when temptations assailed her, as the enemy assailed that people, make her also more than conqueror through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Very, very different were the thoughts passing through the mind of Dora, though outwardly she was doing exactly the same things as were done by her twin sister. Dora was not making a brave battle against inward sin, but was, like a coward and traitor, going over to the enemy’s side. It is true that she still intended to unpick on the Monday morning all that she had sewn on the Sunday afternoon; but this resolve was made on the false principle of punishing herself for the sin she would not honestly confess, and of which she had never truly repented. This idea of self-inflicted punishment was merely Dora’s contrivance for quieting conscience, that conscience which had been very uneasy during the conversation on the subject of leprosy, the terrible type of sin. But Dora was trying, and with tolerable success, to banish from her mind all thought of that conversation. It was far more pleasant to think of the pattern of the Tabernacle curtains than of the holy things of which that Tabernacle should remind us.
A great many persons—even grown-up persons—act, alas! like Dora. They so fix their attention on outward things in religion that they quite overlook the inward meaning. Such self-deceivers are ready enough to work at what pleases the eye and amuses the fancy, and believe that they are making an offering to God; but the cleansing of the heart, the giving up sin—these are duties which they shrink from, and which they willingly put off to “a more convenient season.”
XIV.
Work.
ALMOST every inmate of Cedar Lodge was up very early on Monday morning, Agnes being the only member of the family who did not rise till her usual hour. The first crow of the cock, strutting about in the yard behind the house, roused little Elsie from sleep. The child was restless and impatient in her white-curtained cot, until she was suffered to rise, dress, and set about her Turkey-red work for the model. Amy was bending over her strip of white linen almost before there was sufficient light for her to see how to thread her fine needle, for the morning was dark and rainy; indeed the sun never showed his face during the whole of that cheerless day.
Drip, drip! fell the rain, but none of the children regretted that they were not likely to go out of the house. “I don’t mind the rain one bit!” cried Elsie. “I’m glad that it rains; we’ll get on so famously with our work!”
Drip, drip! fell the rain; clink, clink! fell the hammer of Lucius; and blithe sounded his whistle, as he labored in the midst of his squares of pasteboard, strips of wood, and lengths of wire. The schoolboy set to his work with a will; and how pleasant is work when we have strength and spirit to do it, and feel that we have a worthy object before us!
No one was up earlier than Dora. She sprang from her bed before twilight had given place to day-light, so impatient was she to get to her embroidery pattern again. The noise of Dora’s rising awoke Agnes, who had not passed so good a night as her more vigorous twin had done, the sickly girl having been several times disturbed by her cough.
“What are you about, Dora?” murmured Agnes, in a drowsy and rather complaining tone; “I’m sure that it can’t be nearly time to get up.”
“Oh, I like to set about my new work quickly, and get a good piece of it done before breakfast,” was Dora’s reply.
“There will be plenty of time for work between this and Christmas; I wish that you would keep quiet and let me rest,” yawned Agnes.
“You can rest if you wish it; I won’t make a noise,” replied Dora. “But for my part I like to be up and doing. You know that:
‘Early to bed, and early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.’”
Agnes said nothing in contradiction of the old proverb which her sister had quoted, but turned round on her pillow, and with a weary yawn composed herself again to sleep. She thought that it would be time enough to get up when Susan should call her at a quarter to seven, and she only wished that Dora had thought so also, for it fidgeted Agnes to hear her moving about in the room. But Dora had cared as little about disturbing the sleep of a sickly sister as she had about letting her mother go out in the rain. Dora admired her own energy, and looked upon Agnes almost with scorn, as being lazy, cold, and dull, with not a bit of enthusiasm in her nature.
“We should not have had a model worth looking at had the embroidery been left to her,” said Dora to herself, not without a feeling of self-complacence, as she glanced at her twin who had again sunk into slumber.
It will be remembered that Dora had resolved to unpick all the work that she had sewn upon the preceding Sunday. As soon as the little girl had hastily finished her toilet, so hastily that she forgot to button her sleeves or put on her collar, she opened her workbox, took out her work, and seated herself as close to the window as possible, in order to catch as much as she could of the dim light of dawn. It might have been expected that Dora would also have forgotten to say her prayers, but such was not the case. She remembered to kneel down by her bedside and hurry through a mere form of words, without paying the slightest attention to their meaning, thinking of her embroidery all the time. It was a satisfaction to the conscience of Dora that she had repeated a prayer, and she never stopped to ask herself whether that prayer were not in itself a sin.
Dora with needle and scissors set first to her work of unpicking. But every one who has tried such an occupation must know it to be one of the most tedious and disagreeable of tasks. It was doubly so to Dora, because she greatly admired the embroidery work which she was thus beginning to spoil.
