MOSES, 
 
 REV. DR. ISAAC M. WISE. 

 
 MOSES, 
 
 THE MAN AND STATESMAN 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 Delivered in New York and Boston, January 23 and 25, 1883. 
 
 BY REV DR. ISAAC M. WISE. 
 
 I/>CH A CO., PUBLISHERS, 
 CINCINNATI.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 5014093 
 
 MOSES, THE MAN AND STATESMAN. 
 
 GREAT men are the most instructive and most attractive 
 text-books, whose paragraphs are deeds, and the reflex of hu- 
 man greatness are the notes. Deeds overwhelm the heart and 
 their reflexes capture the mind with that superior force by 
 which the drama excels the lyric poem and nature outstrips 
 the most eminent works of art. The lives of great men are 
 leaves in the Bible of humanity, illustrated by that unex- 
 celled master-painter whose name is Truth. In the panorama 
 of every-day life, we observe the movement of figures, so closely 
 akin to ourselves that they become uninteresting, and, finally, 
 annoying and depressing. It is the vulgar curiosity-shop. In 
 the Pantheon of those demi-gods who enacted the proudest 
 scenes in the drama of man's history, we are brought face to 
 face with man in his glory, and feel encouraged, cheered and 
 elated with the exposition of what man could be and should 
 be, and begin to feel that he was properly called " Creation's 
 Lord," who exclaims " The world, the world is mine." 
 
 The stars are not of equal magnitude, density and brilliancy, 
 nor are all great men equally great. Some are suns, others 
 planets, and others again mere satellites. The suns, it appears, 
 are most distant from us. We utilize in art antique models ; 
 in architecture we study ancient monuments ; in style, prose or 
 poetry, we imitate classical forms of by-gone days. We do 
 precisely the same in philosophy and jurisprudence, in ethics 
 and aesthetics, in religion and theology. We exhume ancient 
 forms and formulas. We abstract the spirit of men and works 
 of the past, and systematize that essence into standards by
 
 which to measure the events and demands of the age, to regu- 
 late and to satisfy them. It is that which we call learning and 
 practical wisdom, science and art. 
 
 However humiliating this may sound, it is nevertheless true. 
 With the exception of the natural sciences, the mechanical 
 arts, and whatever increases by the accumulation of human 
 experience and experiment, objective observation and ocular 
 demonstration, we are the pupils and heirs of the men of gray 
 antiquity. 
 
 Those ancient 'men not only lived closer to the lap of be- 
 nign and instructive nature than we do, but the themes of their 
 thoughts were also more sublime than ours. They concen- 
 trated their energies upon themselves, and sought to solve the 
 mysteries of human nature, which led them into the mysteries 
 of existence, and so they elaborated the great themes of man, 
 conscience, right, goodness, beauty, God, and man's relations 
 to the Almighty. They were purely subjective, and the mind 
 grew gigantic under the influence of ennobling and invigorat- 
 ing themes. In our phase of civilization, however, man has 
 become objective, science is objective, invention is objective, the 
 entire occupation of the man and the text-book of the lad are 
 objective; the mind is absorbed in matter and its modifica- 
 tions ; thought reaches not beyond that lower region, its themes 
 are coarse and cold. 
 
 The old violin, upon which none but skilled artists played, 
 can not be imitated by any artisan. It appears that the mel- 
 low notes, the sweet echoes of the maestrd's charming melo- 
 dies, are mysteriously retained in the dumb instrument. The 
 beautiful melodies of moral and intellectual themes played 
 upon the chords of the mind leave their sweet echoes in the 
 human character. The violin improves not, because it records 
 no vivifying melodies. We have not been able to duplicate 
 Moses, Solomon and Isaiah, Plato and Aristotle, Homer and
 
 Virgil, Caesar and Marcus Aurelius. All we can, and in fact 
 do, is to convert the inherited heavy gold coins into small 
 change, and distribute it among the large masses of our fellow- 
 men, assist and enable them to partake of the heritage of man. 
 
 If it is admitted that in all objective sciences and arts we 
 are in advance of the ancient?, and in all subjective sciences 
 they were our superiors and masters, it must be equally admittd 
 that they were grander characters, men and women more sub- 
 lime and more powerful than we are. For it is by those very 
 subjective treasures that the character is formed, the will in- 
 vigorated, and that the energies are prompted and stimulated to 
 great and glorious deeds, to sublime outpourings of immortal 
 truth. We do yet catch fire from their fire and borrow light 
 from their light. Hence when we speak of great men, to con- 
 template them as patterns of superior humanity, we speak of 
 distant suns, the great men of antiquity, first and foremost. 
 
 Among the monuments of ancient genius the Bible oc- 
 cupies a prominent place on account of the sublimity of its 
 themes, the depth and universality of its conceptions, the 
 simplicity of its language and the exquisite beauty of human 
 character which it presents to the mind in mighty, dramatical 
 figures. It is certainly to the millions the most ennobling and 
 most enlightening book they possess. It is greatness and good- 
 ness presenting themselves in life-size figures of charming 
 features. It removes the veil from heaven's dome and permits 
 the mortal to gaze into the mysteries of existence, the glory of 
 the spirit. Again in that old Bible of the Hebrews one classical 
 and colossal figure overtowers all the others. It looks like the 
 giant cedar among the trees, like the snow capped Baker among 
 the Rocky Mountains, like the sun among the planets. This 
 colossal, classical figure is the son of Amram and Jochebed 
 Moses, the " servant of Jehovah," the redeemer and legislator 
 of Israel, the man who with his stylus of iron engraved upon
 
 the rock of ages the duties and destinies of the human family, 
 to which, as he said, nothing should be added, from which 
 nothing should be taken away. 
 
