I
“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 theBible, 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 andmustfollow it;THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH(Rom. vi. 23).
“But you have taught us thatGod 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 savedbothfrom 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?”
“Ask yourself what lesson this would have taught you had you been one of the children of Israel,” said Mrs. Temple. “When you beheld the Tabernacle with the wondrous cloud resting upon it, and gazed through the opening in front on the veil which hid from your eyes the more dazzling glory within—that glory which was a sign of the immediate presence of God, into which on pain of death you dared not enter—what would have been the thought uppermost in your mind?”
“The thought that God was terribly holy, and that no human being was fit to come near Him,” replied Lucius, gravely.
“But one man was allowed to draw near,” observed Mrs. Temple.
“Only the high priest, and that with the blood of a sacrifice,” said her son.
“And so mankind were taught that thereisa way to approach a holy God, butonly one way;they were taught that sacrifice was needful, thatWITHOUT SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION(forgiveness of sin), Heb. ix. 22.
“But, mother, surely God does not require the blood of bulls and goats!” cried Lucius.
Mrs. Temple in reply turned over the leaves of the Bible, till she found the fortieth Psalm, and then read aloud,
“Burnt-offering and sacrifice hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo! I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O my God.” It is the Lord Jesus Christ who says this by the mouth of David. The blood of lambs and other creatures was worthless, saveas signs and pledges of the precious blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin, (John i. 7,) the blood of Him who is indeedthe Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world(John i. 29).
“It seems so sad that the Lord, who had done no sin, should have to bear all that agony on the cross,” murmured Lucius.
“Christ bore it in ourSTEAD,” said Mrs. Temple; “He suffered the punishment for sin, that sinners, repenting and believing, might be saved, forgiven, and made happy forever.”
“I still cannot clearly make out the use of sacrifices—I mean of animals,” said Lucius.
“They taught that one being may suffer instead of another,” replied Mrs. Temple,speaking slowly, that her son might weigh well every word. “When an Israelite brought a lamb for sacrifice it was just as if he had said, ‘O holy God, I know that I am a sinner, and that I deserve to suffer for my sin; but in mercy accept the life of this lambinstead of mine.’ It was to teach this same lesson that Aaron the high priest was commanded to lay his hands on the head of a living goat, and confess over him the sins of all the children of Israel. The scape-goat (as it was called), was then sent away into the desert, bearing away with him all the sins which had been solemnly confessed over him by the high priest of God. With a thankful heart and lightened conscience must every faithful Israelite have seen the scape-goat led away from the camp. ‘My sins are takenfrom me, far as the east is from the west,’ he might say, ‘I shall never, never have to bear that terrible burden myself.’”
“But why have we no scape-goats and no sacrifices now?” asked Lucius; while Dora silently thought, “What a comfort it would be to see all one’s sins carried far away from us forever!”
“We need no more such sacrifices now,” replied Mrs. Temple, “because the One great Sacrifice which Christ made of Himself on the cross is so infinitely precious, that it is enough to save a world that was lost from sin. We need no scape-goat now, for when Christ went forth to die, He carried away with Him the burden of the guilt of all His people.”
“But then, mother, is every one’s sin taken away, is every one sure to enterheaven, the real Holy of holies?” asked Lucius. The question was a very important one, and poor Dora’s heart beat fast as she listened to hear what answer her parent would give to the boy.
“No, my son,” replied Mrs. Temple, “for not every one has true faith in the Lord and His Sacrifice, that faith which makes us repent of sin, be sorry for sin, confess it and try to forsake it. We know that (two only excepted) all the Israelites above a certain age never reached the good land of Canaan, but all died in the desert. And why was this? It was because they had sinned against God. They might have sacrifices but they had not true faith; they might give up lambs, but they gave not up sin; they might have God’s presence in the tabernacle to guide them, but they did notlet their conduct be guided by the light of His holy Word.”
“It almost seems to me,” observed Lucius, “as if the Israelites wandering about in the desert were types of us—of all who are now called Christian people.”
Mrs. Temple smiled with pleasure to see that her son was beginning really to understand a little of Old Testament teaching by types. “Yes, dear boy,” she replied, “the history of the Israelites is just like a picture or type of what is now happening to ourselves in our journey through life towards heaven, our promised Canaan. They were first in bondage to cruel Pharaoh; we are born into the world in bondage to sin. The Israelites at the beginning of their journey passed through the Red Sea; St. Paul shows us that this wasa type of Christian baptism (1 Cor. x. 2). I could go on to show you how the history of Israel is full of many other interesting types of our own, but you have heard enough for the present. There are just a few most important lessons which I would wish to impress on your mind. They are:
“First, that we all are sinners.
