THE name Moses means, according to one authority: "Drawing out (of the water); i. e. rescued." When we consider this in connection with the experience which probably gave him the name, and then carry our thought to that other momentous event in his life, the Passover, the significance of the name and of the two events becomes apparent.
Let us recall the opening scene in the well-known story. After Pharaoh had condemned the male infants of the Israelites to be cast into the river, we read that the mother of Moses hid him for three months. "And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink." Was not this a wonderful instance of unfaltering faith in the protecting love of the one God? The woman was "of the house of Levi;" and "Levi" is defined on page 590 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, thus: "A corporeal and sensual belief; mortal man; denial of the fulness of God's creation; ecclesiastical despotism." Therefore we can surmise that the mother-love rose above her educated beliefs to this great height of faith for the sake of the helpless babe, dearer to her than life. Inspired by divine Love, she took the ark of bulrushes,—the ark typifying protection and refuge, —and confided it with its precious burden to the very river which would have been the child's destroyer if Pharaoh's command had been carried out. Thus the reflection of the divine Mother-Love conquered fear; and the result showed how her confidence in God, good, was rewarded, for not only was the child saved, but she was appointed by Pharaoh's daughter to nurse and care for the child, and received wages, an added benefit. She had indeed brought "all the tithes into the storehouse," and reaped great blessing.
The whole world shares in this blessing, for Moses was the human instrument in the hand of the Almighty to forge one of the early links in the chain of revelation whereby universal salvation was unfolded. This scheme of world salvation has been made very clear to the present age in the Christian Science textbook. Once more referring to the Glossary of this volume (p. 592), we find that a definition of "Moses" given there is "moral courage," and all through the Bible "water," in its material signification, symbolizes error, and in its spiritual aspect, healing truth. Moses' mother, during the early months of his life, no doubt alternating between terror of the water that might engulf her child, and the dawning perception of the way of his deliverance, must have risen to a faith sufficient to overcome her fear.
