But they indicate the first rise of the power of Greece and of Europe the first conviction, as it has been well expressed, ut valesceret Occidens,-the first apprehension that the tide of Eastern conquest was rolled back, and that at last from the Western Isles would come a power, before which Asshur and Babylon, Assyria and Chaldæa, and Persia, no less than the wild hordes of the desert, would fade and 'perish for ever' from the earth.1 It has often been debated, and no evidence now remains to prove, at what precise time this grandest of all its episodes was introduced into the Mosaic narrative. But, however this may be determined, the magnificence of the vision remains untouched; and it stands in the Sacred record, the first example of the Prophetic utterances respecting the destinies of the world at large; founded, like all such utterances, on the objects immediately in the range of the vision of the seer, but including within their sweep a vast prospect beyond. Here first the Gentile world, not of the East only but of the West, bursts into view; and here is the first sanction of that wide interest in the various races and empires of mankind, not only as bearing on the fortunes of the Chosen People, but for their own sakes also, which the narrow spirits of the Jewish Church first, and 'of the Christian Church since, have been so slow to acknowledge. Here, too, is exhibited, in its most striking form, the irresistible force of the Prophetic impulse overpowering the baser spirit of the individual man. The spectacle of the host of Israel, even though seen only from its utmost skirts, is too much for him. The Divine message struggling within him is delivered in spite of his own sordid resistance. Many has been the Balaam whom the force of truth or goodness from without, or the force of genius or conscience from within, has compelled to bless the enemies whom he was hired to curse, 'For 'ships of Chittim' the Vulgate reads 'galleys from Italy.' The general sense of the West' is still preserved. But the exchange of the familiar island of Cyprus for the country at that time unknown and unintellligible to the East of Italy, well illustrates the difference between Prophecy as it appears in the Bible and as it appears in the theories of later ages. See Lecture XX. Like the seer of old, Who stood on Zophim, heav'n-controlled. 'And Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his own place.' The Sacred historian, as if touched with a feeling of the greatness of the Prophet's mission, drops the veil over its dark close. Only by the incidental notice of a subsequent part of the narrative, are we told how Balaam endeavoured to effect,2 by the licentious rites of the Arab tribes, the ruin which he had been unable to work by his curses; and how, in the war of vengeance which followed, he met with his mournful end. Moses. 2. The intermingling of the narratives of the Book of NumFarewell of bers, the Book of Deuteronomy, the Book of Joshua, the rise of new names, Eleazar, Phinehas, Jair, indicate that we are approaching the confines of another generation, and another stage of the history. But the main interest still hangs round Moses, and round the heights of Pisgah. We Deuteronomy. need not here discuss the vexed question of the precise time when the Book of Deuteronomy 3 assumed its present form. It is enough to feel that it represents to us the long farewell of the Prophet and Lawgiver, as he stood amongst the groves of Abel Shittim, and recapitulated the course of his career and of his legislation. Parts, at least, have every appearance of belonging to that stage of the history and to no other; when they were still beyond the Jordan, when the institutions of the Conquest and the Monarchy were still undeveloped. And, if the features of the earlier Law are in other parts transfigured with a softer and a more spiritual light, this change, whilst it may indicate the influence of the later spirit of the great Prophetic age, yet is also in close harmonyhardly the less remarkable if it be a dramatic, and not an historic, harmony-with the soothing and widening process 'Josephus amplifies the single word of the Biblical narrative into another elaborate embassy to the Euphrates.Ant. iv. 6, § 5-8. 