The Man Moses

THE MAN MOSES.
By J. W. McGarvey
I WRITE not of Moses the wonder-worker, of Moses the prophet, or of Moses the law-giver; but of Moses the man. I have endeavored to sift the materials of his history, to gather out its personal features, and to combine them in a portraiture which we may admire. I wish to bring him down from the clouds with which
imagination has wrapped him about, place his feet upon the
earth, and stand by his side, that we may see him as he was.
Every visitor to the city of Rome is led by his guide into an old
church, named in honor of the Apostle Peter in chains, quite an
insignificant building in that city of costly churches, to behold its only attraction, a statue of Moses by Michael Angelo. It is one of the masterpieces of the great sculptor, and it embodies in marble his conception of the man Moses. As soon as your eyes take in the majestic figure, you feel that you are in the presence of greatness.
There is an imperial dignity in the expression of the broad features, and a calm self-possession, which speak at once of a man born to be honored and obeyed. The figure is almost gigantic in its proportions. It is seated, and it is wrapped about with a robe whose heavy folds are carved with exquisite skill. The huge muscles of the bared right arm are suggestive of prodigious strength, and as you gaze you begin to see interpreted in the statue incidents in the career of Moses which never before appeared so real. You see that strong man smiting the Egyptian officer at a single blow; and you see that mighty form and that commanding face overawing the wild shepherd of the desert, as Moses, a stranger and a fugitive in a strange land, drives them back from the well that he may deliver some timid women out of their hands. No small man could have ventured on such an undertaking. You remember, too, that owing, at least in part, to the strength and vigor of his constitution, at the age of one hundred and twenty years his eyesight was undimmed and his natural strength was unabated. After gazing on that statue, wherever you see Moses, amid the stirring scenes of his eventful career, whether leading the flocks of Jethro in the desert, standing in the presence of the Egyptian king, stretching out the magic rod over the Red Sea, standing with uplifted hands on the summit from which he watched the battle against Amalek, lifting the rod to smite the rock at Rephidim, descending the slope of Sinai after communion with God, raising his voice on the plain of Moab to speak in the ears of all Israel those wonderful discourses which make up the Book of Deuteronomy, or standing at last on the top of Pisgah, in sight of all the camp, while he gazed for the last time on the promised land, always and everywhere you behold that same majestic form towering above all ordinary men, and filling the eye of every beholder with the image of a perfect manhood.
If we are indebted to the great Italian sculptor for our best con-ception of the person of Moses, we are indebted to two men of like spirit with Moses for our best conception of his character. By their guidance we shall be able to say with confidence that the most prominent feature in his character is magnanimity—that, greatness of soul which disdains all the artifices of a selfish ambition, which impels men to self-sacrifice for worthy causes, and which endures with fortitude the buffeting of adversity. One of these guides is Stephen, the first man to lay down his life for the name of Jesus, he saw what our dull perceptions might have failed to discover, and he tells us that Moses was moved in smiting the Egyptian officer, not alone by the desire to avenge a fellow Hebrew, not by a sudden burst of passion, but by the deliberate purpose of arousing Israel to an uprising against their oppressors. What an uprising it would have been! A band of unarmed serfs rising up against the armies of the most powerful nation on the earth, with inevitable defeat staring them in the face! How desperate the undertaking, and how utterly fearless the man who struck the blow! No wonder that the attempt was a failure—that his broken-spirited countrymen responded with reproaches and not with sympathy. The conception as too daring for any but the soul of Moses.
Our other guide, the apostle who was in labors in abundant than all others for the salvation of a lost world, looks deeper still into the thoughts and motives of Moses, and brings us into still closer sympathy with him. He tells us what we should have observed without his aid, that in taking this decisive step Moses refused to be called any longer the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. How strange a refusal was this! To the fact that he was called the son of a king’s daughter, and that by all the people of Egypt who were not admit¬ted to the family secrets he was believed to be her son, Moses owed the high position which he had held in the Egyptian court, and the deference paid to him by the multitude. To learn that he was only the low-born son of a Hebrew, was, with all the ignorant and the sycophantic in the kingdom, to despise him and to spit upon his name. But Moses dared to endure all that in order to strike one brave blow, at whatever hazard, for his down-trodden countrymen.
