The occupation of the shepherd was at length to be abandoned.  By oppression and suffering and ignominious exactions, the children of Israel were prepared to leave their homes—­the land in which they had dwelt for centuries—­and venture across the sea and into the desert.  When we remember that husbandry had been the national occupation, when we consider how strong is the instinct which binds man to the land of his birth and the graves of his fathers, and how strong is that bond which attaches one to the spot he has cultivated, to the land he has ploughed and sowed and reaped, we cannot wonder at the coercion needful to rouse a people whose energies were all depressed, and who had been held in check and kept stationary for ages.

But the people were ready to depart.  The oppression of Pharaoh had prepared the way for the display of the Divine faithfulness and power.  Jehovah sent his ambassador from the desert to the court of the King of Egypt, to demand their freedom.  During his long exile, most who had known Moses in his early days, had passed away; and the few that were left would hardly recognise in the shepherd of the desert, with his staff for his badge of office—­bearing the marks of toil and exposure, of deep thought and solitary meditation—­the young and gallant prince, the courtier and the warrior of former days.  She who had cherished him had probably been laid in the tomb of her royal race, and the name and the memory of Moses may have been forgotten in the palace and the court.  Yet there he stood, before the throne which might have been his seat, the ambassador of the King of kings, bearing the stern message of Jehovah—­“Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.”  Yet wo after wo was denounced and executed—­pledge after pledge given and violated—­and not until one long wail over the dead and dying resounded through the land were the children of Israel permitted to leave the land of Egypt.  The loss of three millions of subjects, of their labour, their tribute, and the removal of all their personal property, would weaken and impoverish the kingdom.  Every motive of policy and pride urged the monarch to resist the demand, and thus he suffered the penalty due to his contumelious defiance of the God of Israel, while the judgments inflicted upon him strengthened the faith of the Israelites.  The expulsion of the Moors and of the Jews from Spain, the banishment of the Huguenots from France, furnish similar though not parallel cases, in modern ages; and these show that the loss of peaceful, industrious subjects to a kingdom is like taking the life-blood from the system.  Centuries have passed, yet these nations have not recovered—­and thus Egypt must long have felt her loss.