On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE TOP OF MOUNT SINAI.
When we reached the Convent, I felt that I was "dead," and should leave my bones with those of the Israelites that fell in the wilderness; but the next morning, when the sun crept in through the iron bars of my window, I awoke with a dreamy sort of feeling, as half in doubt where or what I was. A Convent is a ghostly place, and one may easily get a feeling as if he were a pale wanderer in the shades below. Several times in the night I had been awaked by a deep sepulchral sound. It was not the Convent bell, but a stroke on a heavy bar of iron, which called the monks to prayer. This added to the strangeness of the place, so that whether I was in the body or out of the body, I could not tell. But daylight scatters the ghosts that have come about us in the night, so that when the sun was fully risen, I began slowly to come back to this world; and as I looked out of the window, and saw the camels lying in the yard of the Convent, I realized at last that we were at the foot of Mount Sinai, whose top we hoped to reach that very day.
It was nearly nine o'clock when we mounted and filed slowly out of the arched gateway. Our path led round to the rear of the Convent. At the end of the valley is a conical hill, on which it is said that Mahomet once had an audience with God; for the Moslems will have it that their Prophet was in no wise inferior to Moses. It is quite possible that the tradition is true, that in his youth, when a mere camel-driver, he wandered among these hills, and perhaps caught from the legends of Moses the idea of making the daring attempt to assume the part of a Prophet of God; and that again he came after he had promulgated his visions, and met with success beyond his utmost belief, when he proudly assumed the role of protector. It gives one an idea of the age of the Convent, to remember that it is older than Mahomet: it was founded by the Emperor Justinian in the year 555, so that it has been standing more than thirteen centuries! The early monks felt the need of making friends with the new power which had just risen in Arabia, and was attacking and destroying on every side, and so sought and received from Mahomet a pledge of his protection. He could not write, but dipping his broad hand in ink (it might have been in blood, for the color is red), gave the imprint of his open palm. That was a signature which could not be mistaken. A copy of this bloody hand is hung up in the room in which I am now writing; the original is said to be in Constantinople, though I can hear of no one who has seen it; but tradition supports the fact of its existence; and to this pledge of the Prophet the monks have often appealed, and it is due to it that the Convent has not been long since destroyed.
Continuing our course, we began to wind round the base of the mountain. Now it seemed as if we were pilgrims to the heavenly Jerusalem. It did not need that a monk should be sitting by the wayside, as in the old time, to ask "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?" and after hearing our confession, to grant us absolution: for were we not beginning, where Bunyan's Pilgrim began, at the foot of Mount Sinai, a journey which was to end only at the Celestial City? Though our progress was slow, yet we were "stepping heavenward." There was something like one's Christian experience even in this indirect approach. It was as if we could not face the Mount, and go up straight into the cloud, but must approach by a way more gentle and winding, but in which, though we seemed to be only going round and round, we were all the while climbing higher and higher. Gradual as was the ascent, yet we knew that we were slowly mounting: for as we looked backward now and then, we perceived by comparison with surrounding heights that we had reached a greater elevation. As they sank lower, we knew that we had risen higher. A camel's back is a good perch from which to look down into deep mountain valleys. But there came a point where we must leave the camels, and continue on foot. The ascent, however, is not to be compared to that of Serbal; indeed it is not at all difficult, for pious hands have piled up stones as rude steps for the feet of pilgrims, so that we go up slowly, but steadily and easily, to the top of the Mount. Riding and walking, the whole time of the ascent from the Convent was less than three hours, while that of Serbal was six.
