on his mind, still shows how the hardening may be the fault of the thing or person hardened, rather than of the hardener. The same fire that softens and melts the gold hardens the clay. Now, the very miracles that God performed in Pharaoh's sight were like fire to his cold worthless heart of clay. They hardened it, as the clay is hardened by the fire. These miracles would have produced a very different effect upon a man who had some true fear of God in him. They would have led such an one to seek God and submit to God, and so would have been the "beginning of wisdom" in him. But Pharaoh had no fear of God, no pity for God's people, so, humanly speaking, fifty more miracles would have had, no effect upon him for the better.

Lastly, another consideration must be taken into account in forming an estimate of this deep matter. God wrought these signs and wonders in mercy towards the world; in justice toward the guilty and devoted nation of Egypt, but in mercy to the world; in order, as He says in my text, "that His name-i.e., His power and Godhead-might be declared throughout all the earth"-and these plagues, especially the last, were wrought in mercy even to the Egyptians; for if they had only discerned the hand of the one true God in the circumstances of the deliverance of the Israelites, they would have turned

from their idols to "serve the living and true God;" and this would have been the greatest mercy that could have overtaken them. You must remember that these signs and wonders—all of which led, step by step, to the thrusting out of the Israelites, and the passage of the Red Sea-were not done in a corner, but in the midst of the leading nation of the earth. Egypt was then the chief and central nation of the world. All Europe was in barbarism. We have accounts of the kings of Assyria, at even those early periods, communicating with the kings of Egypt. The whole world must have resounded with the accounts of the mighty works that God was then doing. And we are not left to conjecture on this matter. There is a remarkable incident recorded in the second chapter of Joshua, which shows what a stir the departure of the children of Israel must have made. Rahab, the harlot, entreats the favour of the spies who came to spy out Jericho with the words, "I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you: for we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea for you." Now this was said some forty years after the accomplishment of God's judgment upon Pharaoh and his hosts. So, if this woman appealed to them thus, so many years after they had

taken place, what a stir, then, must they have made at the time throughout all heathendom! So, in fact, this judgment upon Pharaoh was a double mercy to the whole heathen world. It taught them with an authority that would have come home to them, that the God of the whole earth was the God of Israel; it gave warning also to the wicked inhabitants of Canaan to repent and flee from the coming judgments.

All these things, taken together, serve to vindicate God's dealings with Pharaoh as expressed in Holy Scripture. They may not clear up all, but they serve to show how all would be cleared up if we had a perfect knowledge of the mode of God's working upon the mind and a perfect knowledge of human history. Let us not, then, be frightened with any difficulties that we find in the Bible. They are only to be expected in such a revelation as that book professes to be. It would be an argument against the truth of Scripture if everything in it was as clear and plain as our every-day transactions with one another; for the Bible is an account of the transactions of God with man-God, the Eternal God Who fills all things, Who upholds all things, and orders all things, and all of Whose works form parts of some vast design, some harmonious whole-this great God having to do with a creature limited in all his faculties-born one day, dying another-whose most perfect

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knowledge only serves to show him how very imperfect his knowledge is.

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Let us, then, submit, heart and soul, to this great God-the God revealed to us in the Bible. Let us freely confess that " His judgments are unsearchable, and His ways are past finding out," as He has declared them to be.

Let us fear lest we fall, as Pharaoh did, into His hands-into the hands of One who has in His power heart and soul just as much as body; for if we go on hardening our hearts in unbelief and impenitency, He may take away from us, as He did from Pharaoh, the power of believing in His mercy, and of being altered by His judgments and chastisements. And let

us remember that though judgment is His work, yet it is His strange work: and His delight is in mercy. If He hardened such a heart as Pharaoh's, let us be assured that, if we ask Him, He will soften OURS. He will, according to His express promise, take from us the heart of stone and give us the heart of flesh-He will open our hearts to the gospel of His Son, He will renew and sanctify them by His Spirit. This He has said He will dothis He has promised, so that if our hearts are hard we are without excuse-for His own Son is now at His right hand as our Mediator and Intercessor, for the very purpose of giving repentance—¿.e., a change of heart to Israel, and remission of sins.

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SERMON XV.

JUDAS ISCARIOT.

ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 14.

"Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver."

IT may, by God's blessing, solemnize our minds so as to enable us to realize more fully the indignities and sufferings that Jesus Christ endured, which will be brought before us in the sacred services of the ensuing week, if we consider the character and conduct of him through whose cursed covetousness our Lord was betrayed to suffer-Judas Iscariot, first the chosen apostle, then the son of perdition. Some of you, perhaps, have long looked upon Judas Iscariot as one who sinned in a way that it is well-nigh out of your power to imitate. You are familiar with the character of the holy and loving Saviour-you consider that the man must have been a very fiend incarnate who could betray to his enemies so good, holy, gracious, and withal confiding, a Friend. But wait a little. Have you ever considered what it was that made Judas so wicked