PHARAOH'S ALTERNATIONS OF AMENDMENT AND RELAPSE.

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EXODUS vii.-X., passim.

IS land of Egypt covered with frogs, Pharaoh was urgent with Moses and Aaron to "intreat the Lord" for him, and with conciliatory proposals in favour of the children of Israel. The plague of the frogs abated accordingly, Pharaoh hardened his heart as soon as he saw that there was respite. So with the plague of flies that came in grievous swarms into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt, so that the land was corrupted by reason of the flies; again Pharaoh besought Hebrew intercession, and pledged himself to acts of clemency; and again no sooner was the plague removed, than Pharaoh hardened his heart at that time also, neither would he let the people go. Plague after plague ensued the murrain of beasts, the plague of boils and blains, and the plague of hail and fire; and so grievous was the last-smiting all that was in the field, both man and beast, as well as every herb and tree-that Pharaoh once more importuned Moses and Aaron, confessing his sins, imploring forgiveness, and promising amendment. Once and again he was heard and answered. "And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart ... neither would he let the children of Israel go." The plague of locusts, destroying all that the hail had left, made him call for the Hebrew brothers again in hottest haste, entreating forgiveness "only this once," and deliverance "from this death only." But the mighty west wind that swept away the ravagers had no sooner ceased to blow, than the hardening process again set in, and the tyrant revelled as of yore in his accustomed tyranny. How many more plagues might have been added to the ten-decade upon decade-with the like result, each facile amendment merging in a more and more facile relapse, it is superfluous to guess.

We read in Homer, as versified by Pope, that—

"The weakest atheist-wretch all heaven defies,

But shrinks and shudders when the thunder flies."

So Boileau satirises the "intrepid" scoffer, who puts off believing in God until fever prostrates him; who is almost as quick as the lightning to lift up his hands to heaven when the lightning glares across it, but laughs at poor feeble humanity as soon as the atmosphere is cleared and the storm quite spent : "Attend pour croire en Dieu que la fiévre le presse; Et, toujours dans l'orage au ciel levant les mains, Dès que l'air est calmé, rit des faibles humains."

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu describes in one of her vivacious letters a stormy passage she has just made from Calais to Dover, and diverts herself not a little, as her ladyship's manner is, at the distress of a fellow-passenger, in alternations of anxiety as to being lost herself and losing her smuggled head-dress. "She was an English lady that I had met at Calais, who desired me to let her go over with me in my cabin. She had brought a fine point-head, which she was contriving to conceal from the custom-house officers. When the wind grew high, and our little vessel cracked, she fell very heartily to her prayers, and thought wholly of her soul. When it seemed to abate, she returned to the worldly care of her head-dress;" and the alternative exclamations of the distracted creature are liberally specified by Lady Mary; who then adds: “This easy transition from her soul to her head-dress, and the alternate agonies that both gave her, made it hard to determine which she thought of greatest value."

Lord Lytton, in one of his fictions, comments on the instinct, as he calls it, of that capricious and fluctuating conscience, belonging to weak minds, "which remains still and drooping and lifeless as a flag on a mast-head during the calm of prosperity, but flutters and flaps and tosses when the wind blows and the wave heaves." And an example to the purpose is given in the case of a selfish uncle, whose orphan nephews are all but coldly discarded until his own son is in extremis. "Mr.

Beaufort thought very acutely and remorsefully of the condition of the Mortons, during the danger of his own son. So far indeed from his anxiety for Arthur monopolising his care, it only sharpened his charity towards the orphans; for many a man becomes devout and good when he fancies he has an im

mediate interest in appeasing Providence." Such a man, in such a case, becomes at any rate lavish of promises, which perhaps at the moment he even intends to keep. But how are promises of this kind usually kept? Much after the manner predicated of Bajazet, by Acomat, in the French tragedy; a vaguely worded intimation, but definite enough in its scope: only let the pressure that extorts the promise be withdrawn, and gone will be the value of the promise too:

"Promettez : affranchi du péril qui vous presse,

Vous verrez de quel poids sera votre promesse." Pope would consign such trifles light as air to the lunar sphere,

"Where broken vows and death-bed alms are found,

And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound,
The courtier's promises, the sick man's prayers."