We were now on Jebel Mousa, the summit which ancient tradition assigns as the place of the giving of the Law; although, as we shall see, later explorers incline to another peak of the same mountain which more directly overlooks the plain of Er Rahah. Jebel Mousa is over six hundred feet higher than Serbal, though in appearance it is less imposing. But it is a magnificent dome of rock. As I crept to the verge of the cliff, the dragoman grasped me by the arm and drew me back, lest I should be made giddy by the fearful height: for one slip there, and I should be dashed a thousand feet below. The view also is of great extent, and very similar in its general character to that from Serbal, with the same vast stretch over the Peninsula — the same waters of the Red Sea encompassing the same wilderness of mountains. But the objection to Serbal being the Mount of the Law applies equally to Jebel Mousa, that there is no broad plain under it in which the whole congregation of Israel might stand. Wadies enough there are in sight, but scattered here and there in a way to raise a doubt as to its being the chosen. summit, especially when one finds another point near at hand where all the conditions are supplied. But for the hour or two that we rest here, we may give ourselves up to the sacred associations of a spot which has been consecrated by the reverent faith of many generations. Here Moslem and Christian can join in worship, for on the top stand side by side a small Greek chapel and a little mosque. We found nothing to excite our devotion in the tinselled Greek chapel, but sat reverently without on the rock while Dr. Post read out of his Arabic Bible the Ten Commandments. But the dragoman of the other American party, who was a devout Moslem, entered the mosque, and with his face turned towards Mecca, bowed himself in low prostrations, swinging his head from side to side, and calling upon Allah. The Moslems have great reverence for the Hebrew Lawgiver, whom they always speak of as "our Lord Moses," and whose name they like to associate with that of Mahomet as the two Prophets of God, and make pilgrimages to Jebel Mousa, where they show in the rock the footprint of Mahomet's camel! If any be surprised that there should be only one footprint, yet be not incredulous, O gentle reader, for this is easily explained when you consider that the sacred camel only touched the top of the rock as he flew through the air, bearing the prophet from Mecca to Jerusalem! Moslem traditions vary on this point, some affirming that the camel stood with legs outstretched, one foot in Cairo, one in Damascus, one in Mecca, and one on Sinai, from which he was carried up into heaven, with his rider on his back, by the Angel Gabriel! Of two miracles, the true believer will always choose the greater. Some of the Christian traditions which have gathered about Mount Sinai are hardly more worthy of credit. The attempt of the monks to localize every event has led to many designations which are quite absurd. Still we cannot repress some degree of feeling as we creep into a cleft of the rock in which it is said Moses hid himself when the Lord passed by; or into the reputed cave in which Elijah hid himself when he fled from the wrath of Jezebel, after he had slain the prophets of Baal.
From Jebel Mousa we descended to a valley midway between it and another peak which is now more commonly believed to have been the Mount of the Law. Here in a pass between rocks, under a huge granite boulder, is a spring of water which the Arabs say never fails. It was very grateful in the heat of the day, especially as we found snow in a cleft of the rocks, which, added to the natural coldness of the spring, gave us ice water on Mount Sinai. Here we rested for some minutes, bathing our foreheads, before we began another mountain climb. This valley contains a remarkable willow, which gives to the mountain before us the name of Ras Sufsafeh, the Mountain of the Willow; and well entitled it is to such an honor, if what the monks tell us be true, that it is the very one from which Moses cut the rod with which he smote the rock and made the waters flow! How they know that the tree was a willow, it is for them to say, or how it should possess such remarkable vitality that it has been preserved to this day. It looks as if it might be fifty years old!
At the willow Dr. Post left me for an hour, to make a different ascent. Near to Ras Sufsafeh is a second peak which commands the same sight of Er Rahah in front, and which, he thought, might also take in a large wady on the right, making the whole view more extensive. To deter- mine this point, he proposed to ascend it. But the monk from the Convent, who accompanied us as a more learned conductor than the Arab guides, at once frowned on the suggestion by declaring it "impossible," that it "had never been done," that, in short, it was a spot "where no human foot had ever trod"! It did look very perpendicular, but Dr. Post was not quite willing to accept the assurance that it was inaccessible. Spying it round from different points, he thought he discovered on the top a small cairn of'stones, a sort of rude altar, a proof that human feet had been there, and human hands also; and while the grizzled old monk looked aghast at the presumption and almost im- piety of attempting to do what no one had done before, he set forward, telling one of the Arab guides to follow him. He is a capital mountaineer, springing from rock to rock like a chamois, and climbing wherever a goat could set its foot, and in half an hour he shouted to me from the very pinnacle of the peak which "no human foot had ever trod."
