ld not live" (Ezek. xx. 11, 25).

This is the inevitable law, the law of a confused and darkened judgment,
a heart made heavy and ears shut, a conscience seared, an infatuated
will kicking against the pricks, and heaping to itself wrath against the
day of wrath. Wilful sin is always a challenge to God, and it is avenged
by the obscuring of the lamp of God in the soul. Now, a part of His
guiding light is prudence; and it is possible that men who will not be
warned by the fear of injury to their conscience, such as they suppose
that Pharaoh suffered, may be sobered by the danger of such derangement
of their intellectual efficiency as really befel him.

In this sense men are, at last, impelled blindly to their fate (and this
is a judicial act of God, although it comes in the course of nature),
but first they launch themselves upon the slope which grows steeper at
every downward step, until arrest is impossible.

On the other hand, every act of obedience helps to release the will from
its entanglement, and to clear the judgment which has grown dull,
anointing the eyes with eye-salve that they may see. Not in vain is the
assertion of the bondage of the sinner and the glorious liberty of the
children of God.

A second time, then, Moses presented himself before Pharaoh with his
demands; and, as he had been forewarned, he was now challenged to give a
sign in proof of his commission from a god.

And the demand was treated as reasonable; a sign was given, and a
menacing one. The peaceable rod of the shepherd, a fit symbol of the
meek man who bore it, became a serpent[10] before the king, as Moses was
to become destructive to his realm. But when the wise men of Egypt and
the enchanters were called, they did likewise; and although a marvel was
added which incontestably declared the superior power of the Deity Whom
Aaron represented, yet their rivalry sufficed to make strong the heart
of Pharaoh, and he would not let the people go. The issue was now knit:
the result would be more signal than if the quarrel were decided at one
blow, and upon all the gods of Egypt the Lord would exercise vengeance.

What are we to think of the authentification of a religion by a sign?
Beyond doubt, Jesus recognised this aspect of His own miracles, when He
said, "If I had not done among them the works that none other man did,
they had not had sin" (John xv. 24). And yet there is reason in the
objection that no amount of marvel ought to deflect by