e; the Lord of the locust swarms--able to bring them over
the desert and over the sea to devour up every green thing in the
land, and then to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and drive
the locusts away to the eastward; the Lord of light--who could
darken, even in that cloudless land, the very sun, whom Pharaoh
worshipped as his god and his ancestor; and lastly, the Lord of
human life and death--able to kill whom he chose, when he chose, and
as he chose. The Lord of the earth and all that therein is; before
whom all men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess, 'Is anything
too hard for the Lord?'

And now, I always tell you that each fresh portion of the Old
Testament reveals to men something fresh concerning the character of
God. You may say, These plagues of Egypt reveal God's mighty power,
but what do they reveal of his character? They reveal this: that
there is in God that which, for want of a better word, we must call
anger; a quite awful sternness and severity; not only a power to
punish, but a determination to punish, if men will not take his
warnings--if men will not obey his will.

There is no use trying to hide from ourselves that awful truth--God
is not weakly indulgent. Our God can be, if he will, a consuming
fire. Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brimstone, storm
and tempest of some kind or other. This shall be their portion too
surely. Vengeance is his, and vengeance he will take. But upon
whom? On the proud and the tyrannical, on the cruel, the false, the
unjust. So say the Psalms again and again, and so says the history
of these plagues of Egypt. Therefore his anger is a loving anger, a
just auger, a merciful anger, a useful anger, an anger exercised for
the good of mankind. See in this case why did God destroy the crops
of Egypt--even the first-born of Egypt? Merely for the pleasure of
destroying? God forbid. It was to deliver the poor Israelites from
their cruel taskmasters; to force these Egyptians by terrible
lessons, since they were deaf to the voice of justice and humanity--
to force them, I say--to have mercy on their fellow-creatures, and
let the oppressed go free. Therefore God was, even in Egypt, a God
of love, who desired the good of man, who would do justice for those
who were unjustly treated, even though it cost his love a pang; for
none can believe that God is pleased at having to punish, pleased at
having to destroy the works of his own hands, or the