him, and unworthy of freedom. His heart sinks,

the grandeur of courts, military renown, the wisdom of Egypt, are all less in his eyes than even the reproach of a good cause; but he feels himself powerless and alone, rejected by the very people whom he came to serve. Like the Greater Prophet of whom he was the type, "He came unto his own, and his own received him. not."

In sinking of heart and despair, the solitude of the wilderness, its loneliness and stern simplicity, are a refuge and rest to him. In the great calm of nature he draws near to Him who is invisible. What is most peculiar in the character of Moses, with all his advantages of beauty, rank, station, education, and military success, is a singular absence of self-esteem and self-reliance. When the God of his fathers appears in flaming fire and commissions him to go and lead forth his oppressed people, Moses shrinks from the position, and prays that it may be given to another. He is not eloquent; he says, he is of stammering speech and a slow tongue, and he prays the Lord to choose another. How often it happens that the work of the world is thus put upon men who shrink from it, - not from indolence, but from an exalted ideality, a high conception of the work to be done! Moses was dumb and stammering with low-minded, vulgar-natured men, as men who live high up in the radiant air of the nobler feelings often are. How bring his great thoughts and purer feelings down to their conceptions? He must have a spokesman, and evidently regards his brother Aaron as better fitted to take the lead than himself.

Aaron seems to be a specimen of that class of men― facile, sympathetic, easily moved, and with a ready gift of wordswhom greater natures often admire for a facility and fluency which their very greatness denies to them. And yet it is this Aaron who, when Moses had been more than a month absent on the mount, was carried away by the demand of the people to make them a visible god; and who, if his brother had not cast himself down in agony of intercession, would have been swept away by the Divine anger.

In the great scene of the national deliverance, after the passage

MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES.

of the Red Sea, behold Moses and Miriam once more reunited in a grand act of national triumph! A solemn procession goes forth on the shores of the sea, and Moses leads the psalm of thanksgiving. "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, saying, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." The solemn union of man and woman in this great public act of worship and thanksgiving, which inaugurated a free nation, is indicative of the equality given to women by the Divine Being in all that pertains to the spiritual and immortal. "On your sons and your daughters," says the prophet Joel, "I will pour out of my spirit, and they shall prophesy"; and the same passage is quoted by St. Peter as expressive of the genius of the opening Christian dispensation. Thus we find at the opening of the Mosaic, as well as the Christian dispensation, this announcement of the equality of the sexes in their spiritual nature.

Many circumstances make it probable that as Moses and Miriam unitedly led the devotions of the people on this most solemn of national festivals, so they continued to be united in administrative station during that important period when the national code of laws and religious ritual were being crystallized and consolidated. We infer from a passage in the prophet Micah,* that it was not in mere brotherly fondness that Moses would have consulted this sister, who had been to him as a mother, but that she was understood to be one of the divinely appointed leaders of the people, and that he was thus justified in leaning upon her for counsel.

Moses was distinguished above all men we read of in history by a singular absence of egoism. He was like a mother in the midst of the great people whose sins, infirmities, and sorrows he bore upon his heart with scarcely a consciousness of

* Micah, who prophesied in the reign of Hezekiah, represents the Divine Being as thus addressing his people: "I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt; I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam" (Micah vi. 4). This is an indorsement more direct than any other prophetess ever received.

self. He had no personal interests. He was a man so lowly and gentle of demeanor that all his associates felt free to advise him. Thus his father-in-law, Jethro, visiting him in the wilderness, expresses himself with perfect freedom in regard to the excessive toil he is undergoing in the care of the people, and suggests the appointment of elders who should share the work of management. The eighteenth chapter of Exodus is a beautiful picture of the character and demeanor of Moses towards his father-in-law, and of his meek readiness to take advice. It appears that in all the long, laborious journey through the wilderness, Moses felt the burden and the responsibility altogether more than the honor, and there is a despairing freedom in the complaints he sometimes pours out to his God. Thus in one of the periods of national discontent, when the people were all "weeping and murmuring every man in his tent door," Moses says, "Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and why have I not found favor in thine eyes, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people, have I begotten them, that thou shouldst say, Carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness." The answer to this prayer is the appointment of seventy elders, under the care of God, to be sharers in the responsibilities of Moses. This division of responsibility seems to have relieved Moses, and he had not a thought of divided honor, though it at once occurred to others with regard to him. When the gift of prophecy descended upon some of these seventy elders, it seems to have been imagined by some that this honor would take from the dignity of Moses; and we are told (Num. xi. 28, 29), "Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets!" If now

MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES.

we consider this singular meekness and unselfishness of Moses, we may easily see how it might be a temptation to an ambitious, self-asserting spirit to cross beyond the proper limit of advice and counsel into that of tyrannical dictation.

We have seen, in the few scenes where Miriam has appeared, that she had a peculiar, prompt self-assertion and ready positiveness which made leadership a necessity and a pleasure to her. She was a woman to court rather than shrink from responsibility, and to feel to the full all the personal dignity and glory which her rank and position gave her; and, accordingly, the sacred narrative, which conceals no fault, informs us how gradually these unwatched traits grew up into the very worst form of selfish ambition. After all the trials and sorrows of Moses, all the cabals and murmurings that wearied his soul and made him feel that life was a burden to him, we come at last to the severest trial of his life, when the sister and brother on whom he had leaned joined against him. The whole incident, recorded in Numbers xii., is most painful and most singular. "And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses on account of an Ethiopian woman whom he had married." This is after the visit of his Midianite father-in-law, Jethro, who brought back to Moses his wife and two sons, from whom he had been long separated. It is supposed by some that this "woman of Cush" is the person referred to. If Moses had to this time been without a wife, he had been entirely devoted to his sister. Now another female influence comes in, the wife of Moses may have felt disposed to assert her position among the women of Israel, and thus a broil may have arisen. One can easily imagine subjects of contention, and great vivacity of dissent, and the authority of Moses would naturally be referred to as the supreme one.

Miriam and Aaron join together to repudiate that authority, and set themselves up as equals. "And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. And the Lord spake sud

denly to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came

out.

And the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called forth Moses and Aaron and Miriam, and he said: Hear now my words. If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house. With him I will speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold. Wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled, and the Lord departed from them, and the cloud departed from the tabernacle; and behold Miriam became leprous, white as snow; and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, Alas, my lord, lay not this sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly and wherein we have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother's womb. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O Lord, I beseech thee." The answer given to Moses draws a strong simile from the customs of those desert tribes where the father holds almost the sacred place of a god in the family. If her own father had expressed towards her the utmost extreme of mingled indignation and loathing at her conduct, would she not be ashamed for a while? And the command is given that she be shut out from the camp for seven days. It is evidence of the high position held by this woman, that the whole camp of Israel waited during those seven days, while she was suffering under this terrible rebuke. The severity of the rebuke and punishment which fell upon Miriam seems at first sight excessive. But we shall notice, in the whole line of the traditions with respect to the prophetic office, the most complete unselfishness is absolutely required. To use the prophetic gift in any manner for personal ambition or aggrandizement, was sacrilege. The prophet must be totally, absolutely without self. His divine gifts must never be used for any personal and individual purpose, even for the relief of utmost want. Thus the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, gifted with miraculous power, wandered hungry in the desert, and waited to be fed by God.