Quarter July 27 the dialogue between Moses and the people, and show Tissot's picture No. 39. Call for the Golden Text and explain what it means. Tell the parable on p. 288. SUGGESTIONS FOR BEGINNING THE LESSON For Younger Pupils. This is what the poet heard in February:- My branches bleak and bare- Now listen to what he hears in October : I heard the tree regretting: Faith ne'er shall fail me more!" What is our Golden Text? Today we hear the mourning in the land of bondage: later comes the time of rejoicing. Who is the Pharaoh now in Egypt? For Older Pupils. In the Church of S. Pietro in Rome stands Michel Angelo's gigantic statue of Moses. You have seen a reproduction, have noted the huge limbs, the tense muscles, the dauntless look, and you have been impressed by the sense of power which the statue gives. It is a true representation of the militant spirit that ruled Moses. We have seen him before he had control of himself, when he slew the Egyptian; and again before he had conquered his self-distrust, when he wished to be relieved of the task he knew to be his of freeing his people: from now on we see the true Moses, his turbulent temper under control, able to conquer others because he had conquered himself, all his native timidity swept away by his sympathy for his oppressed people, ready to spend himself to further the plans of God. From now on his life is one long, splendid battle. It is a sublime figure, even as Angelo has portrayed him, who now confronts Pharaoh on his throne. LESSON TOPICS AND ILLUSTRATIONS I I KNOW NOT JEHOVAH Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go?" These were Pharaoh's arrogant words. I am God myself, thought Pharaoh; my will is the only will that must be obeyed. "Moses and Aaron came and said unto Pharaoh": thus we are told of their gaining an audience with the king, but no words tell of their paying him the customary homage. Well did Moses know the arrogance and cruelty and power of Egypt's Pharaoh, but he would not bow down before him as a supplicant. From the writings of Professor Maspero, the eminent Egyptologist, I condense this account of the way a request was preferred to Rameses II, the father of the Pharaoh with whom Moses was dealing. Each movement, each official act of the sovereign resembles an act of worship, celebrated midst the chanting of solemn hymns. If he grants an audience the subject whom he admits to the favor of gazing upon his face approaches him with a formula of devout adoration. If he summons a council for any business, the nobles of the kingdom open the deliberation by a kind of religious service in his honor. Imagine Rameses II seated upon his large golden throne, wearing a diadem adorned with two feathers, seeking for some means of facilitating the access of caravans to the gold mines situated in Nubia between the Nile and the Red Sea. The councillors enter the presence of the good god, their arms raised in an adoring attitude; they fall prostrate upon their faces and remain in that position while the business is explained to them. The desolate aspect of the country is graphically described and they are asked whether it is desirable to dig wells at intervals along the road. Their reply is not long deferred: "Thou resemblest Ra!" they all exclaim together: "thou resemblest Ra in all that thou doest, therefore the wishes of thine heart are always fulfilled; if thou desire something during the night, at dawn it is already there. We have seen many miracles that thou hast accomplished since thou hast risen as king of the world, and we hear of nothing, our eyes see nothing elsewhere that can rival them. Every word that issues from thy mouth is like the words of Harmachis. If, therefore, thou sayest to the water, 'Come up upon the mountain,' the celestial water will soon flow at thy word, for thou art Ra incarnate, Khepera created in the flesh; thou art the living image of thy father Tmu, lord of Heliopolis; the god who commands is in thy mouth, the god of wisdom is in thine heart, thy tongue is the sanctuary of Truth, a god sits upon thy lips, thy words are accomplished every day, and the wish of thine heart realizes itself like that of Ptah when he created his works. Since thou art eternal everything acts according to thy designs and everything obeys thy words, sire, our master!" Rameses, convinced by this speech, gives his orders, laborers are set to work and a well is dug at a suitable spot. This is one example among a thousand of suitable language to be used when any one has the perilous honor of raising his voice in Pharaoh's presence. No business, however unimportant it may be, can be brought before him without a lengthy memorandum of his superhuman origin and of his personal divinity. The other gods reserve heaven for themselves. Pharaoh possesses the earth; not only the land of Egypt, but the whole earth. If beyond the valley of the Nile there be peoples who claim to be independent or kings who refuse to bow before him, they are rebels; "children of rebellion” who will be punished sooner or later, and who will pay for their hour's liberty by eternal ruin. "I am God Myself." How much would despots of the present time like to act in the same spirit, though they lack the boldness of announcing it in so many words! How many set up their own desires and inclinations as their highest, their only law, and deny the existence of anything ideal before which they have to bow down and to whose dictates they have to yield? Dr. Max Landsberg. II ORDERING BRICKS MADE WITHOUT STRAW Where Human Lives are held Cheap. Wherever excessive labor is required, or labor under hard conditions, the employers are like these Egyptian