“It is a great pity to undo this,” Dora said to herself before she had been for two minutes plying the scissors. “I won’t go on with this foolish unpicking. After all, my undoing every stitch of my pretty work would not undo the fault of my having put it in on Sunday.”
This was indeed true. A fault once committed, no human being has power to undo; but while looking to the Lord alone for forgiveness, we are bound to prove the sincerity of our regret for a fault by making what amends lie in our power. Dora took the easier, but far more dangerous way, of trying to forget the fault altogether, or to make up for it by what she considered to be her zeal in charity work. She certainly sewed very diligently on that dull morning, scarcely lifting her eyes from the pattern which she had neatly traced on the linen. She was filling up the pencilled outlines with chain-stitch, satin-stitch, and other stitches, in bright-colored silks and a brilliant thread of gold.
“Oh, look!—just look how famously Dora has been getting on with her work!” exclaimed the admiring Elsie, when, summoned by the bell at half-past eight, the children had assembled in the breakfast-room, awaiting their mother’s coming down to prayers.
“Why, you don’t mean to say that you have worked all that this morning?” said Lucius to Dora.
The question was rather an awkward one for Dora to answer—it took the girl by surprise. Dora replied to it by an evasion, which was another act of deceit. “I couldn’t begin my embroidery on Saturday night,” she said, actually congratulating herself that she had this time spoken the exact truth, as if it were not the very essence of falsehood to deceive, even though the lips may utter no lie. As Dora had not sewn on Saturday, she knew that Lucius would take it for granted that she had been so clever and industrious as to do all the work which he saw on the Monday morning, for he would certainly never suspect her of having put in one stitch upon Sunday.
“Don’t you admire Dora’s curtain, is it not lovely?” said Amy to Agnes, who was examining the work of her twin.
“Rather,” was the reply, uttered in a hesitating tone.
Agnes could not truthfully have expressed warmer admiration, for she did not think that the figures of the cherubim were at all gracefully drawn, nor did she consider that the colors were perfectly blended, there being too little scarlet in proportion to the purple and blue. But the cold praise of the twin was not unnaturally set down by her family as coming from a mean, unworthy motive.
“She is as jealous as a cat!” exclaimed Lucius; “Agnes can’t forgive poor Dora for having been trusted with the most difficult part of the work.”
The irritable temper of Agnes fired up in a moment at an observation which she felt to be unjust as well as unkind. But Agnes on that Monday morning had not merely said her prayers, she had really prayed for grace to conquer besetting sin, and now, though she could not help her cheeks flushing scarlet at the taunt of her brother, she pressed her lips closely together, and kept down the passionate reply which it was so hard, so very hard, not to utter.
“How much of your work have you done this morning, Agnes?” asked Elsie, rather proudly, showing her own three inches of seam in the Turkey-red cloth.
“I have cut out my mohair curtains,” said Agnes, who had also, though she did not choose to say so, been mending her gloves, in obedience to the known wish of her mother.
“Cut out—only cut out?” laughed Lucius, who had been doing great things in the nailing and hammering line; “if you take the matter so easily, Agnes, every one will cut you out, though you may not be made into curtains!”
Agnes was provoked at the joke, and all the more so because Dora and Elsie laughed, and Amy could not help smiling. Few persons like to be laughed at, and the peevish-tempered Agnes was certainly not one of the few. But the girl had made a resolve, not in vain trust in her own power of carrying it out, but in a spirit of humble prayer, to set a watch before her lips; and if she could not speak kindly, not to utter a single word. Agnes could not, indeed, yet manage to take a disagreeable joke with smiling good humor, but she bore it in resolute silence, she did not utter any retort.
No one admired Agnes Temple, no one praised her self-command: she was thought lazy because she had not eagerly rushed into an occupation in which she took no particular pleasure, and for which she knew that she would find plenty of time without neglecting more homely duties; she was thought jealous because she had simply spoken the truth; and yet on that day Agnes had begun a nobler work than that of embroidering in purple and gold, and her offering was a far more acceptable one than that of which Dora was proud.
XV.
Different Motives.
“WHAT a busy, cheerful little party!” exclaimed Mrs. Temple, as she entered the study on the afternoon of that same day, and found all her children sitting together, sewing, cutting, gilding, and chatting merrily as they worked. “You remind me of the busy, happy scene outside Jerusalem, beheld every year when the Feast of Tabernacles was kept.”
“What was the Feast of Tabernacles, mamma?” inquired Amy. Lucius would have asked the same question, but he dared not speak at that moment lest his breath should blow away the sheet of gold-leaf with which he was trying to cover his wires.
