Exodus 2

Exodus 2:1-25

ISRAEL’S BONDAGE. MOSES AND THE EXODUSExo_1:1 to Exodus 15:21.DR. J. M. Gray’s five rules for Bible reading: “Read the Book”, “Read the Book Continuously”, “Read the Book Repeatedly”, “Read the Book Independently”, “Read the Book Prayerfully”, are all excellent; but the one upon which I would lay emphasis in this study of Exodus is the second of those rules, or, “Read the Book Continuously”. It is doubtful if there is any Book in the Bible which comes so nearly containing an outline, at least, of all revelation, as does the Book of Exodus.

There is scarcely a doctrine in the New Testament, or a truth in the Old, which may not be traced in fair delineation in these forty chapters.God speaks in this Book out of the burning bush. Sin, with its baneful effects, has a prominent place in its pages; and Salvation, for all them that trust in Him, with judgment for their opposers, is a conspicuous doctrine in this Old Testament document.

God, Sin, Salvation, and Judgment—these are great words! The Book that reveals each of them in fair outline is a great Book indeed, and its study will well repay the man of serious mind.Exodus is a Book of bold outlines also! Its author, like a certain school of modern painters, draws his picture quickly and with but few strokes, and yet the product of his work approaches perfection. How much of time and history is put into these three verses:“And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the Children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1:5-7).These three verses contain 215 years of time, and all the events that crowded into that period would, if they were recorded, fill volumes without end.

And, while there are instances of delineation in detail in the Book of Exodus, the greater part of the volume is given to the bolder outlines which sweep much history into single sentences.In looking into these fifteen chapters, I have been engaged with the question of such arrangement as would best meet the demands of memory, and thereby make the lesson of this hour a permanent article in our mental furniture. Possibly, to do that, we must seize upon a few of the greater subjects that characterize these chapters, and so phrase them as to provide mental promontories from which to survey the field of our present study.

Surely, The Bondage of Israel, The Rise of Moses, and the Exodus from Egypt, are such fundamentals.THE BONDAGE OF ISRAEL.The bondage of Israel, like her growth, requires but a few sentences for its expression.“Now, there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the Children of Israel are more and mightier than we; Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pit horn and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the Children of Israel.

And the Egyptians made the Children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour” (Exodus 1:8-22).There are several features in Egypt’s conduct in effecting the bondage of Israel which characterize the conduct of all imperial nations.The bondage began with injustice. Israel was in Egypt by invitation.

When they came, Pharaoh welcomed them, and set apart for their use the fat of the land. The record is,“Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Raamses, as Pharaoh had commanded” (Genesis 47:11).There they flourished until a king arose which knew not Joseph. Then a tax was laid upon them; eventually taskmasters were set over them, and those who came in response to Pharaoh’s invitation, “Come unto me and I will give you the good of the, land of Egypt, and ye shall eat of the fat of the land”, were compelled by his successors to take the place of slaves. It seems as difficult for a nation as it is for an individual to refrain from the abuse of power. A writer says, “Revolution is caused by seeking to substitute expediency for justice,” and that is exactly what the King of Egypt and his confederates attempted in the instance of these Israelites. It would seem that the result of that endeavor ought to be a lesson to the times in which we live, and to the nations entrusted with power.

Injustice toward a supposedly weaker people is one of those offences against God which do not go unpunished, and its very practice always provokes a rebellion which converts a profitable people into powerful enemies.It ought never to be forgotten either that injustice easily leads to oppression. We may suppose the tax at first imposed upon this people was comparatively slight, and honorable Egyptians found for it a satisfactory excuse, hardly expecting that the time would ever come when the Israelites should be regarded “chattel-slaves”.

But “he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much”. It is doubtful if there is any wrong in man’s moral relations which blinds him so quickly and so effectually as the exercise of power against weakness.Joseph Parker, in speaking of the combat between Moses and the Egyptian, says, “Every honorable-minded man is a trustee of social justice and common fair play. We have nothing to do with the petty quarrels that fret society, but we certainly have to do with every controversy—social, imperial, or international—which violates human right and impairs the claims of Divine honor. We must all fight for the right. We feel safer by so much if we know there are amongst us men who will not be silent in the presence of wrong, and will lift up a testimony in the name of righteousness, though there be none to cheer them with one word of encouragement.”It is only a step from enslaving to slaughter. That step was speedily taken, for “Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river” (Exodus 1:22).

Unquestionably there is a two-fold thought in this fact. Primarily this, whom the tyrant cannot control to his profit, he will slay to his pleasure; and then, in its deeper and more spiritual significance, it is Satan’s effort to bring an end to the people of God.

The same serpent that effected the downfall of Adam and Eve whispered into Cain’s ear, “Murder Abel”; and into the ears of the Patriarchs, “Put Joseph out of the way”; and to Herod, “Throttle all the male children of the land”; and to the Pharisee and Roman soldier, “Crucify Jesus of Nazareth”. It remains for us of more modern times to learn that the slaughter of the weak may be accomplished in other ways than by the knife, the Nile, or the Cross. It was no worse to send a sword against a feeble people, than, for the sake of filthy lucre, to plant among them the accursed saloon. Benjamin Harrison, in a notable address before the Ecumenical Missionary Conference held in the City of New York years ago, said, “The men who, like Paul, have gone to heathen lands with the message, ‘We seek not yours but you,’ have been hindered by those who, coming after, have reversed the message. Rum and other corrupting agencies come in with our boasted civilization, and the feeble races wither before the breath of the white man’s vices.”Egypt sought to take away from Israel the physical life which Egypt feared; but God has forewarned us against a greater enemy when He said, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. * * Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him”. If in this hour of almost universal disturbance the sword cannot be sheathed, let us praise God that our Congress and Senate have removed the saloon—a slaughter-house from the midst of our soldiers, and our amended Constitution has swept it from the land.THE RISE OF MOSES.I do not know whether you have ever been impressed in studying this Book of Exodus with what is so evidently a Divine ordering of events.

It is when the slaughter is on that we expect the Saviour to come. And that God who sits beside the dying sparrow never overlooks the affliction of His people.

When an edict goes forth against them, then it is that He brings their deliverer to the birth; hence we read, “And there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of the house of Levi, and the woman conceived and bare a son” (Exodus 2:1-2),That is Moses; that is God’s man! It is no chance element that brings him to the kingdom at such a time as this. It is no mere happening that he is bred in Pharaoh’s house, and instructed by Jochebed. It is no accident that he is taught in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. It is all in perfect consequence of the fact that God is looking upon the Children of Israel, and is having respect unto them.Against Pharaoh’s injustice He sets Moses’ keen sense of right. When Moses sees an Egyptian slay an oppressed Israelite, he cannot withhold his hand.

And, when after forty years in the wilderness he comes back to behold afresh the affliction of his people, he “chooses to suffer with them rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” God never does a better thing for a nation than when He raises up in it such a man. We have heard a great deal of Socrates’ wisdom, but it is not in the science of philosophy alone that that ancient shines; for when Athens was governed by thirty tyrants, who one day summoned him to the Senate House, and ordered him to go with others named to seize Leon, a man of rank and fortune, whose life was to be sacrificed that these rulers might enjoy his estate, the great philosopher flatly refused, saying, “I will not willingly assist in an unjust act.” Thereupon Chericles sharply asked, “Dost thou think, Socrates, to talk in this high tone and not to suffer?” “Far from it,” replied the philosopher, “I expect to suffer a thousand ills, but none so great as to do unjustly.” That day Socrates was a statesman of the very sort that would have saved Athens had his ideas of righteousness obtained.Against Pharaoh’s oppression He sets Moses’ Divine appointment.