 Permit me, ladies and gentlemen, to speak to you this even- 
 ing of Moses. I think he is the grandest man of all known to 
 fame in history. You must not think that I have selected this 
 subject for this evening because it is maintained on the one hand 
 that there was no Moses, and on the other hand that he is a 
 mythical character, to whom posterity ascribed deeds, laws and 
 institutions unknown to him and his cotemporaries. Assertions 
 so unhistorical and unphilosophical, and altogether negative, 
 could not well be made the subject of a lecture. I have selected 
 Moses, because I think he was the greatest man of antiquity, 
 and because I felt the desire to speak to you favorably of an 
 old acquaintance and friend. I have first to say a few words on 
 
 THE MAN MOSES. 
 
 Whatever Grecian writers up to Josephus, the Rabbis and the 
 Mohammedans reported of the life of Moses in addition to the 
 Pentateuchal notices, has the value for the student of history, 
 that from it he might learn how posterity exaggerates and 
 ornaments the life of its heroes in default or even in spite of 
 authentic history. Outside of the Pentateuchal notices we 
 know nothing of Moses, his life or his character. And in the 
 Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, the notices concerning 
 the life of its master mind are very few and meager, as it is not 
 intended to narrate what Moses did or suffered ; it is rather 
 intended to -narrate what God -did in Israel. Moses occupies 
 so small a space in the Books of Moses that his authorship can 
 hardly be doubted. If at a later period one or more men had 
 written that work, he or they would certainly have glorified the 
 redeemer, lawgiver, hero, statesman and father of his people, 
 and depicted him in glowing oriental colors.
 
 n 
 
 Again, among those brief notices there are certainly some 
 of a later date. " The man Moses was very meek," posterity 
 said of the same man, of whom it was said : "And Moses 
 knew not that the skin of his face beamed " ; and " There rose 
 not in Israel again a prophet like Moses." These quotations 
 were certainly written after the death of Moses, as in the first 
 instance the term K^Km "And the man Moses " proves, for 
 this was a title foreign to Moses in speaking of himself ; and 
 the two latter passages could not be true if the former was. 
 If he was a meek man, he could not speak of his countenance 
 beaming with glory and of his superiority as a prophet above 
 all men in Israel. On the other hand, however, it must be ad- 
 mitted that the same kind of rational criteria which lead us 
 to suspect the authenticity of some passages necessitate us to 
 accept others as authentic. The object of the Pentateuch is 
 certainly righteousness and holiness, the fear of God, the or- 
 ganization and government of society on strictly ethical prin- 
 ciples. The author and compiler of such a book, without any 
 \vorldly or personal interests in view, must not and can not 
 be suspected of any willful falsehood ; and it is a crime against 
 human nature to raise such an accusation, unless irrefutable, 
 hisiorical or a priori arguments establish facts contrary to his 
 allegations. He may exaggerate traditions, amplify and 
 apostrophize in poetical effusion. He may canonize worldly 
 deeds and surround common affairs with the halo of the 
 miraculous, the aspect of the wonderful. He may, in glowing 
 colors, depict the psychical subjective visions as real and ob- 
 jective actions and processes. But he can not and must not 
 be suspected of willful falsehood. Consequently we have a 
 legitimate canon of criticism to recognize the authentic pas- 
 sages, and it is to those to which we now turn. 
 
 We are told with the utmost brevity that Moses, born to Am- 
 ram and Jochebed, in the time of oppression and servitude, was
 
 g 
 
 doomed to die by the king's cruel mandate, but was rescued by 
 a natural yet marvelous incident which gave him temporarily 
 back to his mother and afforded him the golden opportunity to 
 acquire an education at the royal court. This little chain of acci- 
 dents, so necessary to make of the Hebrew infant the man Moses, 
 is delineated with such sublime simplicity that the reader can 
 not tell whether the writer intended to convey the idea that 
 Providence so designed and executed it in order to make the 
 infant Moses the redeemer and lawgiver, or whether he merely 
 records the natural incidents by which the waif could become 
 the powerful man. Aside from the delicate dramatic touches 
 peeping through the narrow crevices of a mother's anguish 
 and a sister's devotion, the whole story is too simple and nat- 
 ural to be doubted. If poetry it were, it would be much more 
 complicated and ornate. If it had been written at any time after 
 Moses, hosts of stars and angels, shepherds and kings, miracles 
 and a host of supernatural demonstrations would have been 
 called into requisition to furnish the proper frame for so im- 
 portant a picture as the birth of the redeemer and lawgiver. 
 
 Having thus been informed of the birth and first fate of 
 Moses, the records are silent as to his education. We imagine 
 that he was well instructed in all the arts and sciences of Egypt ; 
 and we imagine this by inference and interpretation only, for 
 we have no direct information to this effect. It is certainly 
 false to maintain that Moses was an Egyptian priest, since none 
 besides the king, unless born of priestly parents, was ever ad- 
 mitted to that caste. 
 
 Moses appears again on the stage of life, not as the Egyptian 
 commander and conqueror of Ethiopia, as the ancient legend 
 has it, but when he had reached the age of maturity he went 
 out to see his brethren in their state of abject servitude. Then 
 and there he slew and buried a taskmaster who had smitten a 
 Hebrew slave. All sapient moralists cry horror over that rash
 
 9 
 
 deed, which they certainly would not do if John Brown had 
 killed a Virginia taskmaster under similar circumstances. It 
 was a rash act, perhaps unworthy of the lawgiver Moses, al- 
 though it remains uncertain in the text whether the Egyptian 
 taskmaster had not killed the Hebrew slave, as in both in- 
 stances the same term (VI and rDD) is used. But it certainly 
 was not so unworthy of the youthful patriot who, descending 
 from the height of the royal court to his brethren in distress, 
 felt so much more indignant and outraged by the taskmaster's 
 brutal conduct. It was certainly a case of strong provocation, 
 which, in the hands of Col. Robert Ingersoll before any criminal 
 court, would constitute a successful plea to clear an ordinary 
 assassin. 
 
