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And when the people faw that Mofes delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themfelves together unto Aaron, and faid unto him, Up, make us gods which fhall go before us for as for this Mofes, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And Aaron faid unto them, Break off the golden car-rings which are in the ears of your wives, of your fons and of your daughters, and bring them unto And all the people brake off the golden ear-rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving-tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they faid, Thefe be thy gods, O Ifrael, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

me.

THE real inftances of human folly and extravagance far exceed the conceptions of the most lively imagination. All history, and every day's experience, justify the mortifying account which the prophet gives of our corrupted nature-" The heart is deceitful above all things, and defperately wicked: who can know it ?" The partiality of felf-love, and the charity of a kind difpofition, would at times lead us to form a more favourable judgment both of ourfelves and of others,

* Jer. xvii. 9.

than

than we deserve. The form of fin, feen in its nakednefs, is fo hideous, that we fhrink from it with horror; but use familiarizes the fpectre; and we are infenfibly led to bear, to be, and to do that which once we abhorred. Could a prophet have foretold one half of the irregularities, the exceffes, the enormities of our lives, we should have deemed the prediction a falsehood and an infult; and, with the refentment of conscious virtue, we should have been ready to exclaim in the words of Hazael, "Is thy fervant a dog, that he fhould do this great thing?" Yet alas! the event has wofully verified the cruel imputation; and exhibited the man fallen from his excellency, become the very monster he justly detefted; the man funk into an object of pity, of fcorn, or of deteftation to himfelf and to mankind.

Many practices appear to us abfurd and unnatural merely because we are not accustomed to them. Herodotus relates, that Darius, king of Perfia, having affembled the Greeks who were under his command, demanded of them what bribe they would take to induce them to eat the dead bodies of their parents, as the Indians did? Being anfwered, that it was impoffible for them ever to abandon themselves to fo great inhumanity, the king, in the presence of the fame Greeks, demanded of fome Indians what confideration would prevail with them to burn the dead bodies of their parents, as the Greeks did? The Indians expreffing the utmost horror, entreated the king to impofe upon them any hardfhip rather than that. Among the Hottentots, the aged, fo long as they are able to do any work, are treated with great tenderness and humanity; but when they can no longer crawl about, they are thruft out of the fociety, and put in a folitary hut, there to die of hunger or age, or to be devoured of wild beafts. If you expoftulate with them upon the favageness of this cuftom, they are aftonifhed you fhould reckon it inhuman: "Is it not much greater cruelty," they afk, "to fuffer perfons to linger and

languish

languifh out a miferable old age, and not put an end to their wretchednefs, by putting an end to their days?"

Idolatry is one of those practices, to our apprehenfion, fo foolish and unreasonable, that we wonder how it ever obtained footing in the world; and with difficulty are we brought to believe the avidity with which whole nations have given into it. The particular circumftances of the Ifraelites in the wildernefs, render their proneness to idol worship peculiarly monftrous and unaccountable. The chain of miracles which accompanied their deliverance from Egypt; that conftant fymbol of the divine prefence which attended them, the pillar of fire and cloud; the daily miraculous fupply of bread from heaven; the recent anathema pronounced against the worfhip of images from the dreadful glory of Mount Sinai; the fcrupulous care employed, if we may use the expreffion, to exhibit no manner of funilitude of the Deity in Horeb, to prevent the poffibility of a pretence to use, themfelves, or to tranfmit to pofterity any fenfible reprefentation of the invifible God; all thefe, fuperadded to the plainest dictates of common fenfe and reason, clothe with a blacknefs and malignity not to be expreffed, the ftrange conduct which is the subject of this chapter.

Mofes, foreseeing the length of his absence in the mount, had wifely delegated his power to Aaron and Hur, that the operations of government and the adminiftration of juftice might fuffer no interruption. God, the great God, was now vouchfafing to employ himfelf in prefcribing a mode, and a miniftry of worfhip for his Ifrael, which fhould poffefs all the pomp and fplendour difplayed by the nations in the fervice of their falle gods, together with a facredness and dignity peculiar to itfelf. He was preparing to gratify their very fenfes by external fhew, as their fouls by heavenly wifdom. He was planning a tabernacle, eftablishing a priefthood, and appointing feftivals and facrifices,

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facrifices, whofe magnificence fhould leave them nothing to regret in the glory which they had feen in Egypt; and, at that very time, they are employing themselves in devifing and executing a plan of religious fervice, equally difrefpectful to God and dishon

ourable to themselves.

Their guilt begins in finful impatience and prefumption. In matters both of life and of religion men greatly err, when they take upon them to carve for themselves. "Vain men would be wife, though man be born like a wild affes colt." The tranfition is fo fudden that it seems incredible. Not many days are past fince they had given the most folemn, explicit and unreferved confent to the whole of the divine law. "All that the Lord hath faid will we do, and be obedient." The treaty had been but just ratified by a covenant, a facrifice, and a feast, with a folemnity not eafily to be forgotten. The noife of the mighty thunderings has scarcely ceased; the ineffable glory of the God of Ifrael is yet present to their eyes; they have not well recovered from the terror inspired by that voice which made heaven and earth to tremble. Yet even thus circumftanced, as one man they fly to the appointment, not of a new leader and commander, though that had been ingratitude without a parallel, but with an impiety the most shocking and confounding, to the creation of a new god. And the very first exercise of the power which was committed unto Aaron for the public good, is to be the leader, the abettor, and an example, in practising the abominations of that country from which they had been fo happily delivered.

"And when the people faw that Mofes delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and faid unto him, Up, make us gods which fhall go before us: for as for this Mofes, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him."† There

VOL. IV.

* Job xi. 12.

D
+ Verfe 7.

Verse 1.

well as a wicked

There is a fottishness, a madness, as
nefs in certain vices, which, at firft fight, we should
deem inconfiftent with each other. The irrationality

of the brute, the frenzy of the lunatic, and the malig-
nity of the demon, here difcover themfelves at once;
and leave us perplexed which we are most to wonder
at and deplore. What fhall we fay of the ftupidity
which talked of making gods, and of following that as
a guide which itself could not move, but as it was car
ried? With what notes of indignation fhall we mark
our abhorrence of that base ingratitude which could
fpeak contemptuoufly of fuch a benefactor as Mofes :

This Mofes, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him ?”’* With what holy refentment must we execrate the fpirit that could deal thus perfidioufly, prefumptuoufly, with God?

After we have vented our anger and astonishment upon the conduct of thefe vile Ifraelites, let us paufe and examine ourfelves. Afferted by a ftrong hand and a ftretched-out arm into the glorious liberty of the fons of God, have we never reverted in thought, in defire, in practice, into that very thraldom of fin from which the Son of God came to fet us free? Lying under the weight of benefits much more precious, and bound by engagements equally folemn and explicit, have we never fwerved from the path of duty, never loft fight of our vows, never failed in our obedience? With fo much clearer and fuller difcoveries of the being, nature and will of the one living and true God, have we feared and loved him, and only him; have we never bowed the knee to mammon, never worshipped in the house of Rimmon, never kiffed the image of Baal? Alas, alas! we hate and condemn fome fins merely because they are not our own, while we stand chargeable in the fight of God and man, with equal or greater offences of a different kind; fo blinded as not to perceive, fo felf-deluded as not to feel their enormity.

* Verfe I.

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