How can Moses call himself slow of speech and of a slow tongue, when Stephen distinctly declares that he was mighty in word as well as deed? (Acts vii. 22). Perhaps it is enough to answer that many years of solitude in a strange land had robbed him of his fluency. Perhaps Stephen had in mind the words of the Book of Wisdom, that “Wisdom entered into the soul of the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful kings in wonders and signs.... For Wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb, and made the tongues of them that cannot speak eloquent” (Wisdom x. 16, 21). To his scruple the answer was returned, “Who hath made man’s mouth?... Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.” The same encouragement belongs to every one who truly executes a mandate from above: “Lo, I am with you alway.” For surely this encouragement _is_ the same. Surely Jesus did not mean to offer His own presence as a substitute for that of God, but as being in very truth Divine, when He bade His disciples, in reliance upon Him, to go forth and convert the world. And this is the true test which divides faith from presumption, and unbelief from prudence: do we go because God is with us in Christ, or because we ourselves are strong and wise? Do we hold back because we are not sure of _His_ commission, or only because we distrust ourselves? “Humility without faith is too timorous; faith without humility is too hasty.” The phrase explains the conduct of Moses both now and forty years before. Moses, however, still entreats that any one may be chosen rather than himself: “Send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send.”