in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, the only people who at that time had
any human learning. Even in his early life, Moses seems to have been
aware that he was to be sent to put an end to the bondage of his people,
for, choosing rather to suffer with them than to live in prosperity
with their oppressors, he went out among them and tried to defend them,
and to set them at peace with one another; but the time was not yet
come, and they thrust him from them, so that he was forced to fly for
shelter to the desert, among the Midianite descendants of Abraham. After
he had spent forty years there as a shepherd, God appeared to him, and
then first revealed Himself as JEHOVAH, the Name proclaiming His eternal
self-existence, I AM THAT I AM, a Name so holy, that the translators of
our Bible have abstained from repeating it where it occurs, but have put
the Name, the LORD, in capital letters in its stead. Moses was then sent
to Egypt to lead out the Israelites on their way back to the land so
long promised to their fore-fathers; and when Pharaoh obstinately
refused to let them go, the dreadful plagues and wonders that were sent
on the country were such as to show that their gods were no gods; since
their river, the glory of their land, became a loathsome stream of
blood, creeping things came and went at the bidding of the Lord, and
their adored cattle perished before their eyes. At last, on the night of
the Passover, in each of the houses unmarked by the blood of the Lamb,
there was a great cry over the death of the first-born son; and where
the sign of faith was seen, there was a mysterious obedient festival
held by families prepared for a strange new journey. Then the hard heart
yielded to terror, and Israel went oat of Egypt as a nation. They had
come in in 1707 as seventy men, they went out in 1491 as six hundred
thousand, and their enemies, following after them, sank like lead in the
mighty waters of that arm of the Red Sea, which had divided to let the
chosen pass through.