And when they told their marvellous story to the elders of the people, and displayed the signs, they believed; and when they heard that God had visited them in their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. This was their preparation for the wonders that should follow: it resembled Christ’s appeal, “Believest thou that I am able to do this?” or Peter’s word to the impotent man, “Look on us.” For the moment the announcement had the desired effect, although too soon the early promise was succeeded by faithlessness and discontent. In this, again, the teaching of the earliest political movement on record is as fresh as if it were a tale of yesterday. The offer of emancipation stirs all hearts; the romance of liberty is beautiful beside the Nile as in the streets of Paris; but the cost has to be gradually learned; the losses displace the gains in the popular attention; the labour, the self-denial and the self-control grow wearisome, and Israel murmurs for the flesh-pots of Egypt, much as the modern revolution reverts to a despotism. It is one thing to admire abstract freedom, but a very different thing to accept the austere conditions of the life of genuine freemen. And surely the same is true of the soul. The gospel gladdens the young convert: he bows his head and worships; but he little dreams of his long discipline, as in the forty desert years, of the solitary places through which his soul must wander, the drought, the Amalekite, the absent leader, and the temptations of the flesh. In mercy, the long future is concealed; it is enough that, like the apostles, we should consent to follow; gradually we shall obtain the courage to which the task may be revealed. FOOTNOTES: [7] Tertullian appealed to the second of these miracles to illustrate the possibility of the resurrection. “The hand of Moses is changed and becomes like that of the dead, bloodless, colourless, and stiff with cold. But on the recovery of heat and restoration of its natural colour, it is the same flesh and blood.... So will changes, conversions and reformation be needed to bring about the resurrection, yet the substance will be preserved safe.” (_De Res._, lv.) It is far wiser to be content with the declaration of St. Paul that the identity of the body does not depend on that of its corporeal atoms. “Thou sowest not that body that shall be, but a naked grain.... But God giveth ... to every seed his own body” (1 Cor. xv. 37–8). [8] “I am not an ordinary man,” Napoleon used to say, “and the laws of morals and of custom were never made for me.”—_Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat_, i. 91. CHAPTER V. _PHARAOH REFUSES._ v. 1–23.