Article February 5, 1903 Issue

Israel's Helper

J. E. FELLERS

The Bible is replete with incidents to which many events in the last century run parallel. The beautiful story of Moses has a new and peculiar interest when studied from the standpoint of comparison. The king of Egypt, actuated by "the elemental principle of all persecution—that of fear blended with envy," and a mistaken belief of doing right, sought to destroy God's chosen people, the children of Israel. Task-masters were placed over them. Burdens were imposed upon them beyond endurance. The chains of bondage were riveted tighter and tighter. Finally the edict was sent forth that their children should be cast into the Nile as soon as they were born.

About this time Moses was born. At first his mother thought she would hide him from the king's wrath, but learning that this could not be done, she made a small ark of the reeds that grew on the banks of the river, put the babe in the ark, and placed it upon the waters near the shore, leaving the babe's sister to watch what might become of it. Just as this frail bark and its occupant were about to be borne away from the shore and into the current, the king's daughter, a godly woman, came along, heard a faint cry, had the child delivered from danger, and when a nurse was needed to care for this babe, at its sister's suggestion, its own mother was chosen. Whether the king's daughter know that the nurse was the mother of the child, we cannot tell. If we are wise, however, we may observe that in this case, as in many others, God chose a woman to bring back to the world that which her father had sent away.

How like the Egyptian king and his priests, each believing that he was doing a great work, were the advocates of the time-honored remedies for earth's suffering and woe; how like the Nile,—heavy, sluggish, and turbid,—were the false beliefs of humanity, and how like Moses, helpless, adrift on this perilous stream, and ignorant of danger, was all mankind when Science and Health was given to the world, and through it and its author Christian Science was brought back to human consciousness. Note also how like the king's daughter, who heard the young child's cry, protected him from the wrath of established customs, took him back to his father's home and laid him in his mother's arms, was our Leader, who, hearing the call of her fellowmen, led them back to an understanding of life eternal and to a confidence in the protection of a Father-Mother God.

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