3. It will have been clear from all that has been said that the Epistle to the Hebrews has not been looked on as designed to limit our inquiry into the meaning of the symbolism of the tabernacle, and that there is con- sequently no ground for adopting the sj-stem of inter- preters who can see in it nothing but an aggregate of types of Christian mysteries. Such a system has, in fact, to choose between two alternatives. Either the meaning was made clear, at least to the devout wor- shippers of old, and then it is no longer true that the mystery ;vas hid " from ages and generations," or else the mystery was concealed, and then the whole order was voiceless and unmeaning as long as it lasted, then only beginning to be instructive when it was 'Teady to vanish away." Rightly viewed, there is, it is believed, no antagonism between the interpretation which starts from the idea of symbols of great eternal truths, and that which rests on the idea of types foreshadowing Christ and his Work and his Church. If the latter were the highest manifestation of the former (and this is the keynote of the Epistle to the Hebrews), then the two systems run parallel with each other. The type may help us to understand the symbol. The symbol may guard us against misinterpreting the tyjie. That the same things were at once symbols and types may take its place among the proofs of an insight and a fore- sight more than human. Not the vail of nature only, but the vail of the flesh, the humanity of Christ, at once conceals and manifests the Eternal's glory. The rending of that vail enabled all who had eyes to see and hearts to believe to enter into the holy of holies, into the Divine Presence, and to see, not less clearly than the high-priest, as he looked on the ark and the mercy -seat, that righteousness and love, truth and mercy, were as one. Blood had been shed, a life had been offered which, through the infinite power of its love, was able to atone, to satisfy, to purify.
The allusions to the tabernacle in the Apocalypse
TABERNACLE
142
TABERXACLE
are, as migbt be expected, full of interest. As in a vision, which loses siglit of all time limits, the temjile of the tabernacle is seen in heaven (Kev. xv, oj, and yet in the heavenly Jerusalem tliere is no tem|)le seen (xxi, 22). In the heavenly ten)i)le there is no longer any vail; it is open, and the ark of the covenant is clearly seen (xi, 19).
4. We cannot here follow out that strain of a higher mood, and it would not be profitable to enter into the speculations which later writers have engrafted on tiie lirst great thought. Those who wish to enter upon that line of iiujuiry may tind materials enough in any of the greater commentaries on the Epistle to the He- brews (Owen's, Stuart's, Bleek's, Tlioluck's, Delitzsch's, Alford's), or in special treatises, such as those of Van Till {De Tabet-mic. in Ugolino, 77/<'A-((?n7/*-, viii ), Bede ( Expositio Myslicu et MonilU Musaici Taln'rudcnli \ Witsius ( De Tabern. Levit. Mi/steriis, in the Misccll. Sacr.). Strange outlying hallucinations, like those of ancient rabbins, inferring from •• the pattern showed to Moses in the Mount" the permanent existence of a heavenly tabernacle, like in form, structure, propor- tions to that which stood in the wilderness (Leyrer, loc. cit.'), or of later writers who have seen in it (not in the spiritual, but the anatomical sense of the word) a /)/pe of humanity, representing the outer bodily framework, the inner vital organs ( Friederich, Syvib. dvr Mus. Stiflshiilte, in Leyrer, loc. cit., and Ewald, Alteiih. p. 338), may be dismissed with a single glance. The Judaic and patristic opinion in the main, though not in the details, was advocated by Biihr in his Symholik (1837), in which he considered the tabernacle a symbol of the universe, the court representing earth, and the tabernacle, strictly so named, heaven, though not in a material sense, but as the place and instruments of (iod's revelation of himself. In his work on the temple, ten years later, Biihr retracted much of his former theory, and advocated the opinion that the tabernacle sym- bolized the idea of the dwelling of (iod in the midst of Israel. Another view, which seems an exaggeration into unwarrantable detail of the true idea that each Christian is a temple of God, ])roceeds to adapt to the elements of human nature the divisions and materials of the tabernacle. Thus the court is the body, the holy place the soul, the holiest the spirit — true dwelling- place of God. This might do very well as a general illustration, and was so used by Luther; but the idea has been fully developed and defended against the at- tack of Biihr by Friederich in his Symb. der Mos. Slifl- skiitte (Leips. 1841).
5. Nevertheless, as the central point of a great sym- bolical and tyjjical institute, the tabernacle necessarily possessed, both as a whole and in its contents, a sym- bolical and typical significance, which has been recog- nised by all orthodox interpreters. On this head, as we .see above, much fancifid and unregulated ingenuity has been indidged; but this must not induce us to neglect those conclusions to which a just ai)i)lication of the principles of typological interpretation conducts.