to a race studiously oppressed, degraded, and exposed to all contumely, and while, doubtless, she was no stranger to the prejudices which led her countrymen to look upon the sons of Israel as an outcast and despicable race.  Still the bonds of national affection, of kindred and brotherhood, were all respected.  The whole narrative shows that Moses was never alienated from his family, never taught to forget that he was a Hebrew.  His patroness felt that there were holy ties never to be disregarded nor trampled upon.

And while the princess of Egypt surrounded her infant charge with right influences, while she provided wisely for his intellectual culture, she likewise brought the influence of her own personal character to bear upon him.  The influence of a pure woman, who unites refinement to intelligence, and adds to them the polish of the court without its corruption, would be as powerful as it would be salutary, and when to the higher qualities, mental and moral, the polished refinement and graceful attention to all the proprieties of life are imparted, a high finish is given to the character.  Nor was that acquired grace and courtly manner a thing of frivolous import.  It exerted an important influence upon the future destiny of the individual.  The successful leaders of great multitudes have often owed almost as much to that high bearing and dignified demeanour which should be the distinct badge of those who are numbered with the great, as to their skill and discernment; and while treated in the court of Pharaoh as a scion of royalty, the young Hebrew acquired that air of conscious authority to which inferior minds always defer.  He gained there that knowledge of courtly splendour and gayety which forced in him the conviction of their perfect insufficiency for the high demands of the spiritual nature, and that knowledge of the heart of man and its depraved qualities most needful to one who was at once to lead and control a multitude, and who was to stand before kings as the envoy of Jehovah.

The Israelites never seem to have entered the Egyptian armies.  It would have been contrary to the policy of the kings either to have encouraged a martial spirit or to have placed arms in the hands of this multitude; yet as one of the family of Pharaoh, Moses led the armies of Egypt.  And needful it was that the future leader of Israel should be well instructed in all the tactics of war—­should understand all the providing for, the ordering, and the encamping of vast hosts.  It was perhaps only by arduous military service that he could have developed that capacity indicated by the vast skill with which an army of six hundred thousand men, encumbered with their wives and little ones, could be encamped in regular order, whether marching or resting.  Ever desiring peace and acting on the defensive, yet ready to repel aggression, for forty years the nation of Israel were encamped as the hosts of an army.  Each tribe with its own banner, marching and countermarching, taking down and putting up their tents, with all the skill and regularity of a disciplined army, and often engaged in actual warfare.  He who could thus order and regulate such a host must have possessed the skill and science of the general.  While the habits of long command, added to the consciousness of authority and Divine reliance, enabled him to prevent or control turbulent outbreaks.