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Vol. VI. December 1884. No. 3.

The Aaronic Priesthood.

III.

THE object of the Almighty in establishing His Priesthood, among the people He had brought up out of the land of Egypt with such a continuous display of omnipotent power, was similar to what He now has in view regarding His latter day Israel, the lineal descendants of those ancient wanderers in the wilderness. It was to sanctify them, body and spirit, and prepare them for the fulness of His glory. This object, Moses sought earnestly to attain, but like all reformers and men of God in all ages, he had to meet and contend with many difficulties; not alone the blind bigotry and unreasoning opposition of the world, but, worst of all, with internal dissensions, lack of faith among his own followers, and the jealous murmurings and fault-finding of his immediate associates.

What this finally led to, the student of Scripture is already aware. We have now to relate the next notable error into which Aaron, with his sister Miriam, fell, through a want of that faith and confidence in Moses their brother, which a Prophet of the Lord, inspired and directed from on high, has every right and reason to expect from the people whom he has been chosen to lead.

Moses had married-doubtless by God's command-an Ethiopian woman, or Cushite, in addition to his wife Zipporah, daughter of Jethro. This act, for some reason, greatly incensed Miriam and Aaron, who, without stopping to ascertain whether he had done the thing of himself, or obeyed a divine injunction, fell to abusing him with their tongues, and intimating, it is likely, that he had acted on his own responsibility. The offense, in their eyes, since polygamic marriages were common in ancient Israel, was perhaps not so much that he had taken a plural wife, as that he had married a woman of Ethiopia, which was in violation of the Hebrew law. However, that he was justified in what he had done, despite the "mixed marriage" prohibition-which God, the giver of the law, had the right to suspend if He thought proper-is plainly manifest from what followed. The Lord heard the seditious murmurings of these fault-finders, and it angered Him greatly. Summoning them with Moses unto the Tabernacle, He rebuked them in these words:

"If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.
"My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.
"With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"

Having thus spoken, the Lord departed, but when the cloud lifted from off the Tabernacle, it was discovered that Miriam had been smitten with leprosy. Aaron escaped with the verbal chastening. Why, we are as unable to explain as for his being left alive after making the golden calf, for worshiping which so many of his brethren were put to death. It may be, and indeed is probable, that in the latter as in the former case, he was the blind tool of evil and not the principal offender. The speech which had angered the Lord was this: "Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath He not spoken also by us?"-words calculated to sow the seeds of sedition and rebellion, particularly when falling from the lips of persons in authority.