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 MOSES: 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
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 HENRY GEORGE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "Progress and Poverty," "Social Problems," 
 
 "Land Question," "Protection and Free Trade," 
 
 delivered in 
 
 ST. ANDREW'S HALL, GLASGOW, 
 
 I^ECEIlWI^Eft 28, 1884. 
 
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 Labour Questions and Empire (by Wm. D. Hamilton), 
 
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 Economic Principles (by Mrs. Eliza Stowe Twitchell), 
 
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a 
 
 MOSES." 
 
 '■>X<^ 
 
 -An audience that filled the St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow, to over- 
 flowing, assembled at 7 o'clock on Sunday evening, 28th 
 December, 1884, to hear Mr. George deliver his lecture on 
 ■" Moses," the great Law-giver of the Hebrews. 
 
 There is in modern thought a tendency to look upon the 
 prominent characters of history as resultants rather than as 
 initiatory forces. As in an earlier stage the irresistible disposition 
 is to personification, so now it is to reverse this process, and to 
 resolve into myths mighty figures long enshrined by tradition. 
 
 Yet, if we try to trace to their sources movements whose per- 
 petuated impulses eddy and play in the currents of our times, we 
 at last reach the individual. It is true that "institutions make 
 men," but it is also true that "in the beginnings men make 
 institutions." 
 
 In a well-known passage Macaulay has described the im- 
 pression made upon the imagination by the antiquity of that 
 church, which, surviving dynasties and empires, carries the mind 
 back to a time when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon 
 and camelopard and tiger bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. 
 But there still exist among us observances — transmitted in un- 
 broken succession from father to son — that go back to a yet 
 more remote past. Each recurring year brings a day on which, 
 in every land, there are men who, gathering about them their 
 families, and attired as if for a journey, eat with solemnity a 
 hurried meal. Before the walls of Rome were traced, before 
 Homer sung, this feast was kept, and the event to which it points 
 was even then centuries old. 
 
That event signals the entrance upon the historic stage of 2» 
 people on many accounts remarkable — a people who, though they 
 never founded a great empire nor built a great metropolis, have 
 exercised upon a large portion of mankind an influence, wide- 
 spread, potent, and continuous ; a people who have for nearly 
 two thousand years been without country or organised nationality^ 
 yet have preserved their identity and faith through all vicissitudes of 
 time and fortune — who have been overthrown, crushed, scattered ; 
 who have been ground, as it were, to very dust, and flung to the 
 four winds of heaven ; yet who, though thrones have fallen, and 
 empires have perished, and creeds have changed, and living, 
 tongues have become dead, still exist with a vitality seemingly- 
 unimpaired — a people who unite the strangest contradictions ; 
 whose annals now blaze with glory, now sound the depths of 
 shame and woe. 
 
 The advent of such a people marks an epoch in the history 
 of the world. But it is not of that advent so much as of the 
 central and colossal figure around which its traditions cluster thati 
 I propose to speak. 
 
 Three great religions place the leader of the Exodus upon the 
 highest plane they allot to man. To Christendom and to Islam, 
 as well as to Judaism, Moses is the mouthpiece and law-giver of 
 the Most High ; the medium, clothed with supernatural powers, 
 through which the Divine Will has spoken. Yet this very exalta- 
 tion, by raising him above comparison, may prevent the real' 
 grandeur of the man from being seen. It is amid his brethren, 
 that Saul stands taller and fairer. 
 
 On the other hand, the latest school of Biblical criticism' 
 asserts that the books and legislation attributed to Moses are- 
 really the product of an age subsequent to that of the prophets. 
 Yet to this Moses, looming vague and dim, of whom they can 
 tell us almost nothing, they, too, attribute the beginning of that 
 growth which flowered after centuries in the humanities of Jewish- 
 law, and in the sublime conception of one God, universal and> 
 eternal, the Almighty Father ; and again, higher still and fairer rose 
 that guiding star of spiritual light which rested over the stable of 
 Bethlehem in Judea. 
 
