_Is. 10:5, 7_—“_Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation!... Howbeit, he meaneth not so._” Charles Kingsley, Two Years Ago: “He [Treluddra] is one of those base natures, whom fact only lashes into greater fury,—a Pharaoh, whose heart the Lord himself can only harden”—here we would add the qualification: “consistently with the limits which he has set to the operations of his grace.” Pharaoh’s ordering the destruction of the Israelitish children (_Ex. 1:16_) was made the means of putting Moses under royal protection, of training him for his future work, and finally of rescuing the whole nation whose sons Pharaoh sought to destroy. So God brings good out of evil; see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 28-35. Emerson: “My will fulfilled shall be, For in daylight as in dark My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark.” See also Edwards, Works, 4:300-312. _Col. 2:15_—“_having stripped off from himself the principalities and the powers_”—the hosts of evil spirits that swarmed upon him in their final onset—“_he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it_,” _i. e._, in the cross, thus turning their evil into a means of good. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 443,—“Love, seeking for absolute evil, is like an electric light engaged in searching for a shadow,—when Love gets there, the shadow has disappeared.” But this means, not that all things _are_ good, but that “_all things work together __ for good_” (_Rom. 8:28_)—God overruling for good that which in itself is only evil. John Wesley: “God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.” Sermon on “The Devil’s Mistakes”: Satan thought he could overcome Christ in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross. He triumphed when he cast Paul into prison. But the cross was to Christ a lifting up, that should draw all men to him (_John 12:32_), and Paul’s imprisonment furnished his epistles to the New Testament.