Keep the commandments." Thus are we enjoined many times throughout both the Old and the New Testament. The word "keep," in both Hebrew and Greek, means to guard: in the Hebrew, with the sense of hedging about; in the Greek, to set a watch. Many instances are recorded in the Bible of the revelation of God's will to the consciousness which was pure and consecrated enough to receive it; and each faithful prophet carefully hedged about his precious message, and set a watch to protect it from loss or injury.
Moses not only gave the children of Israel the law of God from Sinai, but during their forty years in the wilderness he patiently and firmly established it on a workable basis, which met their needs at that period, and prepared the nation for its entrance into the promised land. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we read (p. 200), "Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by immortal Mind." Let no one think that the method of worship thus instituted by Moses was merely material, because largely symbolical; for it met the need of a primitive people, and clearly taught them the spiritual truth which advanced them "to the worship of. God in Spirit instead of matter."
God said to Moses concerning the tabernacle and its fittings, "Look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount." And the great teaching of the tabernacle worship was the at one-ment of God and man, and the illustration of the steps necessary for each one to take to realize this: first the altar of Love, whereon were sacrificed material beliefs; next, the holy place, where the incense of prayer and the light of Truth uplifted consciousness; then, the Holy of Holies, with the ark of the covenant, where men communed with God. Thus was the endeavor made to teach the truth of the at-one-ment of God and man.
