self, our Lord, that, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, you may be changed into his likeness, from grace to grace, and virtue to virtue, and glory to glory.

And that change and that growth are as easy for the poor as for the rich, and as necessary for the rich as for the poor.

SERMON IX.

MOSES.

(Fifth Sunday in Lent).

A

EXODUS iii. 14.

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

ND now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible; excepting, of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ; the story of how a family grew to be a great nation. You remember that I told you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history of a family.

Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes, as the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.

Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being

weak, I suppose because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.

Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and made them free men. And how God did that (for God, in general, works by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great, wise, and good man of their race -Moses.

It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.

Let us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God trained him to do the work for which God wanted him.

Let us read from the account of the Bible itself. I should be sorry to spoil its noble simplicity, by any words of my own:- And the children of 'Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; ' and the land was filled with them. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew 'not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join

' also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and 'so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did 'set over them taskmasters to afflict them with 'their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh trea'sure cities, Pithon and Raamses. . . . And 'Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every 'son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive. And 'there went a man of the house of Levi, and 'took to wife a daughter of Levi. 'woman conceived, and bare a son: 'she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could

And the

and when

no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime. ' and with pitch, and put the child therein; ' and she laid it in the flags by the river's 'brink. And his sister stood

afar off, to wit

And the daugh

'ter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself ' at the river; and her maidens walked along by 'the river's side; and when she saw the ark " among the flags; she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: ' and behold, the babe wept. And she had com'passion on him, and said,

This is one of the

Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to 'Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee

'went and called the child's mother. And 'Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this " child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give 'thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she 'brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he 'became her son. And she called his name

Moses and she said, Because I drew him out ' of the water.'

Moses, the child of the water. St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; that is, adopted by her. We read elsewhere that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from his own writings, especially that part called Moses' law.

So that Moses had from his youth vast advantages. Brought up in the court of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest cities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world, he had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man could teach him in those old times.

But that would have been little for him. He might have become merely an officer in Pharaoh's