“Two days ago he was riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him; while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer.  And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the frozen flesh a-crawl with terror upon his loosened bones, white-lipped and wide-eyed with frantic fear, uttered a yell of horror as he dashed the spurs into his panic-stricken horse, in a mad endeavor to escape from the Awful Presence that filled all earth and sky from edge to edge of vision.

“Then almost in the same flash, the unearthly light died out of the dim prairie, the veil swept across into place again; and he managed to check his wild flight, and look about him.  His empty lips were gibbering without a sound escaping them, and his very heart shivered with cold, for all the brassy heat of the day.  But the breeze was wandering on again; under the great sun the prairie spread dim to the southwest, and tawny to the northeast; only between his own loose knees the horse trembled in every limb, and mumbled the bit with dry mouth.  All was as before in earth and sky, apparently, but not in his own self.  It was as if his spirit stood apart from him, putting questions which he could not answer, and demanding judgment upon problems which he dare not reason out.

“Then he remembered what this thing was which had happened.  The prairie had spoken to him, as sooner or later it spoke to most men that rode it.  It was a something well known amongst them, but known without words, and as by a subtle instinct, for no man who had experienced it ever spoke willingly about it afterwards.  Only the man would be changed; some began to be more reckless, as if a dumb blasphemy rankled hidden in their breasts.  Others, coming with greater strength perhaps to the ordeal, became quieter, looking squarely at any danger as they face it, but continuing ahead as though quietly confident that nothing happened save as the gods ordained.”

The motive power in all of Moses’ later work was that transforming, vivid sense of Jehovah’s presence that came to him on the barren mountain peak.

Also fundamental to his call was the recognition of the crying need of his disorganized, oppressed kinsmen in Egypt.  This appealed to all the instincts begotten by his shepherd training; for they were a shepherdless flock in the midst of wolves.  Through the ages the inhabitants of the parched, stony wilderness had looked with hungry eyes upon the tree-clad hills and green fields of Palestine.  The early traditions of his ancestors also glorified this paradise of the wilderness wanderer and led Moses to look to it as the haven of refuge to which he might lead his helpless kinsmen.  Vividly and concretely the ancient narrative tells of the struggle in the mind of Moses