 This incident, however, also shows that Moses, by his natural 
 disposition, could tolerate no wrong; while another incident 
 shows that he could not be an idle spectator where one was being 
 perpetrated. When a fugitive in the wilderness, he witnessed how 
 rude shepherds took advantage over their female companions at 
 the well of water. He was on hand to protect that sheperdess, 
 afterward his wife Zipporah, and her sisters. Here we have 
 before us the fundamental traits of the character of a law-giver, 
 courage and a predominant love of justice. The man of stern 
 justice resents every wrong done to his fellow-creature ; and such 
 a man only can be a law-giver. Whoever commits a wrong, or 
 sees others do it with impunity, can not become an apostle of 
 justice. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think on account of the 
 truly chivalric conduct of Moses toward Lady Zipporah in the 
 wilderness, his opponents ought to forgive him the " mistakes" 
 he is supposed to have otherwise made. The other hostile party 
 ought to be convinced that Moses was a living reality, for he 
 went to the house of Jethro, married Zipporah, begat children 
 and became a vulgar shepherd, all of which is decidedly unbe- 
 coming the hero of a myth. And the third party ought to feel
 
 10 
 
 assured that these incidents were not penned down by an ad- 
 mirer of a later date ; for he would certainly not have permitted 
 that the distinguished " Servant of the Lord " should have mar- 
 ried the daughter of an Arabian Sheikh, who was not of the house 
 of Israel, and not circumcise his sons till his wife in rather an 
 unkind manner reminded him of his duty, and heed the ad- 
 vice of his Heathen father in-law in the important matter of 
 provisional organization. A later writer, priest or prophet, 
 would certainly have improved these incidents, especially in 
 the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, to whom intermarriage with 
 Gentiles was an abomination. The fact that Moses, setting out 
 on a foreign mission, took his wife and children with him, al- 
 though she was but a plain shepherdess, and returned with 
 them to Egypt, is proof positive that he was a good husband 
 and father, in consideration of which the party of the first part 
 ought to forgive him his other " mistakes." 
 
 It is unjust and unreasonable, to put it in the mildest form, 
 to judge the character and career of a statesman and legislator 
 of the prominence and eminence of Moses, by the oidinary 
 standard applied to gauge the moral character of a man of the 
 nineteenth century under ordinary circumstances. The worst 
 " mistake " made by the fault-finders in this case is, that they 
 can not see that extraordinary emergencies and circumstances, 
 and the solution of extraordinary problems, such as the law- 
 giver in the wilderness was called upon to face and to solve, re- 
 quire that prudence, firmness and forbearance which only great 
 and good men possess ; regulations, measures and the moment- 
 ary toleration of evils which under other circumstances might 
 appear unjust and immoral. With Moses, however, all those 
 alleged " mistakes " are counterpoised and by far overbalanced 
 by his 
 
 UNSELFISHNESS AND HONESTY OF PURPOSE. 
 
 In the wh^le of his record M-Mes app3ars almost imper-
 
 11 
 
 eonal. He assumes no titles, seeks no prerogatives and no 
 emoluments for himself or his immediate posterity. He could 
 stand up before his enemies in the Korah rebellion, and declare 
 before God, " Not one ass of theirs have I taken." His sons 
 were no officers, and inherited nothing, not even an extra por- 
 tion of land in Canaan. His brother was given the priesthood, 
 because he stood at the head of the people in Egypt as his col- 
 laborator in their redemption. His tribe was distinguished not 
 on his account, but because those Levites proved faithful to 
 the cause, when many rebelled and madly danced around the 
 golden calf. He asked nothing for himself, not even a sepul- 
 cher, nothing in life, and nothing after death. The plain and 
 meek " Servant of Jehovah" who might have been a king and 
 a god, the founder of a dynasty and of gorgeous temples to 
 perpetuate his glory, died on "Mount Nebo, ''And no man 
 knoweth his grave to this day," his children disappear from his 
 nation's chronicle, and a man of another tribe is his successor 
 in office. Those who have made man and men their study 
 must be well aware how rare and unique such unselfishness 
 is, even among the greatest and best of the human race. Few, 
 if any, have ever risen to that moral height that they said, " I 
 wish all the people of Jehovah were prophets, and Jehovah 
 would give his spirit upon them." 
 
 Moses lived for a cause, to which his life and energies were 
 devoted with the utmost honesty of purpose, because he was 
 entirely unselfish. He embraced it when he was a youth and 
 a prince ; adhered to it as a shepherd in the wilderness ; em- . 
 braced and pushed it to a successful issue under all the diffi- 
 culties, dangers and storms in Egypt; never wavered, never 
 doubted its final success under the horrors of the wilderness ; 
 the wild commotions of agitated multitudes, the frustration of 
 his plans and hopes, the death of his comrades and fellow-suf- 
 ferers about him, the waste of his years, and the approach of
 
 12 
 
 his end, confirmed and sealed his unshaken faith in the grand 
 cause to the last breath of his life. 
 
 The mice you know the story of the mice that conspired 
 one day to undermine the rock of Gibraltar ; they gnawed and 
 gnawed again with their little teeth until they were dead, and 
 the rock is there yet, and is yet a rock. Exactly so do those ap- 
 pear to intelligent men whose petty business it is to find fault 
 with Moses. Where are the men of that unselfishness and 
 stern honesty of purpose? And yet this is the standard by 
 which to measure the statesman and legislator's moral char- 
 acter, the amount of justice embodied in his laws, the unsel- 
 fishness manifested in his actions, and the honesty of purpose 
 characterizing his career. It is easier to die than to live one 
 hundred and twenty years for a great cause under all the storms 
 and miseries of life. It is a momentary inspiration, perhaps a 
 periodical insanity, to die for a cause ; it is a perpetual inspira- 
 tion and resoluteness to live for it. No prophet has yet risen 
 in Israel like Moses. 
 
 But we must not forget that Moses was of a sanguine tem- 
 perament. 
 
 PASSIONATE, RASH AND IMPETUOUS. 
 
