“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.