This is not all. With still deeper insight Paul tells us that in striking this blow, and making this refusal, he deliberately chose to bear evil treatment with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. He doubtless entertained the hope that his people would respond to his signal—that the sacrifice which he was making for them would stir them to action, and that he would soon be in command of all able-bodied men in a conflict for freedom. In such a conflict he could but look for hardship while it lasted; for death if it failed; and if it succeeded, for a life of poverty at the head of a poor people seeking a home in a foreign land. But all this, even the worst that could come of it, he deliberately chose in preference to the sinful pleasures which filled, with their ceaseless round, every day of the year in that heathen court.
Even yet we have not sounded the full depth of the motives which governed our hero. Paul further tells us that in making this refusal and this choice, he accounted the reproach which he would endure, styled the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. In this estimate he went almost beyond our poor ability to follow him even in thought. What riches mean there be in reproach? What was there in the reproach that Moses well knew would be heaped upon his name by all Egypt when the decisive step was taken, which, by any figure of speech, could be called riches, and which he really accounted greater riches than the treasure of Egypt? No mean or selfish soul could have discovered it; and no such soul can see it even when it is pointed out. But Moses saw it. He saw that riches have no value except as it contributes to human enjoyment; and he saw as plainly that all the enjoyment which the riches of a kingdom can bring is nothing compared to that which springs from duty nobly done, and from self-sacrifice willingly made. This is the climax. In this wondrous immolation of him¬self on the altar of his people and his people’s God, his magnanimity shines as bright as an Egyptian sun. He turns his back on in honor of being called a member of the royal family, choosing the evil which is inevitable in preference to the boundless pleasure which he leaves behind him; and he expects to find in self-abrogation deeper and holier joy than all earth’s treasures could impart.
Shall we ask what considerations led Moses to this refusal, this choice, this estimate? Was it because earthly honor had no attrac-tion for him? because his soul and body had sickened on earthly
pleasures? because he was too young to be a lover of money? It is said that, young men love pleasure; those middle-aged men love power: and those old men love wealth. But Moses at forty, with perfect health and a form without blemish, was just at the age and, in the condition to drink deeper draughts of pleasure than his fellows. He was at the age when ambition’s fires burn most fiercely in the breast, and he was not too young to be enamored with the accumulation of wealth. Just at the very period of life when these three passions, the passions which most dominate our race, the love of honor, the love of pleasure, and the love of gold, reign in common minds with supreme dominion, Moses renounces them all; and again, we ask, for what consideration? Undoubtedly the love of his downtrodden countrymen had a large share in determining his course. But other men have loved their countrymen with a love which has extorted universal admiration: why has no other in the history of this old world knowingly sacrificed so much for them as be; Diocletian is famed in Human history for having resigned the throne when he was one of four Caesars who jointly ruled the Roman empire: but this he did after originating and prosecuting the most relentless persecution through which the church of God had ever passed.; after his health had broken down, and when death was drawing near. He has been lauded to the skies as a model of contentment, because, when advised by Maximian to aspire once more to the throne, he replied: “Would you could see the cabbages planted by my hand at Salona; you would then never think of urging such an attempt.” Cabbages with large heads and growing in straight rows were more beautiful to him in his old age, as they have been to many a Dutchman, than the tinsel of royal splendor. He made the exchange, not for love of his people, but for love of ease, and—of cabbages. Charles V., born to a dominion seldom if ever equaled for power and wealth, voluntarily laid it aside, and, and in adulation of the whole Catholic world, retired professedly to the life of a comeat. But this he did after his nervous system had been exhausted by the cares of empire and the distinctions of many bloody wars; and after disease, brought on by self-indulgence, had so enfeebled him, that, when making his speech of abdication be had to lean upon a crutch. Moreover, his retirement was not, like that of Moses, to the lonely life of a shepherd in the wilderness, but to the ease and indulgence of a luxurious dwelling connected with a monastery in one of the loveliest, valleys of Spain. Here he fairly reveled in the delicacies of the table, to which he was always a slave, and he reproached himself again and again because he had not put Luther to death when the latter appeared before him at the Diet of Worms. Finally, to complete the contrast, he left his own son on the imperial throne; the treasures of the empire were still at his command; and he abdicated, not for love of his people, but for love of himself—that he might find in retirement that ease which the cares of empire denied him. When we turn from these men, or from any others whose lives adorn human history, and look at Moses, we must confess that the pyramids of his own Egypt stand no higher above all other structures built by man than does the sacrifice which he made stand above those which have been made by others. We renew our question, What were the considerations which led to this refusal, this choice, this estimate? and in order to obtain an answer, we turn once more to the comments of the mag-nanimous Paul. It was because, says Paul, “he looked for the recompense of reward.” he fixed his eye on that day of final account, in which we must receive a due reward for all the deeds done in the body; and it was when he thought of going up to that tribunal, after a life of worldly honor which was all a sham because based upon a mistaken supposition as to who he was; after a cease-less round of earthly pleasure which his sham life was affording him; after the enjoyment of untold wealth kept at the price of duty neglected, and when he thought of the recompense that would fol-low such a life, evil treatment with the people of God promised him greater pleasure, and the reproach of Christ greater riches. Here is magnanimity, springing from the two noblest motives that ever actuated human conduct—love for the oppressed and down-trodden here, below, and respect for the will of Him who dwells on high.
