However, it is God's prerogative to answer all the proud reasonings, and bring down the lofty imaginations of the human mind. He can write the sentence of death upon nature, in its fairest forms. "It is appointed unto men once to die." This cannot be avoided. Man may seek to hide his humiliation in various ways,--to cover his retreat through the valley of death in the most heroic manner possible,--to call the last humiliating stage of his career by the most honorable titles he can devise,--to gild the bed of death with a false light,--to adorn the funeral procession and the grave with the appearance of pomp, pageantry, and glory,--to raise above the mouldering ashes a splendid monument, on which are engraven the records of human shame,--all these things he may do; but death is death after all, and he cannot keep it off for a moment, or make it aught else than what it is, namely, "the wages of sin." The foregoing thoughts are suggested by the opening verse of chapter xi--"One plague more!" Solemn word! It signed the death-warrant of Egypt's first-born--"the chief of all their strength." "And Moses said, 'Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more.'" (Chap. xi. 4-6.) This was to be the final plague--death in every house. "But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast; that ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel." It is the Lord alone who can "put a difference" between those who are His and those who are not. It is not our province to say to any one, "Stand by thyself; I am holier than thou:" this is the language of a Pharisee. "But when God puts a difference," we are bound to inquire what that difference is; and, in the case before us, we see it to be a simple question of _life or death_. This is God's grand "difference." He draws a line of demarkation, and on one side of this line is "life," on the other "death." Many of Egypt's first-born might have been as fair and attractive as those of Israel, and much more so; but Israel had life and light, founded upon God's counsels of redeeming love, established, as we shall see presently, by the blood of the lamb. This was Israel's happy position; while, on the other hand, throughout the length and breadth of the land of Egypt, from the monarch on the throne to the menial behind the mill, nothing was to be seen but death; nothing to be heard but the cry of bitter anguish, elicited by the heavy stroke of Jehovah's rod. God can bring down the haughty spirit of man. He can make the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrain the remainder.