The Children's Tabernacle. A. L. O. E.
to have to stop at the beginning for want of fine linen!” exclaimed Dora. “I hope that mamma will go out and buy us plenty at once.”
“Ah! Dora, you know that mamma owned this morning that she felt very tired,” said Amy, a little reproachfully; “and the shops are a good way off; it is not as if we lived in the town.”
“Besides, it is raining,” observed Elsie, who was looking out of the window.
“It is merely a little drizzle, that would not hurt a fly!” exclaimed Dora. “Mamma never minds a few tiny drops when she puts on her waterproof cloak.”
“Mamma never minds anything that has only to do with her own comfort,” observed Amy.
“So there is more need that we should mind for her,” said Agnes.
“I’m sure that I wish that I could go to the shops myself without troubling, any one!” exclaimed the impatient Dora. “If it were not for this stupid, tiresome infection, I’d get Lucius to go with me this minute, and would we not return laden with linen, pasteboard, and all sorts of things! But mamma’s fear of setting other people coughing and whooping makes her keep us shut up here in prison.”
“Mamma is quite right!” exclaimed Lucius. “I say so, though I hate more than you do being boxed up here in the house.”
“Mamma is quite right,” re-echoed poor Agnes, as soon as she recovered voice after another violent fit of coughing, which almost choked her. “I should not like to give any one else such a dreadful complaint as this.”
Mrs. Temple now entered the room, with several things in her hand. “I have found a nice bit of red Turkey cloth,” said she, “so my little Elsie will be able to set to work on her curtains at once.”
The child clapped her hands with pleasure, and then scampered off for her little Tunbridge-ware work-box.
“I hope that you have found the linen too, mamma,” cried Dora; “I am in a hurry for it, a very great hurry,” she added, regardless of an indignant look from Agnes, and a pleading one from Amy.
“I am sorry that I have no suitable linen,” replied the lady, “but I intend to go out and buy some.”
“Not to-day, not now, it is raining; you are tired,” cried several voices; that of Dora was, however, not heard amongst them.
“I have here some pasteboard, though not sufficient for our model, and a bottle of strong gum which will be most useful,” said the lady, placing on the table what she had brought; “but gilt paper will be needed as well as gold leaf, and of it I have none; I must procure that, and some more pasteboard for my dear boy.”
“And plenty of wire, cut into five-inch lengths for the pillars,” added Lucius.
“And linen for Amy and me,” joined in Dora.
“But please buy nothing till Monday,” said Agnes; “the work can wait quite well for a couple of days.”
“Yes, yes, do wait till Monday,” cried the other children; Dora again being the only exception.
Dora’s selfishness was marring her offering, as Agnes’s pride had blemished hers. How difficult it is even in the most innocent pleasure, even in the most holy occupation, to keep away every stain of sin! Ever since the sad time when evil entered the beautiful garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve ate of the fruit which God had forbidden them to taste, pride, selfishness, and unholiness have been natural to the human heart. Even when we most earnestly try to do what we think good works, how much we need to be on our guard lest sin creep in to spoil all!
Dora, though silent, showed so plainly by her looks her extreme impatience to be supplied at once with the materials for which she could have so easily waited that her gentle mother made up her mind to gratify the wish of her daughter. Mrs. Temple put on her waterproof cloak, and, tired as she was, went forth on a shopping expedition. It vexed the children to see that the clouds grew darker and the shower fell more heavily not long after their mother had quitted the house.
“If mamma catches cold or has pain in her face it is all Dora’s fault!” exclaimed Lucius.
“It was so selfish – so silly not to wait,” observed Agnes; “just see how the rain is pouring!”
“I love mamma as much as any of you do!” cried Dora, her heart swelling with vexation, so that she could hardly refrain from tears.
“You love yourself better, that’s all,” remarked Lucius; and his words were more true than polite.
Mrs. Temple returned home very much tired and rather wet, notwithstanding her umbrella and waterproof cloak. And Dora was, after all, disappointed of her wish to have the linen and begin her embroidery work directly. Mrs. Temple had found it difficult to carry home parcels when she had an umbrella to hold up on a windy day, and had also feared that goods might get damp if taken through driving rain. The wire, pasteboard, gold-paper, and linen were to be sent home in the evening, and the longed-for parcel did not appear until it was time for the twins to follow their younger sisters to bed.
VI.
Types
“This is the day when Christ arose,
So early from the dead;
And shall I still my eyelids close
And waste my hours in bed!
“This is the day when Jesus broke
The chains of death and hell;
And shall I still wear Satan’s yoke
And love my sins so well!”
THIS well-known hymn was on Amy’s mind when she awoke on the following day, and it rose from her heart like the sweet incense burnt every morning in the Tabernacle of Israel. But Dora’s thoughts on waking, and for some time afterwards, might be summed up in the words – “Oh, I wish that this day were not Sunday! How tiresome it is, when my beautiful pattern is all ready, not to be able to try it!”
Mrs. Temple did not appear to be much the worse for her shopping in the rain. Her children knew nothing of the aching in her limbs and the pain in her face which she felt, as she bore both quietly and went about her duties as usual. Dora did not trouble herself even to ask if her mother were well. It was not that Dora did not love her kind parent, but at that time the mind of the little girl was completely taken up by her embroidery in scarlet, purple, and blue.
As the children might not go to church, Mrs. Temple read and prayed with them at home, suffering none but Lucius to help her, and letting him read but little, for fear of bringing back his cough.
All through the time of prayers, though Dora knelt like the rest of the children, and was as quiet and looked almost as attentive as any, her needlework was running in her mind. If she thought of the happy cherubim, it was not of their crying “Holy, holy, holy!” in heaven, but of the forms of their faces and wings, and how she could best imitate such with her needle.
I will not say that the other children thought about the Tabernacle only as a holy thing described in the Bible, from which religious lessons could be learnt, – little plans for sewing, measuring, or making the model would sometimes intrude, even at prayer-time; but Lucius had resolutely locked up his knife, and he and three of his sisters at least tried to give full attention to what their mother was speaking when she read and explained the Word of God.
Mrs. Temple purposely chose the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, a very difficult chapter to the young, but one likely specially to interest her family at a time when the subject of the Tabernacle in the wilderness was uppermost in the minds of all. It will be noticed that Dora did not join at all in the conversation which followed the reading.
“Mamma, that chapter comes nearly at the end of the Bible, and is about our Lord and his death,” observed Lucius; “and yet it tells us about the Tabernacle, and its ark, and the high priest going into the Holy of holies. Now, what could the Tabernacle in the desert have do with our Lord and His dying, – that Tabernacle which was made nearly fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ,