spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion (with
many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to
address, and forgot therein, and in his angry words to the rebels, that
he was only an instrument in the divine hand. It was a momentary
wavering in a hundred and twenty years of obedience. It was one failure
in a life of self-abnegation and suppression. The stern sentence came.

People say, 'A heavy penalty for a small offence.' Yes; but an offence
of Moses could not be a small offence.' _Noblesse oblige!_ The
higher a man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the
message and office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable
in him is the slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of
mud, that would never be seen on a navvy's clothes, stains the white
satin of a bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little
sin done by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.

Nor are we to regard that momentary lapse only from the outside and the
surface. One little mark under the armpit of a plague-sufferer tells
the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground
may tell that, deep below, lurks the root of a poison plant. That
little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resumption
of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of
comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new
generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that
his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had
been put upon it; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the
responsibilities that the new circumstances brought. So the penalty was
not so disproportionate to the fault as it may seem.

And was the penalty such a very great one? Do you think that a man who