“The Feast of Tabernacles was a yearly festival held by the Israelites in remembrance of the time spent by their fathers in tabernacles or tents in the desert,” replied the lady. “This was the most cheerful of all the feasts, and was kept in a remarkable manner. The people made booths for themselves of the branches of palm, willow, and other trees, and for seven days lived in these booths. There were processions, glad hosannas, and sounds of singing and mirth. The people enjoyed their out-of-door life, and blessed the Lord for His goodness in guiding the Israelites through the wilderness to the good land in which their children now dwelt.”
“One could hardly keep such a feast in England,” observed Agnes, glancing out of the window at the gray sky and the dripping trees, which were dimly reflected in the pools left by the morning’s rain.
“I think that living in green leafy booths would be delightful in summer, even in England!” exclaimed Lucius, who had managed to fix his gold-leaf. “I should have liked, had I been a Jew, to have kept the Feast of Tabernacles—better perhaps than to have helped to make this model Tabernacle,” added the boy, who, after several hours of steady work, was beginning to feel rather tired. “I should much prefer hewing down branches, and doing the rough carpentering part of the business, to gilding these tiresome, fidgety wires, which I am sure to ungild again as soon as I attempt to fix them into their frame.”
“What, you are weary of your work already!” exclaimed Dora, as she paused in her sewing to thread her needle.
“Not exactly weary of it now,” answered Lucius, “but I guess that I shall be so long before this model is finished. It is all very well,” he continued, taking up his knife to hack away at some stubborn pasteboard—“it is all very well to make pillars and curtains while the sky is cloudy, and the rain falls fast, and I am kept prisoner at home; but suppose that the rain should stop, and the sun shine out, and the weather become settled at last, wouldn’t every one of us like running about in the fields all day, playing at cricket, or croquet, or rounders, better than measuring and cutting and——there! snap goes my knife, my new knife!” and with a gesture of impatience the boy flung the unmanageable pasteboard down on the table.
There was much to justify the suspicion expressed by Lucius that the work so eagerly begun by the Temples would, before it could be finished, become a burden and a tax upon the patience of all. On the very next day began a season of warmth and sunshine, which did more to drive away coughs and restore vigor to late invalids than could all the skill of the doctor. Even Agnes was able to spend hours in the open air; and, except at mealtimes, Lucius liked to be out all the day. His fidgety work, as he called it, could scarcely be done but indoors, and the boy found it a grievous task.
“But it would be a shame not to go on with the model now, after putting mamma to so much trouble and expense,” observed Lucius one morning to Dora. “Besides, I engaged to do it, and no English boy must flinch back from keeping his word. The new knife which I bought yesterday is not to be compared to that which I so unluckily snapped over the pasteboard; but I must hack away steadily, and show a good example to that lazy puss Elsie, who since the fine weather began has not put another stitch into her Turkey-red curtains.”
“She has stowed them away in her doll’s cradle,” observed Dora, laughing.
Mrs. Temple was not surprised to find that the making of the model now progressed more slowly; she was rather pleased to see the amount of perseverance shown by her children after the charm of novelty had worn off. Even the “lazy puss” drew her work from its hiding-place, and would sew—for five minutes at a time—“just to please dear mamma.” All the five Temples continued to work, when work had ceased to be an amusement; but they worked from different motives. Those which influenced Lucius—a manly, honorable boy—have been mentioned already, as well as the simple wish to please mother which made Elsie prick her plump little finger under her Turkey-red cloth. But if you could glance into the hearts of the three other girls as they sit together industriously plying their needles, we should find an example of how the very same effect may be produced by different causes.
Amy had from the very first considered her humble work as something to be done for her Heavenly Master, and this sweet thought made her take pleasure in labor, which without it would have been wearisome indeed. It was this thought which made Amy put fine hemming and stitching into the long strips of white lawn which represented the linen curtains surrounding the court of the Tabernacle, and even unpick any portion which did not seem to her to be sewn neatly enough. Amy tried to give her best, her very best work, because she was giving it to the Lord, and some of the happiest hours which the little girl ever had known were spent over her tedious curtains.
“I cannot think, Amy, how you can go on so patiently with what is so tiresome, with no variety in it, and a kind of work which will not look striking when all is done,” exclaimed Dora one day, as she unrolled some glittering gold thread from her reel.
Amy smiled as she glanced up at her sister’s far more amusing occupation. “If I could have worked anything so pretty as the veil which you are making, I daresay that I should have liked it much better,” she observed. “But I am pleased to do the plain work as well as I can, as the embroidery would have been far too difficult for me.”
Amy’s curtains might seem plain to the eyes of most people, but her mother looked upon them with special pleasure; for, as she said to herself, “they are embroided all over with faith and love.”
Agnes also made steady progress with her not very inviting work, though she took in it no great pleasure. Agnes regarded the sewing as a matter of duty, and therefore plied her needle in the same spirit as that in which she struggled to subdue her temper, and tried to put a bridle on her tongue. It was the work which had been given to her, and she would do it, without asking herself whether she liked it or not.
