n the map of Europe. One man of genius
explains it all. But take away the man of genius, and substitute a group
of small men in his place, and the thing is much more obscure and
unintelligible. So, given Moses, the man of genius and inspiration, and we
can understand the Exodus, understand the Jewish laws, understand the
Pentateuch, and understand the strange phenomenon of Judaism. But, instead
of Moses, given a mosaic, however skilfully put together, and the thing is
more difficult. Therefore, Moses is to be preferred to the mosaic, as the
more reasonable and probable of the two, just as Homer is preferable to
the Homerids, and Shakespeare to the Shakespeare Club.[352]

We find in Moses the three elements of genius, inspiration, and
knowledge. Perhaps it is not difficult to distinguish them. We see the
natural genius and temperament of Moses breaking out again and again
throughout his career, as the rocky strata underlying the soil crop out in
the midst of gardens, orchards, and fields of corn. The basis of his
nature was the hardest kind of rock, with a surging subterranean fire of
passion beneath it. An awful soul, stem and terrible as Michael Angelo
conceived him, the sublime genius carving the sublime lawgiver in
congenial marble. The statue is as stern as law itself. It sits in one of
the Roman churches, between two columns, the right hand grasping the
tables of the law, the symbolic horns of power protruding from the brow,
and the austere look of the judge bent upon those on the left hand. A
fiery nature, an iron will, a rooted sense of justice, were strangely
overflowed and softened by a tenderness toward his race, which was not so
much the feeling of a brother for brethren as of a parent for children.

Educated in the house of Pharaoh, and adopted by his daughter as her
child, taken by the powerful and learned priesthood of Egypt into their
ranks, and sharing for many years their honors and privileges, his heart
yearned toward his brethren in the land of Goshen, and he went out to see
them in their sufferings and slavery. His impetuous nature broke out in
sudden indignation at the sight of some act of cruelty, and he smote the
overseer who was torturing the Jewish slave. That act made him an exile,
and sent him to live in Arabia Petrea, as a shepherd. If he had thought
only of his own prospects and position, he would not have gone near the
Israelites at all, but lived quietly as an Egyptian priest in the palace