There were many times when Moses was tempted to falter, but God’s commission constrained his service. When Moses said, “Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh?” God answered, “Surely I will be with thee”. When Moses feared his own people who would not believe in his commission, God answered, “Thus shalt thou say unto the Children of Israel, I AM hath sent you”. When Moses feared that the Israelites would doubt his Divine appointment, God turned the rod in his hand into a worker of wonders. And, when Moses excused himself on the ground of “no eloquence”, God replied, “Go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say”. With any man, a conviction of Divine appointment is a power, but for him who would be a saviour of his fellows, it is an absolute essential.Pastor Stalker, speaking to the subject of a Divine call to the service of soul-winning, said, “Enthusiasm for humanity is a noble passion and sheds a beautiful glow over the first efforts of an unselfish life, but it is hardly stern enough for the uses of the world.

There come hours of despair when men seem hardly worth our devotion. * * Worse still is the sickening consciousness that we have but little to give; perhaps we have mistaken our vocation; it is a world out of joint, but were we born to put it right? This is where a sterner motive is needed than love for men.

Our retreating zeal requires to be rallied by the command of God. It is His work; these souls are His; He has committed them to our care, and at the judgment-seat He will demand an account of them. All Prophets and Apostles who have dealt with men for God have been driven on by this impulse which has recovered them in hours of weakness and enabled them to face the opposition of the world. * * This command came to Moses in the wilderness and drove him into public life in spite of strong resistance; and it bore him through the unparalleled trials of his subsequent career.” How many times he would have surrendered the battle and left his fellows to suffer under Pharaoh’s heels, but for the sound of that voice which Joan of Arc heard, saying to him as it said to her, “Go on! Go on!”Against Pharaoh’s slaughter God set up Moses as a Saviour. History has recorded the salvation of his people to many a man, who, either by his counsels in the time of peace or his valor in the time of war, has brought abiding victory. But where in annals, secular or sacred, can you find a philosopher who had such grave difficulties to deal with as Moses met in lifting his people from chattel slaves to a ruling nation?

And where so many enemies to be fought as Moses faced in his journey from the place of the Pyramids to Pisgah’s Heights?Titus Flaminius freed the Grecians from the bondage with which they had long been oppressed. When the herald proclaimed the Articles of Peace, and the Greeks understood perfectly what Flaminius had accomplished for them, they cried out for joy, “A Saviour! a Saviour!” till the Heavens rang with their acclamations.But Moses was worthy of greater honor because his was a more difficult deed.

I don’t know, but I suppose one reason why Moses’ name is coupled with that of the Lamb in the Oratorio of the Heavens, is because he saved Israel out of a bondage which was a mighty symbol of Satan’s power, and led them by a journey, which is the best type of the pilgrim’s wanderings in this world, and brought them at last to the borders of Canaan, which has always been regarded as representative of “the rest that remaineth for the people of God”.THE EXODUS FROM EGYPTinvolves some items of the deepest interest.The ten plagues prepare for it. The river is turned into blood; frogs literally cover the land; the dust is changed to lice; flies swarm until all the houses are filled; the beasts are smitten with murrain; boils and blains, hail, locusts and darkness do their worst, and the death of the first-born furnishes the climax of Egyptian affliction, and compels the haughty Pharaoh to bow in humility and grief before the will of the Most High God (chaps. 7-12).There is one feature of these plagues that ought never to be forgotten. Without exception, they spake in thunder tones against Egyptian idolatry. The Nile River had long been an object of their adoration. In a long poem dedicated to the Nile, these lines are found: “Oh, Nile, hymns are sung to thee on the harp,Offerings are made to thee: oxen are slain to thee;Great festivals are kept for thee;Fowls are sacrificed to thee.”But when the waters of that river were turned to blood, the Egyptians supposed Typhon, the God of Evil, with whom blood had always been associated, had conquered over their bountiful and beautiful Osiris—the name under which the Nile was worshiped.The second plague was no less a stroke at their hope of a resurrection, for a frog had long symbolized to them the subject of life coming out of death. The soil also they had worshiped, and now to see the dust of it turned suddenly into living pests, was to suffer under the very power from which they had hoped to receive greatest success. The flies that came in clouds were not all of one kind, but their countless myriads, according to the Hebrew word used, included winged pests of every sort, even the scarabaeus, or sacred beetle. Heretofore, it had been to them the emblem of the creative principle; but now God makes it the instrument of destruction instead. When the murrain came upon the beasts, the sacred cow and the sacred ox-Apis were humbled. And ~when the ashes from the furnace smote the skin of the Egyptians, they could not forget that they had often sprinkled ashes toward Heaven, believing that thus to throw the ashes of their sacrifices into the wind would be to avert evil from every part of the land whither they were blown.