“Secondly, that we can only be forgiven and enter heaven through the Sacrifice of our Lord on the cross.
“Thirdly, that His Sacrifice takes away all sin from those who have true faith in their hearts; that faith whose reality is shown by its making us repent of and try, by God’s help, to give up our sins.”
D
DORA felt very unhappy. She had broken the holy rest of the Lord’s day; she had repeated prayers without praying, heard God’s Word read without attending, had made a vain show of religion; and at last had worked and worked hard at her needle, as she might have done on any other day of the week. Dora had disobeyed what she knew to be the wishes of her mother, and then to hide such disobedience had uttered a lie to deceive her! The girl could notconceal from herself that she had done what was wrong—exceedingly wrong; that she had displeased a holy God, whose eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good.
“Oh, what can I—what ought I to do now!” thought Dora, as slowly and sadly she went up to her own little room. Conscience gave an instant reply, “Retrace your steps as quickly as you can, own your fault to your mother, and ask forgiveness from God.” But Dora was very unwilling to do this; she was inclined to take a kind of half-way course.
“I need not say anything to mamma about what I have done,” thought Dora. “I will not touch my pretty work any more on Sunday; and to-morrow, as soon as I get up, I will unpick every stitch ofwhat I have been sewing to-day. That will be a good punishment for me; yes, that will be the right kind of punishment for breaking the Fourth Commandment.”
Dora half satisfied her conscience by making this resolution to undo what ought not to have been done; but the little girl made a grievous mistake in supposing that any self-inflicted punishment can take away sin. We must go straight to the Lord for forgiveness, and ask it only for the sake of the Lamb of God, who suffered to take away guilt; and when we have sinned against our fellow-creatures, as well as against our Heavenly Father, we must honestly and openly confess to them what we have done, and ask their forgiveness. Dora shrank from doing this; she wasextremely unwilling to own to her mother that she had been sewing on Sunday.
“Perhaps mamma would take away from me the making of the embroidered curtains altogether,” thought Dora, “and give it to Agnes instead; and then all the family would know the reason, and I should be lowered in the opinion even of little Elsie! Oh, how dreadfully ashamed I should feel, and what a bitter disappointment it would be to see the work in the hands of another, after I have taken such pains to draw out that beautiful pattern! Worst of all, Aunt Theodora would hear of my fault when we go to be with her at Christmas. She would be sure to ask why I had not embroidered the veil and the curtains, for she thinks that I embroider so well. Oh, I could not bear that the aunt whom Ilove so much—who loves me so much—should know what I have done! No, no, there is no use in speaking about the matter at all; I will punish myself by the tiresome unpicking, and then all will be right.”
Would all be right? Were Dora to punish herself ever so severely, would all be right? No, dear reader, no! self-punishment cannot wash away sin.
“Could my zeal no respite know,Could my tears forever flow,All for sin could not atone,Thou must save, and Thou alone.”
“Could my zeal no respite know,Could my tears forever flow,All for sin could not atone,Thou must save, and Thou alone.”
“Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone,
Thou must save, and Thou alone.”
Dora was only deceiving herself now, as she had an hour before deceived her indulgent mother.
In the evening, after tea-time, the family assembled again in the study. Their usual employment on Sunday eveningshad been to sing hymns with their mother, each in succession choosing a favorite hymn; but the whooping-cough had for weeks past put a stop to all singing, and it had cost Mrs. Temple some thought to find a way of making the evening Sabbath hour as pleasant to her family as it had usually been. The searching in the Bible for types had been a new kind of occupation, and had made the afternoon seem less long to the young prisoners at home than it might otherwise have appeared during the absence of their mother at church. The family circle looked a very happy one by the light of the fire round which they gathered; for autumn was beginning, the weather, though not very cold, was damp; and the illness from which the children were recovering made warmth and drynessso desirable, that the fire was always lighted at sunset.
“I like when we sit so cosy together before the blazing fire!” exclaimed little blue-eyed Elsie, cuddling close to her mother. “I hope that Eliza won’t bring in the candles; no one wants candles to talk by. Agnes, you won’t cough so badly if you put your feet here on the fender; please, Lucius, give the fire a good stir, and make the red flames leap up and dance. Are we not a happy party!” she added, squeezing tightly her mother’s hand in both of her own.