 He slew the Egyptian task-master in a fit of passion. He 
 threw down and rashly broke the two tables of stone, the most 
 precious gift he had to bestow on his people. Impetuously he 
 smote repeatedly the dumb rock to cause it to pour forth its 
 water, when he had been commanded to speak only, and he 
 angrily addressed his own people and disciples, " Hear now, 
 ye rebels." 
 
 In the most trying events recorded in the Pentateuch, which 
 momentarily arrested the onward career of Moses and threat- 
 ened to end it ignominiously, he proved the impetuosity of 
 his passionate character. I refer to the sequences of the " golden 
 calf" in the camp of Israel, the uproar in the camp after the
 
 13 
 
 return of the spies from Canaan, and the revolt of Korah and 
 his conspirators. In the first instance Moses saw the destruc- 
 tion of the base upon which he had reared the gorgeous struc- 
 ture of Israel's redemption and his elevation to the position of 
 God's chosen people. He perceived the curse of Egyptian idol- 
 atry triumph again over that pure Monotheism, which was the 
 objective point of his mission, his ardent labors, his cherished 
 hopes, his faith and conviction. The whole work of a lifetime 
 and the sole hope of Israel and mankind appeared to collapse 
 like a bubble. He hurls from his arms the two tables of stone 
 and breaks the most precious treasure he had to give ; and he 
 hears the voice of God telling him, " And now let me alone, 
 that my anger wax hot against them, and I consume them, and 
 make of thee a great nation." Consume utterly annihilate at 
 once the poor, deluded multitude. How passionate ! How 
 rash and impetuous ! In the second instance Moses perceives 
 his great hope of organizing a people in the Holy Land to em- 
 body and realize, to promulgate and perpetuate the sublime 
 principle - of truth and human happiness, frustrated, crushed 
 by the cowardice of petulant men. The returning spies had 
 incensed the people to revolt ; they refused to go up to Canaan 
 and demanded to be led back into Egyptian slavery. The en- 
 tire fabric of redemption was again at the point of destruction. 
 Moses was angry very angry and he heard the voice of God 
 saying, " How long shall this people provoke me? and how long 
 yet will they not believe in me, with all the signs which I have 
 shown in the midst of them? I will smite them with the pes- 
 tilence, and root them out, and I will make of thee a nation 
 greater and mightier than they." And the third instance was 
 perhaps no less threatening than the two former, when Korah 
 and his conspirators revolted and attempted to overthrow both 
 the polity and policy of the growing Theocracy ; and also in 
 in this case Moses hears God saying: "Separate yourselves
 
 14 
 
 from the midst of this congregation, and I will make an end of 
 them in a moment." 
 
 In his glowing wrath, under the first impression and violent 
 uproar of his passions, Moses imagined that destruction, utter 
 annihilation of the rebellious people was God's justice in those 
 various cases. The people hopelessly degenerated, he rashly 
 opined, was unfit to realize and actualize the sublime scheme 
 of salvation, of which he was the harbinger and expounder. 
 In all these cases, however, Moses prays vehemently, supplicates 
 like a father for his children in danger of death, and God for- 
 gives, is reconciled to the people, and the threatened evil is ob- 
 viated. Take all those narratives literally, and God is repre- 
 sented as the angry despot, ready to crush arid annihilate his 
 poor, frail and deluded children, while Moses appears as the 
 most merciful, the benign and long-suffering father of Israel, 
 who saves them by his ardent entreaties. All this is contrary 
 to the theology and moral system of Moses laid down in the 
 same Pentateuch. Take those narratives in their correct 
 sense, understand all the dialogues between God and Moses 
 from the psychological standpoint as subjective, and not as 06- 
 jective incidents, as ideal, and not as real facts, and those 
 events teach how passionate, impetuous, rash and reckless 
 Moses was, so that his first impressions under those circum- 
 stances were horrid, terrible, reckless, destructive, and yet they 
 appeared to him just, and becoming the eternal God of justice. 
 But at the same time those very events suggest what the sec- 
 ond sober thought of Moses must have been. They show how 
 powerful his- reason and conscience were, to master, to over- 
 come and bridle his mighty passion, and to direct him to the 
 right and good, the just and true. 
 
 Great men have mighty passions. One efficient cause of 
 their greatness is the superior power of their passion. '' He 
 who is greater than his neighbor is of mightier passion," said
 
 15 
 
 an ancient sage. Groat deeds rise first and foremost from the 
 pressure of excited and ignited passion. Cool, frigid, little 
 men may be cunning, devising and calculating heads, but they 
 will never perform great, heroic and pre-eminent feats, to move 
 and inspire large masses, to benefit and elevate inert multi- 
 tudes. If those mighty passions are unbridled, they lead to 
 acts of barbarity, violence, cruelty, reckless fury, and end fre- 
 quently in self-destruction. But where the reason and con- 
 science of the man, as was evidently the case with Moses, are 
 stronger than the mighty passions, to control and govern them, 
 to direct and apply them to great and good deeds, to the elevar 
 tion and salvation of man ; there you find the great man, and 
 there only. His passions must be mighty, his first impressions 
 violent, but his reason and conscience must be so much 
 mightier, and his second sober thought correct, benign, just 
 and wise. This was the case with Moses, and this completes 
 the picture of his moral character. If Thomas Carlyle had 
 written a biography of Moses, he would have summed it up 
 somewhat to this effect : This man's intellect was so powerful 
 that his moral principles were so correct and his deeds so enor- 
 mous ; and this would be correct under all ordinary circum- 
 stances, but Moses is an extraordinary phenomenon in the his- 
 tory of man. ' Mos^s is the m >4 exalted personality in the 
 oldest history," says the historian L. von Ranke (Wcltgeschichte 
 L, 1 Leite 42). Ordinary causes are inadequate to produce ex- 
 traordinary effects. Neither the gigantic intellect and the pow- 
 erful passions, nor the most intense love of liberty and justice 
 will account for the extraordinary and unique character, work 
 and legislation of Moses. Think of a man who was educated at 
 a royal court, spending the greater part of his life as an obscure 
 shepherd in the wilderness without relinquishing the great ob- 
 ject of his life, the redemption of his people from bondage, and 
 establishing a m >del nation on the principles of monotheism,
 
