When these daughters of the sheikh returned to their father's tents, in answer to the father's inquiries about their coming so early they detailed the events at the well, and the refugee was immediately sent for, and introduced to the hospitalities of this home.

More than that, in due time he obtained there a wife; for Jethro was so pleased with him that he gave him Zipporah, his daughter, as an inducement to stay and to make his residence among the tribe.

He remained there forty years. His wife gave him two sons, of whom the elder was named Gershom, "Expulsion," (from Garash, to drive out), and the other Eliezer, meaning "God is my helper:" and thus, in the cares and enjoyments of domestic life and the service of his father-in-law as keeper of his flocks, time passed tranquilly away to him, through successive years, amid those mountains and valleys, the open wastes and fertile spots around the fountains in Arabia.

The country where he was now is usually called "The Peninsula of Sinai," not a correct term, for it is a triangle, the full northern side of which is joined to the desert region lying between Palestine and Egypt. A distinct name, however, is needed for this remarkable region, and this will answer very well if it is thus understood. The country spoken of lies between the two northern arms of the Red Sea,--the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akabah-and has at the southern end of this triangle a collection of granite mountains, not arranged in any regularity of form, but each one distinct, with deep and mostly narrow valleys between their bare, black, precipitous sides; both mountain and valley now offering but rarely a speck of verdure to the eye. All is bleak and desolate, but the necessities of the present inhabitants lead them to cut down the trees for making char

1 The reader will do well to refer to the map on page, 316.

coal, almost the only thing they can procure for sale or barter; and it is probable that, in the time of Moses, there was more verdure than at the present. But it must always have been a bleak, desolate and solitary region, quite apart from the rest of the world. Just north of this granitic portion, which is a triangle of about seventy miles on each side, is a more open belt of sandstone country, twenty-four miles wide; and beyond this northwardly is limestone underlying, or else forming bare hills, in the great desert region extending on to Beersheba. But all these geological formations are now generally bare and barren alike. One spot must be excepted, and this one is so beautiful that, on account both of its own loveliness and of the contrast which it offers to the rest, it is called " the gem of the desert." It is in a valley called the Wady Feiran, lying at the northwestern edge of the granite region; and there, quite exceptionally to all else, is a stream of pure water, with trees overhanging it, and turf by its side, and some cultivation, where the Arabs raise grain, melons and figs. The whole place seems to have been considered a sacred one from the earliest times; for by the stream are remains of ancient churches, and in the adjoining bluffs have been excavated cells for anchorites,-the spaces scarcely large enough to contain a human body; and all this region, even to the highest summits of the adjacent Mount Serbal, is sprinkled thickly over with singular inscriptions, which for a long time baffled every effort to decipher them. They are in letters rude, but evidently having a meaning, and in an unknown language: sometimes, however, Greek characters are intermingled, and a few have the Christian emblem of the cross; but these latter and the Greek are thought to be more modern than the others. For some time the earlier inscriptions were attributed to the Hebrews in their forty years' journeyings; but Professor Beer, of Leipsic, who has lately succeeded in deciphering them, makes them out to be by the

Nabatheans of Petra and its neighborhood, of whom they are the only existing traces. He supposes them to have been made by pilgrims; but Lepsius thinks that they were made by a Christian pastoral people. They are supposed to belong to the century preceding and that following the Christian era. This spot is very abundant in them, while they diminish in number as we recede from it.

The neighboring Mount Serbal, three miles distant from Feiran, and reached by a branch wady, is one of the highest mountains in the peninsula; and standing quite disconnected from the others, is the most imposing of all. It has an elevation of six thousand three hundred and forty-two French feet, with both summit and sides extremely rugged, the former compared by Dr. Olin to a series of stalactites turned lower end upward. The Arabs still climb its peaks, in order to offer sacrifices there on extraordinary occasions; and the sanctity still attached by them to this mountain, as well as the marks of great regard in ancient times, and the beauty of the neighboring "gem of the desert," together with its great convenience for a stopping-place for the Israelites, have made Lepsius and others consider this as the genuine Mount Sinai; a subject which will be discussed in another part of this work. The whole of this region will require from us a more minute attention when we come to the journey of the Israelites through it and the delivery in it of the Law; but it is desirable to have some acquaintance now with the country in which Moses was to spend so many years, and where, in order to be prepared to do so much good thereafter to others, he had first to do a great work within himself.

We must never forget "the human element" in the inspired men of ancient times, even in those most favored of the Almighty. God did not take for his agents men of wooden formations in intellect or feelings, and contented to be of that character; but men who, though belonging to our

humanity, were trying to learn to do for Him. Our Saviour gave the true philosophy of God as helper when he said, If any man will do his will he shall know.1

Moses was here, now, to undergo a long process of mental discipline, before he could be prepared for the immense. work to which he was to be called. Inspiration would come, but not to a man benighted and making no effort for light; not to one sinking down in a stupor of idleness, but to one rousing himself up to the highest kind of thinking and praying, and hoping and loving,-all connected with God.

There was, in the first place, very much for Moses to unlearn with respect to himself, as well as much to learn. He was only a man; he had been brought up in Egyptian temples, with Egyptian training, where to the bias exercised on his youthful mind by the kindness and love of his fostermother, had been added the enchantments of architectural grandeur and the influence on a growing intellect by the grave, majestic Osirides, and the old legends respecting their gods. All this had entered deeply into his soul, and could now be thoroughly shaken off or corrected, not by a single effort, but only by long struggles with himself and with error, and by earnest clingings, as for his life, to truths as they came out of chaos and became evident to his mind and heart. He was to be self-trained by the severest mental and moral discipline-God all the while assisting him-before he could be fitted to train others, in mind and heart.2

These savage-looking mountains in their sternness and solitudes were favorable for such searchings after truth and struggles with self. No temples here except of God's own forming; no images, yet God everywhere; no corruptions to the heart in this entire simplicity of life and in these calm

1 John vii. 17.

We see a striking exhibition of similar struggles long afterward in Luther.

and simple employments. The Midianitish tribe coming from Abraham had retained in their pastoral life a knowledge of God handed down from that patriarch, better than had been done by Jacob's descendants among the strange mixtures and degrading servitude in Egypt; and Jethro was now able to aid even this student so endowed with large capacities, in these present efforts to reach higher truths.

A long time he had in these solitudes; and a long time was required;-much self-searching, much prejudice to be shaken off, much obstinacy of error to be overcome, much purity of soul to be obtained, in order to fit it for the truth; and we may believe, also, much prayer and earnestness with God for help. For he surely needed help. He, this man, with all our human feelings clinging to him, was to rise from that overwhelming rubbish of Egyptian mythology, evermore crumbling back upon his mind as he tried to work upward toward the light; and was to get up, at last, to where he could see God in singleness of heart and truth of soul, and to know Jehovah as he is. What was to assist him in all this? Books? There were few or none. Reason? Alone, it must fail. Whence have help? Only from God; and God would help only as he would try to help himself with struggles and in prayer.

Eusebius and other eminent critics suppose that during this time he wrote the book of Genesis, but others assert that the inspiration necessary for it did not come to him till after the delivery of the Law in Sinai. Whatever may

have been the time of such composition, it is certain that the style of his writings is the best and purest in the Hebrew Scriptures, and shows a very highly cultivated taste. Hebrew scholars consider the Pentateuch as constituting the golden age of their literature.

We leave him now in this retirement, while we go back and look once more at Egypt and the Pharaohs.

' Inferred from incidents in Ex. xviii.