“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 the Bible, 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 and must follow it; THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH (Rom. vi. 23).

“But you have taught us that God 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 saved both from 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 there is a way to approach a holy God, but only one way; they were taught that sacrifice was needful, that WITHOUT 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, save as signs and pledges of the precious blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin, (John i. 7,) the blood of Him who is indeed the 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 our STEAD,” 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 lamb instead 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 taken from 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 enter heaven, 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 not let 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 was a 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.”