have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness."

Leaving aside for the moment all our childish preventions, and considering
this evidence in the cold light of history, it becomes tolerably evident
that Moses had now reached the turning-point in his career, the point
whither he had inexorably tended since the day on which he bid good-bye to
Jethro to visit Egypt and attempt to gain control of the exodus, and the
point to which all optimists must come who resolve to base a religious or
a political movement on the manipulation of the supernatural. However pure
and disinterested the motives of such persons may be at the outset, and
however thoroughly they may believe in themselves and in their mission,
sooner or later, to compass their purpose, they must resort to deception
and thus become impostors who flourish on the credulity of their dupes.

Moses, from the nature of the case, had to make such demands on the
credulity of his followers that even those who were bound to him by the
strongest ties of affection and self-interest were alienated, and those
without such commanding motives to submit to his claim to exact from them
absolute obedience, revolted, and demanded that he should be deposed. The
first serious trouble with which Moses had to contend came to a head at
Hazeroth, the second station after leaving Sinai. The supposed spot is
still used as a watering-place. There Miriam and Aaron attacked Moses
because they were jealous of his wife, whom they decried as an
"Ethiopian." And they said, "Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses?
hath he not spoken also by us?" Instantly, it became evident to Moses that
if this denial of his superior intimacy with God were to be permitted, his
supremacy must end. Accordingly the Lord came down "in the pillar of the
cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and
Miriam: and they both came forth." And the Lord explained that he had no
objection to a prophet; if any one among the congregation had an ambition