t be identical.

Rather we are to conceive of an inspiration, an ideal, a vision of
spiritual truths, to which all this work in gold and acacia-wood should
correspond. It was thus that Socrates told Glaucon, incredulous of his
republic, that in heaven there is laid up a pattern, for him that wishes
to behold it. Nothing short of this would satisfy the inspired
application of the words in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the
readers, who were Jewish converts, are asked to recognise in this verse
evidence that the light of the new dispensation illuminated the
institutions of the old.

Without this pervading sentiment, the most elaborate specifications of
weight and measurement, of cup and pomegranate and flower, could never
have produced the required effect. An ideal there was, a divinely
designed suggestiveness, which must be always present to his
superintending vigilance, as once it shone upon his soul in sacred
vision or trance; a suggestiveness which might possibly be lost amid
correct elaborations, like the soul of a poem or a song, evaporating
through a rendering which is correct enough, yet in which the spirit,
even if that alone, has been forgotten.

It is surely a striking thing to find this need of a pervading sentiment
impressed upon the author of the first piece of religious art that ever
was recognised by heaven.

For it is the mysterious all-pervading charm of such a dominant
sentiment which marks the impassable difference between the lowliest
work of art, and the highest piece of art-manufacture which is only a
manufactured article.

And assuredly the recognition of this principle among a people whose
ancient history shows but little interest in art, calls for some
attention from those who regard the tabernacle itself as a fiction, and
its details as elaborated in Babylonia, in the priestly interest.
(Kuenen, _Relig. of Israel_, ii. 148).

The problem of problems for all who deny the divinity of the Old
Testament is to explain the curious position which its institutions are
consistent in accepting. They rest on the authority of heaven, and yet
they are not definitive, but provisional. They are always looking
forward to another prophet like their founder, a new covenant better
than the present one, a high priest after the order of a Canaanite
enthroned at the right hand of Jehovah, a consecration for every pot in
the city like that of the vessels in the temple (Deut. xviii. 15; Jer.
xxxi. 31; Ps. cx