“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.