THE HALT AT CASIUM.
In the morning our travellers found themselves in the neighbourhood of
Casium. The march had not been long, but the situations of the wells
determine the halts of the caravans. Near the town a large sand-hill
extended into the sea, on the point of which was built the temple of
Jupiter Casius. The active Greek set off, though the distance was
considerable, not for the purpose of worshipping there, but of examining
it as a work of art. Helon felt no desire to accompany him, for on a
journey to Jerusalem and in his present state of mind, it seemed to him
nothing less than a sin to visit a heathen temple, even for the
gratification of his curiosity. Elisama praised his determination, and
reminded him of the reproof delivered by the mouth of Jeremiah, “Thou
hast always broken thy yoke and burst thy bands; and hast said, I will
not be restrained, but on every high hill and every green tree thou hast
gone after idolatry.”[28] In the mean time Elisama began, and Helon
devoutly joined in this psalm:
Footnote 28:
Jer. ii. 20.
Bless the Lord O my soul,
And all that is within me bless his holy name!
Bless the Lord O my soul,
And forget not all his benefits;
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities,
Who healeth all thy diseases,
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction,
Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercy.
He satisfieth thy mouth with good things
So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Jehovah executeth righteousness
And judgment for all that are oppressed.
He made known his ways unto Moses,
His acts unto the children of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.—Ps. ciii.
They next sang the hundred and sixth Psalm, which describes the journey,
the wilderness, and the disobedience of Israel. “It is well,” said
Elisama, when they had done, “that our Greek is not here, or his nascent
reverence for our people might be stopped in its growth. I must confess
his society was at first very burthensome to me, but he is more open to
the reception of the truth than I had given him credit for being, and I
have hopes that he may become a stranger of the gate.”
Myron returned full of admiration of the precious works of art which he
had found in the temple of the Casian Jupiter, in which however, as a
connoisseur, he found of course something to blame. At the meal the
discourse of Helon and Myron (for Elisama was too oriental in his habits
to talk at such a time) turned upon the ancient Goshen, in whose limits
they now supposed themselves to be. They agreed that at the distance of
fourteen hundred years it was very difficult to identify it, but that
probably it was the district of Lower Egypt which is bounded by the sea,
by the eastern branch of the Nile at Pelusium and by the river of Egypt,
and that it perhaps ascended as far as Heliopolis to the south.
When they awoke towards evening, refreshed by their sleep, the
conversation respecting Goshen was resumed. Elisama, seated upon his
carpet, thus took up the discourse:
“It seems then that we are at least on the skirts of that fruitful
district of pasturage, in which the children of Abraham sojourned, and
where they grew from a family to a people. Thou hast already heard,
Myron, that our father Jacob came down to Egypt, with seventy persons,
to his son Joseph, who had preserved the land of Pharaoh, by his wise
precautions, from the miseries of famine; that two hundred and fifteen
years after Jacob went down into Egypt, and four hundred and thirty
years after Abraham left his native country at God’s command, 603,550
fighting men of the Israelites quitted Egypt, without reckoning the
22,000 Levites, or the women and children. During these four hundred and
thirty years Israel grew into a nation.
“In order that the promise of Jehovah, ‘that all nations should be
blessed in Abraham,’ might be accomplished, it may easily be conceived
that it was necessary that Abraham should become a people. But there was
no country where it could have been accomplished in so short a time as
in this. Canaan was already fully peopled, but in Goshen there was ample
room for them to increase and spread. The Canaanites would not have
looked quietly on for so many years, and have witnessed their increase,
whereas the Egyptians would feel themselves bound by gratitude to
Joseph, at least during the first century after his death, to abstain
from any injury towards his nation. Nowhere else could Israel have been
kept so free from mixture with other nations, as in the neighbourhood of
the Egyptians, whose religion inspired them with a horror of pastoral
tribes. The land was at the same time fruitful, and facilitated the
existence of numerous families. Finally, Egypt already possessed a civil
polity more perfect than existed at that time in any other country; and
though no human means were necessary to form a lawgiver for Israel, yet
by constantly observing a people living under a constitution which
regulated the rights and duties even of the lowest order of the people,
the Israelites were prepared to value and receive a similar constitution
themselves.
