The Children's Tabernacle

PREFACE

WHILE I was engaged in writing the following brief work, again and again the question arose in my mind, “Can I make subjects so deep and difficult really interesting and intelligible to the young? The importance of reading Old Testament types in the light thrown on them by the Gospel cannot, indeed, be overrated, especially in these perilous times; but can a child be taught thus to read them?”

The attempt thus to teach is made in the following pages; and I would earnestly request parents and teachers not merely to place the little volume in the hands of children as a prettily-illustrated story-book, but to read it with them, prepared to answer questions and to solve difficulties. Sunday books should supplement, not take the place of, oral instruction. A writer may give earnest thought and labor to the endeavor to make religious subjects interesting to the young; but what influence has the silent page compared with that of a father expressing his own settled convictions, or that of a mother who has the power to speak at once to the head and the heart?

I.

Wanting Work

“YOU have no right to spoil my desk, you tiresome, mischievous boy!”

“I’ve not spoilt it, Agnes; I’ve only ornamented it by carving that little pattern all round.”

“I don’t call that carving, nor ornamenting neither!” cried Agnes, in an angry voice; “you’ve nicked it all round with your knife, you’ve spoilt my nice little desk, and I’ll” – What threat Agnes might have added remains unknown, for her sentence was broken by a violent fit of coughing, whoop after whoop – a fit partly brought on by her passion.

“What is all this, my children?” asked Mrs. Temple, drawn into the room called the study by the noise of the quarrel between her son and her eldest daughter.

Lucius, a boy more than twelve years of age, and therefore a great deal too old to have made so foolish a use of his knife, stood with a vexed expression on his face, looking at his poor sister, who, in the violence of her distressing cough, had to grasp the table to keep herself from falling; Amy, her kind younger sister had run to support her; while Dora and little Elsie, who had both the same complaint, though in a milder form than their sister, coughed with her in chorus.

Mrs. Temple’s care was first directed to helping her poor sick daughter. Agnes, as well as her three sisters, had caught the whooping-cough from their brother Lucius, who had brought it from school. It was several minutes before the room was quiet enough for conversation; but when Agnes, flushed and trembling, with her eyes red and tearful from coughing, had sunk on an arm-chair relieved for a time, Mrs. Temple was able to turn her attention to what had been the cause of dispute. A rosewood desk lay on the table, and round the upper edge of this desk Lucius had carved a little pattern with the large sharp knife which he held in his hand.

“I am sure, mamma, that I did not mean to do mischief,” said Lucius, “nor to vex Agnes neither. I thought that a carved desk would be prettier than a plain one, and so” —

“You might have tried the carving on your own desk,” said Agnes, faintly. The tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she dared not raise her voice lest she should bring on the whooping again.

“So I might, blockhead that I am; I never thought of that!” exclaimed Lucius. “But if you like we will exchange desks now, and then all will be right. Mine is a bigger desk than yours, and has not many ink-stains upon it.”

The proposal set Dora, Amy, and Elsie laughing, and a smile rose even to the lips of Agnes. She saw that Lucius was anxious to make up for his folly; but the big school-desk would have been a poor exchange for her own, which was neat and had red velvet lining; while hers, being scarcely larger than a work-box, would have been of little service to Lucius at school.

“O no! I’ll keep my own desk; the carving does not look so very bad, after all,” murmured Agnes, who had an affectionate heart, though by no means a perfect temper.

“I took no end of pains with it,” said Lucius, “and my knife is so sharp that” —

“I would rather that you did not try its edge on my table,” cried his mother, barely in time to save her mahogany from being “ornamented” as well as the desk.

“Stupid that I am! I was not thinking of what I was about!” exclaimed Lucius, shutting up the knife with a sharp click; “but the truth is I’m so horribly sick of having nothing to do that I must set about something. I don’t like reading, I’ve enough and too much of that at school; you won’t let me go out, lest the damp should bring back my coughing and whooping – I’ve had enough and too much of that also; I’ve only the girls to play with, for none of my own friends must come near the house because of this tiresome infection; and I shall be taking to cutting my own fingers off some day for want of something better to do!”

