s found him and I told her that
I would get somebody to nurse him for her. Come, and we may have him
for our own again."

Now, I take it that it was an important event when the Princess decided
that the child was to live. The death sentence had gone out against
him. You know that. The death sentence had been pronounced against
every son of the Hebrews. But an even more important event took place
when the Princess decided who should be the baby's nurse. When she
decided who should have the training of the child, then she decided
what the child was to be. Suppose, for instance, she had determined to
train him herself, she would have made him like herself. Moses would
have become a heathen in spite of the blood in his veins. He was
destined to be a genius, but his genius might have been very far from
being the helpful something that it was. Wrongly trained it might have
been as brilliant as the lightning's flash, but also as destructive.

But this woman chose, all unwittingly, it is true, to give her baby to
be nursed by his own mother. And this Jewish woman was not a heathen.
She was a faithful servant of the Lord. I can see her as she hurries
down to the banks of the Nile. And as she goes there's a wonderful
light in her eyes. And her lips are moving, and she is saying,
"Blessed be the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Israel, who has
heard the prayer of His servant and who has granted the desire of her
heart."

And I love to look again upon this scene. The Egyptian princess is
handing over the precious little bundle of immortality into the arms of
a Jewish slave. And that Jewish slave is hugging her own child to her
hungry heart. And the princess is talking to her proudly, haughtily,
as becomes her rank, "Take this child away and nurse him for me and I
will give thee thy wages." And away goes this mother, the happiest
mother, I think, in all the world.

Now, had you met this mother with her child so wonderfully restored to
her and had asked her whose was the child and for whom she was nursing
it, I wonder what she would have said. I know what the attendants of
the princess thought. I know what they would have said. They would
have said that she was nursing the child for the Princess. They would
have said that the Princess was her employer. They would have said
that Moses was the Princess's baby. But this mother never thought of
it in any such way. She laughed in the secret depths of her hea