establishment of a dynasty,--"a sure house." Jeroboam made choice of
Shechem for his capital; and from political reasons,--for fear that the
people should, according to their custom, go up to Jerusalem to worship
at the great festivals of the nation, and perhaps return to their
allegiance to the house of David, while perhaps also to compromise with
their already corrupted and unspiritualized religious sense,--he made
two golden calves and set them up for religious worship: one in Bethel,
at the southern end of the kingdom; the other in Dan, at the far north.

It does not appear that the people of Israel as yet ignored Jehovah as
God; but they worshipped him in the form of the same Egyptian symbol
that Aaron had set up in the wilderness,--a grave offence, although not
an utter apostasy. Moreover, this was the act of the king rather than of
the priests or his own subjects.

Stanley makes a significant comment on this act of the new king, which
the sacred narrative refers to as "the sin of Jeroboam, the son of
Nebat, who made Israel to sin." He says: "The Golden Image was doubtless
intended as a likeness of the One True God. But the mere fact of setting
up such a likeness broke down the sacred awe which had hitherto marked
the Divine Presence, and accustomed the minds of the Israelites to the
very sin against which the new form was intended to be a safeguard. From
worshipping God under a false and unauthorized form they gradually
learned to worship other gods altogether.... 'The sin of Jeroboam, the
son of Nebat,' is the sin again and again repeated in the
policy--half-worldly, half-religious--which has prevailed through large
tracts of ecclesiastical history.... For the sake of supporting the
faith of the multitude, lest they should fall away to rival sects, ...
false arguments have been used in support of religious truths, false
miracles promulgated or tolerated, false readings in the sacred text