s of the land, and they melted away (Josh. ii. 9,
10).

And perhaps it may save us from the unconscious egoism which always
deems that I myself shall not be treated quite as severely as I deserve,
to mark how the punishment of one affects the interests of all.

Added to all this is a kind of half-ironical clemency, an opportunity
of escape if he would humble himself so far as to take warning even to a
small extent. The plague was to be of a kind especially rare in Egypt,
and of utterly unknown severity--such hail as had not been in Egypt
since the day it was founded until now. But he and his people might, if
they would, hasten to bring in their cattle and all that they had in the
field. Pharaoh, after his sore experience of the threats of Moses, would
find it a hard trial in any case, whether to withdraw his property or to
brave the stroke. To him it was a kind of challenge. To those of his
subjects who had any proper feeling it was a merciful deliverance, and a
profoundly skilful education of their faith, which began by an obedience
probably hesitating, but had few doubts upon the morrow. We read that he
who feared the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and
his cattle flee into the houses; and this is the first hint that the
plagues, viewed as discipline, were not utterly vain. The existence of
others who feared Jehovah beside the Jews prepares us for the "mixed
multitude" who came up along with them (xii. 38), and whose
ill-instructed and probably very selfish adhesion was quite consistent
with such sensual discontent as led the whole congregation into sin
(Num. xi. 4).

To make the connection between Jehovah and the impending storm more
obvious still, Moses stretched his rod toward heaven, and there was
hail, and fire mingled with the hail, such as slew man and beast, and
smote the trees, and destroyed all the vegetation which had yet grown
up. The heavens, the atmosphere, were now enrolled in the conspiracy
against Pharaoh: they too served Jehovah.

In such a storm, the terror was even greater than the peril. When a
great writer of our own time called attention to the elaborate machinery
by which God in nature impresses man with the sense of a formidable
power above, he chose a thunderstorm as the most striking example of his
meaning.

"Nothing appears to me more remarkable than the array of scenic
magnificence by which the imagination is appalled, in myriads of
instances when the actual dang