Moses had time to take off the priestly garments, which were the insignia of office and to put them on Eleazar, and then, when all was ready, Aaron simply ceased to breathe at the precise moment when it was convenient for Moses to have him die, for the policy of Moses evidently demanded that Aaron should live no longer. Under the conditions of the march Moses was evidently preparing for his own death, and for a complete change in the administration of affairs. Appreciating that his leadership had broken down and that the system he had created was collapsing, he had dawdled as long on the east side of the Jordan as the patience of the congregation would permit. An advance had become inevitable, but Moses recognized his own inability to lead it. The command had to be delegated to a younger man and that man was Joshua. Eleazar, on the other hand, was the only available candidate for the high priesthood, and Moses took the opportunity of making the investiture on Mount Hor. So Aaron passed away, a sacrifice to the optimism of Moses. Next came the turn of Moses himself. The whole story is told in Deuteronomy. Within, probably, something less than a year after Aaron’s death the “Lord” made a like communication to Moses. “Get thee up ... unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; “And die in the Mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron, thy brother died in Mount Hor; “Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. “And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, ... And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan. “And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.... But no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” The facts, as preserved by Josephus, appear to have been these: Moses ascended the mountain with only the elders, the high priest Eleazar, and Joshua. At the top of the mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as he was embracing Joshua and Eleazar and still speaking, a cloud covered him, and he disappeared in a ravine. In other words, he killed himself. Such is the story of Moses, a fragment of history interesting enough in itself, but especially material to us not only because of the development of the thought dealt with in the following volumes, but of the inferences which, at the present time, it permits us to draw touching our own immediate future.