have been dropped early into his tender mind. This hired Hebrew nurse, permitted to come into the royal palace by some back-way, was indulged this privilege freely, we know not precisely how long; but let us presume that the same faith and prayer kept this door open, at least for her occasional visits in his future years. How many testimonies of God’s love to the fathers of their nation she dropped into his youthful ear; how much she told him of God as “the exceeding great reward” of his believing people; how well she put the contrast between “the treasures of Egypt” and the treasures laid up for God’s then persecuted people:――these points are rather left to our inference than definitely stated; but we may be very sure that the faith of Moses took hold of these grand truths of then extant revelation; fixed its hold early; and held fast through all his future life. We have three co-ordinate narratives of the early years of Moses: that given in Heb. 11: 24–27, very brief, and touching only its specially religious side; while that of Stephen (Acts 7: 20–29) is full, even somewhat more full than the narrative in Ex. 2: 10–15. Particularly Stephen adds that Moses was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words and in deeds”――a man like Joseph of immense efficiency:――also that he was “full forty years old” when it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel――a statement which shows that he distinctly recognized this relationship of brethren. Seeing a brother Hebrew abused by an Egyptian he interposed, smote the Egyptian dead, and buried him in the sand. Stephen’s words suggest that this was not merely one of those quick, spontaneous impulses felt by noble souls in view of outrageous wrong, but was a first step toward a contemplated career of interposed force for the rescue of his people from their oppression. “For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not” (Acts 7: 25). The whole of the fact seems to be that the Lord was not yet ready and had not fully prepared Moses for this great life-work of his yet, and certainly had not inaugurated him into it.[27]――――Interposing the next day in a quarrel between two of his own Hebrew brethren, he learned that his slaying of the Egyptian was known, and immediately sought safety by flight to the land of Midian. The Lord had more objects than one in turning his steps thither; not only his then present safety, but the spiritual culture of so much solitude and of long-continued, unbroken communion with God and of long tried faith, coupled with the incidental advantage of becoming perfectly familiar with that great wilderness through which he was to lead the hosts of Israel for forty years.