It is not without reason that the deliverance of the covenant people from Egypt, their journey through the wilderness of Arabia under God’s guidance, and their final settlement in the land of promise, have been regarded as typical of the higher redemption, guidance, and salvation received through Christ.  From the earliest ages of the Christian church this wonderful history has been an inexhaustible storehouse of analogies for the illustration of Christian experience.  In his pilgrimage through this vale of tears, the believer instinctively turns to it for instruction and encouragement.  The mighty interposition of God when the Israelites were “yet without strength” in their bondage; their protection through the blood of the paschal lamb sprinkled on the doors of their houses when the destroyer passed through Egypt; the opening of a way through the Red sea when all human means of escape failed them; the journey through the wilderness; the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night to guide, the water from the rock to refresh, the manna from heaven morning by morning to feed them; God’s faithful discipline in contrast with human unbelief, waywardness, and folly; the final preparation for the conquest of Canaan and its successful accomplishment—­this whole series of events is wonderfully adapted to illustrate the course of Christian experience, and who shall say that God did not order it with a view to this end?  We do not resolve it into mere type.  We acknowledge it to be true history, valid to the men of that age—­a true earthly deliverance, guidance, and sustenance in the wilderness, conducting to the possession of a true earthly inheritance.  But we say that it is a history so ordered by God as to typify the higher pilgrimage of the believer to the heavenly Canaan.  It is undeniable that the writer to the Hebrews regards the rest of the covenant people in the land of promise as a type of the rest of heaven.  Heb. 3:7-4:11.  And if that part of the history was typical, it is reasonable to infer that the whole was typical.  It belongs to the nature of a type that it should, on the one hand, come short of the fulness of meaning that belongs to the antitype, and, on the other, should contain some things which find no correspondence in that which it adumbrates.  The priesthood of the sons of Aaron, as we shall see, typified Christ’s priesthood, but only inadequately, as a shadow represents the substance; while sinfulness, which belonged to all the priests of Aaron’s line, not only did not correspond to the character of the Antitype, but was in contradiction with it.  So is it also with the historical types that have been under consideration.  They represent the antitype inadequately, and only in certain respects.

* * * * *

II.  RITUAL TYPES.