“It’s a case of idleness being the mother of mischief,” cried the bright-eyed Dora, who was busy embroidering with many-colored silks an apron for little Elsie’s doll.

“Idleness is indeed very often the mother of mischief,” observed Mrs. Temple. “I am afraid that my young people often prove the truth of the proverb.”

“Perhaps it was partly idleness that made the children of Israel do so very very wrong when they were wandering about in the desert,” observed Amy, glancing up from a book on the subject which she had been reading.

“Ah! they were shut up in a wilderness month after month, year after year,” cried Lucius, “after they had come forth from Egypt with their flocks and herds and all kinds of spoil. They had little to do, I suppose, and may have grown just as tired of the sameness of their lives as I have of the dulness of mine.”

“I have often thought,” observed Mrs. Temple, who had seated herself at the table and taken up her knitting – “I have often thought how tenderly the Lord dealt with his people in providing for them pleasant, interesting occupation when He bade them make the Tabernacle, and condescended to give them minute directions how it should be made. There were the various employments of carving, ornamenting, working in metal, to engage the attention of the men; while the women had spinning, weaving, sewing, and embroidering, with the delightful assurance that the offering of their gold and silver, their time and their toil, was made to the Lord and accepted by Him.”

“I never before thought of the making of the Tabernacle being a pleasure to the Israelites,” observed Agnes. “I always wondered at so many chapters in the Bible being filled with descriptions of curtains, silver loops, and gold ornaments, which are of no interest at all to us now.”

“My child, it is our ignorance which makes us think any part of the Bible of no interest,” observed Mrs. Temple. “If you remember the readiness with which, as we know, the Israelites brought their precious things for the Tabernacle, and if you can realize the eager pleasure with which, after the long idleness which had ended in grievous sin, men and women set to work, you will feel that the order to make a beautiful place for worship must have been the opening of a spring of new delight to the children of Israel. They had the Lord’s own pattern to work from, so there was no room for disputes about form or style; and it was a pattern admirably suited to give pleasant employment to numbers of people, and to women as well as to men. Fancy how listless languor must have been suddenly changed to animation; the murmurs of discontented idlers to the hum of cheerful workers; and how vanity and foolish gossip amongst the girls must have been checked while they traced out their rich patterns and plied their needles; and instead of decking their own persons, gave their gold and jewels freely to God!”

“I wish that we’d a Tabernacle to make here,” exclaimed Lucius, whose restless fingers again opened his dangerous plaything.

Mrs. Temple raised her hand to her brow: a thought had just occurred to her mind. “We might possibly manage to make a model of the Tabernacle,” she said, after a moment’s reflection.

“Ah, yes! I’d do all the carving part – all the hard part,” cried Lucius, eagerly.

“Do, do let us make a model!” exclaimed his sisters.

“It would be a long work – a difficult work; I am not sure whether we could succeed in accomplishing it,” said Mrs. Temple. “And after all our labor, if we did manage to make a fair model, to what use could we put it? We had better consider all these matters before we begin what must be a tedious and might prove an unprofitable work.”

“Ah, a model would be of great use, mamma!” cried Dora. “At Christmas-time, when this tiresome infection is over, and we go to our aunt at Chester, we could show it to all her friends.”

“And to her school children – her Ragged-school children!” interrupted Lucius with animation. “We’ve let them see our magic-lantern for three Christmases running, and if the children are not tired of the slides of lions, bears, and peacocks, I’m sure that I am; besides, I smashed half the slides by accident last winter. A model of the Tabernacle would be something quite new to please the ragged scholars, and Aunt Theodora would draw so many good lessons from it.”

“And could we not do with the model what we did with the magic-lantern,” suggested Dora, “make of it a little exhibition, letting aunt’s friends come and see it for sixpenny tickets, and so collect a little money to help on the Ragged-school?”

“That would be so nice!” cried Amy.

“That would be famous!” exclaimed little blue-eyed Elsie, clapping her hands.

“Let’s set to work this minute!” said Lucius, and he rapped the table with his knife.

Dora threw the doll’s apron into her work-box, eager to have some employment more worthy of the clever fingers of a young lady of more than eleven years of age.

