But, however earnest and pure may seem to be the breathing of the soul
to God, something unworthy mingles with what is best in man. The very
altar of incense needs to have an atonement made for it once in the year
throughout their generations with the blood of the sin-offering of
atonement. The prayer of every heart which knows its own secret will be
this:

"Forgive what seemed my sin in me,
What seemed my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man
And not from man, O Lord, to Thee."

_THE CENSUS._

xxx. 11-16.

Moses by Divine command was soon to number Israel, and thus to lay the
foundation for its organisation upon the march. A census was not,
therefore, supposed to be presumptuous or sinful in itself; it was the
vain-glory of David's census which was culpable.

But the honour of being numbered among the people of God should awaken a
sense of unworthiness. Men had reason to fear lest the enrolment of such
as they were in the host of God should produce a pestilence to sweep out
the unclean from among the righteous. At least they must make some
practical admission of their demerit. And therefore every man of twenty
years who passed over unto them that were numbered (it is a picturesque
glimpse that is here given into the method of enrolment) should offer
for his soul a ransom of half a shekel after the shekel of the
sanctuary. And because it was a ransom, the tribute was the same for
all; the poor might not bring less, nor the rich more. Here was a grand
assertion of the equality of all souls in the eyes of God--a seed which
long ages might overlook, but which was sure to fructify in its
appointed time.

For indeed the madness of modern levelling systems is only their attempt
to level down instead of up, their dream that absolute equality can be
obtained, or being obtained can be made a blessing, by the envious
demolition of all that is lofty, and not by all together claiming the
supreme elevation, the measure of the stature of manhood in Jesus
Christ.

It is not in any _phalanstere_ of Fourier or Harmony Hall of Owen, that
mankind will ever learn to break a common bread and drink of a common
cup; it is at the table of a common Lord.

And so this first assertion of the equality of man was given to those
who all ate the same spiritual meat and drank the same spiritual drink.

This half-shekel gradually became an annual impost, levied for the great
expenses of the Temple. "Thu