Meanwhile, with two other guides I had been slowly making my way up the rocky steep of Ras Sufsafeh. It is a pretty hard climb, but it seemed light compared with that of Serbal, and in an hour we stood on the very top. This is the peak from which it is commonly supposed that Dr. Robinson, after careful exploration of all the points of the Sinai group, concluded that the Law was given; and when I reached the summit and looked down into the plain of Er Rahah, I saw how the con- ditions were met, and no longer doubted that I was stand- ing on the holy mount. On the very front and forehead of the cliff stands a tremendous boulder, which seems as if it might have been the "pulpit" of the great Law- giver. "To this I climbed, or rather was dragged up by the Arabs, and here looked down on a spot which had witnessed the most august event in human history, except that which took place on Calvary. I now sent the guides away to a little distance, though not beyond call, for there are moments when one must be alone to get the full force of sacred associations, and here where Moses talked with God, one feels that he is face to face with his Maker. When left quite alone in the awful solitude of the mountain, one feels that he is on holy ground. I did not, after the Oriental custom, take off my shoes from my feet, but after the Western sign of reverence, uncovered my head, as when one enters a cathedral where he must speak in a whispered voice, and move about with noiseless steps.
Coming to such a height of vision, one feels as if he had come to a point in his own life, and a personal feeling mingles with that inspired by the scene, so that one flows into the other. As I looked down from the top of Sinai, I saw not only the deep passes winding away into the mountains, I saw the winding course of a lifetime that had at last brought me to this spot; and how could one who felt that he was but a pilgrim, tarrying not even for a night, but only for an hour, help breathing a prayer to Him who of old led His people across these deserts and through these mountains, that He would guide his wandering steps aright! And then somehow there came into my heart and to my lips the words of the Twenty-third Psalm, and standing there alone with uncovered head, I found myself repeating the blessed assurance, in the strength of which I shall go all my days: "The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to he down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."
The spell was broken by shouts down the mountain, and presently Dr. Post appeared with the other American party, and altogether we studied the features of the mountain and the plain as related to each other. Looking over the edge of the cliff, we could see how perfectly it answered to the description of "the mount that might be touched," for the plain came up to its very base, and at the same time there were low-lying mounds at the foot, which seemed to mark where bounds had been set against too near an approach. As to the extent of open space, wide as it was, Dr. Post reported that the other peak which he had climbed commanded a view still wider; that, while it was in the very axis of the plain of Er Rahah, it took in also the Wady es Sheikh on the other side, which furnished standing room for nearly as many more. Hence he is of the opinion that this was the peak which Dr. Robinson ascended, as it answers more exactly to the description he has given. But after all, whether it was this or that one of several peaks, does not seem very important, for the whole group is comprised under the general name of Sinai, and the Divine manifestation may have included them all. "The mountain was altogether on a smoke," and to the multitude that looked upward it may have seemed as if all were wrapped in the volume of dense, rolling cloud. Those who have witnessed an eruption of Vesuvius from the Bay of Naples, remember that at times great masses of smoke roll down the mountain side, and then clear away, and flames shoot up to a vast height, reddening the sky, while at the same time they are reflected in the faces of a multitude of spectators white with terror, as if the Dies Iræ had come and the very heavens were on fire. If amid this scene, the grandest and most awful that Nature ever presents, a voice were heard issuing out of the cloud and rolling down the breast of the mountain, we might form some faint conception of the mingled majesty and terror of the sight when the Lord descended upon Sinai. From the top we observed what we had noticed in the plain, that the ground is lowest nearest the mountain, and that it rises as it recedes, like the seats of an amphitheatre, so that all converge to one point, which is the centre of the scene. At the farther end of the plain, the surface is more broken, rising and falling in gentle undulations, so that if any fled terror-stricken from the base of the mount, they could still behold it afar off, from the distant slopes, while they heard the mighty voice that swept across the plain, and reverberated like thunder in the farthest recesses of the mountains. No wonder that those who stood trembling at the sight said to Moses, "Speak thou with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die."
