University of Virginia Library

12. LETTER XII.
PRINCE REMESES OF DAMASCUS TO KING SESOSTRIS.

I will now resume the subject which occupied
the foregoing portion of my last letter, namely, the departure
of the twelve armies of the Hebrews from the
land of Egypt.

When the last division had passed the tower, after
midnight, Moses and Aaron went forward and travelled
all night, along the column of march, addressing the
leaders of tribes, divisions, thousands, and hundreds, as
they went, giving them words of courage, and commanding
them to keep in view the Pillar of Fire.

This Divine Glory, which the whole people of the
Hebrews, and even the Egyptian followers, were permitted
to behold and gaze at with wonder, as if it were
the moon or sun, moved onward, far in advance of the
last division, and seemingly directly over the head of
the column. When I reached, with Moses, the van of
the mighty slowly-moving host, I perceived that a sort
of sarcophagus on wheels was drawn by twelve oxen in
front of all; and that over this, the “shekinah,” as Aaron
termed the presence of God in the cloud of light, was

suspended. I had not seen this before, but knew that
it must contain the embalmed body of Prince Joseph,
which the children of Israel had jealously guarded and
concealed from the Pharaohs of the present dynasty,
waiting the time of the deliverance; for the venerable
Joseph, on his death, had taken an oath from his brethren,
the children of Israel, that they would carry up his
bones out of Egypt, when God should send the deliverer
to bring them forth.

Faithfully were this wonderful people now fulfilling
the oath of their fathers to Joseph, after more than two
hundred years had passed. Thus their going out of
Egypt bore a resemblance to a national funeral. At
the side of the sarcophagus Moses and Aaron walked,
and thus the solemn march advanced towards the wilderness.
All that night they journeyed from the plain
of Raamses, and came to the verge of a rocky valley
where the way was rough, compared with the fertile
and level plains of Egypt. When the sun arose, the
pillar of fire faded, as it were, into a columnar cloud
which still advanced miraculously and wonderfully before
us. When the heat of the day increased, the cloud
descended and rested over a place called Succoth.
Here Moses ordered the people to encamp, and bake
their unleavened bread which they brought with them
in their kneading-troughs from Egypt. The next night
they travelled up the valley to a place called Etham, a
short journey; and thence, after a rest, turning back a
little, they traversed the valley between rocks eastward,
and encamped at a well of water called Pi-hahiroth,
where there were many palm-trees. Here they remained
to rest, with the hills on either hand, wondering

why God should not have let them pass into the desert
at Etham, instead of bringing them into that defile,
which seemed to have no outlet but at the shore of the
sea. Passing Pi-hahiroth, with its castle and garrison,
the latter of which fled at our advance, as also the garrison
of the tower of Migdol, which guarded the way to
Egypt from the Arabian Sea, and so up the cliffs of the
valley-sides, Moses encamped between Migdol and the
sea, which spread far away eastward in front, with the
towers and fortified city of Baal-zephon visible on the
opposite side. The Pillar of Cloud had indicated this
place of encampment, by resting above it near the
shore.

When I surveyed the place, I marvelled to know how
Moses would move forward the next day; for the
mountainous ridges of the rocky valley, along which
we had come, continued close to the shore of the sea on
the right hand, and on the left, and I could perceive, as
I walked to the place, no room for a single man, much
less an army, to go either south or north between the
mountains and the water; for the sea broke with its
waves against its perpendicular sides. I concluded,
therefore, that on the morrow the whole host would
have to retrace its steps, and enter the desert by the way
of Etham, where it had before encamped, and so make
a sweep around the head of the sea to the northward
and eastward. But I did not express to any one my
thoughts. The calm majesty and repose of Moses awed
me. Upon his expansive brow was stamped confidence
in his God, who, if need were, could make a road across
the sea for His people, for whose deliverance He had
done such wonders. I reflected, too, that the leader was

God himself, and that He had gone before, and led them
to the place where they were. I therefore waited the
will of God, to see what in His wisdom He would do.

