gratitude; and well may we believe that the man of God sought some solitude where he might disburden his heart by pouring forth his thanks to the Almighty Deliverer.* But

the joy and the gratitude had hope as well as reality for their basis; and wherever hope is found, fear is not far off. And so there would.arise the anxious thought, "What next?" And the next step could not be determined until the ultimate aim was clearly seen and definitively resolved on. Without delay, therefore, must Moses have given himself to meditation, in order to learn clearly what was before him. But this he could not learn until he had surveyed what was around him. His present condition would determine his future course.

Moses had a fixed and unalterable purpose. That purpose was the deliverance of the children of Israel. In part, this had been effected. But a horde of fugitive slaves is not a free people. The rescue of his fellow-bondsmen from the hands of Pharaoh was but the first step of a series. The next step was to secure their safety. When this was effected, they might begin to coalesce and grow into a community. Once a community, they might, with the aid of religion, become a people, and grow up into a nation. For this end, however, they would need a country. Such an inheritance had been indicated and promised by the word of Him by whom Pharaoh and his hosts had just been overwhelmed. Into Canaan, therefore, must Moses conduct his people. That land of their fathers was to be their home, and in that home would Jehovah's grace be fulfilled in the growth of those children into maturity. The purpose, then, which Moses had, was to lead the Israelites into Canaan, in order that there they might become God's people; that is, a people organised under the divine hand, and obedient to the divine will.

In order to accomplish this his purpose, Moses had first of all to establish his people in a place of security. An arm of the sea was indeed between them and their oppressors; but the might of Egypt, though struck down, was not destroyed. Soon would the land ring with a cry for vengeance. Soon, therefore, would Egypt muster its remaining strength, and set in movement its allies and dependents. Those were found

* The narrative presupposes an acquaintance with "Israel and the Pyramids," "The Plagues of Egypt," and "The Exode," already published, and which are still on sale, either separately or in vol. 1.

alike on the north and the south of the spot where Moses deliberated with himself. If he cast his thoughts in the direction of Canaan, Egyptian strongholds bristled on his sight. If he turned his thoughts toward the sanctuary of Horeb, he beheld Amalek ready to fall on his undisciplined bands. Yet flight toward the north was as undesirable now as it was when She quitted Rameses. Beyond a doubt, his all but unarmed myriads would be cut to pieces if he tried to strike into Canaan by the Wady-el-Arish. No better fate could he expect, if, taking the pilgrim route across Arabia Petræa, he endeavoured to pass from Suez to Akaba, in order thence to advance northwardly into Canaan. A third road was not without promise. That road ran along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez. The danger here was, that he might even unexpectedly come into collision with the Amalekites, who roamed at large over the interior of the Sinaitic Peninsula, which they considered their own, and which as their own they would be eager to defend against invaders. Besides, animosity, which ran back for centuries, made Amalek, a descendant of Edom, but too glad of an opportunity to deal a blow on his kinsman* Israel. There was, however, no alternative, and the peril must be incurred. Possibly, by keeping near to the sea, Moses might escape attack, or at least postpone the hour of trial until he was less unprepared. The risk, however, great as it might be, he must encounter, for he was under a command from God to conduct the people, when set free by the divine arm, to "the mount of God." This obligation was paramount. With Moses, God's will was law. If only, with Jehovah's aid, he could place the people in the heart of Sinai, he would gain the security he deșired. In that natural stronghold he could easily keep even a powerful enemy at bay, and might, by judiciously choosing his time, assail and destroy his foes. Once in a place of safety, the people would begin to rise into a nation.

Moses could not fail to be painfully impressed with the necessity of conducting the Israelites through a long and varied course of discipline. The full extent of that necessity he may have learnt only by sad experience afterwards. But what were they? Slaves with their chains struck off. The brand of slavery had eaten into the heart's core of the bulk of

* Gen. xxxvi. 12, 16.

the people. To the depravations of slavery were added the depravations of idolatry. Not easily could the consequent evils be rooted out. That difficult task achieved, God and his law had to be planted in those gross and stony hearts. Evidently the process was long, the labour was great, and success could be hoped for only under very favourable circumstances. In Sinai-the school appointed by Jehovah himself— might the requisite discipline be found. To Sinai, therefore, must the people be conducted.

