that averment, and I give to the language of the text being considered the same interpretation that I gave to the text aforesaid. On this third day of the people's protesting against the usurpations of Moses, and of asserting the right of popular liberty, Moses' bands of assassins again appeared to his support and in maintenance of his authority over the people. The rushing forth of these bands to the slaughter of the people, Moses records it, "the glory of the Lord appeared."

SEC. 9. "And Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of the congregation. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Get ye up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment." Thus much of Moses'

statement, as recorded in the quotation at the head of this Chapter. Every intelligent man, and every woman, who is imbued with the spirit of Christianity, knows that this declaration of Moses' was not only a ruse of an unscrupulous impostor, and untruthful, but that it was, and is, libelousa slander of the attributes of God, the universal Father. The principal attribute set forth by Moses in this averment is a characteristic of the source of evil. Love, forbearance, and forgiveness, uniform and perpetual, were primates in the elementary character of that God which Jesus of Nazareth taught man to adore, and they are primates of that Spirit of which is born again every harmonious child of God. The demands which the God of Jesus made on man were just, and all his reproofs, or expressions of displeasure, were tempered with love. The demands of Moses' God were arbitrary, and unjust, and his rebukes, or his expression of displeasure, were lordly denunciations.

SEC. 10. Again, the spirit of Moses' Lord was tempered less with the spirit of love to man than was man's spirit in the unperverted state. Depraved as he showed himself to be, by taking his own statements as evidence in the case, at times, Moses' acts proved him to have been much better than his Lord--in him existed most of the love element. And the case now under consideration proves the point

stated. When Moses' Lord desired to consume the entire congregation of Israel, and urged Moses to get out of his way that he could snap up all of them, at once, as in a moment," Moses expressed his desire that a portion of the congregation should be spared, and set himself to work to snatch them away from the wreaking vengeance of his angry Lord; and he attained the object of his desire by hurrying Aaron off among the people with a pot of burning perfumery to there, in their presence, give his Lord, in exchange for his wrath. "Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them." So said Moses. His Lord accepted the fumes of the burning spices presented by Aaron, and let the people off as Moses requested. Remember that the foregoing is only Moses' narration of the matter.

SEC. 11. "And he, Aaron, stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed," says the record. The true interpretation of this language of Moses is this: When Moses saw that his bands had massacred many of the people, and so decimated them that the living would be manageable by him, he sent Aaron, with his pot of incense in hand, into the midst of his slaughtering hosts to order them to desist in their work of slaughter. The record says that Aaron did as commanded-ran into the midst of the congregation in his official character, and with pot of burning incense in hand-and the plague was stayed. The official authority of Aaron in enforcing the order of Moses upon his murderous bands, was the power that stayed that work of slaughter which Moses called by the ambiguous term, "plague." According to the record, Moses' assassins had massacred fourteen thousand and seven hundred of the people before he gave orders that his bands should cease their indiscriminate wholesale slaughter, when, as before said, that fiendish work was prosecuted as he willed, and, at any time, could have been stopped by his word.

SEC. 12. "And Aaron returned unto Moses, unto the

door of the tabernacle of the congregation; and the plague was stayed." This is the closing sentence of Moses' narration of that, ever to be remembered, popular movement for popular liberty by the children of Israel-the last great effort for popular freedom made by any considerable portion of the said people during that generation, and the lifetime of Moses. From the closing scene of this bloody drama and diabolical work of subjugating the people, and crushing out the spirit of freedom, onward, for the succeeding thirtyeight years, within the camp of Israel, Moses had nearly everything his own way; if the people suffered, or perished on the barrens, or in the wilderness of Arabia, Moses was justly accountable for it.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE WANDERINGS OF THE ISRAELITES - A GAP IN MOSES' HISTORY-THE HISTORY OF THE ISRAELITES RESUMED.

"And the space in which we came from Kadesh-Barnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the Lord sware unto them."

[Deut. II: 14.

"Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin, in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron." [Num. xx: 1, 2.

SECTION 1. I stated at the commencement of Chapter XXXIX, that as to the matters of time and place in which the Korah struggle for freedom occurred, the record of Moses did not define them clearly, but that commentators, generally, agree in saying the period of that event was some time during the second year after Moses and the children of Israel together left Egypt; and the place where it transpired was at Kadesh-Barnea, or near to it. Admitting this to be the truth in the premises, then there was an interval of more than thirty-seven years intervening between the Korah struggle and the events narrated in the last quotation above. Hence, it is as it has been contended by biblical writers, namely: that of the forty years' history of the Israelites, immediately preceding his death, Moses omitted to make a record of their doings in over thirty-seven years. This is quite an item to be overlooked in the history of a nation, and that, too, by God's specially appointed historian -Moses neglected to record nineteen-twentieths of the history of that people over whom he was God's viceroy for

the space of forty years. The text, first quoted, above, taken in connection with other statements of Moses, proves the aforesaid omission.

SEC. 2. Then, again, the fact of the omission of nearly thirty-eight years of the history of the children of Israel is substantiated by Num. xxxii: 19-36. There, in said chapter, the places of their encampings, during the thirtyseven, and over, years, are noted. If this bare naming of stations had been left unrecorded by Moses, and his statement as to the length of time they consumed in passing from Kadesh-Barnea to Zered had not been entered on record in his history, there would not have been any account which would have directed the reader's attention to those years, or to the sufferings which the Israelites endured during that time. But, says one, the record says the children were to wander forty years in the wilderness, and that the carcasses of the fathers should fall there; and this is a history of that time. A predictive statement concerning any people, unattended by any actualities on the part of that people, does not constitute history. A word as to that predictive statement. This question was slightly alluded to in the thirty-eighth Chapter. The prediction that that generation would not inherit the country of the Canaanites was predicated on known visible facts.

SEC. 3. The fighting men of that generation had been tested, and would not engage in battle with the Canaanites, for the possession of their country. Moses knew that he could never dispossess the old inhabitants by the prowess of those who had utterly refused to engage them in deadly conflict. He also knew that his only chance of ever obtaining possession of his coveted prize, (the land of Canaan,) was through the prowess of a people who had been trained, from youth and infancy, in the war-spirit-trained to be disregardful of the law of justice and the rights of others; fearless of death on the battle-field, and unscrupulous as to the means used to obtain an end sought-unscrupulous in taking the life of those whom they would despoil. He