Nor, further, is it easy to discover what motive Moses can have had for counterfeiting a commission from Jehovah, or leading out, under such pretence, the tribes of Israel into the wilderness. We have no reason to believe that he was under any disgrace at the courts of Memphis or of Thebes, when he first, at the age of forty, took notice of his afflicted brethren ;* nor have we any need of such a motive to account for a step which natural affection must have prompted; the wonder may rather seem to be that he had not visited them before. If, however, he at this time entertained any settled plans for their emancipation, it is evident that the first discouragement sufficed to make him abandon them. He sets them, indeed an example of resistance to that oppression which ground them to the dust; or, to speak more accurately, a sudden burst of indignation impels him to a homicide, which, when committed, instead of glorying in, he is anxious to conceal. He endeavours, also, to reconcile the differences, and, apparently, to arouse them to a sense of that strength which arises from union. But their first ingratitude deters him from the attempt, and awakens him to a sense of his danger. He flies into a distant region of Arabia, where, during forty years, he continues entirely separated from his family, till at an age when the fever of enthusiasm has generally passed away, and when men are seldom disposed or qualified for a

VOL. I.

*Exod. ii. 11.

difficult and dangerous enterprise, he returns to the land where, if remembered at all, he was remembered as a murderer, to persuade an oppressive sovereign to permit a race of useful slaves to depart from serving him.

In all this there is surely no appearance of worldly cunning. Of worldly prudence there would be no appearance, unless the individual who thus acted had relied on a power beyond his own. In Egypt, at first, as the adopted son of a princess, an initiated member of the ruling caste, he had every motive to desire the continuance of an order of things so favourable to his views, whether of ambition or of indulgence, or (if such were his turn of mind) of tranquil and studious retirement. In Midian he was no needy adventurer. He was the son-in-law of a Shekh, entrusted with those flocks which are the Arab's most valued property; he had a wife and children; nor does there seem any sufficient reason why, at his advanced age, without such a call as he professed to have received, he should have left the romantic valleys of Horeb on a dangerous and toilsome journey.* And what, let me again inquire, was the object which he proposed to himself in that journey? There have, I know, been many instances in which the breast of the exile has been haunted by recollections of home,

*See Patrick on Exod. ii. 16. for the rank of Jethro. The beauty and luxuriance of the valleys of Horeb are forcibly represented by Niebuhr. Reisebeschreibung, tom. i. p. 294. et seq. And Müller. Univers. Hist. book ix. sect. 4.

and where his longing after the scenes of infancy and the friends of maturer age has dragged him back, through every hazard, to the land of his former happiness. But it was not in order to remain in Egypt that Moses sought to return thither. It was not to court again the favour of those whose parents had protected his helpless childhood; it was not to weave over again his ancient plans, if such he had entertained, of advancement in the state; it was not to renew his former studies, and to pass the short remnant of his days among his early associates in the sacred shades of Memphis or Heliopolis. He returned that he might lead forth a band of stubborn and degraded slaves into a wilderness, and invade, at their head, a well armed and warlike nation, "a people great and tall, and cities fenced up to Heaven."* Nor, even in his fullest tide of success, does his conduct intimate a selfish ambition, or so much as what might be called a natural desire for the interest and aggrandizement of his family. If he enjoyed, in some respects, the power of a king, yet was he a king without guards, without pomp, without wealth or luxury. In the administration of justice he voluntarily associated with himself the aristocracy of the tribes, and a council fortuitously chosen. For his own sons he obtained neither wealth, nor influence, nor dignity of any kind; and in allotting an hereditary priesthood to his brother's children, he divided its

* Deut. ix. 1, 2.

powers more accurately from those of the civil governor than was done in any other nation of antiquity.*

But still, it may be said, though we allow that Moses may have been actuated by patriotism only, or by a generous thirst of fame, in his labours as a leader and a lawgiver, still he may, like Numa or Mango Capac, have pretended a divine authority, in order to conciliate the respect, and compel the obedience of an ignorant and ferocious people. This has been the opinion usually professed by the more candid and philosophical unbelievers; and to this, even Josephus, in deference to his heathen readers, has given an undue degree of countenance.†

But, had this been the case, a crafty lawgiver would certainly have selected that system of theology which was most adapted to the former prejudices of those whom he desired to persuade. At all events he would not have fixed on a scheme of faith and worship which increased, by its repugnance from all their previous habits, the unavoidable and inherent difficulties of his undertaking. The people

* The judge or civil magistrate was, by the original Mosaic constitution, supposed to be a layman, and, as such, distinguished from the priest. Deut. xvii. 9-12. And though the priest was his assessor, the authority of this last appears to have been only circa res sacras.

† Joseph. cont. Apion. Op. tom. ii. p. 482. rotoÛTOS μÈV dÝ TIS αὐτὸς ἡμῶν ὁ νομοθέτης, οὐ γόης, οὐδ ̓ ἀπατέων,—ἀλλ ̓ οἷον παρὰ τοῖς Ελλησιν αὐχοῦσιν τὸν Μίνω γεγονέναι, καὶ μετ' αὐτὸν τοὺς ἄλλους νομοθέτας, κ. τ. λ.

to whom Moses came had sojourned for, at least, two centuries (perhaps for four) in a land of polytheists and idolaters. They are expressly said to have been addicted to those vanities of which the soil of Egypt was, through all ancient times, the foul and fruitful mother. There was no single point on which they were so much inclined to dispute the authority of Moses as on the observance of that pure and perfect theism which he laboured to introduce among them. When the prophet had been absent though but for forty days, he found them, on his return, adoring the Egyptian Apis, and his latter days were embittered by their headlong relapse into the worship of the idols of Moab. Nor do we need any further proof of their deep-rooted attachment to the superstitions of the land in which they had so long sojourned, than the fact that three fourths of the ritual laws enjoined them have reference to the customs of Egypt either as articles of peace, or as directly preventive and prohibitory. Under such circumstances, how gladly would a mere worldly legislator have suffered their religious blindness to remain undisturbed, while he concentrated his efforts to secure their temporal happiness; and have compounded for their false gods, so he himself might hope to be reverenced and obeyed as a deity!

But further, let us suppose that Moses might possibly have been actuated not merely by patriotism, but by such a degree of zeal for the doctrine of the Divine Unity as might induce, without personal in