Thus ended the glorious life of the man of God. His death was as mysterious to his followers in America, as was his disappearance and supposed death to the Israelites in Asia. He was the first missionary who carried the glad tidings of God’s good-will towards an erring world; and he died the death of a martyr at the hands of the very world that he came to enlighten.
At the time of his death Moses must have been very old, for he was already one hundred and twenty years old when he left the Israelites. To arrive at the exact age to which he attained, an acquaintance with the chronicles of many kingdoms would be necessary, in order to know the date at which he arrived, and what length of time he sojourned, in each. But as most of the empires which Moses founded are now under the government of various nations, who have wantonly destroyed every vestige of the history and traditions of their former kings, this knowledge cannot be attained in this age of the world.
When Moses commenced his missionary life he was accompanied by his Ethiopian consort,[[78]] and a son, by her, as there is evidence to prove in the painting at Thebes, where there is a representation of the Ethiopian princess with a boy on her lap.[[79]] There also went with him Zipporah and her two sons, Gershom and Eliezer,[[80]] and their sons,[[81]] and a large company of Jews, Egyptians, and Ethiopians.[[82]]
The doctrine that Moses preached everywhere was the same as that he wrote and left among the Jews. It will, therefore, not be out of place to rehearse it here, as he rehearsed it before the Israelites previous to his departure from their midst:—
“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
“They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?
“Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations the inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields, and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.
“But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxed fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.
“And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.