MOSES, THE GREATEST LAW-GIVER, AND THE MEEKEST MAN
LONG ago in the land of Egypt there lived as slaves to the Egyptians a race of white people called the Hebrews. There were so many of them that the Egyptians began to be afraid that they would over-run the land. So the cruel king, or the Pharaoh, as he was called, commanded that all the baby boys of the slave race should be thrown into the River Nile. But one little child escaped this fate, for his poor slave mother disobeyed the king and hid her baby in her hut. When he was three months old, his mother was afraid she could not keep him quiet any longer. So she made a basket, and plastered it inside with pitch, so that it would be water-tight and float like a boat. Into this basket-boat she put her baby.
The mother set the strange little boat on the edge of the River Nile, among the tall reeds called bulrushes, very near the place where she knew the king’s daughter came every day to bathe. It was a cool spot, well guarded and safe from the terrible crocodiles that lived in the Nile. After making sure that the little boat would not sink, the mother went back to her work, leaving her daughter Miriam to see what became of her baby brother.
Just as the wise mother had planned, the princess soon came with her ladies-in-waiting, and spied the cradle basket rocking on the waves near the shore. She told one of her maidens to bring it to her. The king’s daughter knew too well of her father’s command to drown or kill all the boy babies of the Hebrew slaves. So when she found a baby crying there, she pitied the poor mother who had obeyed the king by putting him in the river, still fondly hoping to save his life.
When the Pharaoh’s daughter saw the babe, she said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children!” There was a pleading look in the face of the little child. He seemed to ask the princess to take him in her arms. The princess herself was married but she had no children. That baby, smiling through his tears, touched her mother-heart. How could she help saving his little life from her father’s cruel law by claiming him as her own?
Just then Sister Miriam bowed before the princess and said, “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?”
The king’s daughter was, pleased and said, “Yes, go.” So the happy sister ran and brought her mother to the great stone palace of the Pharaohs. Then the princess said, as if the mother were only a child’s nurse, “Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.”
So, besides saving his life, that mother was royally paid for taking care of her own son instead of working as a slave out in the hot sun. Besides, she had a good chance to tell him, as he grew up, of the one true God. What if her boy should save his father’s people from slavery, when he became a man in the palace of the Pharaohs?
In due time the daughter of the king adopted the young Hebrew as her own son, and named him Moses, which means “Saved,” because she had rescued him out of the river. When Moses was old enough he went to live with his royal mother, where he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, who at that time, nearly four thousand years ago, were the most learned people in the world. Although he studied in the college of the priests, who believed in the Sun, the Moon and many other gods, Moses never forgot what his mother had taught him about the true God.
Young Prince Moses had a great deal to do while he was growing to manhood. He is said to have become commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army that conquered the black and savage race living a thousand miles up the Nile.