he was just as well as merciful, and (it was the old story) he hated sin.
Disobedience was sin, and Uzzah had been disobedient.

As for the lambs and the he-goats, Jesus had done away with all that. He
was God's son, and he had propitiated God's anger and satisfied his
justice when he shed his own blood on the cross to save sinners. Without
shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. You were not to bother
about the blood.

But you couldn't help bothering about it. You couldn't help being sorry
for Uzzah and the Midianites and the lambs and the he-goats.

Perhaps you had to sort things out and keep them separate. Here was the
world, here were Mamma and Mark and kittens and rabbits, and all the
things you really cared about: drawing pictures, and playing the
Hungarian March and getting excited in the Easter holidays when the white
evenings came and Mark raced you from the Green Man to the Horns Tavern.
Here was the sudden, secret happiness you felt when you were by yourself
and the fields looked beautiful. It was always coming now, with a sort of
rush and flash, when you least expected it.

And _there_ was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion
was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding
bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the
things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't
honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness
was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for
you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done
it.