to Canaan in Palestine was about one
hundred seventy-five miles. But by the circuitous route they traveled it
was nearly a thousand miles. It took forty years to make the passage,
for the way had to be fought through the country of foes who very
naturally sought to block the way. Quick transportation was out of the
question. The rate of speed was about twenty-five miles a year.

Here was a people without homes, or fixed habitation, beset on every
side with the natural dangers of the desert, and compelled to face the
fury of the inhabitants whose lands they overran, fearful,
superstitious, haunted by hunger, danger and doubt. By night a man sent
ahead with a lantern on a pole led the way; by day a cavalcade that
raised a cloud of dust. One was later sung by the poets as a pillar of
fire, and the other a cloud. Chance flocks of quail blown by a storm
into their midst were regarded as a miracle; the white exuding wax of
the manna-plant was told of as "bread"--or more literally food.

Those who had taken part in the original exodus were nearly all
dead--their children and grandchildren survived, desert born and savage
bred. Canaan was not the land flowing with milk and honey that had been
described. Milk and honey are the results of labor applied to land.
Moses knew this and tried to teach this great truth. He was true to his
divine trust. Through doubt, hardship, poverty, misunderstanding, he
held high the ideal--they were going to a better place.

At last, worn by his constant struggle, aged one hundred twenty, "his
eye not dim nor his natural force abated"--for only those live long who
live well--Moses went up into the mountain to find solace in solitude as
was his custom. His people waited for him in vain--he did not return.
Alone there with his God he slept and forgot to awaken. His pilgrimage
was done. "And no man knoweth his grave even unto this day."

History is very seldom recorded on the spot--certainly it was not then.
Centuries followed before fact, tradition, song, legend and folklore
were fused into the form we call Scripture. But out of the fog and mist
of that far-off past there looms in heroic outline the form and features
of a man--a man of will, untiring activity, great hope, deep love, a
faith which at times faltered, but which never died. Moses was the first
man in history who fought for human rights and sought to make men free,
even from their own limitations. "And there arose not a prophet since
I