“This material, neither smooth nor pretty, is something like a type of me,” thought Agnes, as she put the finishing stitch into one of her mohair curtains; “but the goats’-hair had just as much its appointed place in the Tabernacle as loops of silver and sockets of gold. I shall never be as much liked and admired as Dora is—I may as well make up my mind to that; but if God help me by His grace, I too may lead a useful life, and be dear—at least to my mother.”
And more and more dear was Agnes becoming to her mother, who watched with the keen eye of affection the struggle made by her eldest daughter against her besetting sins. Mrs. Temple guessed what it cost Agnes to bear a rough joke in silence, to lend pretty things which she feared that the borrower might spoil, to give up her own way, and to show no jealous anger when another was preferred before her.
“My girl’s character is becoming stronger and nobler every day,” thought Mrs. Temple; “I thank the Lord for my Agnes, for I am sure that it is His grace that is working in her heart. Agnes promises to grow up into a really valuable woman, one whom her mother can trust.”
Mrs. Temple could not have said as much for her dearly loved Dora. The lady was perplexed and pained to feel that something—she knew not what it could be—seemed to have come between her and her bright, clever, affectionate child. Dora, indeed, gave Mrs. Temple no cause to find fault with her conduct; her lessons were well learned, her temper was good, she was a favorite still with her brother and sisters; and yet her mother felt that there was a change in her Dora for which she could not account. Mrs. Temple was wont to have little quiet conversations separately with each of her children at night: in these meetings they were able to open their hearts more freely to their mother than they could have done had a third person been present, and their parent could speak upon religious subjects in the way best suited to the character and age of each. These quiet moments spent alone with mamma had been greatly prized by all the children; but Dora could take pleasure in them no more, and her parent was conscious that such was the case. The girl generally managed, only too easily, to forget all about her unrepented sin when the remembrance of it was not forced upon her now half-deadened conscience, but when her mother sat by her bedside and softly talked to her about heaven, Dora grew uneasy in spirit. She did not like to be reminded of the holy God whose law she had broken—what pleasure could the knowledge of His truth bring to one who was conscious of unrepented falsehood! The returns of Sundays, nay, even the hour for family prayer, were never welcome to Dora. When she repeated texts or hymns, as the rest of the family did, she had the wretched consciousness that she was acting a hypocrite’s part, and taking God’s name in vain. Dora’s life was becoming one long act of deceit. She was secretly ashamed of herself for appearing so much better than she in reality was.
“But my work—my beautiful work—my work for the poor—I’ll make up for what I’ve done wrong by taking extra pains with that!” thought Dora. And so the poor girl usually succeeded in winning much praise from others, and in deceiving her own sinful heart, only too willing to be thus deceived.
XVI.
The High-Priest.
“THERE is one thing which we can’t do, it is too hard for even Dora,” observed Elsie one morning at breakfast, when, as was often the case, the Children’s Tabernacle had formed a topic of conversation. “We can’t make models of the Ark, or the Altar, or the Table of Showbread; our pretty curtains won’t cover anything, the Tabernacle will be quite empty!”
“I really could not undertake to do more than I am doing, even if my fingers could manage to make such tiny models,” said Lucius, who, as we have seen, already found that he had engaged in a difficult task.
Agnes, Dora, and Amy were silent; they all felt that there would certainly be a great want in their Tabernacle, but they did not see how that want could possibly be supplied.
The young Temples little guessed that while their mother was in her own room, engaged, as they supposed, in reading or writing, or making up her household accounts, she was preparing for them a pleasant surprise. Mrs. Temple was not less with her family than usual, she did not neglect her house affairs, she never forgot either to order the dinner or to pay the butcher and baker, but she stole time for her novel employment from her sleep, and from her favorite amusement of reading library books.
On the day when the model was completed, when the last silver socket had been fastened, and the last little curtain hemmed, the children had the pleasure of setting up the Tabernacle in the study, to see how it looked. There was great satisfaction in surveying the finished work; every one felt glad that the long labor was over, and that he had had a share in the work.
“How pleased auntie will be!” cried Elsie.
“And the ragged children, too,” joined in Amy.
“And now go out for your walk, my dear ones,” said their mother; “the morning is so frosty and bright that you may make your walk a long one; I should not be surprised should you wander as far as Burnley woods. I shall not expect you back for a couple of hours.”
“Mother, you will go with us,” said Lucius.
“I will be particularly engaged this morning,” replied Mrs. Temple, as she shook her head with a smile. Elsie remarked afterwards that it had been “a knowing kind of smile,” as if there had been some very particular reason indeed for her mamma’s stopping at home. The reason was clear enough to all the party when they returned from their walk, and with their cheeks rosy from the fresh air and exercise re-entered the study. The children found their mother standing beside the model. Elsie, who was the first to run up to it, gave almost a scream of delight.
