they waited for the revelation of God. How would He make Himself known to them? Would it be, as they had seen in those ancient temples of Egypt, under the similitude of any figure, 'the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any 'beast that is upon the earth, or the likeness of any fowl that 'flieth in the air, or the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, or the likeness of any fish that is in the 'waters under the earth?' Would it be any, or all of these forms, under which they would at last see Him, who, with a mighty hand, had brought them up out of the land of Egypt ? These questions, or the like of these, are what must have occurred to the Israelites on the morning of the mighty day when they stood beneath the Mount. was to come. SINAI. The outward scene might indeed prepare them for what They stood, as I have described, in a vast sanctuary, not made with hands—a sanctuary where every outward shape of life, animal or vegetable, such as in Egypt had attracted their wonder and admiration, was withdrawn. Bare and unclothed, the mountains rose around them; their very shapes and colours were such as to carry their thoughts back to the days of primeval creation, 'from everlasting to everlasting, before the mountains were 'brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made.'1 At last the morning broke, and every eye was fixed on the summit of the height. Was it any earthly form, was it any distinct shape, that unveiled itself?. ... There were thunders, there were lightnings, there was the voice of a trumpet2 ex 1 See Ps. xc. 2, ascribed to Moses. For this aspect of the mountains, see Sinai and Palestine, pp. 12, 13. 2 It is well known that no volcanic phenomena exist in the desert to account for these appearances. In fact, all the expressions used in the Sacred writers are those which are usually employed in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe a thunderstorm. For the effects of a thunderstorm at Mount Sinai, compare Dr. Stewart's Tent and Khan, 139, 140: 'Every bolt, as it burst with the roar of a cannon, seemed 1 ceeding loud; but on the Mount itself there was a thick cloud-darkness, and clouds, and thick darkness. It was 'the secret place of thunder.' On the summit of the mountain, on the skirts of the dark cloud or within it, was Moses himself withdrawn from view. It is this which represents to us the seclusion so essential to the Eastern idea— within certain limits, so essential to any idea-of the prophetthat, Separate from the world, his breast Might deeply take and strongly keep I. This was the first and chief impression, which the Israelites and their leader alike were intended to receive at Mount Sinai. They saw not God; and yet they were to believe that He was there. They were to make no sign or likeness of God, and yet they were to believe that He was then and always their one and only Lord. Negative Revelation of Sinai. How hard it was for them to receive and act on this, may be imagined from what has been said of their previous statemay be seen from their subsequent history. Even on that very plain, beneath that very mount, they could not bear to think that they were to serve a God who was invisible; they The worship of the Calf. returned to Egypt in their hearts. Then ensued a scene which Josephus, after the manner of much Ecclesiastical History of later times, shrinks from describing, but which the Sacred historian does not fear to relate at length. Aaron, the great High Priest, in the absence of his greater brother, was shaken. He framed a visible form, the likeness of the sacred beast of Heliopolis, and proclaimed 'day; then, after the interval of a few 'seconds, came the peal of thunder, burst'ing like a shell, to scatter its echoes to 'the four quarters of the heavens, and over'powering for a moment the loud howlings ' of the wind.' Mr. Drew witnessed a thunderstorm at Serbal, and was struck by its likeness to the sound of a trumpet (Scripture Lands, 66, 424). Compare the descriptions of the event in Jos. Ant. iii. 5, 2; Judg. v. 4; Ps. lxviii. 7, 8, 9; in each of which, to the other images of a storm, are added the torrents of rain-'The heavens dropped ;' 'The clouds dropped water;' 'A plentiful rain;' 'Violent rain.' A like description occurs in Hab. iii. 3-11. Compare Ps. xviii. 7-16; xxix. 3-9. 6 6 i Ps. lxxxi. 7. it as 'the God,1 which had brought them up from the land ' of Egypt.' An altar rose before it, like that which still exists beneath the nostrils of the Sphinx; a three days' festival was proclaimed, with all the licentious rites of song and dance which they had learned in Egypt. And not then only, but again and again, in the history both of the Jewish and of the Christian Church, has the same temptation returned. The priest has set up what the prophet has destroyed. Graven images have been set up in deed or in word, to make the Unseen visible, and the Eternal temporal. But the Revelation of Sinai has prevailed. Slowly and with many reverses did the great truth then first imparted gain possession of the hearts of Israel, and, through them, of the whole world—that we are neither to imagine that we see God when we do not, nor yet, because we do not see Him, to doubt that He has been, and is, and yet shall be. This was the marvel which the Jewish worship presented, even to the best and wisest heathens, who were perplexed by what seemed to them