ssion has been in the
world a living power.

From the free spirit of the Mosaic law sprang that intensity of family
life that amid all dispersions and persecutions has preserved the
individuality of the Hebrew race; that love of independence that under
the most adverse circumstances has characterized the Jew; that burning
patriotism that flamed up in the Maccabees and bared the breasts of
Jewish peasants to the serried steel of Grecian phalanx and the
resistless onset of Roman legion; that stubborn courage that in exile
and in torture has held the Jew to his faith. It kindled that fire that
has made the strains of Hebrew seers and poets phrase for us the highest
exaltations of thought; that intellectual vigor that has over and over
again made the dry staff bud and blossom. And passing outward from one
narrow race it has exerted its power wherever the influence of the
Hebrew scriptures has been felt. It has toppled thrones and cast down
hierarchies. It strengthened the Scottish Covenanter in the hour of
trial, and the Puritan amid the snows of a strange land. It charged with
the Ironsides at Naseby; it stood behind the low redoubt on Bunker Hill.

But it is in example as in deed that such lives are helpful. It is thus
that they dignify human nature and glorify human effort, and bring to
those who struggle hope and trust. The life of Moses, like the
institutions of Moses, is a protest against that blasphemous doctrine,
current now as it was three thousand years ago; that blasphemous
doctrine preached ofttimes even from Christian pulpits: that the want
and suffering of the masses of mankind flow from a mysterious
dispensation of Providence, which we may lament, but can neither quarrel
with nor alter.

Adopted into the immediate family of the supreme monarch and earthly
god; standing almost at the apex of the social pyramid which had for its
base those toiling millions; priest and prince in a land where prince
and priest might revel in all delights--everything that life could offer
to gratify the senses or engage the intellect was open to him.

What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce sun toiled under the
whips of relentless masters? Heard from granite colonnade or beneath
cool linen awning, it was mellowed by distance, to monotonous music. Why
should _he_ question the Sphinx of Fate, or quarrel with destinies the
high gods had decreed? So had it always been, for ages and ages; so must
it ever be. The beetle