Bored with whittling, embroidery and other amusements, five children and their mother set out to build a model of the tabernacle. As the pillars are fashioned and the curtains sewn, the children learn the importance of types in the Old Testament. The showbread on the table in the Holy Place is a type of Christ being the bread of life; the offerings for leprosy were a type of cleansing from sin; the Holy of Holies was a type of God's presence, etc. One day, though, twelve-year-old Dora finds herself in trouble. Will the way be opened for her--from a mere tabernacle model to a new knowledge of forgiveness?
By : Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821 - 1893)
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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?
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