“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. She had 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, with a 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 and sisters,” 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 the cure 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 it fastens on their hands, it will make the very fingers drop off!”

“Oh, how dreadful!” exclaimed all the children.

“Dreadful indeed, but not so dreadful 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,” said her 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 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.”