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THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT.

WHEN Joseph, and Pharaoh, who had made him governor of Egypt, were dead, and the generation that had witnessed the wisdom by which the state had been preserved, during the terrible famine, had passed away, the memory of the miracles wrought by the God of Israel gradually became obscure, and was at last regarded as a superstition; which if not wholly false in its origin, had at least been rendered more marvellous in its descent through a long course of years.

The king who had succeeded to the throne of Pharaoh had no knowledge of Joseph nor his deeds; and as the children of the good viceroy had attached themselves to the race of their father, and had not mingled with the princes of Egypt, among whom they were born, and with whom they might have occupied a place in the councils of the kingdom, there was no tie between the foreign inhabitants of Goshen and the Egyp

tians. The latter, therefore, seeing the rapid increase of the Hebrews, became jealous of their power, and feared that eventually they would be able to supplant the aboriginal inhabitants. Even the king partook of these fears of his subjects, and argued thus with his ministers: "The people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Let us deal wisely with them, therefore, lest they multiply, and when there falleth out a war, they unite with our enemies and fight against us."

Accordingly, in order to afflict the Israelites, and to prevent their growth, task-masters were appointed, to compel them to labour as slaves, for the king; and they worked as builders, and built for him the treasure-cities of Pithom and Rameses. Nevertheless, the more they were oppressed the more numerous they became. It seemed in vain that the Egpytians exacted the most rigorous services, and made the lives of the children of Israel bitter with hard bondage; both in making bricks, in building, and in field service, the Lord was with his chosen people, and caused them to prosper in spite of all human efforts to prevent them.

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When the new king, whose name, like that of several of his predecessors, was Pharaoh, saw that his harsh measures were unavailing to depress the Israelites, he published a decree, that every male child, which should be born of Hebrew

parents, should be immediately destroyed. For a time this cruel law was evaded; but Pharaoh grew furious, and adopted the strictest precautions for the enforcement of his will; so that, eventually, many innocent children were thrown into the Nile, and perished.

While this law was in operation, Jochebed, the wife of Amram, of the family of Levi, had a son; a strong and beautiful child, whose birth she was enabled, for three months, to conceal from all the searchers; but at the end of that time she could no longer hide her infant, and, submitting to dreadful necessity, she made an ark, or covered basket of bulrushes, and daubing it with slime and pitch, so as to exclude the water, she put the child therein, and, ere the morning had broke, laid it in the flags by the river's brink. It may be thought how agonized a mother's heart would be, to part with her young babe; to lay him where the green crocodile might come and devour him, or the tide rise and bear him away to die amid the weltering waters. The mother wept, and returned to her dwelling to mourn her loss in secret; but she had a daughter who was grown up, and this maiden watched at a distance, on the bank of the river, to see what should become of the infant.

It came to pass in the morning, that the king's daughter, with her train of female attendants, came to the place to bathe ;

and seeing the ark among the rushes, it was fetched, and the desolate child found therein,

-Smiling in his tears,

As when, along a little mountain lake,

The summer south-wind breathes with gentle sigh,

And parts the reeds, unveiling, as they bend,

A water-lily, floating on the wave."

The princess, although she knew that the babe must be a child of the Hebrews, had compassion on its helpless innocence, and calling to her its sister, who had now drawn nigh, bade her call a Hebrew nurse, to tend it. The maid hastened and brought the babe's mother; to whom the daughter of Pharaoh confided her foundling, saying, "Take the child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee wages.' So the mother, with ill-repressed joy, took her infant son home again, and nurtured him with the utmost tenderness. This child was named by Pharaoh's daughter, Moses, which means drawn forth;" because he had been snatched from destruction in the river. And the princess adopted the child; and when he was able to walk took charge of him, and caused him to be educated by the priests and wise men, in all the mysterious learning, the arts and divinations, which were taught in the temples and schools of Egypt. But Moses had been taught the secret of his parentage by his mother, and his affections

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clave to his own race and kindred; and he looked with sorrow and bitterness on the oppression of his countrymen.

It happened when Moses was grown, that as he walked amid the Israelites, musing on their burdens, he beheld a savage task-master applying the lash to one of his unfortunate slaves; and the wrath of the young Hebrew foundling was kindled, and, having ascertained that none but the beaten man was nigh, he rushed upon the Egyptian, whom he slew and buried in the sand. In barbarous countries such events are not uncommon, and the loss of a man occasions little public inquiry. Moses, consequently, was not unreasonable in hoping that his crime would escape detection, seeing that it was as much the interest of the slave, whom he had delivered, as his own, to conceal the murder. But when he a second time went among his brethren, and reproved two Hebrews whom he saw quarelling, he became convinced that he had reckoned too much on secrecy, for he was answered with a bitter taunt: "Who made thee a prince and judge over us? Wilt thou kill us as thou didst the Egyptian?" Then he was stricken with fear, saying, "Surely the thing is known," and he fled towards the great desert; not unnecessarily, for Pharaoh, having heard what he had done, sought to put him to death.

It was the special providence of the Almighty that preserved

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