de of thought, which habitually connects the Lord with an
arm, with a chariot, with a bow made naked, with a tent and curtains,
without the slightest taint of materialism in its conception. Did not
the magicians, failing to imitate the third plague, say "This is the
finger of a God"? Did not Jesus Himself "cast out devils by the finger
of God"? (Ex. viii. 19; Luke xi. 20).

CHAPTER XXXII.

_THE GOLDEN CALF._

xxxii.

While God was thus providing for Israel, what had Israel done with God?
They had grown weary of waiting: had despaired of and slighted their
heroic leader, ("this Moses, the man that brought us up,") had demanded
gods, or a god, at the hand of Aaron, and had so far carried him with
them or coerced him that he thought it a stroke of policy to save them
from breaking the first commandment by joining them in a breach of the
second, and by infecting "a feast to Jehovah" with the licentious "play"
of paganism. At the beginning, the only fitness attributed to Aaron was
that "he can speak well." But the plastic and impressible temperament of
a gifted speaker does not favour tenacity of will in danger. Demosthenes
and Cicero, and Savonarola, the most eloquent of the reformers,
illustrate the tendency of such genius to be daunted by visible perils.

God now rejects them because the covenant is violated. As Jesus spoke no
longer of "My Father's house," but "your house, left unto you desolate,"
so the Lord said to Moses, "thy people which thou broughtest up."

But what are we to think of the proposal to destroy them, and to make of
Moses a great nation?

We are to learn from it the solemn reality of intercession, the power of
man with God, Who says not that He will destroy them, but that He will
destroy them if left alone. Who can tell, at any moment, what calamities
the intercession of the Church is averting from the world or from the
nation?

The first prayer of Moses is brief and intense; there is passionate
appeal, care for the Divine honour, remembrance of the saintly dead for
whose sake the living might yet be spared, and absolute forgetfulness of
self. Already the family of Aaron had been preferred to his, but the
prospect of monopolising the Divine predestination has no charm for this
faithful and patriotic heart. No sooner has the immediate destruction
been arrested than he hastens to check the apostates, makes them exhibit
the madness of their idolatry by drinking the water in which the dust