am a stranger in a strange land." Different indeed had been the
experience of Joseph, who called his "firstborn Manasseh, for God, said
he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house" (Gen.
xli. 51). The home-life of Moses had not made him forget that he was an
exile. Even the removal of imminent death from her husband could not
hush these selfish complaints of Zipporah, not because he was a father
of blood to her little one, but because he was a bridegroom of blood to
her own shrinking sensibilities. It is Miriam the sister, not Zipporah
the wife, who gives lyrical and passionate voice to his triumph, and is
mourned by the nation when she dies. Both what we read of her and what
we do not read goes far to explain the insignificance of their children
in history, and the more startling fact that the grandson of Moses
became the venal instrument of the Danites in their schismatic worship
(Judges xviii. 30, R.V.).

Domestic unhappiness is a palliation, but not a justification, for an
unserviceable life. It is a great advantage to come into action with the
dew and freshness of affection upon the soul. Yet it is not once nor
twice that men have carried the message of God back from the barren
desert and the lonely ways of their unhappiness to the not too happy
race of man.

Now, who can fail to discern real history in all this? Is it in such a
way that myth or legend would have dealt with the wife of the great
deliverer? Still less conceivable is it that these should have treated
Moses himself as the narrative hitherto has consistently done. At every
step he is made to stumble. His first attempt was homicidal, and brought
upon him forty years of exile. When the Divine commission came he drew
back wilfully, as he had formerly pressed forward unsent. There is not
even any suggestion offered us of Stephen's apology for his violent
deed--namely, that he supposed his brethren understood how that God by
his hand was giving them deliverance (Acts vii. 25). There is nothing
that resembles the eulogium of the Epistle to the Hebrews upon the faith
which glorified his precipitancy, like the rainbow in a torrent, because
that rash blow committed him to share the affliction of the people of
God, and renounced the rank of a grand son of the Pharaoh (Heb. xi.
24-5). All this is very natural, if Moses himself be in any degree
responsible for the narrative. It is incredible, if the narrative were
put together after the Captiv