The Christian Creed; or, What it is Blasphemy to DenyBesant, Annie
Religion
The Christian Creed; or, What it is Blasphemy to Deny
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Controversial literature
Next came the locusts, to “eat the residue of that which is escaped,
which remaineth unto you from the hail” (x., 5). As the hail “smote
_every_ herb of the field and brake _every_ tree of the field” (ix.,
25), there cannot have been much left for the locusts; however, they
made a clean sweep of all the vegetable life in Egypt, “and there
remained not any green thing in the trees or in the herbs of the fields”
(x., 15). On the whole it was by a merciful dispensation of Providence
that the cattle were all dead, and were not left to starve. As all the
animals were dead and there were no plants left, the Lord had nearly
come to the end of his plagues; so he sent “darkness which may be felt”
for three days, while trying to invent some more. None of the Egyptians,
we are told, rose “from his place for three days;” why nobody struck a
light we are not told; now-a-days we often have plagues of darkness in
London from the fogs, but we make shift with gas and the electric light
until the sunlight returns.
The last miracle in Egypt was a very wonderful one; it was the killing
for the third time of some—the first-born— cattle. The first-born of men
were also slain; but that was only for the first time, and all men are
mortal. This was too much for the Egyptians, and they rose up to drive
out the Israelites, the latter picking up, as they went, “jewels of
silver, jewels of gold, and raiment” (xii. 35), and so robbing their
unlucky hosts of the little property they had left.
But poor Pharaoh was not yet safe: “The Lord hardened the heart of
Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel”
(xiv. 8). He yoked into his chariots the twice-slain horses, and mounted
his men on others of these re-revivified quadrupeds, and galloped after
the flying robbers. God, to deliver his people, divided the sea before
them, piling up the waters on each side as a wall. Down along this
curious and unique path plunged the men and the horses, the latter
probably thinking that one death, more or less, couldn’t hurt them. A
new difficulty arose. God pulled off their chariot-wheels, and so
delayed them; and then suddenly down came the water-walls, and the poor
Egyptians were all drowned. Like the flies and the locusts, “there
remained not so much as one of them” (xiv. 28). The horses also were
drowned, and let us hope they did not come to life again.
Thus endeth the story of the miracles of Egypt, which story is part of
the Christian creed as defined by law, and which it is blasphemy to
deny.
After the Lord had thrown “the horse and his rider” into the sea, the
children of Israel went on into the wilderness, and found no water for
three days. At the end of that time they found some “bitter” water, but
the Lord showed Moses a tree which made the water sweet. Genus and
species not revealed to us. It is very odd that, when the Bible mentions
anything that might be practically useful, it never gives such
particulars as would enable us to repeat the experiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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