When Moses fled from Egypt a star of the first magnitude dropped from the political sky of that kingdom. It was thought that he had dropped into perpetual darkness, and many were the comments made by wise men and tender women, among the Egyptians and among his own countrymen, on the grand opportunities thrown away for the sake of a mere sentiment. Doubtless many a prudent father held up before his sons as a solemn warning the example of the great man who stood once very near the throne, and who in a moment of frenzy had rendered himself a fugitive from justice, and brought ignominy upon a noble name. The courtly dames who would gladly have given their choicest daughters to him in marriage, and the fair daughters themselves who lavished in vain their sweetest smiles on the handsome prince, were all in a flutter, as such butterflies of society are wont to be on such occasions. “What a shame!” we hear them say, “that such a low-born creature was introduced into our circle! What an escape our daughters made! O, my! what could the old princess have been thinking about, to palm off such an underling as a suitable companion for us! Well, well; we shall never again hear of the great Moses: and let us thank our stars that he is gone.”
While such may have been the thoughts of the Egyptians, what were those of the elders of Israel, who remembered the promise made to Abraham and to Jacob, and the oath which Joseph had exacted concerning his bones? Was this disaster to the most learned and powerful man of their race, who had been raised up as if for the very purpose of delivering them, a presage of final disappointment, and a signal for riveting more tightly their chains? Or was deliverance yet to come in God’s own way and time? What a trial to the faith and patience of these venerable men, AS they sank toward the grave with the great problem unsolved, and not a ray of light as yet appearing to betoken the approaching dawn! And what must have been the thoughts and feelings of the father and mother of Moses when the light of their family had gone out, and the hopes and anxieties of forty years had sunk into despair! We dare not attempt to sound the depths of their distress.
And now, let us follow him into the place of his plight, and see if the magnanimity which impelled him to the great sacrifice was able to sustain him in his adversity. He had deliberately chosen to suffer as the leader of a poor and despised people; but his real decent was far below his humblest anticipations. Yonder he moves, a solitary figure on the Arabian desert, without money, without friends, without, a home, the sand for a bed at night, and the stars of heaven for a canopy. Does he sink in weakness and self-reproach? Does his manliness desert him? See him approach a well where many rude shepherds have collected their flocks. Some women are watering their sheep, when the strong men push them aside and take possession of the well. The lonely stranger springs forward, drives back the ruffians, and with his own strong arm draws water from the well, and waters the flocks of the helpless, while women and men alike stand by and look on with amazement, but none dares to interfere. When this kindly task is done, the stranger quietly takes a seat and allows the shepherds to resume their labor. He knows not whither next to direct his steps. There he remains till the grateful father of the girls he had befriended comes upon the scene, and invites him to his house. He finds himself in the home of the priest of Midian, a tribe in whose veins, as in his own, flows the blood of Abraham. It is a congenial home, but he sits not down in idleness to enjoy a kinsman’s hospitality. Though his hands had been unused to toil, he takes charge of the flocks in place of the young women whom he had befriended, and with a heart far lighter than when he was enjoying sin; pleasures of sin in Egypt’s court, he leads the sheep. He takes a wife, and settles down for life in the humble occupation of a shepherd. Here he remains in contentment for forty years, remembering his past glory only as a troubled dream, and fully expecting here to live out his days. Who can doubt that here he found greater enjoyment than the pleasures and riches of the Egyptian court had ever been able to give? Here, then, is magnanimity exemplified; and as we bow before the great exemplar, we aver that a more magnanimous man than Moses has not graced this earth.
