EXPOSITION XI. EXODUS iv. 18-24. 18. And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father in law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. 19. And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life. 20. And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand. 21. And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go. 22. And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn : 23. And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn. 24. And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. And now Moses, having obtained full consent of his father-in-law, no longer hesitates to un dertake the arduous mission wherewith he was charged, but, taking his wife and children, returns into the land of Egypt. The remarkable incident, so briefly and mysteriously alluded to in the verses we have read, as befalling Moses on his journey, when the Lord sought to kill him, seems to infer that even Moses had been forgetful of the only ceremonial duty, viz. that of circumcision, which the Almighty had hitherto laid upon his people; and that had it not been, as we find from the following verses, for the promptitude of the wife of Moses, who was therefore evidently a worshipper of the God of Israel, he would have fallen a victim to the awakened anger of the Almighty. The whole story conveys a most important lesson to the Christian; for nothing can mark more distinctly, that God will not overlook the slightest neglects of his people, or even of the most honoured and most useful of his instruments, than the fact here revealed to us, that he was about to slay, and for what might seem to us a very trivial dereliction of duty, that person who, of all the world, appeared to be most essential to the great scheme which the Almighty had in hand. So plainly does the word of God proclaim that he will not overlook the smallest sin, even in the greatest saint; and so certain is it that the in strument is nothing in the sight of God, but that he who could of the very stones of the earth raise up children unto Abraham, also could, without an effort, have replaced even Moses, from among the debased and degraded bondsmen of Israel. EXPOSITION XII. EXODUS iv. 27-31. 27. And the Lord said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him. 28. And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him, and all the signs which he had commanded him. 29. And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel : 30. And Aaron spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people. 31. And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. And It is pleasing to read of the affectionate meeting of the brothers, Moses and Aaron, after forty years of separation. We augur well, at once, for their combined efforts in the great cause in which they were about to embark, when we behold them thus united and attached. if there be one natural feeling which more than another can strengthen the hands of the young, in entering upon life, or brace their hearts for its arduous and difficult duties, it is this bond of family affection: it is the bundle of sticks that cannot be broken; it is the united family which, humanly speaking, can alone prosper. To cherish this feeling we are doubly bound; for it is one of the very few virtues that outlived the fall, and flourishes even in a lost and ruined world. True, that it is greatly in need of a better soil than its root can find in the natural heart, to enable it to withstand the storms and tempests of Earth, and to give it any hope of a revival beyond the grave, and in a more genial and a happier clime: but we would not despise it, even in its rudest state; we would rather thankfully hail it as one of the many proofs, that where sin has embittered and poisoned so much, God has been pleased yet to preserve something undestroyed which can minister so largely to the comfort and happiness of man. Family affec tion, however, can then alone be calculated upon as durable, when it exists, as in the case before us, between those who are united in the same God, and fellow-heirs together of the same salvation. We are told, that after Moses had performed. the signs, of which we read in the last portion of Scripture, in the sight of the children of Israel, that "the people believed;" falsifying, therefore, at once the apprehension of Moses, "Behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice." How constantly does it happen, that the most formidable of our difficulties are thus of our own creation; that a little more faith, a little more energy, a little more perseverance, and all would yield to us. Only be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, and he will say to the most appalling and overwhelming of our difficulties, as he did to those of Zerubbabel of old, "Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain." D |