Israel being a chief source of his wealth) between "God and Mammon ?"

MARY. Only the men were to go and worship, leaving the women and children behind, to make sure of their coming back again: and when Moses would not accept this insolent proposal, he drove him away in anger. No wonder God sent the locusts on him immediately! But, Mama, I think it was simple in Moses always to believe Pharaoh serious, and entreat God for him.

MAMA. My dear, God has constituted no man judge of another's sincerity, nor have his ministers a right to withhold from the worst, the benefit of their finite intercession. Besides, others were sufferers equally with the infidel king in all these calamities; and the Lord, who "refrained" from destroying Nineveh on account of the "six score thousand persons in it who could not discern their right hand from their left"—was doubtless ready "to be entreated" for the helpless and unoffending among the Egyptians. There was now little more in the shape of property to be destroyed, and the next plague-a meet prelude to the crowning judgment which succeeded-was of a nature to work on the feelings and consciences of such as retained on their minds any sense of God. Darkness, deep, pal

pable, and supernatural, besides being a very proper humiliation to a people piquing themselves on their superior illumination, was a signal retribution on their idolatrous worship of the sun, and idle personification of a power of darkness, from which their tutelary deity of light was unable to rescue them.

MARY. It must have been dreadful to sit in darkness three whole days, not knowing what was to come next!

MAMA.

Terrible indeed! Were the Israel

ites left thus unenlightened?

MARY. No, no; it says, "The children of Israel had light in their dwellings."

MAMA. Never forget this, Mary, or the cause of this exhilarating difference; which, as a foretaste of further mercies, must have been doubly reviving. If the Israelites had "light in their dwellings," while the Egyptians sat paralysed with horror under the influence of a "darkness that might be felt”—it was because the " candle of the Lord shined on their heads;" because that symbol of the Divine presence, already become to their enemies " a pillar of a cloud," displayed its joyful beacon to animate them for their journey. In the dwelling of every Christian, Mary, there is, or ought to be, the same heavenly light; dispelling the mists of error, the clouds of ignor

ance, the night of doubt and despondence—and shining," like the path of those whom it guides

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and invigorates,

fect day!"

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more and more unto the per

MARY. Oh, Mama!

Pharaoh could still

think of making conditions with God, and keeping the cattle of the Israelites from going with them. How weak as well as wicked he must have been!

MAMA. Wickedness is but another name for folly, in most instances, my dear; and the heart has more share than is generally imagined in the errors of the understanding. Covetousness was at the bottom of Pharaoh's whole resistance to the departure of God's people-and the more inevitable his ultimate compliance became-the more did his " evil heart of unbelief" struggle to retain some hold over its unjust possessions. Better kings and better men than Pharaoh might have been loth to relinquish a nation of profitable slaves and tributaries; and let us, while acknowledging his impious infatuation, ask ourselves if we feel it easy to" count all things but loss" at the command of even a gracious and liberal Master, who has promised to repay every such sacrifice" an hundred fold?" With this salutary and humbling inquiry, let us pause, ere we follow the reprobate King of Egypt to his "house of mourn

ing" and watery grave. If we have thus far accompanied the sacred historian without heightened feelings of reverence for God, and deepened fear of provoking his righteous judgments, it were better for us that Moses had never written, -nay, that like Pharaoh—(to use our Lord's awful words)—we " had been cast into the depths of the sea."

G

62

MORNING SIXTH.

LESSON.-Exodus, Chapters xi. xii. and xiii. to ver. 17.

MAMA. We have, my dear Mary, in these closely connected, .and indeed inseparable chapters, the three-fold record of the final and memorable judgment by which Jehovah summed up his "wonders upon Egypt," and its wicked monarch—the singular expedient by which its extension to the children of Israel was to be mercifully averted-and the religious rite by which this gracious deliverance was to be commemorated to the most distant periods of their existence as a nation. Interesting as the whole transaction was to the Jews, as a record of Divine vengeance and memorial of Divine goodness-to us Christians, who know what a far better and more glorious deliverance is here typified, it must open subjects of reflection and gratitude as much more elevated and sublime than theirs, as "Christ our Passover" transcends in spotlessness and va