Why do these last make so slight an impression on bystanders? Mr. Whitehead says because it is not a living but a dying man that speaks; and a dying man who wants to live. "It is fear that cries out in agony, not penitence that prays." Fielding, in his masterpiece, moralises on the truism that be men ever so much alarmed and frightened when apprehending themselves in danger of dying, yet no sooner are they cleared from this apprehension, than even the fears of it are erased from their minds. It is much later in the same story, that the "hero's" avowed resolution, at a crisis in his fortunes, to sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto him, is ridiculed by a cynical acquaintance, as the effect merely of low spirits, and confinement-with the quotation of "some witticisms about the devil when he was sick." The epigram in question is a favourite allusion with novelists and moralists of all sorts and sizes. There is a border freebooter of Scott's, who, having recovered from a severe illness, thanks to the medical skill of the Black Dwarf, greets his benefactor, on horseback, all in bandit array, as soon as convalescent. "So," said the dwarf, "rapine and murder once more on horseback!" "On horseback?" said the bandit; "ay, ay, Elshie, your leech-craft has

set me on the bonnie bay again." "And all those promises of amendment which you made during your illness forgotten?" continued Elshender. "All clear away, with the water-saps and panada," returned the unabashed convalescent. "Ye ken, Elshie, for they say ye are weel acquent wi' the gentleman,

"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he."

For it is not every vow taken in a panic, to become a monk it spared, that is kept as Luther's was-" devil" though the antiLutherans of his day might account and call him. Young Martin saw one of his friends struck dead by his side, by a stroke of lightning, in 1505; and the sight moved him to utter on the instant a vow to St. Anne that he would become a monk if he were himself spared. "The danger passed over, but he did not seek to elude an engagement wrung from him in terror. He solicited no dispensation from his vow." Brother Martin ipso facto approved himself no member of the fraternity of what Le Sage calls vous autres, messieurs les diables, in a passage that indirectly bears upon our theme, for it refers to the proverbial worthlessness of promises coming from that quarter: "Voilà de belles promesses, répliqua l'Ecolier; mais vous autres, messieurs les diables, on vous accuse de n'être pas fort religieux à tenir ce que vous promettez." The epigram runs, if not rhymes, as well in Latin as in English:

"Egrotat dæmon, monachus tunc esse volebat;

Dæmon convaluit, dæmon ut ante fuit."

Referring to proverbs of this kind it is that Archbishop Trench says, that sometimes an adage, without changing its shape altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations be slightly modified-the modifications, slight as they often are, being not the less eminently characteristic. "Thus in English we say, The river past, and God forgotten, to express with how mournful a frequency He whose assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by His help the danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is with them: The

river past, the saint forgotten: the saints being in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than God. And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude: The peril passed, the saint mocked." Men indulge in doubts of a Supreme Being, says La Bruyère, when they are lusty and strong; but with sickness comes belief, such as it is. "L'on doute de Dieu dans une pleine santé. . Quand on devient malade, et que l'hydropisie est formée .

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. l'on croit en Dieu." Believes?

As to that, the devils believe, and tremble. But how when the dropsy is relieved and the trembling fit over? Dr. Johnson once adverted in conversation with Seward and Boswell to the evil life he led until sickness wrought a reformation, which, in his case, had been lasting. Mr. Seward thereupon observed: One should think that sickness, and the view of death, would make more men religious." But Johnson replied to this: "Sir, they do not know how to go about it; they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of calculation."* It is to be observed that the doctor claimed for himself a previous regard for religion in quite early life; for some years it had, to use his own phrase, "dropped out of his mind," but "sickness brought it back,” and he hoped he had never lost it since.

It is an old, old story, that of the generation which tempted God in the desert, whose days He therefore consumed in vanity, and their years in trouble. When He slew them, then they sought Him; and they returned, and inquired early after God. But it was only to start aside again, like a broken bow. "Tamen ad mores natura recurrit

Damnatos, fixa et mutari nescia."

"When men in health against physicians rail,"

says Crabbe,

"They should consider that their nerves may fail;

Nay, when the world can nothing more produce,
The priest, the insulted priest, may have his use."

Boswell's "Life of Johnson," April 29, 1783.

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