that he was a goodly child,
she hid him three months. And when she could 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 what
would be done to him. And the daughter 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 compassion 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 a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said
to her, Go. And the maid 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 household, and we might never have
heard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own
people and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had
not been something better and nobler in him than all the learning
and statesmanship of the Egyptians.

For there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a
man believe in God, and trust God. 'And therefore,' says St. Paul,
'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; esteeming
the reproach of CHRIST better