The story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts.
Every child can understand, every child can feel with it.  It is a
story for all men and all times.  Even if it had not been true, and
not real fact, but a romance of man's invention, it would have been
loved and admired by men; far more then, when we know that it is
true, that it actually did so happen; that is part and parcel of the
Holy Scriptures.

We all, surely, know the story--How Joseph's brethren envy him and
sell him for a slave into Egypt--how there for a while he prospers--
how his master's wife tempts him--how he is thrown into prison on
her slander--how there again he prospers--how he explains the dreams
of Pharaoh's servants--how he lies long forgotten in the prison--how
at last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret a dream for him, and how
he rises to power and great glory--how his brothers come down to
Egypt to buy corn, and how they find him lord of all the land--how
subtilly he tries them to see if they have repented of their old
sin--how his heart yearns over them in spite of all their wickedness
to him--how at last he reveals himself, and forgives them utterly,
and sends for his poor old father Jacob down into Egypt.  Whosoever
does not delight in that story, simply as a story, whenever he hears
it read, cannot have a wholesome human heart in him.

But why was this story of Joseph put into Holy Scripture, and at
such length, too?  It seems, at first sight, to be simply a family
history--the story of brothers and their father; it seems, at first
sight, to teach us nothing concerning our redemption and salvation;
it seems, at first sight, not to reveal anything fresh to us
concerning God; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for the
general plan of the Bible history.  It tells us, of course, how the
Israelites first came into Egypt; and that was necessary for us to
know.  But the Bible might have told us that in ten verses.  Why has
it spent upon the story of Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses,
but ten chapters?

Now we have a right to ask such questions as these, if we do not ask
them out of any carping, fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes
in the Bible, from which God defend us and all Christian men.  If we
ask such questions in faith and reverence--that is, believing and
taking for granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it, as
the Book of books, in which our own forefathers and all Christian
nations upon earth for many ages have found all things necessary for
their salvation--if, I say, we question over the Bible in that
child-like, simple, respectful spirit, which is the true spirit of
wisdom and understanding, by which our eyes will be truly opened to
see the wondrous things of God's law:  then we may not only seek as
our Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we
should.  We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph
being so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest
of the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the
character of God.

I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely
a family history.  But suppose that that were the very reason why it
is in the Bible, because it is a family history.  Suppose that
families were very sacred things in the eyes of God.  That the ties
of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were
appointed, not by man, but by God.  Then would not Joseph's story be
worthy of being in the Bible?  Would it not, as I said it would,
reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of
God?

Consider now, my friends:  Is it not one great difference--one of
the very greatest--between men and beasts, that men live in
families, and beasts do not?  That men have the sacred family
feeling, and beasts have not?  They have the beginnings of it, no
doubt.  The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but
only for a while.  God has implanted in her something of that
deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings--a mother's love.  But as
soon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are
nothing to her--among the lower animals, less than nothing.  The
fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as
soon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.

The feeling of a FATHER to his child, again, you find is fainter
still among beasts.  The father, as you all know, not only cares
little for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at
first, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill
them when they grow up.

Husband and wife, again:  there is no sacredness between them among
dumb animals.  A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in
youth, but through old age and beyond the grave--what is there like
this among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like
the dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and
have been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by
men for that very reason?

But where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two
sacred human feelings--the love of brother to brother, or of child
to father?  Where do you find the notion that the tie between
husband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken at no temptation,
but in man?

These are THE feelings which man has alone of all living animals.

These then, remember, are the very family feelings which come out in
the story of Joseph.  He honours holy wedlock when he tells his
master's wife, 'How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against
God?'  He honours his father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild
shepherd out of the desert though he might be, and an abomination to
the Egyptians, while he himself is now in power and wealth and
glory, as a prince in a civilized country.  He honours the tie of
brother to brother, by forgiving and weeping over the very brothers
who have sold him into slavery.

But what has all this to do with God?

Now man, as we know, is an animal with an immortal spirit in him.
He has, as St. Paul so carefully explains to us, a flesh and a
spirit--a flesh like the beasts which perish; a spirit which comes
from God.

Now the Bible teaches us that man did not get these family feelings
from his flesh, from the animal, brute part of him.  They are not
carnal, but spiritual.  He gets them from his spirit, and they are
inspired into him by the Spirit of God.  They come not from the
earth below, but from the heaven above; from the image of God, in
which man alone of all living things was made.

