"Golden calf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think that the day of atonement was the day on which Adam sinned, on which Abraham was circumcised, and on which Moses offered atonement for the sin of the golden calf. ...
— Hebrew Literature
... left the lesson of its downfall written large upon the pages of history. I repeat that if superstition consists in believing something that is inconsistent with rational human experience, then our present worship of the golden calf is by far the most dangerous form of superstition that has ever befuddled the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... that's my due; and I'll lift both of us high above this frog pond, to which we've both descended. I'll breathe on your sick conscience so that it heals like a wound. Who am I? A man who has done what no one else has ever done; who will overthrow the Golden Calf and upset the tables of the money-changers. I hold the fate of the world in my crucible; and in a week I can make the richest of the rich a poor man. Gold, the most false of all standards, has ceased to rule; every man will now be as poor as his ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... must watch, that we be not meek contrary to God's honor and Commandment. For it is written of Moses that he was the very meekest man on earth, and yet, when the Jews had worshiped the golden calf and provoked God to anger [Sir. 45:4], he put many of them to death, and thereby made atonement before God. [Ex. 32:28] Likewise it is not fitting that the magistrates should be idle and allow sin to have sway, and that we say nothing. My own possessions, my honor, my injury, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... had made the golden calf. Moses returned to the Lord and said, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin. Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written." That was importunity, that would rather die than not have his people given ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... Law to all nations,) as in the midst of bright and calm light, the figure of the Deity being supported by luminous and level clouds, and attended by happy angels: while opposite, on the right hand, the worship of the Golden Calf is symbolized by a single decorated pillar, with the calf on its summit, surrounded by the clouds and darkness of a furious storm, issuing from the mouths of fiends;—uprooting the trees, and throwing down the rocks, above the broken tables of the Law, of which the ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... history of human change has been transacting before us, I have not shut my ears and eyes to its moral; that I have not followed the throng into the valley, and there joined the fabricators of the new idolatry, the priesthood of the golden calf of revolution, and shared the polluted feast and the intoxicated dance; while the thunders of divine vengeance were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... although in ordinary conversation Sussex rustics are careful not to speak his name. They say "he." Mr. Parish, in his Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, gives an example of the avoidance of the dread name: "'In the Down there's a golden calf buried; people know very well where it is—I could show you the place any day.' 'Then why don't they dig it up? 'Oh, it's not allowed: he wouldn't let them.' 'Has any one ever tried?' 'Oh yes, but it's never there when you look; he moves it away.'" His punchbowl may be seen here, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... for society. Napoleon, Richelieu, and the Medicis were a match for their generations. And as for you, you value yourself at twelve thousand francs! You of this generation in France worship the golden calf; what else is the religion of your Charter that will not recognize a man politically unless he owns property? What is this but the command, 'Strive to be rich?' Some day, when you shall have made a fortune ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... afraid of the saddle by day nor of the lamp by night. In advance of the general intelligence, they should lead the way to improvement and prosperity. I would rather assume the staff of Moses and struggle with the perils of the wilderness and the waywardness of the multitude than be a golden calf, elevated in gorgeous inactivity—the object of a worship ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... to't, as he is That brings him the commodity. No more Shall thirst of satin, or the covetous hunger Of velvet entrails for a rude-spun cloke, To be display'd at madam Augusta's, make The sons of Sword and Hazard fall before The golden calf, and on their knees, whole nights Commit idolatry with wine and trumpets: Or go a feasting after drum and ensign. No more of this. You shall start up young viceroys, And have your punks, and punketees, my Surly. And unto thee I speak it first, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... This latter is the case with the 'devil dancers' of Ceylon. In Africa the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity. David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions, dancing formed an important part of the witches' ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... audience, and the audience reacted upon him. He thundered against the profligacy of the rich, the selfishness of Society, the iniquities of the government, the excesses of the monks, the laxity of discipline in the schools, and the growing tendency in the Church to worship the Golden Calf. In some instances priests and monks had married, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... and received, day after day, delegations of pilgrims come to harken to his words of wisdom, which were then, through the medium of the press, presented to similar groups from Maine to California. For weeks, ten to twenty-five thousand people a day sought "the shrine of the golden calf." ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... you goin' to help 'em to worship the true God if you send 'em out of the country? Is it for the sake of humanity you drive 'em out? or be you, like the Isrealites of old, a worshipin' the golden calf of ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... consoled the inconsolable. Once he was shut up in a mad-house, but emerged more popular than ever. Then he went on a pilgrimage through the towns of Mexico, preaching his "Father's" word among the adulterers of goods and the Worshippers of the Golden Calf. An object of reverence and admiration, he blessed the children and rained miracles upon the heads of the sick, finally arriving at San Francisco in 1894. From there, still on foot and bare-headed, he crossed the Mohave Desert, spent several weeks at Flagstaff, and then continued ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... species of idolatry, and is forbidden by the second commandment. Such, also, are the triangles, declared to be "a beautiful emblem of the eternal Jehovah." (Monitor, p. 290.) The Israelites, of course, did not understand that the Divine Being was really like their golden calf; they considered it a symbol of Deity. How much better is it to assimilate God to a triangle than to a calf? The difference is just this: the latter idea is more gross than the former. The sin of idolatry—that is, of ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... receive a windfall, receive an inheritance, hit the jackpot, win the lottery; fill one's pocket &c (treasury) 802; feather one's nest, make a fortune; make money &c (acquire) 775. enrich, imburse. worship the golden calf, worship Mammon. Adj. wealthy, rich, affluent, opulent, moneyed, monied, worth much; well to do, well off; warm; comfortable, well, well provided for. made of money; rich as Croesus, filthy rich, rich as a Jew^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Hebron bring, And with a general shout proclaim'd him king: 60 Those very Jews, who, at their very best, Their humour more than loyalty express'd, Now wonder'd why so long they had obey'd An idol monarch, which their hands had made; Thought they might ruin him they could create, Or melt him to that golden calf—a state. But these were random bolts: no form'd design, Nor interest made the factious crowd to join: The sober part of Israel, free from stain, Well knew the value of a peaceful reign; 70 And, looking backward with a wise affright, Saw seams of wounds dishonest to the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Parisian wedding, did I not? But in point of fact this wedding is a symbol. It's the apotheosis of the bourgeoisie, my dear fellow—the old nobility sacrificing one of its sons on the altar of the golden calf in order that the Divinity and the gendarmes, being the masters of France once more, may rid us ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... stones. Are we not expressly forbidden by the Holy Scriptures to make unto ourselves idols and graven images? The sins of idolatry and superstition will assuredly provoke the Divine displeasure, and kindle the fire of its wrath, as they did in the days of Moses, after the worshipping of the Golden Calf by the Israelites. Thus spake offended Heaven:—'Let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them.' Grievously will the Lord punish such as are guilty of these sins, for hath He not declared, as we read in Leviticus, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... offerings or sacrifices. But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey and be faithful to my commandments, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." (It was only after they had sacrificed to the golden calf that I gave myself sacrifices to turn into ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... to marry a woman unless she has a certain income. The officer must bring up his family in accordance with his position. This system, which it is sought to justify by all kinds of reasons, shows how the worship of the golden calf and class prejudices may degenerate our manners and customs. Without fortune one cannot serve the country as an officer, or marry, except by selling oneself to a rich woman. In other terms, an officer cannot marry according to his own inclination ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... who—like the Pharisees of old—welcomed a religion which did not interfere with their complacency, with their pursuit of pleasure and wealth, with their special privileges; welcomed a Church which didn't raise her voice against the manner of their lives—against the order, the Golden Calf which they had set up, which did not accuse them of deliberately retarding the coming of the Kingdom ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and that much the same may be said of the corresponding epochs of other American novelists' work, with a few exceptions where native genius was too strong to be spoiled even by a vicious artistic principle. 