The foundation upon which, at all periods, Israel’s sense of its national unity rested was religious in its character.  It was the faith which may be summed up in the formula, Jehovah is the God of Israel, and Israel is the people of Jehovah.  Moses was not the first discoverer of this faith, but it was through him that it came to be the fundamental basis of the national existence and history. 1

***************************************** 1.  Jehovah is to be regarded as having originally been a family or tribal god, either of the family to which Moses belonged or of the tribe of Joseph, in the possession of which we find the ark of Jehovah, and within which occurs the earliest certain instance of a composite proper name with the word Jehovah for one of its elements (Jeho-shua, Joshua).  No essential distinction was felt to exist between Jehovah and El, any more than between Asshur and El; Jehovah was only a special name of El which had become current within a powerful circle, and which on that account was all the more fitted to become the designation of a national god. ****************************************

The exigencies of their position severe a number of kindred clans from their customary surroundings, and drove them into his arms.  He undertook the responsibilities of their leader, and the confidence of success which he manifested was justified by the result.  But it was not through any merit of his that the undertaking (of which he was the soul) prospered as it did; his design was aided in a wholly unlooked-for way, by a marvellous occurrence quite beyond his control, and which no sagacity could possibly have foreseen.  One whom the wind and sea obeyed had given him His aid.  Behind him stood One higher than he, whose spirit wrought in him and whose arm wrought for him,—­not for his personal aggrandisement indeed, but for the weal of the nation.  It was Jehovah.  Alike what was done by the deliberate purpose of Moses and what was done without any human contrivance by nature and by accident came to be regarded in one great totality as the doing of Jehovah for Israel.  Jehovah it was who had directed each step in that process through which these so diverse elements, brought together by the pressure of necessity, had been caused to pass, and in the course of which the first beginnings of a feeling of national unity had been made to grow.

This feeling Moses was the first to elicit; he it was also who maintained it in life and cherished its growth.  The extraordinary set of circumstances which had first occasioned the new national movement continued to subsist, though in a less degree, throughout the sojourn of the people in the wilderness, and it was under their pressure that Israel continued to be moulded.  To Moses, who had been the means of so brilliantly helping out of their first straits the Hebrews who had accompanied him out of Egypt, they naturally turned in all subsequent difficulties; before