WHERE DID MOSES GET THAT LAW?
By Wm. T. Price
A portion of the following article has for a long time been in use with S. D. Adventists, but the reader will gladly peruse it again from sheer satisfaction at knowing that it has appeared in such a paper as the Christian at Work, from which we now take it:— The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in Heaven.—Richter. These words of the most charming of the literary Germans, in my esteem, never recur so forcibly as when I am thinking of preparing an article for The Christian at Work. Somehow it impresses me that to write something about Moses might favor the purpose indicated by Richter’s wish, and that I so earnestly aspire to realize. It never occurred to me that sincere persons could have any trouble about Moses and his writings, until I entered the ministry, about twenty years ago, and had charge of a group of churches in the Virginia mountains. In one of these, the most important in numbers and promise, the bench of elders consisted of two members. Upon visiting one of these brethren—a venerable man, over seventy years of age, and the more intelligent and influential of the two—I found him quite exercised over a difficulty he had recently discovered in reading Hebrews 11, which his pastor had once mentioned to him as a portion of Scripture well adapted to encourage and comfort Christians. It appears this aged elder had not found it so, and he was feeling quite badly about the conduct of Moses. “What troubles me,” he remarked, “is that I cannot feel that Moses will do to go by, since he acted so indifferently as to refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. It is my idea, and I cannot help it, that a man who will go back upon his mother in that way is not what he ought to be, and really I don’t know what to think or do about minding what such a man should write for my duty.” When this good old seeker for truth became informed as to the facts in the case, his difficulty was satisfactorily disposed of, much to his subsequent peace of mind. Since then I have been informed of difficulties about Moses from various sources, learned and otherwise, and I have found, upon careful analysis, the ultimate elements of all are about the same as that which troubled my venerated elder—available facts not duly considered. A ministerial editor in Chicago, who sometimes writes of himself as the Rev. David Smith, D. D., has quite recently taken in hand a son of a deceased clergyman, who seems sorely exercised over some alleged mistakes of Moses. If this perplexed child of the covenant does not find his perplexities explained by Dr. Smith’s sweetly put strictures, it will be just because he does not desire a solution of his doubts. Dr. Smith, so-called, views Moses with a kaleidoscopic eye, and, in swinging around the historic circle as visible from his standpoint, he points out several forms of the man “Moses”—the historic “Moses,” the Hebrew “Moses,” and the Puritanic “Moses.” He then proceeds to show how the eloquent and humorous preacher’s son has all this while been tackling the Puritanical “Moses” instead of the scriptural “Moses,” thus deceiving himself and misleading the public, in so far as the dear people may be influenced by him. Should Dr. S. reach Heaven and not allow his modesty to prevent him from telling Moses that he wrote words like these, and have the prudence to be silent about some serio-comic allusions to “the Theologians,” I feel sure the glorified “Moses” will smile approvingly upon his good offices. The friends of scriptural “Moses,” as well as that Moses himself, cannot be otherwise than pleased with sentiments like the following: “To set forth the mistakes of the historic ‘Moses’ would not be an easy task. One doing this would be compelled to ask us to mark the blunders of a leader who planned freedom for slaves; who bore complainings from an ignorant people until he won the fame of unusual meekness; one who did, in reality, what infidels only have dreamed of doing—living and dying for the people; the mistakes of one whose ten laws are still the fundamental ideas of a State; the mistakes of one who divested the idea of God of bestiality, and began to clothe it with the notions of wisdom and justice, and even tenderness; the follies of one who established industry and education and a higher form of religion, and gave the nation holding these virtues such an impulse that in the hour of dissolving it produced Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles; and thus did more in its death than atheism could achieve in all the laws of geology.” To make sport of such a character as the scriptural “Moses” is something so monstrous that it must be considered an infirmity or an act of injustice. What the history of such a Moses claims is honest dealing and a candid hearing. For illustration, let the example of a converted skeptic be adduced. He experimented long and patiently as a lawyer, to see if he could add anything to the law of the Lord or take anything away, so as to improve upon it. If it could be thus amended, then he would rest in the conviction that it was of human origin merely. The results reached, he states in this way: “The first commandment, I find, directs us to make the Creator the object of our supreme love and reverence. That is as it should be. If he be our Creator, Preserver, and Supreme Benefactor, we ought to treat him, and none other, as such. The second forbids idolatry, the third profaneness, and all this is certainly right. The fourth fixes a time for religious worship. If there be a God, he ought surely to be worshiped. There should be an outward homage expressive of our inward regard. It is proper some time should be specified when all may worship harmoniously, and without interruption. One day in seven is certainly not too much, and I do not know that it is too little. The fifth defines the peculiar duties arising from the family relations. Injuries to our neighbor are then classified by the moral law into offenses against life, chastity, property, and character. I notice, too, that the greatest offense in each class is expressly forbidden. Thus the greatest injury to life is murder; to chastity, adultery; to property, theft; to character, perjury. Now the greater offense must include the less of the same kind. Murder must include every injury to life; and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and perfected by a command prohibiting every improper desire in regard to our neighbor.” “In thinking, where did Moses get that law, I searched history. I find the Egyptians and the adjacent nations were idolaters. So were the Greeks and the Romans, and the wisest and best Greek or Roman never taught a code of morals like Moses.” “Where did Moses get this law, which surpasses the wisdom and philosophy of the most enlightened ages? Living at a period comparatively barbarous, Moses has given a law in which the learning and sagacity of all subsequent times can detect no fault. He could not have risen so far above his age as to have devised it himself. It must have come from Heaven. I am convinced of the truth of the religion of the Bible.” Thus he was led to Christ, and from that time this song made glad the house of his pilgrimage, instead of gibes and jeers about the mistakes of Moses:— The statutes of the Lord are right,
And do rejoice the heart;
The Lord’s command is pure, and doth
Light to the eyes impart.
They more than gold, yea, much fine gold,
To be desired are,
Than honey, honey from the comb,
That droppeth, sweeter far.
Moreover, they thy servant warn
How he his life should frame;
A great reward provided is
For them that keep the same.
—Wm. T. Price, in Christian at Work.