CHAPTER XXIX.

MOSES' MACHINERY IS FINISHED HE IS NOW READY TO LEAVE THE WILDERNESS OF SINAI FOR THE LAND OF CANAAN.

"According to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so the children of Israel made all the work. And Moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the Lord had commanded, even so had they done it; and Moses blessed them." [Ex. XXXIX: 42, 43.

SECTION 1. It is not the intended sphere of this work to enter into a minute description of all the moral and religious machinery constructed and put into motion by Moses, during the eleven months that he and the Israelites sojourned in the wilderness of Sinai-that which he instituted and constructed for the governing and controlling of the said Israelites. The intended purpose of these pages was to demonstrate the principles which governed Moses' actions, and to put forth in them some of the more glaring violations of moral obligation of which he, in his conduct towards the children of Israel, was guilty. This I have done, to some extent, in former Chapters. In this Chapter, I would call the attention of the reader to the peculiar condition of Moses and his surroundings, at the time of which I am now speaking. The people, en masse, were mere automatons, moving only as he moved them, and on the penalty and pain of death they dare not do otherwisehe had taught them this as the law of God, and he had exemplified his teaching by slaying, or causing to be murdered, every man, possessing leading abilities, who disputed his right to rule them, or, openly, questioned his pretended mission.

SEC. 2. Prior to this time, Moses had consolidated the twelve tribes, the descendants of Jacob, into one nation,

making himself the central power of it. In him all the governmental powers centred, none of which moved, legitimately, only as he moved them. Each of the pulsations of his own authority, when he desired it, sent his vital forces into all the ramifications of the nation. He was the nation's Law-maker, its Chief Justice, and its Chief Executive-its Autocrat, and its Generalissimo; also, the only tangible head of its State religion. Then, he had his subordinate officials, of his own creating, in every department. He maintained tribial distinctions, but acknowledged no rights that were not subordinate to his own. By his permission the principals, and all subordinate tribial officials of the several tribes, were created-he created all officials at will, and he destroyed them at his pleasure. And then, he had, of his own selecting, his tribial family of priests. These, alone, did he permit to minister at the altar of his religion, and were allowed to publicly teach to fellowman the attributes of God, and his requirements of man. All others were forbidden to fill these offices, on penalty of death.

SEC. 3. Immediately after Moses had forced from the people of the several tribes their consent to consolidate, and to receive his word as their supreme law, he retired into the mountain and set himself at work framing statutes and ordinances for the people to observe and obey. His laws covered every act of the people, in their various social relations, and almost every contingency that could possibly arise among them. He particularized all the formalities of his religious worship; the consecrated vessels and utensils; the sacred edifices; and all the gaudy trappings, and the awe-striking equipage of his priesthood. Then, he had the entire masses thoroughly organized into groups, each having a ruler placed over them who was a subaltern of the central power, and which was extremely sensitive to the pulsations of head officials. In short, politically, and religiously, Moses now had every thing his own way; and, it is stated in the quotation, above, also in other texts in his record, that the

people had wrought skillfully, and finished, to Moses' entire satisfaction, all the work which he assigned them to do.

SEC. 4. His civil code being completed and proclaimed to the people, and his subalterns appointed to enforce his statutes; his religious formula adopted and delivered into the keeping of the priesthood which he had created, inducted into office, and installed in power; all the material sacred structures having been made ready for use, and set up; his organization completed; his groups officered; the people unmanned and automatic in Moses' hands, and they having been numbered, he was prepared to enter upon another field of enterprise. It was just then that Moses understood his Lord to order him to move forward on his filibustering campaign to subjugate the people, and to overrun and possess the country from the desert of Arabia and the Mediterranean, to the Euphrates.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE ISRAELITES REMOVE FROM SINAI TO THE WILDERNESS OF PARAN-THEY ENCAMP AT KIBROTH-HATTAAVAH.

"And it came to pass, on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony. And the children of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran. And they first took their journey, according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses."

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"And Moses said unto Hobab, (Moses' brother-in-law,) Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes. And he said unto him, I will not go; but I will depart to mine own land, and to my kinsman."

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* "And they departed from the mount of the Lord three days' journey: and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days' journey, to search out a resting place for them." [Num. x: 11, 12, 13, 29, 30, 31, 33.

SECTION 1. Notwithstanding thousands were killed off by Moses' order, for their refusing to follow his lead and implicitly obey his dictation, and for forsaking the worship of his arbitrary ideal God; and notwithstanding the bills of common mortality, and the casualties always attendant on large continued collections of human beings, and on large moving bodies of people, and the war with Amalek, Moses' record affirms that he went forth from the wilderness of Sinai having a body of fighting men numbering some three and a half, or four, thousand more than he had when he came out of Egypt. But, be the truth, or falsity, of this asseveration as it may, taking this record as authority in the premises, the best officered, and the best drilled, armies of the ancients, and of the moderns, never moved and encamped, in such perfect order as did the Israelites under the directions

of Moses, when they went forth from their encampment in Sinai, and in their encampings in the wilderness of Paran. But there can be no doubt that Moses' narration of this matter, if nothing worse, is mostly a fancy sketch. For it is, and it ever was, an utter impossibility for a body of human beings, so numerous as it is said that the children of Israel were together with their flocks and herds—“ very much cattle "-to move in, and maintain such perfect order, through a wilderness country, and across barren sandy deserts, dotted over with rocky ledges, and interspersed with irregular mountainous ridges, as it is said that they moved. But enough of this, for the present.

SEC. 2. "And they first took their journey according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses;" so reads Moses' record, quoted above. At this stage of the investigation, and after what has been said, bearing on the point, I do not consider it necessary to spend much time, nor to use many words, in further showing what is the truthful rendering of all such expressions as that contained in the above language of Moses. The Pentateuch abounds with such fulsome and fraudulent expressions. This language is susceptible of but one natural and truthful rendering, and it, and all other like declarations of the record, are susceptible of but one interpretation; and that is, it was Moses who was ordering, or operating, not God. The things spoken were Moses' own notions, judging them by the standard of the known unchanging law of right. He assumed before the people that he was the oracle of God, their heavenly Father-that he was God's mouth-piece for his words to them-when he was uttering the words of the Prince of Darkness.

SEC. 3. In illustration of the point last mentioned in the preceding Section: When the order was given by Moses, to the commanders of his several divisions, to strike their tents, at Sinai, and to move forward and make for the land of Canaan, it was no more the order of God than that is his which is given by any modern filibuster to the principal