 But whether wont to look on Moses in this way or in that, it 
 may be sometimes worth our while to take the point of view in- 
 which all shades of belief or disbelief may find common ground,, 
 and accepting the main features of Hebrew record and tradition,, 
 consider them in the light of history as we know it, and of human, 
 nature as it shows itself to-day. Here is a case in which sacreci " 
 
'history maybe treated as we would treat profane history without 
 ;any shock to religious feeling. Nor can the keenest criticism 
 resolve Moses into a myth. The fact of the Exodus presupposes 
 such a leader. 
 
 To lead into freedom a people long crushed by tyranny ; to 
 discipline and order such a mighty host ; to harden them into 
 fighting men, before whom warlike tribes quailed and walled cities 
 went down ; to repress discontent and jealousy and mutiny; to 
 combat reactions and reversions ; to turn the quick, fierce flame of 
 'enthusiasm to the service of a steady purpose, require some 
 towering character — a character blending in highest expression 
 the qualities of politician, patriot, philosopher, and statesman. 
 
 Such a characteir in rough but strong outline the tradition 
 -shows us — ^the union of the wisdom of the Egyptians with the 
 unselfish devotion of the meekest of men. From first to last, in 
 -every glimpse we get, this character is consistent with itself, and 
 with the mighty work which is its monument. It is the character 
 •of a great mind, hemmed in by conditions and limitations, and 
 working with such forces and materials as were at hand — 
 accomplishing, yet failing. Behind grand deed, a grander thought. 
 Behind high performance the still nobler ideal. 
 
 Egypt was the mould of the Hebrew nation — the matrix, so to 
 •speak, in which a single family, or, at most, a small tribe grew to 
 a people as numerous as the American people at the time of the 
 Declaration of Independence. For four centuries, according to 
 the Hebrew tradition — that is to say, for a period longer than 
 America has been known to Europe — this growing people, coming 
 a patriarchal family from a roving, pastoral life, had been placed 
 under the dominance of a highly developed and ancient civilisa- 
 tion — a civilisation whose fixity is symbolised by monuments that 
 rival in endurance the everlasting hills — a civilisation so ancient 
 ithat the Pyramids, as we now know, were hoary with centuries ere 
 Abraham looked upon them. 
 
 No matter how clearly the descendants of the kinsmen who 
 came into Egypt at the invitation of the boy-slave become prime 
 minister, maintained the distinction of race, and the traditions of 
 .a freer life, they must have been powerfully affected by such a 
 •civilisation; and just as the Hebrews of to-day are Polish in Poland, 
 •German in Germany, and American in the United States, so, but 
 iar more clearly and strongly, the Hebrews of the Exodus must 
 -have been essentially Egyptians. 
 
 It is not remarkable, therefore, that the ancient Hebrew institu- 
 tions show in so many points the influence of Egyptian ideas 
 And customs. What is remarkable is the dissimilarity. To the 
 
unreflecting nothing may seem more natural than that a people, m^ 
 turning their backs upon a land where they had been long., 
 oppressed, should discard its ideas and institutions. But the 
 student of history, the observer of politics, knows that nothing is 
 more unnatural. Habits of thought are even more tyrannous than> 
 habits of the body. They make for the masses of men a mental 
 atmosphere out of which they can no more rise than out of the- 
 physical atmosphere. A people long used to despotism may 
 rebel against a tyrant ; they may break his statutes and repeal his> 
 laws, cover with odium that which he loved, and honour that 
 which he hated ; but they will hasten to set up another tyrant, 
 in his place. A people used to superstition may embrace a purer 
 faith, but it will be only to degrade it to their old ideas. A people 
 used to persecution may flee from it, but only to persecute in their 
 turn when they get power. 
 
 For " institutions make men." And when amid a people used 
 to institutions of one kind, we see suddenly arise institutions of 
 an opposite kind, we know that behind them must be that active,, 
 that initiative force — the men who in the beginnings make- 
 institutions. 
 