These considerations, when taken together, show how arduous was the task on which Moses was about to enter. Never, perhaps, in the whole course of history, before or since, was a more difficult labour undertaken. The mere conception of such an enterprise bespeaks in Moses a noble mind. There is a fine moral daring in the assumption of so onerous an office. And the execution of its duties, which we can now look back and behold fully completed, merits, as it awakens, the highest admiration. But who can at all appreciate the solicitude of his mind when Moses first realised to himself the magnitude and difficulty of his labour? Let us distinctly, as we ought, acknowledge that but for his deep and intense religiousness, he never could have adventured on the duty. Certainly, without God's constant aid and care, he would by no means have accomplished his purpose; and his entire and confiding reliance on divine succour and guidance which the enterprise supposes, must impress the thoughtful reader with a very high sense of the character of the Hebrew legislator. Beyond & doubt Moses was pre-eminent among those great men whom, from time to time, Providence raises up to execute the grandest of purposes, in the emancipation of a people, the foundation of a commonwealth, the commencement of a new order of civilization. Nay, even deeper and more pervasive than any of those great ordinal changes was the social revolution brought to pass by Moses; for he taught a nation to know, reverence, and serve the true God. And as this great fact first explains the grandeur of the enterprise, so does it afford sufficient reason for that series of wonderful doings on the part of God. which, beginning with the plagues of Egypt, was continued during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and did not terminate till the sons of faithful Abraham were established in their promised inheritance. The magnitude of those facts,

and the truth of those reflections, can, however, be adequately understood only when the student has made himself acquainted with the country, on the north-western boundary of which the deliverer and the delivered now stand in our narrative.

The Peninsula of Sinai is a tongue of land belonging to Arabia Petræa, the northern portion of which it has for its base. This tongue of land may be said to have for its northern border the Hadji or pilgrim road, which runs from Suez to Akaba, where, suddenly turning southwards, it proceeds to Mecca. Immediately south of that road, the country begins to rise into a succession of elevated plains or table-lands, bearing as their general designation, on the west, the name of Jebel-et-Tyh, and on the east, Jebel Edjme. These desert plateaux have for their immediate termination a continuous range of lofty hills, curved in the shape of a crescent, which reaches on the east from Akaba, and on the west from the vicinity of Suez. Springing from the sides of this crescent another range, similar in outline, ascends in a southerly direction, to form the basis of support to the vast group of mountains of which Sinai proper (Jebel Tor Sina) is made up. That group or nest is one of the most singular of natural formations. Resembling a crest or cockscomb in general contour, it consists of a number of long mountain masses, based on a central line, and running on one side of the line south-west by south, and on the other, south-east by east. The central line goes on rising in a southerly direction, till within a short distance it has passed from an elevation of 5451 feet (at the Convent of Sinai) to an elevation of 9500, in a peak to which geographers have not given a name. From this suddenly-attained altitude, the mountains have a rapid descent until they end in Ras Mohammed, which is little above the Red Sea, over which it impends. The extent to which this natural stronghold of Jebel Tor Sina is raised into the air and insulated from the world, may be estimated when the fact is known that, from the sea level at Suez to the highest point in the group, the direct distance is not more than some eighty miles.

It is along the western side of this tongue that the Israelites travelled. This western side is lined by a succession of rock masses, which, as they go southward, rise into mountains; being at Jebel Rahah, about twenty miles from Suez, 300 feet high, and at Jebel Serbal, where the great elevations begin,

4800 feet high. This constantly rising natural wall, which for the most part runs at a considerable distance from the sea, is ever and anon intersected, to give a channel to some brook or torrent, coming down from the high lands of the interior. Hence a succession of valleys or water courses, called, in Arabic, wadys; and up these wadys travellers may pass into the heart of the country. The whole district is a stupendous mass of upheaved mountains, which at first appear thrown together without connexion or order, forming a real labyrinth, through which and out of which no clue could lead. Yet is it the seat of law, no less than the open plain or the luxuriant glen. The inmost recesses have been threaded for the chief purposes of existence-traffic, science, and religion. Roads run through it in almost every direction. If along the western side you are limited to the sea-shore, you soon have the option of keeping that line to the extremity of the peninsula, and even of pursuing it round the headland to the east and the north, or you may strike into the interior, and make your way into what we have termed the nest of Sinai, by at least three lateral routes. Of these, one begins more in the north, in Wady Useita, and passing a little to the north of the ancient Egyptian colony Surrabit, terminates directly in front of the Convent of Sinai; another (the lower), commencing a little to the south of the former, runs along the very interesting Wady Feiran, and leaving Mount Serbal on the south-west, spreads out into the capacious vale of er-Rahah, immediately below the spot where probably the law was promulgated; and a third route, keeping nearer the sea-board, and passing over the vast and desert plain el-Kaa (Sin), breaks into the Sinaitic group either up Wady Hebran, Wady Salih, or some other of the southern vales.

As there are, at least, three roads into this huge natural fastness, so are there, of course, as many out of it. The three which we have specified lie on the western side; on the eastern there are others. Let us, however, fancy ourselves in the very centre of these groups; how are we to make our way back into the midst of social life, supposing that, like Moses, we have a preference for the eastern side? Two chief roads offer themselves. We may quit Jebel Tor Sina by the Wady Sheikh, cross over the plain el-Huderah (Hazeroth), and then taking a directly northern course, traverse the desert till we reach the southern boundary of Canaan (Moses' route); or,