but he made no reply when he heard the sentence of Jehovah.

There was another time when Aaron held his peace under judgment of the Most High:At the time of the consecration of the tabernacle, his sons, Nadab and Abihu, had offered strange fire before Jehovah, "which he had not commanded them." And fire came forth from before Jehovah and killed them. Then Moses uttered words explaining the punishment of Aaron's sons. But Aaron made no reply; he "held his peace." So now he is silent.

Clad in his dignified robes of office as high priest, serene and composed, with his brother Moses, and his own son Eleazar, he ascends the mountain, in the sight of all the people. His life has proved to him one thing; that God must be obeyed. The ascent of the mountain is exceedingly steep and toilsome; but Aaron makes no protest, though he is one hundred and twenty three years old, and now going to his own funeral. He makes no plea to die at ease in his tent; but obedient now as a child he goes with Moses and Eleazar to the top of the mountain. There his garments are removed and placed on the son. In the camp of Israel many hearts must have ached as he climbed the mountain, and many lips must have blessed him. With all his faults he was their own priest. Many of his faults were their faults. Nothwith

standing them, he was one who a generation before had boldly entered the palace of Pharaoh, to demand their freedom. He had been on their side all the way along, from the time when Moses undertook to deliver them. Their grief for their great high priest was made more intense at the foot of Mount Hor by the thought that in the years now ending there had been times when they had been so impatient with him that they were ready to stone him. But now the multitudes gazed at the sides and top of Mount Hor in deep silence, with earnest grief, and reverential awe. For Aaron is dying is ascending. His death-bed is a mountain. His canopy is the sky. Stripped of his official garments, his last look is not from some human window, asking relatives to stand aside to let him see once more the green meadow and the winding river; but he looks from the mountain top over a barren desert south of the Dead Sea. If he sees, west of the Dead Sea, the low lying mountains of the south of Judea, it is not mentioned: for Mount Hor is the more interesting this day, since Aaron dies there. Mount Hor is his death-bed and his tomb.

MOUNT NEBO

If Mount Hor, where Aaron died, attracted a languid interest, notwithstanding the uncertainty as to the identity of the elevation up which the Israelites saw him go with his brother and son, that interest will possibly be greater when we search for the peak from which the great Moses viewed the promised land before he died. On almost any expedition from Mount Hor to Mount Nebo, or Pisgah, which is over against Jericho, among frightful, rocky, precipitous hills, we might leave the Dead Sea at our left. That body of water must be mentioned, as an important part of the landscape, with all its depressing influence. Lying 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, no refreshing breeze helps the traveler. Its water is so salt that the spray kills ordinary vegetation, notwithstanding the great heat. Desolation is the appropriate word for most of the scenery here. The effect of it can be understood from the following description of Lieut. Lynch, of one of his experiences during his exploration:—

"A light air from the south induced me to abandon the awning, and I set the sail, to save the men from laboring at the oars. A light tapping of the

ripple of the bow, and a faint line of foam, and bubbles at her side, were the only indications that the boat was in motion. The other boat was a mile astern, and all around partook of the stillness of death. The weather was intensely hot, and even the light air that urged us almost insensibly, had something oppressing in its flaws of heat.

"The glitter from the water, with its multitude of reflections (for each ripple was a mirror), contributed much to our discomfort; yet the water was not transparent, but of the color of diluted absinthe. The black chasms and rock peaks, embossed with grimness, were around and above us, veiled in a transparent mist, like visible air, that made them seem unreal; and 1,300 feet below, our sounding lead had struck upon the very plain of Siddim, shrouded in slime and salts. While busy with such thoughts, my companions had yielded to the oppressive drowsiness and now lay before me in every attitude of a sleep that had more of stupor in it than of repose. In the awful aspect which this sea presented, when we first beheld it, I seemed to read the inscription over the gates of Dante's Inferno, 'Ye who enter here leave hope behind.' Now, as I sat alone in my wakefulness, the feeling of awe returned: and as I looked upon the sleepers, I felt the hair of my flesh stand up as Job's did" (Lynch was wrong; this "when a

was Eliphaz the Temanite) spirit passed before his face; for to my disturbed imagination, there was something fearful in the expression of their inflamed and swollen visages. The fierce angel of disease seemed hovering over

them, and I read the forerunner of his presence in their flushed and feverish sleep. The solitude, the scene, my own thoughts, were too much; I felt, as I sat thus steering the drowsily moving boat, as if I were Charon ferrying not the souls, but the bodies of the departed and the damned, over some infernal lake, and could endure it no longer; but breaking from my listlessness, ordered the sails to be furled and the oars resumed; action seemed better than such unnatural stupor." (Travels and Adventures, pp. 219-220.)

Along such depressing scenes, or or among rocks and hills appropriately encompassing such waters, Moses may have passed during the last days of his earthly life. And such scenes may have served to increase his mental or spiritual depression, caused by God's sentence upon him for his sin at the waters of Meribah; that he should not enter the Promised Land with the beloved people whom he had led to its border.

Moses felt deeply this sentence of his God. Like a child, petted by a loving father, he plead with God to change the decree. How often he importuned his heavenly Father we do not know; but it was so often that God at last told him to quit, to cease; like a mother wearied by the teasing of a petted child. For we read the following complaint of Moses about it, to the children of Israel, when he attributes his misfortune, in part, to them: