What part Miriam took in the care of her illustrious brother while in the arms of his mother-nurse, we are not told, but we may well believe her sisterly love was strong and unwavering during the years while the precious charge was in the care of the mother. But there was a long period of eighty years between the infancy of Moses and his return from the desert of Midian, so that the clear-eyed and sprightly girl had grown away from the buoyancy of youth during the years of his exile, and must have been nearly, if not quite, a hundred years old, when God’s chosen people were led out of the iron furnace of bondage, a fact we must not lose sight of in the brief narrative of this noble woman in White Raiment. Her age may, in part at least, account for the high position given her. “The sister of Aaron,” is her biblical distinction which she never lost. In Numbers xii, 1, she is placed before Aaron, and in Micah vi, 4, reckoned as one of the three deliverers of God’s chosen people, “I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam.” Hence it is quite evident that she had no small part in the redemption of the house of Israel from the land of oppression. Whether or not the prejudices of that day gave her full honor, the Lord admitted her to the triumvirate of deliverance, the three children of the brave, faithful Jochebed. She was also the first person in her father’s house, and the first woman in the history of God’s people to whom the prophetic gifts are directly ascribed. “Miriam the prophetess,” is her acknowledged title in Exodus xv, 20. She stood, as the leader of Hebrew women, appropriately by the side of the future conductor of the religious service. [Illustration: MIRIAM’S SONG OF TRIUMPH.] In the song of triumph which the children of Israel sang after their passage of the Red Sea, Miriam, with cymbal in hand, led the women in their part of the glad song of deliverance. It does not appear how far the Hebrew women joined in the song, that is, the part led by Moses, but in the antiphony, Miriam repeats the opening words, in the form of a command to the women, saying, “Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.” “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea! Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free! Sing, for the pride of the tyrant is broken; His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave; How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken, And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.