There is no use trying to hide from ourselves that awful truth--God
is not weakly indulgent. Our God can be, if he will, a consuming
fire. Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brimstone, storm
and tempest of some kind or other. This shall be their portion too
surely. Vengeance is his, and vengeance he will take. But upon
whom? On the proud and the tyrannical, on the cruel, the false, the
unjust. So say the Psalms again and again, and so says the history
of these plagues of Egypt. Therefore his anger is a loving anger, a
just auger, a merciful anger, a useful anger, an anger exercised for
the good of mankind. See in this case why did God destroy the crops
of Egypt--even the first-born of Egypt? Merely for the pleasure of
destroying? God forbid. It was to deliver the poor Israelites from
their cruel taskmasters; to force these Egyptians by terrible
lessons, since they were deaf to the voice of justice and humanity--
to force them, I say--to have mercy on their fellow-creatures, and
let the oppressed go free. Therefore God was, even in Egypt, a God
of love, who desired the good of man, who would do justice for those
who were unjustly treated, even though it cost his love a pang; for
none can believe that God is pleased at having to punish, pleased at
having to destroy the works of his own hands, or the creatures which
he has made.
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