'The Mammon of Unrighteousness' and 'The Golden Calf' belong to the second half of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Phaunus, which was flourishing in the beginning of the fourth century, and, according to Rivet, was considered one of the three most celebrated in Gaul. Belenus was the divinity principally worshipped in it; but, according to popular superstition, adoration was also paid to a golden calf, which was buried in the hill, and still remains entombed there. Even within the last fifty years, two laborers have lost their lives in a fruitless attempt to find this hidden treasure. Tombs, and urns, and human bones, are constantly discovered; yet ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... city a certain peddler from a foreign country, which is called Yankee Land, and behold! the great man was found. He dealt in shekels and stocks, and bloomed and flourished, and soon became like unto a golden calf, and lo! all the wise men fell down and worshipped him. Now it happened that at first, like all great men, he was misunderstood, and the people ascribed his success to his partner, so ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... the corner is giving his note to an usurer. The lean and hungry appearance of this cent. per cent. worshipper of the golden calf, is well contrasted by the sleek, contented vacancy of so well-employed a legislator of this great empire. Seated at the table, a portly gentleman, of whom we see very little, is ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... he thought the bottle-dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full of violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel, marvelling at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a demigod. This visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw upon the ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... dictates of his heart, unaware of the sudden change which had taken place in his feelings. It certainly has an ugly look of improbability—but it was the nature of the beast; his eye suddenly caught a glimpse of the golden calf, and he instinctively fell down and worshipped it. "Well—at all events," said Mr. Gammon, scarcely able to keep a serious expression on his face—"though he's not lived much like a gentleman hitherto, yet he will live for the future like ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... but I cannot decide so hastily. I will be at the Golden Calf in a little while, and give ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... calls for our profound gratitude. I confess with shame that I have not only felt it, but have shaped myself, though unconsciously, to it. It has vitiated our charities, corrupted our morals, and invaded even the house of God. We have worshiped the golden calf. We have bowed down to Moloch. We have consented to live under a will that was base and cruel, in all its motives and ends. We have been so dazzled by a great worldly success, that we have ceased to inquire into its sources. We have done daily obeisance to one who neither feared God nor regarded ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... demonstration of Moses jealousy for his God. After this I can see him striding down to the place of this "ball" or "hugging". The round dance of the present day is but a repetition of those lascivious plays, and with his ax or hatchet he hacked up that malicious property, shaped into a golden calf. This did not belong to Moses. It was very valuable but he smashed it and ground it to powder and then to further humiliate these rebels, he made them drink the dust mixed with water, then to absolutely destroy and stamp with a vengeance this insult ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... be sure of no safety, not from the worst and vilest sins; for who could tell how he might not stupify himself by degrees, and by one action after another, each a little worse than the former, till the very fires of Sinai would not flash into eyes blinded with the incense arising to the golden calf of his worship? A man may come to worship a devil without knowing it. Only by being filled with a higher spirit than our own, which, having caused our spirits, is one with our spirits, and is in them ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... themselves the cause of it."[1] "It is impossible," you say, "for the State to inflict the death penalty in the name of God,"—But was it not in God's name that Moses,[2] Phinees,[3] and Elias[4] put to death the worshippers of the golden calf, and the apostates of the Old Law?—"These times are altogether different," you reply; "the New Law must not be confounded with the Old. Did not Christ forbid St. Peter to use the sword?"[5] Yes, undoubtedly, but Christ came to suffer, not to defend Himself.