“When therefore Israel had become a numerous people, and began to feel
the want of a system of laws, Divine Providence so arranged
circumstances, as to awaken in them a longing for freedom and for the
promised land. The Pharaohs inhumanly oppressed them, and made their
lives bitter to them, by labour in brick and tile, and in all manner of
service in the field. At length it was even given in command to the
midwives to kill all the male infants. This was indeed, in one point of
view, only a just punishment for the guilt of Israel, in worshipping the
sacred animals of the Egyptians, and leaving the service of the true
God: but as calamity, by the wise ordinance of Jehovah, serves at once
for punishment and deliverance, the cruelty of the Egyptians proved the
means of Israel’s deliverance and exaltation.
“God raised up Moses and laid his spirit upon him. After the command of
Pharaoh for the murder of the male infants, he was exposed by his
parents among the reeds of the Nile, and rescued in a wonderful manner
by the king’s own daughter. At the royal court, where he was brought up,
he became acquainted with all the wisdom of the Egyptians. When forty
years of age, hurried away by sympathy for his suffering countrymen,
whom even at Pharaoh’s court he had not forgotten, he slew an Egyptian
who was committing an outrage upon an Israelite, and was compelled to
flee. He took refuge in the wilderness, and by a pastoral life of forty
years formed his mind in solitude and amidst the sublimities of nature,
where only a faint remembrance of the world remained to him, and
thoughts of God filled his soul. Here God appeared to him in mount
Horeb, in a bush that burned with fire and yet was not consumed. ‘And
Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush
is not burned. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God
called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses,
and he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy
shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face.
And the Lord said, I have seen the affliction of my people which are in
Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters. I know
their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the
Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land unto a good land and a
large, a land flowing with milk and honey. Come now, therefore, I will
send thee to Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the
children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt.’[29]
Footnote 29:
Exod. iii. 2.
“This was the calling of Moses. His apprehension of his own unworthiness
was removed, and the Lord made known his name unto him; I WILL BE THAT I
WILL BE. He began the great work, and at the first step had to contend
with the unsteadiness of Israel, which, during the remaining forty years
of his life, occasioned him no less trouble than the assaults of their
enemies. Pharaoh refused to let the people go, and nine plagues in
succession, which Jehovah denounced by Moses, and then brought upon the
land, were able only for a time to overcome Israel’s fickleness and
Pharaoh’s obstinacy. At last the tenth was inflicted, and on the
fourteenth of the month Nisan, Israel, with their wives and their
children, and all their possessions, came out from the house of bondage
in Egypt, and passed through the Red Sea, in which the Egyptians,
following them, were drowned. This is, of all the events in the history
of our nation, the most important, from its connection with the giving
of the law which immediately followed. We keep the feast of the Passover
in remembrance of this event. Our great leader was also a poet, and sang
the following song, the oldest and the noblest ode of victory that the
world can show:
I sing unto the Lord for he is great—
Chariot and horse he hath thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength, my song, my salvation:
He is my God, and I will sing praise unto him,
My father’s God, and I will exalt him.
Jehovah is mighty in war,
Jehovah is his name.
Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea,
His chosen captains are drowned in the Red Sea.
The depths have covered them,
They sank to the bottom as a stone.
Thy right-hand, O Jehovah, is become glorious in power,
Thy right-hand, O Jehovah, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.
In the greatness of thy might thou overthrowest them that rise up
against thee,
Thou sendest forth thy wrath which consumeth them as stubble.
With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together,
The floods stood upright as a heap,
The waves were congealed in the depths of the sea.
The enemy said,—
I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil,
My desire shall be gratified upon them, I will draw my sword, my hand
shall destroy them.
