Exodus 32:24

There came out this calf.

Aaron’s excuse

I. There never was a speech more true to one disposition of our human nature than this of Aaron. We are all ready to lay the blame on the furnaces. “The fire did it,” we are all of us ready enough to say. “In better times we might have been better, broader men, but now, behold, God puts us into the fire, and we came out thus.” Our age, our society, is what, with this figure taken out of the old story of Exodus, we have been calling it. It is the furnace. Its fire can set, and fix, and fasten what the man puts into it. But, properly speaking, it can create no character. It can make no truly faithful soul a doubter. It never did. It never can.

II. The subtlety and attractiveness of this excuse extends not only to the results which we see coming forth in ourselves; it covers also the fortunes of those for whom we are responsible. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister, fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls.

III. There is delusion and self-deception in this excuse. Very rarely indeed does a man excuse himself to other men and yet remain absolutely unexcused in his own eyes. Often the very way to help ourselves most to a result which we have set before ourselves is just to put ourselves into a current which is sweeping on that way, and then lie still, and let the current do the rest, and in all such cases it is so easy to ignore or to forget the first step, and so to say that it is only the drift of the current which is to blame for the dreary shore on which at last our lives are cast up by the stream.

IV. If the world is thus full of the Aaron spirit, where are we to find its cure? Its source is a vague and defective sense of personality. I cannot look for its cure anywhere short of that great assertion of the human personality which is made when a man personally enters into the power of Jesus Christ. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)

Shifting responsibility

I. Aaron blamed society. Thus is it with men now. Yielding to the pressure of society, we do not live out our highest convictions.

1. We defer to public opinion. Great is the tyranny of public opinion, and many dare not brave it. Aaron dare not in the text, and thousands still are overawed by it. We like to be talked about, but not against. We stay short of being what we ought to be, of doing what we ought to do, for fear of the adverse criticism of our neighbours, work-fellows, countrymen.

2. We defer to public custom. The Jewish rabble wanted images, such as were in Egypt, and Aaron had not courage to resist the demand. So we often bow to the questionable customs of society. Our convictions are otherwise, but we have not the bravery to be singular--we cast a grain of incense on the world’s altar when we ought to hurl a stone at its gods.

3. We defer to public violence. “They gathered themselves together unto” (verse 1)--rather “against”--Aaron in a tumultuous manner, to compel him to do what they wished. And Aaron was coerced by them. So we often fear the anger, menace, violence of those around us, and act a consciously unworthy part. Aaron in the text blaming “the people” is a picture of thousands of us to-day! We do not wish to act thus and thus, but we are the victims of our social surroundings. It is not I, but the people. We, none of us, are guilty; it is the crowd behind which pushes us.

II. He blamed nature. “I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.” As if it were not his fault, but nature’s. He says nothing about the mould that he made; nothing about the graving tool that he used (verse 4); but nature has done it--it has done itself. So do we reason still.

1. We blame nature for our sins. We ignore the fact that we failed to interpose our will; that we fed the fires of passion; that in making preparation for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, we constructed the mould.

2. We blame nature for our miseries.

Lessons:

1. The childishness of this method of shifting responsibility.

2. The foolishness of it.

3. The uselessness of it. (W. L. Watkinson.)

Aaron’s apology

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.)

Excuses for sin

Here is a man all gross and sensual, a man still young who has already lost the freshness, glory, and purity of youth. Suppose you question him about his life. You expect him to be ashamed, repentant. There is not a sign of anything like that! He says: “I am the victim of circumstances. What a corrupt, licentious, profane age this is in which we live! When I was in college I got into a bad set. When I went into business I was surrounded by bad influences. When I grew rich, men flattered me. When I grew poor, men bullied me. The world has made me what I am, this fiery, passionate, wicked world. I had in my hands the gold of my boyhood which God gave me. Then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.” Another man is not a profligate, but is a miser, or a mere business machine. “What can you ask of me?” he says; “this is a mercantile community. The business man who does not attend to his business goes to the wall. I am what this intense commercial life has made me. I put my life in there, and it came out this.” And then he gazes fondly at his golden calf, and his knees bend under him with the old long habit of worshipping it, and he loves it still, even while he abuses and disowns it. And so with the woman of society. “The fire made me this,” she says of her frivolity and pride. And so of the politician and his selfishness and partisanship. “I put my principles into the furnace, and this came out.” And so of the bigot and his bigotry, the one-sided Conservative with his stubborn resistance to all progress, the one-sided Radical with his ruthless iconoclasm. So of all partial and fanatical men. “The furnace made us,” they are ready to declare. Remember that the subtlety and attractiveness of this excuse, this plausible attributing of power to inanimate things and exterior conditions to create what only man can make, extends not only to the results which we see coming forth in ourselves; it covers also the fortunes of those for whom we are responsible. The father says of his profligate son, for whom he has never done one wise or vigorous thing to make a noble and pure-minded man: “I cannot tell how it has come. It has not been my fault. I put him into the world, and this came out.” The father whose faith has been mean and selfish says the same of his boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls. If we say to it, “Make us noble,” it does make us noble. If we say to it, “Make us mean,” it does make us mean. And then we take the nobility and say, “Behold, how noble I have made myself.” And we take the meanness and say, “See how mean the world has made me.”.. . The only hope for any of us is in a perfectly honest manliness to claim our sins. “I did it, I did it,” let me say of all my wickedness. Let me refuse to listen for one moment to any voice which would make my sins less mine. It is the only honest and the only hopeful way, the only way to know and be ourselves. When we have done that, then we are ready for the gospel, ready for all that Christ wants to show us that we may become, and for all the powerful grace by which He wants to make us be it perfectly. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)