banished man, under the shadow of the rocks of the wilderness, how
strange, how incomprehensible must have seemed the events of his past
life. The visions of his youth, the splendour and warlike pomp of the
army or the pageant of courts, must have come over his soul like a
dream. Even to us how strange seems this long sojourn in the
wilderness, this enforced inactivity and apparent uselessness. Yet the
God of Israel was promoting his own designs both among his people and in
the heart of him who was to be their leader--weaning them from their
place of abode, and preparing them for their departure, and fitting
Moses to be their leader, guide, ruler, and lawgiver. Each dispensation
of his providence, each passing occurrence, all the thoughts, the
emotions, the solitary meditations, the reverential communion, the
occasional intercourse with the few dwellers of the desert,--like the
strokes, slight and almost imperceptible in their effect, which the
block receives from the hand of the sculptor,--all were fitting the
apparently exiled Hebrew for his high vocation as a prophet and
legislator.

And it is often thus. For many years may Jehovah be preparing his
instruments for that event to which he destines them, and which they
may then speedily accomplish. Yet this work in the soul, by which man is
prepared to co-operate with his Maker, is silent, unseen, unmarked, so
that often we may account this time as lost. And man, ignorant of his
future destiny, and of the state to which he is to be called, will ever
find it his true wisdom carefully to fulfil the present duty and to aim
at deriving instruction and benefit from each dispensation of Divine
providence, and from the ordering of each event of his life.

In the careful provision made for the training of Moses, in the various
instrumentalities used to prepare him for his appointed trust, we are
taught that by no miraculous intervention does God supersede the
necessity of the improvement of the faculties he has bestowed. The more
enlightened the understanding, the more the powers of reason are
cultivated, the more intelligently can man serve his Creator, and the
more entirely does he co-operate in the designs of Infinite Wisdom. God
does not bestow, by direct inspiration, that wisdom or knowledge which
is to be gained by the diligent cultivation of the natural faculties, to
save man the fatigue and labour of the acquirement. Those upon whom he
has most richly bestowed the gif