Smiling faces gave the reply. There was but one face that wore no smile. Dora sat on the other side of her mother, but the girl had drawn her chair a little back from the half-circle before the fire, andheld a hand-screen before her face, not really to protect it from the scorching blaze, but that it might not be seen by the fire-light. Dora was glad, though not for the same reason as Elsie, that Eliza did not bring in the candles.
M
“MAMMA, I’ve been trying to find a type; I’ve been looking all through my Bible pictures,” said blue-eyed Elsie.
“And did you succeed in finding a type, my darling?” asked Mrs. Temple, smiling at the gravity of the child, whom she thought scarcely likely to be able to discover the meaning of the most simple Scripture figure.
“I don’t know—I’m not sure,” said little Elsie; “but I’ve found two pictures—one in the Old Testament and one inthe New Testament—and they are rather like each other; so, you know, dear mamma, it seemed as if one might be a sort of a type.”
“And what were your pictures about, Elsie, pet?” asked Lucius, stroking the hair of his youngest sister, of whom the schoolboy was very fond.
“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 Elijahwasa 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. Templesmiled 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 notunderstand 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.
“And why was the Son of God lifted up on the dreadful cross?” asked her mother.
“That we—that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life,” replied Amy Temple.
“It was indeed as a type of this great salvation from eternal death that the brazen serpent was lifted up by Moses,” said the lady. “Do you remember what had happened to the Israelites to make the raising of the brass serpent needful to save them from destruction brought on by sin?”
As Amy did not immediately reply to the question, Elsie eagerly put in her word.
“You told us all about it last Sunday, mamma; I remember the story quite well. The people had been wicked, very wicked, and so fiery serpents came amongst them and bit them; and many—I don’t know how many—Israelites died, because no doctor knew how to cure them.”
“Were those deadly bites a type of sin whose wages are death?” asked Lucius.
“They were so, my son,” said his mother. “Man had no way of saving those who had received the deadly wound, so God himself showed Moses a way. The Lord bade him lift up on high a serpent of brass, and promised that whosolookedupon it should live.”
“I cannot imagine how merelookingcould do the least good to a person dying of the poison of a snake-bite,” observed Agnes.
“The Almighty willed that it should be so,” said Mrs. Temple; “He willed that the look of faith should bring healing to a sick body, as the look of faith at a crucified Saviour still brings healing to the sin-wounded soul. When I read how my Lord says, through the prophet Isaiah, ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah xlv. 22), I think of the brazen serpent, and know that I have but to believe in Christ and be saved.”
“What do you mean by the look of faith?” inquired Agnes.
“Faith is simplybelieving,” replied Mrs. Temple. “To look to Christ is to believe that He is able and willing to save us, and that none can save us but He.”
Dora, who had chosen, as we know, to sit a little drawn back from the circle, andwith a screen in her hand, now dropped the screen on her lap, and leant forward, so that the red flickering gleam of the fire-light shone on her face as she anxiously asked, “Then are we quite, quite safe, sure never to be punished for anything evil that we have done, if only we have faith that the Lord will save us?”
“Yes, if the faith bereal, living faith,” replied Mrs. Temple.
“Are there then two kinds of faith?” inquired Lucius.
“Yes,” answered his mother; “we read in the Bible of two kinds of faith or belief—one dead and one living.”
“I cannot understand that at all,” said Amy.
“I will try to explain,” said the lady “and I ask you, my children, to give meyour full attention, for this is a matter of the greatest importance. You all believe, do you not, that there is an Emperor of Germany?”
“Yes, yes,” replied the children: and Elsie added with a little nod, “I believe there is such a man, though I never have seen him.”
“Now does your belief in the existence of the Emperor—that is, yourfaithin it—does it make the smallest difference in your actions, or words, or feelings?” inquired Mrs. Temple.
“No, why should it?” cried Lucius.
“The Emperor does not care for us; he knows nothing about us,” said Elsie.
“Then your faith in the Emperor is adeadfaith, it has no effect on your hearts,” observed Mrs. Temple. “And this is thekind of faith which many persons, alas! have in the Lord. They believe in a careless sort of way that Christ once lived in the world, and died on the cross, but they believe only with the head, not with the heart. And this isdeadfaith, a kind of faith which never can save us.”
“But what islivingfaith, then?” asked Amy.
“When our belief makes us really love Him who first loved us,—when the thought of Christ’s dying for sin makes us hate sin, that cost Him so dear, then our faith must be living faith; and thus looking to the Lord we are saved.”
