Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/97

 where Aaron and Hur held up his hands. Late in the afternoon we climbed this peak, and stood on the very spot where Moses knelt and prayed, and looked on the very scene on which he looked on that eventful day which was to decide the fate of Israel, when his hopes rose and fell, for the battle was long, and ended not till the going down of the sun. It was sunset when we stood there, and it required little imagination to conceive of the great Hebrew Lawgiver at that hour rising from his knees, his prayers turned to praise as he saw the Amalekites fleeing through the passes of the mountains.

Some I know would look on this scene with very different feelings. A popular lecturer has undertaken to expose the Mistakes of Moses, and in following the narrative of the Exodus, he denounces the entrance of the Israelites into the Peninsula of Sinai as an unprovoked invasion of the territory of a peaceful neighbor — an act which was not merely a mistake, but a crime. This censure of Moses is not new. There is nothing in the Bible which is a more frequent subject of attack than the alleged cruelty of the Hebrew leader in forcing his way among an unoffending people. But let not the critics be too hasty in judgment. We must take large views of things. The Exodus from Egypt was one of those great migrations of nations of which we read in history, movements accomplished by great suffering and great sacrifices, as when, in this very case, the whole Hebrew people perished in the wilderness, yet through which comes at last the deliverance of nations and the general progress of mankind. Colonel Ingersoll is an ardent advocate of liberty, and a fierce denouncer of slavery in every form. We presume he would think slaves justified in fleeing from bondage, and seeking their freedom, even if the end could not be gained except at the price of the sacrifice of precious lives — their own and