ne: it forbade them to
invent or fashion any likeness of the Deity, but this was to insure
purity of service; because, never having seen God, they could not by
means of images recall the likeness of God, but only the likeness of
some created thing which might thus gradually take the place of God as
the object of their adoration. Nevertheless, the Bible clearly implies
that God has a form, and that Moses when he heard God speaking was
permitted to behold it, or at least its hinder parts.

Doubtless some mystery lurks in this question which we will discuss more
fully below. For the present I will call attention to the passages in
Scripture indicating the means by which God has revealed His laws to
man.

Revelation may be through figures only (as in 1 Chron. xxii.), where God
displays his anger to David by means of an angel bearing a sword, and
also in the story of Balaam.

Maimonides and others do indeed maintain that these and every other
instance of angelic apparitions (_e.g._, to Manoah and to Abraham
offering up Isaac) occurred during sleep, for that no one with his eyes
open ever could see an angel, but this is mere nonsense. The sole object
of such commentators seemed to be to extort from Scripture confirmations
of Aristotelian quibbles and their own inventions, a proceeding which I
regard as the acme of absurdity.

In figures, not real but existing only in the prophet's imagination, God
revealed to Joseph his future lordship, and in words and figures He
revealed to Joshua that He would fight for the Hebrews, causing to
appear an angel, as it were the captain of the Lord's host, bearing a
sword, and by this means communicating verbally. The forsaking of Israel
by Providence was portrayed to Isaiah by a vision of the Lord, the
thrice Holy, sitting on a very lofty throne, and the Hebrews, stained
with the mire of their sins, sunk, as it were, in uncleanness, and thus
as far as possible distant from God. The wretchedness of the people at
the time was thus revealed, while future calamities were foretold in
words. I could cite from Holy Writ many similar examples, but I think
they are sufficiently well known already....

We may be able quite to comprehend that God can communicate immediately
with man, for without the intervention of bodily means He communicates
to our minds His essence; still, a man who can by pure intuition
comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor deducible from the
foundations of our n