“The character and scene of the Red Sea passage--the greatest event which ancient history records--have in all ages been the subject of controversy, according to the variously proposed systems of topography, and the extent to which men have admitted or denied the operation of miraculous agency. Some, holding to the strict interpretation of such passages as, ‘The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and their left’ (Exod. xiv. 20), ‘The floods stood upright as an heap’ (Ps. xv. 8), ‘He made the waters to stand as an heap’ (Ps. lxxvii. 15), have inferred that the deep sea must have been literally parted asunder, and that through the chasm thus formed the Israelites passed, with a sheer wall of water on either side of them. By such, the scene of the passage has been fixed at six, ten, fifty, and even sixty miles below Suez, and the position of the city of Rameses has been varied to meet the several theories as to the crossing place. The advocates of these views, apparently anxious to aggrandise the miracle to the utmost, and discarding from fair consideration the physical agency which Scripture expressly mentions as the direct means by which the passage was made practicable, have, however, overlooked or evaded the difficulty of explaining how the fugitives, with their flocks and herds, could have travelled over the sharp coral rocks, and vast quantities of seaweed which cover the sea-bottom at these points. The obvious difficulty also, that a short way below Suez, the breadth of the sea becomes too great for the passage to have been effected within the limits of time given in the narrative, without some preternatural acceleration of speed, of which Scripture gives no hint or mention, has never been met satisfactorily. There is the yet greater difficulty that a wind strong enough to have produced upon deep water the extraordinary effect which is supposed, would have been much too violent for any man or body of men to have stood up against it. Lastly, there is the impossible supposition that Pharaoh and his host would have been mad enough to rush to their doom in this fearful chasm.” Of late years, however, the theory of a deep-water passage has been practically abandoned. Modern critics prefer an intelligent interpretation, according to known natural laws, of the words of Exodus xiv. 21, 22, which lay stress upon the _east wind_ as the direct natural agent by which the sea bottom was for the time made dry land.