ll that the Lord hath
commanded will we do, and will be obedient." Thereupon they too were
sprinkled with the blood, and the solemn words were spoken, "Behold the
blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all
these words." The people were now finally bound: no later covenant of
the same kind will be found in the Old Testament.

And now the principle began to work which was afterwards embodied in the
priesthood. That principle, stated broadly, was exclusion from the
presence of God, relieved and made hopeful by the admission of
representatives. The people were still forbidden to approach, under pain
of death. But Moses and Aaron were no longer the only ones to cross the
appointed boundaries. With them came the two sons of Aaron, (afterwards,
despite their privilege, to meet a dreadful doom,) and also seventy
representatives of all the newly covenanted people. Joshua, too, as the
servant of Moses, was free to come, although unspecified in the summons
(vers. 1, 13).

"They saw the God of Israel," and under His feet the blueness of the sky
like intense sapphire. And they were secure: they beheld God, and ate
and drank.

But in privilege itself there are degrees: Moses was called up still
higher, and left Aaron and Hur to govern the people while he communed
with his God. For six days the nation saw the flanks of the mountain
swathed in cloud, and its summit crowned with the glory of Jehovah like
devouring fire. Then Moses entered the cloud, and during forty days they
knew not what had become of him. Was it time lost? Say rather that all
time is wasted except what is spent in communion, direct or indirect,
with the Eternal.

The narrative is at once simple and sublime. We are sometimes told that
other religions besides our own rely for sanction upon their
supernatural origin. "Zarathustra, Sakya-Mooni and Mahomed pass among
their followers for envoys of the Godhead; and in the estimation of the
Brahmin the Vedas and the laws of Manou are holy, divine books" (Kuenen,
_Religion of Israel_, i. 6). This is true. But there is a wide
difference between nations which assert that God privately appeared to
their teachers, and a nation which asserts that God appeared to the
public. It is not upon the word of Moses that Israel is said to have
believed; and even those who reject the narrative are not entitled to
confound it with narratives utterly dissimilar. There is not to be found
anywhere a parallel for