[2] In Stephen's address to the council at Jerusalem, there is an allusion to Moses' acting, to which it may be well to advert. "And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian; for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not." (Acts vii. 23-35.) It is evident that Stephen's object, in his entire address, was to bring the history of the nation to bear upon the consciences of those whom he had before him; and it would have been quite foreign to this object, and at variance with the Spirit's rule in the New Testament, to raise a question as to whether Moses had not acted before the divinely appointed time.
Moreover, he merely says, "it came into his heart to visit his brethren." He does not say that God sent him, _at that time_. Nor does this, in the least, touch the question of the moral condition of those who rejected him. "They understood not." This was the fact as to them, whatever Moses might have personally to learn in the matter. The spiritual mind can have no difficulty in apprehending this.
Looking at Moses typically, we can see the mission of Christ to Israel, and their rejection of Him, and refusal to have Him to reign over them. On the other hand, looking at Moses personally, we find that he, like others, made mistakes and displayed infirmities,--sometimes went too fast and sometimes too slow. All this is easily understood, and only tends to magnify the infinite grace and exhaustless patience of God.
And not only is there failure in the end, but also manifest uncertainty, and lack of calm elevation and holy independence in the progress of a work begun before God's time. Moses "_looked this way and that way_." There is no need of this when a man is acting with and for God, and in the full intelligence of His mind, as to the detail of his work. If God's time had really come, and if Moses was conscious of being divinely commissioned to execute judgment upon the Egyptian, and if he felt assured of the divine presence with him, he would not have "looked this way and that way."