For if it were not so, we should surely see some family feeling in
the beasts which are most like men.  But we do not.  In the apes,
which are, in their shape and fleshly nature, so strangely and
shockingly like human beings, there is not as much family feeling as
there is in many birds, or even insects.  Nay, the wild negroes,
among whom they live, hold them in abhorrence, and believe that they
were once men like themselves, who were gradually changed into brute
beasts, by giving way to detestable sins; while these very negroes
themselves, heathens and savages as they are, HAVE the family
feeling--the feeling of husband for wife, father for child, brother
for brother; not, indeed, as strongly and purely as we, or at least
those of us who are really Christian and civilized, but still they
have it; and that makes between the lowest man and the highest brute
a difference which I hold is as wide as the space between heaven and
earth.

It is man alone, I say, who has the idea of family; and who has,
too, the strange, but most true belief that these family ties are
appointed by God--that they are a part of his religion--that in
breaking them, by being an unfaithful husband, a dishonest servant,
an unnatural son, a selfish brother, he sins, not only against man,
and man's order and laws, but against God.

Parent and child, brother and sister--those ties are not of the
earth earthy, but of the heaven of God, eternal.  They may begin in
time; of what happened before we came into this world we know
nought.  But having begun, they cannot end.  Of what will happen
after we leave this world, that at least we know in part.

Parent and child; brother and sister; husband and wife likewise;
these are no ties of man's invention.  They are ties of God's
binding; they are patterns and likenesses of his substance, and of
his being.  Of the eternal Father, who says for ever to the eternal
Son, 'This day have I begotten THEE.'  Of the Son who says for ever
to the Father, 'I come to do thy will, O God.'  Of the Son of God,
Jesus Christ, who is not ashamed to call us his brethren; but like a
greater Joseph, was sent before by God to save our lives with a
great deliverance when our forefathers were but savages and
heathens.  Husband and wife likewise--are not they two divine words-
-not human words at all?  Has not God consecrated the state of
matrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and
represented the mystical union between Christ and his Church?  Are
not husbands to love their wives, and give themselves for them as
Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it?  That, indeed, was
not revealed in the Old Testament, but it is revealed in the New;
and marriage, like all other human ties, is holy and divine, and
comes from God down to men.

Yes.  These family ties are of God.  It was to show us how sacred,
how Godlike they are--how eternal and necessary for all mankind--
that Joseph's story was written in Holy Scripture.

They are of God, I say.  And he who despises them, despises not man
but God; who hath also given us his Holy Spirit to make us know how
sacred these bonds are.

He who looks lightly on the love of child to parent, or brother to
brother, or husband to wife, and bids each man please himself, each
man help himself, and shift for himself, would take away from men
the very thing which raises them above the beasts which perish, and
lower them again to the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the
flesh reap corruption.

They who, under whatever pretence of religion part asunder families;
or tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may
say to their parents, Corban--'I have given to God the service and
help which, as your child, I should have given to you'--shall be
called, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw
near to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while
their heart is far from him.

I think now we may see that I was right when I said--Perhaps the
history of Joseph is in the Bible because it IS a family history.
For see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt
that family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with
honour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he
refused his master's wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for
evil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in
his old age.

It is the history of a man who--more than four hundred years before
God gave the ten commandments on Sinai, saying,

Honour thy father and mother,

Thou shalt not commit adultery,

Thou shalt not kill in revenge,

Thou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours--It is the history, I
say, of a man who had those laws of God written in his heart by the
Holy Spirit of God; and felt that to break them was to sin against
God.  It is the history of a man who, sorely tempted and unjustly
persecuted, kept himself pure and true; who, while all around him,
beginning with his own brothers, were trampling under foot the laws
of family, felt that the laws were still there round him, girding
him in with everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt and
Thou shalt not; that he was not sent into the world to do just what
was pleasant for the moment, to indulge his own passions or his own
revenge; but that if he was indeed a man, he must prove himself a
man, by obeying Almighty God.  It is the history of a man who kept
his heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained strange and deep
wisdom; that wisdom which comes only to the pure in heart; that
wisdom by which truly good men are enabled to see farther, and to be
of more use to their fellow-creatures than many a cunning and
crooked politician, whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is
defiled with sin.

