120 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

It is not often that three illustrious people are born in the
same house, and yet to two pious Jewish parents of the tribe
of Levi, there were born in the old Egyptian days, two sons
and a daughter, who bore three of the greatest names known
to the Hebrew race. First of all, Moses, the great Lawgiver
and Leader of Israel’s wandering tribes, whose life, from his
cradle on the Nile to his unknown grave amid the solitudes
of gray Beth-Peor’s mountains, was full of world-wide, sacred
interest; next came Aaron, the great High Priest of the desert

wanderings, whose burial at Mount Hor was in many respects

a more sublime scene than the departure of Moses; and last of
the three, came Miriam—the Poet, the Prophetess of Israel,
who led forth in grand procession, with timbrels and dances,
the loud thanksgiving of a redeemed people. Happy the home
that had such sons and such a daughter.

‘Moses was a great-grandson of the patriarch Levi. His
father’s name was Amram, which meant “handsful of. corn;”’
his mother’s name was Jochebed, which meant “honorable.”
Moses was born a slave, but he was destined to be for the
Hebrew race what Abraham Lincoln became in our own dear
land—the emancipator of the enslaved.

The King whose dreams Joseph had made plain had long
been dead, and now another King arose “who knew not

Joseph,” and who was wholly blind to the gratitude due to

the fellow-countrymen of the greatest statesman Egypt ever
knew. ;
Hard and cruel was the lot of Israel in Egypt. The lives
of these down-trodden people were made bitter and almost
unendurable with the curse of slavery. And yet, the more
these people were persecuted, the more they multiplied. By

reason of their numbers, they became formidable and dan- -

gerous. Fear made the King a coward, and cowards are

~~