ntly found to instruct
him in the history and messianic hopes of Israel, for he knew that their
reproach was that of "the Christ," greater riches than all the treasure
of Egypt, and fraught with a reward for which he looked in faith (Heb.
xi. 26). But what is meant by naming as part of his burden their
"reproach," as distinguished from their sufferings?

We shall understand, if we reflect, that his open rupture with Egypt was
unlikely to be the work of a moment. Like all the best workers, he was
led forward gradually, at first unconscious of his vocation. Many a
protest he must have made against the cruel and unjust policy that
steeped the land in innocent blood. Many a jealous councillor must have
known how to weaken his dangerous influence by some cautious taunt, some
insinuated "reproach" of his own Hebrew origin. The warnings put by
Josephus into the lips of the priests in his childhood, were likely
enough to have been spoken by some one before he was forty years old. At
last, when driven to make his choice, he "refused to be called the son
of Pharaoh's daughter," a phrase, especially in its reference to the
rejected title as distinguished from "the pleasures of sin," which seems
to imply a more formal rupture than Exodus records.

We saw that the piety of his parents was not unhelped by their emotions:
they hid him by faith when they saw that he was a goodly child. Such was
also the faith by which Moses broke with rank and fortune. He went out
unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian
smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. Twice the word of kinship is
repeated; and Stephen tells us that Moses himself used it in rebuking
the dissensions of his fellow-countrymen. Filled with yearning and pity
for his trampled brethren, and with the shame of generous natures who
are at ease while others suffer, he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew.
With that blended caution and vehemence which belong to his nation
still, he looked and saw that there was no man, and slew the Egyptian.
Like most acts of passion, this was at once an impulse of the moment,
and an outcome of long gathering forces--just as the lightning flash,
sudden though it seem, has been prepared by the accumulated electricity
of weeks.

And this is the reason why God allows the issues of a lifetime, perhaps
of an eternity, to be decided by a sudden word, a hasty blow. Men plead
that if time had been given, they would have stifled the imp