Exodus 2:16-22 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.… 1. We see here, first, activity presented to us as an indispensable and effective element in education. This is the great lesson taught by Moses in Midian. Head knowledge Moses had obtained in Egypt; hand work he was to practise in Midian. He was already learned in all Egypt's wisdom; he was now to be a participant in all Midian's labour. The latter was needful to give the former robustness, practical force, and substantial usefulness. In Egypt he was a student, in Midian a worker; and in the combination of the two he became a man of wonderful heroism, and high executive power. Egypt could not do this for him. It could instruct him, it could polish him; it did. Remaining in Egypt he might have been a man of elegant leisure;or with his literary resources, have lived among books, and become, perhaps, puffed up with knowledge, or bewildered with speculation. Idle learning is apt to come to that. In Midian his business was to do, to turn his knowledge into skill, make it practical. We need knowledge; we cannot have too much of it, if it be genuine. But we must ground action upon it. We are to be workers, doers in some line of useful activity, if we would fulfil the end of our being. Neither the ignorant worker nor the indolent scholar is the man for this world, but the intelligent and instructed doer, whose brains prompt his hands, and whose hands second his brains. 2. Again, Moses in Midian is to us a pattern of a wise conformity. He did not stand aloof from the people among whom he lived in a proud superciliousness or an offensive singularity; nor did he waste his time in an idle regretting of the past, and an uncomfortable repining at the unpleasant change of his condition. He made the best of the state into which God's providence had called him, and so was neither odious nor unhappy in it. Our Lord was much of a conformist in His time, and the Pharisees called Him a "friend of publicans and sinners." He was their friend, but not in the Pharisees' sense. And what He practised He recommended. He said to His disciples, "When ye enter into a house, salute it," "and in the same house abide, eating such things as they set before you." So, too, the great apostle, St. Paul, tells us that he "was made all things unto all men," and says, "To the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews; to them that are without law as without law, that I might gain them that are without law." This is worldly wisdom, and it is religious wisdom too. We are not to rebel against our circumstances, not to dwell upon lost good. 3. Finally, we see in Moses in Midian the example of a wise patience. Forty years elapsed during which his great undertaking was in abeyance, and gave no signs of an approaching resumption. He knew that "to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven," and that "it is not for us to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power." He had nothing to do but to wait, and he did wait, and uncomplainingly. How different is this from the course of many reformers, patriots, philanthropists, of whom, like some of old, it may well be said, "I have not sent them, yet they ran: I have not spoken unto them, yet they prophesied"; whose haste outruns the dilatory motion of the chariot of God, and whose eagerness chides God's delay by devices of their own,' and headstrong enterprises and efforts, on which God has never promised His blessing, nor have they asked it. Good things we have purposed, good things we have hoped for, do not come as rapidly as our impetuous wishes are fain to anticipate. "Tarry thou the Lord's leisure; be strong, and He shall comfort thine heart; and put thou thy trust in the Lord." (R. A. Hallam, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. |
    |