unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs.

"And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father

in-law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life. And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go. And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn. And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first born." Exod. iv. 1–23.

The time for the deliverance has come at length. The leader is prepared by long discipline for his arduous office, and the people that are to follow him now cry unto God. Forty years before, they had denounced Moses unto Pharaoh when he smote one of their oppressors. In Egypt also, all who in the remotest degree had favoured Israel are dead, and a heartless profligate and

པ་ག་ཚ་

cruel tyrant wields the thong of the taskmaster. All was ready. Then, and not till then, God will work. Our X impatient struggles and cries avail nothing with him while our sorrows are working for our benefit: that once accomplished, and the fiercest efforts of our enemies cannot for a single moment delay our deliverance.

Call upon the Lord in the time The trouble & he will deliver you

CHAPTER VII.

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.

"AND the Lord said unto Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him.

"And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him, and all the signs which he had commanded him." Exod. iv. 27, 28.

The tribe of Levi is now no longer in the low estate in which the narrative of the birth of Moses displayed it. His adoption by the queen Thouoris, and the appointment of his mother to nurse him as one of the sons of Pharaoh, were distinctions which would not fail to be accompanied with large accessions both of influence and wealth. This would give to Amram and the rest of the elders of Levi the means of protecting the small remnant of their tribe from the tyranny of the Egyptian officers, so as to restore them in some measure to their place among their brethren. Aaron the head and firstborn of Levi, is now a prince in Egypt. He leaves the boundaries of the kingdom, he goes into the presence of Pharaoh at his pleasure. He could have done neither, had he not been of high rank.

The brothers met in Mount Sinai. They will meet

there hereafter. They returned to Egypt together; each as a prince in his own right; for the death of Pharaoh Siphtha took off his proscription of Moses, if it had ever been issued. Such was the law of Egypt.*

It had been in humble guise that Moses set out from Midian. (See verse 20.) But he went forth at God's command, and he bore God's commission: and "them that honour Him, He will honour."

"And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their afflictions, then they bowed their heads and worshipped." Exodus iv. 29-31.

Thirty-seven years before, Moses "supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them, but they understood not." Acts vii. 25. Both Moses and his brethren have suffered much during this interval. Both have learnt much also.

"And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel, Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go." Exod. v. 1, 2.

This was Sethos II.; and we have here another event in his monumental history to relate. It was an act of gross and mad impiety to which the monuments of Egypt have recorded no parallel, in the history of any

* Rosetta Inscription, Greek lines 12-14.

The

other individual that ever lived there. It appears that when the tidings of the death of Siphtha reached Thebes, it became the duty of Sethos as his co-regent and successor, to visit the valley of the kings, for the purpose doubtless of being present at certain ceremonies preparatory to the sepulture. Here the exquisite beauty of the resting-place of his kind and most indulgent relatives Siphtha and Thouoris, and the disgraceful contrast to it, presented by his own slovenly, unfinished. and neglected vault, would be strongly impressed upon him. course he adopted would send a thrill of horror and disgust through the entire of his subjects, of which we can form but a feeble conception. He ordered the names and portraits of his aunt, to whom he owed it that he was king of Egypt, and of his uncle, who had carried on the affairs of the nation for him, and built temples whereon he had inscribed the titles of Sethos to the exclusion of himself, to be covered with stucco, and wrote over them his own recreant name. It would not have been possible to have framed any other act of daring wickedness, whereby the higher and better feelings of ancient Egypt would have been so grossly outraged.

The next act of Sethos II. is recorded in the present passage, and is worthy that which went before it. The answer of the infatuated king to the message from the God of Israel is exactly that which we might have anticipated from the violator of the tomb of his benefactors. The tyrant knew not his country's gods, for he had despised and neglected the elementary precept of their religion regarding his own tomb. He knew not the natural feelings of affection and respect towards his deceased relatives, nor even the still commoner obligation of gratitude to the memories of liberal and disinterested