The tabernacle was surrounded by a spacious court which was enclosed by white curtains suspended from sixty pillars, socketed on “brass” and filleted with silver: the curtains being five cubits high, one hundred long and fifty wide. The court represents the especial sphere of God's operations by human instruments in the world, and though the measurements (five and multiples of five) indicate human responsibility, yet the curtains of fine twined linen express that purity is expected to be maintained on the basis of a capacity to bear judgment, around all that pertains to God's service on the earth. The silver filleting connected the whole. The principle of redemption traverses and unites all that is really divine. A religion that ignores redemption and what it implies is not of God at all.
When we reach the gate of the court we find, as we might well expect, that the Messianic glories and beauties are emblazoned upon it; but again the judicial cherubim were absent, for it typifies the One through Whom “if any man shall enter in he shall be saved.” The first thing seen by one who enters thus through Christ is the sacrifice on the brazen altar, which at once reveals the inexorable justice of God, and the gracious provision by which its claims are satisfied. The three entrances then are, (1) this outer “gate” which admits the sinner to the ground of salvation, and reconciliation; (2) the “door” of the tabernacle, which admits to fellowship in the Light with the people of God; and (3) the “vail” which—being rent—admits to the inmost mysteries of the divine abode, the ineffable glories of the Shekinah and the exalted privilege of worship.
The house of Aaron is typical of the whole body of the followers of Christ, “whose house are we,” and Aaron, of course, typical of Christ Himself, “the High Priest of our profession.” The high priest was usually understood to be the most noble, wise, learned, devout, and sympathetic amongst men; and in that character—as the very highest development of manhood—he stands towards God to represent and intercede for men. When he turns, then, towards men to represent and intervene for God, he is invested with the absolute power and exalted dignity of his divinely privileged position, It is extremely unfortunate that human sin or infirmity have so obscured to our minds the majesty and magnificence of the original idea of a priest. His “holy garments of glory and beauty” —of blue, purple and scarlet, of exquisite embroidery, and of the iridescent splendor of gold and flashing gems—were full of a sacred symbolism of hieroglyphic meanings. From the mystic miter that crowned his head to the golden bells and pomegranates pendant from his robe, his raiment was emblazoned with an elaborate heraldry of manifold spiritual significations. The names of the people of God were engraved on precious stones to be carried on his shoulders and in his breastplate; their memorial too was in the formula upon the miter on his head; signifying that on the seat of power, affection and intelligence our Great High Priest continually carries the remembrance of His beloved people. The head plans for them; the shoulders support them; the heart beats for them. And one thing more has He assured them of—for all types are imperfect—that their names are also engraved on the palms of His hands.
That is the original idea of a high priest and it abides still, notwithstanding the way in which men have maligned and burlesqued it. Aaron the first to fill the office was the first to dishonor it. Yet probably there has been no living man—then or since—so fit for the position: evidently a man of noble presence and of an exalted eloquence, of calm and dignified bearing, even in times of crisis and calamity. When his sons are smitten dead at his feet, “Aaron held his peace.” He had attained the faculty which that illustrious German prince, who had suffered so much, recently desired for his son” Learn to suffer without complaining.” When he hears that he is to die without seeing the promised land, toward which he has fought and labored for forty years, he calmly prepares for his lonely pilgrimage up the sides of Mount Hor. He was in the main a consistent and devout man and had to sustain a certain amount of obloquy by being associated with the enterprises of Moses, but such a man as Aaron is generally respected. Even the Koran, which is pretty hard usually on makers of idols, deals very gently and apologetically with him: while those writers who have, like Paine, written with the greatest virulence against Moses, generally leave his brother alone.
And this indicates where his shortcomings were: a man who is never abused, never accomplishes anything of the first order. “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!” Aaron was weak and was turned aside at one time by the influence of the strong mind of his sister, at another by the pressure of popular opinion. To him vox populi was become vox dei, when he should have recognized (in that case) the vox diaboli. Not that he was weaker than men generally, but his position required one who was stronger. The position needed one who could, like Sans, look upon the thousands of his prostrate companions appeasing their thirst, whilst he suffered on and merely sprinkled his face with water. Within the imposing personality and behind the eloquent tongue of the first high priest there was a spirit infinitely less powerful than that which enabled the little battered old man whose “bodily presence was weak” to look on the furious opposition of whole nations and say, “None of these things move me “: or even than that which enabled the common-looking old Greek philosopher to refuse to escape from the poison cup of his enemies, when he was offered the opportunity. “Why are you surprised,” he said to Hermogenes, “that God thinks it best for me to leave this earth?” But when such a man as Aaron is led astray, the noble gifts which he has received become perverted to unworthy uses: that faculty of language which formerly had resounded with such sonorous power before the Egyptian courtiers is afterward used to effect a most dexterous palliation of his offense. “Thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief...then I cast it [the gold] into the fire, and there came out this calf!”