How little did I anticipate the end! How far was I
from understanding that God had led His people into
this defile, which had no outlet but that by which they
entered, in order to display His glory, and present to the
world the final exhibition of His power, and his judgments
upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians!

The divinely inspired Moses seemed to understand my
thoughts, when I returned to the camp.

“My son,” he said, “this is done to try Pharaoh; for,
when he heareth that we are in the valley of Pi-hahiroth,
before Migdol, he will say, `They are entangled in
the land—the wilderness hath shut them in.' `Then,'
saith the Lord to me, `Pharaoh will repent that he let
you and my people go, and he will follow after you, and
when he shall come after you, I will be honored upon
Pharaoh and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may
know that I am the Lord.' God will yet avenge Himself
upon this wicked king, and reward him for all his
wickedness that he hath done against Him and His
people Israel! Wait, and thou shalt see the power
of God, indeed!”

With what expectation, and with what confidence in
God I waited the result, my dear father, you may conceive.
How wonderful is this God, and His ways how
past finding out! “It was just four hundred and thirty
years from the day Israel left Egypt,” said Aaron to me,
“to the day their father Abram left Chaldea for Canaan;
and that, their books say, is the exact time prophesied
for their deliverance. Their actual residence in Egypt,

from the Syrian Prince Jacob's coming to settle in
Goshen, to the day they left, was two hundred and
fifteen years. The existence of their bondage began at
the death of Joseph, who died sixty-five years, not
seventy, as you supposed, before the birth of Moses.
This servant of God is now eighty years old; therefore,
the number of years that they were in servitude is one
hundred and forty-five, or equal to five generations.
Thus, were the descendants of Abraham, and Abraham
himself, wanderers without any country of their own
for four hundred and thirty years, according to the word
of the Lord to Abraham; not all this time in bondage,
indeed, but under kings of another language. Now, at
length behold them returning a mighty nation, to claim
from the Canaanites and Philistines the land so long ago
promised to their remote ancestor, Abram. God is not
forgetful of His promise, as this vast multitude proclaims
to the world, though He seems to wait; but His purposes
must ripen, and with the Almighty a day is as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day.

Now behold, my dear father, a new manifestation of
His glory and power, and the awful majesty of His judgments,
before whom no man can stand and live! The
next day, being the seventh, whereon a divine tradition
ordains rest, but which in their bondage could not be
regarded, Moses and Aaron commanded the whole host
to repose. Thus time was given Pharaoh, not only to
hear the report,—as he did by some Egyptians who,
in dread of the wilderness, went back,—of their being
shut in by the craggy mountains, with the sea before
them,—but to arm and to pursue and destroy them, or
compel them to submit again to his yoke.

I have learned from an officer of Pharaoh, who, fearing
God, escaped from the palace, and came and informed
Moses of the king's purposes, that when the news
reached the king, who had been three days bitterly repenting
his compliance with the demands of Moses, he
sprang from the table at which he sat, and, with a great
oath by his gods, cried—

“They are entangled between Pi-hahiroth and the
sea! They have played me false, and are not gone by
Etham into the desert to sacrifice! Their God has bewildered
them in the Valley of Rocks by the sea! Now,
by the life of Osiris, I will up and pursue them!” He
called all his lords and officers, and gave commands to
send couriers to the army already assembled at Bubastis,
and expecting to march against the king of Edom,
who had long menaced Egypt. He ordered this army
to hasten, by forced marches, to the plain before On.
He then sent to the city, where he kept his six hundred
chosen chariots of war, for them to be harnessed,
and meet him the next day before Raamses. Couriers
on fleet horses were sent to every garrison, and all
the chariots in other cities, and in the three treasure-cities,
to the number of four thousand charioteers, each
with his armed soldier, gathered on the plain which
the Israelites had left four days before. The forty-seven
fortresses of the provinces sent forth their garrisons, of
three and four hundred men each, to swell the Egyptian
hosts.