a Religion without a God. It is to us the declaration that there must be a void created by the destruction of errors, by the removal of false images of God, before we can receive the true image of the Truth itself.2 II. But it was not only a negative form that the Revelation of Sinai assumed. This blank, this void, this darkness without a similitude, this vague infinity, as a heathen would have Positive of Sinai. called it, supplied the enthusiasm, the ardour, the practical basis of life, which most nations in the old world, and many in the modern world, have believed to be compatible only with the most elaborate imagery and the most definite statements. The idea of God in the Jewish Church, which can be traced to nothing short of Mount Sinai, was the very reverse of a negation or an abstraction. It was the absorbing thought of the national mind. It3 was not merely the Lord of the fication of this idea, to Mr. Clough's remarkable verses, 'The New Sinai' (Poems, p. 27). 3 Ewald, Geschichte, ii. 93-122. Universe, but the Lord who had brought them out of the 'land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.' In the reception and promulgation of this revelation the prophetic character of Moses is chiefly brought out. He had been called to his prophetic mission, as we have seen, in the vision of the Burning Bush. But the mission itself, properly speaking, dates from this time, and is indicated in a form nearly corresponding to that of his original call. I beseech thee, 'show me Thy glory,' was the petition which burst from the Prophet in the hour of bitter disappointment and isolation, when he found that his brother and his people had fallen away from him. The same wish is recorded of the heroes and Kings of Egypt.1 But the difference in the answer to the two prayers well expresses the difference between the Egyptian and the Mosaic religion. To the Egyptian hero the Divinity was revealed in the grotesque form of the ram. To the Israelite Prophet the reply was: 'Thou canst not see My 'face, for there shall no man see Me and live.' He was commanded to hew two blocks like those which he had destroyed. He was to come absolutely alone. Even the flocks and herds which fed in the neighbouring valley were to be removed out of sight of the mountain. He took his place on a well-known or prominent rock-'the' rock 2 The legendary locality is still shown, and the importance of the incident, told equally in the Bible and the Koran,3 is attested by the fact that from this, rather than from any more general connexion, the mountain derives its name of the 'Mount of Moses.' It was a moment of his life second only to that when he received the first revelation of the Name of Jehovah. The Lord passed by ' and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and ' gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, 'keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trans'gression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.' The union of the qualities so often disjoined in man, so little heeded in many forms of ancient religion, 'justice and mercy,' Manetho in Josephus, c. Ap. i. 26; Herod. ii. 42. 6 2 Ex. xxxiii. 18, 20, 21; xxxiv. 1, 3. 'truth and love,' became henceforward the formula, ofttimes repeated the substance of the Creed of the Jewish Church. And this union, which was disclosed as the highest revelation to Moses, was exactly what received its fullest exemplification in the final Revelation, to which Moses led the way: when in the most literal sense of the words, 'grace and truth '—the tenderness of grace, the sternness and justice of truth—' came 'by Jesus Christ.' Prophetic Moses. How marked an epoch is thus intended appears from the mode of the Divine manifestations, which are described as commencing at this juncture, and perpetuated with more or less continuity through the rest of his career. Immediately mission of after the catastrophe of the worship of the calf, and apparently in consequence of it, Moses removed the chief tent-his own tent, according to the Septuagint1—outside the camp, and invested it with a sacred character under the name of 'The Tent or Tabernacle of the Congregation.' This Tent became henceforth the chief scene of his communications with God. He left the camp, and it is described how, as in the expectation of some great event, all the people rose up and stood every man at his tent door, and looked— gazing after Moses until he disappeared within the Tabernacle. As he disappeared the entrance was closed behind him by the cloudy pillar, at the sight of which the people prostrated themselves. 2 The communications within the Tabernacle were still more intimate than those on the mountain. 'Jehovah spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.'3 He was apparently accompanied on these mysterious visits by his attendant Hoshea (or Joshua), who remained in the Tabernacle after his master had left it."4 It was during these prophetic visions that a peculiarity is mentioned which apparently had. not been seen before. On his final descent from Mount Sinai, after his second long seclusion, a splendour shone on his face, as if from the glory of the Divine Presence; which gradually faded away, till, 5 Exod. xxxiii. Ewald, Alterthümer, 2 Exod. xxxiii. 10. • Ibid. p. 329. 5 It is from the Vulgate translation of keren-' cornutam habens faciem,' that the Western Church has adopted the con |