tempting prospects open in the Egyptian palace to the adopted son of the princess, and to a character already high in public opinion, "mighty in words and deeds1." The fallen state of his countrymen urged him to the heroic desire of rekindling a sense of their dignity" For he supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them 2."

The course of the narrative is strikingly natural. His first act, on returning among them, was to set the example of that conduct by which, in the hasty calculation of a daring and indignant spirit, the deliverance was alone to be effected. He fell, sword in hand, on the first Egyptian whom he saw assaulting an Israelite, and slew him. He had yet to learn, that the deliverance of Israel was to be by a higher agency than the sword of man. But he found on this occasion, that the heart of the people was unequal to the bold attempt of breaking their chains; that he had exposed himself to the royal vengeance for nothing. And, apparently, in the disgust which a gallant and lofty mind would be the first to feel; he threw up the attempt at once, and leaving his degenerate countrymen to their fate, plunged into the desert, and for forty years was lost to the world.

But the ways of God are often memorably dis

Acts vii. 22.

Acts vii. 25.

The Israelite

tinguished from the ways of man. redemption, which was refused to the warrior and the patriot, in the glow of manly feeling and the vigour of manly life; was to be imposed upon the shepherd; in the chill of life and feeling, with his hopes extinguished, and his habits alienated alike from the works of council and the field. At the age of eighty! Moses was summoned from the sheep-fold to take the command of the hosts of Israel. The bold prince and soldier was now shrunk into the "meekest man of the earth." He successively pleaded his obscurity, and his want of eloquence; and when both pleas were refuted, he expressly declined the mission. Then, "the anger of the Lord was kindled," and Aaron was joined with him, as a divider of the honours which he might have possessed alone.

But the original nobleness of his nature had not perished. Habits, views, powers, and purposes, are the creatures of time, and may sink with time. But the native mind is buoyant, and floats above all, to the last. When Moses finally takes upon him the Divine commission, his obedience exhibits the strong sincerity of his character. His resolution is then formed once and for ever. He bids farewell to Midian and its ties; hazards all that is dear to human nature upon the event, and, placing his wife and children on their beasts of burthen, begins his perilous journey, never to

return.

In Egypt, the long affliction of the Israelites had already wrought its natural consequence; the stubborn or insensible spirit which had once repelled the deliverer was subdued. "And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped." But another consequence, equally natural, was combined with this submissiveness; their courage was totally broken. A new demand for their labour, made by the tyrant, suddenly extinguished all their confidence in Moses; and the most solemn promises of deliverance were listened to with alternate scorn and despair. "Thou hast

made our favour to be abhorred in the sight of Pharaoh," was the popular outcry. "They heard not, for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage," are the words of the historian.

With such materials, to achieve any great national act of intrepidity was plainly impossible. The course of Providence in the reinstatement of nations, almost uniformly, is to let them work out their own freedom; thus rendering the struggle a school of the hardihood and intelligence essential to its preservation. But now, for the first time, and the last, in history, the deliverance of a nation was to be wrought without a struggle or a suffering; and, by a not less extraordinary distinction, the instruments throughout were to be two indivi

duals, and but two; and those, without wealth, ancient name, personal vigour, or popular ability -the one an Egyptian slave, the other an Egyptian fugitive, separated from each other for half a century, and both verging on the grave.

The exclusive display of Divine agency in this instance, so unexampled in the general providential government; seems capable of being accounted for only by the peculiar object of the restorationthe establishment of a people as the depositaries of a religion. The impression most important for a purpose of this order would be, the incontestible superiority of the God of that religion. This evidence was to be obtained chiefly by the contest in which Israel was involved with Egypt. The Egyptian king and his religion, totally discomfited by the direct power of the God of the Jews, would supply it in the most ample manner. All the share which human qualities might claim in the victory, must, so far, tend to enfeeble the evidence. And thus, the Ten Plagues are expressly declared to have been inflicted" to show the wrath of Heaven, and to make its power known 1"

1 Rom. ix. 21.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE TEN PLAGUES.

THE learning which has been lavished on the subject of the Plagues of Egypt is boundless; but some of the most natural elucidations of those stupendous displays have still been forgotten'. The point of interest with us, in events so remote, must be chiefly, how far their circumstances give proof of Divine design; a conclusion of equal importance to every era of man. In this light, they supply striking, yet, hitherto, not much observed, testimony.

The succession of the Plagues is distinctly regulated on principle, and that principle the gradation of pain. Of all pain, the lowest class is that which arises from the mere offence of the senses; the next is bodily suffering; the last is mental,— in all its stages, up to preternatural terror, an un

The plagues occupied nearly four months, from the beginning of January to the night of the Passover, in April. The number of the Israelites who marched for Palestine was 600,000 men above twenty with a mixed multitude (probably the children of Egyptian and Israelite marriages); the whole, of all ages, with women and children, amounting to about three millions.