The historian alludes to yet another element of divine agency. In the morning watch as the host of Pharaoh were pressing on through the very midst of the bed of the sea, “the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud, and troubled [rather confounded, smote with panic] their marching hosts; and took off their chariot wheels that they drave them heavily; so that the Egyptians said――“Let us flee from the face of Israel, for Jehovah ♦fighteth for them against the Egyptians.”――――It may not be possible, certainly is not specially important, to draw the line here between the natural and the supernatural. We may suppose that the pillar of cloud which had been darkness to them blazed forth fearfully in their faces, appalling the stoutest hearts with fear; that both horses and drivers were confounded; that wheel crashed into wheel and made advance impossible; that turning back for flight, their disorder and confusion became a rout, and that in this hour of crisis the returning waters surge and dash upon them and bury them en masse beneath the mountain waves! So perished the slave-holders and oppressors of God’s ancient people! Thus signally did Jehovah exalt his name and win glory to himself as the Avenger of the oppressed and the faithful God of his Israel. The case falls into the same class with the flood and the fires on Sodom, to show before the ages how readily the Lord can find fit instruments of retributive justice for the swift punishment of the wicked even in this world whenever examples are needed to set forth his ♦displeasure against sin, and the certainty of his retributions upon the wicked. Under a system which normally puts over this retribution till after death, it might obviously be wise in the early ages of time to give some exceptional cases to stand as illustrations squarely before the eyes of living men, witnessing to the terrors of that retribution which can not linger long under the government of a just and holy God. * * * * *