And now, my friends, if we pray--as we are bound to pray--for that
great Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as
well as the joys and blessings of family life--what better prayer
can we offer up for him, than that God would put into his heart that
spirit which he put into the heart of Joseph of old--the spirit to
see how divine and God-appointed is family life?  God grant that
that spirit may dwell in him, and possess him more and more day by
day.  That it may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother,
true to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with whom he has to
deal.  That it may deliver him, as it delivered Joseph, from the
snares of wicked women, from selfish politicians, if they ever try
to sow distrust and opposition between him and his kindred, and from
all those temptations which can only be kept down by the Spirit of
God working in men's hearts, as he worked in the heart of Joseph.

For if that spirit be in the Prince--and I doubt not that that
spirit is in him already--then will his fate be that of Joseph; then
will he indeed be a blessing to us, and to our children after us;
then will he have riches more real, and power more vast, than any
which our English laws can give; then will he gain, like Joseph,
that moral wisdom, better than all worldly craft, which cometh from
above--first pure, then gentle, easy to be entreated, without
partiality, and without hypocrisy; then will he be able, like
Joseph, to deliver his people in times of perplexity and distress;
then will he by his example, as his noble mother has done before
him, keep healthy, pure, and strong, our English family life--and as
long as THAT endures, Old England will endure likewise.



SERMON VIII.  THE BIBLE THE GREAT CIVILIZER



(Fourth Sunday in Lent.)

PHILIPPIANS iv. 8.  Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
think on these things.

It may not be easy to see what this text has to do with the story of
Joseph, which we have just been reading, or with the meaning of the
Bible of which I have been speaking to you of late.

Nevertheless, I think it has to do with them; as you will see if you
will look at the text with me.

Now the text does not say 'Do these things.'  It only says 'THINK of
these things.'

Of course St. Paul wished us to do them also; but he says first
THINK of them; not once in a way, but often and continually.  Fill
your mind with good and pure and noble thoughts; and then you will
do good and pure and noble things.

For out of the abundance of a man's heart, not only does his mouth
speak, but his whole body and soul behave.  The man whose mind is
filled with low and bad thoughts will be sure, when he is tempted,
to do low and bad things.  The man whose mind is filled with lofty
and good thoughts will do lofty and good things.

For thoughts are the food of a man's mind; and as the mind feeds, so
will it grow.  If it feeds on coarse and foul food, coarse and foul
it will grow.  If it feeds on pure and refined food, pure and
refined it will grow.

There are those who do not believe this.  Provided they are
tolerably attentive to the duties of religion, it does not matter
much, they fancy, what they think of out of church.  Their souls
will be saved at last, they suppose, and that is all that they need
care for.  Saved?  They do not see that by giving way to foul, mean,
foolish thoughts all the week they are losing their souls,
destroying their souls, defiling their souls, lowering their souls,
and making them so coarse and mean and poor that they are not worth
saving, and are no loss to heaven or earth, whatever loss they may
be to the man himself.  One man thinks of nothing but money--how he
shall save a penny here and a penny there.  I do not mean men of
business; for them there are great excuses; for it is by continual
saving here and there that their profits are made.  I speak rather
of people who have no excuse, people of fixed incomes--people often
wealthy and comfortable, who yet will lower their minds by
continually thinking over their money.  But this I say, and this I
am sure that you will find, that when a man in business or out of
business accustoms himself, as very many do, to think of nothing but
money, money, money from Monday morning to Saturday night, he thinks
of money a great part of Sunday likewise.  And so, after a while,
the man lowers his soul, and makes it mean and covetous.  He forgets
all that is lovely and of good report.  He forgets virtue--that is
manliness; and praise--that is the just respect and admiration of
his fellow-men; and so he forgets at last things true, honest, and
just likewise.  He lowers his soul; and therefore when he is
tempted, he does things mean and false and unjust, for the sake of
money, which he has made his idol.

Take another case, too common among men and women of all ranks, high
and low.

