THE TIMES WHEN THE PENTATEUCH BEGAN TO BE WRITTEN. MOSES, "THE SERVANT OF GOD." In the first five tracts of this series we have only led our readers to the study of the first book in the Bible, GENESIS, or, "the book of the beginning." But it is a book comprising the story of two thousand three hundred and sixty-nine years, ending with the death of Joseph. In its fifty chapters is included the whole history of the world before the Flood ... 1656 years. ... The space between the Flood and There is no other inspired book which represents such a space of time. The book of EXODUS, or the book of "the going out" from Egypt, comprises but 144 years-and 63 of these up to the birth of Moses are signalized by one event recorded in the first chapter; that vast multiplication of the people of Israel, which was so grievous to the new king of Egypt, who "knew not Joseph," and which led to his murderous edict to destroy all their new born sons. Among these babes devoted to destruction, one, strange to say, is saved by Pharaoh's own daughter. There is an obelisk at Thebes, which is still standing, while the colossus of Rameses lies low. On this obelisk are inscribed such titles as "Lady of both Countries;" "Great Royal Sister;" "PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER!" There is but one queen regent in the royal lists, and this is therefore doubtless the "Pharaoh's daughter" of Exodus, the princess Termuthis, who had power to influence a jealous priesthood to initiate Moses, her supposed heir, in all the wisdom of Egypt. From her Moses receives his Egyptian name, which signifies, "drawn out of the water." He was a "goodly child," "exceedingly fair," having a body and mind prepared of God for the especial inhabitation of His Divine Spirit (Isa. lxiii. 11), and perhaps his greatest qualification for this matchless privilege, also given him of God, is outlined by another hand in the transcription of his book of Numbers. In chapter xii., verse 3, it is remarked, within parentheses, as it could not have been by himself: "(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men who were upon the face of the earth.) The scribe who closes the book of Deuteronomy, declares, "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." The author of all evil had said to the first pair when tempting them to eat of the forbidden fruit, "Ye shall be as gods," but he had no power keep such delusive promise to his victims. What does the Lord say to Moses? to "Thou shalt be to thy brother Aaron instead of God." (Ex. iv. 16.) "And see, I have made thee as a God to Pharaoh" (Ex. vii. 1); and behold it was so. Moses was made the first worker of miracles in the world's history. The Lord had chosen "a people," and He had now prepared them a leader, for whom He ordained during the first forty years of his life the education of a court, and a training in whatever wisdom was left in idolatrous Egypt; an advantage which was likely to have been counterbalanced by the "pleasures of sin," had not Jehovah given him a heart to renounce them, and possibly to forego the heirship of the Egyptian crown. "By faith......choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God......and esteeming the reproach of CHRIST greater riches than the treasures of Egypt......by faith too forsaking Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king." (Heb. xi. 25—27.) The day of Christ which Abraham saw, in vision of the future, must also therefore have been revealed to Moses. ; From the tuition of the palace, however, Moses was withdrawn by the hand of his Mightiest Teacher, when forty years of age, and sent, as we learn from Acts vii. 30, for just as long a space of time, to be a stranger in the wilderness of Arabia -in the simplicity of desert and shepherd life, to forget much probably, and learn more here his mind was enriched by meditation, and his soul fed in obscurity and solitude. It may have been here that the Spirit of the living God instructed and prepared him to write the Book of Genesis, from whose first page a child may learn more in an hour than all Egypt's wise men knew without it by the study of their lives. Perhaps Moses possessed earlier documents, handed down through his grandfather Levi; but whether he did or not, the "Lord was with him" in his task, and has preserved the fruit of his inspired labour to this day. He wrote the only ancient history we can trust, the one by which all others must stand or fall. In that long calm oasis of his shepherd life, how the pictures of Egypt must have passed before his memory! The land of Midian lay around the eastern gulf of the Red Sea, and was supposed to have been settled by the posterity of Midian, fourth son of Abraham and Keturah. You will find it marked in two places in the maps of Arabia and Eastern Palestine, pp. 14 and 44. The Midianites were a wandering race, like the Ishmaelites, and were scattered along the district north of Arabia, and east of the Jordan. They had a patriarchal priest or prince named Jethro, his seven daughters watered their flock by a well, like Rachel of old; and when Moses, like Jacob, assisted them in their task, they supposed him an Egyptian. One of those seven daughters, Zipporah, became his wife, and the name of the firstborn son proclaimed the father's feeling, Gershom, "a stranger here," for as he kept the flock of his father-in-law, his heart must often have ached at the stray tidings of the oppression of Israel. His people were in a "furnace of iron" (Deut. iv. 20), and their "sigh" and "cry," came up into the ear of God, while he, their brother, was breathing the free air of the wilderness, till the second course of his education among those sands and mountains had tamed down the fire of his early indignation, and till he became the meekest man upon earth. Surely then and there he must have studied the patience and impatience of Job; and what human history could better have prepared him for the mission of his forty years to come. He would also, it is probable, in the desert have been refreshed by the patriarchal piety of Jethro, his father-in-law, for we are much disposed to believe with Dr. Bonar, that Jethro was one of those |