 This is what occurs in the Exodus. The striking differences' 
 between Egyptian and Hebrew polity are not of form but of 
 essence. The tendency of the one is to subordination and 
 oppression ; of the other, to individual freedom. Strangest of 
 recorded births ! from out the strongest and most splendid 
 despotism of antiquity comes the freest republic. From between 
 the paws of the rock-hewn Sphinx rises the genius of human 
 liberty, and the trumpets of the Exodus throb with the defiant 
 proclamation of the rights of man. 
 
 Consider what Egypt was. The very grandeur of her monu- 
 ments, that after the lapse, not of centuries but of millenniums^. 
 seem to say to us, as the Egyptian priests said to the boaslful 
 Greeks, "Ye are children!" testify to the enslavement of the 
 people — are the enduring witnesses of a social organisation that 
 rested on the masses an immovable weight. That narrow Nile 
 valley, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of 
 the greatest triumphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its- 
 most abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendour,, 
 its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal power,, 
 and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mystical religion, was 
 as a god on earth, to cover whose poor carcass with a tomb" 
 befitting his state hundreds of thousands toiled away their lives. 
 For the classes who came next to him were all the- sensuous delights- 
 pf a most luxurious civilisation, and high intellectual pleasures^ 
 
7 
 
 which the mysteries of the temple hid from vulgar profanation. 
 But for the millions who constituted the base of the social pyramid 
 there was but the lash to stimulate their toil, and the worship of 
 beasts to satisfy the yearnings of the soul. From time immemorial 
 to the present day the lot of the Egyptian peasant has been to 
 work and to starve that those above him might live daintily. He 
 has never rebelled. The spirit for that was long ago crushed out 
 of him by institutions which make him what he is. He knows 
 but to suffer and to die. 
 
 Imagine what opportune circumstances we may, yet to organise 
 and carry on a movement resulting in the release of a great people 
 from such a soul-subduing tyranny, backed by an army of half 
 a million highly trained soldiers, requires a leadership of most 
 commanding and consummate genius. But this task, surpassingly 
 great though it is, is not the measure of the greatness of the leader 
 of the Exodus. It is not in the deliverance from Egypt, it is in 
 the constructive statemanship that laid the foundations of the 
 Hebrew commonwealth that the superlative grandeur of that 
 leadership looms up. As we cannot imagine the Exodus without 
 the great leader, neither can we account for the Hebrew polity 
 without the great statesman. Not merely intellectually great, but 
 morally great- -a statesman aglow with the unselfish patriotism 
 that refuses to grasp a sceptre or found a dynasty. 
 
 The lessons of modern history, the manifestations of human 
 nature that we behold around us, would teach us to see in the 
 essential divergence of the Hebrew polity from that of Egypt the 
 impress of a master mind, even if Hebrew tradition had not 
 testified both to the influence of such a mind, and to the constant 
 disposition of accustomed ideas to reassert themselves in the 
 minds of the people. Over and over again the murmurings 
 break out ; no sooner is the back of Moses turned than the cry, 
 " These be thy gods, O Israel ! " announces the setting up of the 
 Egyptian calf; while the strength of the monarchical principle 
 shows itself in the inauguration of a king as quickly as the far- 
 reaching influence of the great leader is somewhat spent. 
 
 It matters not when or by whom were compiled the books 
 popularly attributed to Moses ; it matters not how much of the 
 code there given may be the survivals of more ancient usage or 
 the amplifications of a later age ; its great features bear the stamp 
 of a mind far in advance of people and time, of a mind that 
 beneath effects sought for causes, of a mind that drifted not with 
 the tide of events but aimed at a definite purpose. "* 
 
 The outlines that the record gives us of the character of 
 Moses — the brief relations that wherever the Hebrew scriptures 
 
are read have hung the chambers of the imagination with vivid 
 pictures — are in every way consistent with this idea. What we 
 know of the Ufe illustrates what we know of the work. What we 
 know of the work illumines the life. 
 