How many there are who love gossip and scandal; who always talk
about people, and never about things--certainly not about things
pure and lovely and of good report, but rather about things foul and
ugly and of bad report; who do not talk, because they do not think
of virtue, but of vice; or of praise either, because they are always
finding fault with their neighbours.  The man who loves a foul
story, or a coarse jest--the woman who gossips over every tittle
tattle of scandal which she can pick up against her neighbour--what
do these people do but defile their own souls afresh, after they
have been washed clean in the blood of Christ?  Foul their souls
are, and therefore their thoughts are foul likewise, and the
foulness of them is evident to all men by their tongues.  Out of
their hearts proceed evil thoughts about their neighbours, out of
the abundance of their hearts their mouths speak them.  Now let such
people, if there be any such here, seriously consider the harm which
they are doing to their own characters.  They may give way to the
habits of scandal, or of coarse talk, without any serious bad
intention; but they will surely lower their own souls thereby.  They
will grow to the colour of what they feed on and become foul and
cruel, from talking cruelly and foully, till they lose all purity
and all charity, all faith and trust in their fellow-men, all power
of seeing good in any one, or doing anything but think evil; and so
lose the likeness of God and of Christ, for the likeness of some
foul carrion bird, which cares nothing for the perfume of all the
roses in the world, but if there be a carcase within miles of it,
will scent it out eagerly and fly to it ravenously.

The truth is, my friends, that these souls of ours instead of being
pure and strong, are the very opposite; and the article speaks plain
truth when it says, that we are every one of us of our own nature
inclined to evil.  That may seem a hard saying; but if we look at
our own thoughts we shall find it true.  Are we NOT inclined to
take, at first, the worst view of everybody and of everything?  Are
we NOT inclined to suspect harm of this person and of that?  Are we
NOT inclined too often to be mean and cowardly? to be hard and
covetous? to be coarse and vulgar? to be silly and frivolous?  Do we
not need to cool down, to think a second time, and a third time
likewise; to remember our duty, to remember Christ's example, before
we can take a just and kind and charitable view?  Do we not want all
the help which we can get from every quarter, to keep ourselves
high-minded and refined; to keep ourselves from bad thoughts, mean
thoughts, silly thoughts, violent thoughts, cruel and hard thoughts?
If we have not found out that, we must have looked a very little way
into ourselves, and know little more about ourselves than a dumb
animal does of itself.

How then shall we keep off coarseness of soul?  How shall we keep
our souls REFINED? that is, true and honest, pure, amiable, full of
virtue, that is, true manliness; and deserve praise, that is, the
respect and admiration of our fellow-men?  By thinking of those very
things, says St. Paul.  And in order to be able to think of them, by
reading of them.

There are very few who can easily think of these things of
themselves.  Their daily business, the words and notions of the
people with whom they have to do, will run in their minds, and draw
them off from higher and better thoughts; that cannot be helped.
The only thing that most men can do, is to take care that they are
not drawn off entirely from high and good thoughts, by reading, were
it but for five minutes every day, something really worth thinking
of, something which will lift them above themselves.

Above all, it is wise, at night, after the care and bustle of the
day is over, to read, but for a few minutes, some book which will
compose and soothe the mind; which will bring us face to face with
the true facts of life, death, and eternity; which will make us
remember that man doth not live by bread alone; which will give us,
before we sleep, a few thoughts worthy of a Christian man, with an
immortal soul in him.

And, thank God, no one need go far to look for such books.  I do not
mean merely religious books, excellent as they are in these days:  I
mean any books which help to make us better and wiser and soberer,
and more charitable persons; any books which will teach us to
despise what is vulgar and mean, foul and cruel, and to love what is
noble and high-minded, pure and just.  We need not go far for them.
In our own noble English language we may read by hundreds, books
which will tell us of all virtue and of all praise.  The stories of
good and brave men and women; of gallant and heroic actions; of
deeds which we ourselves should be proud of doing; of persons whom
we feel, to be better, wiser, nobler than we are ourselves.

In our own language we may read the history of our own nation, and
whatsoever is just, honest and true.  We may read of God's gracious
providences toward this land.  How he has punished our sins and
rewarded our right and brave endeavours.  How he put into our
forefathers the spirit of courage and freedom, the spirit of truth
and justice, the spirit of loyalty and order; and how, following the
leading of that spirit, in spite of many mistakes and failings, we
have risen to be the freest, the happiest, the most powerful people
on earth, a blessing and not a curse to the nations around.

