In contemplating the path of Moses, we observe how that faith led him entirely athwart the ordinary course of nature. It led him to despise all the pleasures, the attractions, and the honors of Pharaoh's court. And not only that, but also to relinquish an apparently wide sphere of usefulness. Human expediency would have conducted him along quite an opposite path. It would have led him to use his influence on behalf of the people of God--to act _for_ them instead of suffering _with_ them. According to man's judgment, providence would seem to have opened for Moses a wide and most important sphere of labor; and surely, if ever the hand of God was manifest in placing a man in a distinct position, it was in his case. By a most marvelous interposition--by a most unaccountable chain of circumstances, every link of which displayed the finger of the Almighty--by an order of events which no human foresight could have arranged, had the daughter of Pharaoh been made the instrument of drawing Moses out of the water, and of nourishing and educating him until he was "full forty years old." With all these circumstances in his view, to abandon his high, honorable, and influential position, could only be regarded as the result of a misguided zeal which no sound judgment could approve. Thus might poor blind nature reason. But faith thought differently; for nature and faith are always at issue. They cannot agree upon a single point. Nor is there anything, perhaps, in reference to which they differ so widely as what are commonly called "openings of providence." Nature will constantly regard such openings as warrants for self-indulgence; whereas faith will find in them opportunities for self-denial. Jonah might have deemed it a very remarkable opening of providence to find a ship going to Tarshish; but, in truth, it was an opening through which he slipped off the path of obedience. No doubt it is the Christian's privilege to see his Father's hand, and hear His voice, in everything; but he is not to be guided by circumstances. A Christian so guided is like a vessel at sea without rudder or compass; she is at the mercy of the waves and the winds. God's promise to His child is, "I will guide thee with Mine eye." (Ps. xxxii. 8.) His warning is, "Be not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding; whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee." It is much better to be guided by our Father's eye than by the bit and bridle of circumstances; and we know that, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, "providence" is only another word for the impulse of circumstances.