1. The end was at last come. It might still have seemed that a triumphant close was in store for the aged prophet. “His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” He had led his people to victory against the Amorite kings; he might still be expected to lead them over into the land of Canaan. But so it was not to be. From the desert plains of Moab he went up to the same lofty range whence Balaam had looked over the same prospect. The same, but seen with eyes how different! The view of Balaam has long been forgotten; but the view of Moses has become the proverbial view of all time. It was the peak dedicated to Nebo on which he stood. “He lifted up his eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward.” Beneath him lay the tents of Israel ready for the march; and “over against” them, distinctly visible in its grove of palm-trees, the stately Jericho, key of the Land of Promise. Beyond was spread out the whole range of the mountains of Palestine, in its fourfold masses: “all Gilead,” with Hermon and Lebanon in the east and north; the hills of Galilee, overhanging the Lake of Gennesareth; the wide opening where lay the plain of Esdraelon, the future battle-field of the nations; the rounded summits of Ebal and Gerizim; and beyond them the dim haze of the distant sea; immediately in front of him the hills of Judæa and, amidst them, seen distinctly through the rents in their rocky walls, Bethlehem on its narrow ridge, and the invincible fortress of Jebus.
A glorious spectacle, a magnificent prospect for any eyes, as the very few-travellers and pilgrims-who have had the opportunity of beholding it have with one consent declared. But what a spectacle for him! He saw the land, not merely in its natural beauty, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of mountains and brooks, a land which was the glory of all lands; but he saw it as the land which the Lord had given to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and to their seed, to the end that, in spite of all the sin and opposition of men, even of those who were the bearers of His promises, He might there work out the eternal purposes of His love; that He might found there a fortress of true religion, where His worship should be maintained during the long and weary ages in which all the rest of the world should be wholly given to idolatry; and from which, in due time, should go forth the ambassadors of His grace, who should everywhere declare His name, and plant the banners of the faith in every land.
And as he saw it, and understood, if not all, yet much of the significance of that land for all the after-history of mankind, how it should be indeed a Holy Land, for it should be once trodden by the feet of One, a prophet like unto him, and greater than he, for He should be Moses and Joshua in one, and far more than either, far more than both; as he saw this good land, may we not believe that he was comforted for all, felt that it was glory enough for a sinful man to have been used by God to bring His people thus far, even to the verge and border of this land of inheritance? May we not be sure that with him was not merely a perfect acquiescence in the will of God, so that he accepted that will without murmuring or repining, but that he felt goodness and mercy to have followed him from the first to the last, and that no good thing had been withholden from him? Thus, looking in that supreme hour before and after, looking back to all the way by which the Lord had led him, to those three mysterious forties into which his life had been divided, the forty years at the court of Pharaoh, the forty years in the land of Midian, and now the forty years in the wilderness; and looking forward to a land of inheritance, fairer, richer, brighter than even that which he now saw but must never tread, the weary, much-enduring man yielded his spirit to his God. God, as the Jewish rabbis assure us, drew out that spirit with a kiss-they meaning by this to express their sense of the serene composure, the painless peace of his departure.
And the Lord came, invisible as a thought,
Three angels gleaming on his secret track,
Prince Michaël, Zagaël, Gabriel, charged to guard
The soul-forsaken body as it fell
And bear it to the hidden sepulchre
Denied for ever to the search of man.
And the Voice said to Moses: “Close thine eyes.”
He closed them. “Lay thine hand upon thine heart,
And draw thy feet together.” He obeyed.
And the Lord said, “O spirit! child of mine!
A hundred years and twenty thou hast dwelt
Within this tabernacle wrought of clay.
This is the end: Come forth and flee to heaven.”
But the grieved soul with plaintive pleading cried,
“I love this body with a clinging love:
The courage fails me, Lord, to part from it.”
“O child, come forth! for thou shalt dwell with Me
About the immortal throne where seraphs joy
In growing vision and in growing love.”
Yet hesitating, fluttering, like the bird
With young wing weak and dubious, the soul
Stayed. But behold! upon the death-dewed lips
A kiss descended, pure, unspeakable-
The bodiless Love without embracing Love
That lingered in the body, drew it forth
With heavenly strength and carried it to heaven.1 [Note: George Eliot.]
