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(for close of year): — We have arrived at another milestone on the journey of life. How many more we have to pass before we reach our journey's end we cannot say; for, unlike the milestones by the roadside, which not only tell the traveller how far he has travelled but how much farther off his destination is; our passing years are milestones which only point backwards. In the face of this terrible uncertainty, then, how foolish it is to echo the word of Pharaoh and say, "To-morrow."

1. In postponing the day of salvation, we are postponing our own happiness. Think of the madness of Pharaoh, enduring another night of the frogs when he could obtain instant release from them. And yet he was no more mad than the sinner is who postpones his salvation from day to day. His sins are more numerous and nauseous than the frogs of Egypt. They swarm everywhere; they leave their slime upon everything; they spawn in the dark corners of his heart; he is plagued with them, and can get no peace.

2. In this procrastination we are flying in the face of God's clearest warnings. Ten times over God's warnings were repeated to Pharaoh before the final destruction came; but even this is not the limit of His longsuffering to usward. His warnings are often uttered a hundred times over to us before the final crash. Yet many pay no heed to them. They are startled for a while, and give a passing thought to their souls, only to sweep away such thoughts in worldliness again, and cry "To-morrow! I will think of this to-morrow." A traveller from India thus relates some of the experiences of his voyage: — "Flocks of greedy albatrosses and cape-pigeons crowded around the ship's stern. A hook was baited with fat, and upwards of a dozen albatrosses rushed at it instantly; and as one after another was being hauled on deck, the remainder, regardless alike of the struggles of the captured anti the vociferations of the crew, kept swimming about the stern. Not even the birds which were indifferently hooked, and made their escape, desisted from seizing the bait a second time." Poor, foolish birds, to disregard the death-struggles of so many of their companions and their own experience of the sharpness of the hook! Poor, foolish men, to disregard more terrible warnings still, to procrastinate in spite of the sudden destruction of so many of their companions in the ways of sin and the sharp trials that God has sent to urge them to escape the like destruction:

3. In putting off the great question of salvation till to-morrow, we forget that tomorrow will in all probability see us harder-hearted than to-day. Pharaoh was softened while he was plague-stricken. He seemed even near becoming a worshipper of the true God, for he said to Moses, "Intreat the Lord for me." But when the warning was past, and the morrow came, he relapsed into his old hardhearted enmity towards God; all the harder for his temporary softening. Transient impressions are terribly dangerous. If you take the red-hot metal and plunge it into cold water, you make it harder than it was before. So it was with the heart of Pharaoh; so it is with our hearts too.

(G. A. Sowter, M. A.)

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KJV: And the LORD spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

WEB: Yahweh spoke to Moses, Go in to Pharaoh, and tell him, "This is what Yahweh says, 'Let my people go, that they may serve me.