 16 
 
 moral law, freedom, justice and equality, when all around the 
 world was submerged in polytheism, slavery and incest. Had 
 he ever abandoned that object, he could not have beheld the 
 vision of the burning bush, nor could he have. understood its 
 import. Think of a man who appeared with his staff before a 
 mighty king and court to demand in the name of the unknown 
 God the liberation of hundreds of thousands of slaves, and not 
 only unaided by the natural means of accomplishing such a 
 radical revolution, but even against the will of the liberated 
 masses carries his point, leads an entire people out of its na- 
 tive land into a howling desert and overcomes Pharaoh with all 
 his power to the bitter end of the mighty antagonist's death. 
 All the miracles recorded in the Pentateuch as such are not as 
 wonderful and astounding as is this simple fact, which none 
 can deny. A nation was born, a free people was organized out 
 of a horde of slaves, notwithstanding the relentless opposition 
 of the then greatest power on earth. Think furthermore of 
 the man's organizing and governing talent as displayed in the 
 camp in the wilderness, its marches and its rest, an organizing 
 mastership which astounded even the heathen prophet Balaam 
 and caused him to bless where he was called to curse. Think 
 of the man's patience, forbearance and unshaken consistency, 
 in the wilderness, when he saw his projects frustrated and his 
 hopes blighted, his comrades perish and his end approaching. 
 Think of all that and the distressing details thereof, and ex- 
 plain it by natural causes, if you can. There is a mystery at 
 the bottom of this character without precedent or parallel in 
 history, and this mystery is the powerful conviction of Moses 
 that he was in possession of truth, the whole truth, the death- 
 less, everlastig truth ; and his unshaken faith in the majestic 
 power of truth, to which everything must yield ; his conviction 
 and faith that he was the servant of God, the inspired messen- 
 ger of the Most High, the man of destiny, the apostle of Prov-
 
 17 
 
 idence. This solves the mystery, and nothing else can. What- 
 ever one might believe in regard to Providence, miracles, inspi- 
 ration, revelation and kindred conceptions, there is one point 
 that all must admit, and that is that Moses verily believed and 
 trusted in the only true God and Providence, and that he verily 
 believed he was inspired and commissioned by the one and true 
 God to say and to do that which he did say and do. He was 
 so sure of his office, dignity and destiny that he was not jealous 
 when Eldad and Medad prophesied in the camp, and in the hour 
 of distress he could address his God thus : " Behold, thou hast 
 said unto me, bring up this people and thou hast not made 
 known to me him whom thou wouldst send with me, and thou 
 hast said, I have distinguished thee (known thee) thy name, 
 and thou hast also found grace in my sight." 
 
 The power of this conviction and the might of his faith, 
 which make the basis of his character, complete the faint out- 
 lines we are able to draw of the man Moses, of whom it is re- 
 ported in holy writ God said : " My servant Moses is authen- 
 ticated in all my house " (Kin JOKJ W2 ?33), the authorized ex- 
 pert in the entire moral household of Providence. This point 
 however, leads us directly into another division of this humble 
 essay, namely, into 
 
 THE WORK DONE BY MOSES. 
 
 The historian mentioned above says furthermore, " The idea 
 of the extra-mundane and intellectual God was conceived by 
 Moses and, so to say, incorporated in the people which he or- 
 ganized and led. The incarnation can not be accomplished in 
 the infinite purity of the idea, still it radiates from everything 
 which the legislator ordained, and one might say that he was 
 the Pedagogue of his people which he organized." This is the 
 voice of impartial history. All the quibbling of theology, that 
 of Kuenen and Wellhausen included, can not change it. The 
 scoffing of petulant humorists, with the laughter and applause
 
 18 
 
 of inconsiderate masses, can not impair it. History is history 
 in spite of all quibblings, humorisms and burlesques. Moses 
 left to posterity in the Five Books a five-act drama, in grandeur 
 unapproachable, in sublimity insurpassable, in beauty incompar- 
 able beyond the poet's loftiest flight of imagination, incarna- 
 ting the greatest subject ever thought of b} 7 man, the birth and 
 organization of a free and sanctified nation, the birth and tri" 
 umph of Heaven's truth and benignity, Seraphic light and 
 Shekinah glory upon this earth with its darkness, slavery and 
 incest. Moses was the greatest of all master artists. Painters 
 and sculptors failed to exhaust the grand characters and scen- 
 eries produced by that creative genius. He was himself the 
 greatest of all known sculptors, and left to posterity that colos- 
 sal and imperishable statue, hewn from the solid rock of truth, 
 inscribed with the weal and woe of all ages and generations ; 
 the pedestal is the habitable earth, its head reaches heaven's 
 dome, its forms are gigantic ; and the name of that inimitable 
 colossus is Israel, the immortal, eternal nation with the beauty 
 of God's chosen people. 
 
 MOSES AS A REFORMER. 
 
 Altogether too high-flying, too top-lofty, too poetical, too em- 
 phatic and enthusiastic without sufficient cause, says our very 
 critically inclined friend, who has collected and systematized 
 pins enough to sting you and fasten on you the posters of all 
 theaters and circuses; too much for one man, says he, for 
 Moses was after all a mere reformer. He found one piece of his 
 laws here and another piece there ; he took a patch from Egypt, 
 others from Asiatic nations and made of it the patch-work 
 comfort which you call the Law of Moses. Hold on, my friend, 
 let us see about that. 
 
