96 THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES
alone to the mountain-top to receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion (with many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to address, and forgot therein, and in his angry words to the rebels, that he was only an instrument in the Divine hand. It was a momentary wavering in a hundred and twenty years of obedience. It was one failure in a life of self-abnegation and suppression. The stern sentence came.
^ It is pathetic to find him among that great company of martyrs for the public good, those who in order to serve their people have neglected their own characters. Under the stress of public work and the pressure of the stupidity and greed of those whom they have sought to guide, many leaders of men have been tempted, and have yielded to the temptation, to forget the demands of their better nature. But whatever their services to the world, such unfaithfulness does not pass unpunished. They have to bear the penalty, whosoever they be ; and Moses was no more an excep- tion than Cromwell or Savonarola was, to mention only some of the nobler examples.^
(1) If we ask why that single and apparently trifl[ing dis- obedience unfitted him to lead the people into the land, while men far more rebellious and with less temptation afterwards became their rulers, I do not know that we can find an adequate reply. It may be that God would show how one act may darken the whole of man's earthly hopes ; how the subtle influence of one act of disobedience — because in disobedience lies the germ of all sin — may pervade with its gloom the whole of a man's history, and cause his holiest efforts to fail just at the moment they seem about to succeed. In that we have the hidden source of life's incomplete- ness unveiled. It may not be true to say that some special and definite sin ever prevents the man who has a great purpose from accomplishing it, but this history points out that the presence of sin has destroyed all the completeness of life, and accounts for all that failure of the holiest aims which saddens and perplexes us.
^ One little mark under the arm-pit of a plague-sufferer tells the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground may reveal deep below the root of a poison-plant. That little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resump-
* A. Hai-2)«»r.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 97
tion of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had been put upon it ; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the responsibilities that the new circumstances brought.^
(2) People say, " A heavy penalty for a small offence." Yes ! But an offence of Moses could not be a small offence. Noblesse oUige ! The higher a man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the message and office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable in him is the slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of mud that would never be seen on a navvy's clothes stains the white satin of a bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little sin done by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.
^ It is one of the laws of the Divine government of the world, that with those to whom God specially draws near He is more rigorous than with others. Amos clearly saw and proclaimed this principle. " Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, 0 children of Israel," he says ; " you only have I known of all the families of the earth : therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities " (Amos iii. 1, 2).
(3) We cannot suppose that the sudden outburst of impetuous temper at Meribah — when his spirit was agitated by a fierce whirl- wind of wrath, as a storm sweeping down some mountain-rent on an inland lake — could remain long unforgiven. As far as the east is from the west, so far had that transgression been removed. But though the remission was complete, yet the result lingered in his life, and shut him out from an experience which should have been the crown of his career. " The Lord hath put away thy sin," said Nathan to the royal transgressor ; " but thy child shall die, and the sword shall not depart out of thy house."
(4) But there is more. Moses was one with Israel. When they sinned he interceded as for himself. When Jehovah made him the offer that He would make of him a great nation, he declined it solely from his love to Israel. He lived for the nation, and for the nation he died. Eemember how once he went so far as to say, " If not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast