That the ancestors-or some of the ancestors-of the later Israelites were for long settled in Egypt, and in the end subjected there to hard bondage; that Moses was the leader who, after much opposition on the part of the Pharaoh, rescued them from their thraldom at a time when Egypt was paralysed by an unprecedented succession of national calamities, and led them through a part of the Red Sea usually covered with water, beyond reach of their recent oppressors; that he brought them afterwards to a mountain where Israel received through him a revelation which was a new departure in the national religion, and became the foundation both of the later religion of Israel and of Christianity; that he originated, or more probably adapted, customs and institutions from which the later civil and religious organization of the nation was developed; and that thus Israel owed to Moses both its national existence and, ultimately, its religious character-these, and other facts such as these, cannot be called in question by a reasonable criticism.
1. Had Moses the gifts of leadership? We are certainly impressed more by his silence and backwardness than by his speech. But the truth is that for leadership, in any disinterested cause, the outward gifts count for little compared with inward strength. So far as your true motive is personal ambition and display, take prudently the measure of your powers, and do not overstep your actual capacities. “Nature sets its just premium on reality.” No eloquence or emphasis avails, if to those that hear you the expression seems somehow rather larger than the man. If you are called by the inner voice to some unselfish enterprise and service, the scale of it, the risk, the weight of the responsibility, the felt deficiency of gifts, need not hold you back, if only you will bring to it the veracity, the generosity of spirit, the trust in God, which gave to Moses power and place of leadership. “I am that I am”; cling fast to the eternal and the true, and you need fear no exposure of human weaknesses: they will not bring you to discredit or to shame. And grudge not their gifts to any. If others should outshine you in charm or brilliance or power of inspiration, think not that they usurp your place, but say with Moses, “Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!” You cannot covet influence too much. It is among God's choicest gifts. To every young man who is face to face with choice of his profession I would say, See that that finds its place in your scales of choice. As you choose between the law, medicine, the civil service, the army, the desk, the ministry, the school, bethink you well which offers you the field of influence most germane to your personal type. It is the thing most precious, most praiseworthy, the thing which most abides before the judgment-seat of God. But the longer you live and the more experience ripens, the more you will realize that it proceeds not from gifts, but from sincerity of life, unselfishness of aim, and fidelity to God. It is the least self-conscious of all powers. No sense of shortcoming impairs it. Moses, as history proves, possessed it in pre-eminent degree; but Moses, I doubt not, was to the last more conscious of failure than of success. “Meekest of men” became his epithet, and therefore the most staunch, the most enduring, the most impervious to defeat.1 [Note: G. H. Rendall, Charterhouse Sermons, 29.]
In reading the early letters of men of genius I can recall my former self, full of an aspiration which had not learned how hard the hills of life are to climb, but thought rather to alight down upon them from its winged vantage-ground. Whose fulfilment has ever come nigh the glorious greatness of his yet never-balked youth? As we grow older, art becomes to us a definite faculty, instead of a boundless sense of power. Then we felt the wings burst from our shoulders; they were a gift and a triumph, and a bare flutter from twig to twig seemed aquiline to us; but now our vans, though broader grown and stronger, are matters of every day. We may reach our Promised Land; but it is far behind us in the Wilderness, in the early time of struggle, that we have our Sinais and our personal talk with God in the bush.1 [Note: Letters of James Russell Lowell, i. 154.]
2. Notice other signs of leadership in Moses.
(1) He had a keen sense of wrong when witnessing the ill-usage of others, an indignation against injustice, a warm sympathy with the weak under the oppression of the strong. All people profess this sympathy, but in some it is a feeling which leads to action. It was such a feeling in Moses, as the very first act of his which we read of shows-when he saw one of the Israelites suffering wrong from an Egyptian, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. The Israelites were a poor despised race in Egypt, and the Egyptians ill-treated them. Moses saw one of these cases of ill-usage, and it roused in him immediately this sympathy for the oppressed, and this indignation against oppression. So again in Midian, when he fled there, his first act was to stand up for the seven daughters of the priest of Midian who came to water their flocks at the well, and whom the violent and unmannerly shepherds drove away. They went home and told their father: “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hands of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.” This was the disposition of Moses, and therefore God chose him to be the deliverer of the children of Israel out of Egypt.