But what need, asks the sneerer at Moses, of such grand "pyrotechnics" to attend the giving of the Law? Why should "the heavens be on fire" except it were to illuminate a world? What need of all this array of clouds and storms, of lightnings and thunderings? Was there a king to be crowned? Not one of the Pharaohs ever saw such a sight on the banks of the Nile. But here there was neither king nor crown, nor any of the signs of royalty. Only a law was to be proclaimed; and that not a complete system of legislation, but only Ten Commandments, expressed in few words. There is an apparent want of harmony in such magnificent preparations to usher in such a feeble conclusion. And yet somehow this Law, so small in volume, has lived for thousands of years, and promises to live to the end of time. Standing here on the rocky height where it was given, we cannot forbear some reflections on the peculiar features of a Law thus proclaimed, which had such an origin, and was to have such a history.
The Ten Commandments are commonly divided into two Tables — that which concerns the worship of God, and that which treats of the relations of men to each other. First and foremost is the idea of God. That is central and supreme, standing in the very front of the law, as it does of the Bible. The first sentence of the Bible is "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Author of all things, He is the beginning and the end of all law, as of all religion. The first command of the Decalogue announces the principle of Monotheism — that there is only one living and true God, who is the Creator of all things, and the only object of human worship. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." How short the sentence, and yet it rules the world! This morning, as the sun came from the East, it touched the gilded domes, not only of Cairo and Damascus and Constantinople, but of ten thousand mosques all over the Mohammedan world, and from all their minarets the voice of the muezzin cried "God is God: there is no God but God" — words which were but the faint, far-off echo of those spoken on Sinai two thousand years before Mahomet was born. What meaning did the word God convey to the mind of the Hebrew who had come out of Egypt? It did not recall the legend of Isis or Osiris. It did not present for his worship the vague incarnation of a principle of good or evil, but a living Being, a Divine Guardian and Protector. Well might that sacred name stand in the very front of a law of which God was the beginning and the end.
The second command is aimed at the idolatrous worship which the Israelites had learned in Egypt, and to which they clung with such strange infatuation. The third, "Not to take the name of God in vain," inculcated that reverence in word which must accompany obedience in act. The fourth has this peculiarity, that whereas a command is usually an ordinance of labor, this is an ordinance of rest. "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work." For one day in seven the perpetual grind of life ceases; the wheels stand still; the laborer lays down his burden. This is a blessing disguised as a command, a Divine benediction on an overburdened world.
Next to the reverence which we owe to our Maker, is that which we owe to those who are, in another sense, the authors of our being, and so to the command to worship God follows "Honor thy father and thy mother." This consecrates the family relation. "Honor" includes love, reverence, and obedience — a trinity of virtues, out of which flowers and blossoms all that is most beautiful in human character.
And now follow five commands regulating the relations of men to each other, which are the most remarkable summary of law in all the annals of legislation — remarkable because they compact into few words the sum of all wisdom, as approved by the universal experience of mankind. For example, in these two commands, "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal," each of which is stated in four words, and four words of one syllable, is contained the seed-principle of protection to person and property, which is the germ of all civilized society. These precepts, so brief — we might almost say, so minute in their brevity and condensation — comprehend all the laws that were ever enacted to guard the lives and the possessions of men.
"Thou shalt not commit adultery" — thou shalt not sin thyself, nor tempt others to sin. This guards, as a holy shrine, the virtue of man and woman; it watches like an angel over the purity of domestic life, and drives away the foul fiends of passion and lust, and fills the dwelling with that sweet, pure, trustful love, which makes home the type of heaven.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." This guards character and reputation against evil eyes as well as slanderous tongues; against the looks as well as words by which one casts a shade on another's good name, which is dearer to him than life.
"Thou shalt not covet" — not only shalt thou not rob or defraud thy neighbor, thou shalt not even desire that which is his — it is the fruit of his labor, leave it to his enjoyment, and be content with thine own. This protects your neighbor, and by its reverse action protects you also, not only from violence and wrong, but from the least approach of covetous desire. If this one command were obeyed, what contentment and what peace would it bring into every home and into every heart.
That is all. There are but ten commandments, no less and no more. These last five seem almost too brief and too simple. But do they not cover the whole field? What crime is there against person or property, against a man's life or his honor, against his virtue or his good name, which they do not forbid? Tell us, legislator or philosopher, if you have anything to add to this brief code? What interest of man does it leave unprotected?
