It is this and sweet bitter, then how great is that darkness. condition of a man that is represented by the destruction of the horse, the ass, and the camel. How different from the representation, in that divine account in the gospel, of the Lord's taking an ass and bringing it to Jerusalem. In this latter case, it represents man's common sense brought into harmony with religion, and being suffered to have the high honour of bearing upon it the King of kings. Thus, all the natural truths we have, are being blessed by spiritual truths, and we are guided on to prosperity and peace. In the sad account before us, there is depicted the condition of one, who, in spite of every friendly help, in spite of every remonstrance of friends and of conscience, in spite of every entreaty even of the God of love, will continue to defy the glorious Being who seeks to bless him. The sheep and the oxen, which also were consumed, are representative of other spiritual virtues, the spirit of duty; the disposition to plod on in useful works, is represented in the correspondences of the animal world by the ox. The sheep signifies all the kind principles of charity. The Lord says-He will put the sheep at His right hand-and He is their Divine Shepherd. But when a person has so far immersed himself in sin and guilt, that his intellect becomes utterly depraved; the oxen and the sheep soon expire too, and he has no flock of good affections to look after. Then the next plague comes, which I have mentioned as the plague of ulcers and pustules, called in the English version boils and blains. Now this rottenness of flesh which is represented by loathsome sores, the deep ulcerous appearances which are described by these terms, is representative of the shamelessness of evil which stands in entire contrast, you will remember, with what we pointed out as represented by former plagues. The sinner, in his early days, whose heart is heedless and rebellious, would not for the world, that any person should see him do what is not respectable. But now when he has sunk several stages lower and particularly when the intellect has lost its power, when he has come into that condition which our Lord describes, when he says,-if thou return not to thy first love I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, (Rev. II. 5.) when those rational powers which have been called the reins and the bridle of the soul, have been lost, then the utter indecency, blasphemy, and recklessness which prevail with him, are represented by the ulcers and pustules all about. You will remember that striking passage, "We are full of wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores."-Is. 1. 6. These putrifying sores are the disgusting blasphemies, the utter loathsomeness of character, the carelessness of the decencies and proprieties of life which prevail, when sin has become shameless. Such is the condition represented here by the ulcers and pustules which afflicted the Egyptians after the murrain had consumed the cattle. Moses was commanded to take handsful of ashes of the furnace and lift them up towards heaven. The furnace represents the heart all alive with lust. 66 They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker." The ashes are there, fixed in his habits, fixed in his maxims and principles. He has no longer the warm delight which singave at first; but the results are fixed in his very character and they become ashes of the furnace. The ashes remain after the vigours of the lust is over, and the person has become a cool, besotted, and deliberate, evil-liver. These were lifted up by the sacred Prophet to show, how, in the sight of Heaven, such things seem. What disgusting ulcers, what awful consumption of souls, what utter rottenness of spirit, is brought about by those terrible evils which have thus made the bad man's heart into a furnace of infernal fire. You will see the same thing remarkably illustrated in what is said of those who fight against Jerusalem. "And these shall be the plagues wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongues shall consume away in their mouth."-Zec. XIV. 12. "And so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be in these tents, as this plague."-Zec. XIV. 15. Then comes the plague of the hail, the lightning, and the thunder. These signify that state of the wicked man's soul, in which he finds every truth of religion has become to him hard, condemnatory and severe. Hail, is frozen rain. Rain is repre sentative in the Divine Word, of the descent of truth into the soul. You will remember many places in which it is thus described, "My doctrine shall distil as the dew; as the tender showers upon the grass." "It is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you." The descent of refreshing showers, the coming down of those bright and beautiful drops which give fertility to a country, slake the land's thirst, and refresh all nature, these are just like those divine descents of holy truths from heaven, by which the soul that thirsts after righteousness feels that it is also refreshed. The little paradise within has been visited from the heavenly world and all the trees of righteousness become pleased and happy. But where the soul has brought itself into a wintry state, when it has surrounded itself with an atmosphere of utter cold; it has no ray of warmth from the sun of righteousness, but all is hard, miserable, and unhappy. The divine influence flowing down, becomes turned into hail. The very truths that would have otherwise cheered and comforted, become a condemnation, and are felt to be a pronunciation of punishment and despair. Oh! I have seen some sad instances, where persons have become so utterly bad as to adopt what Milton puts into the mouth of Satan, I cannot repent,-Everything condemns me,--It is utterly useless for me to strive : : "Evil be thou my good, When I was a boy of some twelve years of age, I met a person of