here unusually pathetic, of Josephus. Other wilder stories told of the Divine kiss which drew forth his expiring spirit ; others of the 'Ascension of Moses' amidst the contention of good and evil spirits over his body. The Mussulmans, regardless of the actual scene of his death, have raised to him a tomb on the western side of the Jordan, frequented by thousands of Mussulman devotees. But the silence of the Sacred narrative refuses to be broken. 'In' that strange land, 'the land of 'Moab, Moses the servant of the Lord died according to the 'word of the Lord.' 'He buried him in "a ravine" in the 'land of Moab, over against the idol temple of Peor.' Apart from his countrymen, honoured by no funeral obsequies, visited by no grateful pilgrimages, 'no man knoweth of his sepulchre 'unto this day.' The grave of Moses. Two impressive truths are involved in this representation of the death of Moses, truths which hardly occur again with equal force in the history till we meet them again in the end of Him, of whom, in the New Testament, Moses is so often made the illustration and likeness. First, the mystery, the uncertainty, which overhangs the burial place of the greatest character of the Jewish Church, is a sample of the general feeling with which these local sanctuaries were guarded. Doubtless, as in the case of the Patriarchal sepulchres at Hebron and the royal sepulchres at Jerusalem, the natural instinct of reverence for the tombs of the illustrious dead often asserted its own rights. But, as if to show that this is a secondary and not a primary element of religious sentiment, when we come to the highest cases of all, the grave on Mount Nebo, the grave on Golgotha, the darkness closes upon the sacred spot: 'no 'man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.' Secondly, the scene on Pisgah is at once the fitting end of the life of Moses, and the exemplification of a general law. In The end of one sense it might seem mournful, incomplete, disappointing; but in another and higher sense, how fully in accordance with his whole career, how truly the crowning point of his life! Moses. 'Jude 9. Fabricius, Cod. Pseudep. i. 839-846. The personal characteristics of the Prophet are too faintly drawn to admit of any fuller delineation. But one feature is indisputably marked out. No modern word seems exactly to correspond to that which our translators have rendered 'the 'meekest of men,' but which rather expresses, 'enduring,' 'afflicted,' 'heedless of self.' This, at any rate, is the trait most strongly impressed on all his actions from first to last. So in Egypt he threw himself into the thankless cause of his oppressed brethren; at his earliest call he prayed that Aaron might be the leader instead of himself; at Sinai he besought that his name might be blotted out if only his people might be spared; in the desert, he wished that not only he but all the Lord's people might prophesy. He founded no dynasty; his own sons were left in deep obscurity; his successor was taken from the rival tribe of Ephraim. He himself receives for once the regal title, 'The King' in 'Jeshurun;' but the title dies with him. It is as the highest type and concentration of this endurance and self-abnegation, that the last view from Pisgah receives its chief instruction. To labour and not to see the end of our labours; to sow and not to reap; to be removed from this earthly scene before our work has been appreciated, and when it will be carried on not by ourselves, but by others, is a law so common in the highest characters of history, that none can be said to be altogether exempt from its operation. It is true in intellectual matters as well as in spiritual; and one of the finest applications of any passage in the Mosaic history is that, first made by Cowley, and enlarged by Lord Macaulay, to the great English philosopher, who Did on the very border stand Of the blessed Promised Land; And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit Saw it himself, and show'd us it ; But life did never to one man allow Time to discover worlds and conquer too. 'In the first book of the Novum Organum we see the great 1 Deut. xxxiii. 5. 'Lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an 'infinite expanse; behind him a wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters, in which successive generations have 'sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, reaping no 'harvest and building no abiding city: before him a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey. While the multitude below saw only the flat sterile desert in 'which they had so long wandered, bounded on every side by 'a near horizon, or diversified only by some deceitful mirage, 'he was gazing from a far higher stand, on a far lovelier 'country, following with his eye the long course of fertilising 'rivers, through ample pastures, and under the bridges of great 'capitals, measuring the distances of marts and harbours, and 'portioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beer'sheba.' '1 The imagery thus nobly used to describe the promise and the self-denial of intellectual labour, is still more true of the many reformers, martyrs, and missionaries, John Huss, Tyn. dale, Francis Xavier, Howard, who, in all times of the Church, have died on the threshold of their reward, in hope, not in possession. Events have moved too slow, and the generation passes away which should have supported the saint or the chief; or events have moved too fast, and the strength of the rising generation has superseded the want of a leader; or a word has been spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and his prospects are suddenly overcast; or he is struck by decay of power, or by sudden, untimely death; again and again the Moses of the Church, of the commonwealth, lingers there, 'dies there in the land of Moab, and goes not over to possess 'that good land;' and Canaan is won, not by the first and greatest of the nation, but by his subordinate minister and successor, Joshua the son of Nun. 'Macaulay's Essay on Bacon, p. 413. THE CONQUEST OF IX. THE CONQUEST OF THE EAST OF THE JORDAN. X. THE CONQUEST OF WESTERN PALESTINE.—TH FALL OF JERICHO AND AI. XI. THE CONQUEST OF WESTERN PALESTINE.—TH THE XII. THE CONQUEST OF WESTERN PALESTINE. BATTLE OF merom, and SETTLEMENT OF THE TRIBES. THE AUTHORITIES FOR THIS PART OF THE HISTORY. 1. (1.) Num. xxi. 21–35, xxv., xxxi., xxxii., xxxiv.; Deut. ii. 9, iii. 20, iv. 41-49, xxix. 7, 8; Joshua i.-xxiv. ; Judg. i. 1-36, xi. 15-26, xviii. 1-31; 1 Chron. ii. 20–24. (2.) Ps. xliv. 1-4, lxxviii. 55, cxiv. 3, 5, cxxxvi. 17-22; Ecclus. xlvi. 1-12. (3.) The Characteristics of the Tribes, Gen. xlix.; Deut. xxxiii. 2. Jewish traditions. (1.) Josephus, Ant. iv. 5, 6, 7; v. I. (2.) Rabbinical legends, in Otho's Lex Rabbin. 332; Fabricius' Codex Pseudepigraph. Vet. Test. 871-873. (a.) Joshua's Prayer. (b.) Joshua's Ten Decrees. (3.) Philo, De Caritate. (4.) Samaritan Book of Joshua, edited by Juynboll, 1848. [It was written in Arabicprobably in the 12th century-in Egypt, and is chiefly valuable as representing the traditions and feelings of the Samaritan community.] 3. Heathen traditions, mentioned by Suidas (sub voce Xavaàv); Moses Choren. (Hist. Arm. i. 18); Procopius (Bell. Vand. ii. 4). |