THE ROD OF MOSES TURNED INTO A

SERPENT.

WHILE Moses was tending the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, driving them from place to place where the best pasture was to be found, he came at length to Mount Horeb, whither, from what follows, it is evident that he was conducted by the immediate providence of God. Here he witnessed an awful manifestation of the divine presence; for "the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." Perceiving that the bush did not burn, for it was the Shechinah that appeared from it and not material fire, Moses approached in order to ascertain the cause of so singular a phenomenon, when the Lord announced his presence and appointed him his special messenger to the tyrant of Egypt, demanding through him, the release of his people Israel from a long and laborious servitude. The inexperienced shepherd, alarmed at the responsibility and apprehended perils of the trust, expressed his doubts at once of his own sufficiency to perform so dangerous a mission, and of the willingness of the Israelites to receive a minister so miraculously accredited. In order to confirm the doubting Hebrew, "The Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? and he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it." * The future lawgiver of the Jews appears on a gentle acclivity of the mountain before the bush, which is enveloped by the divine glory, in the act of fleeing from the miraculous form which his rod had assumed in obedience to the divine volition; when he is arrested by the voice of God, calling to his attention this token of power to uphold him in the work given him to do, and at the same time confirming him in his arduous ministry.