the Sake of a Nation.</u>

First is the incident of Moses' ungranted petition. Moses was the leader
of his people. He is one of the giants of the human race from whatever
standpoint considered. His codes are the basis of all English and American
jurisprudence. From his own account of his career, the secret of all his
power as a maker of laws, the organizer of a strangely marvellous nation,
a military general and strategist--the secret of all was in his direct
communication with God. He was peculiarly a man of prayer. Everything was
referred to God, and he declared that everything--laws, organization,
worship, plans--came to him from God. In national emergencies where moral
catastrophe was threatened he petitioned God and the plans were changed in
accordance with his request. He makes personal requests and they are
granted. He was peculiarly a man who dealt directly with God about every
sort of thing, national and personal, simple and complex. The record
commonly credited to him puts prayer as the simple profound explanation of
his stupendous career and achievements. He prayed. God worked along the
line of his prayer. The great things recorded are the result. That is the
simple inferential summary.

Now there is one exception to all this in Moses' life. It stands out the
more strikingly that it is an exception; the one exception of a very long
line. Moses asked repeatedly for one thing. It was not given him. God is
not capricious nor arbitrary. There must be a reason. _There is._ And it
is fairly luminous with light.

Here are the facts. These freed men of Egypt are a hard lot to lead and to
live with. Slow, sensuous, petty, ignorant, narrow, impulsive, strangers
to self-control, critical, exasperating--what an undertaking God had to
make a nation, _the_ nation of history, about which centred His deep
reaching, far-seeing love ambition for redeeming a world out of such
stuff! Only paralleled by the church being built upon such men as these
Galilean peasants! What victories these! What a God to do such things!
Only a God could do either and both! What immense patience it required to
shape this people. What patience God has. Moses had learned much of
patience in the desert sands with his sheep; for he had learned much of
God. But the finishing touches were supplied by the grindstone of friction
with the fickle temper of this mob of ex-slaves.

Here are the immediate circumstances. They lacked water. They grew very
thi