Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers | Page 6

Egyptians killed the
children to avoid trouble is preposterous, since no possible act that man
can commit would so arouse sudden rebellion and fan into flame the
embers of hate as the murder of the young. If the Egyptians had
attempted to carry out any such savage cruelty, they would not only
have had to fight the Israelitish men, but the outraged mothers as well.
The Egyptians were far too wise to invite the fury of frenzied
motherhood. To have done this would have destroyed the efficiency of
the entire Hebrew population. An outraged and heartbroken people do
not work.
When one person becomes angry with another, his mental processes
work overtime making up a list of the other's faults and failings.

When a people arise in revolt they straightway prepare an indictment
against the government against which they revolted, giving a schedule
of outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is
politely called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary
indictment of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the
attitude of the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a
Southern girl who came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words
"damned Yankee," innocently remarked that she always thought they
were one word. A description of the enemy, made by a person or a
people, must be taken cum grano Syracuse.
* * * * *
When Moses fled, after killing the Egyptian, he went northward and
east into the land of the Midianites, who were also descendants of
Abraham. At this time he was forty years of age, and still unmarried,
his work in the Egyptian Court having evidently fully absorbed his
time.
It is a pretty little romance, all too brief in its details, of how the tired
man stopped at a well, and the seven daughters of Jethro came to draw
water for their flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the girls
away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young ladies,
to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had left their
manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting which
the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven
daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as
basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told
their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, and he, with all the
deference of the desert, sent for him "that he might eat bread."
Very naturally Moses married one of the girls.
And Moses tended the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, taking the
herds a long distance, living with them and sleeping out under the stars.
Now Jethro was the chief of his tribe. Moses calls him a "priest," but he
was a priest only incidentally, as all the Arab chiefs were.

The clergy originated in Egypt. Before the Israelites were in Goshen,
the "sacra," or sacred utensils, belonged to the family; and the head of
the tribe performed the religious rites, propitiating the family deity, or
else delegated some one else to do so. This head of the tribe, or chief,
was called a "Cohen"; and the man who assisted him, or whom he
delegated, was called a "Levi." The plan of making a business of being
a "Levi" was borrowed from the Egyptians, who had men set apart,
exclusively, to deal in the mysterious. Moses calls himself a Levi, or
Levite.
After the busy life he had led, Moses could not settle down to the
monotonous existence of a shepherd. It is probable that then he wrote
the Book of Job, the world's first drama and the oldest book of the
Bible. Moses was full of plans. Very naturally he prayed to the
Israelitish god, and the god harkened unto his prayer and talked to him.
The silence, the loneliness, the majesty of the mountains, the great
stretches of shining sand, the long peaceful nights, all tend to
hallucinations. Sheepmen are in constant danger of mental aberration.
Society is needed quite as much as solitude.
From talking with God, Moses desired to see Him. One day, from the
burning red of an acacia-tree, the Lord called to him, "Moses, Moses!"
And Moses answered, "Here am I!"
Moses was a man born to rule--he was a leader of men--and here at
middle life the habits of twenty-five years were suddenly snapped and
his occupation gone. He yearned for his people, and knowing their
unhappy lot, his desire was to lead them out of captivity. He knew the
wrongs the Egyptian government was visiting upon the Israelites.
Rameses the Second was a ruler with the builder's eczema: always and
forever he made gardens, dug canals, paved roadways, constructed
model tenements, planned