was itself a grace; and the slowly ripening fruit grew mellower than if
it had been forced into a speedier maturity.

_THE FIRST PLAGUE._

vii. 14-25.

It was perhaps when the Nile was rising, and Pharaoh was coming to the
bank, in pomp of state, to make official observation of its progress, on
which the welfare of the kingdom depended, and to do homage before its
divinity, that the messenger of another Deity confronted him, with a
formal declaration of war. It was a strange contrast. The wicked was in
great prosperity, neither was he plagued like another man. Upon his
head, if this were Menephtah, was the golden symbol of his own divinity.
Around him was an obsequious court. And yet there was moving in his
heart some unconfessed sense of awe, when confronted once more by the
aged shepherd and his brother, who had claimed a commission from above,
and had certainly met his challenge, and made a short end of the rival
snakes of his own seers. Once he had asked "Who is Jehovah?" and had
sent His ambassadors to their tasks again with insult. But now he needs
to harden his heart, in order not to yield to their strange and
persistent demands. He remembers how they had spoken to him already,
"Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, My firstborn, and I have said
unto thee, Let My son go that he may serve Me; and thou hast refused to
let him go: behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn" (iv. 22, R.V.).
Did this awful warning come back to him, when the worn, solemn and
inflexible face of Moses again met him? Did he divine the connection
between this ultimate penalty and what is now announced--the turning of
the pride and refreshment of Egypt into blood? Or was it partly because
each plague, however dire, seemed to fall short of the tremendous
threat, that he hoped to find the power of Moses more limited than his
warnings? "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed
speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to
do evil."

And might he, at the last, be hardened to pursue the people because, by
their own showing, the keenest arrow in their quiver was now sped?
Whatever his feelings were, it is certain that the brothers come and go,
and inflict their plagues unrestrained; that no insult or violence is
attempted, and we can see the truth of the words "I have made thee as a
god unto Pharaoh."

It is in clear allusion to his vaunt, "I know not Jehovah," that Moses
and Aaron now repeat the d