thieves through borrowing what they mean to restore, and hypocrites
through slightly overstating what they really feel. And, since there are
nice gradations in evil, down to the very last, Pharaoh will not yet
avow publicly the atrocity which he commands a few humble women to
perpetrate; decency is with him, as it is often, the last substitute for
a conscience.

Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of all full-grown wrongs, the
chief is the revolt of human nature, since, fallen though we know
ourselves to be, the image of God is not yet effaced in us. The better
instincts of humanity are irrepressible--most so perhaps among the poor.
It is by refusing to trust its intuitions that men grow vile; and to the
very last that refusal is never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon
upon its agents, and its agents cannot always reckon upon themselves.
Above all, the heart of every woman is in a plot against the wrong; and
as Pharaoh was afterwards defeated by the ingenuity of a mother and the
sympathy of his own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by the
disobedience of the midwives, themselves Hebrews, upon whom he reckoned.

Let us not fear to avow that these women, whom God rewarded, lied to the
king when he reproached them, since their answer, even if it were not
unfounded, was palpably a misrepresentation of the facts. The reward was
not for their falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived when the
notion of martyrdom for an avowal so easy to evade was utterly unknown.
Abraham lied to Abimelech. Both Samuel and David equivocated with Saul.
We have learned better things from the King of truth, Who was born and
came into the world to bear witness to the truth. We know that the
martyr's bold protest against unrighteousness is the highest vocation of
the Church, and is rewarded in the better country. But they knew nothing
of this, and their service was acceptable according as they had, not
according as they had not. As well might we blame the patriarchs for
having been slave-owners, and David for having invoked mischief upon his
enemies, as these women for having fallen short of the Christian ideal
of veracity. Let us beware lest we come short of it ourselves. And let
us remember that the way of the Church through time is the path of the
just, beset with mist and vapour at the dawn, but shining more and more
unto the perfect day.

In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy Scripture celebrates, the
service o