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Lives of Great Men
45
he risked all, and failed. In defeat and disappointment he became a
fugitive and exile in a strange land.
In the wilds of Midian Moses spent forty years as a keeper
of sheep. Apparently cut off forever from his life’s mission, he
was receiving the discipline essential for its fulfillment. Wisdom
[42]
to govern an ignorant and undisciplined multitude must be gained
through self-mastery. In the care of the sheep and tender lambs he
must obtain the experience that would make him a faithful, long-
suffering shepherd to Israel. That he might become a representative
of God, he must learn of Him.
The influences that had surrounded him in Egypt, the luxury and
vice that allured in ten thousand forms, the refinement, the subtlety,
and the mysticism of a false religion, had made an impression on his
mind and character. In the stern simplicity of the wilderness all this
disappeared.
Amidst the solemn majesty of the mountain solitudes Moses was
alone with God. Moses seemed to stand in His presence and to be
overshadowed by His power. Here his self-sufficiency was swept
away. In the presence of the Infinite One he realized how weak, how
inefficient, how short-sighted, are mortals.
Here Moses gained a sense of the personal presence of the Divine
One. Not merely did he look down the ages for Christ to be made
manifest in the flesh, he saw Christ accompanying the host of Israel
in all their travels. When misunderstood and misrepresented, he was
able to endure “as seeing Him who is invisible.”
Hebrews 11:27
.
Moses did not merely think of God, he saw Him. God was the
constant vision before him. Never did he lose sight of His face.
To Moses faith was no guesswork, it was a reality. He believed
that God ruled his life in particular, and in all its details he acknowl-
edged Him. He felt his need of help, asked for it, by faith grasped it,
and in the assurance of sustaining strength went forward.
Such was the experience that Moses gained by his forty years of
training in the desert. To impart such an experience, Infinite Wisdom
did not count the period too long or the price too great.
The results of that training, of the lessons there taught, are bound
up not only with the history of Israel but with all which from that
day to this has told for the world’s progress. The highest testimony
to the greatness of Moses is, “Since then there has not arisen in