The more we reflect upon it, the more the wonder grows. The framework of laws in a nation is the work of ages, but here the whole is compressed into a space so small that it could be written on a man's hand. Different nations have obtained their rights at the price of great sacrifices — rights which are summed-up in certain great charters, such as the Magna Charta of England and the Declaration of Independence of America. As these contain the principles of Universal Liberty, so does this second table of the law contain the principles of Universal Justice. If it were obeyed, there is not an act of injustice which could find a place among men. Is it then too much to say that the Ten Commandments are the acorn which contains the oak of civilization? Who can measure the germinating power of a great principle of justice — how it multiplies itself in its application to different countries and races, adapting itself to all times and climes, to all the relations of men as they may change to the end of the world? It is the handful of corn in the top of the mountain, but the fruit thereof shakes like Lebanon. To a law so beneficent, is it possible to ascribe an origin too high or too sacred? Law in its highest form has always been regarded as the emanation of Divinity. "Law," says Hooker, "has her seat in the bosom. of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world. Ad things in heaven and earth do her homage — the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power." There is a natural fitness in a Law so Divine being delivered from the skies. The greatest of living English poets, when he would personify Liberty, beholds her "on the heights":
" Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet;
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.
"Within her place she did rejoice,
Self-gathered in her prophet mind;
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind."
What is thus spoke of Liberty may be said of Law, that
Of old she sat upon the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Even more than Liberty does Law deserve to be thus lifted up in the sight of the nations, for it is a higher and a diviner thing. "The Universe can exist without Liberty; it cannot exist without Law; and if we might apply these majestic lines to the sacred image of Law enthroned on the cliffs of Sinai, we might say that from those "heights" not only do
"Fragments of her mighty voice
Come rolling on the wind,"
but that the full voice, loud and clear, speaks to all the kindreds of mankind.
Whence then had this man this wisdom? He was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," but he did not find it there, for a part of his code is aimed directly at the idolatries which were universal in Egypt. Where then did he get his inspiration? This is for those who are fond of pointing out the Mistakes of Moses to answer. They seem not to reflect, that when they have exhausted their small stock of wit on the supernatural proofs of his Divine mission, (as when, for example, they suggest that he took advantage of a thunder storm, which came up while he was on the mountain, to work upon the fears and the credulity of the people!) and have thus disposed, as they imagine, of the miracles of Moses, they leave the great miracle untouched: it is the Law itself. They have explained the lightnings and the thunderings: let them explain the Law. That remains a great fact in history, harder and more unyielding than the granite dome of Mount Sinai itself. Where did Moses get that Law? Those who, while they disparage the Bible, are ready to do honor to all other religions, to their founders and their sacred books, would willingly ascribe it to Buddha, whose Five Commandments so nearly correspond to the Second Table of the Law. Nor would it daunt them in the least that it would oblige them to follow those Commandments of Buddha from India across the whole breadth of Asia; but unfortunately Moses lived and died more than eight hundred years before Buddha was born! The ingenuity of unbelief must devise some other explanation. It is enough for us, as we come down from the Mount, to accept reverently the assurance that the Law which Moses gave to the Hebrews was written with the finger of God on tables of stone.
Such thoughts, suggested by such sights, gave a sacred interest to the hours that we stood on Mount Sinai, and filed our minds with a strange wonder as we left that hoary summit. We sent back the camels, and came down by a more direct but more precipitous descent, through the Valley of Jethro, so called because half way down the mountain, under a projecting rock, is a perpetual spring which bears that name. To this point no doubt Moses often climbed when he watched the flocks of Jethro, and sat for hours beneath the shade of the rock beside the cooling spring, and perhaps found the same graceful ferns that grow there still. In the association of everything about Sinai with the great Hebrew Lawgiver, it is pleasant to know that nature remains unchanged. These granite cliffs do not wear away by time, or but slowly in the lapse of ages. So the fern still grows, and the water flows, and we may gather to-day from the dripping rocks the same delicate maiden's hair which Moses gathered for the daughter of Jethro more than three thousand years ago.