wanderings as the shepherd of Jethro, came to believe that his destiny was
linked with that of his countrymen in a revolution which was certain to
occur before they could accomplish the promise of Joseph and escape from
Egypt under the guidance of the god who had befriended and protected him.
Moreover, Moses was by no means exclusively a religious enthusiast. He was
also a scientific man, after the ideas of that age. Moses had a high
degree of education and he was familiar with the Egyptian and Chaldean
theory of a great and omnipotent prime motor, who had had no beginning and
should have no end. He was also aware that this theory was obscured by the
intrusion into men's minds of a multitude of lesser causes, in the shape
of gods and demons, who mixed themselves in earthly affairs and on whose
sympathy or malevolence the weal or woe of human life hinged. Pondering
deeply on these things as he roamed, he persuaded himself that he had
solved the riddle of the universe, by identifying the great first cause of
all with the deity who had been known to his ancestors, whose normal home
was in the promised land of Canaan, and who, beside being all-powerful,
was also a moral being whose service must tend toward the welfare of
mankind. For Moses was by temperament a moralist in whom such abominations
as those practised in the worship of Moloch created horror. He knew that
the god of Abraham would tolerate no such wickedness as this, because of
the fate of Sodom on much less provocation, and he believed that were he
to lead the Israelites, as he might lead them, he could propitiate such a
deity, could he but by an initial success induce his congregation to obey
the commands of a god strong enough to reward them for leading a life
which should be acceptable to him. All depended, therefore, should the
opportunity of leadership come to him, on his being able, in the first
place, to satisfy himself that the god who presented himself to him was
verily the god of Abraham, who burned Sodom, and not some demon, whose
object was to vex mankind: and, in the second place, assuming that he
himself were convinced of the identity of the god, that he could convince