No business that men have ever followed is so favorable to meditation and profound thought as the. life of an Oriental shepherd. And especially was it so with Moses, who entered upon it after being instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians, and after experiencing the extremes of human fortunes. When he began this part of his career, the tragic events in the life of Job were of recent occurrence, and it is scarcely possible that he failed to become acquainted with them. The land of Uz was but a few days’ journey from the region in which he pastured his flocks, and the land of Edom, in which Eliphaz lived, was still nearer. All four of Job’s friends belonged to tribes kindred to Israel and to Midian, and it is highly probable that the same was true of Job himself. It is also highly probable that some of these, and that even Job, was still alive when .Moses went into the wilderness, and that he may have obtained his knowledge of the facts from the lips of these very men. If so, how deeply must the experience of Job have affected him as he instinctively compared it with his own. Like himself, Job had been precipitated from the heights of earthly glory and honor to the depths of poverty and loneliness. But their experiences, so much alike in this particular, were most unlike in every other, Job’s fall was unexpected and involuntary; that of Moses was a deliberate leap from the heights to the depths, Job fell into the writhings of a painful and loathsome disease; Moses retained his former health and vigor. Job was driven to the verge of despair, and barely escaped that renunciation of God which Satan was trying to extort from him; Moses was full of peace in the prospect of a contented and happy life. But with all these differences, the case of Moses suggested those same deep questionings about sin; providence of God, and the principles on which he governs men, which had taxed the philosophy of Job and his friends; and when the former heard of the long debate which Job had maintained against Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, there can be no doubt that his own mind was aroused to grapple with the same great problem; and who can say that, as he sat from day to day under the shade of some lone tree, or the shadow of a high rock, while his flocks were quietly grazing or resting before him, he did not ponder this high theme, until there came forth from his struggling heart and brain that sublime poem which makes up the body of the Book of Job? You may call this mere conjecture; but it is the ground on which, for long centuries, the generations of Israel ascribed to Moses the authorship of that Book. When a traveler in Syria was led by his Mohammedan guide to a little indentation in the coast called Jonah’s bay, and told that this is the place where Jonah was cast out. by the fish, he asked: “How do you know, Abdallah, that this is the very place?” The guide, with an air of triumph, demanded: “If it was not here, How, and where was it?” There was more argument in this reply than you might suppose; for certainly the event occurred some¬where, and it occurred somewhere on this very coast. Now if that little bay is the most suitable place for it, and especially if it is the only suitable place for it, the guide might very logically demand, If it was not here, where was it? So, in regard to the authorship of the Book of Job. It was certainly written by somebody. It was written by somebody of great learning and genius. If Moses did not write it, who did? To this question the critics have found no answer. They confess that they do not know; and thus, they would compel us to believe that the man who wrote the sublimest poem in human literature was so obscure that his name was not remembered. It is conceivable that a man might write a chronicle, or a story like that of Ruth or Esther, and remain unknown; for such compositions require no effort of genius; but to believe that the author of this work could be unknown to those who held his book to be sacred, and embalmed it in their holiest literature, is like believing that the name of Milton will perish while men will still be reading “Paradise Lost.” For these reasons, in spite of all that critics of recent times have said to the contrary, I am constrained to credit the Jewish tradition that Moses wrote this book, and to see in it another evidence of that greatness of soul which distinguished this marvelous man.
