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nomy, history, mathematics, architecture, painting, and music. They built pyramids, temples, and tombs which are still objects of wonder and admiration. They manufactured beautiful articles in gold, and silver, and ivory. In the coffins of the mummies curious works of art are found, at least equal to the finest productions of the present day.

But these men, so skilful in the arts and sciences, were foolish in all that concerned religion. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." They worshipped cats, dogs, crocodiles, and birds; and their greatest divinity was a bull!

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It is thus that the best instructed people without the help of God are often the most foolish in matters of religion; and that savages who study the sacred volume have more knowledge of the truth than the Greeks and Romans had, and than the Chinese and Hindoos have in the present age.

The seed that the mother of Moses had sown in his mind was not thrown away. It remained buried for a long time, but at last Moses understood the promises of God. He believed them, and sacrificed for them all his earthly prospects.

What an act of faith! A prince-rich, learned, and great to become a slave, to join himself to a degraded people, many of whom had themselves forgotten God; to forsake the worship of the gods of the country, and to cause himself to be reviled and persecuted.

In the present day, if the son of a king were to

1 Rom. i. 22, 23.

profess himself a Jew, the world would be astonished at it. Nevertheless the Jews are a noble race, and the Lord whom we worship is of the race of the Jews. But they were then a people composed of shepherds and slaves; and Moses, in order to join them, quitted his second mother, gave up leisure, grandeur, the wealth of this world, and the pleasures of sin. Stephen tells us that at the age of forty years1 he visited his brethren, and refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing to share the affliction and oppression under which the Israelites groaned. Why did he do so? Because he knew them to be the people of God, although they had fallen into unbelief. Doubtless Moses inquired into everything that related to the promises that had been made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He remembered that God had said that the people would one day go out of Egypt. He visited his brethren, he saw them making bricks, forced to do this work by blows. He beheld them reduced to the greatest degree of misery, and treated as though they were the offscouring of the earth. He was moved with pity, he wished to devote his life to deliver them. In doing so he would be called a fool, an enthusiast, and ungrateful.

He would perhaps be driven out of the palace, he would have the grief of afflicting his adopted mother; but what did it signify? He wished to give himself up to the service of his God. He went among his brethren. He found them as they are represented in the picture already spoken of-toiling as slaves, without clothing, and severely beaten. Yet Moses wished to share their lot. He saw that he would lose every earthly thing, but he was so full of faith and prayer 1 Acts vii. 23.

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that he did not fear "the wrath of the king." solving to leave all that he had hitherto loved and respected, he trod under foot the wisdom of the Egyptians, he gave up all the riches and honours with which he was surrounded, but he obtained a far better adoption than that of the princess. He went among his brethren when he saw them oppressed, he thought himself called upon to defend them; and when passion and anger rose he fought with an Egyptian and killed him. Being aware that if the fact were known his life would be taken, and that all the people of Israel would be punished by the king, he hid the dead body in the sand, believing that no one saw him.

The next day he returned among his brethren, and seeing two Hebrews quarrelling he tried to make peace between them by reproving the one that was in the wrong; but he in his anger said to him, "Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?"

Moses, perceiving that what he had done was discovered, fled to the Arabian peninsula, in which dwelt the Midianites, a people who, like the Idumeans and Israelites, were descended from Abraham.

Feeling himself alone in the world Moses sat down on the brink of a well. From his dress he appeared an Egyptian. Some young girls came to water their flocks, and shepherds came and drove them away. Moses, who had a noble and generous heart, and was accustomed to command, forgot that he was a stranger. He defended the young girls, and helped them to draw the water, so that they returned sooner than usual to their father. He, astonished at their speedy return, was informed by them of the cause of it, and reproached them for not Heb. xi. 27.

having brought with them the stranger who had protected them. He sent them to call Moses, and, after a while, gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage. This man was, probably, a priest of the true God, and Moses thus found himself out of the society of idolators.

You see the wonderful ways of God. Moses must acquire the qualifications necessary for the head of a great nation, and he lived for forty years in a palace. It was necessary that he should live in retirement, that he might be prepared by meditation and prayer for the great work which was afterwards entrusted to him; and he became, as it were, an exile in the deserts of Midian.

It was necessary that the people of Israel, who were not inclined to quit Egypt, should be taught some great lessons and be brought to wish for deliverance. God often does not use the means that seem the most powerful to perform a great work.

Moses, instead of being a prince, was a shepherd. He came down from the mountains at the age of eighty, stripped of all worldly wealth, but made rich and powerful in the strength of God. He depended no longer on himself, but looked for help from above.

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V.

The Fugitive finds a home.

(EXODUS ii. 22-25; iii. 1-3.)

HE last chapter contained an account of forty years of the life of Moses-years passed in

riches and honours, in cities, amid the excitement of camps and palaces, and in the pomps and pleasures of this world.

The present chapter contains forty years of the life of Moses, passed as a shepherd in the solitudes of Arabia, or in the mountains of Midian, with no companions but the children of the desert.

Once a mighty prince, a renowned soldier, high in command, he was now an obscure shepherd. Wherefore was this change? It had not been caused by what men call misfortunes, but by his own free choice. He believed in the promises of God; he looked for the city to come, for the kingdom which shall not pass away, for the better land; and to obtain these things he chose to be an exile, a banished man; to leave the palace of Pharaoh's daughter, and to expose himself thus to the anger of the king. Read what is told us about this in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews :—

"By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures

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