ver man was so tried,
save One, even our Lord Jesus Christ, as was Moses. And yet by
patience he conquered. Eighty years had he spent in learning to
keep his temper; and when he had learned to keep his temper, then,
and not till then, was he worthy to bring his people out of Egypt.
That was a long schooling, but it was a schooling worth having.

And if we, my friends, spend our whole lives, be they eighty years
long, in learning to keep our tempers, then will our lives have been
well spent. For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere
with a man's courage or justice, or honest indignation against
wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men. Moses' meekness did not
make him a coward or a sluggard. It helped him to do his work
rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of
Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his
brethren, those miserable slavish Jews. And so meekness, an even
temper, and a gracious tongue, will help us to keep our place among
our fellow-men with true dignity and independence, and to govern our
households, and train our children in such a way that while they
obey us they will love and respect us at the same time.

SERMON X. THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT

(Palm Sunday.)

EXODUS ix. 13, 14. Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my
people go, that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all
my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy
people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the
earth.

You will understand, I think, the meaning of the ten plagues of
Egypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a
country Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were. Some of
you, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not: it is for
them I speak.

Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one
which can be most simply described. One long straight strip of rich
flat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad.
On either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running
through it from end to end, the great river Nile--'The River' of
which the Bible speaks. This river the Egyptians looked on as
divine: they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole
wealth of Egypt. Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving
behind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most
inexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and