ory" (xxxiii. 18).

We have seen how nobly this petition and the answer condemn all
anthropomorphic misunderstandings of what had already been revealed; and
also how it exemplifies the great law, that they who see most of God,
know best how much is still unrevealed. The elders saw the God of Israel
and did eat and drink: Moses was led from the bush to the flaming top of
Sinai, and thence to the tent where the pillar of cloud was as a
sentinel; but the secret remained unseen, the longing unsatisfied, and
the nearest approach to the Beatific Vision reached by him with whom God
spake face to face as with a friend, was to be hidden in a cleft of the
rock, to be aware of an awful Shadow, and to hear the Voice of the
Unseen.

It was a fit time for the proclamation which was then made. When the
people had been righteously punished and yet graciously forgiven, the
name of the Self-Existent expanded and grew clearer,--"Jehovah, Jehovah,
a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in
mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and
transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the
children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation." And
as Moses made haste and bowed himself, it is affecting to hear him again
pleading for that beloved Presence which even yet he can scarce believe
to be restored, and instead of claiming any separation through his
fidelity and his honours, praying "Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and
take us for Thine inheritance" (xxxiv. 10).

Thereupon the covenant is given, as if newly, but without requiring its
actual re-enactment; and certain of the former precepts are rehearsed,
chiefly such as would guard against a relapse into idolatry when they
entered the good land where God would bestow on them prosperity and
conquest.

As Moses had broken the former tablets, the task was imposed on him of
hewing out the slabs on which God renewed His awful sanction of the
Decalogue, the fundamental statutes of the nation. And they who had
failed to endure his former absence, were required to be patient while
he tarried again upon the mountain, forty days and nights.

With his return a strange incident is connected. Unknown by himself, the
"skin of his face shone by reason of His speaking with him," and Aaron
and the people recoiled until he called to them. And thenceforth h