under whom Joseph has
risen and who had just been expelled. To cripple and crush them there
was given them hard and exhaustive tasks of brick making under cruel
task-masters. There still remains evidence of this cruelty in the many
Egyptian buildings built of brick, made of mud mixed with straw and
dried in the sun. When it was found that they still increased in
number in spite of the suffering. Pharoah tried, at first privately
then publicly, to destroy all the male children. This order does not
seem to have been long in force but was a terrible blow to a people
like the Hebrews whose passion for children, and especially for male
children, has always been proverbial.

It is difficult to gather from this narrative the varied influence of
this sojourn upon the Hebrews themselves. They doubtless gained much
of value from the study of the methods of warfare and military
equipment of the Egyptians. They learned much of the art of
agriculture and from the social and political systems of this
enlightened people. No doubt many of their choicest men received
educational training that fitted them for future leadership. Their
suffering seems on the one hand to have somewhat deadened them,
destroying ambition. On the other, it bound them together by a common
bond and prepared the way for the work of Moses, the deliverer, and
for the real birth of the nations.

Moses the Deliverer. Chapters 2 and 4 tell the wonderful story of the
birth of Moses, of his loyalty to his people, of his sojourn in Midian
and of his final call to the task of the deliverance of Israel. His
wonderful life-a life to which all the centuries are indebted-is
naturally divided into three parts. (1) _His early life of forty years
at the court of Pharaoh_. By faith his parents trusted him to the care
of Providence and he was brought to the house of Pharoah and was
taught in all the learning of the Egyptians, who conducted great
universities and were highly cultured in the arts and sciences (Acts
7:22). Finally feeling it to be his duty to renounce his worldly glory
and identify himself with his Hebrew brethren, he made the choice by
faith (Heb. 11:24-27). He no doubt felt then the call to be their
deliverer but did not find his countrymen ready to accept him as such
(Acts 7:25-28). Whereupon he fled to the wilderness of Midian. (2)
_Forty years in the desert_ where he gained an intimate knowledge of
all the wilderness through which for forty years he was to lea