The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-09-20
Third Quarter, Lesson XII. Septem- Der e1, 1902; Deuteronomy,
 xxxiv, 1-12.
The Death of Moses,

4hc ocdIu OI mOSeS.
 No human life was ever more full of scenic incident than that of Moses. From his wave-rocked cradle onward 1t was march of stirring, and often tragic events, prolific of themes for the artist ai.d poet. There is no need to name these circumstances. They come at once to memory with the mere mention of Moses name.
 The climax of this series of events was reached in Moses death. No hu- man demise surpasses it in certain quality of weirdness. The story is that. on one Of the many occasions on which the lsraeliteS ''murmured' in the wild erness. Moses and Aaron were unusually incensed against them. Moses cried,
 Hear. now, ye rebels! Must we fetch you water out of this rock?' For some quality in this action which is not clea-- ly defined, the brothers were denied the privilege of entrance to Canaan. Aaron was already dead, and Moses had re- cceived his token. He uttered his stately farewell. chanted his song, and pro nounced his blessing and then began his solitary death journey to Nebo. Ther is no word of protest on his part against hks fate He had certainly gained in submissiveness since he ut. me go over. Josephus says he with drew amidst the tears of the people, the women beating their breasts. and the children giving way to uncontrolled WdlilnS, ana that the elders ana ElleZer and Joshua followed part way up the mountain. At length he reached the peak named Nebo, in honor of the heather gol: A miraculous vision of the entire land of promise is not necessarily in volved in the terms of the narrative. It Is expressly affirmed that Moses vision was undimmed, and the height com- manded an exceedingly wide range. What he saw was a sample of the whole to the remotest limits named
 The death of Mnaac haa aH also. Here one can be easily lost in a maze of curious, if not idle, specula tion. The rabbis say, for example, that Moses died by kiss of the Lord. In the act from him. All this is elaborated from the simple phrase that Moses died by the mouth of the Lord.'' And the burial Moses has been made a mystery also The venerable tradition is that Je- hovah Himself buried him. The LXX., however, has it, they buried him." and the third person, singular would allow or the verb being taken as impersonal. If those who attended to the burial of Moses kept their secret and made no record of it. after their death, it could be truthfuily affirmed that mo man knoweth the place of his sepulcher /" Jude is evidently making reference and concession (without of necessity approv- Ing iD, to some Jewish tradition when he speaks of Michael the Archangel con tending and disputing with Satan about the body of Moses. The quotation is probably from the lost apocryphal book mentioned by Origen as the Ascension of Moses. These are matters largely cu- rious and speculative. They afford a fertile field for the imaginative and poetic; but for the average person the moral qualities of the man are confess edly and vastly more important than the accidents of his death and burial
 Thus. for example. the death of Moses was undoubtedly intended to be exemp- lary. He was lawgiver. but he was also himself a law-breaker. He must suffer in sight of all the people the perf alty of the law which he not only gave, but also broke. Again, Moses. n an age of practical materialism, which was always asking What shall we eat, drink and wear? stood pre-eminently for the immaterial and invisible. He was often
 ''All alone,
 Wrapt in a still, dark, solid cloud, The curtain of the Holy One
 Drawn round him like a shroud:
 So. separate from the world his breast Might duly take and strongly keep The print of Heaven"
 For one who lived such fife the