The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-05-11
Our Contributors.
A Peep at Moses Married Life.

NAoo0o,. uuiihS LIS GALLO LII hlOldL, lOuuu
shelter under the roof of rich prince,
named Jethro, home in his family and
wife in his daughter. His introduction
to Jethros household was quite romantic.
In his fight from Egypt he came to
certain we'll While he sat there resting
In the cool of the evening, woman ap-
preached, driving her fathers sheep be-
fore her. Industriously she filled the
troughs with water, and the sheep began
to drink. All this while the stranger,
known by his dress to be from Egypt,
sat quietly by. But presently company
of shepherds came up with their cattle
and began to drive away the womans
sheep. The stranger had before felt his
blood Jingle at witnessing the tyranny
of the strong; and this new exhibition
of petty tyranny quickened his blood
afresh. Rising up in his might he drove
away the rude shepherds, scattered their
cattle, and then profered to the damsel
such services as she might require. Zip
porah, for that was the damsel's name,
would have been unlike most women if
the incident had failed to excite in her
heart romantic interest in the mvste-
rious stranger-an interest which after
wards was intensified by what she learned
OF Moses history and saw of his superior
mental endowments and manly beauty
and the result was-as might have been
expected marriage in Jethro's family.
John Ploughman," in his Talk on
Wives, says: If there is only one good
wife in England, 1 am the man who put
the ring on her finger" But Moses could
not say: If there is only one good wife
an MadSaaa, I am the man who put the
ring on her finger. His marriage turned
out to be an unhappy one. 1 suppose
that as is usually the case, both parties
were to blame for this. zipporah was
an unamiable and passionate woman, and
Moses was not then, what he afterwards
became, the meekest of men. He was
indeed, just what his early petting in the
Egyptian court tended to make him, an
amperious and arrogant man. And that
tells the whole story of conjugal infelicity.
The peevishness of the wife became
constant source of irritation to the hus-
band; and the imperiousness of the hus-
band had no other effect than to excite
the wife to set her will in constant oppo-
sltlon to his. And in this crossing of
wishes and variance of wills we have all
the needful requisites of lifelong an
tagonism an antagonism in which we
may be sure Zipporah would be eager to
take all the advantages which the de-
pendent condition of Moses afforded her
nor is it likely that she was very frugal
In her reminders that he was nothing but
an impecunious adventurer when he came
to eat the bread Of charity in her fathers
house. We have touching insight into
the discomforts of his situation and the
heart-sorrows which they engendered,
IN the names which Moses gave to his
two sons. The elder he called Gershom
ia stranger here'-or as some say
0"N'N'N~VN oOiohS3Oi duu tue younger ne |
called Eliezer-"I In God is my help"
But the husbands unfailing remedy in
such case was at hand: the repose
which he failed to find in the bosom of
his family, he found in the mountain SOL
itudes, tending the focks of his father-in-
law.
When he started back 10 Egypt, as the
Lords ambassador to Pharaohs court.
Moses first thought was to take his wife
along with him. But sudden and yio-
Tent outburst of passion at the inn where
they were stopping for the night, con-
WINGED him that the presence of his wife
would likely prove hindrance to him
rather than help; and SO he sent her
back to her father. This doubtless was
wise disposition of the fractions wife.
Think of zipporah in those straits to
which her husband was several times re-
duced while leading the people out of
Egypt-at the Red Sea, for example,
where, with the craggy, impossible rocks
of Pihahiroth on one side and the frontier
forts of Migdol and Baal-zephon on the
other, and the Egyptian army behind
and the Goa bafora thar Al .o,;o -