2 Num. xxxi. 8, 16. At the time of the Christian era, and probably long afterwards, the account of the death and burial of Moses was supposed to have been written by himself as a prediction. (Jos. Ant. iv. 8, § 48; Philo, V. M. iii. 39). This hypothesis is worth recording as an example of interpretation now entirely superseded. * See Lecture XXXIX. which belongs to the old age, not merely of every nation, but of every individual. Deuteronomy has been sometimes said to be to the earlier books of the Law, as the Fourth Gospel to the earlier Three. The comparison may hold good in regard no less to the actual advance in the character of Moses the Lawgiver to Moses the expiring Prophet, and the like advance from the Son of Thunder to the aged Evangelist. In this last representation of Moses, one feature is brought out more forcibly than ever before. The poetic utterances, regarded as an indispensable accompaniment of the Prophetic gift, now come forth in full strength; the vox cycnea of the departing seer. Two of these, at least in their general conception, belong exclusively to this epoch, the Eve of the Conquest: the Song of battle and of warning by which Joshua was to be cheered, and the Blessing, it might almost be said the The two Moses. war-cry, of the several tribes. In some minute points, also, we seem to trace the feeling of this particular crisis of the history. The name by which, in the Song of Moses, the God of Israel is called, must, in the first instance, have been suggested by the Desert wanderings- The Rock.' Nine times in the course of this single hymn is repeated this most expressive figure, taken from the granite crags of Sinai, and carried thence through psalms and hymns of all nations, like one of the huge fragments which it represents, to regions as remote in aspect as in distance, from its original birthplace. If 'the Rock' carries us back to the desert, the pastoral riches to which the Song refers confine us to the eastern bank of the Jordan-The butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the 'fat of kidneys of wheat.' It would be too bold to say that these words could not have occurred to any one in Western Palestine; but they are so far more appropriate to the Eastern downs and forests, that we may fairly see in them a stamp of that peculiar locality. · The third hymn which, by its title, belongs to this period, 'Deut. xxxii. 13, 14. Moses. is of far more universal interest. 'The prayer of Moses the 'Man of God,' which contrasts the fleeting generations of man with the mountains at whose feet they wandered, The Prayer or Psalm of and the eternity of Him who existed 'before ever 'those mountains were brought forth,' has become the funeral hymn of the world, and is evidently intended to be treated as the funeral hymn of the Prophet himself. The most recent criticism, whilst hesitating to receive it as actually the composition of Moses, rejoices to see in it his spirit throughout. The Psalm has something in it unusually arrest'ing, solemn, and sinking deep into the depths of the Divinity. 'Moses might well have been seized by these awful thoughts at 'the close of his wanderings; and the author, whoever he be, 'is clearly a man grown grey with vast experience, who here 'takes his stand at the end of his earthly course.' 2 The end was at last come. It might still have seemed that a triumphant close was in store for the aged Prophet. The last Pisgah. 'His 'eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.' He view from 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 been long 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.'3 Beneath him lay the tents of Israel ready for the march; and 'over against' them, distinctly visibly 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 1 Ps. xc. 2 Ewald, Psalmen, p. 91. 3 Deut. iii. 27. The above was written before the identification of Nebbah with Nebo, which gives precisely the view here 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. To him, so far as we know, the charm of that view pronounced by the few modern travellers who have seen it to be unequalled of its kind-lay in the assurance that this was the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, and to their seed, the inheritance-with all its varied features of rock and pasture, and forest and desert-for the sake of which he had borne so many years of toil and danger, in the midst of which the fortunes of his people would be unfolded worthily of that great beginning. To us, as we place ourselves by his side, the view swells into colossal proportions, as we think how the proud city of palm-trees is to fall before the hosts of Israel; how the spear of Joshua is to be planted on height after height of those hostile mountains; what series of events, wonderful beyond any that had been witnessed in Egypt or in Sinai, would in after ages be enacted on the narrow crest of Bethlehem, in the deep basin of the Galilean lake, beneath the walls of 'Jebus which is Jerusalem.' All this he saw. He 'saw it with his eyes, but he was not 'to go over thither.' It was his last view. From that height he came down no more. Jewish, Mussulman, 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 further, taking with him only the elders, the 'high priest Eliezer, and the general Joshua. At the top of 'the mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as he was 'embracing Eliezer 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, ''With the telescope we could see any 'building in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Account of the View from Nebbah, by |