THE TABERNACLE IN THE WILDERNESS. THE BARS.-Exod. xxvi. 26-29.

HE boards of shittim wood were framed together by bars of the same material, overlaid with gold.

The truth here taught in type concerns the fellowship and unity of the people of God.

Each board stood erect on its own foundation. It had an individual standing of its own, independent of all others. This shows the individual salvation and standing of the saints.

Each board was bound to the one beside it, and to all the rest, by the bars of shittim wood. This shows the fellowship and unity of the saints.

The type reveals to us how divine unity is formed and sustained, and how it may be manifested.

We are not only units, nor do our privileges and responsibilities begin and end with ourselves. We have been bound up in the bundle of life with our fellow-saints, and the grace that made us members of the family of God, has laid upon us the responsibility of being our brother's keeper. There is in the Scriptures a vast, unique, and wide-spreading circle of truth, presenting privileges and responsibilities to the saints of the present age concerning unity which was unknown in ages past. We are, verily, guilty if we allow all this to lie unheeded, under the pretext that we are more deeply concerned about our individual life and walk, and in seeking the salvation of the lost. These things have their ordered places, and ought to get the prominence due to them in the minds and activities of the saints, but surely not to the exclusion of all the weighty line of truth given by the same Lord to His people, concerning their fellowship and responsibilities toward their fellowsaints and brethren. Of these it truly may be said, "These ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone" (Matt. xxiii. 23).

The bars are five in number. described generally, then particularly. tion is directed to the middle bar. A

They are first Special attenWe read in

chapter xxvi., verse 28, "And the middle bar in the midst of the boards shall reach from end to end," and in further explanation of this we read in chapter xxxvi. 33, "And He made the middle bar to shoot through the boards from the one end to the other." The middle bar would thus hold all the boards firmly together. The many boards by it were framed into one tabernacle, and they formed a manifest visible unity. An onlooker could see the outward unity of the boards, but not the bar that formed and sustained it. It was hid within the heart of the boards, where no rude hand of man could break or displace it. And thus it is with that which binds together and unites the saints of God. The saints of God are one-one with Christ and with each other. No power on earth or in hell can pluck the feeblest lamb from the Shepherd's bosom, or wrench the feeblest member from the body of Christ. The deep mysterious oneness that exists between the Risen Head and His members is divine and eternal. So is the union of the members one with another. The Church, viewed as the body of Christ, embraces every child of God throughout the world. It includes all who have life in Christ, and excludes all who are dead in sin.

But there is another aspect of the Church presented in the Scriptures; that is, as gathered together unto Christ on earth, as God's witness in a dark and evil world, and it is concerning the Church in this aspect that the type before us speaks. We see here how a company of the people of God are divinely gathered and fitly framed together. Such was the church which was at Jerusalem (Acts viii. 1), the Church of God which was at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 2), and the churches of Galatia (Gal. i. 2). They were composed of believers only, and they were gathered unto God's centre and united in God's way. This is the divine model of a Church of Christ. As the bar in "the midst" of the boards united them all, so does the Lord in "the midst" of His gathered saints. Once in cold contempt and scorn they crucified Him with robbers, "on either side one and Jesus in the midst"