While Moses was on the Mount with God forty days, receiving instructions as of the tabernacle and all its appointments, the people, quickly forgetting the solemn circumstances that accompanied the giving of the law, which they had pledged themselves to obey, demanded to have an idol-a god which they could see. "And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the work of their own hands."

Jehovah then bids Moses to go down, for the people had corrupted themselves; they had "changed their glory (Jehovah) into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass," and said, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt ! " And when Moses came down and saw the calf and the dancing "he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the Mount " (Exod. 32:19).

The ritualist might look upon this act of Moses as sacrilegious ; he might plead that being the work of God they should have been preserved with religious veneration. But one in the mind and spirit of God, as Moses was, at once perceives that bringing these tables of the law to a people turned away from Jehovah, and worshiping the work of their own hands, is just bringing the curse of the law to them, in swift and terrible recompense, even to blot them out from the presence of God. Moses shatters the tables upon the Mount, therefore ; then grinds their god to powder, and makes them drink the dust of "the work of their own hands." He also calls upon those who are on God's side to show themselves, and smite the idolaters, their own kinsmen and neighbors, for "there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;" and "he that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me" (Eccl. 3:5; Matt. 10:37).

Having vindicated God's name with judgment upon the idolaters, Moses goes in before the Lord to plead for the people; in passionate love he pleads (ver. 32) and obtains governmental forgiveness for them. To the promise that Jehovah would send an angel and drive out the Canaanites, and give Israel the land He had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses insists before God that not an angel but Jehovah Himself must go with them (34:15), and he obtains this also (ver. 17).

Then Moses grows exceedingly bold in the confidence of love:"And he said, I beseech Thee, show me thy glory." God's gracious answer calls for our worshipful meditation:"I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the Name of the Lord before thee" (ver. 19).

The goodness of the Lord is His glory; and this glory is now revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ, in whom the invisible God has manifested Himself to us:"In whom we have redemption . . . according to the riches of His grace; " In whom we are "blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies; In whom we have an inheritance . . . according to the counsels of His own will" "that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."

May we then like Moses say, "I pray Thee, show me thy glory," that all Hit goodness maybe revealed to the eyes of our heart.