countrymen out of Egypt? Moses would
sooner die like a man helping his countrymen, than live on the fat of the
land while they were slaves. And forty years before he had shown the
same spirit too, when though he was rich and prosperous, and high in the
world, the adopted son of King Pharaoh's daughter (Exodus ii. 11), he
disdained to be a slave and to see his countrymen slaves round him. We
read how he killed an Egyptian, who was ill-treating one of his brothers,
the Jews--and how he then fled out of Egypt into Midian, houseless and
friendless, esteeming as St. Paul says, "the reproach of Christ"--that is
the affliction and ill-will which came on him for doing right, "better
than all the treasures of Egypt" (Heb xi. 24-27).

_A man must live_? The valiant Tyrolese of old did not say that (more
than seventy years ago), when they fought to the last drop of their blood
to defend their country against the French invaders. They were not
afraid to die for liberty; and therefore they won honour from all
honourable men, praise from all whose praise is worth having for ever.

_A man must live_? The old Greeks and Romans, heathens though they were,
were above so mean a speech as that. They used to say, it was the
noblest thing that can befall a man to die--not to live in clover, eating
and drinking at his ease--to die among the foremost, fighting for wife
and child and home.

_A man must live_? The martyrs of old did not say that, when they
endured the prison and the scourge, the sword and the fire, and chose
rather to die in torments unspeakable than deny the Lord Jesus who bought
them with His blood, rather than do what they knew to be _wrong_.
(Hebrews xi.) They were not afraid of torture and death; but of doing
wrong they were unspeakably afraid. They were _free_, those holy men of
old, truly free--free from their own love of ease and cowardice and
selfishness, and all that drags a man down and makes a slave of him. They
knew that "life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment." What
matter if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Their souls
were free whatever happened to their bodies--the tormentor could not
touch _them_, because they believed in God, because they did not fear
those who could kill the body, and after that had no more that they could
do.

And do you not see that a coward can never be free, never be godly, never
be like Christ? For by a coward I mean not merely a man who