Moses’ Forty Years in Midian
MEN have endeavored to picture the earthly end of this wonderful man in poetry; and yet it seems to us that the simple inspired record can do him justice. What a grand, luminous character is revealed in him, limned against the blackness of the surrounding idolatry of the ages before him! He was a mighty man when he went down into the land of Midian, but he was mighty only in the learning and the wisdom of this world; after the forty years' schooling with God alone in the desert he is fitted to lead a people out from bondage into the land of freedom. What patience, what wisdom, what tender solicitude, what earnest devotion, what constant self-sacrifice, were revealed through all those forty years! To us he seems to stand out the one great figure of the ages, second only to Him whom even he feebly typified, the Lord Jesus Christ. What wonderful lessons God has given to the world through him, and what marvelous civilizations have followed the Book to the molding of which he under God contributed so much!