 In regard to culte, the sacrificial polity, the Levitical priest- 
 hood and Levitical laws of cleanness and diet, judicial and so- 
 cial laws and institutions, especially marital laws, polygamy,
 
 19 
 
 slavery, the institution of the avenger of blood, and kindred 
 topics, he was a mere reformer. The laws and customs which 
 the Hebrews had adopted of the Egyptians, or developed in 
 their own social and political life in Goshen, like the division 
 into twelve tribes and the government by the first-born and el- 
 ders, and whatever they had inherited of the Patriarchs, and 
 by them probably of the Chaldees and Assyrians, could in the 
 main be adopted and reformed only to harmonize them with 
 the Mosaic Monotheism and the necessary sequents of that 
 Monotheism. So far, it is correct to speak of Moses as a re- 
 former, who learned of the Egyptians, the Chaldees and others. 
 This adoption and adaptation, however, only proves two points, 
 in the first place, that the laws and institutions, as we find 
 them in the Pentateuch, were given for and to a people coming 
 directly from Egypt, with the laws, customs and institutions of 
 that ancient country ; in the second place, this proves the 
 wisdom and impartiality, as well as the prudence, of Moses. 
 Whatever was good and useful in the traditions of his people 
 or the laws and customs of the Egyptians, and congenial to 
 his system, he adopted and sanctioned. Whatever wrong was 
 too strong to be eradicated at once, like polygamy, slavery, ani- 
 mal sacrifices and similar inherited evils, he surrounded with 
 modifying laws, leading to their gradual abolition and eradica- 
 tion. Still, everything was bent and cut and changed to ..bear 
 the impress of his spirit, the criteria of his system, and the 
 luster of Monotheism the Living God of Israel and the Sinaic 
 principle. A? a reformer, it must be admitted that he was 
 wise enough to understand that no man can commence an en- 
 tirely new history, and none can overcome at once all evils. 
 History and the statu quo exert their rights under all circum- 
 stances. However, Moses was by no means a mere reformer ; 
 he was much more,
 
 20- 
 
 A WISE AND JUST LEGISLATOR. 
 
 When you sift the question down to the system to those 
 sublime and universal principles which, with the Mosaic dis- 
 pensation, opened the new era of man's history, the reign of 
 spirit and freedom and the superiority of holiness and love as 
 it now predominates more or less in the religious, social and 
 political conceptions of the entire civilized world it is utterly 
 false to call Moses a reformer. The Mosaic dispensation can 
 only be called the spiritual creation of a lofty genius or the 
 gracious gift of revelation ; hence, Moses was either the " Ser- 
 vant of the Lord," or the divinely-gifted genius, which terms 
 may be synonymous. For u to behold the similitude of God," 
 and to be spoken to by him "face to face," is perhaps identical 
 with the most perfect conceptions of the loftiest genius, en- 
 gaged with the holiest and most sublime themes. 
 
 Take a cursory survey of the Mosaic dispensation, and you 
 will find this : God, or rather the ineffable Jehovah, is the 
 password which leads you through the entire sanctum to the 
 very sanctum sanctorum of the whole Mosaic system of doc- 
 trine and law. It is supposed, indeed, that Monotheism was 
 the oldest groundwork of religion, which gradually degenerated 
 into polytheism and idolatry. The Bible admits this, and 
 documentary evidence to a certain degree supports it. Upon 
 this alleged fact is based the theory that Moses adopted the 
 Monotheism of the Egyptian priests, or also the Jews adopted 
 it from the eastern nations, from the Arians even, as some 
 ingenious archaeologists add. The one theory, or rather hy- 
 pothesis, is as good as the other. The Monotheism of Moses 
 differs from that discovered under the debris and rubbish of 
 huge, smashed and crushed idols, under the ruins and frag- 
 ments of temples and altars strewn with the bleached bones of 
 human victims, and in the myths and legends of bewildered
 
 21 
 
 minds, as the sun differs from the candle light. The idea of 
 spirit and spirituality, hence of freedom and holiness, is a 
 nonentity in all ancient mythology, theogony and theodicy, so 
 that the very idea of a controlling intellect in nature (Nous, 
 the shaping spirit) was unknown to the Pagan world prior to 
 Anaxagoras, in the fourth pre-Christian century. The god of 
 the ancient nations was an abstraction of concrete nature in its 
 totality, materialistic and fatalistic, and the gods were fractions 
 thereof, abstractions of natural forces and energies, personified 
 in celestial bodies by Zabaites, in natural 'objects by Feticists, 
 in defunct men and women in Olympus, among the advanced 
 Pagans, without the least similarity to the Living God of Israel. 
 
 The Monotheism of Moses, symbolized in the term Jehovah, 
 is the expression of the all-producing, all-pervading, all con- 
 trolling, all-possessing, self-conscious and all-knowing, infinite, 
 free and almighty spirit, revealed in the material universe 
 which does not contain him, and reflected in human reason, 
 which can not comprehend him, omnipresent in nature and 
 history without being absorbed therein. The Living God of 
 Israel as Moses taught him is substance, and no mere abstrac- 
 tion. He is life and love, reason and freedom, the will and the 
 power, and no symbol of concrete, dead and cold matter, with 
 its iron necessity and fatalism. He is God, the absolute and 
 necessary existence, and all nature has relative existence only, 
 and is the mere reflex of his wisdom, power, goodness and holi- 
 ness. This is the Mosaic Monotheism which, besides the ele- 
 ments thereof inherited of the patriarchs, is as original and 
 unique as reason itself. Moses alone could fully comprehend 
 this immense revelation, as genius only fully comprehends its 
 own mighty creations. We understand thereof only that which 
 loboring talent is permitted to grasp of the production of genius, 
 much or little, never in its completeness, fullness and unity. 
 
 This is the key to the Mosaic dispensation and legislation,
 
 22 
 
 minus the heritage and the circumstances to which the leading 
 principles had to be accommodated for the time being. In the 
 light of that Monotheism the material universe appeared to be 
 the work of the Great Architect, an organic cosmos, with plan, 
 design, ultimate end, and all things therein co-ordinate and 
 subordinate ; and this is the foundation of all science. 
 