Geikie says that the seventh plague brought these devout worshipers of false gods to see “that the waters, the earth and the air, the growth of the fields, the cattle, and even their own persons, all under the care of a host of divinities, were yet in succession smitten by a power against which these protectors were impotent. When the clouds of locusts had devoured the land, there remained another stroke to their idolatry more severe still, and that was to see the Sun, the supreme god of Egypt, veil his face and leave his worshipers in total darkness.

It is no wonder that Pharaoh then called to Moses and said, “Go ye, serve the Lord”; but it is an amazing thing that even yet his greed of gain goads him on to claim their flocks and their herds as an indemnity against the exodus of the people. There remained nothing, therefore, for God to do but lift His hand again, and lo, death succeeded darkness, and Pharaoh himself became the subject of suffering, and the greatest idol of the nation was humbled to the dust, for the king was the supreme object of worship.He is a foolish man who sets himself up to oppose the Almighty God. And that is a foolish people who think to afflict God’s faithful ones without feeling the mighty hand of that Father who never forgets His own.One day I was talking with a woman whose husband formerly followed the habit of gambling. By this means he had amassed considerable wealth, and when she was converted and desired to unite with the church, he employed every power to prevent it, and even denied her the privilege of church attendance. One morning he awoke to find that he was a defeated man; his money had fled in the night, and in the humiliation of his losses, he begged his wife’s pardon for ever having opposed her spirit of devotion. Since that time, though living in comparative poverty, she has been privileged to serve God as she pleased; and, as she said to me, finds in that service a daily joy such as she at one time feared she would never feel again.

God’s plagues are always preparing the way for an exodus on the part of God’s oppressed.The Passover interpreted this exodus. That greatest of all Jewish feasts stands as a memorial of Israel’s flight from Egypt as a symbol of God’s salvation for His own, and as an illustration of the saving power of the Blood of the Lamb.The opponents of the exodus perished.

Our study concludes with Israel’s Song of Deliverance, beginning, “The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation”, and concluding in the words of Miriam, “Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea”. See Exodus 15:1-21. Such will ever be the end of those who oppress God’s people and oppose the Divine will.When one studies the symbolism in all of this, and sees how Israel typifies God’s present-day people, and Moses, their deliverer, Jesus our Saviour, and defeated Pharaoh, the enemy of our souls, destined to be overthrown, he feels like joining in the same song of deliverance, changing the words only so far as to ascribe the greater praise to Him who gave His life a deliverance for all men; and with James Montgomery sing: “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed Great David’s greater SonWho, in the time appointed, His reign on earth begun.He comes to break oppression, To set the captive free,To take away transgression, And rule in equity.“He comes, with succor speedy, To those who suffer wrong;To help the poor and needy, And bid the weak be strong;To give them songs for sighing, Their darkness turn to light,Whose souls, condemned and dying. Were precious in His sight.”

