The Chosen People | Page 7

though there were here and
there slopes of grass, and bushes of hoary-leaved camel-thorn, and
long-spined shittim or acacia, nothing bearing fruit for human beings.
There were strange howlings and crackings in the mountains, the sun
glared back from the arid stones and rocks, and the change seemed
frightful after the green meadows and broad river of Egypt.
Frightened and faithless, the Israelites cried out reproachfully to Moses
to ask how they should live in this desert place, forgetting that the Pillar
of cloud and fire proved that they were under the care of Him who had
brought them safely out of the hands of their enemies. In His mercy
God bore with their murmurs, fed them with manna from Heaven, and
water out of the flinty rock; and gave them the victory over the
Edomite tribe of robber Amalekites at Rephidim, where Joshua fought,
and Moses, upheld by Aaron and Hur, stretched forth his hands the

whole day. Then, fifty days after their coming out of Egypt, He called
them round the peak of Sinai to hear His own Voice proclaim the terms
of the new Covenant.
The Covenant with Abraham had circumcision for the token, faith as
the condition, and the blessing to all nations as the promise. This
Covenant remained in full force, but in the course of the last four
hundred years, sin had grown so much that the old standard, handed
down from the patriarchs, had been forgotten, and men would not have
known what was right, nor how far they fell from it, without a written
Law. This Law, in ten rules, all meeting together in teaching Love to
God and man, commanded in fact perfection, without which no man
could be fit to stand in the sight of God. He spoke it with His own
Mouth, from amid cloud, flame, thunder, and sounding trumpets, on
Mount Sinai, while the Israelites watched around in awe and terror,
unable to endure the dread of that Presence. The promise of this
Covenant was, that if they would keep the Law, they should dwell
prosperously in the Promised Land, and be a royal priesthood and
peculiar treasure unto God, They answered with one voice, "All the
words the Lord hath said will we do;" and Moses made a sacrifice, and
sprinkled them with the blood, to consecrate them and confirm their
oath. It was the blood of the Old Testament. Then he went up into the
darkness of the cloud on the mountain top, there fasting, to talk with
God, and to receive the two Tables of Stone written by the Finger of
God. This was, as some believe, the first writing in the letters of the
alphabet ever known in the world, and the Books of Moses were the
earliest ever composed, and set down with the pen upon parchment.
Those Laws were too strict for man in his fallen state. Keep them he
could not; breaking them, he became too much polluted to be fit for
mercy. Even while living in sight of the cloud on the Mountain, where
Moses was known to be talking with God, the Israelites lost faith, and
set up a golden calf in memory of the Egyptian symbol of divinity,
making it their leader instead of Moses. Such a transgression of their
newly-made promise so utterly forfeited their whole right to the
covenant, that Moses destroyed the precious tables, the token of the
mutual engagement, and God threatened to sweep them off in a

moment and to fulfil His oaths to their forefather in the children of
Moses alone. Then Moses, having purified the camp by slaying the
worst offenders, stood between the rest and the wrath of God,
mediating for them until he obtained mercy for them, and a renewal of
the Covenant. Twice he spent forty days in that awful Presence, where
glorious visions were revealed to him; the Courts of Heaven itself, to
be copied by him, by Divine guidance, in the Ark and Tabernacle,
where his brother Aaron, and his seed after him, were to minister as
Priests, setting forth to the eye how there was a Holy Place, whence
men were separated by sin, and how it could only be entered by a High
Priest, after a sacrifice of atonement. Every ordinance of this service
was a shadow of good things to come, and was therefore strictly
enjoined on Israel, as part of the conditions of the Covenant, guiding
their faith onwards by this acted prophecy; and therewith God, as King
of His people, put forth other commands, some relating to their daily
habits, others to their government as a nation, all tending to keep them
separate from other nations. For transgressions of such laws as these, or
for infirmities of human nature, regarded as stains, cleansing