In our own English tongue, too, we may read such poetry as there is
in no other language in the world; poetry which will make us indeed
see the beauty of whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.
Some people have still a dislike of what they call foolish poetry
books.  If books are foolish, let us have nothing to do with them.
But poetry ought not to be foolish; for God sent it into the world
to teach men not foolishness, but the highest wisdom.  He gave man
alone, of all living creatures, the power of writing poetry, that by
poetry he might understand, not only how necessary it was to do
right, but how beautiful and noble it was to do right.  He sent it
into the world to soften men's rough hearts, and quiet their angry
passions, and make them love all which is tender and gentle, loving
and merciful, and yet to rouse them up to love all which is gallant
and honourable, loyal and patriotic, devout and heavenly.  Therefore
whole books of the Bible--Job, for example, Isaiah, and the Psalms--
are neither more nor less than actual poetry, written in actual
verse, that their words might the better sink down into the ears and
hearts of the old Jews, and of us Christians after them.  And
therefore also, we keep up still the good old custom of teaching
children in school as much as possible by poetry, that they may
learn not only to know, but to love and remember whatsoever things
are lovely and of good report.

Lastly, for those who cannot read, or have really no time to read,
there is one means left of putting themselves in mind of what every
one must remember, lest he sink back into an animal and a savage.  I
mean by pictures; which, as St. Augustine said 1400 years ago, are
the books of the unlearned.  I do not mean grand and expensive
pictures; I mean the very simplest prints, provided they represent
something holy, or noble, or tender, or lovely.  A few such prints
upon a cottage-wall may teach the people who live therein much,
without their being aware of it.  They see the prints, even when
they are not thinking of them; and so they have before their eyes a
continual remembrancer of something better and more beautiful than
what they are apt to find in their own daily life and thoughts.

True, to whom little is given, of them is little required.  But it
must be said, that more--far more--is given to labouring men and
women now than was given to their forefathers.  A hundred, or even
fifty years ago, when there was very little schooling; when the
books which were put even into the hands of noblemen's children were
far below what you will find now in any village school; when the
only pictures which a poor woman could buy to lay on her cottage-
wall were equally silly and ugly:  then there were great excuses for
the poor, if they forgot whatsoever things were lovely and of good
report; if they were often coarse and brutal in their manners, and
cruel and profligate in their amusements.

But even in the rough old times there always were a few at least,
men and women, who were above the rest; who, though poor people like
the rest, were still true gentlemen and ladies of God's making.
People who kept themselves more or less unspotted from the world;
who thought of what was honest and pure and lovely and of good
report; and who lived a life of simple, manful, Christian virtue,
and received the praise and respect of their neighbours, even
although their neighbours did not copy them.  There were always such
people, and there always will be--thank God for it, for they are the
salt of the earth.

But why have there always been such people? and why do I say
confidently, that there always will be?

Because they have had the Bible; and because, once having got the
Bible in a free country, no man can take it from them.

The Bible it is which has made gentlemen and ladies of many a poor
man and woman.

The Bible it is which has filled their minds with pure and noble,
ay, with heavenly and divine thoughts.

The Bible has been their whole library.  The Bible has been their
only counsellor.  The Bible has taught them all they know.  But it
has taught them enough.

It has taught them what God is, and what Christ is.  It has taught
them what man is, and what a Christian man should be.  It has taught
them what a family means, and what a nation means.  It has taught
them the meaning of law and duty, of loyalty and patriotism.  It has
filled their minds with things honest and just and lovely and of
good report; with the histories of men and women like themselves,
who sinned and sorrowed and struggled like them in this hard battle
of life, but who conquered at last, by trusting and obeying God.

This one story of Joseph, which we have been reading again this
Sunday, I do not doubt that it has taught thousands who had no other
story-book to read--who could not even read themselves, but had to
listen to others' reading; that it has taught them to be good sons,
to be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in
temptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that
it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life;
and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way
of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has
really done more to civilize and refine them--to make them truly
civilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages--than if they
had known a smattering of a dozen sciences.  I say that the Bible is
the book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor,
high and low, and has been doing so for fifteen hundred years; and
that any man who tries to shake our faith in the Bible, is doing
what he can--though, thank God, he will not succeed--to make such
rough and coarse heathens of us again as our forefathers were five
hundred years ago.