 It was not an empire such as had reached full development in 
 Egypt, or existed in rudimentary patriarchal form in the tribes 
 around, that Moses aimed to found. Nor was it a republic 
 where the freedom of the citizen rested on the servitude of the 
 helot, and the individual was sacrificed to the state. It was a 
 commonwealth based upon the individual — a commonwealth whose 
 ideal it was that every man should sit under his own vine and fig 
 tree, with none to vex him or make him afraid ; a commonwealth 
 in which none should be condemned to ceaseless toil ; in which, 
 for even the bond slave, there should be hope ; in which, for even 
 the beast of burden, there should be rest. A commonwealth in 
 which, in the absence of deep poverty, the manly virtues that 
 spring from personal independence should harden into a national 
 character — a commonwealth in which the family affections might 
 knit their tendrils around each member, binding with links 
 stronger than steel the various parts into the living whole. 
 
 It is not the protection of property, but the protection of 
 humanity, that is the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sanctions are 
 not directed to securing the strong in heaping up wealth so much 
 as to preventing the weak from being crowded to the wall. At 
 every point it interposes its barriers to the selfish greed that, if left 
 unchecked, will surely differentiate men into landlord and serf, 
 capitalist and workman, millionaire and tramp, ruler and ruled. 
 Its Sabbath day and Sabbath year secure, even to the lowliest, rest 
 and leisure. With the blast of the jubilee trumpets the slave goes 
 free, the debt that cannot be paid is cancelled, and a re-division of 
 the land secures again to the poorest his fair share in the bounty 
 of the common Creator. The reaper must leave something for 
 the gleaner ; even the ox cannot be muzzled as he treadeth out 
 the corn. Everywhere, in everything, the dominant idea is that 
 of our homely phrase — " Live and let live ! " 
 
 • ,And the religion with which this civil policy is so closely inter- 
 twined exhibits kindred features — from the idea of the brotherhood 
 of man springs the idea of the fatherhood of God. Though the 
 forms may resemble those of Egypt, the spirit is that which Egypt 
 had lost. Though a hereditary priesthood is retained, the law in 
 its fullness is announced to all the people. Though the Egyptian . 
 rite of circumcision is preserved, and Egyptian symbols reappear 1 
 in all the externals of worship, the tendency to take the type for 1 
 the reality is sternly repressed. It is only when we think of the 
 
13U11S and the hawks, of the deified cats and sacred ichneumons of 
 Egypt, that we realise the full meaning of the command — " Thou 
 •shalt not make to thyself any graven image ! " 
 
 And if we seek beneath form and symbol and command, the 
 thought of which they are but the expression, we find that the 
 great distinctive feature of the Hebrew religion, that which 
 separates it by such a wide gulf from the religions amid which it grew 
 ■up, is its utilitarianism, its recognition of divine law in human life. 
 It asserts, not a God whose domain is confined to the far off 
 beginning or the vague future, who is over and above and beyond 
 men, but a God who in his inexorable laws is here and now ; a 
 God of the living as well as of the dead ; a God of the market 
 place as well as of the temple ; a God whose judgments wait not 
 another world for execution, but whose immutable decrees will, in 
 this life, give happiness to the people that heed them and bring 
 misery upon the people that forget them. Amid the forms of 
 splendid degradation in which a once noble religion had in Egypt 
 sunk to petrifaction, amid a social order in which the divine justice 
 seemed to sleep, I AM was the truth that dawned upon Moses. 
 And in his desert contemplation of nature's flux and reflux, the 
 death that bounds her life, the life she brings from death, always 
 consuming yet never consumed — I AM was the message that fell 
 upon his inner ear. 
 
 The absence in the Mosaic books of any reference to a future 
 life is only intelligible by the prominence into which this truth is 
 brought. Nothing could have been more familiar to the Hebrews 
 •of the Exodus than the doctrine of immortality. The continued 
 existence of the soul, the judgment after death, the rewards and 
 punishments of the future state, were the constant subjects of 
 Egyptian thought and art. But a truth may be hidden or thrown 
 into the background by the intensity with which another truth is 
 grasped. And the doctrine of immortality, springing as it does 
 from the very depths of human nature, ministering to aspirations 
 which become stronger and stronger as intellectual life rises to 
 higher planes and the life of the affections becomes more intense, 
 may yet become so incrustei with degrading superstitions, may 
 'be turned by craft and selfishness into such a potent instrument 
 for enslavement, and so used to justify crimes at which every 
 'natural instinct revolts, that to the earnest spirit of the social 
 reformer it may seem like an agency of oppression to enchain the 
 intellect and prevent true progress ; a lying device with which the 
 cunning fetter the credulous. 
 