taskmasters, demanding bricks without straw. And the purchaser, though he sins through thoughtlessness, is not guiltless. Were there no buyers of sweat-shop products, there would be no sellers. The power to remedy the sweat-shop evils lies in the purchasing public. There is an ancient Jewish legend that at the building of the Tower of Babel a brick fell from the top and broke and loud lamentation arose, but when a man fell and was killed, nothing was said. Bricks were dear, but human lives were cheap. So today sweat-shop products are dear, and human lives are held cheap. What mean ye that ye crush my people, and grind the faces of the poor, saith the Lord God of hosts, saith the prophet Isaiah. Let my People go. The fight is forever on, for God is forever saying to special interests and to property-accumulating enterprises and to grinding monopolies and tyrannies of all sorts, "Let my people go." Looked at from Jehovah's point of view, the only prize worth contending for in this world is men, and all things else—all trade, all commerce, all industry, all government, all pleasures that do not contribute to the making of men-must rest under his displeasure. He insists upon it that captains of industry shall see that man is more than all engines and railways and reapers and mills and factories. He insists that the money side of every transaction is the smaller side, and that the scales must always be made to tip in favor of the man. He will not have the spirit of a man crushed out of him in making buttons or pins or shoes. He will not have the soul of a woman drawn into the threads and colors of the cloth she weaves. He will not have the laughter of little children choked out by the atmosphere of sweat-shops or smothered by the whir of wheels, and because Jehovah insists upon human emancipation, because his "Let Quarter July 27 my people go" forever rings down from the skies, the struggle for liberty never ends. Still God is saying "Let my people go." The area of liberty must be broadest. He demands that the people shall not be in bondage to trust tyrants or corporation tyrants, and that the golden chains of property and plutocracy shall not be about their hearts and limbs. Robert Francis Coyle, in Continent. III BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN For they shall be comforted. Moses conveyed the seven-fold promise of God (Ex. 6.2-9) to his people, but, it is pathetically added, "they hearkened not for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage." Sorrow and suffering have a paralyzing effect upon our spiritual faculties, so that for the time even the most wonderful assurances of God lose power to comfort, and sometimes seem a mockery; as when David "said in his heart, I shall surely perish one day by the hand of Saul," although the Lord had most distinctly and repeatedly assured him of the kingdom. John McNeill says: "David was in the dumps, and said this in his heart because it would not do to say it with his lips." And he adds "Imagine David putting this in a psalm: "The Lord, he said he'd raise me, And set me up on high; But cruel Saul, he slays me, Anything that will not stand framing in prayer or psalm, is unworthy to be said in our hearts, and one of the surest signs of the triumphant grace is that, despite all present circumstances, we dare rejoice in hope and faith in God's word. Dr. Arthur T. Pierson, in Bible Notes. A Parable. It was autumn in the forest. "Wherever shall I begin to grow?" said an acorn to himself as he sat on the branch of an old oak-tree on the border of the forest. A light breeze arose, and shook from the old oak-tree many of its russet leaves. With them fell the poor acorn. "Now I am done for," said he. "How unfortunate I am." In the fall his brown and wrinkled skin had been torn. It was painful. All winter long the rain fell on him and the snow dropped its soft flakes above him. He became buried beneath the dead leaves and mould that fell on him. Then he fell asleep in his wet, cold bed. But at last the warm breath of spring came to wake him. "How sad," he said, "to have wasted so much time in sleep. I want to grow. Where shall I begin?" As he said this the acorn stretched out two little green side-growths, just as you stretch our your arms, when you wake in the early morning. He tried to look out of his little hole. A few more stretches and he could look around, with his head above the ground. This summer and the next and the next he made rapid progress. In his fourth autumn, the owner of the ground passed by, stopped and said to his gardener: "We must take care of this little fellow. We will put a fence around him. He is sound and strong; but here is a shoot on the side that is sucking up all his strength; cut it off at once, and next year he will grow better." The gardener took his knife, and cut off the shoot. How it hurt! But worse, the plant was wounded. to the heart. "They have cut away my strongest shoot," said he. "How can I recover?" Years_rolled by, and slowly, spring by spring, bud by bud, the sapling grew. The sun's rays shone upon his leaves; the rains nourished his roots; the ice, nipping his precious buds, hardened the wood; the winds, swaying hither and thither, as if determined on uprooting him, but rooted him the more firmly. Year by year his crest rose higher, his wood hardened, his trunk thickened, his roots stretched deeper. But every autumn the sap descended and the withered branches lost their leaves, and he would think to himself: "These unkind trials are too hard. Must I fall again into sleep, must I spend six months without making any progress?" One calm evening a little girl and an old man