e acacia tree. The awful
severity of the judgments, the series which they formed, their advent
and removal at the menace and the prayer of Moses, are considerations
which make such a theory absurd. The older scepticism, which supposed
Moses to have taken advantage of some epidemic, to have learned in the
wilderness the fords of the Red Sea,[12] to have discovered water, when
the caravan was perishing of thirst, by his knowledge of the habits of
wild beasts, and finally to have dazzled the nation at Horeb with some
kind of fireworks, is itself almost a miracle in its violation of the
laws of mind. The concurrence of countless favourable accidents and
strange resources of leadership is like the chance arrangement of a
printer's type to make a poem.

There is a common notion that the ten plagues followed each other with
breathless speed, and were completed within a few weeks. But nothing in
the narrative asserts or even hints this, and what we do know is in the
opposite direction. The seventh plague was wrought in February, for the
barley was in the ear and the flax in blossom (ix. 31); and the feast of
passover was kept on the fourteenth day of the month Abib, so that the
destruction of the firstborn was in the middle of April, and there was
an interval of about two months between the last four plagues. Now, the
same interval throughout would bring back the first plague to September
or October. But the natural discoloration of the river, mentioned above,
is in the middle of the year, when the river begins to rise; and this,
it may possibly be inferred, is the natural period at which to fix the
first plague. They would then range over a period of about nine months.
During the interval between them, the promises and treacheries of the
king excited alternate hope and rage in Israel; the scribes of their own
race (once the vassals of their tyrants, but already estranged by their
own oppression) began to take rank as officers among the Jews, and to
exhibit the rudimentary promise of national order and government; and
the growing fears of their enemies fostered that triumphant sense of
mastery, out of which national hope and pride are born. When the time
came for their departure, it was possible to transmit orders throughout
all their tribes, and they came out of Egypt by their armies, which
would have been utterly impossible a few months before. It was with
them, as it is with every man that breathes: the delay of God's grace