Notable Women of Olden Time

by Anonymous

We cannot trace the course of Miriam's life. She appears before us for a season and then we lose sight of her for many years. She may have passed them in the retirement and obscurity of her rural home in the land of Goshen. She may have been counted in the train of the princess of Egypt and shone in the court of Pharaoh. Princes may have flattered her and nobles sued for her love. She seems never to have married,—yet her heart may have had its own history of love, perhaps unrequited, disappointed, or sacrificed at the altar of prudence, of conscience, or, it may be, ambition. Oh what a tale of suffering and of enjoyment would the history of one human heart present, if faithfully recorded!

Years had passed: childhood was gone—youth was fleeing. The brother had attained a high distinction in the court of Egypt. He had tasted the pleasures of wisdom and the enjoyments of science and knowledge, while, as the adopted child of Pharaoh's daughter, he stood before the people, the prospective heir to the crown.

Thus, in the prime of life, endowed with the richest gifts of mind and the attractions of manly beauty, adding the polish of the courtier to the wisdom of the philosopher—and all the adventitious advantages of royal birth received by his adoption—there lay before the young Hebrew a bright vista of prospective glory and honour and earthly happiness.

But not to sit on the throne of Egypt had Jehovah raised this child of the chosen people from the death designed by their oppressor. Not to fit him for the throne of Egypt had he surrounded him with all that was propitious to intellectual and moral attainments and guided and watched each step of his course from his infancy.

Deep and inscrutable must have seemed the designs of Jehovah, as, when all was brightest, the dark clouds gathered around this favoured son of the Hebrews, and all the promise and purpose of his saved life seemed defeated. The hour of trial came—probably, as it generally comes, suddenly and unexpectedly. It was the hour which was to test his principles and prove his faith. The hour in which all the allurements of sense, the gratification of ambition, and (it may have seemed) the claims of grateful affection, were brought into conflict with the stern claims of duty and principle, and in this hour he did not fail. He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. His choice was made. He abjured the throne and left the court. What disappointment must have fallen upon hearts who had looked to his exaltation as a pledge of good for his race, and who saw in his downfall the prolonged dominion of tyranny and persecution!

Yet Moses was not permitted to remain in peace, although he had sunk into obscurity. He who was to lead the hosts of Israel through the great and terrible wilderness—who was to endure toil, labours, and privation, needed the nerve, the hardihood, the physical training, which could not be gained in the luxurious courts of the Pharaohs, or in the quiet, and, doubtless, comfortable and abundant homes of the husbandmen of Goshen. Amid the enjoyments of home, the pleasures of study, he need not have regretted the loss of a throne.

For many years he, who had been trained in luxury and elegance, led the flocks of Jethro, and knew all the privations and the endurances of the shepherd in the desert. And while his frame was thus hardened and invigorated, while he learned to forego pleasure and endure bodily toil, his soul was nourished by solitary meditation and high communion with God. The philosopher can find instruction and interest in the works of creation, but only he who adds the adoration of the worshipper to the wisdom of the philosopher is prepared to study the works of Jehovah aright.

What deep thought, what high imaginings, what profound reverence must have filled the soul of the Hebrew shepherd as he watched the stars in the silence and loneliness of the desert. As he sat, a solitary and banished man, under the shadow of the rocks of the wilderness, how strange, how incomprehensible must have seemed the events of his past life. The visions of his youth, the splendour and warlike pomp of the army or the pageant of courts, must have come over his soul like a dream. Even to us how strange seems this long sojourn in the wilderness, this enforced inactivity and apparent uselessness. Yet the God of Israel was promoting his own designs both among his people and in the heart of him who was to be their leader—weaning them from their place of abode, and preparing them for their departure, and fitting Moses to be their leader, guide, ruler, and lawgiver. Each dispensation of his providence, each passing occurrence, all the thoughts, the emotions, the solitary meditations, the reverential communion, the occasional intercourse with the few dwellers of the desert,—like the strokes, slight and almost imperceptible in their effect, which the block receives from the hand of the sculptor,—all were fitting the apparently exiled Hebrew for his high vocation as a prophet and legislator.