Several scenes from the life of Moses are delineated in this biblical cycle. One of these, as sometimes treated, for classic grace and dignity reminds one of some noble antique. It is Moses on Mount Horeb putting off his shoes from his feet. This act is interpreted by some of the Christian Fathers[485] as an emblem of the renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil demanded of the servants of Christ. The accompanying example, Fig. 70, is from the cemetery of Callixtus. [Illustration: Fig. 70.--Moses on Mount Horeb.] [Illustration: Fig. 71.--Moses Receiving the Law.] Fig. 71, from a sarcophagus in the Lateran, represents Moses on Mount Sinai receiving from the hand of God the law, which was to be the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. Moses is sometimes exhibited, 291 also, as breaking the tables of the law on his descent from the mount. [Illustration: Fig. 72.--Moses and the Baskets of Manna.] [Illustration: Fig. 73.--Moses Striking the Rock.] In the Catacomb of St. Cyriaca is a unique picture of the descent of the manna--the emblem of the “True Bread which came down from heaven.” It is seen falling in a copious shower, and gathered in the vestments of four Israelites. According to Martigny the accompanying engraving, Fig. 72, from the Catacomb of St. Priscilla, and another in the Callixtan Catacomb, represent Moses standing among the baskets of manna gathered in the wilderness. But for the severe and aged expression of countenance, so different from the youthful aspect of Our Lord in the frescoes of the Catacombs, they might be taken for pictures of Christ and the seven baskets of fragments left after feeding the multitude. More frequently recurring than any other scene in the history of Moses 292 is that of his striking water from the rock, an emblem of the spiritual blessings flowing to the church through the sufferings of the Messiah, “For they drank of that spiritual Rock which followed them; and that Rock was Christ.”[486] The illustration in Fig. 73 is taken from a sarcophagus found in the cemetery of St. Agnes. That in Fig. 74 is from a fresco of earlier date in the Catacomb of Marcellinus. [Illustration: Fig. 74.--Moses Striking the Rock.] In two or three of the gilded glasses to be hereafter mentioned, which are of comparatively late date, this scene is rudely indicated, and over the head or at the side of the figure is the word PETRVS or Peter. From this circumstance Roman Catholic writers have asserted that in many of the sarcophagal and other representations of this event it is no longer Moses but Peter, “the leader of the new Israel of God,” who is striking the rock with the emblem of divine power--a conclusion for which there is absolutely no evidence except the very 293 trivial fact above mentioned.[487]