Be it so, says Moses in the name of God. Thou shalt know that the idols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy people.
Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they. ‘Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.’
So the river was turned into blood. The sacred river was no god, as they thought. Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which the very life of Egypt depended. He could turn it into blood. All Egypt was at his mercy.
But Pharaoh would not believe that. ‘The magicians did likewise with their enchantments’—made, we may suppose, water seem to turn to blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were but too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind that Moses’ miracle was only a juggling trick too. For men will make up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to do so: when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness, draw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way. They will find reasons, and make reasons to prove, if need be, that there is no sun in the sky.
Then followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.
Learned men have disputed how far these plagues were miracles. Some of them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost unknown. But whether they—whether the frogs, for instance, were not produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the lice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither need I know. If they were not, they were miraculous; and if they were, they were miraculous still. If they came as other vermin come, they would have still been miraculous: God would still have sent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come at that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly miraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians on the one hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other. But if they came by some strange means as no vermin ever came before or since, all I can say is—Why not?
And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.’
Whether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether the dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it would be. If you believe at all that God made the world, it is folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power. As a wise man has said, ‘If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that miracles can happen.’ He makes you and me and millions of living things out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means. Why can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the ground, without those means? I can give no reason, nor any one else either.
We know that God has given all things a law which they cannot break. We know, too, that God will never break his own laws. But what are God’s laws by which he makes things? We do not know.
Miracles may be—indeed must be—only the effect of some higher and deeper laws of God. We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or disturbs his order by them. They may seem contrary to some of the very very few laws of God’s earth which we do know. But they need not be contrary to the very many laws which we do not know. In fact, we know nothing about the matter, and had best not talk of things that we do not understand. As for these things being too wonderful to be true—that is an argument which only deserves a smile. There are so many wonders in the world round us already, all day long, that the man of sense will feel that nothing is too wonderful to be true.