The Gospel of the Pentateuch by Charles Kingsley
page 94 of 186 (50%)
page 94 of 186 (50%)
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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 learning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild Arabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year: but, no doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks alone. Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt, and wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him. Thinking over the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he should ever be able to help them. Thinking, too, and more than all, of God--of God's promise to Abraham and his children. Would that ever come true? Would GOD help these wretched Jews, even if HE could not? Was God faithful and true, just and merciful? That Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that forty years, there can be no doubt. If he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to him. If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it |
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