Verses 22 to 38. God, who is a God of love and full of mercy and loving kindness, here ordains that every man who shall manufacture a particular kind of scented pomatum, shall be put to death. Christian Theist, you tell me that yours is the 'eternal, immortal, and only wise God' (_vide_ 1st Timothy, chap, i., v. 17)--do you in truth believe that he would order me to be utterly cut off because I might perhaps unconsciously make a scented ointment of a particular character? Do {61} you believe if I take a certain description of perfumed pomatum, and 'smell thereto,' previous to rubbing some on the hair of my head, that I shall be put to death? Perhaps these enactments were only meant for the Jews, who seem to have required some strange laws; if so, it is a pity God has allowed the Book to come to us in its present state, as we find it hard to conceive (without any fact to reason upon) that one verse is intended only for the Jews, and the following one intended for the whole world. *Chapter xxxi., v. 15. Moses would never have joined the 'Society for Abolition of Capital Punishment,' if it had been established in his day. This verse must have since become a dead letter, an obsolete statute which God does not enforce in the present age. But if this verse is a dead letter, how much more of the Bible is affected in the same manner? Who is to tell which enactments may be safely disobeyed, and which carry with them the terrible penalty? V. 17. 'He rested and was refreshed.' Although even the most faithful and pious believer must have great difficulty in attempting to contemplate that stupendous work, the creation of the universe out of nothing, yet this great difficulty sinks into utter insignificance beside the greater one of endeavouring to imagine the omnipotent and immutable Deity resting after his labour, and being refreshed. V. 18. The expression 'finger of God' is evidently intended to be understood literally here, but the question then arises as to the nature of an infinite spirit without body, parts, or passions (_vide_ thirty-nine articles), yet having fingers, hands, face, and back parts. Dr. Pye Smith says, on the [----------] (anthropopatheia) of the Scriptures (treatment of God as if possessing a human shape and nature)--'This is very remarkable and very extensive, but it is manifested by comparison with many other parts of the Scriptures, that the terms employed are terms of _condescending comparison_ with the acts and effects of the thus mentioned organs of the human body, to convey, especially to unpolished men a conception of those properties and actions of God, which to our feeble ideas have a resemblance, and that they were so understood. Language had not then terms for the expression of abstract conceptions.'