The Bible account of the birth and preservation of Moses has the usual quality of Scripture narratives; it is very brief and very stimulating to the imagination. Who of us has not seen in childhood the old Nile with its reeds and rushes, its background of temples and pyramids? We have shared the tremors of the mother and sister while the little one was launched in the frail ark. Probably some report of the kindness of the Princess had inspired a trembling hope. The mother dares not stay to guard her treasure, lest she draw cruel eyes upon it; but the little Miriam, as a child playing among the tall reeds, can remain on the watch without attracting attention. In the scene where the helpless stranger is discovered by the Princess, we have, in the movements of the sister, all the characteristics, in miniature, of the future leader of Israel. Prompt, fearless, with an instantaneous instinct as to the right thing to be done at the critical moment, we can see the little Hebrew maid press forward amid the throng surrounding the alarmed and crying child. The tradition is that an Egyptian woman, at the command of the Princess, tried to quiet him at her breast, and that the young prophet indignantly rejected the attempt,--a statement which we who know babies, whether prophetic or otherwise, may deem highly probable. Then spoke up the little Miriam: "Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?" This was a bold proposal, but it succeeded. Perhaps the small speaker had some of the wonderful beauty of her infant brother to set off her words: at all events, the Princess seems at once to have trusted her with the commission. We may readily believe the little feet had not far to go. The child comes back to his mother's bosom as a royal ward. We see here in the child Miriam great self-poise and self-confidence. She is not afraid of royalty, and, though of an enslaved and despised race, is ready to make suggestions to a queen. These are the traits of a natural leader, and we shall see them reappearing later in the history of Miriam. It was customary among the Oriental races to prolong the period of nursing two or three years, and Moses was thus in the care of his mother and elder sister for a long time. Josephus gives the tradition current among the Jews, that the child was a wonderfully attractive one,--so beautiful, that every one who beheld him turned to look at him. The mother and sister looked upon him as the visible pledge of God's mercy to their suffering people, as well as the visible answer to prayer. The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in whose hand are all hearts, had made a refuge for the young Deliverer in the very family of the destroying tyrant!