I 7 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



had previously been employed in the service of idolatry, 

 the circumstance affords another striking example of 

 the Divine economy which constructed the tabernacle 

 itself and instituted its rites in large measure upon the 

 models of the Egyptian religion ; which has always 

 poured its higher truths into moulds with which men 

 had been familiar before ; and has brought out of the 

 false system the measure of truth which it contained, 

 and which made it influential and suitable to human 

 needs, setting its seal upon the truth and issuing it with 

 a brighter image, a sharper outline and a more para- 

 mount authority from its own mint. The false andlia 

 of man's forging, reflected in some degree, if they did 

 not distort, the true image of heaven. The things 

 which the heathen saw in them were not optical 

 illusions of the soul, but images of great and enduring 

 realities. And by the adoption of these in the worship 

 of the God of Israel, He emphatically showed that His 

 religion, so far from having no relation with anything 

 that went before, was the substance of the world's 

 dream, the fulfilment of man's hope, the revelation of 

 the transcendent wisdom which had been kept secret 

 from the beginning of the world, after which in their 

 blindness the nations were consciously or unconsciously 

 groping. The mystic mirrors of the Egyptians which 

 caught the dim unsatisfying likenesses of their gods 

 many and lords many, which the Hebrew women used 

 to better purpose and in a higher and holier service, 

 were melted down and moulded into the bronze laver 

 of the tabernacle, in whose waters the worshipper 



