It is blasphemy to deny that Jahveh was so passionate (God is without passions, Art. I.), and so vain that he could only be restrained from smiting his people by the appeal of Moses to his vanity: “Then the Egyptians shall hear it.... and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land.... the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying: Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness” (Numbers xiv., 12—16). This suggestion, most ingeniously introduced by Moses — who “managed” Jahveh with admirable tact — proved successful, and “the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word” (v. 20). Yet it is blasphemy to say that god changes his purpose.
Furthermore, although it is blasphemy to deny that u he is faithful that promised” (Heb. x., 23), yet we must believe that Jahveh declared to the Israelites, “ye shall know my breach of promise” (Numbers xiv., 34).
It is blasphemy to deny that Jahveh commanded that a man who “gathered sticks upon the sabbath day” (xv., 32—36) should be stoned to death. Yet is it equally blasphemy to deny that Jesus, the representative and first-begotten of Jahveh, condemned the Pharisees who declared that his disciples did “that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day” (Matt, xii., 2), when they gathered corn.
The poor Pharisees tried to obey the law as given by Jahveh; their reward was to be condemned by his son. Yet it is blasphemy to deny that “I and my Father are one” (John x., 30).
It is blasphemy to deny that Jahveh commanded the Israelites to “make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a riband of blue: and it shall be unto you for a fringe” (Numbers xv., 38, 39). It is hard to believe, though it is blasphemy to deny, that the “Eternal Spirit” troubled himself about “a fringe.”
It is blasphemy to deny that there is a “pit,” within the earth, into which people may fall alive, when the earth opens her mouth and swallows them up; further, that Korah, Dathan and Abiram, their wives, their sons and their little children, were so swallowed up, and “went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them” (Numb, xvi., 27—33).