PREFACE
THE conception of Moses, which I have elaborated in the following chapters, was suggested years ago by contrast with Michael Angelo's statue of him, colossal in proportions, hewn in stone.
Yet one turns away from that mighty head, that pregnant brow, that towering height, hopeless of repeating aught of a life, which, if that conception be the true one, must have had so little in common with our own. It is a comfort, therefore, to turn to the record of the New Testament, which tells that he did not spring at a leap to the throne on which he has sat through the ages, but that his character took years to form, and that his mighty deeds were due, not to some rare combination of personal qualities, but to the faith which he had is common with the rank and file of the great army of the saints.
I have tried, therefore, to show that Moses was a man like other men; with great qualities that needed to be developed and improved; with flaws that veined the pure marble of his character; with deficiencies that had rendered him powerless but for the all-sufficient grace that he learned to appropriate; and that he wrought his life-work by the simplicity of his faith, by communion with God, and by becoming a channel through which the Divine purpose was achieved.
I wish to express my special obligations for geographical and other details to the works of the late Dean Stanley; to the monograph on Moses in the "Men of the Bible" Series; as well as to "Modern Science in Bible Lands," by Sir J. W. Dawson.
F. B. Meyer