r at
the relapses of men who were penitent upon sick-beds or in adversity, as
soon as their trouble is at an end, we are blind to this distinction.
Pain is sometimes obviously due to ourselves, and it is natural to blame
the conduct which led to it. But if we blame it only for being
disastrous, we cannot hope that the fruits of the Spirit will result
from a sensation of the flesh. It was so with Pharaoh, as doubtless
Moses expected, since God had not yet exhausted His predicted works of
retribution. This anticipated fraud is much the simplest explanation of
the difficult phrase, "Have thou this glory over me."

It is sometimes explained as an expression of courtesy--"I obey thee as
a superior"; which does not occur elsewhere, because it is not Hebrew
but Egyptian. But this suavity is quite alien to the spirit of the
narrative, in which Moses, however courteous, represents an offended
God. It is more natural to take it as an open declaration that he was
being imposed upon, yet would grant to the king whatever advantage the
fraud implied. And to make the coming relief more clearly the action of
the Lord, to shut out every possibility that magician or priest should
claim the honour, he bade the king name an hour at which the plague
should cease.

If the frogs passed away at once, the relief might chance to be a
natural one; and Pharaoh doubtless conceived that elaborate and long
protracted intercessions were necessary for his deliverance. Accordingly
he fixed a future period, yet as near as he perhaps thought possible;
and Moses, without any express authority, promised him that it should be
so. Therefore he "cried unto the Lord," and the frogs did not retreat
into the river, but suddenly died where they were, and filled the
unhappy land with a new horror in their decay.

But "when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he made his heart heavy
and hearkened not unto them." It is a graphic sentence: it implies
rather than affirms their indignant remonstrances, and the sullen, dull,
spiritless obstinacy with which he held his base and unkingly purpose.

_THE THIRD PLAGUE._

viii. 16-19.

There is no sufficient reason for discarding the ordinary opinion of
this plague. Gnats have been suggested (with beetles instead of flies
for the fourth, since gnats and flies would scarcely make two several
judgments), but these, which spring from marshy ground, would unfitly be
connected with the dust whence Aaron was to evoke the pe