gration of a great and numerous community, were to be effected under the most difficult and adverse circumstances, that ever marked the emancipation of the oppressed from the thraldom of the oppressor.

The person elected for the leader of this great enterprise was one "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," endowed by nature for the mighty and laborious mission, by all the energies of a powerful and imperturbable temperament, and spiritually fitted through divine election by the "God of Israel" himself. Such was the great deliverer of his people "from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage;" such was the Jewish legislator, whose laws, after the lapse of some thousand years, are still influencing the opinions and codes of the most enlightened nations.

That Moses lived to manhood, and effected all this; that he was not at his birth swept away with the waters of the Nile, and confounded with its slime; that he was saved, cherished, and early imbibed that enthusiastic feeling and sympathy for his suffering countrymen, which constitute the true spirit of patriotism in all times, was due to woman! Pharaoh had committed to the execution of two Hebrew women, wise in their art, (whose names scripture has preserved) the destruction of the male population of Israel at its birth. From this atrocious order Shiphrah and her companion extricated themselves, with true female dexterity; instancing a physiological obstacle to the king's wishes, and thus "saving the men children alive, so that the people multiplied and waxed exceedingly." Thus frustrated, Pharaoh charged all people, saying, "every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive."

To evade this dreadful sentence, one unhappy mother of the tribe of Levi, after hiding her infant for three months, resolved on committing him herself to the chances of the Nile. The confidant of so perilous a breach of the atrocious law was a child, her own child, the sister of the proscribed infant, one whose poetical name-Miriam, "the star of the sea," (she who brightens or enlightens)*-may

St. Jerome.

have been given her from some precocious exhibition of the great qualities which afterwards distinguished her, or some happy coincidence of locality or nativity, consonant to the customs of the Hebrews.

The unfortunate mother, having "laid her infant in the flags by the river's brink," appears (in fear or in despair) to have abandoned him to his fate, and to have departed. But Miriam “ his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done with him ;" and another image of female sympathy then presented itself! The king's daughter "saw the ark among the flags, and sent her maid to fetch it. And when, on opening it, she beheld the babe," she wept, and said, "this is one of the Hebrew children." The young Miriam, in the quick perception of developed sensibility, saw the salvation of her infant brother in the eyes of the princess; and, darting forward from her covert, adroitly asked, "Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her go, and the maid went and called the child's mother."*

It is impossible to conceive a more beautiful, a more dramatic incident; one in which female sympathy and intelligence are more happily painted. Moses, restored to the humble paternal home, received his first impressions (always the most indelible) from the lips of his Hebrew mother, and of his sister, that sister, his saviour, his protectress, and probably his earliest instructress. His intelligence and sensibility must have been thus early awakened by that tragic outrage on his own person, to a bitter sense of his nation's wrongs. It was not until "Moses grew" that he was brought back to his princess and protectress, and that he became her son."

* In Josephus's account, this incident, simple and striking when told in scripture language, is not only falsified from beginning to end, but is given in the true style of Racine's Esther or Athalie, if the original French version, by the celebrated Arnaud D'Andilly, from the Greek is to be depended on. Here is the little Miriam's speech to the princess, the child being supposed to have refused the bosom of Egyptian nurses: C'est en vain, madame, que vous faites venir toutes ces nourrices, quisqu'elles ne sont pas de la même nation de cet enfant. Mais si vous en prenez une d'entre les Hebreux peut-estre qu'il n'en aurait point d'aversion."-Livre ii. chap. 5.

The translation, however, of Arnaud is said, by the père Gillet, to be plus élégante que fidele.

The brother nursling of Miriam betrayed his national temperament and breeding, while still in the palace of the king; for the first recorded incident in his life was that "He slew the Egyptian who had smote an Hebrew, one of his brethren," and then "fled from the face of Pharaoh." He fled, probably, to meditate the delivery of his people! that delivery which he so miraculously effected. But in the enterprise he was not alone; for, conjointly with himself, were embarked, in the great mission, his brother Aaron, and his sister Miriam," Miriam the Prophetess," one inspired by that Heaven,* with which she is more than once represented in mysterious communion.

It is certain (says a learned and pious expounder of the Old Testament)† that she had received a portion of the prophetic spirit; and that she was a joint leader of the people with her two brothers, is proved by the words of the prophet Micah-" for I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam ;" and again, "the Lord spoke suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, come out ye three under the tabernacle of the congregation, and the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called down Miriam.”

