You will see that he demands of fathers the blood of their sons. Read
the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the third chapter of Numbers, "And
I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel,"
etc.
How, in the desert of Sinai, did the Jews obtain curtains of fine linen?
How did these absconding slaves make cherubs of gold? Where did they get
the skins of badgers, and how did they dye them red? How did they make
wreathed chains and spoons, basins and tongs? Where did they get the
blue cloth and their purple? Where did they get the sockets of brass?
How did they coin the shekel of the sanctuary? How did they overlay
boards with gold? Where did they get the numberless instruments and
tools necessary to accomplish all these things? Where did they get the
fine flour and the oil? Were all these found in the desert of Sinai?
Is it a sin to ask these questions? Are all these doubts born of a
malignant and depraved heart? Why should God in this desert prohibit
priests from drinking wine, and from eating moist grapes? How could
these priests get wine?
Do not these passages show that these laws were made long after the Jews
had left the desert, and that they were not given from Sinai? Can you
imagine a God silly enough to tell a horde of wandering savages upon a
desert that they must not eat any fruit of the trees they planted until
the fourth year?
Forty-fifth. Ought a man to be despised and persecuted for denying that
God ordered the priests to make women drink dirt and water to test their
virtue? 1 Or for denying that over the tabernacle there was a cloud
during the day and fire by night, and that the cloud lifted up when God
wished the Jews to travel, and that until it was lifted they remained in
their tents?2