re subject
to the servant of Jehovah.

Again, his hand became leprous in his bosom, and was presently restored
to health again--a declaration that he carried with him the power of
death, in its most dreadful form; and perhaps a still more solemn
admonition to those who remember what leprosy betokens, and how every
approach of God to man brings first the knowledge of sin, to be followed
by the assurance that He has cleansed it.[7]

If the people would not hearken to the voice of the first sign, they
should believe the second; but at the worst, and if they were still
unconvinced, they would believe when they saw the water of the Nile, the
pride and glory of their oppressors, turned into blood before their
eyes. That was an omen which needs no interpretation. What follows is
curious. Moses objects that he has not hitherto been eloquent, nor does
he experience any improvement "since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant"
(a graphic touch!), and he seems to suppose that the popular choice
between liberty and slavery would depend less upon the evidence of a
Divine power than upon sleight of tongue, as if he were in modern
England.

But let it be observed that the self-consciousness which wears the mask
of humility while refusing to submit its judgment to that of God, is a
form of selfishness--self-absorption blinding one to other
considerations beyond himself--as real, though not as hateful, as greed
and avarice and lust.

How can Moses call himself slow of speech and of a slow tongue, when
Stephen distinctly declares that he was mighty in word as well as deed?
(Acts vii. 22). Perhaps it is enough to answer that many years of
solitude in a strange land had robbed him of his fluency. Perhaps
Stephen had in mind the words of the Book of Wisdom, that "Wisdom
entered into the soul of the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful
kings in wonders and signs.... For Wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb,
and made the tongues of them that cannot speak eloquent" (Wisdom x. 16,
21).

To his scruple the answer was returned, "Who hath made man's mouth?...
Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and
teach thee what thou shalt say." The same encouragement belongs to every
one who truly executes a mandate from above: "Lo, I am with you alway."
For surely this encouragement _is_ the same. Surely Jesus did not mean
to offer His own presence as a substitute for that of God, but as being
in very truth Divine, whe