have a godly jealousy, especially in a day when lukewarmness as to the honour of Christ so generally prevails. Moses has now but little heart for intercession, when on the mount he breathed the very atmosphere of grace; but now he is in the actual scene of sin, and sees it as the Lord had seen it on the mount, when Moses had interceded with Him for the people. But now, nothing but the sin of the people is before Moses. "Ye have sinned a great sin:" he must needs get out of the scene of sin, in order to get into the place of intercession. Blessed instruction for us-such a high priest became us, "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens"! Ever able to estimate sin as it must be in the sight of Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and at the same time to throw the glory of his own person, and the value of his own work, into his own prevailing intercession. "And now I will go up unto the Lord: peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.' Surely Moses the servant of the Lord goes up to the mount dispirited and dismayed. He had not personally sinned the sin; but for that very reason he felt it the deeper. "And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now if Thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me I pray thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written." There was the truthful consciousness in Moses that he could find no plea in himself or in the people to present before the Lord; his only alternative was either to find forgiveness in the Lord's own grace, or that he himself might be blotted out, so as not to witness the shame of his people. How strongly does this consciousness of worthlessness in Moses bring into relief the dignified consciousness of worth in Jesus-"I have prayed for thee." But the Lord has His own ways: when corporate failure has come in, He can deal with individuals in the midst of it according to His own righteous judgment. "Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book." At the same time it is clearly announced, that the corporate sin would in due time be punished corporately; "nevertheless, in the day when I visit I will visit

of man.

their sin upon them." These are principles of God of deep and solemn importance. God is pleased to commit to man's responsibility certain corporate blessings. Such blessings become speedily forfeited through the failure God still bears on in protracted long-suffering, dealing with individuals according to His own grace, but at length the time comes for corporately visiting the failing body. "And the Lord plagued the people because they made the calf which Aaron made." Aaron laid the blame on the people; but it is regarded by God "as with the priest, so with the people." God knows the amount of guilt attached to the several parties, and where they may lay it the one on the other, God charges both alike.

The principle embodied in the golden calf was early manifested in the Church; and is in fact the principle of idolatry. "Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." This admonition was given to those who were "called saints." Is it unneeded now? Are we in no danger of idolatry? We are aware of the fine-drawn distinctions of the Romanist to justify picture and image-worship; and we know also that it is not the meaning which they attach to such homage, but the light in which it is regarded by God, which is the truth. Many also most confidently believe, on the authority of the word of God, that the corruption of Christendom will end in open, gross, and palpable idolatry. Neither the progress of civilisation nor the emancipation of the mind of man are any safeguard against gross and palpable idolatry. It was the wisdom of man making the Godhead the subject of speculation instead of the object of faith, which originally introduced idolatry. "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations [reasonings] and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." Surely man will never find his way back to

God, by the very road of his departure from God; and the veneration of ordinances and intellectual rationalism may meet in the end in palpable idolatry. The word of admonition still applies to saints, "Neither be ye idolaters," for the principle of idolatry is some present palpable object between the soul and God, which effectually hinders dependance on God; and this is the principle embodied in the golden calf. We find in the days of the Apostles the original elements of this principle of idolatry under several modifications; and in the progress of declension these elements have received more or less tangible form. The grossest form of the original sin of the Church is found in the Galatian error-an error held up to us as a beacon, but which really has been followed as a pattern, so as to have been in great measure the formative power of the great professing body. It is the grossest form of the principle of the golden calf, being the natural expression of the feeling of the human heart, as though God was served with man's hands as needing something. It is said of the people when they made the golden calf, "they rejoiced in the work of their own hands," the same in principle as the Galatian error. But how strongly does the Apostle rebuke it. He knew of no middle way between the grace of God in Christ and idolatry. The Galatians had been turned from idolatry to the true God by faith in Christ Jesus. They were now in danger of relapsing in principle into their old idolatry, by adding the law to Christ. "Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods; but now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again [back, marg.] to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage ?"

In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have the same principle in another form; the virtual setting aside of the perfectness of the work of Christ on the cross, and his present perfect priestly ministry, by recurrence to Jewish ordinances of worship. It is but the golden calf in another form. "As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what

is become of him." Even so now; Christ, received into the heavens, is forgotten in His ministry there, and early indeed did the Church desire to have some visible and tangible helps to worship, and they took their pattern from the sin of Israel. Stern and solemn is the warning rebuke of the Apostle (Heb. vi. and x.), so that scarcely a saint has been unexercised by it; and yet how little has it been aptly applied. These warnings are manifestly against the tendency to relapse into the old form of worship, to go back to the shadow and lose the reality. "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." "He that despised Moses law died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace?"

Judaism christianised, is a large and extensive characteristic of the great professing body; men have assimilated the very things which God has contrasted, and that by putting together such heterogeneous materials Christ has been dishonoured, even as He, as Jehovah, was dishonoured by Israel setting up visible gods, which really rivalled Jehovah Himself.

The principle of the golden calf was detected by the watchful eye of the Apostle, working among the Colossians in a more subtle form. Such foreign helps as philosophy and asceticism were there intruded; but in reality they hindered the simplicity of the Gospel, instead of helping the soul to realised union with Christ; such helps took it away from dependance on Christ, so that those who esteemed them, did not "hold the head." This form of the original sin of the Church has worked its way in the downward course of the Church; the fleshly mind has intruded its own conceits into the

revelation of God; under the garb of affected humility, or it may be even under the semblance of spiritual aspirations we find the glory of Christ in His own person, as well as the glory of his work, virtually superseded. It is the exercise of the human mind on the great facts of revelation, instead of staying the soul by faith on these great facts, which especially marks this principle; and it is one which readily insinuates itself. Direct 66 'holding the head" is the only safeguard

against it.

But by far the most subtle form of the idolatry of the golden calf, is that which we find in the Corinthian church; the "glorying in men" or idolatry of man. Not of man as man, but man as the minister of Christ. How nice the line between esteeming such very highly in love for their works' sake, and putting them between the soul and Christ, according to the desire of Israel to have gods to go before them, when Moses who brought them up out of Egypt was lost to their sight. It is very possible to find this principle lurking where priestcraft is loudly abjured. The desire is deeply rooted in the human heart to have some tangible medium between itself and God, which, while it may be the medium of communicating the truth of God to the soul, is nevertheless used by the soul to hinder its coming into immediate contact with Christ Himself, and to keep it in measured distance from God. Paul, Apollos, or Čephas, the gracious gifts of Christ Himself to the Church, the moment they severally became regarded as the minister of so many persons, were by this very means put between the soul and Christ, they were gloried in as men. was to their own dishonour, and at the same time to the deep damage of the souls of those who thus set them up over themselves. For by thus misplacing the channel of His grace, Christ Himself as the fountain of all grace is lost sight of. "All are yours." The infinite fulness of Him in whom dwelleth all fulness is little known; because men only regard one, instead of the many channels, by which that fulness is communicated, "All are yours" (1 Cor. iii.). And thus, virtually, it is not the truth itself which is so much regarded, as the person who testifies

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