Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers | Page 3

powers which no human being ever possessed.
Moses lived thirty-three hundred years ago. In one sense thirty-three
centuries is a very long time. All is comparative--children regard a man
of fifty as "awful old." I have seen several persons who have lived a
hundred years, and they didn't consider a century long, "and thirty-five
isn't anything," said one of them to me.
Geologically, thirty-three centuries is only an hour ago. It does not
nearly take us back to the time when men of the Stone Age hunted the
hairy mammoth in what is now Nebraska, nor does thirty-three
centuries give us any glimpse of the time when tropical animals, plants
and probably men lived and flourished at the North Pole.
Egyptian civilization, at the time of Moses, was more than three
thousand years old. Egypt was then in the first stage of senility,
entering upon her decline, for her best people had settled in the cities,
and this completes the cycle and spells deterioration. She had passed
through the savage, barbaric, nomadic and agricultural stages and was
living on her unearned increment, a part of which was Israelitish labor.
Moses looked at the Pyramids, which were built more than a thousand
years before his birth, and asked in wonder about who built them, very
much as we do today. He listened for the Sphinx to answer, but she was
silent, then as now. The date of the exodus has been fixed as having
probably occurred during the reign of the Great Pharaoh, Mineptah, or
the nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty. The date is, say, fourteen hundred
years before Christ. An inscription has recently been found which
seems to show that Joseph settled in Egypt during the reign of
Mineptah, but the best scholars now have gone back to the conclusions
I have stated.
At the time of the Pharaohs, Egypt was the highest civilized country on
earth. It had a vast system of canals, an organized army, a goodly
degree of art, and there were engineers and builders of much ability.

Philosophy, poetry and ethics were recognized, prized and discussed.
The storage of grain by the government to bank against famine had
been practised for several hundred years. There were also
treasure-cities built to guard against fire, thieves or destruction by the
elements. It will thus be seen that foresight, thrift, caution, wisdom,
played their parts. The Egyptians were not savages.
* * * * *
About five hundred years before the birth of Moses there lived in
Arabia a powerful Sheik or Chief, known as Abraham. This man had a
familiar spirit, or guide, or guardian-angel known as Yaveh or Jehovah.
All of the desert tribes had such tutelary gods; and all of these gods
were once men of power who lived on earth. The belief in special gods
has often been held by very great men: Socrates looked to his "demon"
for guidance; Themistocles consulted his oracle; a President of the
United States visited a clairvoyant, who consented to act as a medium
and interpret the supernatural. This idea, which is a variant of ancestor
worship, still survives, and very many good people do not take
journeys or make investments until they believe they are being dictated
to by Shakespeare, Emerson, Beecher or Phillips Brooks. These people
also believe that there are bad spirits to which we must not harken.
Abraham was led by Jehovah; what Jehovah told him to do he did;
when Jehovah told him to desist or change his plans, he obeyed.
Jehovah promised him many things, and some of these promises were
fulfilled.
Whether these tutelary gods or controlling spirits had any actual
existence outside of the imagination of the people who believed in
them--whether they were merely pictures thrown upon the screen by a
subconscious spiritual stereopticon--is not the question now under
discussion. Something must be left for a later time: the fact remains
that special providences are yet relied upon by sincere and intelligent
people.
Abraham had a son named Isaac. And Isaac was the father of Jacob, or

Israel, "the Soldier of God," so called on account of his successful
wrestling with the angel. And Jacob was the father of twelve sons. All
of these people believed in Jehovah, the god of their tribe; and while
they did not disbelieve in the gods of the neighboring tribes, they yet
doubted their power and had grave misgivings as to their honesty.
Therefore, they had nothing to do with them, praying to their own god
only and looking to him for support. They were the chosen people of
Jehovah, just as the Babylonians were the chosen people of Baal; the
Canaanites the chosen people of Ishitar; the Moabites the chosen
people of Chemos; the Ammonites the chosen people of Rimmon.
Now Joseph was the favorite son of