Moses has been saved from the waters of the Nile by Pharaoh's own daughter. He has been brought up at Heliopolis, in the midst of the pomp of the court, and instructed in the sciences of the Egyptian priests. He has served the sovereign of Egypt; he has commanded his troops and made war for him against the Æthiopians. He has received an Egyptian name, Osarsiph, or Tisithen. Everything seems to concur to make him an Egyptian. But he remains a faithful Israelite: true to the faith and to the fortunes of his brethren. Their oppression rouses his indignation; he avenges one of them by killing his oppressor. {176} The victims of oppression, alarmed, disavow Moses, instead of supporting him. Moses flees from Egypt and takes refuge in the Desert, amongst a tribe of wandering Arabs, the Midianites, sprung, like himself, from Abraham. Their chief, the sheick of the tribe, Jethro, called also Hobab, receives him as a son, and gives him his daughter Zipporah in marriage. The proud Israelite, who has declined to remain an Egyptian, becomes an Arab, and leads, several years, the nomadic life of the hospitable tribe. It is now in the peninsula of Sinai that Moses wanders with the servants and flocks of his father-in-law. In the centre of that peninsula, of yore a province in the empire of the Pharaohs, but which had fallen into the possession of the pastoral Arabs, rises Sinai, a mount with which from time immemorial, among the neighbouring tribes, have been connected as many sacred traditions as have ever been assigned to Mount Ararat in Armenia, or the Himalayas in India. In this venerable spot, before a burning bush, Moses, with a heart full of faith, hears God calling him and commanding him to lead his people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. {177} Moses is humble, distrustful of himself, just as Abraham before him had been. "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? ... When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." [Footnote 44] [Footnote 44: Exodus iii. 11, 13, 14.] Moses receives his mission from Jehovah, and feels no other disquietude than arises from the desire to accomplish it.