Exodus 32:24 And I said to them, Whoever has any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire… Aaron's excuse is the standing excuse of at least one large class among us. Servants use it every day. Who has not heard them plead? "Please, ma'am, I couldn't help it; it broke in my hands." As if it were not they, but the wilful jug or dish which was responsible for the fracture, or some malign fate which mocks at human endeavour and care. "It was an accident" has been their sigh ever since domestic service became an institution among us. But is the plea confined to them? Do you not also hear it from the lips of every child? "I didn't do it" — they are all quite sure of that; though, if they did not do it, it would be hard indeed to say who did. Here are two large classes, then, to whom Aaron's excuse is familiar; and to one of these classes we all belonged in our time. But are there no more? Most of you will remember that inimitable scene in "Adam Bede" in which Mrs. Poyser, while rating the clumsy Molly for her broken jug of beer, herself drops a still more precious jug from her angry fingers, and exclaims: "Did anybody ever see the like? The jugs are bewitched, I think." You will remember how she proceeds to argue that "there's times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird," and concludes, philosophically enough, that "what is to be broke will be broke." Possibly most of us have known mistresses who, while indignantly repudiating the common excuse of their maids, have nevertheless condescended to employ it in their own behalf. And what bankrupt tradesman, or broken merchant, or fraudulent banker is there who does not plead the same, or a similar, excuse? It is hardly ever their fault that they cannot pay twenty shillings in the pound; it is their misfortune. "Things have gone against them." "Circumstances over which they have no control have been their ruin" — not their own rashness, or dishonest discounts, or risky speculations. They put their capital into that shop, that firm, that bank, and, lo, there came out this ugly calf of bankruptcy! But you must not blame them; it is the furnace that was in fault. And if mistresses no less than their maids, and men of business no less than their wives, attribute to accident, mischance, or a malignant and mysterious fate, results of which the cause might be found much nearer home, scholars no less than men of business, men of science no less than scholars, Christian commentators no less than men of science, too often betake themselves to the same egregrious line of argument and excuse. There are illustrations and repetitions and modifications of Aaron's apology which touch us closer home. The man who is a sinner — as which of us is not? — has it perpetually on his lips. How often, when arraigned at the bar of Conscience or taken to task by Authority, have we urged that we really could not help ourselves; that, to use Mrs. Poyser's word, we were "bewitched" by some evil and malignant power; that it was impossible to keep the law we had transgressed, and that "what is to be broken" will and must be broken? "A hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree." With passions so fierce and strong as mine, with a natural and hereditary bias to evil, exposed to temptations so numerous and so nicely adjusted to my temperament, why should I be blamed, why should I overmuch blame myself, if now and then I have overleaped the cold and strict requirements of the law? Such as I am, in such a world as this, with a passionate craving for immediate enjoyment, exposed to forces so powerful and so constant in their operation, hampered by conditions so inauspicious, how could I do otherwise than I have done? Is it my fault that, with desire and opportunity conspiring against me, I have sometimes been overmastered or betrayed by them, and broken a commandment which no man has always kept?... Well, Aaron's excuse for himself has reminded us of a good many excuses as irrational and absurd as his which men make to this day. And we have seen and acknowledged that there is some element of truth in them; that what we call accident does play a certain part in our life and the lives of our fellows. But though, in the abstract, we cannot define this mysterious power, or determine exactly how far we are subject to it, in conduct and practice we have no great difficulty in dealing with it. We make allowance for our servants; we admit that even the most careful must meet with an accident sometimes, and that there are times even when a small series of such accidents are almost certain to tread on each other's heels. Nevertheless, if, after due trial, we find that a servant has contracted a constant and incorrigible habit of breaking whatever is breakable, we promptly dismiss her as too unfortunate for us, or as abnormally clumsy, or as wilfully negligent. We make allowance, too, for the accidents of commerce; we confess that now and then a man may fail honourably because he fails through no fault of his own. But if we meet with a man who has failed in almost everything he has undertaken, and who has spent half his time in the Court of Insolvency and its purlieus, we are in no hurry to associate ourselves with him or to assist him; nay, unless he can bring surprisingly good evidence to the contrary, we set him down as a lazy vagabond or an unscrupulous rogue. Just so we make, or ought to make, allowance for a man who is "overtaken by a sin." And for ourselves, my brethren, let us have done with this poor subterfuge, which we know to be, for us at least, a mere refuge of lies even as we run into it. (S. Cox, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. |
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