Thou didst blow with thy breath, the sea covered them,
They sank like lead in the mighty waters.
Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing
wonders?
Thou stretchedst out thy right-hand—the earth swallowed them.
Thou hast led forth in thy mercy thy redeemed people,
Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy place;
The people hear and are afraid
Anxiety taketh hold on the inhabitants of the land of the Philistines;
The princes of Edom quake,
Terror taketh hold on the mighty men of Moab,
All the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.
Let fear and dread fall upon them, by thy mighty arm,
Let them become stiff as stone,
Till thy people pass over, O Lord,
Till the people which thou hast purchased pass over.
Bring them in, plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance,
To the place of thy dwelling which thou thyself hast prepared,
To the sanctuary which thy hands have built.
Jehovah reigns for ever and ever.—Exod. xv.
“This first victory, which ennobled Israel as a people, was destined to
be the forerunner of a series of victories, till its greatest, that over
all nations, shall be won. This first song of triumph has given the
model to a number of similar compositions, all of which refer to it.
“Israel was now made free. But this was scarcely accomplished when it
was made also a holy nation, and on the fiftieth day after the departure
from Egypt, God gave to our fathers that treasure which hallows them
above every other people, the law upon mount Sinai. Yonder in the
desert, in the midst of a sandy and naked region, rises a mountain, with
two summits, of which the lower is called Horeb, the higher Sinai.
Northward from them are two valleys, terminating in a plain, in which
the people was encamped. In this impressive solitude, cut off from all
other nations of the earth, surrounded with steep and pointed rocks,
beneath a burning sky, amidst the thunders and the lightnings of
Jehovah’s presence, they received the law.
“Jehovah declared to Moses that Israel should be to him a kingdom of
priests and a holy people.[30] For this purpose they were commanded to
wash their garments and keep themselves holy to the third day, and it
was forbidden that man or beast should ascend the mountain, or even
touch it with his foot. The third day came. Early in the morning ‘there
were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the
voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people that were in
the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to
meet God; and they stood at the lower part of the mount. And mount Sinai
was altogether in a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire,
and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole
mount trembled greatly. And the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and
grew louder and louder, and Moses spake, and the Lord answered him with
a voice.’
Footnote 30:
Exod. xix. 6.
“Awful preparations! symbols of the presence of Jehovah! who drew near
to give the law. While he thus displayed himself in all the terrific
majesty of heaven on the loftiest pinnacles of the land; and the people,
overwhelmed with terror, felt their own feebleness before him, he gave
to Moses the tables with the ten commandments, and afterwards the rest
of the law; and all was concluded with a promise to the obedient, and
the threat, ‘Cursed be he that fulfilleth not all the words of this law
to do it. And all the people shall say Amen.’
“The whole constitution and legislation of Israel rests on the relation
of the people to God as their king. From the covenant between them arose
a twofold authority. Aaron was the first high priest and Moses the first
chief. The high priest conducted the worship of the people before
Jehovah; the chief directed their civil and military affairs. Their
employment in the land which they were to occupy was to be agriculture.
“But the Jews, who had been corrupted by living in Egypt, were not fit
subjects for such a constitution. It was necessary that a new generation
should arise, and for this purpose Moses led them forty years backward
and forward in the wilderness, and only two, of whom he himself was not
one, came into the promised land. Forty-four stations in the desert are
reckoned up, in which they successively encamped, as we do now; and it
was only by the severest discipline that they could be retained in
obedience. Often was Jehovah compelled to visit them with heavy
calamities, and sweep them away by thousands. Yet he never ceased also
to perform miracles of mercy and almighty power upon them.
“Amidst all these sins of the people, in their forty years wandering in
the wilderness, Moses was the representative of the divine authority,
and the medium of divine communication. Against him the fury of the
rebellious people was vented, and by him Jehovah both blessed and
punished them. Moses stood among them, like a rock in the desert, a
wonder, or rather a miracle of firmness combined with meekness,
steadfast resolution, with wise indulgence, absolute submission to God,
with boldness and determination in the guidance of the people. In the
long and unhappy period of forty years of wandering, he displayed the
aptitude for command which his kingly education had given him, joined
with that love to his suffering countrymen, with which he could only
have been inspired by being a native Jew.
