Article November 17, 1917 Issue

Moses

ETHEL MUNRO GOSS

As an inspiration to service there is no stronger influence than a study of the life of one who has given his all in the service of mankind. As we look back across the ages at those heroic figures who made an indelible mark in the history of spiritual development, one of the first is the stalwart figure of Moses, who gave to the world the vision gained on mount Sinai. That the vision was given first to a people who repeatedly murmured at being led out of bondage, but makes the inspiration of his life the more compelling.

Moses must have possessed from the first that same independence of character which compelled his great forefather Abraham to obey the voice that urged him to get out of his country and to go into a land which Truth would show him. He had a hatred of oppression and a generous passion to help the oppressed, for we find him taking the side of his fellow countryman against an Egyptian taskmaster; then protecting the daughter of Reuel, priest of Midian, otherwise known as Jethro, against the shepherds. Still later he was led to his great life work, the freeing of the Hebrew captives in the land of Egypt, not by the strength of his own right arm, but in the strength of the God of Israel.

While the children of Israel "sighed by reason of the bondage," and "they cried, and their cry came up unto God," their future deliverer was being prepared for his mission by tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, in the desert. There, in silent communion with the God of his fathers, the vision was granted him of the God who would deliver his beloved people,—"I AM THAT I AM," the self-existent One,—and the vision was accompanied by a demonstration of Truth's power in the case of the rod and the leprous hand. There also to Moses, as to all who receive the message to go forward, came the suggestion of human weakness. "O my Lord," he pleads, "I am not eloquent, ... I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." Still the vision fails not, and Moses is strengthened by the realization of Mind's all-power. So, with Aaron as his mouthpiece, he accepts his mission and takes his first step.

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Self-denial
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