What a change must have been wrought in the moral condition of the Hebrew women, during the four or five hundred years residence of the Israelites in Egypt, when one among them was deemed capable and worthy to lead, in the greatest enterprise that ever was undertaken! It appears that the women were not only made acquainted with the coming Exodus of their people, when it as yet wore the air of a mysterious conspiracy, but to them was consigned, by Moses, the delicate task of providing for the material exigencies of a long and perilous sojourn in barren deserts and trackless wildernesses, when expediency, for a time substituted for right, obliged him to order the women "to borrow of the Egyptians jewels of

It must be remembered that Miriam was of the consecrated tribe of Levi, the hereditary priesthood.

† Doctor Clarke.

Doctor Clarke supposes that Miriam was inspired by the Holy Spirit to instruct and lead the women, as Moses was the men.

silver and jewels of gold, and raiment," &c. &c. It was some palliation of this infringement of moral probity, "that the women had found favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they gave unto them such things as they required."*

When the hour of departure arrived, on that awful "night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt," these true women, "whose desire was unto their husbands," these devoted wives and mothers, without one exception, without one desertion from their great cause of national emancipation, (though not, perhaps, without one sigh for the comforts, luxuries, and refinements† of the most civilized people of the world) set forth for the far promised land. They commenced their journey by the deserted cities of Letaa and Belzephon‡" with a mixed multitude of six hundred thousand people,” “besides children," prepared to wander in pathless deserts and among hostile tribes, under every privation and suffering, which a position, so exposed and so unaccommodated, could inflict.

After the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, and the utter destruction of the Egyptian army, when the brightening day that succeeded to the dreadful night spread before the weary but joyous Israelites, the waterless deserts of Shur,-Moses raised that glorious canticle, supposed to be the earliest recorded poetry of the world, which, full of triumph for his miraculous passage and victory, predicted the downfall of great nations before his own, the sorrows "of the people of Palestine"the "amazement of the Dukes of Edom." But he sung

* Exodus, chap. xii. Josephus asserts that the Egyptians made the women presents, some from impatience for the departure of the Hebrews, and others from friendship, which they expressed by shedding tears at their separation.-History of the Jews, Article 95, vol. 1.

+ The elegance of the women's dress, even in the desert, is proved by many passages in the Scriptures. "Aaron, when moulding his golden calf, called upon the people to deliver up the golden ear-rings which were in the ears of their wives, their sons, and their daughters." Moses, too, makes the foot of the laver of brass of the looking-glasses (metal mirrors) of the women assembling.-Exodus, 38.

Josephus. Moses alone was not accompanied by his wife: he had previously sent her away, but Zipporah and her sons soon followed him into the desert, accompanied by her father.

not alone-coeval with this first poetic outburst of holy inspiration from the lips of man, was the poetry of woman's high, excited spirit. "Miriam the prophetess took a cymbal in her hand, and all the women went with timbrels and with dances after her :" answering the terrorstriking ode of Moses with more cheery inspirations, she raised the depressed spirits of an audience of 600,000 listeners, calling on them "to sing unto the Lord, for he had triumphed gloriously! the horse and his rider had he thrown into the sea."

Miriam was thus a leader of the female emigration of Israel, sharing in her brother's prophetic mission, and animating her people by strains as inspired as his own.*

When Miriam again appears in this sublime drama, it is not in her sacerdotal character as prophetess or priestess, but as the champion of her people, the rigid guardian of the law for she considered Moses as usurping an undue power, in violating, by his marriage with "an Ethiopian woman," that very dispensation which he had himself so religiously and rigorously appointed. She had probably brought Aaron over to her opinion; and the observation, "Hath the Lord indeed only spoken by Moses? hath he not also spoken by us?" is an evidence of their common rights. Miriam and Aaron," it is said, "both spake against Moses;" he was, moreover, the subject of suspicion and aversion to the murmuring tribes,† who, in their discontent, rejected his miracles, and disobeyed his injunctions.

On what grounds of likelihood this was done, none can now asssert. Moses, all prophet as he was, was still but man, and as such was fallible; but the conduct of Miriam (however culpable) was of fearful worldly import

*Josephus, with true Rabbinical prejudice where woman is considered, omits all further mention of Miriam, after her interview with the Egyptian princess; but in the history of the Hebrew women, the Scriptures are the only guides.

† As for this Moses, the man that brought us out of the land of Egypt, &c.-Exodus, chap. xxxiv. again chap. xviii. and xx.

The weakness of Aaron, and his inferiority to his brother and sister, strikingly marked throughout his mission, and the people calling on him in the absence of Moses, "Up, and make us Gods that shall go before us," and his making them a golden calf, are proofs.