It was then that Moses, descended from a family of the tribe of Levi, was born,—­1571 B.C., according to Usher.  I need not relate in detail the beautiful story of his concealment for three months by his mother Jochebed, his exposure in a basket of papyrus on the banks of the Nile, his rescue by the daughter of Pharaoh, at that time regent of the kingdom in the absence of her father,—­or, as Wilberforce thinks, the wife of the king of Lower Egypt,—­his adoption by this powerful princess, his education in the royal household among those learned priests to whose caste even the King belonged.  Moses himself, a great master of historical composition, has in six verses told that story, with singular pathos and beauty; yet he directly relates nothing further of his life until, at the age of forty, he killed an Egyptian overseer who was smiting one of his oppressed brethren, and buried him in the sands,—­thereby showing that he was indignant at injustice, or clung in his heart to his race of slaves.  But what a history might have been written of those forty years of luxury, study, power, and honor!—­since Josephus speaks of his successful and brilliant exploits as a conqueror of the Ethiopians.  What a career did the son of the Hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palaces of Memphis, sitting at the monarch’s table, feted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, the hidden meaning of religious rites, and even the being and attributes of a Supreme God,—­the esoteric wisdom from which even a Pythagoras drew his inspiration; possibly tasting, with generals and nobles, all the pleasures of sin.  But whether in pleasure or honor, the soul of Moses, fortified by the maternal instructions of his early days,—­for his mother was doubtless a good as well as a brave woman,—­soars beyond his circumstances, and he seeks to avenge the wrongs of his brethren.  Not wisely, however, for he slays a government official, and is forced to flee,—­a necessity which we can hardly comprehend in view of his rank and power, unless it revealed all at once to the astonished king his Hebrew birth, and his dangerous sympathies with an oppressed people, the act showing that he may have sought, in his earnest soul, to break their intolerable bonds.

Certainly Moses aspires prematurely to be a deliverer.  He is not yet prepared for such a mighty task.  He is too impulsive and inexperienced.  It must need be that he pass through a period of preparation, learn patience, mature his knowledge, and gain moral force, which preparation could be best made in severe contemplation; for it is in retirement and study that great men forge the weapons which demolish principalities and powers, and master those principia which are the foundation of thrones and empires.  So he retires to the deserts of Midian, among a scattered pastoral people, on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and is received by Jethro, a priest of Midian, whose flocks he tends, and whose daughter he marries.