d the Hivites, and the Jebusites.'

Then followed a strange conversation. Moses was terrified at the
thought of what he had to do, and reasonably: moreover, the
Israelites in Egypt had forgotten God. 'And Moses said unto God,
Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto
them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall
say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God
said unto Moses, I Am that I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say
unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.'

I Am; that was the new name by which God revealed himself to Moses.
That message of God to Moses was the greatest Gospel, and good news
which was spoken to men, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ay, we are feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our
liberty, our religion and our morals, our peace and prosperity, in
the happiness of our homes, and I trust that of our consciences, the
blessed effects of that message, which God revealed to Moses in the
wilderness thousands of years ago.

And Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and
returned into the land of Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, 'Thus saith the
Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, Let my son go that he may
serve me, and if thou let not my firstborn go, then I will slay thy
firstborn.'

A strange man, on a strange errand. A poor man, eighty years old,
carrying all that he had in the world upon an ass's back, going down
to the great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world, the great
conqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his name means), one of the
greatest Pharaohs who ever sat on the throne of Egypt; in the midst
of all his princes and priests, and armies with which he had
conquered the nations far and wide; and his great cities, temples,
and palaces, on which men may see at this day (so we are told) the
face of that very Pharaoh painted again and again, as fresh, in that
rainless air, as on the day when the paint was laid on; with the
features of a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by power
till he thought himself, and till his people thought him a god on
earth.

And to that man was Moses going, to bid him set the children of
Israel free; while he himself was one of that very slave-race of the
Israelites, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who held them
all as lepers and unclean, and would not eat with them; and an
outcast too, who had fled out of Eg