and the earthquakes of the deep, to fight their battles and to avenge their wrongs. Thus, when the Egyptians thought themselves sure of their prey; when, by deeds of oppression, insolence, and injury, they threatened the Israelites with utter extermination; it was then that God heard the groaning of His people, and remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob; it was then that God sent them a deliverer, and released them from their bondage, and poured upon their oppressors the vials of His wrath. all tyrants, then, know this: that eternal justice reigns above; that, however slow, vengeance will surely overtake them; that no earthly power can avert their future doom.

Let

Mark again the ways of God towards His servant Moses. From the beginning He had appointed him to be the deliverer of His people. Hence the wonderful manner in which his life was preserved in his infancy, and the remarkable providence which secured for him the highest education that Egypt itself could afford. Now, we might have reasonably expected that God would have allowed him to retain his high position at the court of Pharaoh, and to use the powerful influence which his position gave him, for the benefit of his nation. That would have been, humanly speaking, the most natural mode of proceeding. But no; such was not the will of Heaven;

so that when he interested himself in the welfare of his brethren, he brought himself into difficulties, incurred the displeasure of the king, and was compelled to flee the country to save his own life. Thus the appointed deliverer, when he seemed to be rapidly acquiring the power necessary to accomplish his life's great work, was suddenly degraded into the position of a lowly shepherd, and was doomed for the next forty years to lead a life of obscurity in the wilderness.

But Moses did not rebel against his fate. He did not spend his time in useless lamentations over the past, he did not bewail the apparent waste of his splendid attainments, he did not morbidly brood over the painful contrast between what he was and what he might have been; but with calm endurance and manly resolution, and above all, with meek submission to the will of God, he brought to his humble calling all the energy at his command. And herein lay the secret of his ultimate success; nay, my friends, herein lies the secret of all success—that is, all success worthy of the name. Has your life been hitherto an apparent failure? you met with frequent and bitter disappointments? Is your position now inferior to that which you feel yourself qualified to fill? It is, I confess, a hard lot to bear. But then, remember that you occupy the very position which Divine Providence has

Have

assigned for you. You are neither better nor worse, higher nor lower, than Divine wisdom has intended you to be. To suppose that you ought to be in other circumstances, would be to exalt your own judgment above that of God. Remember also, that you may attain the end of your being in any place; that you may adorn with moral beauty the very humblest sphere; that you may confer upon your position greater dignity than any position could possibly confer upon you. When we read the histories of the world's brightest characters, we seem to forget altogether the social ranks to which they belonged; the dazzling brightness of their heroism, their valour, their truth, makes their outward surroundings of no account; the one prominent fact which forces itself upon our attention is, that they acquitted themselves like men, and won the admiration of all succeeding ages. Who ever stops to reflect that John Bunyan was a tinker; that Paul the apostle was a tent-maker; that Jesus of Nazareth was a carpenter's son? We are content to know that they were men-men of weight, and worth, and power-men whose glorious characters have raised humanity in the scale of being. Be it ours, therefore, not to murmur at our circumstances, but to make the most of whatever circumstances in which we may be placed.

"Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father

in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the back side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb." Such is the simple description of the circumstances under which it pleased God to reveal Himself to His servant, and to call him to the work for which he had been born, It has justly been remarked that this was, on God's part, a significant approval of honest industry. This reminds us that we are to expect God's favour—not in giving ourselves up to sloth, and idleness, and luxury-but in diligently performing the duties of our calling. And, after all, were not the forty years he spent in Midian, however unwelcome they might have been at the time, were they not the best preparation imaginable for the toils, trials, and perplexities of the forty years which followed? Was he not much better qualified to lead the Israelites in the wilderness, after having accustomed himself to the hardships and dangers of a shepherd's life, than if he had been summoned to his post from the ease and comforts of the royal palace? The training to which he was thus subjected was God's training, and God's training is always the best.

It is not an easy matter to determine the exact position of the locality where Moses sojourned at this time. Tradition points to a certain place, but with little probablity in its favour, as it does not answer the conditions of the Scripture narrative.

We are simply told here that he had "led the flock to the back side of the desert," and had come "to the mountain of God, even to Horeb." But the name Horeb has caused no small amount of difficulty to commentators, as it seems to be applied sometimes to Mount Sinai. It has, therefore, been asked, Were Horeb and Sinai the same, and if the same, why should they be spoken of as different? or, were Horeb and Sinai different, and if different, why should they be spoken of as the same? best solution of the question, I think, is to regard Horeb as the name of the mountainous region in which Mount Sinai stood. This will sufficiently account for the fact that the names should be interchanged.

The

The word "desert" here must not be taken in its ordinary sense. It does not mean a vast, uniform, sandy plain, where life in its various forms was entirely absent. It means rather a solitary region, without permanent habitations, where wandering shepherds sought pastures for their flocks. It was such a place as would be peculiarly adapted to hold communion with God, and to meditate upon eternal realities. Those who have sailed for weeks upon the ocean, when surrounded day and night by its deep, dark, far-stretching waters, and impressed on every hand with the immensity of creation, have sometimes been so overpowered by the sublime