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DISCOURSE IV.

MIRACLES WROUGHT BY MOSES IN EGYPT.

PHARAOH'S HEART HARDENED.

INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER.

DISCOURSE IV.

MIRACLES WROUGHT BY MOSES IN EGYPT.

PHARAOH'S HEART HARDENED.

TION OF THE PASSOVER.

INSTITU

say,

EXODUS xii. 26, 27.

And it shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passshall ye over, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.

FEW portions of the history of Israel are narrated with such minuteness of detail, as that which sets forth the proceedings of Moses, from the period of his return into

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Egypt, to the final departure of the Jewish nation; and exhibits his various attempts to prevail upon Pharaoh to let the people go. And, doubtless, there are few which so well deserve a faithful and particular notice; whether we consider the actual and immediate importance of the deliverance, the extraordinary means resorted to for its accomplishment; or its consequences, diffused as they are over the whole world, and felt as they have been, and will continue to be, throughout all succeeding ages, even unto the end of time.

To satisfy, in some degree, the scruples of his servant, to give him a confidential companion and assistant, and to compensate for his own deficiency in eloquence (seeing that he was himself "slow of speech and of a slow tongue"), the Lord supplies him with a coadjutor, in the person of his elder brother Aaron, to whom he allots the office of speaking on all public occasions. Still further to confirm his faith, he gives him as a sign, that which, of all things, Moses would think

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most unlikely to occur. Behold," says he, "thy brother cometh forth to meet thee and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart." And so ready is the Almighty to afford strength and assistance to his ministers, even when they least expect it, that before Moses had descended from the mount this promise is performed, he meets and embraces his brother.-Communing together of all the things which the Lord had revealed-of all the promises which he had made and of all the hopes which he had held out to them, they arrive in Egypt; where their whole progress was one stupendous scene of wonder-working power, encountered by equally wondrous obduracy and depravity.

Their first step is to assemble their brethren, and open their commission; to declare unto them the message which they had brought from God. And we may conceive the joy that lighted up the countenances of the bondmen, at the prospect of deliverance-at the intelligence, by the mouths of Moses and Aaron, that God had remembered and visited his people.

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