Jehovah sent his ambassador from the desert to the court of the King of
Egypt, to demand their freedom. During his long exile, most who had
known Moses in his early days, had passed away; and the few that were
left would hardly recognise in the shepherd of the desert, with his
staff for his badge of office--bearing the marks of toil and exposure,
of deep thought and solitary meditation--the young and gallant prince,
the courtier and the warrior of former days. She who had cherished him
had probably been laid in the tomb of her royal race, and the name and
the memory of Moses may have been forgotten in the palace and the court.
Yet there he stood, before the throne which might have been his seat,
the ambassador of the King of kings, bearing the stern message of
Jehovah--"Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the
wilderness." Yet wo after wo was denounced and executed--pledge after
pledge given and violated--and not until one long wail over the dead and
dying resounded through the land were the children of Israel permitted
to leave the land of Egypt. The loss of three millions of subjects, of
their labour, their tribute, and the removal of all their personal
property, would weaken and impoverish the kingdom. Every motive of
policy and pride urged the monarch to resist the demand, and thus he
suffered the penalty due to his contumelious defiance of the God of
Israel, while the judgments inflicted upon him strengthened the faith of
the Israelites. The expulsion of the Moors and of the Jews from Spain,
the banishment of the Huguenots from France, furnish similar though not
parallel cases, in modern ages; and these show that the loss of
peaceful, industrious subjects to a kingdom is like taking the
life-blood from the system. Centuries have passed, yet these nations
have not recovered--and thus Egypt must long have felt her loss.

After the tribes of Israel had passed through the Red Sea, the sister of
Moses again appears before us. When he poured forth that chant of