 ' The belief in the immortality of the soul must have existed in 
 -strong forms among the masses of the Hebrew people. But the 
 
10 
 
 truth that Moses brought so prominently forward, the truth his- 
 gaze was concentrated upon, is a truth that has often been thrust 
 aside by the doctrine of immortality, and that may perhaps, at 
 times, react on it in the same way. This is the truth that the 
 actions of men bear fruit in this world, that though on the petty 
 scale of individual life wickedness may seem to go unpunished 
 and wrong to be rewarded, there is yet a Nemesis that with tireless 
 feet and pitiless arm follows every national crime, and smites the 
 children for the father's trangression ; the truth that each individual 
 must act upon and be acted upon by the society of which he is a 
 part, that all must in some degree suffer for the sin of each, and 
 the life of each be dominated by the conditions imposed by all. 
 
 It is the intense appreciation of this truth that gives the Mosaic 
 institutions so practical and utilitarian a character. Their genius,. 
 if I niay so speak, leaves the abstract speculations where thought- 
 so easily loses and wastes itself, or finds expression only in symbols 
 that become finally but the basis of superstition, in order that it 
 may concentrate attention upon the laws which determine the 
 happiness or misery of men upon this earth. Its lessons have 
 never tended to the essential selfishness of asceticism, which is so- 
 prominent a feature in Brahminism and Buddhism, and from which 
 Christianity and Islamism have not been exempt. Its injunction 
 has never been, "Leave the world to itself that you may save your 
 own soul," but rather, " Do your duty in the world that you may 
 be happier and the world be better." It has disdained no sanitary 
 regulation that might secure the health of the body. Its promise 
 has been of peace and plenty and length of days, of stalwart sons- 
 and comely daughters. 
 
 It may be that the feeling of Moses in regard to a future life 
 was that expressed in the language of the Stoic, " It is the business 
 of Jupiter, not mine;" or it may be that it partook of the same 
 revulsion that shows itself in modern times, when a spirit essen- 
 tially religious has been turned against the forms and expressions- 
 of religion, because these forms and expressions have been made 
 the props and bulwarks of tyranny, and even the name and. 
 teachings of the Carpenter's Son perverted into supports of social 
 injustice — used to guard the pomp of Caesar and justify the greed. 
 of Dives. 
 
 Yet, however, such feelings influenced Moses. I cannot think- 
 that such a soul as his, living such a life as his — feeling the exalta- 
 tion of great thoughts, feeling the burden of great cares, feeling, 
 the bitterness of great disappointments — did not stretch forward 
 to the hope beyond ; did not rest and strengthen and ground 
 itself in the confident belief that the death of the body is but the: 
 
11 
 
 emancrpation of the mind ; did not feel the assurance that there 
 is a power in the universe upon which it might confidently rely, 
 through wreck of matter and crash of worlds. Yet the great con- 
 cern of Moses was with the duty that lay plainly before him; the 
 effort to lay the foundations of a social state in which deep poverty 
 and degrading want should be unknown — where men released from 
 the meaner struggles that waste human energy should have oppor- 
 tunity for intellectual and moral development. 
 
 Here stands out the greatness of the man. What was the- 
 wisdom and stretch of the forethought that in the desert sought to 
 guard in advance against the dangers of a settled state, let the 
 present speak. 
 
 In the full blaze of the nineteenth century, when every child in 
 our schools may know as common truths things of which the 
 Egyptian sages never dreamed ; when the earth has been mapped 
 and the stars have been weighed; when steam and electricity have 
 been pressed into our service, and science is wresting from nature- 
 secret after secret — it is but natural to look back upon the wisdom^ 
 of three thousand years ago as the man looks back upon the- 
 learning of the child. 
 