 Man being the image of God, a reflex of the universal in- 
 tellect, will and love, rose from his insignificance to which 
 Paganism had degraded him to the lofty position of creation's 
 ultimate end, God's representative on earth, a free, moral and 
 intellectual agent. This is the first derivative of that sublime 
 principle of Monotheism : Man is godlike and free. This is 
 the postulate of Moses, upon which rises his system of ethics 
 with freedom and equality at the base, the preservation and 
 happiness of the human lace at its apex. "Ye shall be a 
 kingdom of priests," he announced to his people every one a 
 priest, every person one of the highest class and caste none 
 to be superior and none inferior before God and His laws one 
 law and one statute to be for all, the native and the alien. 
 This announcement of equality was as new and original with 
 Moses as his proclamation of liberty, of Sabbath-year and 
 Jubilee-year. It was the inevitable sequent of his Monotheism. 
 
 In Egypt, as in India and elsewhere, society was broken up 
 into castes and clans, which domineered the one over the 
 other, and slavery was the lot of all, as the gods themselves were 
 the slaves of blind and relentless fate and iron necessity. The 
 chief of a Pagan nation was a god or demi-god, whom every 
 per&on must -obey under penalty of death. The chief of the 
 Mosaic government is the prophet, to whose teachings and ad- 
 vices every person was commanded to listen ; but none could 
 be punished by human authority for non-obedience to the 
 prophet. The law governs, and man can only expound and 
 administer it. Theocracy is identical with democracy, and
 
 23 
 
 democracy means equality before the law and the sovereignty 
 thereof. The law is divine, it is God's, who alone is King, i. e., 
 it must emanate from unadulterated reason and the principle 
 of absolute justice. Therefore, it must exclude none and em- 
 brace and protect all who live among you and seek prosperity 
 and happiness with you. This is the groundwork of the Mo- 
 saic ethics, flowing naturally from the divine fountain of his 
 Monotheism. 
 
 Embraced therein is the moral law which must govern the 
 individual. The God of Moses is holy, and that is again origi- 
 nally Mosaic. The gods of Paganism were sensuous and sen- 
 sual beings, to whom neither purity nor virtue, neither right- 
 eousness nor holiness, neither spiritual love nor intellectual 
 enjoyment was attributed. The debauchery and violence of 
 the gods were admired by immoral men and glorified by lubric 
 poets. The Most Holy One, according to the Mosaic dispensa- 
 tion, promised his chosen people that they should become to 
 him a peculiar treasure, " a holy nation," and commanded 
 them, " Ye shall be holy men unto me " ; "' Ye shall be holy, 
 for I, Jehovah your God, am holy" ; " And ye shall sanctify 
 yourselves and be holy," etc. God must be worshiped in right- 
 eousness and holiness. 
 
 Man's happiness and the perfection of his nature depend on 
 the purity of his motives and the righteousness of his doings. 
 Like God, man must learn to love the true, the good and the 
 beautiful for their own sake, and abhor falsehood and wicked- 
 ness and impurity as being abominable in themselves. So 
 man lives godlike. Religion based upon falsehood is supersti- 
 tion, and superstition is the progenitor of fanaticism, injustice 
 and impurity. As you forsake God, so will he forsake you ; as 
 you desert truth and reason, so will they abandon you. No 
 man can worship God and feast with the devil. But the Pa- 
 gans did. Religion and morals were with them two different
 
 24 
 
 factors. Morals appeared to them a social compact and politi- 
 cal necessity. The most pious among them was no better by 
 his religion than the most frivolous. The idea of holiness as a 
 form of religious worship is of Mosaic origin, a necessary se- 
 quent of his sublime Monotheism. 
 
 If you cast a glance upon the entire Mosaic legislation as 
 the prophets understood and expounded it, you will find these 
 fundamental thoughts at the bottom of every group and every 
 detail thereof. Dietary laws and the laws of lustration and 
 purification are in the first place sanitary laws, surrounded 
 with symbolic signification of inner and spiritual holiness. 
 Take care of the exhausted and the wounded, is a splendid 
 martial law. Take care of the poor, the needy, the stranger, the 
 widow and the orphan, said Moses, and his poor laws are with- 
 out parallel in the laws of nations. The}' stand above all simi- 
 lar laws and doctrines of antiquity, inasmuch as with Moses 
 they are means of worship and holiness, means of atonement 
 and redemption, aye, the release of the soul out of the bonds 
 of selfishness, avarice and hardness of heart ; the worship of 
 God through returning gratefully to him. through the poor or 
 the altar, parts of the profuse gifts which he bestows upon his 
 children ; and gratefulness is one of the most eminent virtues. 
 Learn to make sacrifices in order to overcome your greediness 
 and your undue attachment to the dust of this earth ; but let 
 your sacrifices be to God for holiness and to man for goodness, 
 for the preservation and happiness of the race. In peace, 
 "Love thy neighbor as thyself"; "And ye shall love the 
 stranger," i. e., you shall love man, he is God's child and im- 
 age. In war, slay not the defenseless, make not war upon 
 those who offer you peace and submission, protect female chas- 
 tity against violence ; destroy no property wantonly, destroy 
 no fruit tree when you besiege an enemy's city, and force none 
 of your brethren to go to war if he objects to it. Let the law
 
 25 
 
 govern, and not the violence of passions ; no Lynch law, let the 
 courts decide and the bailiffs execute, have cities of refuge to- 
 protect the manslayer, take cognizance of the innocent blood 
 shed in your land and take no ransom of the assassin. Take 
 him even from my altar to put him to death. Be just, fair and 
 upright in all your doings and dealings. To what end? To be 
 holy, to do the will of your God, to preserve intact the human 
 race according to God's covenant with man, to secure happiness- 
 to man and holiness to yourselves. So the whole Mosaic dis- 
 pensation and legislation arise from his Monotheism, as rises 
 the beautiful tree with all its branches, leaves, blossoms and 
 fruit from its roots, as heat and light emanate from the sun. 
 In order to correctly understand Moses as a legislator, and to- 
 comprehend him fully as a man, one must study, first and 
 foremost, his theology, his Monotheism, for it is truly his, and 
 the foundation of his character and dispensation. 
 