All this intelligence reached Moses; but he remained
immovable in his camp, the Pillar of Fire also standing
in the air above the tent of Aaron, in which was the
sarcophagus of Prince Joseph. Messenger after messenger,

sometimes an Egyptian friendly to the Israelites,
sometimes an Israelite who had been detained and did
not leave Egypt with his brethren, came to Moses, and
as they passed through the camp, gave up their news to
the people.

One man said Pharaoh had left his palace, armed in
full battle-armor, and at the head of his body-guard of
six hundred chariots of gold and ivory, was driving to the
plain of Raamses. A second messenger brought tidings,
that the king's great army, from the vicinity of Bubastis
and Pelusium, had passed On in full march,—seventy
thousand foot, ten thousand horsemen, and two thousand
chariots of iron! A third came, reporting that four
thousand chariots had also assembled from all parts
of Lower Egypt, and that every man was rallying to
the standard of the king, to pursue the Hebrews and
destroy them by the edge of the sword. By and by, a
fourth came, an escaped Hebrew, who told that the king
had marshalled his vast hosts of one hundred thousand
foot, twenty thousand horsemen, nine thousand chariots
of iron, besides his six hundred chosen chariots of his
body-guard, and was in full pursuit of the Israelites by
the way of Succoth.

These tidings filled the bosoms of the Hebrews with
dismay. They were in no condition to do battle, there
being among them all, one only who knew the use of
arms, which one was Moses; who, with God on his side,
was an army in himself.

The Egyptian army, marched all night, without rest
to hoof or sandal. Before the sun was up, their approach
was made known by the distant thunder of their
chariot-wheels, and the tramp of their horses. At

length, when the Pillar of Fire was fading into a white
cloud, and the sun rose brilliantly over the Sea of Arabia,
the van of the Egyptian army became visible, advancing
down the inclosed valley. When the Israelites beheld
its warlike front, and heard the clangor of war-trumpets
and the deep roll of the drums, they fled with fear.
The elders then hastened, and, pale with terror and
anger, came before Moses, and cried to him—

“Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou
taken us away to die here in the wilderness? Wherefore
hast thou dealt thus with us to carry us forth out of
Egypt? Did we not, at the first, tell thee in Egypt, `Let
us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?' for it had
been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we
should die in the wilderness.”

Then Moses answered their tumult, and said, without
displeasure visible in his godlike countenance—

“Fear ye not! Stand still, and see the salvation of
the Lord, which He will show you to-day! for the Egyptians
whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them
again no more forever! The Lord shall fight for you,
and ye shall hold your peace. Wait to see what He
will do.”

Then Moses, with a troubled face, entered his tent,
and his voice was heard by those near by, calling upon
God.

And the Lord answered him from the cloud above
the tent—

“Why criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children
of Israel that they go forward! But lift thou up thy
rod and stretch out thy hand over the sea, and divide
it; and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground

through the midst of the sea. And behold Pharaoh,
(whom I withhold from nothing which he chooseth in
his hard heart to do, leaving him to his own devices to
reap the fruit of his own ways), he shall follow you
with the Egyptians into the sea! and I will get me
honor upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his
chariots and upon his horsemen. And the Egyptians
shall know that I am the Lord!”

Then Moses came forth from the tent, whence the voice
of the Lord had been heard by all, both near and afar
off. Now, lo! the angel of God in the Pillar of Cloud,
as soon as the armies of Israel began to move forward
to the sea, removed from the front, and went to the rear
of the Hebrew host, and stood behind them in the Pillar
of Cloud! Thus, it stood between the camp of the
Israelites and the camp of the Egyptians, so that
when night came, the Israelites, lying encamped on
the shore, had the full splendor of its light; while the
Egyptians, to whom it presented a wall of impenetrable
darkness, also encamped, fearing to go forward in
the unnatural night which enveloped them. So the
two hosts remained all night, neither moving—the
Pillar of Fire and the Pillar of Cloud between them,
creating day on one side of it, and tenfold night on the
other.

