the works of men.

I make these, as I conceive, necessary digressions, because a discourse
on Moses would be pointless without them; at best only a survey of that
marvellous and favored legislator from the standpoint of secular
history. I would not pull him down from the lofty pedestal whence he has
given laws to all successive generations; a man, indeed, but shrouded in
those awful mysteries which the great soul of Michael Angelo loved to
ponder, and which gave to his creations the power of supernal majesty.

Thus did Moses, instructed by God,--for this is the great fact revealed
in his testimony,--lead the inconstant Israelites through a forty years'
pilgrimage, securing their veneration to the last. Thus did he keep them
from the idolatries for which they hankered, and preserved among them
allegiance to an invisible King. Thus did he impress his own mind and
character upon them, and shape their institutions with matchless wisdom.
Thus did he give them a system of laws--moral, ceremonial, and
civil--which kept them a powerful and peculiar people for more than a
thousand years, and secured a prosperity which culminated in the
glorious reigns of David and Solomon and a political power unsurpassed
in Western Asia, to see which the Queen of Sheba came from the uttermost
part of the earth,--nay, more, which first formulated for that little
corner of the world principles and precepts concerning the relations of
men to God and to one another which have been an inspiration to all
mankind for thousands of years.

Thus did this good and great man fulfil his task and deliver his
message, with no other drawbacks on his part than occasional bursts of
anger at the unparalleled folly and wickedness of his people. What
disinterestedness marks his whole career, from the time when he flies