nsciences of judges
and kings, expectant of the Divine word, and ready to proclaim it over
the head of the crowd; announcing disasters, ending often as martyrs,
prominent from beginning to end of the sacred annals till they disappear
in John beheaded by an Herodias!

Then came Elijah, cursing the worship of Baal, contending with the
dreadful Jezebel; Elijah founding the first society of monks, the only
man of the Old Testament history except Enoch who did not die; and
Elisha, his disciple; the greater prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah,
and Daniel, and the groups of minor prophets announcing the advent of
the Son, rising up in commination or lamentation, threatening or
comforting the people.

The whole history of Israel flowed along in a torrent of curses, rivers
of blood, oceans of tears!

This dismal procession at last oppressed Durtal. With closed eyes he
suddenly beheld a patriarch who stood before him, and he recognized with
awe that this was Moses, an old man with a beard like a cataract, hair
sweeping his shoulders, a master workman whose powerful hands had
kneaded those rough Hebrews and coagulated their medley hordes. He was
indeed father and lawgiver to this people.

Facing the scene on Calvary there rose before him the scene on Sinai,
the close and the opening of the great chronicle of the nation that was
dispersed by its own crime, enclosing the whole purpose of its existence
in the space between those two hills.

A terrific spectacle! Moses alone on the smoking height, while
lightnings rend the clouds and the mountain trembles at the sound of the
invisible trumpet. Below, the awe-stricken people fly; and Moses,
unmoved amid the roar of thunder and the repeated fires of lightning,
listens to Him who Is, and who dictates the terms of His protection of
Israel; and then Moses, with shining face, descends from the Mount,
which, according to St. John Damascene, is the type of the Virgin's
Womb, as the smoke that rises from it is that of the desires and flames
of the Holy Spirit.

Suddenly this picture vanished; the Patriarch remained, and by his side
appeared the first High Priest of the worship of Jehovah, whom the
sculptors had omitted to represent on the exterior of the porch, but
whose image the glass-workers have portrayed in a window of the same
front; Aaron, the great Pontiff, anointed by Moses.

And this ceremony, during which Moses conferred the order of priesthood
on the person and the descenda