Now, at the going down of the sun, on that day when
the Egyptians encamped because of the cloud, Moses
had stretched forth his hand over the sea by God's command,
and lo! there arose a mighty wind upon the sea,
rising from the south and east; and all that night we
heard the sea and waves roaring, and the hearts of Israel
sunk within them for fear. The Pillar of Fire cast upon

the sea a radiance like moonlight, so that we could perceive
that it was in a great commotion, and that God
was doing some great wonder in the deep. It is said
that the noise of the waves reached the ears of Pharaoh,
and that he at first believed it was the sound of the
tramping of the whole host of the Israelites, advancing
with their God to give him battle in the darkness. He
called his men to arms, and tried to show front of war;
but the shadow of the cloud between him and the Hebrews,
rendered it impossible for any man to move
from one place to another, or to see his fellow.

At length morning came to us, but not to the Egyptians,
whose night still continued. But what a spectacle
of sublimity and power we beheld! Before us, an avenue,
broad enough for two hundred men to march
abreast, had been cut by the rod of God through the
deep sea, the water of which stood as a wall on the
one side and on the other, glittering like ice on the
sides of the rocks of Libanus, when capped with his
snows. At this sight, the Hebrew hosts raised a shout
of joy to God, for they could see that the sacred avenue
reached as far as the eye could extend across the sea;
but so great was the distance, that its sides converged to
a point far out from the shore, and seemed but a hair
line. Then Moses, lifting up his voice, commanded the
children of Israel to form into companies and columns
of one hundred and eighty men abreast, and enter the
sea by the way God had opened for them. First went
Aaron and the twelve elders, being one of each tribe,
who guarded the body of Prince Joseph. Then followed
the sarcophagus, drawn by twelve oxen, one also furnished
by each tribe. Then came a hundred Levites,

carrying all the sacred things which the Hebrews had
preserved in their generations. Now came Moses, leading
the van of the people in column. I also walked
near him. As we descended the shore and entered the
crystalline road, I marvelled, yet had no fear, to see the
walls of water, as if congealed to ice, rise thirty cubits
above our heads, firm as if hewn from marble, with sharp
edges at the top catching and reflecting the sunlight.
The bed of the sea was hard and dry sand, smooth as
the paved avenue from Memphis to the pyramids. All
day the Israelites marched in, and when night came not
half their vast column had left the land. All the while
the Pillar of Cloud stood behind, in the defile between
the Israelites and the Egyptians. At length, in the first
watch of the night, it removed, and came and went before
the Israelites, throwing its beams forward along our
path in the sea. Its disappearance from the rear removed
also the supernatural darkness that enveloped the
Egyptians; and when, by the light of the skies, Pharaoh
beheld the Israelites in motion, he pursued with all his
host, leading with his chariots his eager army. It was
just light enough for him to see that his enemy was escaping,
but not enough so to see by what way; but,
doubtless, he suspected that they were wading around the
mountains; for great east winds have, from time to time,
swept the sea here outward, so that the water has been
shallow enough for persons to make a circuitous ford
around the northern cliff, and come in again upon the
same shore into the desert above. Pharaoh knew that
the wind had been blowing heavily, which he at first
mistook for the Israelites in motion, and there is no doubt
that he pursued with the idea that the sea had been
shoaled by the wind, and that they would come out a
mile or two on the north side, and gain the desert by
Etham, and so double the head of the sea into the peninsula
of Horeb. There can be no other reason assigned
for his pursuit into such a road of God's power, unless
it was judicial madness,—a hardening of his heart by God,
in punishment for his contumacy and opposition to His
will. Doubtless this is one way in which God punishes
men, by making their peculiar sin the instrument of their
destruction.