Dora sighed and drew her head back again into the shadow. Hers was not a faith that had kept her from sin—hers was not a faith that made her now obey thewhisper of conscience, confess her fault to her mother, and make what amends she could for what she had done.
“Depend upon it, that when an Israelite had been cured of his wound by looking at the brazen serpent, he did not go and stroke and play with the fiery reptile that had bitten him,” observed Lucius, who had the clearest head amongst the party, and best entered into the meaning of types.
“No, he would run away from the horrid creatures, or try to kill them; he would put his foot upon the fiery serpents and crush them—crush them,” cried Elsie, stamping her little foot on the hearthrug, to add force to her words.
“So every one who has living faith dreads and hates sin, and tries to destroyit,” observed Mrs. Temple. “We will not carelessly trifle with itif we believe from our heartsthat our blessed Redeemer suffered because of our sins.”
“What a very holy thing was that brazen serpent which Moses set up on a pole!” exclaimed Amy. “Did he not afterwards put it into the ark, that the Israelites might carry it about with them wherever they went, and treasure it as they did the tables of stone on which the Commandments were written?”
“We do not read of Moses putting the brazen serpent into the ark,” replied Mrs. Temple; “but the Israelites must have carried it with them in their wanderings through the desert, and have taken it into the Promised Land, for we read of the brazen serpent being greatly honored bythe people more than seven hundred years after it was lifted up.” (1 Kings xviii. 4.)
“It was quite right that the Israelites should honor it very, very much,” cried Elsie, “because the brazen serpent had saved so many people from dying.”
“You mistake, my child,” said her mother. “The brass image had no power in itself to save a single creature from death; it was of no use at all but as a means appointed by God. The brazen serpent was atypeof salvation; and when the Jews took to burning incense to the mere type, that is, when they paid to it the honor which is due to God alone, they fell into sin.”
The younger children looked surprised; and Amy murmured, “Then can even a holy thing lead men to do what is wrong?”
“Men do wrong, exceedingly wrong, when they put anything, however holy it may seem in their eyes, in the place of God,” observed Mrs. Temple. “When good king Hezekiah saw that his people were honoring the brazen serpent too much, what do you think that he did?”
“Perhaps he locked it up, so that no one could get at it,” cried little Elsie.
“Hezekiah took a much stronger measure than locking up the image,” said her mother. “The good king broke the brazen serpent into pieces, and called it Nehustan, or a piece of brass, to show both by word and deed that the most holy and interesting relic may lead to the sin of idolatry, if it draw away our thoughts and our hearts from the Lord who alone can give us salvation.”
A
“AS we seem to be giving in our types youngest by youngest, it is Dora’s turn now to tell us which she has chosen,” said Lucius.
“Ah! Dora will have found out the most interesting type of all, Dora is so clever!” cried Elsie, who had great faith in the intelligence of the brighter of the twins.
All eyes were turned towards Dora as she sat in the shadow, but Dora’s own eyes were bent on the hearthrug. Shehad been so much taken up on that Sunday, first with her embroidery, then with the conversation between her mother and Lucius, and the painful struggle in her own mind with an upbraiding conscience, that Dora had not even thought of looking out for a type in Scripture.
“What have you chosen, Dora?” asked Lucius.
“I have not chosen any type yet, I have not had time,” stammered out Dora, confused and mortified to find herself behind even little Elsie, who looked astonished at the words of her sister.
“Not time! why, you have had as much time as any of us,” said Agnes. “What were you doing all the afternoon while mamma was at church?”
“Nothing particular,” said Dora, witha little confusion. Again a pang shot through the heart of the conscious girl for she knew that she was again staining her lips with untruth.
“You don’t mean to say that you were sitting from two o’clock till five, with your hands before you, and thinking about nothing at all,” said Lucius.
“Perhaps Dora was reading that interesting book about the poor French Protestants,” suggested Amy.
Dora did not speak. She was too well pleased, alas! that her family should believe that she had been thus engaged, though she knew that she had not so much as opened the volume in question.
“It would have been better, my love, for you to have entered into the occupation which interests your brothers andsisters,” said Mrs. Temple, in a tone of gentle reproof. “Even reading a nice Sunday book like the one Amy mentioned may become a selfish amusement, if it keeps us from adding a little to the general pleasure.”
“I never knew Dora take such a reading fit before,” muttered Lucius; “she generally likes to use her fingers more than her head.”