 And yet, for all this wonderful increase of knowledge, for alh 
 this enormous gain of productive power, where is the country im 
 the civilised world in which to-day there is not want and suffering: 
 — where the masses are not condemned to toil that gives no- 
 leisure, and all classes are not pursued by a greed of gain that 
 makes life an ignoble struggle to get and to keep ? Three 
 thousand years of advance, and still the moan goes up, "They 
 have made our lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in 
 brick, and in all manner of service ! " Three thousand years of 
 advance ! and the piteous voices of little children are in the moan„ 
 
 We progress and we progress ; we girdle continents with ironi 
 roads and knit cities together with the mesh of telegraph wires ;. 
 each day brings some new invention ; each year marks a fresh 
 advance — the power of production increased, and the avenues of 
 exchange cleared and broadened. Yet the complaint of "hard 
 times" is louder and louder; everywhere are men harassed by- 
 care, and haunted by the fear of want. With swift, steady strides- 
 and prodigious leaps, the power of human hands to satisfy human 
 wants advances and advances, is multiplied and multiplied. Yet: 
 the struggle for mere existence is more and more intense, and' 
 human labour is becoming the cheapest of commodities. Besides- 
 glutted warehouses human beings grow faint with hunger and 
 shiver with cold ; under the shadow of churches festers the vict 
 that is born of want. 
 
12 
 
 Trace to their root the causes that are thus producing want in 
 the midst of plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelligence, 
 .aristocracy in democracy, weakness in strength — that are giving to 
 our civilisation a one-sided and unstable development, and you 
 will find it something which this Hebrew statesman three thousand 
 years ago perceived and guarded against. Moses saw that the 
 real cause of the enslavement of the masses of Egypt was, what 
 has everywhere produced enslavement, the possession by a class of 
 -the land upon which and from which the whole people must live. 
 He saw that to permit in land the same unqualified private owner- 
 •ship that by natural right attaches to the things produced by 
 labour, would be inevitably to separate the people into the very 
 irich and the very poor, inevitably to enslave labour — to make the 
 .few the masters of the many, no matter what the political forms, 
 to bring vice and degradation no matter what the religion. 
 
 And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman who legis- 
 lates not for the need of a day, but for all the future, he sought, in 
 •ways suited to his times and conditions, to guard against this error. 
 Everywhere in the Mosaic institutions is the land treated as the 
 gift of the Creator to His common creatures, which no one has the 
 right to monopolise. Everywhere it is, not your estate, or your 
 property, not the land which you bought, or the land which you 
 conquered, but "the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" — 
 *'the land which the Lord lendeth thee." And by practical legis- 
 lation, by regulations to which he gave the highest sanctions, he 
 tried to guard against the wrong that converted ancient civilisations 
 'into despotisms — the wrong that in after centuries ate out the heart 
 •of Rome, that produced the imbruting serfdom of Poland and the 
 :gaunt misery of Ireland, the wrong that is to-day crowding families 
 into single rooms in this very city and filling our new States on 
 the other side of the Atlantic with tramps. He not only provided 
 for the fair division of the land among the people, and for making 
 :it fallow and common every seventh year, but by the institution of 
 the jubilee he provided for a redistribution of the land every fifty 
 ■years, and made monopoly impossible. 
 
 I do not say that these institutions were, for their ultimate 
 purpose, the very best that might even then have been devised, 
 ■for Moses had to work, as all great constructive statesmen have to 
 work, with the tools that came to his hand, and upon materials as 
 he found them. Still less do I mean to say that forms suitable for 
 that time and people are suitable for every time and people. I 
 ask, not veneration of the form, but recognition of the spirit. 
 
 Yet how common it is to venerate the form and to deny the 
 -jspirit. There are many who believe that the Mosaic institutions 
 
13 
 
 were literally dictated by the Almighty, yet who would denounce* 
 as irreligious and "communistic" any application of their spirit to- 
 the present day. And yet to-day how much we owe to these- 
 institutions ! This very day the only thing that stands between our , 
 working classes and ceaseless toil is one of these Mosaic institutions, i 
 Nothing in political economy is better settled than that under con- 
 ditions which now prevail the working classes would get no more- 
 for seven days' labour than they now get for six, and would find it 
 as difficult to reduce their working hours as now. 
 