While dwelling thus on the grandest trait in the character of Moses, I am not forgetful of that milder and gentler element which
is emphasized most in his own writings. Magnanimity is a huge oak in the forest, while meekness is a modest daisy, blooming at its roots, and nourished by the same soil. The daisy may grow elsewhere than at the root of the oak, but elsewhere it is not so beautiful: so meek¬ness may exist without magnanimity; but when it blossoms out of the same rich soil of the soul, it spreads a charm over its greater companion, and becomes itself an object of greater admiration. Such is the setting in which we are to look upon the meekness of Moses: for if he was “meek above all the men that were upon the face of the earth,” it was because he was, above all others, magnan¬imous. It was his greatness of soul which looked upon all petty ambitions and jealousies as beneath the dignity of true manhood, and far beneath the thoughts of a man in communion with God, which enabled him to bear with equanimity all the rebellions and slights and insults that were heaped upon him by an ungrateful people for forty years. I need not recite in this paper the manifestations of his meekness. On the mere mention of the word you recall them. You remember that on two occasions, far apart in time, when God himself, just if his patience was exhausted, proposed to destroy in a moment that rebellious generation, and raise up from the seed of Moses a people for the promised inheritance, Moses, unobservant of the high honor offered him, fell upon his face before the Lord and entreated him to desist from his promise. You remember that when Korah, Dathan and Abiram, supported by two hundred and fifty men of renown in the camp, and backed by the whole multitude of the people, cried out to him and Aaron, “Ye take too much upon you. ye sons of Levi,” he said no more than that they should all appear before the Lord with censers in their hands, and let the Lord himself choose whom he would have to draw near before him. And when the two hundred and fifty actually came near with their cen-sers, and God in fierce wrath said to Moses and Aaron, “Separate yourselves from among this congregation that I may consume them in a moment,” he fell upon his face and cried out, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all thy congregation?” And still further, you remember that when that keenest of all the cutting things of this life, a family feud, befell Moses, involving his Cushite wife, and his own dear brother and sister who had hitherto stood by him in all his trials—that sister, indeed, who had stood by when he was cast a helpless infant into the river Nile, and shrewdly brought his own mother to nurse him for the woman who saved him and claimed him; when these two turned against him, and said, “Hath the Lord spoken only with Moses?
Hath he not also spoken with us?” and when the Lord, more jealous for him than he for himself, smote Miriam with leprosy, you remem¬ber how once more he called upon the Lord for mercy, and said, “Heal her, O God, I beseech thee.” In view of all these facts, if he himself, and not some annotator of a later age, wrote the paren¬thetical statement, “Now the man Moses was meek above all the men which dwelt on the face of the earth,” it. was but a candid and simple vindication of his character in the face of those who had so often charged him with taking too much upon himself.
To what causes, acting in the first forty years of his life, shall we accredit the development of this lofty character? Can we doubt that its germs were inherited from a line of ancestors? Was it not latent in that beautiful and finely formed babe, who was so carefully preserved by his parents on account of the promise which was seen in it, a promise which caught the eye of the Egyptian princess, and led to the marvelous change in his fortunes? All this is doubtless true: but the development of that latent spark, and the fanning of it into the flame which burned so brightly, must, have had more immediate causes than this. We know nothing in the training of the Egyptian schools to have had this effect, and nothing in the habits of the Egyptian court. But, perhaps, we shall be on the track of the true cause, if we ask ourselves how he came to know that he was a Hebrew. He was too young when brought to the palace to remember his mother; and if she was permitted to visit him after his reception into the palace, it must have been in the guise of a hired nurse, and as such he was taught to know her. But what mother ever lived who could allow her own son, for whom she had risked her life, to grow up to manhood, to distinction and great honor, and continue always to consider himself the son of another woman? As sure as the mother of Moses lived, we may be sure that she kept up some kind of communication with him; and if she were compelled in his earlier days, for prudence sake, to visit him only as his old nurse, the time must have come when she thought it prudent to tell him that she was his mother, and to prove it to him beyond a doubt. If she did this, she also told him of the hopes of Israel, and the promises made by God to the fathers. She told him of her own efforts to save his life in infancy, of the little ark of bulrushes, the compassion of the Egyptian lady, the wondrous tact of his own little sister in getting him back to his mother’s arms, and her belief that God had raised him up for some high and holy destiny. This was the seed, sown in the rich and fruitful soil of a noble nature, which we are constrained to believe struggled for growth in his soul until it brought forth the fruit of the wondrous character which we have feebly depicted. If we are right in this, we behold in Moses another among the myriad examples which abound in history of the power of a mother’s love and a mother’s faith, working in the soul of a noble son.