“Oh! see—see what mamma has been making! Clever mamma!” she cried, clapping her hands, and jumping for joy.
“What lovely little models!” exclaimed Lucius. “Mother, it is you who have cut us all out.”
“You have done what none of us could have done,” said Agnes.
“And so quietly too,” observed Dora.
“There is nothing wanting now!” cried Amy, putting her arm fondly around the parent who had so kindly entered into the little pleasures of her children.
“I thought that one thing more was wanting,” said Mrs. Temple. The lady seated herself beside the table, and took off the cover of a little pasteboard box which she held in her hand. The children looked on with mingled curiosity and pleasure as their mother carefully drew out from it a beautiful little figure about two inches long, exquisitely dressed in miniature garments, representing those which were worn by the high-priest of Israel. To imitate these garments in a size so small, had taxed the utmost skill of the ingenious and neat-fingered lady.
I need not set down all the exclamations of wonder and pleasure which were uttered by the younger Temples. If their mother’s great object had been to gratify her children, that object was certainly attained.
“The dress which I have tried to imitate,” said the lady, “is that in which the high-priest appeared on solemn occasions. The Day of Atonement was, however, an exception; on that most solemn day in the year, when the high-priest ventured into the Holy of holies, he did so in simple garments of pure white linen.”
The mother then showed and explained to her family the different articles of dress on her curious model. The under-tunic, or shirt, of linen, and above it the mantle of sky-blue color, having at the bottom an ornamental border or fringe.
“This fringe, which, as you see, I have cut out in the form of tiny pomegranates, ought to be interspersed with bells of gold,” said Mrs. Temple; “but my fingers could not succeed in making anything so very minute.”
“And unless we had looked through a microscope, we could not have distinguished bells no bigger than needles’ eyes,” observed Lucius.
“And what is this fine uppermost garment, reaching to the knees?” inquired Dora, looking admiringly on the delicate embroidery in gold and colors similar to that which she had herself worked for the Veil, only a great deal finer.
“This is the Ephod,” replied Mrs. Temple. “On the front of it I have, as you see, worked in very small beads of various colors an imitation of the high-priest’s breastplate, which was formed of twelve precious stones.”
The minute breastplate excited more attention than any other part of the high-priest’s dress, and had, perhaps, given the skilful worker more trouble than all the rest. Every one of the little beads was of a different tint. They were closely set together in rows, so as to form a square ornament, and were fastened to the shoulder parts of the Ephod by little threads of gold.
“How very splendid the real breastplate must have been!” exclaimed Dora Temple.
“Had it also some typical meaning?” asked Lucius. “I suppose so,” he added, “as everything about the Tabernacle and the high-priest seems to have been a type of something greater.”
“On each of the precious stones in the splendid breastplate was inscribed the names of one of the twelve tribes of Israel,” replied Mrs. Temple. “I believe that the breastplate was worn by the high-priest, who was to pray in the Tabernacle for the people, and then to come forward and bless them, as a token that he bore their names on his heart.”
“Oh, that is a beautiful meaning!” cried Amy; “especially when we think,” she continued, more softly, “that the high-priest was a type of our blessed Saviour Himself.”
“Who bears all His people’s names on his heart,” observed Mrs. Temple; “both when He pleads for them in heaven, and when He blesses them upon earth.”
“The high-priest must have looked very noble and grand in his rich garments,” observed Lucius; “and yet it seems too much honor for any mere man to be called a type of the Son of God.”
“Ah, my boy! poor and mean indeed must any earthly type appear when compared to the heavenly Antitype!” exclaimed Mrs. Temple. “That thought came strongly to my mind as I was sewing together these little worthless glass beads to form the model of the glorious breastplate. ‘Can these wretched little atoms of colored glass,’ I said to myself, ‘give any idea of magnificent jewels, sparkling in light, set in gold, and each engraved with a name?’ But even so mean, and small, and insignificant was Aaron, in all his splendor, compared to the sacred Being who deigns to call Himself our High-Priest, and to make intercession for us above!”
All the party were silent for several moments, looking down at the little model, and thinking over the words of their mother. Elsie then pointed to the curious head-dress which appeared on the figure. It was not exactly a turban, though it was formed of tight rolls of linen. It had the representation of a plate of gold in front, fastened on to it by a blue thread.
“That head-dress is called the high-priest’s bonnet or mitre,” observed Mrs. Temple. “There are rather different opinions regarding its exact shape. It cost me a good deal of thought to contrive it, and here again I felt how impossible it is to give anything like a just idea of the real object in a model so small as this. You see that I have not neglected to put a little gold plate on the front of the mitre; but I had no power to form letters so minute as to represent on it what was engraved on that which the high-priest wore. This was ‘Holiness to the Lord.’”
