The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 179

Ho does this in righteousness. "God, having permitted evil to exist, musE thereafter of necessity permit it also to run its whole cour~e in the way of showing itself to bo what it really is, as that which aims at the defeat of the Divine purpose, and tho consequent dissoluUon of the universe." This involves hardening. a. Tlvr<;ugh a, direct judgment in the soul of the individual, God smiting him with a. spirit of blind- ness and infatuation in punishment of obstinate resistance to the truth. This.is the most difficult of all aspects of hardening, but it only cuts the knot, does not untie it, to put superficial meanings upon the scriptures which allege the reality of the judgment (e.g. Deut. xxviii. 28; 2 Thess. ii. 11). It is to be viewed as connected with what may be ,called the internal providence of God in the workings of the human mind; his government of the mind in the wide and obscure regions of its involuntary activities. 'l'ho direction taken by these activities, seeing that they do not spring from man's own will, must be as truly under the regulation of Providence, and be determined in quite as special a manner, as are the outward circumstances of our lot, or those so-calledfmtuities concerning which we are assured: "An not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and ore of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father" (Matt. x. 29). lt is a signi- ficant fact that, as sin advances, the sinner becomes less and less a. free agent, falls increasingly under the dominion of necessity. The involuntary activities of the soul gain ground upon the voluntary. The hardening may be conceived of, partly as the result of a withdrawal of light and restraining grace; partly as a. giving of the soul up to tho delusions of the adversary, "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" (Eph. ii. 2), whose. will gradually occupies the region in the moral life vacated by the human will, and asserts there a correspondingly greater power of control ; and partly as the result of a direct.Divine ordering-of the course of thought, feeling, and imagination. Hengstenberg acutely remarks; "It appears to proceed from design, that the hardening at the beginning of th& plagues is attributed, in a preponderating degree, to Pharaoh, and towards the end to -God. The higher the plagues rise, so much the more does Pharaoh's hardening assume a supernatural character, so much the more obvious is it to refer it to its supernatural causality." • II. HARDENING IN ITSELF CONSIDERED. 'l'he heart is the centre of personality, the source of moral life, the seat of the will, the conscience, and the affections (Prov. iv. 23; Matt. xv. 18). The hardening of the heart may be viewed under two aspects : 1. More generally as the result of growth in sin, with consequent loss of moral and religious susceptibility; and 2. As hardening against God, the author of its moral life. We have but to put these two things together-the heart, the seat of moral life, hardening itself against the .Author of its moral life-to see that such hardening is of necessity fatal, an act of moral suicide. It may elucidate the subject to remark that in every process of hardening there is something· which the heart parts with, some- thing which it resists, and something which it becomes. There is, in other words- (1) That which the heart hardens itself in, viz. some evil quality, say injustice, cruelty, lust, hate, secret enmity to God, which quality gradually becomes a fixed element in character; (2) that which the heart hardens itself against, viz. the influ- ences of truth, love, and righteousness, in whatever ways these are brought to bear upon it, whether in the promptings of conscience, the movements of natural sensi- bility, the remonstrances of parents and friends, the Word of God, the internal strivings of the -Spirit; and (3) that which the heart parts with in hardening, viz. with its original susceptibility to truth, with its sensitiveness to moral influences, with its religious feeling, with its natural generosity, etc. The result is blindness, callousness, lostness to the feeling of right, to the sense of shame, to the authority of God, to the voice of truth, even to true self-interest. All hardening is thus double-sided; harden- ing in hate, e.g., being at the same time hardening against love, with a loss of the capacity of love; hardening in injustice being a hardening against justice, with a loss of the capacity for moral discernment ; hardening in cruelty being a hardening against kindliness, with a corresponding destruction of the benevolent sensibilities ; hardening against God being at the same time hardening in self-hood, in egoism, with a loss of the capacity of faith. We hence conclude: l. .All evil hardens, and all hardening in mwal evil is in principle hardening against God. The hardening may begin at the circumference of the moral nature, and involve the centre, or it may begin at the centre, and work out to the circumference. Men may be enemies to God in their mind by M2 164 THE :BOOK OF EXODUS. [cu. vu. 3.