n as illustrating a phase of superstition.

We smile at the Jews, removing the correct vowels lest so holy a word
should be irreverently spoken, placing the sanctity in the cadence,
hoping that light and flippant allusions may offend God less, so long as
they spare at least the vowels of His name, and thus preserve some
vestige undesecrated, while profaning at once the conception of His
majesty and the consonants of the mystic word.

A more abject superstition could scarcely have made void the spirit,
while grovelling before the letter of the commandment.

But this very superstition is alive in other forms to-day. Whenever one
recoils from the sin of coarse blasphemy, yet allows himself the
enjoyment of a polished literature which profanes holy
conceptions,--whenever men feel bound to behave with external propriety
in the house of God, yet bring thither wandering thoughts, vile
appetites, sensuous imaginations, and all the chamber of imagery which
is within the unregenerate heart,--there is the same despicable
superstition which strove to escape at least the extreme of blasphemy by
prudently veiling the Holy Name before profaning it.

But our present concern is with the practical message conveyed to Israel
when Moses declared that Jehovah, I AM, the God of their fathers, had
appeared unto him. And if we find in it a message suited for the time,
and which is the basis, not the superstructure, both of later messages
and also of the national character, then we shall not fail to observe
the bearing of such facts upon an urgent controversy of this time.

Some significance must have been in that Name, not too abstract for a
servile and degenerate race to apprehend. Nor was it soon to pass away
and be replaced; it was His memorial throughout all generations; and
therefore it has a message for us to-day, to admonish and humble, to
invigorate and uphold.

That God would be the same to them as to their fathers was much. But
that it was of the essence of His character to be evermore the same,
immutable in heart and mind and reality of being, however their conduct
might modify His bearing towards them, this indeed would be a steadying
and reclaiming consciousness.

Accordingly Moses receives the answer for himself, "I AM THAT I AM"; and
he is bidden to tell his people "_I am_ hath sent me unto you," and yet
again "JEHOVAH the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you." The
spirit and tenor of these three names may be said to