Pharaoh and his chariots, and horsemen, and host
pursued, and came close upon the rear-guard of the Israelites,
against whom they pressed with shouts of battle.
The sea was faintly lighted, and the king and the
Egyptians did not see the walls of water which inclosed
them, as they rushed madly and blindly after their prey,
urged on by the loud voice of Pharaoh. At length,
when they were in the midst of the sea, the Lord, in the
Pillar of Cloud, suddenly turned and displayed its side of
dazzling light towards the astonished Egyptians! By
its sunlike splendor, Pharaoh and his captains perceived
their peril, and the nature of the dreadful road in which
they were entangled. The walls of water on each side
of them, say the Israelites who were in the rear and
saw, moved and swelled, and hung above them in stupendous
scrolls of living water, upheld only by the word
of God! The vivid light of the shekinah blinded their
eyes, and bewildered their horses, and troubled the
whole host. All the horrors of his situation were presented
to the mind of the king. With frantic shouts to
his charioteers to turn back, he gave wild orders for his
army to retreat, saying—

“Let us flee from the face of Israel! for the Lord
their God fighteth for them against us!”

Then followed a scene of the most horrible confusion.
The steady gaze upon them of the Angel of the Lord, in
the cloud of fire, discomfited them! They turned to fly!
Their chariot-wheels sunk in the deep clay which the
wagons of the Hebrews had cut up, and came off! The
king leaped from his car, and, mounting a horse held
by his armor-bearer, attempted to escape, when the Lord
said unto Moses, who now stood upon the Arabian side
of the sea—

“Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters
may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots,
and upon their horsemen.”

Then Moses stretched forth his hand upon the sea, in
the deep defile of which, cleaved by God for his own
people, the Egyptian hosts, chariots, horse and foot,
were struggling to retrace their course to the Egyptian
shore, each man battling with his comrade for
preference in advance. The whole scene, for several
miles in the midst of the sea, was a spectacle of terror
and despair such as no war, no battle, nothing under the
skies, ever before presented. The shouts and cries of the
Egyptians reached our ears upon the shore with appalling
distinctness.

Now Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, out
of the path through which the last of the Israelites were
coming forth, when the billows that had been cloven by
the rod of God, and made to stand in two walls like
adamant, began to swell and heave, and all at once both
edges of this sea-wall fell over like two mighty cataracts
plunging and meeting, roaring and rushing together

each into the chasm wherein the whole host of Pharaoh
—his captains, chariots, and horsemen—with their faces
towards Egypt, were struggling to escape from the snare
that God, in His just vengeance, had laid for them. The
returning waters covered the whole host of them before
our eyes, and, while we looked, the wild sea rolled its
huge waves, laden with death, above the abyss; and
then subsiding, the great sea once more flowed calmly
over the spot, and Pharaoh, who had been erecting for
years a majestic pyramid to receive his embalmed body,
was buried by the God whom he defied, beneath the
chariots and horses in which he trusted for victory over
the sons of God.

This spectacle of God's power and judgment filled all
Israel with awe. Those who had murmured against
Moses sought his presence, and prostrated themselves
before him, acknowledging their fault, and asking him
to entreat God to pardon their iniquity, declaring that
henceforth they would receive the voice of Moses as the
voice of God.

That day the Israelites encamped on the shore; and
all night the waves cast upon the coast the dead bodies
of Pharaoh's host, and chariots innumerable, with their
stores of quivers of arrows, lances, swords, and spears;
so that the men of Israel, to the number of one hundred
thousand chosen out of each tribe, save that of Aaron,
were armed from the spoils of the dead soldiers and
chariots. Was not this, also, the finger of God, O my
father! The impression made upon the minds of the
children of Israel, by this wonderful exhibition of the
power of God,—of His goodness to them and His vengeance
upon Pharaoh,—was such that they believed

God, and feared Him, and professed themselves ready
henceforth to be obedient to His voice.

When Moses and the children of Israel saw that their
enemies were dead, they chanted a sublime hymn of
praise and triumph to God upon the shore. Then came
Miriam, the sister of Aaron, the aged prophetess of God,
bearing a timbrel in her hand, and followed by an innumerable
company of maidens and daughters of Israel,
each with her timbrel in her hand, and singing songs of
joy and triumph, while the virgins danced before the
Lord.