Exodus 2:10

MOSES-THE AMONG MENExo_2:1-2; Exodus 2:10THERE are lives so great that all men must have some familiarity with them, and yet no man has exhausted their study, and no speakers have brought to the thought of their fellows all the facts they inspire. Moses is one of those names! I say it without hesitation, that aside from Jesus Christ, Moses is the man of the Sacred Word. Peter was not one half so great; Paul was not his peer; and if we are disposed to dispute the claim, it only proves that while none of us know the New Testament too well, many are inexcusably ignorant of the Old, and hence unacquainted with some names that have inspired the past, and will profoundly influence the future.Moses is not one of those names! He is the one of them. Ingersoll bleated about his blunders, and more honest and competent critics have and will add their attacks upon his name and the books that bear it; but when Ingersoll is forgotten and Infidelity comes to its grave, Moses will live in the memory of sainted minds, and the angel choirs in their grandest oratorio shall couple his name with that of “The Lamb”.In order that we may understand his life, let us think about the facts that entered into it and made up the sum total.

I don’t know that they are different in quality from those that enter every life; but in quantity, how great!I. THE OF MOSES’ LIFE AND THE MAN.Cicero said, “It is not the place which makes the man; but the man that makes the place.” The same may be said of times and circumstances.

They don’t make men. The growth of plants may depend upon place, seasons, circumstances, but man is of other stuff, and, in a much greater measure, his life is independent of its environment. But true as that is, it is equally true that it touches him, influences him, and furnishes its share to the colors that go to make up his history. No student of the Pentateuch can question that Moses was affected by several factors in his environment.Who can measure the result of the conjunction of the sacred and the secular in his education? From the account of Moses’ youth as related in the second chapter of Exodus, we know that the child’s mother was the fortunate nurse to whom the Princess committed the care of the strangely saved little one. The record of her instruction is not to be found, save as men are able to read it in Moses’ after-life, and yet from that we know what it must have been.

Whence his sense of brotherhood with the despised and degraded slaves of the land save from a mother’s teaching? Whence his hot indignation at the injustice of the Egyptian lash, laid often and heavily on the poorly clad back of a Jew, save from a mother’s teaching?

Whence his own fine sense of virtue and right that left his name as clean as that of his illustrious predecessor, Joseph, save from a mother’s restraining influence, and her example of chastity? Whence his faith in Jehovah as opposed to the calf of Egypt, save as Jochebed had whispered it into his soul, and prayed it into his heart’s core? See the mother in the son! He is fortunate indeed whose early education is encompassed by the tender concern of a mother whose habits of life are simple, whose virtues are sung of angels, and whose faith in God is supreme! Some people seem to think that a man’s complete education may be secular, and can be had from touching the world and studying books. That is a mistake!

The best part of any youth’s training is had from the sacred instruction of a mother’s life, and learned while yet in the school of the home.In a sermon of John McNeil’s, he relates that true story brought from his native land, by saying, “One day, long ago, a lad was setting out from a home in Fife in Scotland. He was beginning life; his childhood’s days were gone.

His mother was going along the road with him, and that mother was a true mother in Israel. He was not converted, and at the turning point of the road where mother and son were to part, she said, ‘Now, Robert; just one thing I have to ask you, and you will promise me before I speak it?’ Robert was somewhat canny like his mother, and he said, ‘No, I will not promise until I know’. He had some notion what that promise would be. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘it is not anything that will trouble you. It will not be hard or severe.’ ‘Well, mother,’ he said, ‘I will,’ ‘Promise,’ said she, ‘that every night before you lie down to sleep you will read a chapter from your Bible, and pray.’ He screwed his face, for it was an unpalatable promise, but he made it. Who was that Robert? That Robert was Robert Moffat, and Africa is coming into the Kingdom of God behind him,’ Who says that an education can be complete without a mother’s lessons?

Who dares affirm that the sacred lessons about God and Christ and the Bible and Eternity are non-essentials?And yet, secular education has its place. It was the good fortune of Moses’ environment that at the Princess’ expense he came to be “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians”.

