mindedness; what then is to be done, if upon tbe very first approach of reli!tlon we pooh-pooh it as more superstition, folly, and delusion? 2. This was a question to vJhich Moses could have given a very effective and alarming answer if only he had been allowed opportunity. Moses, fresh from the revelations and sanctities of Horeb, could have told Pharaoh such a story of the workings of Jehovah as would have been enou"h and more than enough, to guide the steps of a right-minded listener. Not, only his' own personal experience ; not only the sight of the burning bush, the rod transformed, the leprous hand, the blood where water ought to be; but also the fulness, the terrible fulness of Jehovah's power in the earlier days of the world, were within his reach to speak about. He could have told Pharaoh very admonitory things concerning Sodom and the Deluge if only he had been willing to listen. We may well believe that the effect of Pharaoh's defiant attitude would be to send Moses away striving to refresh and sustain his mind with the evidences, so available and so abundant, that in spite of !hiH proud king's contempt, Jehovah, in his vast power and resources, was indeed no vain imagination. When the proud and self-sufficient ask this Pharaoh-question, it is for af to make such answer as may be reassuring to ourselves; not to doubt our own eyesi"ht because others are blind, our own hearing because others are deaf. " Ho~ few sometimes may know, when thousands err. The truth which we may not be able to make even probable to others, we must strive i;o to grasp and penetrate, that more and more it may be felt as certain and satisfying to ourselves. 3. Thus we see how the Lord himself needed to deal with this question. Knowledge cf God is of many kinds, according to the disposition of the person who is to be taught, and according to the use which God purposes to make of him. Pharaoh was evidently not going to be a docile sclrolar in God's school---one who comes to it willing and eager, thirsting for a refreshing knowledge of the living God. But still he had to be a scholar, willingly or not. He had to learn this much at least, that he was transgressing on the peculiar possessions of God when he sported with Israel in his despotic caprice. It is for no man to say that his present real ignorance gives assurance that he will never come to some 'knowledge of God. It may be as pitifully true of the atheist as it is encouragingly true of the godly, that what he knows not now, he will know hereafter. Now he knows not God, but in due time he will know him; not dubiously, not distantly, but in the most practical and it may be most painful and humiliating manner. Pharaoh says, with a sneer on his face, and derision in his voice, " Who is Jehovah?" That question is duly answered by Jehovah in signs and plagues, and the last. answer we hear anything about on earth comes unmistakable and sublime, amid the roll of the Red Sea's returning waters. II. But Pharaoh not only puts this defiant question; HE UTTERS A MOST DETERMINED RESOLUTION WHICH GoD ALONE OAN ALTER. "Neither will I let Israel go." What then are Israel's chances for the future? There was every certainty that, if left to himself, Pharaoh would go on, tyrannous and oppressive as ever. From a ,human point of view he had everything to help him in sticking to his resolution. His fears, if-he had any- the wealth which he and his people had gained from the incessant toils of Israel-the great dislocations and changes which would have been produced by even a temporary withdrawal of Israel-all these things helped to a firm maintenance of the resolution. lt was a resolution which had strong and active support in all the baser feelings of his own breast. It is just in the firmness and haughtiness of such a resolution, revealing as it does the spirit of the man, that we get the reason for such an acc-umulation of calamities as came upon hls land. Here is another significant illustration of the manifold power of God, that he could break down so much proud determination. There was no change in Pharaoh's feeling; no conversion to an equitable and compassionate mind; he simply yielded, because he could not help himself, to continuous and increasing pressure, and God alone was able to exert that pressure. Pharaoh here is but the visible and unconscious exponent of that dark Power which is behind all evil men and cruel and selfish policies. That Power, holding men in all sorts of bitter disappointments and degradina miseries, virtually says, "I will not let them go." Our con.6.dence ought ever to be, th:t though we can do nothing to break this _bitter bondage, God, who forced the foo of Israel to relll liis voracious grnsp, will by his own means force freedom for ua 124 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. [OIL V. 6-9,
from every interference of our spiritual foe. It was Pharaoh'e sad prerogativo to shut his own heart, to shut it persistently, to shut it for ever, against tho authority and benedictions of Jehovah. But no one, though he be as mighty and arrogant as a thousand Pharaohs, can fasten us up from God, if so be we are willine to go to him, from whom alone we can gain a pure and eternal lifo.-Y.