her wonder when the five ladies came at last in sight, walking along the bank, whether they would notice anything, and how she rather thought that they would have passed on, if just then the baby had not begun to cry; and how she herself had contrived to come up as if by chance at the very moment, and how the princess looked so good and pitiful, and how she, the sensible and selfpossessed little Miriam, had offered to run and get a nurse for the noisy unappeasable foundling! And oh how heartfelt would be the thanksgiving to the God of Abraham which arose that evening from beneath the roof of that humble Hebrew dwelling, for the lost one had been found; this their son who had been dead was alive again; the ark of bulrushes was transformed into a golden cradle, and, guided by a Hand Divine, had landed its helpless freight in no monster's jaws, but on the very steps of Pharaoh's throne. Singular preservations like this have marked the infancy of many who afterwards grew memorable. Every one will recall the story of Romulus and Remus, nursed by a wolf, and thus preserved to lay the foundations of Rome and the Roman empire; and the readers of Herodotus will remember how he tells that Astyages ordered his infant grandson to be thrown out into the wilderness, but how a shepherd's wife, whose own babe was dead, adopted the "goodly child," and so saved from the hyænas that Cyrus who was to create the Medo-Persian monarchy, and fill so large a space in history. And every one is now familiar with the legend of our own king Arthur, revived as it has been by the Laureate : "No man knew from whence he came ; Conceding, however, that these tales are legends,-confused echoes, possibly, from the story now under consideration,—it is well to note how often in their precarious outset precious lives have been preserved from imminent danger, and sometimes by what we deem a trivial circumstance. In the beginning of last century, in the house of a London tradesman, a babe was born who looked so inanimate and insignificant that it was taken for granted he was dead, when afterwards gazing at the tiny form an attendant noticed a gentle movement in the chest, and her efforts were rewarded by fostering into life 1 Like Moses, τὸ παιδίον μέγα τε καὶ εὐειδές.—HEROD. i. 112. 2 Tennyson's Idylls, p. 240. For similar stories see Suetonii Augustus, c. 95, and the Tamul tale (referred to by Ewald) in B. Schmid's Zerstreute Blätter (1843), st. 2. the author of The Rise and Progress. Contemporary with Philip Doddridge there was growing up in a parsonage of Lincolnshire a boy of great promise who had already reached his sixth summer, when the rectory took fire; all awoke in time and saved themselves, but the little boy was forgotten, or rather, it was left to God Himself to save him, and the "brand plucked from the burning" grew up to be the founder of English Methodism. A poor woman in the town of Stirling sprang up from her spinning-wheel with an impression on her mind that her child had fallen into a neighbouring well. She was just in time to snatch hold of a lint-white head which had not yet disappeared, but which was no child of her own but the minister's son, Tommy Randall, afterwards abundantly known as the benevolent and noble-minded Dr. Davidson of Edinburgh. We forget it as regards ourselves, but we see and feel it in our children. Surely a special Providence superintends them, and in their hands angels bear them up, lest at any time they dash their foot against a stone. Playing with the cockatrice; putting their hand on the lion's mane; making toys of edge-tools, and rolling down-hill live shells; scrambling up precipices, and falling out from open windows; swept a helpless bundle down the swollen torrent, or picked up from beneath the carriage-wheels; restored from desperate sickness or preserved amidst frightful accidents,-what mother is there who, at some moment, has not felt like the Alpine peasant when she saw the eagle sailing overhead with her infant in its talons? Who that has not once and again shrieked out in helpless agony, and then wildly laughed or wept at the marvellous preservation ? Who is there that has a son grown up who does not acknowledge that he is the child of Providence? And who is there that has grown up himself but says with Addison :— "When in the slipp'ry paths of youth Thine arm, unseen, convey'd me safe, Through hidden dangers, toils, and deaths, And through the pleasing snares of vice, Nobody knows the original name of Amram's second son; the name his parents gave him became entirely superseded and absorbed in the name which the princess gave him. And so any prized possession which we have succeeded in acquiring, or in long retaining, has attached to it, usually speaking, some circumstance of wonder or surprise in its bestowment or restoration. From a thing so small as some earthly possession, up to a thing so great as the salvation of the soul, it is a salvage from the flames; like Joshua the high priest, "a brand plucked from the fire:" it is a gift from the flood, you name it Moses, and say, "Because I drew it out of the water." The time of Moses' birth is one of the most instructive incidents in this history. We have no reason to suppose that the exterminating edict of the king remained in force for any considerable period. It did not exist when Moses' own brother was born, three or four years before, and if it had been in active operation for any length of time, it is utterly impossible that there could have been 600,000 grown-up males ready to accompany Moses in the march from Egypt. Much likelier is it that this was one of those frantic expedients to which despotism resorts in a moment of rage, and which after a while its myrmidons cease to execute, and are right in their calculation that it will not be renewed. Not improbably the decree became a dead letter soon after Moses was taken up and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, and there can be no doubt that it had only newly come forth when Moses was born. In any case, it was the most dismal moment in the history of Israel's bondage-the very noon of Hebrew night; and it was the moment when the man was born who should put an end to it all. Israel's extremity was God's opportunity; and the wrath of Pharaoh wrought the purpose of Jehovah. But for B |