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them they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed unto it, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, saying, For evil did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.

And the LORD repented of the evil which he said he would do unto his people.

And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, with the two tables of the testimony in his hand; tables that were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon tables.

And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear. And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. And he took the calf which they had

made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought great sin upon them? And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot thou knowest the people, that they are set on evil. For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him. And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off; so they gave it me: and I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.

And when Moses saw that the people were broken loose; for Aaron had let them loose for a derision among their enemies then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Whoso is on the LORD'S side, let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

And Moses said, Consecrate yourselves to-day to the LORD, yea, every man against his son, and against his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day. And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make atonement for your sin.

And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.

And the LORD said unto Moses,

Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. And now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine angel shall go before thee: nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.

In the Public Library of Boston, at the end of the long gallery upstairs, are some remarkable paintings by Sargent, illustrating the development of the Hebrew religion. In these pictures one sees at a glance the idolatrous influences out of which, at the period of this chapter, Moses was endeavoring to rescue his race.

Fire and torture, cannibalism and human sacrifice, gluttony and wild revelling with weird bewitching radiance hung around the worship of the heathen gods.

Out of such a satiated life these very Hebrews had themselves sprung. It was in their blood. One or two leaders like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had lifted them for a little while out of and above it, but they soon fell under the yoke of the Assyrian kings and the Egyptian Pharaohs. These two contending powers are strongly represented in Sargent's pictures, with their arms lifted on either hand to smite the enslaved Israelites.

Imagine this race of slaves freed at last and coming out into a wild country where every step had to be taken in contact with fierce barbarous idolatrous tribes, descendants from the same old stock as the Israelites themselves, and yet endeavoring under the hand of this wonderful leader Moses to live up to an incomparably higher standard of religion and morals than anything before attempted.

Mighty must be the man who could accomplish such an undertaking, and fierce and frequent the contests between his ideal and their desires!

This chapter, which we are considering, offers a striking illustration of one of these conflicts. It brings out remarkably the nobility and the weakness, the trial and the triumph, of the character of Moses.

In the opening scene, Moses exhibits a quality in marked contrast to the people he is leading, a quality that is essential to real greatness, the quality of being alone, of searching in the silence.

It seems as if the strength of this capacity in Moses, and the lack of it in the people, was a prime cause of the tragedy which follows.

Moses was a man who

"In the still hours when passion is at rest Gathered up stores of wisdom in his breast";

who in his aloneness found his genius and his strength, equipped his soul for battle, arrayed his forces, formed his ideals, laid his plans, gathered his power.

The Israelites had the opposite tendency: to them to be alone was depressing, full of fears. They had no infinite resources in the stillness of solitude. Like sheep that huddle together, with their nibbling noses, following hither and thither as close as they can be, they simply could not understand how the shepherd could bear to be alone. For themselves they needed the constant chatter of tongues, they wanted to be seeing something, or doing something, or having a new sensation all the time.

This frivolous weakness was dangerous then as it ever has been. "Where in the world has this man Moses gone?" they cried out in impatient weakness. "He cannot possibly be spending weeks like this absolutely alone, he must be dead or lost." And then, wretchedly satisfied with their own unreasonableness (for Moses had told them he was devoting himself to working out a scheme of laws, a constitution, a covenant, a form of government to unite the whole colony of tribes that were now getting so numerous as to need a settled code, and they could hardly expect him to formulate such an important constitution offhand) the whole people, in a fractious paroxysm of that dangerous old idolatrous spirit, suddenly resolved to forsake all the tedious discipline and decent morality into which Moses had with such devoted persistence trained them, and rush off into a wild orgy of idolatrous intoxication.

So they started a tumultuous carousal, and broke at once all their pledges of faithfulness to the simple morality and righteousness of the worship of Jehovah.

Meanwhile, Moses works out patiently the plan of his ideal government. He knows the past dangers. He sees the future opportunities. If these people, now seasoned by ad

versity and strengthened by trial, can hold fast to the simple, hardy, industrious, abstemious life they have now been leading they will become the strongest, purest, and noblest of the races of the world.

One thing, only one thing, can accomplish such a result; that is absolute separation from the baneful excitements of the idolworship feasts and the loose conflicting responsibility of these many deities.

Their own God, Jehovah, he alone is God; absolute obedience to his law alone would be the real triumph for his people.

So Moses in long hours of prayerful thought seeks to work out into human laws Jehovah's mighty will.

Not many, of course, of the elaborate rules, so minute and careful, which we find in these early books of the Bible came from so far back in the Jewish era as the time of Moses; most of what we find here is the result of a later development, for none of the originals of our records were made for nearly a thousand years after Moses slept his well-earned sleep upon the Eternal Father's breast.

But the gist of the whole system of laws,— the devotion to one God,-and the first great given words, the commandments, were doubtless from the inspired mind of Moses himself. On the mountain, hidden, as the people thought, in the glory of the close presence of the Almighty, Moses labored.

At last, as his plan was complete, and he prepared to return to the people, and, with a new covenant, lead them on to higher and yet higher life, Joshua suddenly brings him word of a great commotion in the camp below. At first they think it is a battle. "But no," says Joshua; "it is not the voice of those that shout for victory, neither is it the cry of those who are overcome. No, it is as the sound of those who sing in a revel."

Alas! Alas! Moses' heart quaked within him, for of all things it was that revelry he most feared.

"My God," he cries, "what shall I do?" And then it seems to him that the very face of Jehovah darkens with a frown, and an awful voice cries: "Let me alone. My wrath is hot. I will consume them."

Then in a wonderful passage, a passage which is a magnificent Biblical testimony to the divinity of humanity, Moses pleads with

Jehovah for mercy and gentleness toward these erring Israelites.

Of course in these days they had no conception of a God who was never angry, and Moses uses some strange reasoning to soothe Jehovah's temper and persuade him to be lenient and kind. He says what an unpleasant thing it would be to have the Egyptians ridiculing Jehovah when they heard that, after all the mighty power he had exerted to rescue these people, he had been obliged to destroy them after all as the worthless slaves the Egyptians had always said they were.

Jehovah repents and forgives them. He will still recognize the Israelites as his own. He lets Moses descend from the mount to see what has really taken place, and bear, as he has borne so often, the irritable discontent and reproaches, as well as the more real burdens and sorrows, of this weak and most aggravating people.

The truth is even worse than the report. Hundreds of his most faithful workers reel in intoxicated imbecility about the glittering figure of a golden calf! All the people seem to have been suddenly seized with the madness of idolatrous revelry.

Then we enter the second stage of the tragedy.

It seems to Moses that all is lost.

I suppose in that first scene, while he argued with Jehovah in behalf of Israel, and besought the Lord to be merciful to his people, he did not himself realize to what excesses this disaster had led. At any rate, no sooner does he discover the true state of affairs than a cloud very like to that which bespread the countenance of Jehovah darkens his own face.

Passion-alas! all too human passionfills his heart. He destroys at one blow the holy words he was bringing, and he commands the priests to smite with frightful slaughter the drunken crowds now unable to defend themselves. Such a barbarous chastisement as the butchering of fathers and brothers, seems to us frightful; but, terrible as it was, it was not unusual in those days.

But for Moses to have initiated it! Moses the wise, the guardian of the people, the self-restraining, the meek! Alas! it was an exhibition of the frailty of the great.

The closing scene is again superb. It re