Inside of this impregnable fortress, the traveler of to-day finds two prison chambers cut in the solid rock. These rock-hewn dungeons once echoed the tread, and resounded with the songs and prayers, of that strong-charactered and iron-willed man of God who came to prepare the way of the Lord—to make His paths straight! It makes one shudder to stand here amidst the solemn grandeur of these storm-beaten rocks, and contemplate the tragic history of this great man. A great man? Yes. It was John the Baptist who first had the courage to stand before his fellow-countrymen, and, looking them squarely in the face, say: “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” With stentorian voice he cried: “O, generation of vipers;” “the ax is laid at the root of the tree;” “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” “He that cometh after me shall baptize you with fire, He will thoroughly purge His floor and will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” It was John the Baptist who buried Christ the Lord in yonder rolling river. It was John the Baptist who pointed to Him and said: “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”
I thank God for the life and character of John the Baptist who, after all the honors heaped upon him, could say, I am nobody—I am simply the voice of One crying in the wilderness. He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He must increase but I must decrease. Yes, John said that he was nobody—that he was only a voice, and yet Jesus says: “Among those born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.” Oh, to be nobody! Oh, to be only the voice of Jesus, calling men unto righteousness, and warning them to flee the wrath to come! Oh, that the writer and the reader of this chapter may “rise upon the stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things!” O, God, graciously grant, I pray thee, that both writer and reader may realize that the magnitude of any life is to be determined by the distance of self from the centre!
In the same chasm with Machaerus, and not far away, there is a group of ten hot springs bursting forth from the side of the wady one hundred feet or more from its rocky bed. Although in close proximity to each other these springs vary in temperature from 130 to 142 degrees. According to Josephus, some of these fountains are bitter and others sweet. The waters are said to possess great medicinal properties and healing virtues. The maimed, the halt, and the blind resort hither in search of health. While living at Jericho, just before his death, Herod the Great, according to Josephus, came to these springs hoping to drown his disease. But the wicked, adulterous, murderous Herod was not so sick, I trow,
“As he was troubled with thick-coming fancies
That kept him from his rest.”
Herod was a murderer; and wash his guilt away he never could. He might wash, and wash and wash, and cry: “Out, out damned spot!” But there was the “smell of blood still.” He might have said as Macbeth afterwards did:
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
North of Machaerus, and not far from Heshbon, is Mt. Nebo from which Moses viewed the land of promise, and upon which, also, he breathed his last. This peak, as one would naturally suppose, commands a fine view of the surrounding country. For twenty miles to the south and southeast, one’s eyes sweep over an elevated table-land of unusual richness and beauty. The range of vision toward the rising sun extends to where the blue sky and the sandy desert meet. Looking westward one sees the valley of the Jordan, and traces the wanderings of the river from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. Beyond the Jordan is the land of “milk and honey” that Moses was never allowed to enter. Moses came up hither from the plain of Moab, and the Lord showed him the country and said unto him, “This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.”
As the reader sits in his swinging hammock beneath the wide-spreading branches of some great oak and pronounces these words to a listening friend, they may sound light and trifling. But if he could stand here where I am, and lift his eyes from the sacred page and let them fall at once upon the surrounding hills and valleys, methinks these words would then each weigh a pound. I have never studied the life of any mortal man with the same degree of interest that I now study the life and character of Moses. Probably it is all the more enjoyable because I have been down in Egypt where Moses was born. I have been sailing up and down the Nile where Moses once floated in the ark of bulrushes. As I sat in a boat on the broad bosom of that majestic river, and looked out upon its banks, I half-way imagined that I could see Moses’s mother weaving the ark. Reader, would you know how that ark was made? Well, it was on this wise. Moses’s mother took a bulrush, and a prayer, and faith, and a tear, and plaited them together. Then more faith, and tears, and bulrushes, and prayers, and plaited them together. When a mother has thus woven an ark, she can trustingly launch her babe upon any waters! And I am persuaded that if we, in our Christian work, would use more faith and tears and prayers and less bulrushes, it would be far better for our Redeemer’s Kingdom.
I repeat that I have been in Egypt where Moses was born; on the Nile where he floated; to Pharaoh’s court where he was educated; I have been out on the desert where Moses killed an Egyptian because he imposed upon a Hebrew. I then climbed to the top of the regal pyramid, and looked out over the land of Goshen where Israel served four hundred years in bondage. I followed Moses down to the Red Sea where he led Israel across. I looked up to the frowning brow of Sinai where Moses met God face to face, and talked with him as man to man; where he reached up and received from the hand of God the tables of stone on which were written the Ten Commandments.
After following Moses around in the wilderness to some extent, I have come now to where his eyes were closed in death. The inhabitants of this country have no written history, but they know a great deal traditionally about the life and character of Moses. Many weird stories and beautiful legends concerning him have been handed down from generation to generation, and are as fresh in the minds of the people to-day as if he had died within the recollection of some now living. Frequently in these stories Scripture history and legendary lore are beautifully interwoven. For instance, the people here say that Moses with three million Jews had camped on the plain of Moab. And God said unto him, “Moses, get thee up into yonder mountain, and I will show thee from thence the land of promise.” When God spake Moses obeyed—he started at once. Standing high upon the mountain side he looked back upon the tabernacle and the tents of Israel. The people followed him with their prayers and blessings. He paused, looked back at his brethren, and waved them a last adieu, as if to say,