A. L. O. E. - The Children's Tabernacle

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?

“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!”