Mrs. Temple smiled at the impetuosity of her children. “I must repeat, let us consider first,” she observed. “Possibly not one amongst you has any idea of the amount of labor and patience required to complete a model of the Tabernacle which was made by the children of Israel.”

“Of course our Tabernacle would be much smaller than the real one was,” remarked Dora.

“Supposing that we made it on the scale of one inch to two cubits, I wonder what its length would be?” said Mrs. Temple. “Just bring me the Bible. Lucius, I will turn over to the description of the Tabernacle, which we will find in the Book of Exodus.”

“I do not know what a cubit is,” said Elsie, while her brother ran for the Bible.

“Don’t you remember what mamma told us when we were reading about the size of the Ark?” said Agnes. “A cubit is the length of a man’s arm from the elbow to the end of his middle-finger, just about half of one of our yards.”

“Eighteen inches, or, as some think twenty,” observed Mrs. Temple, as she opened the Bible which Lucius had just placed on the table before her.

“Let’s count a cubit as exactly half a yard, mamma,” said Lucius, “and then one inch’s length in the model would go for a yard’s length in the real Tabernacle. If we reckon thus, how long would our model need to be?”

“The outer court of the Tabernacle was one hundred cubits long by fifty broad,” replied Mrs. Temple; “that, in such a model as we propose making, would be a length of four feet and two inches, by a breadth of two feet and one inch.”

“Just large enough to stand comfortably on this side table!” cried Lucius. “There will be room enough on this table, and I’ll clear it of the books, work-box, and flower-jar in a twinkling.”

“Stop a minute, my boy!” laughed his mother, as Lucius appeared to be on the point of sweeping everything off, including the green cloth cover; “we have not even decided on whether this model should be made at all; and if we do begin one, months may pass before we shall need that table on which to set it up.”

“O, do, do let us make a model!” again the young Temples cried out.

“I’m ready to undertake every bit of the wood-work,” added Lucius, impatient to use his sharp knife on better work than that of spoiling a desk.

“First hear what you will have to undertake,” said his more cautious and practical mother. “The mere outer court has sixty pillars.”

“Sixty pillars!” re-echoed the five.

“Besides four more pillars for the Tabernacle itself,” continued the lady, “and forty-eight boards of wood, to be covered all over with gold.”

“How large would each board have to be?” asked Lucius, more gravely.

“Each five inches long, and three quarters of an inch broad,” answered his mother.

“And quite thin, I suppose,” said the young carpenter, looking thoughtfully at the blade of his knife which was to accomplish such a long, difficult piece of work.

“We could get gold-leaf for the gilding, mamma,” suggested the intelligent Dora, “and pasteboard instead of wood; pasteboard would look quite as neat, and need not to be cut up into boards.”

“Oh, it’s not the gilding, nor the cutting up the planks neither, whether they be made of pasteboard or wood, that puzzles me!” cried her brother; “but think of sixty-four pillars! How on earth could I cut out so many slender little rods with my knife!”

“Thick wire might be used for the pillars just as well as pasteboard for the planks,” said Agnes; “when covered with gold-leaf they would look just the same as if” – The sentence was interrupted by another fit of coughing; it was clear that poor Agnes was at present little fitted to join in the conversation.

II.

The Tabernacle

“THERE is a picture of the Tabernacle in your Bible, mamma; that will help us in arranging what is to be done; and you will decide on which of us should do each portion of the work,” said Dora.

Mrs. Temple turned over the leaves till she came to the picture.

“Here you see a long open court,” she observed, “enclosed by pillars supporting curtains of fine linen, fastened to them by loops of silver. I shall supply the linen for these curtains, and I think that my gentle Amy, who sews so nicely, may make them. This work will require only neatness and patience, and my little dove has both.”

“Ah, mamma! but the silver loops – how could I make them?” suggested Amy, who had very little self-confidence.

“I have a reel of silver thread up-stairs in my box,” said her mother; “you will make the tiny loops for the curtains of that.”

“And I will manage the sixty-four pillars!” cried Lucius; “it was no bad notion to make them of wire. But they must be fixed into something hard, to keep them upright in their places.”

“I was thinking of that,” said his mother; “we shall need a wooden frame, rather more than four feet by two, to support the model; and into this frame holes must be drilled to receive the sixty-four wires.”

“I must borrow the carpenter’s tools,” observed Lucius; “I can’t do all that with my knife. I see that I have a long, difficult job before me.”

“Do you give it up?” cried little Elsie, looking up archly into the face of her brother.

“Not I!” said the schoolboy proudly. “The harder the work, the more glorious is success!”

“What are those objects in the court of the Tabernacle?” asked Amy, who had been thoughtfully examining the picture.

“That large square object with grating on the top, from which smoke is rising, is the Altar of burnt-offering,” said the lady. “Through the grating the ashes of animals that had been slain as sacrifices fell into a cavity below. The projections which you see at the four corners are called the horns of the altar, of which you read in various parts of the Bible.”

“Was it not an Altar of burnt-offering that Elijah made on Mount Carmel,” asked Dora, “when he cut the dead bullock in pieces and prayed to the Lord till fire was sent down from heaven?”

“Yes,” answered her mother, “but that altar was not like the one in the picture. Elijah built his up quickly; it was merely formed of twelve stones. The altar made by the Israelites in the desert was framed of wood, and covered with brass. It was nearly eight feet square, and was reached, not by steps, but by a sloping bank of earth.”

“And what is that very large vase farther on in the picture?” asked Amy.

“That is meant for the Brazen Laver, to hold water for the priests to wash in. This laver was made of brass which the women of Israel offered. Do any of my girls remember what articles had been made before of that brass?”

The party were silent for a few seconds, and then Amy said, with a blush on her cheek, “The mirrors of the women, mamma.” The little girl was inclined to be vain of her looks, and her mother, who had noticed how much of her Amy’s time was foolishly spent before a glass, had drawn her attention, some days before that of which I write, to a fact which has been thought worthy of mention in the Bible. The women of Israel had the self-denial to give up the brazen mirrors – which were to them what glass mirrors, are to us – to form a laver for the use of the priests when engaged in the service of God.

Mrs. Temple smiled pleasantly to see that the example of the women in the desert had not been forgotten by her child.

“Is not that kind of large tent which is standing in the court, the Tabernacle itself?” inquired Dora.

“It is the Tabernacle,” was the reply.

“Why is all that smoke coming out of it?” asked little Elsie.

“That smoke in the picture represents the pillar of cloud which guided the Israelites in their wanderings,” said Mrs. Temple. “For it is written in the book of Exodus (xl. 38), ‘The cloud of the Lord was upon the Tabernacle by day, and fire was upon it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.’”

“What a very holy place that Tabernacle must have been!” said Amy, in a low tone of voice.

“There was not only the pillar of cloud as a visible sign of God’s presence resting upon it,” observed Mrs. Temple, “but when Moses had finished making the Tabernacle, a miraculous light, called by the Jews, ‘Shekinah,’ and, in the Bible, ‘the glory of the Lord,’ filled the most holy place.”

“I wish that it were so with holy places now!” exclaimed Agnes. “If a cloud always rested on the roofs of our churches, and a glorious light shone inside, people would not be so careless about religion as they are now.”

“I fear that no outward sign of God’s presence would long prevent carelessness and sin,” replied Mrs. Temple.

“What, mamma, not even a shining glory in church!” cried Amy.

“Remember, my child, all the wonders and terrors of Mount Sinai – the thunders and lightnings, the smoke that rose like the smoke of a furnace, the trembling of the earth, and the sound of the trumpet exceeding loud! The Israelites quaked with fear; they felt how awful is the presence of God; they implored that the Lord might only address them through Moses – ‘But let not God speak with us lest we die!’ cried the terrified people. And yet, in sight of that very Mount Sinai, in sight of the thick cloud resting above it, those Israelites openly broke God’s commandments, and fell into grievous sin! Oh, my beloved children, the only thing to save us from sinning greatly against God is for our hearts to be the tabernacle in which He vouchsafes to dwell, and to have his Holy Spirit shining as the bright light within! Can any one of you repeat that most beautiful verse from Isaiah (lvii. 15), which shows us that the Lord deigns to dwell with the lowly in heart?”