“He died on mount Nebo, in the sight of that land for which he had done
and suffered all to which human strength was equal. His eye was
permitted to behold it, but not his foot to tread its soil. Firm as he
was in acting and in suffering, he had once allowed himself to be
overcome, and therefore he was not permitted to attain the end of his
journey, or go to his rest in Canaan. Perhaps it was also the will of
God, that the hands which had been stretched out over the Red Sea, which
had received the tables of the law from Jehovah, and had built his
tabernacle, should not be stained by the blood of the Canaanites. Even
in the battle with Amalek, these hands were only lifted up in the
attitude of prayer.[31]
Footnote 31:
Exod. xvii. 11.
“Listen to the last glowing words of this extraordinary man!
Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,
And hear, O earth, the words of my mouth!
My doctrine shall drop as the rain,
My speech shall distil as the dew.
As rain upon the tender herb,
And as the showers upon the grass.
For I will proclaim aloud the name of Jehovah,
Ascribe ye greatness unto our God!
He is a rock, his work is infinite,
All his ways are just.
God is truth, without deceit,
Just and right is he—
Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations,
Ask thy father and he will show thee,
Thine elders, and they will tell thee,
When the Most High divided the lands to the nations,
When he separated the children of men,
He set bounds to the people,
That the numbers of Israel might have room to dwell.
For the Lord’s portion is his people,
Jacob is the extent of his inheritance.
He found him in a desert land,
And in the waste howling wilderness.
He led him about, he instructed him,
He kept him as the apple of his eye.
As an eagle covers her nest around,
And hovers over her young,
Spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them up,
And beareth them aloft upon her pinions,
So the Lord, he alone, did lead them,
And there was no strange god with him—
See now that it is I,
And there is no god with me.
I kill and I make alive,
I wound and I heal;
There is none that can deliver out of my hand.
For I lift my head to heaven,
And say, I live for ever.
If I whet my glittering sword,
And my hand lay hold on judgment,
I will render vengeance to mine enemies,
And reward them that hate me.
I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
And my sword shall satiate itself on carcasses,
On the blood of the slain and the captive,
On the bared head of mine enemies?—Deut. xxxii.
“Again in the animated commencement of his benediction, imitated in so
many later poems of our nation:
Jehovah came from Sinai,
He rose up unto them from Seir;
He shined forth from Paran,
He came from the hills of Cadesh.
From his right hand darted the rolling fire;
Yea, he loved the people!
All his glory is around thee;
And sitting at thy feet they received thy words.
Moses commanded us the law,
The inheritance of the congregation of Israel.
He was king in Israel,
In the assembly of the heads of the people,
Together with the tribes of Israel.—Deut. xxxiii.
“In this manner, Myron, and by means of such a man, did Israel obtain
its treasure and inheritance, the law. And this is the first period of
the history of our people.”
“Our best thanks belong to thee, venerable old man,” said Myron, “for
the relation of it, and I can readily believe, that the history of thy
nation has more in it than is commonly supposed. It was, I must confess,
in a very different way that Lycurgus, Solon, Numa Pompilius, and even
Pythagoras himself, gave their laws. There is something grand, exalted
and divine, in the manner in which Moses speaks and acts. But permit me
to remind you, that though you mentioned his being brought up at the
court of Pharaoh, and instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, you
have given us no hint that he may have learned much from the pillars of
Isis, and that an imitation of the Egyptian polity is every where
conspicuous in your law, especially in the double power of the king and
the priest, the institution of a sacerdotal caste, the encouragement
given to agriculture, your festivals, and many other particulars.”