When the boy comes to be the man, a mother cannot continue in her office of instructor. He yearns for wider fields of thought than she has explored, and seeks to be instructed by those who speak the language of exact sciences.In Egypt, as the heir-apparent, Moses had every school open to him. In art, he was educated by the very furnishings of the palace in which he lived. No man can visit the Art Museums and look upon the Egyptian display in statuary, painting, and other antiquities without getting some idea of the scenes with which this fortunate son of a bond-woman was familiar in his early life. What an education for the finer tastes when a child is born and brought up among the richest hangings, looks on great paintings, listens to ennobling music—contributions of Masters among the men of art. I cannot explain why a child of lowly birth and humble breeding should take pleasure in these things, and yet I know that the child in my life has its very soul inspired, and seems lifted above the sensual to commune with the great spirit of all good, when the sweeter notes of music touch the ear, when the finer strokes of the brush appeal to the eye, or when the perfect work of the chisel lifts before me a form that seems hiding a soul.

If learning in Egypt included Egypt’s art, then I can understand where Moses caught harmonies of sound and color and form that enlarged his life.There were philosophers in Egypt even then— men who had felt after the keys of life, and vainly imagined they had found them. In the palace at Memphis, in her schools, and on the street, Moses must have met and whetted arguments with them.

That is an education! I know that we laugh at what men call philosophy today; but mistaken and foolish as much of it has been, the minds that have pushed far into its misty realm have found jewels at times and dragged the rough diamonds of truth to the light, and with them men have bestudded life.There were Priests in the palace. From them Moses learned about the religion of his foster-mother and the government of the realm. In view of their idolatry doubtless the religion of his race shone the brighter and became his deeper study and better hope; and along with secular learning he kept his religion. He is a fortunate youth before whom the halls of learning in art, science, and philosophy are open. They are all factors in the sum total of a great, deep, broad education.

But he is to be pitied who gets a knowledge of them at the expense of his faith. Learning without religion is a poor stock in trade.

The wisdom of Egypt without the sacred stamp of Jochebed’s belief in God, would have served, in all probability, to shipwreck Moses’ soul. I have often pitied the blundering parents who dismiss their children to schools of great names, but of reputed godlessness. Some people say they don’t approve of sectarian institutions, but believe rather in great secular universities. Every man to his choice, but I would prefer to send a child to the college unknown beyond the borders of a single state, if in that school learning was handmaid to religion, than to send him to the first university of the world, if its atmosphere, like that of most secular institutions and now increasingly of our denominational schools, was rank and stifling with unbelief.In an address at Princeton college some years ago, that noble President, Francis L. Patton, said, “It is natural for young men to think that the old is false and the new is to supersede it, and that this should have a disturbing influence upon the early faiths of educated young men. I am sorry for the young man who feels that his faith is undergoing eclipse; and that his education is lifting a barrier between him and those who are most dear to him, by preventing him from sharing their religious beliefs in the fulness of the old and unhesitating confidence.

I pity the man who feels as he leaves college that he has more philosophy and less Bible than when he entered. Far sooner would I that a son of mine should never enter a college door, than that his college learning should be gained at the cost of his Christian faith.” Who shall answer Patton?

A stripling, just now flinging away his mother’s prayers, and denying the power of his father’s God, cannot answer him; for he has not yet seen the end of such a course. A godless professor cannot answer him, because he knows not the value of a faith that has inspired such men as Patton through a long series of years; and no man can answer him, for Patton is right. Learning without religion may be of some value, but learning at the expense of religion is a pitiable misfortune for any man. Ah, Moses, your fame lives and will live because in your familiarity with the wisdom of Egypt the training of the home remained, and the lessons from the sacred teaching of a mother helped your faith to survive even in the luxurious and sensual palace of Pharaoh, the King! I want to walk up and down the earth crying into the ears of my young auditors, this text: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom”. But unless you would play the fool and fail, don’t believe that wisdom is ever had until your learning is wedded to the religion of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of love.A second factor of influence in this sum of environment’s effect is found in the fact that Moses tasted at once slavery and sovereignty.

