36 BATTLES OF THE BIBLE.

himself down to die. No human being was near him,
but God saw him die. There was no friend to pay the
last honours to his remains; but his was the grandest
burial that ever was in this earth, for it was the Lord
who buried him. Forty years of his. life Moses passed
at the court of Pharoah, forty in the land of Midian
feeding his father-in-law’s flocks, and forty years he was
in the wilderness of Arabia, the leader and lawgiver of
his brethren, the children of Israel. He was a hundred
and twenty years old when he died.

Johnnie. What an old man he was!

George. He was not old at all. Adam, and Methu-
selah, and Noah, and these people, lived eight or nine
times as long.

Grandfather. Yes, they did: for several reasons that
was an advantage. One might be this, that when the
earth was so thinly peopled, and the means of acquiring
instruction were so few, it was desirable that men should
have a long time to gain knowledge, and a long time to
communicate it. But though the early patriarchs lived
to so great ages, in the days of Moses people did not
live longer than they do now. His life was reckoned a
long one for his time, yet none of the infirmities of age
were upon him. The successor of Moses, as leader of
the people of Israel, was Joshua, the son of Nun, whom
I mentioned to you before. When the spies were sent
in to search the land of Canaan, he was the spy from
the tribe of Ephraim.

George. You mentioned him another time, grand-