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HOW TO GET STRONG

MOSES (1571–1451 B.C.)


Born under strange circumstances; his life hunted before his eyes were open; hidden three months because his parents saw he was a proper child-was Moses. Reared in a palace; trained in the University of Egypt; favored alike with chance for careful study and for profound reflection; he ripened into a man "of calmness; disinterestedness; patience; perseverance; meekness; coupled with keen energy; rapidity of action; unfailing courage; wisdom in council; and boldness in war"; the chosen captain of God's chosen people, in the longest and most trying expedition this world has ever seen. Leader; legislator; commander; liberator; law-giver; historian; he has left a name, great and imperishable.


And what of his body? When a mere babe, a king's daughter saw him; and was so struck with his beauty that she adopted him as her son. Grown to manhood, seeing a fellow-Hebrew, a slave, brutally treated by an Egyptian overseer; he sprang upon the latter; closed with him in a terrible struggle; and left him dead upon the field. Facing one of the greatest rulers the world then knew; surrounded by his mighty retinue, and backed by his armies; this man single-handed, leaning only upon his Maker and himself; with unquailing front, never relaxed his efforts for one moment, until the tyrant let the people go. For forty years of march over desert, sea, and mountain at the head of a mighty multitude, ignorant, fractious, mutinous, surrounded with difficulties and dangers; beset by unknown foes, he never slept a night under a roof. Eighty years old at the start; ten more than most men hope to ever see; yet, at the end of those forty memorable years, he came through in such splendid form that we are told that "Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." What

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