Besides, the people whom Moses led were advancing into great dangers. All round them were pagan nations. Egypt was behind them, and Canaan before them. They had just left the most powerful kingdom on earth, where men prostrated themselves before beasts. They still had a lingering fondness for that hideous worship. On one occasion, when Moses was absent from the camp for forty days, on his return he found them singing and shouting round a golden calf, an image of the god Apis. Often they showed a fanatical frenzy for idolatry. Against all this Moses stood alone, and combated the popular fury. If he had no Divine authority to sustain him, to impose such laws on hostile millions showed a moral daring of which there is no example in history.
As the unity of God was the fundamental law of the state, idolatry of course was the first of crimes. This, therefore, was placed under the ban of absolute prohibition.[1] Any individual who sought to entice them away from their God, even though the nearest kindred, was to be stoned. If a whole city relapsed into idolatry, it was placed out of the pale of protection, and was to be utterly destroyed.[2]
Not only the false worship itself, but everything which could lead to it was forbidden. All the arts by which it was upheld — divination, sorcery, magic, witchcraft — were torn up root and branch.[3] Witches — those old sybils who decoyed men by their juggling arts — were not permitted to live.
Does this appear the extreme of harshness and intolerance? Perhaps it was rather a brave act of mercy. In every pagan country there are sorcerers and necromancers who claim to have power over the elements, or over life and death, and who impose on ignorant savages, often to
