Part 5

“That picture shows but a part of the offering,” replied Mrs. Temple. “When the candles come in, I will read to you from 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 be free 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 shut out 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 the lips 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.”

XII.

Naaman.

“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 prancing horses 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! It was 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 be punished;” 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 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.

XIII.

The Twins.

“CAN one object be a type of more than one thing, mamma?” asked Lucius, “for there is something which we have just spoken of as being a type of what heals our souls—I mean by that, true living faith in the Lord; and I have thought of something quite different, of which it seems also a type.”

“Are you speaking of the river Jordan?” asked Agnes, through whose mind the same thought had been passing.

“Yes, the river in which Naaman dipped seven times and was cleansed,” replied Lucius. “When the Israelites, after their long wanderings in the desert, came to that same river Jordan, there was nothing but its waters between them and the Promised Land, which mother told me to-day is a type of heaven.”

“And the waters were divided to let the people pass over quite easily and safely,” interrupted little Elsie, who never missed an opportunity of bringing out any knowledge which she had gleaned.

“Hush, Elsie! you distract my thoughts,” said her brother, “and make me forget with your prattle what I was going to say. Oh, it is this! When Christians have almost got over their long life-journey, there is only one thing at last that divides them from heaven, their Promised Land; and that thing is death. Mother, is not Jordan a type of death?”

“I believe that it is,” said his mother and Amy silently thought of those beautiful verses which allude to this type:—

“Oh! could we bid our doubts remove, Those gloomy doubts that rise, And view the Canaan that we love With Faith’s unclouded eyes;

“Could we but stand where Moses stood, And view the landscape o’er, _Nor Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,_ Could fright us from the shore.”

“I also believe,” continued the lady, “that the dividing of the waters, which enabled the Israelites to pass over without so much as wetting their feet, is a type of the terrors of death being taken away from the Christian. Safe through the atoning sacrifice and happy in the love of his Lord, the believer can peacefully pass on to his promised land—heaven—with as little cause for fear as the Israelites had in crossing the dry bed of the Jordan.”

“Ah! the Israelites were a happy people,” said Amy, softly. “Think of their having God always to guide them by the pillar of fire and cloud, and holy Moses always to pray for them; and the beautiful promised land Canaan before them, and so many wonderful miracles worked for their good! I almost wish,” she added, “that I had lived in those days.”

“Happier are Christians in these days, my child,” said her mother, “for they know more, far more, of the Saviour’s love than was ever made known to the people of Israel. We have God’s sure Word to guide us in our wanderings through the desert of life, and we have beyond that desert a far brighter land than Canaan, even heaven, promised and purchased by Him who prepares good things for those who love Him; and we have One far greater than Moses—One who ever liveth to plead for us at the right hand of God while we fight our battles against sin. Moses was a being of flesh and blood as we are; his arms grew tired, he needed to have them held up by Aaron and Hur; but the Lord Jesus in praying for His people never grows weary, and His love never grows cold. My children, when life was most like a desert to me, when your father had crossed the Jordan and left me behind, I cannot tell you what comfort and support I found in the knowledge of that prayer and the thought of that love!”

Mrs. Temple’s voice faltered, and Amy felt the hand which she was clasping tremble. The lady now very seldom gave way to any outward burst of sorrow in the presence of her children; her manner was usually cheerful and bright; but the elder ones could well remember how great had been her grief in the first sad days of her widowhood, when their father’s useful life had been closed by a peaceful death. The young Temples all respected their mother’s sorrow, and when she paused from emotion the room was so still that the crackling of the fire and the tick of the clock were the only sounds to be heard. But Mrs. Temple was not willing to throw even a brief shadow over the cheerfulness of her little family circle, and would not now have given way to her feelings had not bodily weariness and pain made her less able to control them. Mrs. Temple very quickly recovered her usual tone, and said in her wonted cheerful manner, “My little Elsie’s eyes are growing sleepy, she can hardly manage to keep them open! My birdie had better fly up to her snug warm nest, and prepare by a good long rest for a busy to-morrow.”

“Oh, yes, to-morrow will indeed be a busy day!” exclaimed Lucius; “I mean to be up with the lark. I hope, mother,” he added, “that you won’t mind the noise of my hammer?”

Mrs. Temple with a smile assured her boy that she would not mind anything; she had not been a mother so long without becoming accustomed to noise, and she would be just as much interested in the progress of the work of her children as they themselves could be.

“You will like me to get on with my little red curtains?” said Elsie, in rather a drowsy tone.

A fond kiss was the mother’s reply; and then Mrs. Temple herself took her youngest child up to her bed-room, for the lady always liked to hear Elsie repeat her evening prayer.

About an hour afterwards all the other young Temples had wished their mother good-night, and retired to the several apartments in which they slept. The twins shared the same room. It was a very pretty one, adorned with framed pictures painted by their Aunt Theodora, and lighted by candles in elegant green glass candlesticks, which had been a birthday present to them from their mother. Both the girls were, on the night in question, more silent than usual, but from different causes.

As Agnes sat slowly brushing out her long plaits of brown hair, stopped every now and then by her cough, her thoughts dwelt much on the subject of the Israelites and their journey through the wilderness, which she was now taught to regard, not only as a historical fact, but also as a type of the life-journey of Christians.