Now, my dear father, I have brought my letters nearly
to a close. I have recorded the most wonderful events
earth ever saw, and displays of Divine power which man
has never before witnessed. In contemplating these
wonders, you will be impressed with the terrible majesty
of God, and overwhelmed by His greatness. You will
be struck with His unwavering devotion and care for
His people whom He hath chosen, and with His unceasing
vengeance upon His enemies, and such as oppress
those whom He protects. You will be awed and humbled
with a sublime perception of his limitless power in
the heavens, on earth, and in the sea; and feel deeply
your own insignificance as a mere worm of the dust in
His sight; and you will cry with me, as I beheld all these
manifestations of His glorious power—

“What is man that thou art mindful of him, O God,
who fillest the heavens with the immensity of Thy presence,
and in Thine own fulness art all in all?”

From the Sea of Arabia, Moses led the armies of Israel,
for three encampments, into the wilderness towards Horeb.
Here was no water but that which was bitter; and

the people murmuring, Moses pacified them by a miracle.
Thence they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of
water and seventy palm-trees, and here we encamped
for some days. After certain further wanderings, we
came to a wilderness, just one month after departing from
Egypt, God, in all that time, taking not away the Pillar of
Cloud by day nor the Pillar of Fire by night from before
the people. Indeed, the whole journey was a miracle,
and attended by miracles; for in this wilderness, Sinn,
their provisions failed, and the people (who are a perverse
and stiff-necked people, forgetful of favors past,
and rebellious—as is perhaps natural to those who have
been so long in bondage, and find themselves now free),
murmured, and again blamed Moses for bringing them
from their fare of flesh and bread in Egypt, to die of
hunger in the wilderness. God, instead of raining fire
upon them, mercifully and graciously rained bread from
heaven to feed them, returning their want of faith in
Him with loving-kindness and pardon. And not only
did God send bread from heaven—which continues to
fall every morning—but sent quails upon the camp, so
that they covered the whole plain. The taste of this
heavenly bread is like coriander-seed in wafers made
with honey. It is white, is called by the people manna,
and is in quantities sufficient for the whole of them.
The camp thence moved forward and came into the vale
of Horeb, where I had first beheld Moses standing by
his flock. Here there was no water, and the people
murmured in their thirst, and again blamed Moses for
bringing them out of Egypt into that wilderness, not
remembering the mighty deliverance at the Sea of Arabia,
nor the manna, nor the quails. At the first obstacle
or privation, they would ever cry out against Moses, who,
one day, exclaimed to his God, in his perplexity—

“What shall I do to this people? They are almost
ready to stone me!”

Then the Lord commanded him to take his rod and
strike the rock in Horeb. He did so, and the water
gushed forth in a mighty torrent, cool and clear, and
ran like a river, winding through all the camp.

We are now encamped before Horeb. From this
mountain God has given, amid thunders, and lightnings,
and earthquakes, His laws to His people, by which they
are to walk in order to please Him. They are ten in
number: four relating to their duty to Him, and the
remaining six to their duty to one another. It would
be impossible, my dear father, for me to describe to you
the awful aspect of Horeb, when God came down upon
it, hidden from the eye of Israel in a thick cloud, with
the thunders, and lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet
of God exceeding loud, so that all the camp trembled
for dread and fear. Nor could I give you any idea of
the aspect of the Mount of God, from which went up a
smoke, as the smoke of a furnace, for seven days and
nights, and how the voice of the trumpet waxed louder
and louder, sounding long and with awful grandeur
along the skies, calling Moses to come up into the mount
to receive His laws, while the light of the glory of the
Lord was like devouring fire. In obedience to the terrible
voice, Moses left Israel in the plain and ascended
the mount. Aaron and others of the elders accompanied
him so near, that they saw the pavement on which the
God of Israel stood. It was, under His feet, as a sapphire

stone, and as it were the body of heaven in its clearness.[1]
He was absent forty days. When twenty days
were passed and they saw him not, nor knew what had
happened to him, the whole people murmured, became
alarmed, believed that they would never see him again,
and resolved to return to Egypt if they could find a
leader. Aaron refused to go back with them; but at
length they compelled him to consent, if in seven days
Moses returned not. At the end of this period they
called Aaron and shouted:

“Up! Choose us a captain to lead us back to
Egypt.”

