element in thine own nature, and thou wilt see it reflected in the world
about thee. Wouldst thou be sure that there is such a thing as a divine
Power? be thyself just and merciful. And so Moses descended again to his
people, and became exceeding charitable in spirit. The Bible says: "The
man Moses was exceeding humble; there was no one more humble than he on
the face of the earth." He bore with resignation their complaints, their
murmurings, their alternate cowardice and foolhardiness. He was made to
feel, like many another in his place, that his foes were they of his own
household. He had an only brother and an only sister. His brother and
sister rose up against him. His kinsmen, too, revolted from him. He
endured all their weakness, all their follies; he sought to lift them by
slow degrees to the height of his own aims. He set the paths of life and
death before them, and told them that the divine word can not be found
by crossing the seas or by searching the heavens, but must be found in
the human heart; and if men find it not there they will find it nowhere
else. And so, at last, his pilgrimage drew to a close. He had reached
the confines of Palestine. Once more he sought the mountain-top, and
there beheld the promised land stretching far away--the land which his
eyes were to see but which he was never to enter. Few great reformers,
indeed few men who have started a great movement in history, and have
been the means of producing deep and permanent changes in the ideas and
institutions of society, have lived to see those changes consummated.
The course of evolution is slow, and the reformer can hope at best to
see the promised land from afar--as in a dream. Happy he if, like
Moses, he retains the force of his convictions unabated, if his
spiritual sight remains undimmed, if the splendid vision which attended
him in the beginning inspires and consoles him to the end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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