ays, "It is I, be not afraid"; making the
wrath of man to praise Him, stilling alike the tumult of the waves and
the madness of the people.

It is possible that even the merciful mitigations of the last plague
were used by infatuated hearts to justify their wilfulness: the most
valuable crops of all had escaped; so that these judgments, however
dire, were not quite beyond endurance. Just such a course of reasoning
deludes all who forget that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance.

Besides the reasons already given for lengthening out the train of
judgments, it is added that Israel should teach the story to posterity,
and both fathers and children should "know that I am Jehovah."

Accordingly it became a favourite title--"The Lord which brought thee up
out of the land of Egypt." Even the apostates under Sinai would not
reject so illustrious a memory: their feast was nominally to Jehovah;
and their idol was an image of "the gods which brought thee up out of
the land of Egypt" (xxxii. 4, 5).

Has _our_ land no deliverances for which to be thankful? Instead of
boastful self-assertion, should we not say, "We have heard with our
ears, O God, and our fathers have declared unto us, the noble works that
Thou didst in their days and in the old time before them?" Have we
forgotten that national mercies call aloud for national thanksgiving?
And in the family, and in the secret life of each, are there no rescues,
no emancipations, no enemies overcome by a hand not our own, which call
for reverent acknowledgment? "These things were our examples, and are
written for our admonition."

The reproof now spoken to Pharaoh is sterner than any previous one.
There is no reasoning in it. The demand is peremptory: "How long wilt
thou refuse to humble thyself?" With it is a sharp and short command:
"Let My people go, that they may serve Me." And with this is a detailed
and tremendous threat. It is strange, in the face of the knowledge
accumulated since the objection called for it, to remember that once
this narrative was challenged, because locusts, it was said, are unknown
in Egypt. They are mentioned in the inscriptions. Great misery was
caused by them in 1463, and just three hundred years later Niebuhr was
himself at Cairo during a plague of them. Equally arbitrary is the
objection that Joel predicted locusts "such as there hath not been ever
the like, neither shall be any more after them, even to the years of
many generations" (ii.