Souls which are at once lofty and humble, magnanimous and meek, are very precious in the sight of God. We are not surprised, then, that God said of him, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so; for he is faith¬ful in all my house: with him I will speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches, and the form of the Lord shall he behold.” Nor are we surprised that some annotator has appended to the latest of his writings the remark, “There hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” If anything in God’s dealings with men was ever painful to him, I think it was the refusal, for good and merciful reasons, to allow his faithful servant to enter into the promised land; for when the time for his departure had almost come, and his heart went out in the pitiful cry, “O Lord God, let me go over, I pray thee, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain and Lebanon,” the Lord, like a tender parent whose heart breaks to hear cries that he can not answer, could only say, “ Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter.” (Deut. 3: 23-26). The painful sentence must be executed. The day for its execution comes. The sun has arisen, and casts the shadow of mount Nebo over the plain of Moab, dotted with the tents of Israel. The tall form of Moses is seen to pass through the midst of the camp of Judah, eastward to the base of the high mountain, and slowly up its three thousand feet to the top of Pisgah. A deathly stillness per-vades the camp, and not a soul follows the great leader. He stands for a time erect on the mountain’s summit, his form distinctly out-lined against the blue sky. Every eye is upon him from below, and after gazing wistfully for the last time upon the goodly land beyond the Jordan, he turns his eyes upon his weeping people in the broad valley below; then, lying down as if to quiet slumber, he breathes out his mighty soul into the arms of his God, and a convoy of angels bear his body away to a tomb over which angels alone shall keep watch until the morning of the resurrection. Fitting departure for the man whose greatness of soul lifted him above all other men, and made him a companion of God! The earthly Canaan he could not enter, but by a nearer way he entered into the better land.
With the last breath of life, and the last sad rites, we conclude the biographies of common men. Not so with Moses. There is another chapter, an appendix to those funeral rites in the mountains of Moab conducted by God and angels. Though the annotator of Deuteronomy most truly said, “There hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,’” yet one was destined to arise whose distinctive feature was that he should be a prophet like unto Moses. “Abraham rejoiced to see his day; and he saw it, and was glad.’* All the prophets, “from Samuel and those who followed after,” spoke of his coming, and they all searched what, or what manner of time, the Spirit which was in them did signify, when it spoke before of the coming of Christ, and the glory that should follow. When at last he came, he congratu¬lated those who saw him in these words; “Blessed are the eyes that see the things that ye see; for I say unto you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not.” At that very moment, those prophets and kings are bending from their blissful seats on high, and catching perhaps the joyful words that fell on the cars of mortals. And when those mighty spirits observed that mortal ears were too dull to hear, and mortal hearts too hard to receive the heavenly words, how they must have longed to burst through the thin veil dividing their state from ours, that they might extend to the mighty Sufferer a sympathy denied him by men in the flesh! At best to two of them the desired permission was given. Neither Abraham, nor David, nor Isaiah; neither Noah, Job, nor Daniel, received the high honor. It was given to Moses, the most magnanimous of all who were there, and to Elijah, the bravest of all, to come and speak words of strength to Him who was about to suffer what mortal man had never endured before; and never on this dull earth was there such a meeting as when God from the highest heavens, Moses and Elijah from the spirit world, Peter, James and John from this world of sin, and Jesus representing heaven and earth alike, came together on that mountain’s top, to speak of the death, and of the undying authority of God’s only Son. No wonder that the glory of God illuminated the spot, while the drapery of night hung about it. No wonder that the three denizens of this earth, holy and courageous as they were, feared to behold the sight, fell upon their faces in terror, and yet exclaimed, “It is good to be here!”
Was Moses ever heard of again after he abandoned the Egyptian court, and fled into the wilderness? O how blind we mortals are! How slow we are to see and believe, that he who sacrifices himself for the good of others, though he flee into a desert, though he hide by the brook Cherith, though he be cast into a lion’s den, has made his name immortal, and shall be heard of again when the muster-roll is called of those whom God delights to honor.
J. W. MCGARVEY.
New CQ 1892 vol 1, pages 154-166