Agnes was not by natural disposition so merry and light-hearted as her brother and sisters, and this difference between her and the rest of the family was all the more marked at the time of which I am writing, from the health of the elder twin being a good deal shaken by her illness. Agnes had naturally a peevish, passionate temper, which greatly marred her own peace of mind, and which prevented her from winning much love from her young companions. Agnes had many faults, and she knew that she had them; they were to her a trouble and burden. The young girl honestly wished to get rid of and conquer these faults, but she wanted energy and spirit to make a really good battle against her besetting sins. Agnes was too much disposed to conclude that because she was ill-tempered she must always continue ill-tempered, that there was no use in striving to subdue her evil nature. Mrs. Temple’s elder twin was wont to feel vexed and to look sullen because Lucius never cared to sit and chat with her as he would with Dora; and because Elsie never threw her arms round her neck as she would round Amy’s. It grieved Agnes to notice that no one ever called her “pet,” or seemed to take delight in having her near.

“I know that it is partly my own fault,” Agnes would often say to herself, in bitterness of soul; “but I don’t think that if I were to leave home for months, there is any one but mamma who would miss me or want me back.”

Such thoughts had only the effect of making the poor girl’s temper more cross, and her manner more peevish; it is so hard for the face to look bright and sweet when gloom is within the heart.

But better thoughts were in the mind of Agnes on that Sunday night, as she sat silently brushing her hair. Sweet and comforting was the reflection that she was not left to fight her battle alone, that there was One who would not only hear her prayer, but who would Himself pray for His feeble child—who would both watch her struggle against sin, and give her strength in that struggle. It was sweet to poor Agnes, when she afterwards knelt down to pray by the side of her bed, to feel that if she was, like an Israelite, bitten by the serpent of sin, she knew where to look for a cure; that if she was like Naaman the leper, there was the Fountain open to her, in which she could wash and be clean. Hope had sprung up in the young girl’s heart, and with hope came increase of courage. Agnes remembered that the Lord who had supplied all the need of the Israelites could supply hers also; and when temptations assailed her, as the enemy assailed that people, make her also more than conqueror through the power of His Holy Spirit.

Very, very different were the thoughts passing through the mind of Dora, though outwardly she was doing exactly the same things as were done by her twin sister. Dora was _not_ making a brave battle against inward sin, but was, like a coward and traitor, going over to the enemy’s side. It is true that she still intended to unpick on the Monday morning all that she had sewn on the Sunday afternoon; but this resolve was made on the false principle of punishing herself for the sin she would not honestly confess, and of which she had never truly repented. This idea of self-inflicted punishment was merely Dora’s contrivance for quieting conscience, that conscience which had been very uneasy during the conversation on the subject of leprosy, the terrible type of sin. But Dora was trying, and with tolerable success, to banish from her mind all thought of that conversation. It was far more pleasant to think of the pattern of the Tabernacle curtains than of the holy things of which that Tabernacle should remind us.

A great many persons—even grown-up persons—act, alas! like Dora. They so fix their attention on outward things in religion that they quite overlook the inward meaning. Such self-deceivers are ready enough to work at what pleases the eye and amuses the fancy, and believe that they are making an offering to God; but the cleansing of the heart, the giving up sin—these are duties which they shrink from, and which they willingly put off to “a more convenient season.”

XIV.

Work.

ALMOST every inmate of Cedar Lodge was up very early on Monday morning, Agnes being the only member of the family who did not rise till her usual hour. The first crow of the cock, strutting about in the yard behind the house, roused little Elsie from sleep. The child was restless and impatient in her white-curtained cot, until she was suffered to rise, dress, and set about her Turkey-red work for the model. Amy was bending over her strip of white linen almost before there was sufficient light for her to see how to thread her fine needle, for the morning was dark and rainy; indeed the sun never showed his face during the whole of that cheerless day.

Drip, drip! fell the rain, but none of the children regretted that they were not likely to go out of the house. “I don’t mind the rain one bit!” cried Elsie. “I’m glad that it rains; we’ll get on so famously with our work!”

Drip, drip! fell the rain; clink, clink! fell the hammer of Lucius; and blithe sounded his whistle, as he labored in the midst of his squares of pasteboard, strips of wood, and lengths of wire. The schoolboy set to his work with a will; and how pleasant is work when we have strength and spirit to do it, and feel that we have a worthy object before us!

No one was up earlier than Dora. She sprang from her bed before twilight had given place to day-light, so impatient was she to get to her embroidery pattern again. The noise of Dora’s rising awoke Agnes, who had not passed so good a night as her more vigorous twin had done, the sickly girl having been several times disturbed by her cough.

“What are you about, Dora?” murmured Agnes, in a drowsy and rather complaining tone; “I’m sure that it can’t be nearly time to get up.”

“Oh, I like to set about my new work quickly, and get a good piece of it done before breakfast,” was Dora’s reply.

“There will be plenty of time for work between this and Christmas; I wish that you would keep quiet and let me rest,” yawned Agnes.

“You can rest if you wish it; I won’t make a noise,” replied Dora. “But for my part I like to be up and doing. You know that:

‘Early to bed, and early to rise, Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.’”

Agnes said nothing in contradiction of the old proverb which her sister had quoted, but turned round on her pillow, and with a weary yawn composed herself again to sleep. She thought that it would be time enough to get up when Susan should call her at a quarter to seven, and she only wished that Dora had thought so also, for it fidgeted Agnes to hear her moving about in the room. But Dora had cared as little about disturbing the sleep of a sickly sister as she had about letting her mother go out in the rain. Dora admired her own energy, and looked upon Agnes almost with scorn, as being lazy, cold, and dull, with not a bit of enthusiasm in her nature.

“We should not have had a model worth looking at had the embroidery been left to her,” said Dora to herself, not without a feeling of self-complacence, as she glanced at her twin who had again sunk into slumber.