But Aaron answered that he would not hearken to
them, and bade them wait for Moses.

Then came a company of a thousand men, all armed,
and said:

“Up! make us gods which shall go before us! As
for this Moses, we wot not has become of him.”

At length Aaron, no longer able to refuse, said—

“What god will ye have to lead you?”

“Apis! the god of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, whom
we and our fathers worshipped in Egypt.”

Then Aaron received from them the jewels of gold they
had taken from the Egyptians, and cast them into a furnace,
and made an image of the calf Serapis, and said, in
grief, irony, and anger—

“This, and like this, is thy god, O Israel, that brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt!”

And erecting an altar before this image, these Israelites,

not yet weaned from Egyptian idolatry, burned incense
and sacrificed before it, and made a feast to the
god, with music and dancing, as the Egyptians do. At
length Moses reappeared, sent down from the mount by
an indignant God, who beheld this extraordinary return
to idolatry. When the holy prophet saw what was done,
he sternly rebuked Aaron, who excused himself by
pleading that he was compelled to yield, and that he
did so to show them the folly of trusting to such an idol,
after they had the knowledge of the true God. Moses
took the calf they had made, and made Aaron burn it
in the fire, and he ground it to powder, and made the
idolatrous children of Israel drink of the bitter and nauseous
draught. Again he rebuked Aaron, and called
for all who were on the Lord's side, when several hundreds
of the young men came and stood by him. He
commanded them to slay all who had bowed the knee
or danced before the calf; and in one hour three thousand
men were slain by the sword, in expiation of their
sin against God.

Now, my dear father, my last letter must be brought
to a close. Moses informs me that the Lord, in punishment
of this sin of Israel, will cause them to wander
many years in the wilderness ere He bring them to the
land promised to their fathers, and will subject them to
be harassed by enemies on all sides, some of whom
have already attacked them, but were discomfited by
the courage of a Hebrew youth, called Joshua, who
promises to become a mighty warrior and leader in Israel,
and whom Moses loves as an own son.

In view, therefore, of this long abode of the children

of Israel in the desert, I shall to-morrow join a caravan
which will then pass to the northward, on its way into
Syria from Egypt. It will be with profound regret that
I shall bid adieu to Moses, to Aaron, to Miriam, and all
the friends I have found among this wonderful people.
Will not the world watch from afar the progress of this
army of God, which has beheld the wonders by which
He brought them out of Egypt? Doubtless, ere this
you have heard, by ships of Egypt, of some of the
mighty miracles which have devastated her cities and
plains; and you will hear, ere this letter reaches you, of
the destruction of the whole army of Egypt, with their
king Pharaoh-Thothmeses, in the Arabian Sea.

Farewell, my dear father; in a few weeks I shall
embrace you. We will then talk of the majesty, and
power, and glory of the God of Israel, and learn to fear
Him; to love, obey, and serve Him,—remembering His
judgments upon Pharaoh, and also upon His chosen
people Israel when they forgot Him; and, that as He
dealt with nations, so will He deal with individuals!
Obedience, with unquestioned submission in awe and
love to this great and holy God, our august Creator, is
the only path of peace and happiness for kings or subjects;
and the only security for admission, after death,
into His divine heaven above, “whither,” saith His holy
servant Moses, “all men will ultimately ascend, who
faithfully serve Him on earth; while those who, like
Pharaoh-Thothmeses, despise Him and His power, will
be banished forever from His celestial presence into the
shades below, doomed there to endure woes that know no
termination, through the cycles of the everlasting ages.”

Farewell, my dear father; may the Pillar of Cloud be
our guide by day, and the Pillar of Fire by night, in the
wilderness of this world! With prayer to God to bring
me in safety to you, and to guard you in health until I
see your face again,