p. 51Ladies and Gentlemen,—
I hope my wordiness may not have the effect of hiding the thread of my argument; and I hope you will not tire of a process that may seem to have a good deal of repetition in it. My argument is very simple, but may be obscured by its details. Yet without the details, it could not be carried home. My argument is that the mere existence of the record of some features in the Mosaic narrative, is of itself proof of the divinity of the whole, because the record of these could not conceivably be written by any class of scribe whatsoever except for the reason of their truth, and the truth of these could not arise except for the truth of the whole of which they are a part. That is the argument in the general—amplified in the details I am submitting. There are some matters of record you might conceive to have been possibly invented, such as the killing of Goliath, or the opening of the Red Sea. They are gratifying to p. 52 national pride. But the matters I am calling your attention to are of another character altogether. They are such as to defy the supposition of invention, and if they are not invention, but truth, then they involve the truth of co-related matters which establish the whole Bible. That is the argument.
I have spoken of the murmurings. Look now at the incident of the golden calf. All the world has heard of it. You remember the particulars no doubt. In the absence of Moses on Mount Sinai for several weeks, the congregation became weary, and came to Aaron, the brother of Moses, and demanded of him to make them the idol (to which they had been accustomed in Egypt) “for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.” Aaron gives way to their wanton mood and makes them the golden calf in the worship of which, they appoint and hold a riotous feast of the idolatrous order. In the midst of their revellings, Moses arrives. Moses, meek man though he was, is roused to such a pitch of anger that he throws down the tables of stone on which the ten commandments were inscribed, which he had brought with him from the Mount; and the tables of stone are broken. He advances to the midst of the camp. The people are abashed: Aaron cowers with shame, but tries to excuse himself. “Oh, let not the anger of my lord wax hot. Thou knowest the people that they are set on mischief.” Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And Moses said to them, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, p. 53 and slay every man his brother.” The result is the slaughter of about 3,000 of the people. Furthermore, “the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf” (Exo. xxxii.). Then Moses, after upbraiding the people with their great crime, says he will go up to God, and “peradventure make an atonement for them.”
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, consider the argument: Is this a true story? If you doubt it, can you imagine a reason for its being told? Here it is. You are bound to account for its existence. Stories don’t write themselves. Can you imagine a motive for writing and preserving in the national archives a narrative which exhibits the Hebrews that came out of Egypt, as a generation of fools; Aaron, as a weak time-serving man; and Moses, as capable of such a towering anger as to fling the very tables of the Law from him to the ground. Are they not all of them incidents of such a nature as a tampering or concocting scribe would suppress? Are they at all of such a character as he would imagine or invent? Is it according to our experience of human nature that such a portrayal of incidents could find its way into a solid serious national record in any way, except on the principle that they happened? Nothing will impress you more deeply with this feeling than the attempt to account for the writing down of such things if they did not happen. (This is leaving inspiration out of account for the sake of argument.) Try the experiment, Ladies and Gentlemen. Try to suggest any reason for the story being written other than its simple truth.
And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, if it is a true story, what follows? Why was Moses so bold as to kill 3,000 men after coming down from the Mount p. 54 with a command, “Thou shalt not kill?” Where did he get the tables of stone from, that he broke in his anger? Why did he go into the Mount, and stay away so long? You see, the story has ramifications. You cannot cut it away from its surroundings. You cannot refuse its inferences and implications.
It proves that Israel was in the Wilderness of Sinai. What took a nation into such a barren solitude? If God led them thither for His divine purpose, all is plain. If He did not, there is an absolute lack of explanation of a fact of history, for no human objects could be served by such an expedition, nor could such an enterprise have been effectuated by any human arrangements, as the transport and maintenance of an immense multitude of human beings in a mountainous desert.
It proves that Moses went up to Mount Sinai; for it shews him in the act of coming down. It, therefore, provokes the question: Why did he go up there? Can any human theory of his case suggest an answer that shall be in harmony with all the facts? Did he go up for the sake of effect? Was Moses, then a charlatan—a deceiver—in a word, an impostor—pretending to receive communication that he did not receive, for the sake of creating an authority for his law, which it would not have had if advanced on his own responsibility? Such things have happened among other nations we know, but they have been since the time of Moses. In the history of the Greek republics or in the case of Mahomet, we have instances of such a character. But, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is shallow reasoning surely to conclude that because there are weak imitations, there was no sturdy original. I will not imagine you capable of such shallowness. Reason requires the reverse conclusion altogether— p. 55 that there is a genuine effective somewhere when you see puerile imitations in the street.
Mahomet, mystifying Greek law givers, and oracles, are self-evident impostures when you look at them all round. But an all-round look of Moses brings the opposite conviction. You cannot reconcile his case throughout with a view that would attribute to any part of his proceedings a deceptive character. The man who would retire to a mountain top to create an impression is not the man who would say “The Lord was angry with me for your sakes;” “Not for thy righteousness or the uprightness of thy heart dost thou go to possess the land. . . . From the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt until ye came into this place ye have been rebellious against the Lord;” “I am not able to bear the burden of all this people;” “Who am I, that ye murmur against me?” “I have not done these things of mine own mind.” And so in many other cases.
Moses stands the test of genuineness on every head. If the story of the golden calf could not be written except for its truth (which I strongly submit, Ladies and Gentlemen), then that story brings with it Mount Sinai, and all that is involved in that mountain’s name of world-wide notoriety. Some of the considerations involved in this suggestion, I will hope to bring before you the next time we meet.