sat under the shade of a great oak tree. The old man said: "I remember when I was a little boy hearing my grandfather tell how, when he was young, he had noticed this oak a mere sapling. He lopped off a shoot, which threatened to deform it, and carefully tended it. Now we sit under its protection. It is a noble oak and gives shelter to us and the herds." The oak laughed over their heads and said: "Am I then, indeed, a full-grown tree? How foolish and wicked I have been! all the time I was grumbling at my disappointments, I was really growing and developing until I am now a great oak. So this is the lesson of life, whether it be the life of an oak-tree or the life of a man. How happy I should have been if I had but recognized it sooner." And he smiled again, as his leaves rustled in the breeze. Condensed from The Jewish Chronicle. SENTENCE SERMONS Any life that is worth living must be a struggle, a swimming not with, but against the current. Dean Stanley. The good are better made by ill, As odors crushed are sweeter still. Rogers. Things which never could have made a man happy, develop a power to make him strong. Phillips Brooks. A child that suffers no hardship is on the road to perdition. J. of Education. THE LESSON'S MEANINGS FOR US Are you at the mercy of a hard task-master, an exacting despot, some sin that has gained the mastery over you? In a beautiful prayer of George Matheson's these words occur, which hold the kernel of our lesson: Christ teaches emancipation through sorrow. It is not enough for me to know that it will be all right some day. Even if that day were come, the sight of this hour would be a blot to me unless it were seen to have been part of the way. I want to know that the shadows of this world are the shades of an avenue-the avenue to the house of my Father. The thought will make all the difference to me. Tell me my shadows come from the trees of thy planting! SUBJECTS FOR BIBLE CLASS DISCUSSION 1. Modern oppression of the Israelites. A Jewish writer says that the Pharaoh of the Exodus is not to be held so fully accountable for his oppression of the Israelites as the Tsar of Russia for his treatment of modern Israel. 2. Labor legislation. See recent issues of the American Labor Legislative Review. WORK TO BE ASSIGNED FOR THE NEXT LESSON Questions to look up. I. Read the account of the plagues given in Exodus. 2. Why does Ex. 12.12 say the plagues were sent? 3. Against what Egyptian gods was judgment promised by the plagues? (Clipping, pp. 291, 292.) 4. What are the natural phenomena connected with the plagues? (Clipping, p. 295.) 5. In what other Psalm are the plagues recorded? (78.44-51.) 6. What does Paul say in Romans 9.14-24 about God's treatment of Pharaoh? 7. What portions of the imagery in the 8th, 9th, and 16th chapters of Revelation are based upon the account of the plagues in Exodus? 8. How do the heathen in India fight a plague today? (Clipping, p. 296.) 9. Tell about the stamping out of the pneumonic plague in China two years ago. (Clipping, p. 297.) Questions to think about. 1. What lessons have we had that gave the history referred to in verses 23-26? 2. What account of Pharaoh is recalled by verse 36? 3. How did the plagues answer Pharaoh's question in our last lesson? 4. The miracles did not make Pharaoh believe in Jehovah; when and in what words did Jesus once say that the people would not believe even though a great miracle should take place? (Luke 16.31.) 5. Recall the advent of the seventeenyear locusts in 1911. 6. Which is the greater marvel, the plague of locusts before the Israelites left Egypt, or the coming once every seventeen years of locusts to certain parts of our own country? Note Book Work. Part III, Moses' Contest with Pharaoh. LESSON V-AUGUST 3 THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT Golden Text Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and who- Mt. 23.12 HOME DAILY BIBLE READINGS-M. Ps. 105.23-36. The Plagues of Egypt. T. Ex. 7.14-25. Water Turned into Blood. W. Ex. 8.1-32. Frogs, Lice, and Flies. T. Ex. 9.1-35. Murrain, Boils, and Hail. F. Ex. 10.1-29. Locusts, and Darkness. S. Ex. II.I-IO. Death of the First-born. S. Rom. 9.14-23. Inscrutable Divine Will. STUDY Ps. 105.23-36 (Compare Ex. 7.8-11.10) READ Ex. 7-11 COMMIT Ps. 105.26, 27 23 Israel also came into Egypt; And Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham. 24 And he increased his people greatly, And made them stronger than their adversaries. 25 He turned their heart to hate his people, 26 He sent Moses his servant, And Aaron whom he had chosen. And wonders in the land of Ham. And slew their fish. 30 Their land swarmed with frogs In the chambers of their kings. 31 He spake, and there came swarms of flies, 32 He gave them hail for rain, And flaming fire in their land. 33 He smote their vines also and their fig-trees, 34 He spake, and the locust came, And the grasshopper, and that without number, 35 And did eat up every herb in their land, And did eat up the fruit of their ground. 36 He smote also all the first-born in their land, WORDS AND PHRASES EXPLAINED Lesson Outline. I. The coming of the Israelites into Egypt, 23. II. Their Increase and the Oppression of the Egyptians, 24-25. III. The Coming of Moses and Aaron, 26. IV. The Plagues Sent, 27-36. 23-26. These verses summarize the history we have recently been studying. Egypt is called "the land of Ham." The name is connected with that of the son of Noah. Their adversaries. The Egyptians.-Deal subtly. Deal wisely, Ex. I.IO; therefore they did set over them taskmasters, II. 27. His signs. Hebrew, the words of his signs, RVm. See verse 28-they rebelled not against his words. |