Of all Mrs. Temple’s family, Agnes had the best memory; though she had neither the quick intelligence of her twin-sister Dora, nor so much of the love of her Heavenly Master which made Amy, though younger than herself, more advanced in religious knowledge. Dora had often admired the verse mentioned by her mother, and to the humble-minded little Amy it had brought a feeling of thankful joy; but it was Agnes who remembered it best by heart, so as to be able now to repeat it without making a single mistake. “Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”

III.

The Curtains

“THE girls will have plenty to do in making the curtains for the Tabernacle itself,” observed Lucius, who, while his mother and sisters had been conversing, had been engaged in looking over the description in the book of Exodus. “Why, there are four distinct sets of curtains! First, the undermost, ten curtains of fine-twined linen, with blue, and purple, and scarlet, and cherubims of cunning – that must mean skilful – work upon them!”

“How splendid that must be!” exclaimed Elsie.

“Then a covering of goats’-hair curtains above these fine embroidered ones,” continued Lucius; “then a third of rams’-skins dyed red; and then, to complete the whole, a covering of badgers’-skin curtains the outermost of all.”

The four young workwomen were somewhat startled at the difficulties which their brother’s words had raised in their minds. Dora gave a voice to the thoughts of her sisters when she said, with a look of disappointment, “It will be hard to get rams’-skins dyed red, but I do not know where goats’-hair can be bought in England; and as for the badgers’-skins, I am afraid that it will be quite impossible even for mamma to find such a thing, unless it be in the British Museum.”

“So we must give up making the Tabernacle,” said Amy, with a sigh.

“Nay, nay,” cried their smiling mother, “we must not be so readily discouraged. Learned men tell us that the Hebrew word translated into ‘badgers’-skins’ in our Bible is one of uncertain meaning, which some think denotes a blue color, and which, if intended for a skin at all, is not likely to have been that of a badger. Blue merino for the outer covering, red Turkey-cloth instead of rams’-skins, and mohair curtains instead of goats’-hair, will do, I think, for our model; as well as the pasteboard, wire, and gold and silver thread, which must represent metal and wood.”

“Yes,” said Lucius, quickly, “they will do a great deal better than the real materials; for if we could manage to get rams’-skins or badgers’-skins to cut up, such curtains would be a great deal too thick and heavy for a little model like ours. Why, our Tabernacle will be only fifteen inches long by five inches in breadth.”

All the grave little faces brightened up with smiles at this way of getting over what had seemed a very great difficulty. Elsie looked especially pleased. Pressing close to her mother, and laying her little hand on Mrs. Temple’s arm in a coaxing way, she cried, “Oh, mamma, don’t you think that I could make one set of the curtains? You know that I can hem and run a seam, and don’t make very large stitches. Might I not try, dear mamma? I should like to help to make the Tabernacle.”

It would have been difficult to the mother to have resisted that pleading young face, even had Elsie made a less reasonable request. “I cannot see why these little fingers should not manage the red Turkey-cloth which will stand for the rams’-skins,” replied Mrs. Temple, stroking the hand of her child; “the outermost covering of all will, of course, need finer stitching, and one of the twins will take that and the mohair besides. To make both these sets of curtains will take far less time, and require less skill, than must be given to the embroidery on linen in blue, scarlet, and purple, which will adorn the inner walls and ceilings of our little model.”

“Do, do let me have the embroidery, it is just the work which I delight in,” cried Dora; and she might have added, “excel in,” for she was remarkably clever in making things requiring fancy and skill.

Agnes, her twin, flushed very red, not merely from the straining of the cough which had frequently distressed her, but from jealous emotion. Agnes had not a lowly heart, and in her heart angry feelings were rising at her sister’s asking that the finest and most ornamental portion of the work should be given to her.

“Of course mamma will not let you have the beautiful embroidery to do, Dora, and leave the plain mohair and merino to me, her eldest daughter!” exclaimed Agnes, laying a proud stress on the word eldest, though, there was but an hour’s difference between the ages of the twins.