MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES.—Exodus, ii.
MOSES.
Moses loses nothing by diffuseness. Even in days that were made long by intolerable monotony—in which men lived centuries because of weariness—Moses did not shrink from a condensation unparalleled in human literature.
Considered as embracing the history of one month only, the third Book of Moses may claim to be the most remarkable book in the Old Testament. Containing twenty-seven chapters, ranging its contents under sixteen different categories, and requiring to be actively represented within the space of twenty-eight days—it may, in its own degree, claim an energy not inferior to the Book of Genesis.
The same fearlessness of treatment is distinctive of both books. The reverent audacity which represented creation as the work of six days—whatever the measure of a day may be—did not shrink from focalizing into one month the whole discipline of life.
Moses’ words could hardly have been fewer if he had lived in our time of feverish haste and tumult. To put up the Heavens and the Earth in one chapter was a miracle in authorship. Yet, well pondered, it was the only thing to be done. Any poet could have built them in endless stanzas, and any philosopher could have begun the infinite story in a book too large for the world to hold.
Moses chose the more excellent way, creating creation with a swiftness that has dazed a literal criticism ever since—literal criticism that has but one season in its dreary year, a year that knows nothing of snow-blossom or wedded light and song. But this very haste was part of the man.
The Moses of Poetry required fifty-one days for the revolution of his “Iliad”; the Moses of Revelation only took a week for the settlement of the Heavens and the Earth, and in that week he found one whole day of rest for the Creator.
This action was entirely characteristic of Moses, for he was the most wrathful man as well as the meekest—killing, smiting, destroying and burning with anger, as well as praying like the father-priest of his people.