I. Scholars have said that the old Greeks were the fathers of freedom; and there have been other people in the world's history who have made glorious and successful struggles to throw off their tyrants and be free.
But liberty is of a far older and nobler house. Liberty was born on the first Easter night, when God Himself stooped from heaven to set the oppressed free. Then was freedom born. Not in the counsels, of men, however wise, or in the battles of men, however brave, but in the counsels of God and the battle of God. Freedom was born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God, from whom all good things come, and of Christ, who is the life and the light of men and of nations, and of all worlds, past, present, and to come.
II. The history of the Jews is the history of the whole Church and of every nation in Christendom. The Jews had to wander forty years in the wilderness, and Christendom has had to wander too, in strange and blood-stained paths, for eighteen hundred years and more. For as the Israelites were not worthy to enter at once into rest, no more have the nation of Christ's Church been worthy. As the new generation sprang up in the wilderness, trained under Moses' stern law, to the fear of God, so for eighteen hundred years have the generations of Christendom, by the training of the Church and the light of the Gospel, been growing in wisdom and knowledge, growing in morality and humanity, in that true discipline and loyalty which are the yokefellows of freedom and independence.
C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch,p. 149.
References: Exodus 12:42. C. Kingsley, National Sermons,p. 337. 12-14. J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era,p. 47. Exodus 13:1-7. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 37. Exodus 13:10. Parker, vol. ii., p. 315; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1092; H. Grey, A Parting Memorial,p. 54.Exodus 13:13. S. Cox, Expositions,2nd series, p. 381; Parker, vol. ii., p. 74.