ered together to receive the last message from the
lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the
anointed priest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to
realize that going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He
who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer
up his own spirit. He who had stood, among them, between the dead and
the living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to
him, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment
more, going forth now to meet the Angel of Death face to face, and
deliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk, in thought, with
those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of
Israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, towards
the slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last time, as step by
step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour,
beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they climbed, and
all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one subdued, showed amidst their
hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that long desert journey,
now at last to close. But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High
Priest, as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and,
through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to
the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was
unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to
him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the
altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his Father's
dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as he drew
nearer his death; until at last, on the shadeless summit,--from him on
whom sin was to be laid no more--from him, on whose heart the names of
sinful nations were to press their graven fire no longer,--the brother
and the son took breastplate and ephod, and left him to his rest.

Sec. 47. There is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep restraint
of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter; but the death of
Moses himself is more easily to be conceived, and had in it
circumstances still more touching, as far as regards the influence of
the external scene. For forty years Moses had not been alone. The care
and burden of all the people, the weight of their woe, and guilt, and
death, had b