“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!” [Illustration: THE TABERNACLE AS PITCHED IN THE WILDERNESS. Children’s Tabernacle. p. 18.] “I wish that we’d a Tabernacle to make here,” exclaimed Lucius, whose restless fingers again opened his dangerous plaything. Mrs. Temple raised her hand to her brow: a thought had just occurred to her mind. “We might possibly manage to make a model of the Tabernacle,” she said, after a moment’s reflection.