[6] ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... of suffering and ignorance among these field hands still, but there is a marked improvement, both as to the intelligence of these masses and their personal comfort. Are they not as intelligent as were the children of Israel when they left Egypt? They made a golden calf to worship after Moses had left them a few days. All ignorant people are prone to depend upon leaders instead of relying ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... inevitably leads to polytheism; they had forgotten that they had seen "no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto" them "in Horeb out of the midst of the fire," and they had worshipped this golden calf as the similitude of God; they had "changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." And that was treason against Him; therefore St. Stephen said, "God turned, and gave them up to ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... were not intended for a golden calf, [25] at which the sick may look and be healed. Christian Scientists should beware of unseen snares, and adhere to the divine Principle and rules for demonstration. They must guard against the deification of finite personality. Every human ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... four most important Tintorets: "The Last Judgment," "The Worship of the Golden Calf," "The Presentation of the Virgin," and "Martyrdom of St. Agnes." The first two are among his largest and mightiest works, but grievously injured by damp and neglect; and unless the traveller is accustomed to decipher the thoughts in a picture patiently, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... observe the Sabbath, Moses received of the Lord the two tables of stone, "written with the finger of God." But as he descended the mountain with these tables, after forty days, and came near the camp, he perceived the golden calf which Aaron had made of the Egyptian ear-rings and jewelry,—made to please the murmuring people, so soon did they forget the true God who brought them out of Egypt. And Moses in anger, cast down the tables ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... do, Mr. H. V. Leslie!" retorted Blake. "I'm not one of your employees, to throw a fit when you put on the heavy pedal, and I'm not one of the lickspittles that are always baa-ing around the Golden Calf. You've had your say. Now I'll have mine. To begin with, let me tell you, I don't need your positions or your money. Griffith has given me work. I'm working ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... MUTT: But Sire, why should we mourn for those who fell? Those turncoats of the money-loving North Deserve the fate that traitor e'er should know. We of the South did loyally uphold Our honor in the combat, for but one Did fall before the golden calf, and he Deep in Louisiana's shades did dwell, Where sugar sweet did ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... recoil from what they call Puritanism, or religion without culture, many have given themselves up to culture without religion, or, at best, with a very diluted form of religion. They have set up for worship the golden calf of art, and danced round it to the pipe which the great Goethe played. They have promulgated what they call the gospel of art,—as Carlyle says, the windiest gospel ever yet preached, which never has saved and never will save any man from ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault of his; but sooner or later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,—but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... very poor. There are very few millionaires among them. A man who has a bank account of fifty thousand dollars is regarded as very rich. I am reminded of an incident which shows that the Southern people fall down and worship a golden calf the same as their deluded brothers of the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... been great before seemed immeasurable! Mamma blessed herself, at the spectacle of power so spiritualized! Miss protested it was immense! Enoch was ready to fall down and worship! I myself did little less than adore: but it was the golden calf of my own creating; it was the divine rhapsody that was immediately to burst upon and astonish ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Paczka exhibited in Berlin, "Vanitas," which excels in richness of fancy and boldness of representation, while wanting somewhat in detail; the ensemble presents a remarkably fine, symbolic composition, which sets forth in rich color the dance of mankind before the golden calf, and the bitter disillusions in the struggle for fame, wealth, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... enforced the doctrines of the Church, had produced in earnest men a vigorous antagonism. Tyranny and unreason of low-minded advocates had brought religion itself into question; and profligacy of courtiers, each worshipping the golden calf seen in his mirror, had spread another form of scepticism. The intellectual scepticism, based upon an honest search for truth, could end only in making truth the surer by its questionings. The other form of scepticism, which might be traced in England from the low-minded ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Paul says, "For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" (Rom. ix. 15). The quotation is from Exodus xxxiii. 