By reason of his birth he was destined to share with the people of his own blood all their indignities, shame, and suffering. Not that tasks were ever heaped upon him, nor that any Egyptian slave-driver dared touch him with the lash!

But what men escape in body they sometimes share in sympathies, and experience in soul. The record in Exodus tallies with that in Acts in teaching that Moses was forty years old before he ever saw the abuses of his brethren that were the daily practice in the field. Already, doubtless, he had tasted the sweets of life as a sovereign. Those forty years are left unrecorded, but surely not by reason of inaction on the part of the Princess’ favorite in all that time.John Lord says, “What a career did the son of the Hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palace of Memphis, sitting at the monarch’s table, feted as a conqueror, adopted as a grandson, and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, the hidden meaning of religious rites, and even the being and attributes of a Supreme God, the esoteric wisdom from which even a Pythagoras drew his inspiration.”But that sovereignty, while it educated him into feelings of all refinement, and acquainted him with what men style “higher life”, did not drown his sense of right, nor cause him to be indifferent to the woes of those who were poor, ignorant, and almost desperate in their bondage. It seems a strange thing how a little sovereignty exalteth some men to such heights that they come to despise all below. There were once small lords of the South who happened to be born white, and by inheritance owned a forty acre lot, who said, “We doubt if a negro has a soul,” and sported their right to rule the ebony skinned immortal without reference to his feelings or even physical comfort.

Yes, and there are small lords in the North, who treat men, white of skin as themselves, though more humble in station, with an equal amount of indifference or even contempt. Haman was indeed the prototype of a multitude who have cursed the ages.

Men, being promoted a little, at once conclude that all beneath them must bow themselves to the earth as they pass. It takes a great soul to occupy the superior positions of this world and yet keep his sympathies with the humble and oppressed. How many a boy has been sent to school with a trunk well-filled with clothes, every stitch in them having been taken by a poor, unlearned, yet great-souled and affectionate mother; with a purse that holds the last dollar that the old father earned and gladly added to his savings for the sake of the schooling of the son. A few years pass! That boy has made rapid strides. Society begins to toast him, and people of wealth often do honor to his culture by their attentions, and the hospitality of their homes.

How will he behave now when the gap between him and his gets to be almost as great as that between the young prince of Pharaoh’s palace and the poor slave driven by Pharaoh’s lash? Will he come to the rescue of their declining years?

Will he use his acquired power for their deliverance from burdens and seek to soothe them in sorrow’s hour? Or will he build a mansion of his own, surround himself with gay circles, move like a monarch among the titled, and prove himself as much of an ingrate as was George Elliot’s Tito Meleme? Which? Answer me that and I will tell you whether his better environment has developed him into the man that God can use, or the hypocrite in whom all hell delights. The spirit of every man is shown in his deportment toward those who hold lowest stations, but whose crimes are not blacker than misfortune, and whose lives have no other blight than crushing burdens.Joseph Parker says finely enough of Moses, “He was not ashamed to recognize the Hebrews as his brethren. He himself had had a day of wondrous luck, so-called; he might have sunned himself in the beams of his radiant fortune, and left his brethren to do as they could.” Yes, he might, because other men have!

I have known the mother of a man whose fortune was counted by hundreds of thousands, to beg; not because she was wicked and her name a reproach, but because he was stingy and wouldn’t support her, and proud and would not own her as the fountain of his flesh and blood. That pride of life is contemptible and mean that makes the sovereign forget the slave.

If the sovereignty is one of wealth and the slavery one of poverty; if the sovereignty is learning and the slavery is ignorance; if the sovereignty is one of good fortune and the slavery one of misfortune, the case is not altered. Be careful then how you treat the man that tends the stable and the woman that serves your table! God could reverse the order if He wished. Be ashamed when you seek to hide the fact that the ignorant old man, stooped with the weight of years, yet eternally fresh in his affection for you, is your father. Blush to the heart if you ever deny that sister or daughter whose sad experiences have taken away her beauty and broken her spirit, and cowed her to the dust. Only devils could be pleased with such haughty deportment.

