s throughout the narrative, being employed nine times in this
chapter; and because the same word is found in Isaiah, again in contrast
with the ruin of others, and with an interesting and beautiful
expansion of the hovering poised notion which belongs to the word.[23]

Repeated commandments are given to parents to teach the meaning of this
institution to their children, (xii. 26, xiii. 8). And there is
something almost cynical in the notion of a later mythologist devising
this appeal to a tradition which had no existence at all; enrolling, in
support of his new institutions, the testimony (which had never been
borne) of fathers who had never taught any story of the kind.

On the other hand, there is something idyllic and beautiful in the
minute instruction given to the heads of families to teach their
children, and in the simple words put into their mouths, "It is because
of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt." It
carries us forward to these weary days when children scarcely see the
face of one who goes out to labour before they are awake, and returns
exhausted when their day is over, and who himself too often needs the
most elementary instruction, these heartless days when the teaching of
religion devolves, in thousands of families, upon the stranger who
instructs, for one hour in the week, a class in Sunday-school. The
contrast is not reassuring.

When all these instructions were given to Israel, the people bowed their
heads and worshipped. The bones of most of them were doomed to whiten in
the wilderness. They perished by serpents and by "the destroyer"; they
fell in one day three-and-twenty thousand, because they were
discontented and rebellious and unholy. And yet they could adore the
gracious Giver of promises and Slayer of foes. They would not obey, but
they were quite ready to accept benefits, to experience deliverance, to
become the favourites of heaven, to march to Palestine. So are too many
fain to be made happy, to find peace, to taste the good word of God and
the powers of the age to come, to go to heaven. But they will not take
up a cross. They will murmur if the well is bitter, if they have no
flesh but only angels' food, if the goodly land is defended by powerful
enemies.

On these terms, they cannot be Christ's disciples.

It is apparently the mention of a mixed multitude, who came with Israel
out of Egypt, which suggests the insertion, in a separate and dislocated
paragr