“Then the high-priest had the Lord’s Name written over his brow,” observed Agnes. “It makes one think of the promise in the Bible, that saints in heaven shall have His Name written on their foreheads.” (Rev. xxii. 4.)
“All will be ‘Holiness to the Lord’ in that happy place!” observed Amy.
It was pleasanter to Dora to examine the little model before her, and to admire and praise her mother’s skill, than to think of what was inscribed on the mitre worn by Aaron and his successors. It is the sad, sad effect of sin concealed in the heart, that it keeps those who indulge it from daring even to wish to be holy.
The Tabernacle was now carefully taken down, piece by piece, to be packed in a box, ready to be carried along with the rest of their luggage when the family should quit their home for awhile. Every curtain was neatly folded, and all the pillars carefully wrapped up in paper. The figure representing the high-priest was gently put back into its own little box, and all the other little objects were packed in cotton, so as to bear without injury a little jolting on the journey before them.
With additional pleasure the young Temples now looked forward to the coming Christmas season, and the long-expected visit which they were to pay to their Aunt Theodora.
XVII.
The Birthday Gifts.
SEVERAL months have passed away since the Temples began making their model of the Tabernacle of Israel. The leaves which were then green on the trees, have become yellow, have faded and fallen; save those on the evergreens, which wear a silver crusting of frost. But it is not to Cedar Lodge that I shall take my young readers, but to a large and rather plain brick house in the city of Chester. It is a house by no means beautiful to the eye, and its only look-out is into a narrow paved street; but still that house has a charm of its own, it is dear to many a heart, for its owner, Miss Theodora Clare, is the friend and benefactress of the poor around. Many have entered sadly through the dark green door of that red-brick house, who have left it cheerfully, blessing the kind heart and liberal hand of its lady.
It is just two days before Christmas: on the morrow Miss Clare’s Ragged School is to have its annual treat. A feast and gifts of warm socks or mittens knitted for each child by the lady’s own hands, are not to form the only, or perhaps the chief attractions of the treat; the little scholars have been promised a sight of the model Tabernacle, which its young makers are to bring from their country home, about ten miles away. Christmas Eve has been fixed upon by Miss Clare as the time for her Ragged School Fête, because it is the birthday of her twin nieces, the younger of whom is her namesake. The arrival of the Temple family is expected almost every minute, and Miss Clare sits by the window, with the red glow of a December sun upon her, glancing up with a look of pleasant expectation whenever she hears the rattle of wheels along the narrow paved street. You might guess at once by the likeness between them that Miss Clare is the sister of Mrs. Temple, though her figure is a little taller, and her locks a little whiter than those of the widow lady.
Miss Clare is evidently thinking; she looks a little perplexed and doubtful as she examines the contents of a large old-fashioned ebony box which holds her little treasures. Not treasures of silver or gold; there are but few indeed of such things in the possession of Theodora Clare: her silver spoons have fed the hungry; her gold chain has paid for the benches on which her ragged scholars sit, and her bracelets for the books which they learn from, and the big blackboard on the wall. A good many pairs of stout little shoes have come out of Miss Clare’s silver tea-pot! But there is one article of jewellery which the lady still possesses, and this is to her the most precious of all. It is the likeness of her sister, Mrs. Temple, in a brooch, set round with pearls. This was the gift of Mr. Temple on his wedding-day to the bridesmaid, Theodora; it is very beautiful as an ornament, and as a likeness almost perfect. But not even this jewel does the generous lady intend to keep for herself; it is to be her birthday present on the following day to Dora.
Miss Clare has for years settled in her own mind that her god-daughter should receive the precious brooch on completing the twelfth year of her age; it is no doubt upon this subject that perplexes her now; (for the lady does look a little perplexed as she searches her old-fashioned box for something which she seems to have some difficulty in finding). She opens this little packet, then that little packet, then silently shakes her head, or murmurs “No, that will not do,” as she replaces it in the large box. The reader knows that Dora has a twin sister, and that the birthday of the one is also the birthday of the other. Miss Clare does not like to give to Dora without also giving to Agnes, and as her hospitality and her charities leave her very little money for buying presents, she wishes to find some suitable article already in her possession of which to make a birthday remembrance. But what should that article be? Almost everything that would please a young girl had already been given away.
“I have nothing—nothing that can be compared in value or in beauty with the brooch,” said Miss Clare to herself, as she locked the box where she had been vainly searching amongst locks of hair neatly wrapped in separate papers, old letters, and little pictures faded and yellow with time. “I hope that Agnes is too sensible a girl to expect that my precious brooch should be given to herself instead of to my namesake, who is to me almost as a daughter; but still Agnes is the elder of the twins; she is, I fear, of rather a jealous temper; her character has not—or had not a year ago—the generosity and sweetness of that of my Dora. I should be grieved to hurt the feelings of either of the dear girls; what can I find that will really please Agnes?”