Heaven is happy when a Moses comes into the field and stoops to lift the bleeding slave to his jeweled bosom and says, “He is my brother, rags and all.”You have read of the virtues of King Humbert. I saw a short time ago a bit of his history that well illustrates this point.

Years ago Naples was being ravaged by the raging of cholera. At the same time the races were going on in Pardenone, and King Humbert had engaged to be present in their festive days. The news came to him that Naples was in distress and his answer by telegram to the racers was, “At Pordenone they are having sport. At Naples they are dying. I will go to Naples.” That was the spirit of Moses of whom the Apostle wrote, “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 in Egypt”. Oh, Moses, how well might twentieth century men learn from thee how to make all sovereignty serve their suffering brother’s good!Finally, both the touch ofSOCIETY AND Ngave coloring to his life.

It is impossible for any man to become a rounded character who sees little or nothing of life among his fellows. Hermits have been reckoned as visionaries and wild dreamers as a rule.

John the Baptist could never have attracted the people, led them to repentance, and added to their spiritual profit, had all his days been spent in the wilderness. But before he retired to that seclusion, he had moved through, and acquainted himself with the world. He only selected the wilderness as his auditorium. He knew the habits, character, and life of those about him from previous study—a man in the midst of men. So did Moses. From the lords of a luxurious court down to the most despised among the Hebrew slaves, he was familiar with men. Does not that account for the language, life, and the laws that he laid down? There are a great many men in the world who know nothing outside of their study, counting-room, or office, save that men struggle for bread.

They can’t deal with their fellows; they cannot advise them when the besetments of life thicken; they cannot lay down laws for their conduct. The world is better off when they have least to say in the affairs that trouble. If we would know each other and help the weak, we must live in the world, and feel the throbbings of hearts that bleed and are ready to break.And yet in every life, solitude should have a place. The man who is driven by the duties of each day from his waking moment to that in which he sleeps again, who has no moments for serious meditation, no solitude in which to reflect upon those greater problems of his present existence and his future good, is apt to become worn early and warped into unbelief; and life, losing its time for reflection and prayer, he is apt to become unbelieving and sick at heart. I was much pleased in reading “Imago Christi” to hear the author say of Christ’s habit of stealing away to a secluded spot to spend an hour or a night alone, “There is more than solitude in such a situation to assist prayer; there is a ministry of nature which soothes the mind and disposes it to devotion. Never did I feel more strongly that in this habit Jesus had laid bare one of the great secrets of life than one day when I climbed all alone a hill above Invereray and lay on the summit, musing through a summer forenoon.

On every hand there stretched a solitary world of mountain and moorland; the loch below was gleaming in the sun like a shield of silver; the town was visible at the foot of the hills, and the passengers could be seen moving in its streets but no sound of its bustle rose so high. The great sky was over all; and God seemed just at hand, waiting to hear every word.” It was in spots like this that Jesus prayed.

Who doubts that the Son of God got strength from the unheard language of such solitude? Great men in the past have given solitude a place in preparing for great work. Josephus tells how he got ready for his work by years of seclusion. John the Baptist, Paul, and Jesus enjoyed the same before their public ministry began. So of almost every reformer. Luther needed four hours a day, not for reading and study, but for reflection and prayer. The forty years in Midian were not so much lost from Moses’ life. The thoughts that occupied him then live today as do those that ran through the good John Bunyan’s mind while Bedford jail held his body within its iron grates.

This great West of ours is wild in action; and energy well directed is right. But in justice to self, in the help of men, in the cause of God, he is stronger who keeps his closet of prayer, his time for reflection, and staying from the hurry of business and the mastering greed of gain, takes time to answer God’s ring, let Him into the room of the heart, and hold a quiet hour of communion with Him.