2. One final honour was in store for Moses still. No human hands bore the dead lawgiver and prophet to his grave, or composed him there. “He,” that is, God, as we are told, “buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day”; he whom God buried, according to all likelihood not seeing corruption, and his grave unknown because probably he was raised from it as soon as laid there; only just tasting the penalty of death and then that penalty removed-as would all seem to be indicated and implied by the apparition of Moses, with Elijah, in a glorified body upon the Mount of Transfiguration. The same also seems pointed at in an obscure passage in the Epistle of St. Jude, where mention is made of the Archangel Michael on the one side, and of Satan on the other, disputing about the body of Moses; Satan contending that he, as a sinner, should pay to the uttermost all the penalties of sin, death, and the return to dust which goes along with death; the Archangel Michael, the great Prince who standeth for the children of his people, declaring that for him one part of the penalty, not indeed the essence of it, but this adjunct to it, was remitted.
We would fain know something of the details of that strange and lonely death. But the narrative is silent. Where Scripture is silent, however, tradition has, as usual, been busy in supplying the information that we crave. “Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions crowd in to fill up the blank. ‘Amidst the tears of the people, the women beating their breasts, and the children giving way to uncontrolled wailing, he withdrew. At a certain point in his ascent he made a sign to the weeping multitude to advance no farther, taking with him only the elders, the high priest Eleazar, and the general Joshua. At the top of the mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as he was embracing Eleazer and Joshua, and still speaking to them, a cloud suddenly stood over him, and he vanished in a deep valley.' So spoke the tradition, as preserved in the language, here unusually pathetic, of Josephus. Other stories told of the ‘Ascension of Moses' amidst the contention of good and evil spirits over his body.” But do we not feel that, after all, the simplicity and silence of Scripture best befit the dignity, the awfulness of the event? He saw-he died-he was buried; and “no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”
“And no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.” That is the fitting crown to such a life; for it leaves it of one piece. There are people on whom the recognitions and distinctions do not alight. There was no vainglory in his life, no shadow of vainglory in his death. He led his people to the borders of the Promised Land, “his eye not dim, nor his natural force abated”; he beheld it stretched before them for their occupation. He made no claim, not even on remembrance, beyond the life-power he had instilled into their hearts. Is it too trivial to cite in such a context the epitaph which in gentler accents expresses at least the mood in which he passed from earthly leadership?-
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me,
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet,
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
Just for the greatest, that is the fitting end. Their life is only in the hearts of men. For Aaron there was mourning thirty days, and his tomb is to this day a place of pilgrimage. But Socrates, Moses, Christ-they left behind them no written word. Was not that a part of their spiritual greatness? Was it not a part, too, or an emblem, of their immortality, that they lay down in no remembered grave?
There are consecrated graves where priest never stood, where mourner never knelt, where tear never fell. There are spots hallowed by your Father which to you are barren ground. God's acre is larger than the churchyard. Out on yon bleak hillside He wrapped your friend to rest in a mantle of spotless snow. Is not that bleak hillside God's acre evermore? Is it not as holy to you as if you had brought sweet spices to the tomb? It has no chant but the winds, no book but the solemn silence, no bell but some wild bird's note, no wreath but the wreath of snow; yet there is no more sacred spot in all the diocese of God.1 [Note: G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, 51.]
There are a number of Scotsmen in the Hawaiian Islands, many of them being managers of sugar plantations, engineers, mechanics, or engaged in mercantile pursuits. The Scottish Thistle Club of Honolulu sent a deputation to ask Stevenson if he would favour the Club with a short talk or lecture on any subject. He cordially consented to give a lecture, and it took place in the hall of the Club. Stevenson, who gave a brilliant and humorous talk on Scottish history, wound up by saying, “I received a book the other day called The Stickit Minister, with a dedication to myself, which affected me strangely, so that I cannot read it without a gulp. It was addressed to me in the third person, and bade me remember those places ‘where, about the graves of the Martyrs, the whaups are crying-his heart remembers how.' Now when I think on my latter end, as I do sometimes-especially of late years when it seems less imminent-I feel that when I shall come to die out here among these beautiful islands, I shall have lost something that had been my due, my predestinate but forfeited grave among honest Scots sods; and I feel that I shall never quite attain to what Patrick Walker calls, in one of those pathetic touches of which I have already spoken, my ‘resting grave,' unless it were to be in one of our purple hillsides, under one of our old, quaint, and half-obliterated table-tombstones slanting down the brae, and ‘where, about the graves of the Martyrs, the whaups are crying, my heart remembers how.' ”1 [Note: J. A. Hammerton, Stevensoniana, 98.]
