[350] See, for these marvellous stories, Weil, Legends of the Mussulmans.

[351] See my sermon on “Melchisedek and his Moral,” in “The Hour that Cometh,” second edition.

[352] Strabo, who probably wrote in the reign of Tiberius, thus describes Moses:—­

“Moses, an Egyptian priest, who possessed a considerable tract of Lower Egypt, unable any longer to bear with what existed there, departed thence to Syria, and with him went out many who honored the Divine Being.  For Moses taught that the Egyptians were not right in likening the nature of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans or even the Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the form of men.  He held that this only was God,—­that which encompasses all of us, earth and sea, that which we call heaven, the order of the world, and the nature of things.  Of this, who that had any sense would venture to invent an image like to anything which exists among ourselves?  Far better to abandon all statuary and sculpture, all setting apart of sacred precincts and shrines, and to pay reverence without any image whatever.  The course prescribed was that those who have the gift of divination for themselves or others should compose themselves to sleep within the Temple, and those who live temperately and justly mjiy expect to receive lome good gift from God.”

[353] “Esteeming the reproach of the Christ” (that is, of the anointed, or, the anointed people) “greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.”

[354] See this well explained in The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation, by James B. Walker.

[355] “’Behold, when I shall come to the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say, What is his name?  What shall I say unto them?  And God said unto Moses, I AM THE I AM.....  Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you!’

“It has been observed that the great epochs of the history of the Chosen People are marked by the several names, by which in each the Divine Nature is indicated.  In the patriarchal age we have already seen that the oldest Hebrew form by which the most general idea of Divinity is expressed is ‘El-Elohim,’ ‘The Strong One,’ ‘The Strong Ones,’ ‘The Strong,’ ‘Beth-El,’ ‘Peni-El,’ remained even to the latest times memorials of this primitive mode of address and worship.  But now a new name, and with it a new truth, was introduced.  I am Jehovah; I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name of El-Shaddai (God Almighty); but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them.  The only certain use of it before the time of Moses is in the name of ‘Jochebed,’ borne by his own mother.  It was the declaration of the simplicity, the unity, the self-existence of the Divine Nature, the exact opposite to all the multiplied forms of idolatry, human, animal, and celestial, that prevailed, as far as we know, everywhere else.”—­Stanley’s Jewish Church.