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?”