The Pulpit Commentary — Leviticus — Section 455

of him. Thie was the oase with the" golden calf" which Aaron made. The people resented their offerings to it in connect.ion with a" feast to the Lord" (Exod. xxxii. 6). f t is too great a mental labour to realize God's presence by pure thought and medita- tion; men crave a visible object which shall remind them of the Supreme. 2, The next step-deep into the thick darkne.'lS-is to identify the Deity with the object which. is the chosen sign of his presence; and the constant, inevitable accompaniment of this act is to multiply the number of divinities; for, as the visible images are many, the gods hecome many also to the popular imagination. However antecedently unlikely it may seem to us that men would commit such great folly as this, universal history compels us to believe that they have done so. Beginning with the demand for "a sign," men have "bowed down unto" and worshipped the image, the pillar, the figured F<tone. 3. Then follows mental, moral, spiritual degradation. The worshippers of idols have attributed to their gods their own infirmities and sins, and then their worship has reacted on their own character, and they have sunk to the lowest depths of abjectness of mind, vileness of spirit, grossness of life. II. ITS ESSE1'"TIAL ELEMENTS. We must not identify idolatry with those more shameless forms of it which historians and travellers have made known to us, These are its ln.st and worst developments. But the idolatrous element is found where there is (1) a false association of God with an object with which he has nothing to do, as (in the case referred to) where the Israelites associated Jehovah iu their thoughts with an image with whlch he had no connection whatever; or (2) a false trust in an object with which God is more or less connected. That was an idolatrous act on the part of the Israelites when they made sure of victory because the ark of God was in the camp (1 Sam. iv. 3--11). God had connected him.self with the ark in an especial manner; -but the Jews were trusting in it rather than in him, and they leant on a broken reed. III. ITS APPEAL TO OURSELVES. Our danger is not from the grosser forms of idolatry, "tlor is it in the former of the two essential elements of it; it is in the latter of these. We are liable to trust idolatrously in that with whlch God is connected, bnt which has no virtue at all in itself. We are invited, and sometimes find ourselves tempted: l. To imagine that a priest can bless us, independently of the truth which he teaches or the spiritual help which he renders us. 2. To suppose that we are nearer to God in sacred place..", irrespective of the consideration whether we realize his presence and draw nigh to hls Spirit. 3. To seek sanctity, or even salvation, in sacraments apart from the reverent thought and consecrated feeling whlch they should suggest or excite, This is an idolatroW! delusion. IV. Tm: PATH OF SAFETY, This is: 1. The avoidance of temptation. We must shnn those Churches and services which would seduce us from spiritual purity. 2. The ooceptance of the One Divine Mediator we have in Christ our Saviour. There is "one man we can adore withont idolatry-the man Christ Jesus." 3. The use of our faculties for the worship of the Invisible. We can worship him who is a Spirit" in spirit and in .truth." We can realize the presence of the infinite God; we can love hlm whom we have not seen (1 Pet. i. 8); we can walk the whole path of life conscious of a Divine -COmpanion whose hand we cannot grasp, but who "leads us all our journey through." By a living faith," our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" {l John i. 3).-C. Vers. 3--13.-IncenUve, to obedience. Religion has the first claim upon us as the supreme obligation of the soul. We are bound to worship and honour God because we owe fe.r more to him than to all other beings in the universe. The first and all- sufficient reason why we should "worship and bow down" before him, is in the fact that "he is our God "-that One from whom we come, in whom wo live, from whom cometh down every good gift. But God condescends to urge us to obedience by pre- senting incentives to our minds. He wishes us to consider that he has ma.do it infinitely remunerative for us to do so; that, by so doing, we become recipients of the largest blessings he can confer an,l we can receive. There is so much of contrast as well B.B comparison between the blessings of the old and the new dispensations, that we must divide our subject into two parts. 1. TRE INCENTIVES WRICH Guo HELD OUT TO B18 ANCIENT PEOPLE. 'l'hese were im['<>rtantly spiritual, bu,t prominently temporal. If they did but" walk in his statutes, 011. XXVI. 1-46.] THE IlOOK OF LEVITICUS. 421