utterly given way,
like that of the Psalmist when he saw the wicked in great prosperity,
while waters of a full cup were wrung out by the people of God (Ps.
lxxiii. 3, 10). And there is always a dangerous moment when the first
glow of enthusiasm burns down, and we realise how long the process, how
bitter the disappointments, by which even a scanty measure of success
must be obtained. Yet God had expressly warned Moses that Pharaoh would
not release them until Egypt had been smitten with all His plagues. But
the warning passed unapprehended, as we let many a truth pass
intellectually accepted it is true, but only as a theorem, a vague and
abstract formula. As we know that we must die, that worldly pleasures
are brief and unreal, and that sin draws evil in its train, yet wonder
when these phrases become solid and practical in our experience, so, in
the first flush and wonder of the promised emancipation, Moses had
forgotten the predicted interval of trial.

His words would have been profane and irreverent indeed but for one
redeeming quality. They were addressed to God Himself. Whenever the
people murmured, Moses turned for help to Him Who reckons the most
unconventional and daring appeal to Him far better than the most
ceremonious phrases in which men cover their unbelief: "Lord, wherefore
hast Thou evil entreated this people?" is in reality a much more pious
utterance than "I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord."
Wherefore Moses receives large encouragement, although no formal answer
is vouchsafed to his daring question.

Even so, in our dangers, our torturing illnesses, and many a crisis
which breaks through all the crust of forms and conventionalities, God
may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him, in words which only
scandalise the orthodoxy of the formal and precise. In the bold
rejoinder of the Syro-Phoenician woman He recognised great faith. His
disciples would simply have sent her away as clamorous.

Moses had again failed, even though Divinely commissioned, in the work
of emancipating Israel, and thereupon he had cried to the Lord Himself
to undertake the work. This abortive attempt, however, was far from
useless: it taught humility and patience to the leader, and it pressed
the nation together, as in a vice, by the weight of a common burden, now
become intolerable. At the same moment, the iniquity of the tyrant was
filled up.

But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to the remonstrance of
Mos