Miss Clare had really given the subject a good deal of consideration, though apparently to little purpose, when a thought occurred to her mind which brought a smile of satisfaction to her kind pleasant face. Miss Clare rose from her seat by the window, and went to a table which had in it a drawer, hidden by the neat brown cloth that hung over the sides. The lady lifted the cloth, drew open the drawer, and then took from it a flat parcel wrapped in a peculiar kind of yellowish paper, with that scent about it which usually pervades articles which have come from India.
“Here is the delicate little embroidered neck-scarf which was sent to me years ago, and which I have always thought much too fine for my wear,” said the lady, as she opened the parcel. “This will of course be a gift not to be compared to the brooch; but still it is pretty, very pretty; I think that Agnes is sure to admire it.”
It was indeed impossible not to admire the exquisite embroidery in gold and colors on the small India-muslin scarf. The natives of India excel in this kind of work, and the little scarf was a gem of beauty for richness of pattern and brightness of hue. Miss Clare’s only doubt was whether such an article of dress were not too gay to be given to her young niece.
Miss Clare had little time to think over this matter, for hardly had she put back the pretty piece of embroidery into its paper wrapping, and then replaced it in the drawer, when the rattle of wheels was heard on the stones, and a large carriage, well filled within, and with plenty of luggage without, was driven up to the door. Well Miss Clare knew the smiling eager faces which crowded the carriage window, and the merry young voices which sounded through the clear cold winter air. The lady ran hurriedly to meet and welcome the party, and was at the open door, notwithstanding the cold of frosty December, before Mrs. Temple and her five children could manage to get out of the carriage in which they had been too closely packed for comfort, but in which they had been very noisy and merry. All trace of whooping cough had long since departed, and the sounds which had been heard in the carriage had been only those of talking, laughing, and singing!
XVIII.
The Arrival.
“MIND, coachman, mind! You must hand down that box very carefully!” shouted out Lucius to the driver, who was now engaged in taking down the luggage. The boy had been the first of the party to spring out of the carriage, but he was the last to enter the house, for all his thoughts seemed to be taken up by the long, flat deal box which had been put under the special care of the coachman, with many a charge to see that no harm should come to it on the journey. Had the box been a cradle containing a baby, it could hardly have been more gently and carefully received from the coachman’s hands, and then carried up the door-steps and into the red-brick house by Lucius. Did it not hold the result of the labor of many weeks!—was there not in it the work completed by the family’s united efforts, the beautiful model of the Tabernacle made by the children of Israel!
“Oh, auntie, here is our great work—our model! Where shall we set it up? Have you a table ready? It is all finished—every loop! Oh, you must see it! you must see it!” Such were the exclamations which burst from the children as Lucius appeared in the hall, laden with the long, flat deal box.
Miss Clare had not yet seen the model, though she had heard a great deal about it, and had given notice to many friends and neighbors of the little exhibition of it,[B] to be held in her house through the following week, for the benefit of her school. She was amused at the eager impatience shown by the youthful workers. Except Agnes, who took the matter more quietly, none of the Temples cared even to warm themselves by the blazing fire after their wintry journey until the model Tabernacle had been unpacked from its box.
“Please, auntie, please don’t look at it till it’s all set up!” exclaimed Elsie, in a tone of entreaty. “You can talk to mamma, you know, while we are unrolling the little curtains (I did the Turkey-red curtains)—and fastening them up on the gilded pillars by the wee wee loops which are made of silver thread!”
Miss Clare was quite willing to indulge the humor of her young guests, so that she did not even remain in the room while the Tabernacle was being put up on the table set apart for the purpose. She took her sister, Mrs. Temple, up-stairs, and helped her to take off her cloak and furs, and talked over many subjects with her, while the young people below were busily engaged with their model. It was not until nearly two hours had elapsed, and after the party had all partaken of a dinner of roast beef and plum-pudding, that Miss Clare re-entered her own sitting-room to have her first sight of the wonderful work.
For wonderful it was in the eyes of its youthful contrivers, who knew the trouble which it had cost them to finish and fix those numerous pillars and curtains, with sockets and loops. The Temples regarded their model as a triumph of art and patience, much as the builder of one of the Pyramids may have regarded his own gigantic work. Miss Clare was expected to look and feel a good deal more astonished than she could in sincerity do; but if she was not astonished, at least she was pleased, and showed that she was so.
“It’s a pity, auntie, that you can’t see more of my Turkey-red curtains; I wish they’d been the top ones,” cried Elsie, lifting up a corner of the merino covering to show her own work beneath.