 Let the mistakes of those who think that man was made for- 
 the Sabbath, rather than the Sabbath for man, be what they may ; 
 that there is one day in the week that the working man may call< 
 his own, one day in the week on which hammer is silent and loom 
 stands idle, is due, through Christianity, to Judaism — to the code 
 promulgated in the Sinaitic wilderness. And who that considers- 
 the waste of productive forces can doubt that modern society would 
 be not merely happier but richer, had we received as well as the- 
 Sabbath day the grand idea of the Sabbath year, or adapting its- 
 spirit to our changed conditions, secured in another way an equiva- 
 lent reduction of working hours. 
 
 It is in these characteristics of the Mosaic institutions that, as- 
 in the fragments of a Colossus, we may read the greatness of the 
 mind whose impress they bear — of a mind in advance of its- 
 surroundings, in advance of its age ; of one of those star souls that 
 dwindle not with distance, but, glowing with the radiance of' 
 essential truth, hold their light while institutions and languages- 
 and creeds change and pass. 
 
 That the thought was greater than the permanent expression it 
 found, who can doubt ? Yet from that day to this that expression. 
 has been in the world a living power. 
 
 From the free spirit of the Mosaic law sprang that intensity of 
 family life that amid all dispersions and persecutions has preserved 
 the individuality of the Hebrew race ; that love of independence- 
 that under the most adverse circumstances has characterised the 
 Jew ; that burning patriotism that flamed up in the Maccabees and 
 bared the breasts of Jewish peasants to the serried steel of Grecian 
 phalanx and the resistless onset of Roman legion ; that stubborn 
 courage that in exile and in torture held the Jew to his faith. It 
 kindled that fire that has made the strains of Hebrew seers and 
 poets phrase for us the highest exaltations of thought ; that intel- 
 lectual vigour that has over and over again made the dry staff bud 
 and blossom. And passing outward from one narrow race it has 
 exerted its power wherever the influence of the Hebrew scriptures. 
 has been felt. It has toppled thrones and cast down hierarchies- 
 
14 
 
 It strengthened the Scottish covenanter in the hour of trial, and 
 rthe Puritan amid the snows of a strange land. It charged with 
 the Ironsides at Naseby ; it stood behind the low redoubt on 
 Bunker Hill. 
 
 But it is in example as in deed that such lives are helpful. It 
 
 •is thus that they dignify human nature and glorify human effort, 
 
 uand bring to those who struggle hope and trust. The life of 
 
 Moses, like the institutions of Moses, is a protest against that 
 
 blasphemous doctrine, current now as it was three thousand years 
 
 ago; that blasphemous doctrine preached oft times even from 
 
 •Christian pulpits ; that the want and suffering of the masses of 
 
 /.mankind flow from a mysterious dispensation of providence, which 
 
 ■we may lament, but can neither quarrel with nor alter. Let him 
 
 who hugs that doctrine to himself, him to whom it seems that the 
 
 squalor and brutishness with which the very centres of our 
 
 • civilisation abound are not his affair, turn to the example of that 
 
 life. For to him who will look, yet burns the bush ; and to him 
 
 who will hear, again comes the voice, The people suffer : who will 
 
 lead them forth ? 
 
 Adopted into the immediate family of the supreme monarch 
 and earthly god ; standing almost at the apex of the social 
 pyramid which had for its base those toiling millions ; priest and 
 prince in a land where prince and priest might revel in all delights 
 — everything that life could offer to gratify the senses or engage 
 the intellect was open to him. 
 
