e" (ver. 12). But the truly impelling force is
always the great deed itself, the haunting thought, the importunate
inspiration, the inward fire; and so God promises Moses neither a
sceptre, nor share in the good land: He simply proposes to him the work,
the rescue of the people; and Moses, for his part, simply objects that
he is unable, not that he is solicitous about his reward. Whatever is
done for payment can be valued by its cost: all the priceless services
done for us by our greatest were, in very deed, unpriced.

Moses, with the new name of God to reveal, and with the assurance that
He is about to rescue Israel, is bidden to go to work advisedly and
wisely. He is not to appeal to the mob, nor yet to confront Pharaoh
without authority from his people to speak for them, nor is he to make
the great demand for emancipation abruptly and at once. The mistake of
forty years ago must not be repeated now. He is to appeal to the elders
of Israel; and with them, and therefore clearly representing the nation,
he is respectfully to crave permission for a three days' journey, to
sacrifice to Jehovah in the wilderness. The blustering assurance with
which certain fanatics of our own time first assume that they possess a
direct commission from the skies, and thereupon that they are freed
from all order, from all recognition of any human authority, and then
that no considerations of prudence or of decency should restrain the
violence and bad taste which they mistake for zeal, is curiously unlike
anything in the Old Testament or the New. Was ever a commission more
direct than those of Moses and of St. Paul? Yet Moses was to obtain the
recognition of the elders of his people; and St. Paul received formal
ordination by the explicit command of God (Acts xiii. 3).

Strangely enough, it is often assumed that this demand for a furlough of
three days was insincere. But it would only have been so, if consent
were expected, and if the intention were thereupon to abuse the respite
and refuse to return. There is not the slightest hint of any duplicity
of the kind. The real motives for the demand are very plain. The
excursion which they proposed would have taught the people to move and
act together, reviving their national spirit, and filling them with a
desire for the liberty which they tasted. In the very words which they
should speak, "The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, hath met with us,"
there is a distinct proclamation of nationality, and o