god of the hills but He is not a god of the valleys"
(1 Kings xx. 28); and plenty of people who would scorn this simple
notion are still of opinion that He is a God of eternity and can save
them from hell, but a little falsehood and knavery are much better able
to save them from want in the meanwhile. Nay, there are many excellent
persons who are not at all of opinion that the prince of this world has
been dethroned.

Therefore, when his enemies recoiled from his fortresses and wandered
away into the wilderness of Egypt, entangling themselves hopelessly
between the sea, the mountains, and his own strongholds, it might well
appear to Pharaoh that Jehovah was not a warlike deity, that he himself
had now found out the weak point of his enemies, and could pursue and
overtake and satisfy his lust upon them. There is a significant emphasis
in the song of Miriam's triumph--"Jehovah is a man of war." At all
events, it was through an imperfect sense of the universal and practical
importance of Jehovah as a factor not to be neglected in his
calculations, through exactly the same error which misleads every man
who postpones religion, or limits the range of its influence in his
daily life,--it was thus, and not through any rarer infatuation, that
Pharaoh made ready six hundred chosen chariots and all the chariots of
Egypt, and captains over all of them. And his court was of the same
mind, saying, "What is this that we have done, that we have let Israel
go from serving us?"

These words are hard to reconcile with the strange notion that until now
a return after three days was expected, despite the torrent of blood
which rolled between them, and the demands by which the Israelitish
women had spoiled the Egyptians. Upon this theory it is not their own
error, but the bad faith of their servants, which they should have cried
out against.

At the sight of the army, a panic seized the servile hearts of the
fugitives. First they cried out unto the Lord. But how possible it is,
without any real faith, to address to Heaven the mere clamours of our
alarm, and to mistake natural agitation for earnestness in prayer, we
learn by the reproaches with which, after thus crying to the Lord, they
assailed His servant. Were there no graves in that land of superb
sepulchres--that land, now, of universal mourning? Would God that they
had perished with the firstborn! Why had they been treated thus? Had
they not urged Moses to let them alone, that they