(2) At first rash and impulsive, Moses submitted to the Divine chastisement and discipline so thoroughly that a real change was produced in his character. This is a fact which arrests our attention. A real change in the temper of any man is a wonderful thing. We rarely see it, so rarely that we are sometimes tempted to doubt whether there is such a thing. People change particular habits; they learn to control particular bodily appetites and passions; they may give up drinking or gaming, or swearing; they may force themselves to do things; which they once neglected to do; even if there is a deep fault at the root of a man, such as pride, jealousy, meanness, we may often see that fault disguised, moderated in its outward expression, and made to look more plausible; yet how seldom do we see a really converted heart, a new-born man in the deepest and most vital parts of the character! The change in the disposition of Moses is revealed in such genuine acts that it ranks with the other great changes of heart in Scripture-the change in him who once would have called down fire from heaven to consume those who opposed themselves to the truth, and who afterwards became the preacher of love; the change in him who was once Saul and afterwards Paul.
(3) His sympathy for the people is deeper, keener than before. But now it is used to bear with them, plead for them, and when necessary denounce and resist them. He is thus the pattern of the good ruler, and stands in special contrast to the selfish ruler of the world's type. The successful ruler of the world's type is one who uses the weaknesses and the vices of mankind for his own personal advantage and exaltation. He maintains his own influence and position, not by curbing and restraining the follies and humours of the people, but by skilfully yielding and giving way to them; he quotes and misapplies the proverb of the oak and the sapling, one of which was uprooted by the storm because in its strength it withstood it; the other survived the storm because in its weakness it yielded to it. Thus by making himself convenient to man's corrupt wishes, he keeps up his place in the world; he does not really care for the people's good, but uses compliance with others only to secure the exaltation of himself. Power is a selfish prize in his eyes. A good ruler, on the other hand, cares for the good of the people, and for that good will run the risk even of losing his own power. Moses, in resisting the vices of his people, has set the pattern of such a ruler. He did not maintain his power by giving way to them. He resisted their sins, he rebuked them, he punished them, while he loved them, and because he loved them.
It so happens that Moses has been interpreted to us by one of deeper insight than any critic or commentator, by a spirit as great and lofty as his own; and, above all, by one whose life, like that of Moses, was made bitter by the treachery, stupidity, and sensuality of a generation among whom he towered up, a soul too great not to be misunderstood. Four hundred years ago there lived a man, sculptor, painter, poet, to whom God gave a mighty genius for art. His name we know as Michelangelo; and Michelangelo, in his divinest inspiration, sculptured the face and figure of Moses. “If among all the masterpieces of ancient and modern statuary there is one that stands forth without a parallel, the most impressive figure ever sculptured in stone or bronze, it is the statue of Moses by Michelangelo.” And how does Michelangelo interpret the meekest of all the men that were upon the face of the earth? To say that the face of the sculptured Moses is strong, wise, majestic, is to fall short of the truth. It is almost terrible in its greatness and loftiness. The lines of care, and sorrow, and disappointment are deep in it; and yet they are lost and forgotten in the unconquerable power and wisdom of it. It is the face of a man who might move among his fellows as a kind of god. But according to the old Latin proverb, “The gods themselves are vanquished by stupidity”; and so the artist has left on the face of the Lawgiver, the shadow of that life-long struggle with the perverseness, the ignorance, and the degradation of the race of slaves whom he made into a nation.1 [Note: W. Danks, The Church on the Moor, 87.]
When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how
Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child
Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,
Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow,
And red, ripe lips for Kisses; even now
Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild,
Who led God's chosen people through the wild,
And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou
That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread
Of angels strewing Earth for us! like him
Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;
But still with milk and honey-droppings fed,
Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair,
Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there!2 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]
