heavily-laden slaves were the greatest sufferers. The trust and hope of some failed. Others were upheld by the wonderful tokens of Divine power, bringing ruin and destruction on the Egyptians after every refusal to let the people go, and keeping the Israelites exempt from the peril always in such a manner as to show that the plagues were no chance visitations falling indiscriminately, but were guided to strike alone those destined for them.

Then came that night to be much remembered, when every believing Israelitish family were awake, in travelling garb, eating their meal of the roasted lamb beneath the bloodmarked threshold, till at midnight rose the great cry, echoed from stone-built palace to reedy hut, from wanderer's tent to gloomy dungeon, as the first-born in every house devoid of that bloody mark lay dead at one fearful moment.

Up rose the Israelites. Then, while terror and dismay still were on the bereaved land, they were ready to march and win their freedom before the reaction of revenge should have set in. When that time came, and the King of Egypt and his horses and chariots were pursuing after them, they were on the sea-shore, with the dark, ruddy, purple waves before them; and beyond, the wild, terrific, white, black, and crimson peaks and gloomy ravines of the waste howling wilderness.

Through the parted waves of that sea they marched, and from the opposite shore they saw their enemies overwhelmed by the waters and lie dead on the shore. These were the scenes that were the training of Hoshea, the son of Nun, in common with all his fellow-countrymen ; but that it was a rare spirit is shown by the fact, that of all the six hundred thousand who witnessed the marvels, but one single heart was found that gathered strength and faith like Hoshea's. Here it is that Hoshea first appears

in his individual character as the warrior hero. The manna had begun to fall, the water had sprung from the rock at the touch of Moses' rod, and the multitude thus sustained were threading their way through the Wadys, walled in with lofty marble rocks, when one of the robber tribes of the desert came on them. The Amalekites, savage marauders, fierce, wild, reckless, and lawless, such as are the Bedouins now, swarmed round the multitude, and cut off the stragglers, the faint and weary, or feeble, with a remorseless cruelty, hateful to God and man alike. And in Rephidim-apparently the fair oasis of Wady Feiran, a wider valley, with springs of water and palm-trees -these deadly foes were mustered to destroy that host of newly-escaped unwarlike slaves, encumbered with women and children, and with herds and cattle and loads of jewels, that made them a tempting prey.

It was to Hoshea that Moses committed the choice and the leadership of the men who were to fight with Amalek. The great Lawgiver himself had a more mysterious and typical part to fulfil when he went apart to the top of the hill with his brother and his sister's husband, and stretched out his hands all day in intercession for this people. In the strength of that intercession Hoshea fought that whole day. It is in the strength and faith of a like but unfailing intercession that every subsequent hero has fought and won. We may picture to ourselves the hills around, in shape and colour like flames, the green vale, the tents of the anxious Israelites, the savage hordes on their swift steeds, with long lances and floating striped garments, with hoods drawn low over their fierce eyes, the hosts of Israel scantily armed with the spear, the arrow, the straight sword, the tall-pointed cap, the leathern breastplate of Egypt, the bullock emblem of the standard of Joseph firmly upheld, wavering for a time as the mortal intercessor's arms grew weary; but again recovering ground,

and by set of sun beginning the first of its many victories.

Hoshea was the victorious General, the hero of the host, who had cleared the path of Israel from the tormenting robbers. Nevertheless, he remained as Moses' minister or personal attendant. When Israel was encamped at the foot of the awful mountain covered with the cloud, whence proceeded lightnings, thunders, trumpet-blasts, and that most mighty of all voices proclaiming the Eternal Law, the voice that the people entreated not to hear again, it was Hoshea alone who with Moses ascended the mountain, even to the cloud that veiled the summit. Moses entered within the cloud. There he received the Tables of stone written with the finger of GOD. There he talked with the Almighty, face to face; there he saw the eternal courts of Heaven, and was instructed how, feebly and faintly, to trace their model in the curtains and the gold of the Tabernacle. To him, among these things unutterable, the forty days and nights might well seem as one. To the fickle, impatient, turbulent crowd below, it appeared as though he had been lost in the thick darkness that covered the red crags among which he had disappeared. "As for this Moses, we wot not what is become of him." But there was one who neither was admitted among the unspeakable glories within the cloud, nor had the support of numbers in the vale beneath-one who had followed Moses as far as was allowed, and was left to hold his patient watch alone upon the bare mountain-side, in the dread solitude, awful in its silent grandeur even when left to nature, awful beyond measure when overhung by the cloud that hid the Divine presence. Out of sight, out of hearing of his fellows beneath-out of sight, out of hearing of the Master for whom he waited, but firm as the rocks around him, he tarried where he had been set to watch, through all those forty days and nights of awe,

with unshaken heart, firm in the confidence learnt when he had "stood still to see the salvation of GOD."

Surely no patient, resolute watch ever equalled that of Hoshea on the Mount of Horeb; and that it was with an unwearied spirit, prompt to dare as well as resolute to wait, we see when Moses had at length come forth, with the precious Tables in his arms, and, as they descended, up came the wild tumultuous cries of the camp below, and the warrior listening cried: "There is a sound of war in the camp!"

Alas! the sword of the avenging Levites had to be drawn, not against the Amalekite robber, but against the idolatrous Israelite, reviving Egyptian superstition in the very face of their insulted God. The second condition of the terms proclaimed by God's own voice had been openly violated, and Moses had destroyed the pledge of those promises to which there was no further claim. But still, hoping for his people against hope, he placed a tent for worship afar outside the camp, and there the presence of God again manifested itself. Moses entered to commune with God, and Hoshea, the only other man entirely unimplicated in the calf idolatry, departed not out of the Tabernacle.

Intercession again obtained the renewal of the covenant once transgressed, and after nearly a year spent in the framing of the Tabernacle, the making of the priestly garments, and the establishment, under Divine direction, of the great system of typical worship, the great multitude again moved on its way. There had now been time to marshal and array it as an army on the march, each tribe in its own place, with all its men numbered as warriors, and with their own standard, taken from the blessing of Jacob, at their head; but as guide and leader to them all the cloudy pillar resting on the sacred Tabernacle. Around that holy tent camped the Priests and Levites, by hereditary

temper the fiercest of the Israelites, but restrained by their sacred office. Eastward lay the goodly tents marshalled under the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Westward was the bull standard of Ephraim, beneath which Hoshea was ranked; to the south was the ensign of the water-bearer, whose burthen typified the instability of Reuben; and to the north the Serpent, or, as some say, the Eagle, of Dan. Beyond lay stretched the other tents of Israel, according to their tribes. When the cloud arose, the Ark was lifted by the Priests, the sacred vessels borne by the Levites, the trumpets were blown, and the chant uplifted by thousands of voices

"Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered;
Let them also that hate Him flee before Him."

Thus, in princely, regular march, the armies of Israel proceeded on their way from the jagged rocks of the southern wilderness to the more dreary and monotonous, though less wild, undulating desert of Paran. Here Moses halted and chose out twelve chiefs, one from every tribe, to go on in advance and reconnoitre the promised home of their inheritance. Of these thus sent on so perilous an adventure the bravest, most faithful, most patient must surely be one; and Moses therefore sent Hoshea as the representative of Ephraim, and at the same time apparently added to his name of "Salvation," or "He will Save," the Divine syllable, JAH, so as to make it "The Lord will save." Did Moses mean to predict safe protection for his true minister? Or was he guided by the spirit of prophecy to confer that name which in after times should belong to the true Captain of our Salvation, the Name above every name, at which every knee should bow?

As each of the twelve is called a Ruler of his tribe, it is probable that this was not a stealthy expedition of a few