“Unless we quite understand what a type means, we shall lose much of the lesson conveyed by the wanderings of the children of Israel, and the long account of the Tabernacle, what was in it, and what was done there, which we find in the books of Moses,” remarked Mrs. Temple.
“It always seemed to me as if that Tabernacle were quite a thing of the past,” said Agnes, “and that it belonged only to the Israelites of old. I never could make out why Christian people in England, thousands of years after the Tabernacle had quite disappeared, should care to know anything about it, the ark, or the altar.”
“But you say that all these things were types,” observed Amy. “Now, what is a type, dear mamma?”
“A kind of shadow or picture of something usually greater than itself,” replied Mrs. Temple.
“I don’t understand,” said Elsie, raising her blue eyes gravely to the face of her mother.
“You know, my love, that before you came to live in this house, when none of the family but myself had seen it, you still had some little knowledge of what it was like.”
“Yes, mamma, for you brought us little pictures of the house, both of the back and the front,” said Agnes.
“We knew that it was a pretty white house, and had a little tower on one side, and that trees were growing in front, and creepers all up it!” cried Elsie.
“Now, I might have described the place to you in writing, but you would not have known its appearance as well as you did from the pictures,” observed Mrs. Temple.
“No, from a mere description I should not have been able to find out the house directly as I did when I walked alone from the station,” cried Lucius. “There are several white houses near this, but the remembrance of the pictures made me know in a moment which was the right one.”