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rulers, capitalists and landowners began to tremble for their very existence. Enormous public works were planned and the enslaved caste were compelled to carry out their allotted labour under rigorous taskmasters, who made their lives a burden to them. Still their numbers continued to increase. Alarmed at the prospect of an impending revolution, the King gave orders that every male child of the Hebrews should be drowned, thinking thus to stamp out the nation. It is easy to imagine therefore that affairs must have come to a desperate pass, when from the palace of Pharaoh and yet from among their own caste a deliverer was raised up to organise and carry out the wholesale emigration of the entire nation.
Looked at in this light it was certainly the boldest venture and greatest scheme of the kind that had ever been conceived, and without the aid of remarkable miraculous displays of Divine power Moses could never have carried out so magnificent a project.
Everything appeared to be against him. The people whom he had come to deliver were an undisciplined mob of cowardly slaves, whose spirit had been crushed by years of cruel tyranny. They were unarmed and unaccustomed to war. They were the subjects of the most powerful military monarchy of those times. 3?or them to dream of emigrating must have seemed the wildest folly. On the one hand the Egyptians would not hear of it, and their way would be barred by legions of the best soldiers the world could produce. On the other hand the country to which they were to emigrate was already occupied by numerous and warlike tribes, wio would contest every inch of territory. Added to this there was a" great and howling wilderness " which separated the "one country from the other.