raoh, to "let go" something which God hath commanded him to relinquish, forfeits peace upon earth, and immortality beyond it. By what encouraging expressions does God, in the beginning of our chapter, revive the drooping spirit of Moses?

MARY. "See, I have made thee a God to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be thy prophet." How could Moses be a God, Mama? There is none but one.

MAMA. True: it is only a strong figure of speech to express the extent of delegated power Iwith which this eminent servant of the Most High was to be intrusted.

MARY. Mama, if God was to harden Pharaoh's heart on purpose, how could he help being wicked? I thought God hardened nobody. MAMA. I am glad you have put this question, my dear; it shews you think of what you read, and enables me to explain a phrase which has puzzled older heads than your's. No person is ever otherwise "hardened" by the most merciful and forbearing of Beings, than by mere cessation of divine interposition when become manifestly incorrigible, a state of reluctant abandonment to obstinate depravity, expressed in Scripture by being "given up to a reprobate mind." The best commentators tell us we have no authority

from the original for ascribing to God any hardening of Pharaoh's naturally stubborn disposition, till we come to the 9th chapter and 12th verse, when he had so decidedly and unpardonably resisted innumerable warnings, as to be judicially abandoned (with a propriety none but the most idle caviller could question) to the consequences of his impenitence and his impiety. This God foresaw would be the case, and prepared Moses for it accordingly; and thus only are we to understand his "heart being hardened" by Him, who "willeth not the death of" the most determined rebel," but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live." We may gather from the passage that another important end, besides the triumphant rescue of Israel, was in the view of Jehovah in the impending judgments. What does He say at verse 5th ?

MARY. "And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt."

MAMA. Yes, my dear Mary; and such are not his designs upon idolatrous Egypt alone. His "hand" is never "stretched out" on any people or individual among us, but that we may know, and fear, and acknowledge Him. Oh! that when we see in national visitations or private

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calamities evident tokens of his outstretched arm, we would say and feel "The Lord reigneth." But to return to Moses-What age was he, when finally deputed on his perilous mission? MARY. Fourscore, and Aaron was three years older. What old men!

MAMA. You must remember, my dear, that human life, though greatly diminished since the antediluvian, or even patriarchal ages, was still prolonged to a duration unknown among us. Moses was an hundred and twenty years old, when he died; at eighty he was therefore probably not more infirm than persons of fifty or sixty in our days. What was the first miracle he was empowered to perform?

MARY. Oh! the old one at the burning bushturning his rod into a serpent. But, Mama, how came it that the Egyptian magicians could do the same? Did God let them ?

MAMA. Doubtless he must, if indeed the miracle was ever really wrought by them. But this is much and justly questioned by the best commentators, because the word translated " enchantments," seems more properly to imply slight of hand, or legerdemain, for which the Egyptians were famous, and especially for taming serpents; some of which, previously prepared, it was by.

no means difficult for such expert conjurors to substitute in the place of their rods. But if permitted really to imitate Moses, it could only be to draw them on by temporary success to an humbling exposure of subsequent inferiority; which indeed was already intimated by Moses's rod swallowing their's. This having failed to convince Pharaoh-what was selected for the object of the next miracle?

MARY. The " river," Mama. The Nile, you know, we said it must be.

MAMA. Yes, the sole river of Egypt; a country, which, denied by Providence the natural refreshment of rain, owed its whole fertility, or power of producing food for man, to a periodical rise of the Nile, and the abundant irrigation thus afforded to its thirsty soil. Why did we say the king's daughter was visiting it when she found Moses?

MARY. For idolatrous worship of it; and so, I suppose, was Pharaoh now.

MAMA. Yes, and therefore no fitter scene or moment could be devised for manifesting to this proud prince the superiority of the God whom he had despised by asking," Who is the Lord?" How was this impious question answered by Jehovah ?

MARY.

"In this shalt thou know that I am

the Lord; I will smite the waters that are in thy river, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink of the waters of the river." How disgusting, Mama!

MAMA. Yes, Mary, even to you and I, how much more so to the nice and delicate Egyptians, who abhorred the very idea of blood, and revolted so from putrefaction as to embalm the bodies even of birds and animals; who looked then, and by the testimony of modern travellers still do, on the hallowed waters of the Nile with superstitious veneration, and held its fishes to be deities, or at least symbols, too sacred for food! What must have been their feelings when they saw their tutelary river thus defiled, their domestic reservoirs polluted, and themselves almost poisoned by their corrupted gods! Nothing more distinctly marks the "finger of God" in these judgments than their correspondence with the sins, and startling opposition to the rites of this most idolatrous of nations. It seems as if the magicians were again enabled, by some optical delusion or divine permission, to imitate this miracle also. If the latter, it was a singular instance of what our Lord calls a "house divided against itself," if the power of evil spirits was