 What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce 
 sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters ? Heard from 
 .granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it was mellowed 
 by distance to monotonous music. Why should he question the 
 Sphynx of Fate, or quarrel with destinies the high gods had 
 decreed? So had it always been, for ages and ages; so must it 
 ever be. The beetle rends the insect, and the hawk preys on the 
 beetle; order on order, life rises from death and carnage, and 
 : higher pleasures from lower agonies. Shall the man be better 
 than nature ? Soothing and restful flows the Nile, though under- 
 neath its placid surface finny tribes wage cruel war, and the 
 stronger eat the weaker. Shall the gazer who would read the 
 secrets o'" the stars turn because under his feet a worm may 
 writhe ? 
 
 Theirs to make bricks without straw ; his a high place in the 
 .glorious procession that with gorgeous banners and glittering 
 emblems, with clash of music and solemn chant, winds its shining 
 ^vay to dedicate the immortal edifice their toil has reared. Theirs 
 i*he leek and the garlic ; his to sit at the sumptuous feast. Why 
 
15 
 
 should he dwell on the irksomeness of bondage, he for whom the 
 chariots waited, who might at will bestride the swift coursers of 
 the Delta, or be borne on the bosom of the river with oars that 
 beat time to songs ? Did he long for the excitement of action ? — 
 there was the desert hunt, with steeds fleeter than the antelope 
 and lions trained like dogs. Did he crave rest and ease ? — there 
 was for him the soft swell of languorous music and the wreathed 
 movements of dancing girls. Did he feel the stir of intellectual 
 life ? — in the arcana of the temples he was free to the lore of ages ; 
 an initiate in the select society where were discussed the most 
 engrossing problems; a sharer in that intellectual pride that 
 centuries after compared Greek philosophy to the babblings of 
 children. 
 
 It was no sudden ebullition of passion that caused Moses to 
 turn his back on all this, and to bring the strength and knowledge 
 acquired in a dominant caste to the life-long service of the 
 oppressed. The forgetfulness of self manifested in the smiting of 
 the Egyptian shines through the whole life. In institutions that 
 moulded the character of a people, in institutions that to this day 
 make easier the lot of toiling millions, we may read the stately 
 purpose. 
 
 Through all that tradition has given us of that life runs the 
 same grand passion — the unselfish desire to make humanity better, 
 happier, nobler. And the death is worthy of the life. Subordi- 
 nating to the good of his people the natural disposition to found a 
 dynasty, which in his case would have been so easy, he discards 
 the claims of blood and calls to his place of leader the fittest man. 
 Coming from a land where the rites of sepulture were regarded as 
 all-important, and the preservation of the body after death was the 
 passion of life ; among a people who were even then carrying the 
 remains of their great ancestor, Joseph, to rest with his fathers, he 
 yet conquered the last natural yearning and withdrew from the 
 sight and sympathy of men to die alone and unattended, lest the 
 idolatrous feeling, always ready to break forth, should in death 
 accord him the superstitious reverence he had refused in life. 
 
 " No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." But while 
 the despoiled tombs of the Pharaohs mock the vanity that reared 
 them, the name of the Hebrew who, revolting from their tyranny, 
 strove for the elevation of his fellow-men, is yet a beacon light to 
 the world. 
 
 Leader and servant of men ! Law-giver and benefactor ! 
 Toiler toward the promised land seen only by the eye of faith ! 
 Type of the high souls who in every age have given to earth its 
 heroes and its martyrs, whose deeds are the precious possessioa 
 
IG 
 
 of the race, whose memories are its sacred heritage ! With whom* 
 among the founders of empire shall we compare him ? 
 
 To dispute about the inspiration of such a man were to dispute 
 about words. From the depths of the unseen such characters 
 must draw their strength ; from fountains that flow only from the- 
 pure in heart must come their wisdom. Of something more real 
 than matter ; of something higher than the stars ; of a light that 
 will endure when suns are dead and dark ; of a purpose of which, 
 the physical universe is but a passing phase, such lives tell. 
 
Ljaijiora 
 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Syrocuse. N. Y. 
 
 ^^ Stockton, Calif. 
 
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 BS580.M6G3 
 
 Moses : a lecture ... delivered in St. 
 
 , j!:'""^on yheological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00041 3197 
 
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