“These linen curtains round the court of the Tabernacle are neatly, very neatly made,” observed Miss Clare; “with so many silver loops they must have required a great deal of patience in the worker.”
Amy colored with pleasure at the praise; she had not expected her own share of the work to attract much notice. She now silently drew her aunt’s attention to the pretty little gilded pillars upon which her curtains were hung.
“But the beauty part—the real beauty part—is the ’broidery, the inner curtains, and the veil!” exclaimed Elsie. “Oh, auntie, you will be astonished at them. Just stoop down and look in—just look in! We’ve managed to leave the front open, and the veil is half-drawn aside, so that you can see the inner part quite well. No one could see the inner part of the real Tabernacle, you know; but then ours is only a model.”
The lady stooped, as requested, and looked through the space between the front pillars, not only into the outer Tabernacle, but beyond the veil into what, in the model, represented the Holy of holies. Dora, who had for months been looking forward to this moment, listened eagerly to hear what her darling aunt would say of her work.
Miss Clare, it will be remembered, had that day been examining a lovely specimen of some of the most finished embroidery to be found in any part of the world. Dora’s work was clever, regarded as that of a girl not twelve years of age, who had had to contrive her own pattern; but it was, of course, very poor compared to that on the Indian scarf.
“Is it not splendid ’broidery?” persisted Elsie, who wished others to share her own unbounded admiration for the work of a favorite sister.
“It is nice,” said Aunt Theodora, quietly, “but wants a little more scarlet, I think.”
And was this all that could be said of that which had cost Dora hours of thought, and many hours of patient labor—these few words of qualified praise! Dora was bitterly disappointed, far more disappointed than Agnes, whose curtains, whether mohair or merino, seemed to win no notice at all. There was good reason why Dora should feel pain which Agnes was spared. It was not time and labor only which the younger twin had given to gain success; she had made a sacrifice of conscience, she had forfeited her own self-respect, she had lost the blessing of confidential intercourse with her mother, and all pleasure and comfort in prayer! Dora had given up all this, and for what? To hear the observation, by no means unkindly uttered, “It is nice, but wants a little more scarlet.”
If Dora had ever believed that in working her embroidery she had really been laboring for anything higher than earthly pleasure or human praise, the extreme vexation which she now experienced must surely have undeceived her. Why should she care so much for what was said of her performance if her real object was but to please her Heavenly Master? Agnes and Amy, who had worked from motives of duty and love, were safe from any such keen disappointment. They both looked with pleasure on the completed model, in forming which they had taken inferior parts; while Dora had to walk to the window to hide from the eyes of her family the mortification which she felt.
That day was a very happy one to all the members of the Temple family, Dora alone excepted. She felt a kind of dread of the evening conversation which she knew that she would have with her aunt. The eve of her last birthday Dora remembered as, perhaps, the happiest time of her life. Aunt Theodora had come to sit with her, and talk to her of her coming birthday—a new milestone, as she called it, on the pilgrim’s path towards heaven. Dora had on that evening opened her heart to her aunt, and the two had loved each other more fondly than they ever had loved before, and their parting embrace had been so sweet that Dora had felt that she could never forget it. Miss Clare was certain to come again this evening into her room—in this house Dora had a little room to herself—and must the niece act the hypocrite’s part to an aunt so loving and true; must the girl so trusted and loved make a show of openness while concealing a secret from her aunt, which, if confessed, must lower her in the eyes of that tender relative and friend?
Miss Clare did indeed come that night, as Dora had expected that she would come. The girl soon found herself sitting on a stool with her arms resting on her aunt’s knee, as they had rested twelve months before; and she heard the same dear voice speaking to her of holy things, as she had heard on that well-remembered night. The room was the same, the furniture, the pictures were all the same, but Dora felt in her own heart a miserable change. Half a dozen times was the poor girl on the point of laying her head on her aunt’s knee, and sobbing forth a full confession to relieve her burdened heart. But to own repeated falsehood and long deceit to one herself so truthful, to lose the good opinion of one whose regard she so greatly valued, oh! Dora could not muster up courage sufficient for this!
“And now that you are making a new start in life’s journey, my child,” such were the aunt’s concluding words as she rose to depart, “give yourself anew to the best of Masters, the most tender of Friends. Ask His blessing upon all that you do: without that blessing our best works are but like building on sand, or writing on water—all end in vanity and vexation of spirit. The great lesson taught us by the history of ancient Israel is this: the path of obedience is the path of safety and happiness also. When God’s people followed where He led, and did what He commanded, then were their hearts filled with joy, and their harps tuned to glad songs of triumph; but when the Israelites turned aside to paths of disobedience, sorrow followed close upon sin; they hung their harps on the willows, and, exiles from their beautiful land, they wept when they remembered the blessings which would still have been theirs, had they not forsaken their God!”