so that their inscriptions can now be understood. Some years ago there was discovered the tomb of the architect who built one of the greatest temples in the city of Thebes in the reign of the famous king Moris, who caused a lake to be dug as large as that of Geneva. His name is to be read on this tomb, and it was seen with astonishment that there are paintings in it which represent the Israelites engaged in making bricks. They can be recognised by their features and complexion, which are very different from those of the Egyptians, and many other marks. How great is the goodness of God, dear children, that he has condescended to confirm to us the truth of his holy Scripture.

III.

The Baby found by the Princess.

EXODUS ii. 1-10.

2HE present chapter ought to be particularly

interesting to you, my friends, as it contains

the history of a child,—or rather of two children, the baby Moses, aged three months, and his sister Miriam, who must have been ten or twelve years.

We have read of the sufferings of the people of Israel, and we are now to consider the preparations for their deliverance; the birth of him who was to be their liberator. But who could then foresee this? as he was a little child, who was hid by his parents for some months lest he should be killed; put into an ark or basket of bulrushes; carried to the river Nile, and laid

among the flags which grow upon its banks. Who could have thought that this weeping babe would become the deliverer of his people? And when was he to deliver them? when he was twenty, thirty, or forty years old? At forty he attempted to do so, but his brethren refused his aid. No, it was only when eighty years had passed away that he became the liberator of Israel. Wherefore this long delay? It was because the people had need of long chastisements. As I told you, the family of Jacob had been for many years in Egypt. They had become a great people, but they were corrupted. They had forgotten the promises of God; they thought only of this world, of their flocks, of their pastures, of their wealth, of their pleasures. They imitated the heathen. They scarcely remembered the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was for this reason that God left them for a time to be cruelly oppressed by the wicked king who knew not Joseph.

They were slaves, they were forced to perform the hardest labour, to build palaces, temples, and pyramids. They made bricks and mortar, and all their service wherein the Egyptians made them serve was with rigour. But this was not enough; the king sought to humble and crush them; and when he saw, notwithstanding all his cruelties, that they continued to increase, he ordered all the boys who were born to be cast into the river. Imagine the sorrow of the unhappy Israelites ; the despair of the fathers, the tears and sobs of the sisters, and the grief of the mothers. After days of hard toil, slavery, and blows, they had no consolation even in their desolate homes. It was then that they again sought help in prayer; it was then that they remembered the true God; it was then that they

besought him to have mercy on them. But they doubtless said to themselves, "God has forgotten us, we are trampled upon, we are going to be destroyed; there is no one to deliver us." They did not know that the little boy carried by his mother Jochebed to the river Iwas to be the deliverer chosen to lead them out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and be their ruler when they should have become a great nation.

And "there was a man of the house of Levi." You know that Jacob was the father of twelve sons, and that Levi was one of whom Leah was the mother.1 Levi himself had three sons when he went down into Egypt with his father. Among the numerous children and grand-children of the sons of Levi, at the end of the one hundred and twenty years of their sojourn in Egypt, one of them took to wife a daughter of Levi. It must not be thought that they were just married at the time when the tyrant Pharaoh issued his cruel decree. In fact, Amram and Jochebed had been united for some years, since they already had two children, the younger of whom was called Aaron, and was three years old when his brother Moses was born. But his sister Miriam was already old enough to share the family cares. She must have been at least ten years old when she was taken into the confidence of her parents and hid her little brother.

Poor Jochebed!

What great anxiety she must have felt when this infant was born. What! would it be necessary to kill it? How she must have dreaded his being torn from her, and envied those who had no children. Every day cruel men were throwing little boys into the Nile, there to be eaten by 1 Gen. xxix. 34.

the numerous crocodiles which still swarm in this stream.

It is reckoned that about six children a day were then born among the Israelites, half of which were probably boys, and therefore doomed to be put to death. The parents of Moses seeing that he was remarkably beautiful, resolved at the risk of their own lives to hide him for three months. It appears that this beauty was so extraordinary, that the idea came into their minds that this infant was perhaps designed by God to accomplish great things. Perhaps they had received some miraculous revelation concerning him similar to Anna and Mary; for Stephen in his speech says that the infant "was exceeding fair," that is to say, that uncommon beauty was given him by God; and St. Paul tells us that it was "by faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents." However this may have been, the parents of Moses resolved to do all they could to save him, and so long as they alone were in danger they persevered in concealing him.

1

At length they could conceal him in their house no longer, and it was necessary to take some other steps to save him from the Egyptians. They therefore took some bulrushes, made a little ark with them, "and daubed it with slime and with pitch," so that the water should not soak through it. They most likely put into it a bed of some kind. Then they carried the ark, doubtless with many tears and prayers, to the river; but, in order that it might not be carried away by the current, they placed it in the flags which grow along the brink of the river.

One can imagine the feelings of the family. The

increase, set not your heart upon them."1 You, too, will learn this from experience.

But if we have God for us we are in safety; nothing can stop the course of his blessings. Think of the words in verses 7 and 12, "The more the Egyptians afflicted the people of the children of Israel, the more they multiplied and grew." During two hundred years of prosperity they had become seventy in number; during two hundred years of affliction they became a people as numerous as the stars of heaven, according to the promises made to Abraham. The seventy persons who entered Egypt with Jacob increased so rapidly that in two hundred and fifteen years they formed a people consisting of several millions, "the chosen people to whom" were to be "committed the oracles of God," the people of the Bible, the people from whom was to come the Messiah, "for salvation is of the Jews," the people of the prophets, the people of the Saviour, the miraculous people, the people of God!

But what is the commencement of this wonderful history of deliverances and blessings? It begins with great humiliations, with long sorrows, with terrible. sufferings. The Israelites were oppressed and enslaved, exposed unsheltered to the heat of the sun, and driven to labour by the rod of their taskmasters; they had even to see their poor little infants, just born, torn from their arms to be cast into the river and drowned without mercy.3

Why was all this? when it is God's will

It was because in this world, to save us, it is often necessary that he should send us trials and humiliations; and it

1 Ps. lxii. 10.

2 John iv. 22.

3 Exod. i. 22.