She hid her child for three months. Disobedience to this
Egyptian law, we read, was faith in God — so says the Epistle
to the Hebrews. " By faith Moses, when he was born, was
hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a
proper child ; a.nd they were not afraid of the king's com-
mandment " (Heb. 3d. 23).
At last concealment was no longer possible, and the
mother placed her child in an ark among the reeds of
the river Nile. And there a foundling orphan he lay,
who was to be the future emancipator and lawgiver of
Israel.
In order to understand these verses, I divide them into
two branches : —



By Google






$6 The Orphanage of Moses

I. The claims of the orphan.
II. The oqihan's education.
And first. By apparent accident, if there be such a thing
in this world of God's, the daughter of Pharaoh came down
to the river to wash, and, among the leeds, she saw the
chest, in which lay the child.
Now the first claim put forward on her compassion was
the claim of infancy.
The chest was opened. The princess "saw the child."
That single sentence contains an ailment. It was an
appeal to the woman's heart. It mattered not that she was a
princess, nor that she helonged to the proudest class of the
most exclusive nation in the world. Rank, caste, nationality,
alt melted before the great fact of womanhood. She was a
woman, and before her lay an outcast child.