19. The Israelites had committed the sin of making the golden calf, and were threatened with destruction; but God was entreated not to destroy them utterly, and Moses was assured that God would extend mercy as He should see fit. The quotation has a bearing upon the position of the Jews and Paul's argument. They were filled with self-sufficiency ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... millionaires of America are animated by the same desire,—the collection of dollars,—they regard their inestimable privileges with very different eyes. Mr Carnegie, for instance, adopts a sentimental view of money. He falls down in humble worship before the golden calf of his own making. He has pompously formulated a gospel of wealth. He piously believes that the millionaire is the greatest of God's creatures, the eloquent preacher of a new evangel. If we are to believe him, there is a sacred virtue in the ceaseless accumulation of riches. It is the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... this material world, there are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfulest flames; and though, by the action of fire, they fall into ignition and liquation, yet will they never suffer a destruction. I would gladly know how Moses, with an actual fire, calcined or burnt the golden calf into powder: for that mystical metal of gold, whose solary and celestial nature I admire, ex- posed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot, and liquefies, but consumeth not; so when the consumable and volatile ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... suggested by his Egyptian experiences, where he had seen sacred bulls worshipped living, and mummied dead. But the remembrance of Aaron and the golden calf was evidently present to him, as the almost verbal quotation of Aaron's words shows. If so, the whole transaction is still more accentuated as a revolt against the ritual of the central sanctuary. 'The much-calumniated Aaron is our example. He was mastered by his brother, but he was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but good of the dead—Mr. Armstrong saw nothing of this fair prospect. To him these trees and lawns were not the work of God. They were property, at so much an acre. He loved money, Miss Innes. He offered up everything to his golden calf. Not power, not ambition, was his fetish: it was money." Then he dropped his pulpit manner, and, turning to me with his engaging smile: "In spite of all this luxury," he said, "the country people here have a saying that Mr. Paul Armstrong could sit on a dollar and ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... temperament suffered, and was martyrized at heart by the scantiness of her pecuniary means. No matter what foolish declarations people make about money, they one and all, if they live in Paris, must grovel before accounts, do homage to figures, and kiss the forked hoof of the golden calf. What a problem was hers! twelve thousand francs a year to defray the costs of a household consisting of father, mother, two children, a chambermaid and cook, living on the second floor of a house in the rue Duphot, in an apartment costing two thousand francs a year. Deduct the dress and ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Discussion. (1) The awe-inspiring ways by which Jehovah made known his presence on Sinai. (2) The several things Israel covenanted to do. (3) The worship of the golden calf and the breaking of the tables of stone. (4) The three great divisions of the law. (5) The law of mercy or of Holiness, what it teaches, and its purpose. (6) Catalogue the different laws of justice ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... me for their God and good Lord, So do their vile deeds with their wicked hearts accord Whilst thou hast talked with me familiarly On Sinai's mountain, the space but of days forty, These sights all they have forgotten clearly, And are turned to shameful idolatry. For their God, they have set up a golden calf. ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... it out since. I regard it as my best contribution to philosophy." "Montes parturiunt," What do they bring forth? Is it a mouse of respectable size? The Boston Herald, which is generally smart, though never profound, says of the symposium, "It has set up Aristotle this year as its golden calf to be worshipped." "But when you ask the question, what does all this talk amount to, it is difficult to give an affirmative answer." "It is simply threshing straw over, again and again." But it is not aware that the Concord straw is merely the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... him much. I wish it would; it would be almost worth while to be upset if Guy Vyvian was going to be upset too—the waster. Well, I wonder anyhow will this show that silly little Rhoda what sort of a creature she's been making a golden calf of.... Well, go and wake Vyvian, then, darling, and then come and tell me what he said to it. Peter, you're dropping ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... among the dusty valleys, glide The silver streams of Jordan's crystal flood; By west, the Midland Sea, with bounders tied Of sandy shores, where Joppa whilom stood; By north Samaria stands, and on that side The golden calf was reared in Bethel wood; Bethlem by south, where Christ incarnate was, A pearl in steel, a diamond ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... idolaters," he counsels, "as were some of them." Not simply the lower class of people were guilty in this respect, but the leaders and examples. As they led, the multitude followed. Even Aaron, the brother of Moses, himself high-priest, swayed by the influential ones, yielded and set up the golden calf (Ex 32, 4) while Moses tarried in the mount. We are astounded that those eminently worthy individuals, having heard God's Word and seen his wonders liberally displayed, should so soon fall unrestrainedly into ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... verdict will send him home to the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But if, which Heaven forbid! it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace,—I do trust in God there is a redeeming spirit in the constitution, which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flames, and to preserve ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... molten image, and the teraphim," which they had stolen on their way thither over Mount Ephraim, appointing the young Levite, the owner of the images, to be priest of their idolatry. In later times it was a station of the golden calf of Jeroboam's institution, that is to say, the revived emblem of Baal, going back to the practice of the Leshemites; and there is yet an idea prevailing in our days that the Druses of the neighbourhood retain that emblem or idol among them—a remarkable instance of the perpetuity ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels—for the golden calf. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... round cadavers, men round gold. Take away the gold, nobody is there. Oh, it has caused tears to flow, this creed of gain! bitter tears, tears of blood, even from those very eyes which once adored the golden calf. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... of one of the fundamental laws in the Decalogue. For if the first command was not disobeyed by all the people, the second was, and these laws are still obligatory, nor can they be broken with impunity. With fatal facility those who worshipped Jeroboam's golden calf became identified with the heathen, and the kingdom thus set upon a false foundation was at last utterly destroyed. And as surely as the tide flows in upon the shore, so surely will the laws of God bring retribution on all who ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... prefer Puritans to clergymen, or vice versa, when Whitgift and Abbot only ran a race of servility and adulation: the result is, that priests of all religions are the same. James and his Levites were worthy of each other; the golden calf and the idolaters were well coupled, and it is Pity they ever came out of the wilderness. I am very glad Mr. Tyson has escaped death and disappointment: pray wish him joy 'of both from me. Has not this Indian summer dispersed your complaints? We are told ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... shadow. He had never been of an envious disposition; he had always looked upon envy as a mean vice, unworthy of a gentleman; but for a moment something very like envy pulled at his heartstrings. Graciella worshipped the golden calf. He worshipped Graciella. But he had no money; he could not have taken her to the ball in a closed carriage, drawn by blooded horses and driven by ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... left in charge of the Israelites when Moses and Joshua ascended the mount to receive the Tables of the Law (xxiv. 12-15), and when the people, in dismay at the prolonged absence of their leader, demanded a god, it was at the instigation of Aaron that the golden calf was made (see CALF, GOLDEN). This was regarded as an act of apostasy which, according to one tradition, led to the consecration of the Levites, and almost cost Aaron his life (cp. Deut. ix. 20). The incident ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... do for a rich old man, who wishes to present a juvenile appearance while he is buying a young wife. No less than three clergymen were present, conducting the sale. The demeanour of the rich congregation was worthy of the glorious bygone days of the Golden Calf. So far as could be judged by appearances, one old lady, in a pew close to the place at which Amelius and Sally were standing, seemed to be the only person present who was not favourably impressed by ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... metrical action united in religious festivals. In the Hebrew writings we read that the triumphal ode composed by Moses on the defeat of the Egyptians, was sung to an accompaniment of dancing and timbrels. The Israelites danced and sung "at the inauguration of the golden calf. And as it is generally agreed that this representation of the Deity was borrowed from the mysteries of Apis, it is probable that the dancing was copied from that of the Egyptians on those occasions." Again, in Greece the like ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... commandment forbids all representations, whether of the one God or of false deities. The golden calf, which was a symbol of Jehovah, is condemned equally with the fair forms that haunted the Greek Olympus, or the half-bestial shapes of Egyptian mythology. The reasons for the prohibition may be considered as two,—the impossibility of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... formulation of public opinion, but an expression of personal and particular belief. For this reason it is more likely to be true. Public opinion is seldom so important as private opinion. Socrates was right and Athens wrong. Very frequently the multitude at the foot of the mountain are worshiping a golden calf, while the prophet, lonely and aloof upon the summit, is hearkening to the very voice ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... this warfare Voltaire may be considered the leader, in his celebrated attack on the chemical processes recorded in Scripture; in which he exposed himself to the ridicule of all the chemists and metallurgists in Europe, by denying the possibility of dissolving the golden calf; the solution of gold being actually found in every gilder's shop in Paris, and known even to coiners and forgers, for hundreds of years before he made this notable ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the more so because you do not worship the golden calf, and do not want to hurry me into my grave as the others do. To tell you all: I wish to settle everything on you while I live, the estate, the house, the money, and all—no, don't run away! I am not crazy, and you need not be afraid that I want you to live here ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... destined for some puppet, some gold image of his choosing, Doubtless, who was made to worship like the golden calf of old, With no merit but her riches, but such shame my soul refusing, I was cast forth without blessing, poor and ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... of hearing." The table is garnished with "The Cow Pox Chronicle," and a skull and bones, while the walls are decorated with pictures depicting a fight between death and a pugilist, the Hottentot Venus, a group of various nations worshipping the golden calf, and the lady without arms or legs. The hand of the clock points to the hour of eleven. Judging by the pile of money-bags lying at the foot of the president's chair, and the two members of the court who are busily ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... slab of porphyry, and here is S. Christopher with his precious burden. The campanile has a round top and flowers sprout from the masonry. Within, the chief glory is Tintoretto. His tomb is in the chapel to the right of the chancel, where hang, on the left, his scene of "The Worship of the Golden Calf," and ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... to "bolstering up her own art and ritual theory." It can, indeed, be no matter for surprise that such suspicions should be aroused. When, for instance, an educated man hears that the Israelites worshipped a golden calf, or that the owl and the peacock were respectively sacred to Juno and Minerva, he can readily understand what is meant. But when he is told that an Australian Emu man, strutting about in the feathers of that bird, does not ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... interfered, and nearly sent the Moravian ship to the bottom {1753.}. He appealed to the example of Moses and Paul. As Moses, he said, had rebuked the Israelites when they made the golden calf, and as Paul had resisted Peter and Barnabas when carried away with the dissimulation of the Jews, so he, as a champion of the Church of Christ, could hold his peace no longer. He attacked the Count ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... censure, upright Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter; sleeves of lawn, a great man's smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie, or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred;—but to worship the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hold of something to which George was altogether a stranger? Surely it is something more to stand with Moses upon Mount Sinai, and see the back of God through ever so many folds of cloudy darkness, than be sitting down to eat and drink, or rising up to play about the golden calf, at the foot of the mountain. And that Thomas was possessed of some divine secret, the heart of child Annie was perfectly convinced; the tone of his utterance having a greater share in producing this conviction than anything he ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... I did. It was the glamour of his imaginary wealth. It was the worship of the golden calf, exemplified in one of its vilest phases, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition, freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the world, revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle detection of what he conceived to be an error in the school he had hitherto adopted, made more manifest to him by the grinning commentary of Nicot, seemed to open to him a new world of invention. He seized the happy moment,—he placed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... or less it would be true. We all are pagans; we cannot help ourselves, for every one of us is necessarily affected by the spirit of his generation. Nobody indeed says, "Go to, I will be a pagan"; but the old story of Aaron's golden calf repeats itself continually. Aaron, when Moses rebuked him, said naively, "There came out this calf." That exactly describes the situation. That calf is the only really authentic example of spontaneous ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... set the best leg before, for their vindication; yet inwardly to make them blush and fail before their accuser. Indeed their inward shame is the cause of their excuse; even as Aaron, when he had made the golden calf, could not for shame of heart confess in plainness of speech the truth of the fact to his brother Moses, but faulteringly: They gave me their gold, saith he, and "I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf" (Exo 32:24). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... miracles as Moses did in Egypt." To this I answered, "Possibly you may harden your hearts against them as Pharaoh and the Egyptians did." And reply was made, "We will not." But again I said, "Assure me of a certainty, that you will not dance about a golden calf and adore it, as the posterity of Jacob did within a month after they had seen the whole Mount Sinai on fire, and heard Jehovah himself speaking out of the fire, thus after the greatest of all miracles;" (a golden calf in the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... illustrations of this truth. Whilst Moses lingered on the Mount, whence the children of Israel knew that the law was to be given, and from whence such evident demonstrations of the divine power had been manifest to the people, they were employed in making the golden calf to go before them, and crying "these are thy Gods, O Israel!" And when they had received the law, written by the finger of God, and were somewhat humbled under the correction of their sins, how few were there, who carried out its injunctions in their ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... associated with the bull, his association with the lamb belonged more to the Roman period. Somewhat the same happened in the case of Attis. In the Bible we read of the indignation of Moses at the setting up by the Israelites of a Golden Calf, AFTER the sacrifice of the ram-lamb had been instituted—as if indeed the rebellious people were returning to the earlier cult of Apis which they ought to have left behind them in Egypt. In Egypt itself, too, we find the worship of Apis, as time went on, yielding place to that ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... worldly man had won her by his success and his worldliness. The glitter of the gold had caught her; and so she had been unhappy, and had pined, and worn herself with grief till she could break away from her honest troth, and bind herself to the horn of the golden calf. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... as found in the Old Testament are illustrated by the worship of the bull and the serpent. Portable gilded images of bulls were consecrated and Hosea protested against the worship of the bull in the kingdom of Israel (Hos. VIII, 5; X, 5). The famous golden calf of the Israelites, which was the object of Moses' anger, was a totemic idol. The worship of the serpent was practiced by Moses himself (Num. XXI, 9). A brazen serpent was worshiped in the temple ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... of privilege that he was insane. At other times, when he was insisting upon justice even to men who had achieved material success, he was placed by the more rabid of the radical opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... see the Gaul's wife in her own person, and yet cannot exist without the sweet presence of the fair one, you make a portrait of clay to make love to, and you will carry on idolatry before it, as once the Jews did before the golden calf ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of Hugh Johnstone. There was hurrying to and fro on their appearance, and in ten minutes a second carriage received the disguised Alixe Delavigne, while the Manager of Grindlay's escorted her, under the eyes of her two guardians. The Golden Calf was the reigning god, even in these ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... would form the greatest possible tactical error. The goal would be unjustifiably obscured, and the aspiration of the membership stunted, through the enshrining of a false and inferior goal—a literary Golden Calf. We must envisage a genuine scale of values, and possess a model of genuine excellence toward which to strive. It would pay better to work toward a high standard oneself, than to seek to drag the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... on the garden bench, had grown rigid in the posture described above—his mouth awry, his eyes gleaming. So this is what has happened! In a few weeks after the death of the hapless Cara he is active and triumphant; he hurls his lariat on the golden calf and captures new millions. A demi-god! A Titan! The king of markets! He sweeps forward in seven-league boots over roads, at the crossing-points of which are Americans with milliards, they are millionnaires no longer, but masters of milliards. He is the man who, as Baron Emil said, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... reply thereto: "If thou desirest to bring forth the truth, address thyself to each of the tribes separately." (6) Kenaz began with his own, the tribe of Judah. The wicked of Judah confessed to the sin of worshipping the golden calf, like unto their forefathers in the desert. The Reubenites had burnt sacrifices to idols. The Levites said: "We desired to prove whether the Tabernacle is holy." Those of the tribe of Issachar replied: "We consulted idols to know what will become of us." (7) The sinners ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... proselyte who cast the golden calf at the bidding of Aaron. After he had made it, he took up some dust on which Gabriel's horse had set its feet, threw it into the calf's mouth, and immediately the calf became animated and began to low. Al Beid[^a]wi says that Al S[^a]meri was not really a proper name, but that the real name ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... ambitions seemed unlikely to make further headway. The new Baron and his wife, their title and money notwithstanding, did not "go down" in their particular segment of county society, and in London there were other titles and incomes to compete with. People were willing to worship the Golden Calf, but allowed themselves a choice of altars. No one could justly say that the Shalems were either oppressively vulgar or insufferably bumptious; probably the chief reason for their lack of popularity was their intense and obvious desire to be popular. They kept open house in such an insistently ...
— When William Came • Saki |
