The Bible was growing; the great crisis which developed into the birth of the Hebrew nation was then transpiring; God’s plans for training a people who should be holy to himself――the repository of his truth――the church of the living God――were then rapidly unfolding; and no vital step in this process could spare the agency of miracle. Yet again; In this portion of sacred history much new light has been thrown upon _God’s management of great sinners_. Pharaoh was a standard case of this sort. As already suggested, there are many aspects of this management. On one side we see the strong arm, putting his hook into the jaws of Leviathan――curbing his spirit, breaking down his power; burying him and his hosts in the sea. On another side are unfolded the nice relations of even this resistless power to the free moral activities of the great sinner; the wonderful blending of mercies with judgments; the patient waiting――if possibly these manifestations of God’s hand may bring the proud king to real submission; and coupled with this, the steady purpose on God’s part to turn all Pharaoh’s pride and guilt and moral obduracy to best possible account――setting forth his mode of dealing with wicked men in making known his power to save his people and to crush their foes, and his unfailing wisdom in making the wrath of the proudest of mortals evolve his own glory and praise. * * * * * _The scenes of Sinai_ were a long and magnificent step of progress in the revelations of God to men. We may think here not so much of the external surroundings――the bringing into service of all the grandest agencies of nature to impress men with reverence and fear and awe, and so to plant the more deeply in their souls the idea of law as emanating unmistakably from the Infinite One; but we may consider the _great fact itself of a revealed law_. It is surely a point in the progress of God’s revelations of himself second to nothing that has gone before――second to nothing in all the ages save the greater mission of his Son for the purposes of redemption. God revealing to man a rule of duty; expressing it in terms at once so simple and so comprehensive; including the duties we owe to God on the one hand and to fellow-beings on the other; putting it on permanent record; accompanying it with demonstrations of majesty and glory, endorsing it so surely and so sublimely; adjusting it so nicely in harmony with the intelligent convictions of rational minds, and so commending it to every man’s conscience as intrinsically and eternally right:――truly the promulgation of such a law through such agencies is surpassingly grand and glorious; and, in the line of our present thought, is one of the great epochs in the march of God’s revelations of himself to mortals. We pause before it to take in the value of this revealed law; the new relations into which the race are brought thereby toward their Great