 No, I am not going to review that whole magnificent struc- 
 ture of religion, law and ethics in so short a time as is allotted 
 to me. It is too vast, to grand, too sublime, too lofty a moun- 
 tain of truth and justice to be surveyed in so short a time. 
 The loftiest genius of antiquity can not be measured in one 
 hour. You have before your mind the author of the great 
 principle that the governments and religions of nations must 
 be built upon the same rock of truth which must be the postu- 
 late of individual character. There can be no two kinds of 
 ethics, one for the nation and another for the individual ; no two- 
 kinds of religion, one to please God and another to advance 
 prosperity and happiness among men ; no two kinds of human 
 beings, the chosen ones and the pariahs, before God and man ; 
 there is but one God, arid one truth, and one justice, and one 
 human family, every individual of which is God's own child. 
 You have before you the organon of revelation : For Moses 
 informs you : Not I, but your God, has spoken to you, and
 
 announced to you the decrees of heaven, the duties and hopes 
 of man. Not I, Moses, he says, but the Almighty himself, has 
 taught you the highest and surest standard of rectitude to 
 guide you safely to prosperity, happiness, immortality and 
 eternal bliss ; to erect upon it the government to protect you 
 and the religion to elevate you. Not I, Moses, but the Al- 
 mighty himself, has revealed to you the universal dominion of 
 truth and justice, of freedom and love; his benign Providence 
 watching over all and each of you ; his mercy and forbeaience 
 with your weakness and shortcomings; his will that you, all 
 of you, be holy, happy, immortal and for ever blessed. On all 
 those grand precepts and principles and under the guidance of 
 the same God, I legislate for you and build up for you a 
 structure of free government and a temple of imperishable 
 religion-; I am the mere servant and messenger of Jehovah, 
 who is your God and your Father. So did Moses speak, and 
 so did he act. He built up the chosen people, the ideal nation, 
 the eternal nation which is and exists with a land and without 
 it, with a government and without one, in prosperity and 
 adversity ; the people which has seen the rise, decline and fall 
 of all ancient empires, stood at the cradle of all modern nations 
 and powers, groped its way through the darkness of the Middle 
 Ages ; and at the very first dawn of liberty and justice among 
 the nations, it rose again with vigor and energy to demonstrate 
 its vitality and its ability to co-operate in the solution of the 
 new problems of resurrecting humanity. 
 
 Standing before Moses you stand before the man who has 
 given law and' religion to the civilized world ; whose standard 
 of right and justice is fast becoming the world's beacon light 
 and guid'ng star; whose doctrines of religion, of God, human 
 dignity, freedom and righteousness conquer the masses, capti- 
 vate the reasoners, enlighten and humanize the millions. Once 
 the mighty peals of thunder roared upon Sinai, overwhelmed
 
 _ i 
 
 by the sounds of the trumpets and cornets, and above all roar- 
 ing and thundering resounded the word and law of God shak- 
 ing the wilderness and re-echoing from Paran and Seir. Louder 
 and mightier yet resounded that one great and powerful word 
 of the Almighty, which was freedom ! freedom ! freedom ! 
 Freedom it resounded from Sinai, mind is free, the spirit is 
 free, man is free, Jehovah is the God of freedom; and now it 
 rolls and re-echoes from ocean to ocean the mind is free, the 
 spirit is free, man is free, crush the yoke, break the shackles, 
 man is free. 
 
 Standing before Moses you face the first declaration of in- 
 dependence, the first proclamation of liberty, the first and 
 eternal blast from the trumpet of freedom, the redemption of 
 the spirit, the elevation of reason to its sovereign rights, you 
 stand before the majesty of righteousness, of purity and virtue, 
 face to face with the sovereignty of truth, the glory of holi- 
 ness, and the divine excellence of human nature. 
 
 Was Moses a statesman, a lawgiver, a teacher of righteous- 
 ness and a servant of Jehovah? The civilized world testifies 
 that he was. Was Moses a reality, an incomparable truth? 
 What poets can not imitate, the loftiest genius can not dupli- 
 cate, no nation and no nations have reproduced, must be the 
 reality of truth. Moses was the grand architect of that gor- 
 geous palace which the prophets and bards frescoed, around 
 which the sages built the fence and park and colonnades, and 
 the reasoners lit the lamps upon the meandering, winding 
 avenues and approaches to the lofty portals. 
 
 WAS MOSES A GREAT MAN? 
 
 It sometimes appears to me as if Moses were still standing 
 upon the pinnacle of Mount Sinai, high above the mists of this 
 earth, enveloped in the benign light of divine truth, surrounded 
 by the seraphs of light and purity, pointing heavenward and 
 looking onward and forward to the family of man, and he np-
 
 28 
 
 pears to me as inviting all nations to rise and to climb up to 
 that glory-crowned height of righteousness, purity and holi- 
 ness, liberty and equality, justice and peace on earth in the 
 name of the One Eternal God and in behalf of the one and in- 
 divisible human family ; a summit, alas ! which the human 
 family, in spite of all combustions and revolutions, all the 
 struggles and the precious blood shed, has not yet reached. 
 Then I appear to myself very small, very insignificant, all per- 
 sons and things appear small and insignificant to me, and I 
 feel compelled to think that either God spoke through the 
 mouth of Moses or nature's productive energy was exhausted 
 in the great mind of that one man, who comprehended the en- 
 tire household of God on this earth, and opened its mysterious 
 avenues to the gaze of man. He who has legislated in the 
 Wilderness for the nations of so many centuries, and has es- 
 tablished the only immortal nation ; he who taught us God, 
 freedom, equality, righteousness, purity, humanity and holi- 
 ness, was certainly a great and good man and a most extraor- 
 dinary reformer. 
 
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