“And what is that very large vase farther on in the picture?” asked Amy.
“That is meant for the Brazen Laver, to hold water for the priests to wash in. This laver was made of brass which the women of Israel offered. Do any of my girls remember what articles had been made before of that brass?”
The party were silent for a few seconds, and then Amy said, with a blush on her cheek, “The mirrors of the women, mamma.” The little girl was inclined to be vain of her looks, and her mother, who had noticed how much of her Amy’s time was foolishly spent before a glass, had drawn her attention, some days before that of which I write, to a fact which has been thought worthy of mention in the Bible. The women of Israel had the self-denial to give up the brazen mirrors—which were to them what glass mirrors, are to us—to form a laver for the use of the priests when engaged in the service of God.
Mrs. Temple smiled pleasantly to see that the example of the women in the desert had not been forgotten by her child.
“Is not that kind of large tent which is standing in the court, the Tabernacle itself?” inquired Dora.
“It is the Tabernacle,” was the reply.
“Why is all that smoke coming out of it?” asked little Elsie.
“That smoke in the picture represents the pillar of cloud which guided the Israelites in their wanderings,” said Mrs. Temple. “For it is written in the book of Exodus (xl. 38), ‘The cloud of the Lord was upon the Tabernacle by day, and fire was upon it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.’”
“What a very holy place that Tabernacle must have been!” said Amy, in a low tone of voice.
“There was not only the pillar of cloud as a visible sign of God’s presence resting upon it,” observed Mrs. Temple, “but when Moses had finished making the Tabernacle, a miraculous light, called by the Jews, ‘Shekinah,’ and, in the Bible, ‘the glory of the Lord,’ filled the most holy place.”