than all the treasures in Egypt.'
And how did he do that? In this wise.
The spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the
spirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong;
which is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any
human being abused and trampled on.
And that spirit broke forth in Moses. 'And it came to pass in those
days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and
looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an
Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way,
and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid
him in the sand.'
If he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of
rough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.
But he will see fair play among his people themselves. They are, as
slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome
among themselves.
'And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews
strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore
smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a
judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the
Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.
Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But
Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of
Midian'--the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.
So he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall
on men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to
deliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute
righteous judgment in the earth. He had lost all, by trying to do
right. He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh's court. Now
he was an outcast and wanderer in the desert. He had made his first
trial, and failed. As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed
that his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them
by his hand; but they understood not. Slavish, base, and stupid,
they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.
And so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years
of age. Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.
It must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of
Pharaoh's daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and
highly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the
learn
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