STATESMEN AND SAGES
Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
—Longfellow
MOSES[1]
By Henry George
(1571-1451 B.C.)
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THREE great religions place the leader of the Exodus upon the highest plane they allot to man. To Christendom and to Islam, as well as to Judaism, Moses is the mouthpiece of the Most High; the medium, clothed with supernatural powers, through which the Divine Will has spoken. Yet this very exaltation, by raising him above comparison, may prevent the real grandeur of the man from being seen. It is amid his brethren that Saul stands taller and fairer.
On the other hand, the latest school of Biblical criticism asserts that the books and legislation attributed to Moses are really the product of an age subsequent to that of the prophets. Yet to this Moses, looming vague and dim, of whom they can tell us almost nothing, they, too, attribute the beginning of that growth which flowered centuries after in the humanities of Jewish law, and again, higher still and fairer, gleamed forth in that star of spiritual light which rested over the stable of Bethlehem, in Judea.
But whether wont to look on Moses in this way or in that, it may be some-
- ↑ Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.