The remark was a very commonplace one, yet it added to Dora’s confusion. Mrs. Temple, noticing her daughter’s look of annoyance, though she attributed it to a different cause than the true one, turned the conversation by asking Agnes whether she had thought of a Scriptural type.
“Yes, mamma,” replied Agnes. “I believe that leprosy is a type of sin, and thecure of lepers a type of the cure of sin just as the looking up at the brazen serpent was a cure for the deadly bites.”
“You are perfectly right, my dear girl,” said her mother.
“What is leprosy?” asked little Elsie
“A dreadful kind of illness,” replied Agnes; and as she seemed disinclined to say more, perhaps from fear of bringing on her cough by speaking, her mother continued the description of this terrible type of sin.
“This frightful malady is still well-known in the East,” said Mrs. Temple. “Your uncle, who came lately from India, has told me that he has seen many poor lepers there. The leprosy makes them loathsome to the eye; it creeps over their bodies; it wastes their flesh; when itfastens on their hands, it will make the very fingers drop off!”
“Oh, how dreadful!” exclaimed all the children.
“Dreadful indeed, but notsodreadful as the sin which it represents,” said their mother sadly; “for the soul’s sickness is more dangerous, its effects infinitely more lasting.”
“I don’t quite see how leprosy is a type of sin,” observed Amy.
“I think that we are led to believe it to be such by the very particular commands regarding it which we find in the law of Moses,” said Mrs. Temple.
“Did poor people with leprosy never get well again?” asked Elsie, with pity expressed on her round little face.
“Yes, they did sometimes recover,” saidher mother, “but not by such means as are used in cases of other sickness. Not a doctor, but a priest, was to judge whether the leper were really cured, or, as it was called,clean;and he had to bring a special offering to be sacrificed to the Lord.”
“I suppose the offering was that sheep which we see in the picture?” said Elsie, for the illustrated Bible had again been brought and placed upon Mrs. Temple’s knee, and the firelight was sufficiently bright to show a picture representing a cured leper coming to the high-priest, to find which illustration Mrs. Temple had turned over the pages.
“That picture shows but a part of the offering,” replied Mrs. Temple. “When the candles come in, I will read to youfrom the ‘Pictorial History of Palestine,’ written by the famous Dr. Kitto, a description of a very peculiar ceremony which took place before the sheep and two rams were slain as a sin-offering.”
“Ah! here come the candles—just when we want them!” cried Elsie, as Eliza made her appearance.
“I’ll get Dr. Kitto’s big book!” exclaimed Lucius, jumping up from his seat by the fire.
The candles were placed on the table near enough to Mrs. Temple to enable her to read without quitting her warm seat, but merely turning her chair round to the table. She then read aloud the following extract from the work of the learned doctor:
“‘When a person was reported to befree of his leprosy, a priest went out of the camp and subjected him to a very strict examination. If no signs of the disorder appeared upon him, the priest sent a person to bring two living birds (doves or young pigeons), cedar wood, scarlet wool, and hyssop, with which he performed the ceremonies of purification, to admit the party to the privileges of the Hebrew Church and communion.’”
“What does that mean, mother?” ashed Lucius.
“That the man was no longer to be cut off, as were lepers in Israel, from worshipping the Lord within the camp, or mixing with the rest of the people,” replied Mrs. Temple.
“Oh, mamma, might not a poor leper do that!” exclaimed Amy. “To be shutout from praying with one’s friends and relations would be almost the worst trial of all!”
“Remember, my child, that the dreadful disease was infectious; there was need of the greatest care lest it should spread in their camp. Lepers had to wear a particular dress, and to live apart from all who were yet in health. If any one drew near to a leper unawares, the afflicted one had to cry out ‘Unclean! unclean!’”
“I don’t think that I will ever again complain of being shut up from friends and playmates because of this whooping-cough,” cried Lucius. “It is disagreeable enough to be kept as we are even from going to church, but fancy what it would be to have to cry out ‘Unclean! unclean!’ if any one chanced to come near us!”
“Please, mamma, go on with the account of what the priest had to do with the two birds which he sent for when he found that the leper was quite well again,” said Amy.
Mrs. Temple continued her reading:
“‘He slew one of the birds, and received its blood in an earthen vessel. Into this he dipped the cedar wood, the scarlet wool, and the hyssop, and therewith sprinkled seven times the once leprous person. The other bird was then permitted to escape, as a symbol that the man was now free of his leprosy.’”
“Oh, how joyful the bird must have been when allowed to fly free up—up high into the air!” exclaimed Elsie.
