What deep thought, what high imaginings, what profound reverence must have filled the soul of the Hebrew shepherd as he watched the stars in the silence and loneliness of the desert.  As he sat, a solitary and banished man, under the shadow of the rocks of the wilderness, how strange, how incomprehensible must have seemed the events of his past life.  The visions of his youth, the splendour and warlike pomp of the army or the pageant of courts, must have come over his soul like a dream.  Even to us how strange seems this long sojourn in the wilderness, this enforced inactivity and apparent uselessness.  Yet the God of Israel was promoting his own designs both among his people and in the heart of him who was to be their leader—­weaning them from their place of abode, and preparing them for their departure, and fitting Moses to be their leader, guide, ruler, and lawgiver.  Each dispensation of his providence, each passing occurrence, all the thoughts, the emotions, the solitary meditations, the reverential communion, the occasional intercourse with the few dwellers of the desert,—­like the strokes, slight and almost imperceptible in their effect, which the block receives from the hand of the sculptor,—­all were fitting the apparently exiled Hebrew for his high vocation as a prophet and legislator.

And it is often thus.  For many years may Jehovah be preparing his instruments for that event to which he destines them, and which they may then speedily accomplish.  Yet this work in the soul, by which man is prepared to co-operate with his Maker, is silent, unseen, unmarked, so that often we may account this time as lost.  And man, ignorant of his future destiny, and of the state to which he is to be called, will ever find it his true wisdom carefully to fulfil the present duty and to aim at deriving instruction and benefit from each dispensation of Divine providence, and from the ordering of each event of his life.

In the careful provision made for the training of Moses, in the various instrumentalities used to prepare him for his appointed trust, we are taught that by no miraculous intervention does God supersede the necessity of the improvement of the faculties he has bestowed.  The more enlightened the understanding, the more the powers of reason are cultivated, the more intelligently can man serve his Creator, and the more entirely does he co-operate in the designs of Infinite Wisdom.  God does not bestow, by direct inspiration, that wisdom or knowledge which is to be gained by the diligent cultivation of the natural faculties, to save man the fatigue and labour of the acquirement.  Those upon whom he has most richly bestowed the gifts of spiritual wisdom have been most careful to cultivate their natural endowments.

Both Paul and Moses were learned before they were inspired, but God did not supersede the use of the powers of the mind by the higher gift of the Spirit.  The providential dealings of God are adapted to the laws of the human mind, and in the government of his creatures he never violates the principles which he has established.