vaulting language of a victorious braggart. After his mob had done its fiendish work in human slaughter; after it had massacred the people's leading men, and it had rescued from the power of Justice, and saved from condign punishment, in the hands of a justly indignant populace, two of his leading bullies; after these had escaped from paying the just penalty of their audacity and false statements in trying to deceive and mislead the people; after the work of human slaughter was ended and the riotous proceedings were over, Moses exultingly exclaims in the presence of his cohorts and bullies, "Joshua and Caleb still live."

SEC. 10. That the reader may have imprinted upon the tablet of his mind a more vivid picture of the work of the Levites, set on by Moses and Aaron, I would say to him, read in Exodus chap. XXXII, Moses' account of the work of those mobocrats, set on by them for the purpose of destroying all those who possessed enough of their divine manhood to dare to disregard Moses' dictation. In the massacre there narrated, by a general order of his, "three thousand" of the people of Israel were, in one day, slaughtered, by these petted Levites who were maintained by taxes levied on the people. This was the order of Moses which they executed by imbuing their hands in the heart's blood of three thousand of their fellow-men:

"Put every man (Levite) his sword by his side, (concealed, of course,) and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor."

SEC. 11. "And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly." So reads the record. "These sayings," and the cause of the people's sorrows, will be the subject of the next Chapter, where it will be made apparent, to the unbiased reader, that the people had cause for their mourning, and that that cause was Moses himself.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MOSES' LORD SWEARS THAT NO ADULT WHO MURMURED SHALL ENTER THE PROMISED LAND-HE ORDERS THEIR RETURN INTO THE WILDERNESS-THE PEOPLE MOURN-THEY ARE CONFUSED -THEY FIGHT AND GET WHIPPED.

"Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: but Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.

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To-morrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. But your carcasses (all that were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, and had murmured,) they shall fall in this wilderness. And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel, and the people mourned greatly."

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[Num. XIV: 23, 24, 25, 32, 39

SECTION 1. I stated in the last Chapter that, as the rule, whatever Moses desired, or whatever he was opposed to, Moses would say that his Lord's sensational nature was alike moved; and obedience to him, or disobedience to him, he would set down that the act was the same to his Lord; and if the people acted contrary to his orders, or without his instruction, he declared it rebellion against his Lord. To the foregoing I will here add, that, as his rule, whatever he thought and spake he would write it down that his Lord said it. The practical of this rule is obvious throughout the fourteenth chapter of Numbers, from which the above texts are extracted. All that Moses there recorded, as being the declarations of his Lord, were his own assumptions, deductions, conclusions, and declarations. This record, as it stands, is a sort of kaleidoscopic view of Moses' own sinuous organic nature and of his distorted mentality; from

the beginning to the end of the chapter there is not in the spirit dictating, and actively governing, a single trace of the moral lineaments, or the characteristics of the Everlasting Father. This part of the record is Moses throughout. SEC. 2. None who offended Moses by disaffection with him, or by their murmurings at his conduct for his treatment to them, shall see the promised land of Canaan. But Caleb shall enter into it, and his relatives shall possess it: In substance, thus reads Moses' record. Though his record declares, imperatively, that of those of the class described, none should inherit the land said to have been promised to their fathers, but that their carcasses should fall in the wilderness, the conditions of things were such, at that time, that it did not require any supernatural aid to acquaint those of only ordinary perceptive faculties of the fact that such would be the fate of the then active generation. They had been brought by Moses to that unavoidable test through which they must enter the land, if they entered it at all, namely: that of fighting for it—that of wresting the land from the lawful- occupants "by great struggles in war and this neither the masses nor Moses' "six hundred thousand" warriors would do. Consequently, there was no prospect that that generation would ever possess the land of Canaan, for known natural causes which were abiding would forever prevent it-the Canaanites, as Moses said, "would not resign up their land to the Israelites without fighting." Hence it required no supernatural aid to predict the fact that that generation would never enter the land of Canaan. The case stood thus:

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The Canaanites possessed the country and would never resign it up to the Israelites without fighting:

The Israelites desired the possession of the country of the Canaanites but would not fight to obtain it:

Therefore, the Israelites would never possess, or the land of Canaan.

"see,"

What astounding prophetic powers Moses and his Lord must have possessed, to have predicted, from a known

cause, an unavoidable effect, known to be such by every individual of the whole community, who possessed common understanding!

SEC. 3. After the children of Israel had been brought to the final test, whether they would risk an engagementfight the Canaanites to obtain possession of their countryand they had utterly refused to fight, and the people persisted in that refusal, and they had resolved to return to Egypt, and had chosen a leader to lead them back, as I said above, it required no supernatural inspiration to have taught any one, that the then active generation could never possess the land of Canaan. And knowing the state to which Moses had then brought the people, and their surroundings, it required no more of the gift of prophecy to have foretold the fact that the " carcasses" of the men of that generation would “fall in the wilderness," than it did to foretell the fact that they could not "see" the land of Canaan, if they would not fight to obtain it. Through deceit and craftiness-false representations, adroit management, and cruelty-Moses had brought the children of Israel into that state, where, when viewed rationally, and dispassionately, to go forward, under his lead and that of his accomplices, there were more than a hundred chances, unavoidable chances, that they would be annihilated, or made slaves of for life, to one that they would succeed in dispossessing the Canaanites.

SEC. 4. In every rational view of the case, either death or perpetual slavery was their unavoidable doom, whether they went forward or remained where they were; for, as Josephus says, the country where they were, Kadesh-Barnea, was "a place difficult to be continued in," and, as already stated, instead of the Canaanites being, as Joshua and Caleb said, "bread" for them, they were not a lunch for the Canaanites, according to rational inference from the unanimous report of the twelve spies. Then, on the penalty of death, Moses interdicted the Israelites affinitizing, in any manner, with the surrounding nations, thereby closing

against them this chance for the lightening of their burdens, and for the mitigation of their sorrows. Then again, many, very many, of the people's leaders, the purest and best men of the children of Israel, had been massacred by Moses' orders, given at sundry times, leaving the people, to a considerable extent, without popular leaders and trusty tried friends. Again, the property which the people brought out of Egypt with them had been consumed, in part, little by little, by Moses, in sacrifices to his bloody God, and to feed his petted bullies, the Levites, in their temple and fighting services. Therefore, when thus conditioned, had not the people sufficient causes for "mourning greatly ?"

SEC. 5. The only possible way (and this was hardly a probable one) for the people to escape the doom of annihilation, or slavery, after Moses had brought them to KadeshBarnea, and after he had sent spies throughout all the surrounding inhabited country, for the purpose of facilitating his schemes to plunder the inhabitants, and possess their country, was to turn into the wilderness and make their way back into Egypt. Here, at Kadesh-Barnea, before Moses had massacred the ten spies, and with them the people's principal leaders, the people had taken the preliminary steps to return. But the effect of this massacre upon the living was, they were nonplussed in their purposes and confused greatly. By this slaughter Moses again gained ascendancy over the people, and before they recovered from their confused state he and his Lord ordered the entire population of Israelites to return into the wilderness, and to there wander until all the then active of its numbers were dead.

SEC. 6. By the above the reader will perceive that Moses now had the people under his control; that he ordered them into the wilderness; and that he restricted them to it, for life-that he did not allow them to return to Egypt as they desired to do, with their wives and their little ones. But, says the earnest inquirer, as the Israelites would not fight the Canaanites, and they would not serve Moses' purpose, why did he put this cruel prohibitive restraint upon that