possession of the promised land. They worshipped animals in gold and silver and wood; they worshipped the whole creation, and all winged birds. Their cry was, ‘These are our gods and other god there is not’. It was for these devilish things, made by the hand, injurious and execrable, that God condemned their worship. For since there are things made with hands to the service and glory of God, whose will it was to introduce His own holy people of the Hebrews, as He foretold to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give them the land of promise, and to make the Israelites possessors and inheritors of the possessions of idolaters, and to crush and utterly wipe out those generations because they had polluted the land and the air by their transgressions, God warned His people beforehand not to fall into their modes of worship. He selected two men of the Israelite people, blessed and hallowed them for the execution of works wrought by the hand, but for the glory and service of God, as a memorial to those generations, Bezaleel and Eliab, of the first tribe of Dan. God said to Moses, ‘Cut out two tables of stone and bring them to Me’. He brought them, and God, with His own finger, wrote upon them the ten life-giving and immortal words. Then God said: ‘Make cherubim and seraphim, and a table, and cover it within and without with gold: and mark an ark of incorruptible wood, and put thy testimonies into the ark for a memorial to your generations, that is, the tablets, the urn, the rod, the manna’. Are these fashions and resemblances made by hand, or are they not? But they are for the glory and service of God. That great Moses, full of fear, in his desire to see a likeness and resemblance, not to be deceived, besought God, saying, ‘Lord, show me Thyself manifestly, that I may see Thee’. And the Lord answered, ‘If thou seest Me, thou wilt die. But pass into the hole of the rock, and thou shalt see My hind parts.’ God showed to him in a vision the mystery hidden from the beginning of the world. But in our generations, in the last days, He showed Himself to us manifestly, both His front and His hind part, entire. When God saw the race of men perishing to the end, taking pity on His own creation, He sent forth His Son, begotten before time. And, coming down from heaven, He entered the womb of the holy Virgin Mary. The true Light shone forth in her womb, and, instead of human generation, the Light became flesh. And He was baptised in the River Jordan, and us also He baptised. He began to give us pledges of knowledge, that we might not be deceived. And, entering into Jerusalem, into the Upper Chamber of holy and glorious Sion, to the mystical supper, He delivered to us His holy Body, and gave us to drink His precious Blood. There also He washed our feet; we drank with Him, and we ate with Him, and our hands felt Him, and He became our companion. And the Truth was manifested to us, and the error and the mist which encompassed us fled away and vanished. And their