this character, the son of most respectable parents, in Liverpool. He had become so reckless, so defiant, so careless, such a worshipper of strong drink, that he had disabled himself in body and soul for useful pursuits, yet clinging to his sin, until even the few hours when the bar was closed at night, were hours of intolerable pain. His parents, in dying, could not trust him with the fortune which they desired, that, equally with his brothers and sisters, he should enjoy. A small sum was made over, so that he could just receive the little that might keep him with daily necessaries from week to week. A thoughtful boy, I was shocked to see so sad a wreck, and as he came down stairs, parched, burning and wretched, to see if yet the liquid fire was to be had, I took it upon me one day, to try if a boy's talk would do him any good. I spoke to him of the present hell in which he was living, and of his future ruin. He heard me, but with this fearful announcement,—It is of no use. I know I am going to hell, and I go on clutching, clutching, clutching my own misery. Religion is true, no doubt, but it is all condemnatory to me; it is all a curse to me. I do not wish to hear of it. I cannot bear to hear of it. There is no comfort for me. It was all condemnatory, all despair, all destruction to him. It is this state that is represented by the hail coming down, and the thunder rolling over the wicked man's head. His own angry passions and lusts flashing, constitute the fire running along the ground. Such is the state represented in this divinely true and amazingly graphic description of what took place in Egypt, and of what takes place in every soul in this ruined condition. But how wonderful is infinite love and mercy! Pharaoh, when he was thus stricken down, and utterly helpless, after he had seen the flashes, and heard the thunder, and felt the hail, and beheld the whole kingdom smitten down, cried,-It is enough, I and my people are wicked. Let there be a cessation; entreat the Lord for me. And Moses said,-Yes, I will entreat the Lord for you, and all this horror will cease; but I know that thou and thy people will not repent. The condition of things had become so fixed, so enrooted, that the very powers of the intellect which alone could grasp the truth and could change him, had been destroyed by the murrain, and they were no longer available. Pharaoh had brought himself to such a state of helplessness, such an infatuated state of intellect, that it was no longer possible for him to repent. He must go down and die; not for defect of divine mercy, Oh! no. The Lord had taken the plagues away one after the other. In fact the plagues were not from the Lord, but from hell. The divine power simply permitted hell to effect them, and the horrors then came. At this day; they who fight against Jerusalem, are those who fight against right, against truth, against wisdom, and even against love; against the Saviour God, who desires to make them happy. Oh what an insane contest is that. The most terrible triumph that any soul can achieve, is its triumph over God. A man can, as far as he himself is concerned, absolutely get the victory in his own soul. Because he has freedom given to him from the Lord to become an angel, he can get the victory over truth; but it is his most terrible defeat. He can get the victory over goodness, but what a horrid triumph a triumph which destroys in him the possibility of happiness. Oh! how much more noble and glorious is it for a man to take the counsel of the King of kings, to take the express, holy direct invitation of Him who is all good, to whom the whole universe is obsequious, who has given us this glorious world to make us comfortable here, and has given us a still more glorious home hereafter, if we will but let Him make us happy. How much nobler to be like Moses and Aaron, and the Israelites, determined to quit our Egpytian state, to shun, with horror, all the ways of evil, and to enter upon that sacred freedom, the freedom of loving God above all things, of doing right, and making ourselves and all around us happy; making a little heaven at home in order to prepare us for a glorious Heaven in the eternal world. SERMON X. THE PLAGUES OF LOCUSTS-OF DARKNESS-AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. "And the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him: And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and thy son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the Lord."-Exodus X. 1. 2. In considering the persistent career of Pharaoh and the downfall of himself and his people, we are conducted in the circumstances which will now engage our attention, to three more of those terrible calamities, which are recorded as having come upon this unhappy monarch and his country. He is represented obstinate as ever, sinning and repenting, sinning and repenting down to his final ruin. The three leading particulars which are contained in the sad history are, first, the plague of the locusts, those malignant insects that are said to have destroyed every green herb, and every young tree in the land; secondly, the plague of darkness,-of that kind of thick and awful darkness which is described in the words of the text as a darkness that could be felt; and thirdly, the destruction of the first-born of Egypt, from the king that sat on the throne down to the maid-servant that sat grinding at the mill. Allow me before adverting to the particulars, and to the spiritual divine warnings which are contained in those particulars, to remind you of the truth which we ought never to forget, that the calamities which were brought upon Egypt, were not absolutely from the Lord, as their efficient cause; but permitted by him as signs of the terrible calamities which come down upon a sinking nation and a sinking soul; but which originate in the powers of hell. In considering this point which we are wishful to illustrate |