“Not more glad than the poor cleansed leper, of whom that bird was a type,”observed Mrs. Temple. “Think of his joy at being free to return to his family—his wife and his children; and his thankful delight when worshipping once more with his former companions in the court of the Tabernacle of his God!”
“It seems to me that there is a verse in one of the Psalms which shows that David had the cleansing of a leper in his mind when he prayed to the Lord to forgive him his sin,” remarked Lucius.
“I was just thinking of the same when mamma read about the hyssop,” said Amy. “It made me feel sure that Agnes was right when she chose leprosy as a type of sin.”
“What is the verse to which you allude?” asked the mother.
Lucius was the one to reply, but thelips of Amy silently moved, as she repeated the same verse to herself from the fifty-first Psalm—“‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow!’”
“Oh, mamma! I remember the story of the poor leper who came to the Lord Jesus,” said Elsie, “and how he cried, ‘Lord if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean!’”
“How much more deeply interesting is the Saviour’s reply, ‘I will, be thou clean,’ if we look upon leprosy as a type of sin,” observed Mrs. Temple. “The Lord was able and willing to heal, not the poor man’s body alone, but also his soul; and make him free from all stain of sin as well as from all taint of disease.”
T
“THE leper story which has always interested me most is that of Naaman the Syrian,” said Lucius, when he had put back Dr. Kitto’s large volume in its place in the bookcase.
“O yes, yes,” interrupted little Elsie; “I know that story too, quite well. I know that Naaman was a great man, and rich, and a famous general besides, but he had the dreadful sickness which no doctor could cure. I remember how Naaman came in a grand chariot with prancinghorses to the house of the good prophet Elisha, and how angry he was when only a servant came out and told him to wash seven times in the river Jordan.”
Elsie stopped almost out of breath from the rapidity with which she had spoken. All the young Temples were familiar with the account of the cure of the Syrian, which was one of their favorite Scripture stories.
“Was the leprosy of Naaman also a type of sin?” inquired Lucius.
“I believe that it was,” answered Mrs. Temple, “and I am strengthened in this belief by Naaman’s leprosy coming upon Gehazi, as a direct punishment for his sin.”
“Ah! that wicked Gehazi!” exclaimed Elsie; “he told a lie, a dreadful lie! Itwas right that he should be punished, was it not?” The question was asked of Dora, Elsie’s favorite sister. The child wondered at the unwonted silence which had come over Dora, and wanted to draw her into conversing like the rest of the party.
Dora winced at the question, and only replied by a slight movement of her head. But little Elsie was not satisfied by this. “Why don’t you speak?” she said bluntly. “When people are so very naughty as to tell lies, and say that they are doing nothing when they are doing something bad, don’t you think that they ought to be well punished for it?”
Forced to reply, for Elsie’s question had drawn every one’s attention towards her, Dora answered, “Of course they should bepunished;” and having thus pronounced sentence upon herself, she relapsed into silence, feeling much inclined, however, to start up and escape from the room.
“Are you not well, my love?” asked her mother, who could not help noticing that Dora’s manner was different from usual.
“Quite well, mamma; only a little tired,” was the evasive reply.
“Tired of doing nothing,” said Lucius.
The conversation on the subject of Naaman was then resumed by Agnes.
“When Naaman was cleansed of his leprosy, mamma, how was it that Elisha did not tell him to go and show himself to the priest, and that we hear nothing about a sin-offering, nor of a bird being set free?” asked the elder twin.
“You must remember,” replied Mrs. Temple, “that Naaman was not an Israelite but a Syrian, a Gentile, and that he was therefore not bound to observe the ceremonial law of the Jews. I think that Naaman was a type of the Gentile church, to which belong all Christians who are not descended from Abraham and Isaac.”
“To which we then belong,” observed Lucius.
“Notice, my children,” continued the lady, “how we see, as if in a series of pictures, the history of a converted soul in the story of Naaman’s cure. First there is the man possessing all that earth can give him, but afflicted with a deadly disease.”
“Like the people who were bitten by the fiery serpents,” interrupted Lucius.
“Here in the leprous Naaman we behold a type or picture of a soul with unforgiven sin staining and corrupting it,” said his mother. “Next we find the leper at the door of the prophet. Can any one of you tell me of what Naaman now is a type?”
“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 thatbecause 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 aTYPEof 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. “Whenour Saviour declared that He was the Vine, and his disciples the branches, it was as if He had said, ‘A vine is aTYPEof 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 aTYPEof 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.