And I tell you, labouring people, that if you want something which
will make up to you for the want of all the advantages which the
rich have--go to your Bibles and you will find it there.

There you will find, in the history of men like ourselves--and,
above all, in the history of a man unlike ourselves, the perfect
Man--perfect Man and perfect God together--whatsoever is true,
whatsoever is honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; every
virtue, and every just cause of praise which mortal man can desire.
Read of them in your Bible, think of them in your hearts, feed on
them with your souls, that your souls may grow like what they feed
on; and above all, read and study the story and character of Jesus
Christ himself, our Lord, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory
of the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to
grace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.

And that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the
rich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.



SERMON IX.  MOSES



(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)

EXODUS iii. 14.  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

And now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most
beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible--
excepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ--the story
of how a family grew to be a great nation.  You remember that I told
you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history
of a family.

Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of
people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own
worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as
the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.

Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose
because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of
their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under
crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.

Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and
made them free men.  And how God did that (for God in general works
by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great,
wise, and good man of their race--Moses.

It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange
education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.

Let us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God
trained him to do the work for which God wanted him.

Let us read from the account of the Bible itself.  I should be sorry
to spoil its noble simplicity by any words of my own:  'And the
children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and
multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with
them.  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, Pithon
and Raamses. . . .  And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying,
Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every
daughter ye shall save alive.  And there went a man of the house of
Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.  And the woman conceived
and bare a son:  and when she saw him that he was a goodly child,
she hid him three months.  And when she could no longer hide him,
she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and
with pitch, and put the child therein:  and she laid it in the flags
by the river's brink.  And his sister stood afar off, to wit what
would be done to him.  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash
herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's
side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to
fetch it.  And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold
the babe wept.  And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one
of the Hebrews' children.  Then said his sister to Pharaoh's
daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee?  And Pharaoh's daughter said
to her, Go.  And the maid went and called the child's mother.  And
Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it
for me, and I will give thee thy wages.  And the woman took the
child, and nursed it.  And the child grew, and she brought him unto
Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.  And she called his name
Moses:  and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.'

Moses, the child of the water.  St. Paul in the Epistle to the
Hebrews says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;
that is, adopted by her.  We read elsewhere that he was learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from
his own writings, especially that part called Moses' law.

So that Moses had from his youth vast advantages.  Brought up in the
court of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest
cities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world,
he had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man
could teach him in those old times.

But that would have been little for him.  He might have become
merely an officer in Pharaoh's household, and we might never have
heard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own
people and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had
not been something better and nobler in him than all the learning
and statesmanship of the Egyptians.

For there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a
man believe in God, and trust God.  'And therefore,' says St. Paul,
'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; esteeming
the reproach of CHRIST better than all the treasures in Egypt.'

And how did he do that?  In this wise.

The spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the
spirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong;
which is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any
human being abused and trampled on.

And that spirit broke forth in Moses.  'And it came to pass in those
days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and
looked on their burdens:  and he spied an Egyptian smiting an
Hebrew, one of his brethren.  And he looked this way and that way,
and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid
him in the sand.'

If he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of
rough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.

But he will see fair play among his people themselves.  They are, as
slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome
among themselves.

'And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews
strove together:  and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore
smitest thou thy fellow?  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a
judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the
Egyptian?  And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.
Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.  But
Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of
Midian'--the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.

So he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall
on men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to
deliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute
righteous judgment in the earth.  He had lost all, by trying to do
right.  He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh's court.  Now
he was an outcast and wanderer in the desert.  He had made his first
trial, and failed.  As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed
that his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them
by his hand; but they understood not.  Slavish, base, and stupid,
they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.

And so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years
of age.  Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.

It must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of
Pharaoh's daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and
highly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the
learning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild
Arabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year:  but,
no doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks
alone.  Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt,
and wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him.  Thinking
over the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he
should ever be able to help them.  Thinking, too, and more than all,
of God--of God's promise to Abraham and his children.  Would that
ever come true?  Would GOD help these wretched Jews, even if HE
could not?  Was God faithful and true, just and merciful?

That Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that
forty years, there can be no doubt.

If he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to
him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it
was God who spoke to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not
have obeyed God at the risk of his life, and have gone on an errand
as desperate, dangerous, hopeless--and, humanly speaking, as wild as
ever man went upon.