“I gave no hint of it,” said Elisama, “because in this sense it does not
exist. To say nothing of its being as yet an undetermined point, whether
the Jews learned these things from the Egyptians, or the Egyptians from
the Jews; I will suppose that the wisdom of the Egyptians is of that
high antiquity which you ascribe to it, and maintain that Jehovah wisely
chose institutions for his people not too remote from those to which
they were accustomed; that some things, which were for higher reasons
essential in the Jewish economy, have an accidental coincidence with
circumstances of the Egyptian customs. But disregarding outward and
accidental things, let the spirit of the two systems be compared, and
you will find that one is the spirit of God, and the other the spirit of
the world. In our religion there is no worship of animals or of images,
no polytheism, no secret doctrines of the priests. These are essential
points, which show that the legislation of Moses must have had a higher
origin, and was not learned by him from any other nation. Would it,
besides, be surprising if, in giving a divine revelation to his people,
Jehovah should have chosen a form for its communication, in which, as
being familiar to them, they would more readily adopt it? Though this
form was of human invention, it was purified and hallowed by God’s
adoption of it.”
“I will confute his heathen unbelief in another way,” said Helon, “and
turn his own weapons upon him, more successfully, I hope, than he lately
endeavoured to do upon me.”
“Speak then,” said Myron, “do you question, and I will reply: here in
the desert let us renew our ancient practice among the Academic
philosophers. A dialogue will be a relief too, for your uncle presumes
upon more patience in his hearers than belongs to Greeks of Athenian
blood.”
“This,” said Helon, “is not the only thing which is tiresome to you.”
“I acknowledge it—a transient gleam of the Divinity from time to time is
well; but my thoughts must return to the things of earth.”
“How well hast thou characterised thyself and the religion of thy
heathen brethren,” said Helon. “You have, indeed, a gleam of divine
truth, a remnant of ancient, primeval tradition, eclipsed and shrouded
in the darkness of human error.”
“To look on the sun, and only on the sun, dazzles the eyes. Elisama is
always pointing thither, and my eyes already ache with straining.”
“The rising sun does not dazzle or strain the eye,” replied Helon, “and
Elisama will tell you, that as yet we only see the dawn, and that
thousands of years will pass before noon arrives. But I was going to
confute you out of your own Plato. Does he not say that truth and virtue
cannot be taught?”
“He does.”
“How then, O wise Myron, can they be attained?”
“Only in the state of divine inspiration, as we have often read in the
dialogues of the god-like sage,” replied Myron.
“What name then must be given to the knowledge of that which is true,
and which is?” continued Helon.
“We must call it a reminiscence of that divine condition, in which,
according to Plato, the soul formerly was, but from which it has
fallen.”
“And do not you yourself say, that all this is merely an intimation of
the truth, and that that which is, cannot be comprehended by means of
such symbols? It is for this reason that I call such knowledge,
Revelation; and I hold this doctrine of Plato to be a relic of those
primeval times, when the true and revealed knowledge of God was not yet
entirely obliterated. But we can prove by historical evidence that God
spoke by Moses, and that our law therefore is what it claims to be, a
Revelation.”
“But what are these historical proofs, on which all depends?”
interrupted Myron.
“Has not Elisama given them in the course of his narrative, and are they
not plainly to be discerned in our sacred writings? But I will give you
another proof. If Moses had read his doctrines on the hieroglyphic
pillars of Egypt, how happened it that they were not read by the priests
of Isis, who must have had still readier access to them?”
Myron appeared to be about to answer, though somewhat perplexed by the
question, when they were interrupted by the well-known blast of the
trumpet. They had not observed that they were prolonging their discourse
far into the night. Sallu and the slave came up, and pulled the poles of
the tent out of the sand. “It is time,” said Elisama, “that we should
desist, and indeed such disputes, Helon, have little results! Let him
fear God, and he will believe in the law.”
“In that case,” said Helon, “we should as men enjoy that friendly
communion in the knowledge of the truth, of which as youths we dreamt in
the Bruchium.” He reached his hand to Myron, who took it smiling, and
hastened to his horse.