SERMON X.

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.

(Palm Sunday.)

EXODUS ix. 13, 14.

Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that

they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

You will understand, I think, the meaning of

the ten plagues of Egypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a country Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were. Some of you, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not: it is for them I speak.

Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one which can be most simply described. One long straight strip of rich flat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad. On either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running through it from end to end, the great river Nile- The

River' of which the Bible speaks. This river the Egyptians looked on as divine: they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole wealth of Egypt. Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving behind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most inexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and made the Egyptians, from very ancient times, the best farmers of the world, the fathers of agriculture. Meanwhile, when not in flood, the river water is of the purest in the world; the most delightful to drink; and was supposed in old times to be a cure for all manner of diseases.

To worship this sacred river, the pride of their land, to drink it, to bathe in it, to catch the fish which abound in it, and which formed then, and forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was their delight. And now I have told you enough to show you why the plagues which God sent on Egypt, began first by striking the river.

The river, we read, was turned into blood. What that means-whether it was actual animal blood-what means God employed to work the miracle-are just the questions about which we need not trouble our minds. We never shall know and we need not know. The plain fact is, that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, became a detestable mass of rottenness-and with

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it all their streams and pools, and drinking water in vessels of wood and stone-for all, remember, came from the Nile, carried by canals and dykes over the whole land. 'And the fish that were in 'the river died, and the river stunk, and there

was blood through all the land of Egypt.'

The slightest thought will show us what horror, confusion, and actual want and misery, the loss of the river water, even for a few days or even hours, would cause.

But there is more still in this miracle. These plagues are a battle between Jehovah, the one true and only God Almighty, and the false gods of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.

Pharaoh answers: 'Who is Jehovah (the Lord) that I should let Israel go?' I know not the Jehovah. I have my own god, whom I worship. He is my father, and I his child, and he will protect me. If I obey any one it will be him.

Be it so, says Moses in the name of God. Thou shalt know that the idols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy people. Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they. Thou shalt know 'that I am the Lord.'

So the river was turned into blood. The sacred river was no god, as they thought. Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which the

very life of Egypt depended. He could turn it into blood. All Egypt was at his mercy.

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But Pharaoh would not believe that. The magicians did likewise with their enchantments'-made we may suppose water seem to turn to blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were but too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind that Moses' miracle was only a juggling trick too. For men will make up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to do so: when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness, draw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way. They will find reasons, and make reasons, to prove, if need be, that there is no sun

in the sky.

Then followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.

Learned men have plagues were miracles.

disputed how far these Some of them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost unknown. But whether they—whether the frogs, for instance, were not produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the lice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither need I know. If they were not, they were miraculous, and if they were, they were miraculous still. If they came as other vermin come, they

would have still been miraculous: God would still have sent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come at that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly miraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, on the one hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other. But if they came by some strange means, as no vermin ever came before or since, all I can say isWhy not?

And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust ' of the land, that it may become lice throughout ' all the land of Egypt.'

Whether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether the dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it would be. If you believe at all that God made the world, it is folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power. As a wise man has said 'If you believe in any real God at all, you must 'believe that miracles can happen.' He makes you and me and millions of living things, out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means. Why can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the ground, without those