ity, to claim the sanction of so great a
name for a newly forged hierarchical system. Such a theory could
scarcely be refuted more completely, if the narrative before us were
invented with the deliberate aim to overthrow it.

But in truth the failures of the good and great are written for our
admonition, teaching us how inconsistent are even the best of mortals,
and how weak the most resolute. Rather than forfeit his own place among
the chosen people, Moses had forsaken a palace and become a proscribed
fugitive; yet he had neglected to claim for his child its rightful share
in the covenant, its recognition among the sons of Abraham. Perhaps
procrastination, perhaps domestic opposition, more potent than a king's
wrath to shake his purpose, perhaps the insidious notion that one who
had sacrificed so much might be at ease about slight negligences,--some
such influence had left the commandment unobserved. And now, when the
dream of his life was being realised at last, and he found himself the
chosen instrument of God for the rebuke of one nation and the making of
another, how pardonable it must have seemed to leave an unpleasant small
domestic duty over until a more convenient season! How natural it still
seems to merge the petty task in the high vocation, to excuse small
lapses in pursuit of lofty aims! But this was the very time when God,
hitherto forbearing, took him sternly to task for his neglect, because
men who are especially honoured should be more obedient and reverential
than their fellows. Let young men who dream of a vast career, and
meanwhile indulge themselves in small obliquities, let all who cast out
demons in the name of Christ, and yet work iniquity, reflect upon this
chosen and long-trained, self-sacrificing and ardent servant of the
Lord, whom Jehovah seeks to kill because he wilfully disobeys even a
purely ceremonial precept.

Moses was not only religious, but "a man of destiny," one upon whom vast
interests depended. Now, such men have often reckoned themselves exempt
from the ordinary laws of conduct.[8]

It is not a light thing, therefore, to find God's indignant protest
against the faintest shadow of a doctrine so insidious and so deadly,
set in the forefront of sacred history, at the very point where national
concerns and those of religion begin to touch. If our politics are to be
kept pure and clean, we must learn to exact a higher fidelity, and not a
relaxed morality, from those who propose to