Then God took their cause into his own hand; I say emphatically into his own hand. If that part of the story be not true, I care nothing for the rest. If God did not personally and actually interfere on behalf of those poor slaves; if the plagues of Egypt are not true—the passage of the Red Sea be not true—the story tells me and you nothing; gives us no hope for ourselves, no hope for mankind.
For see. One says, and truly, God is good; God is love; God is just; God hates oppression and wrong.
But if God be love, he must surely show his love by doing loving things.
If God be just, he must show his justice by doing just things.
If God hates oppression, then he must free the oppressed.
If God hates wrong, then he must set the wrong right.
For what would you think of a man who professed to be loving and just, and to hate oppression and wrong, and yet never took the trouble to do a good action, or to put down wrong, when he had the power? You would call him a hypocrite; you would think his love and justice very much on his tongue, and not in his heart.
And will you believe that God is like that man? God forbid!
Comfortable scholars and luxurious ladies may content themselves with a dead God, who does not interfere to help the oppressed, to right the wrong, to bind up the broken-hearted; but men and women who work, who sorrow, who suffer, who partake of all the ills which flesh is heir to—they want a living God, an acting God, a God who will interfere to right the wrong. Yes—they want a living God. And they have a living God—even the God who interfered to bring the Israelites out of Egypt with signs and wonders, and a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and executed judgment upon Pharaoh and his proud and cruel hosts. And when they read in the Bible of that God, when they read in their Bibles the story of the Exodus, their hearts answer, This is right. This is the God whom we need. This is what ought to have happened. This is true: for it must be true. Let comfortable folks who know no sorrow trouble their brains as to whether sixty or six hundred thousand fighting men came out of Egypt with Moses. We care not for numbers. What we care for is, not how many came out, but who brought them out, and that he who brought them out was God. And the book which tells us that, we will cling to, will love, will reverence above all the books on earth, because it tells of a living God, who works and acts and interferes for men; who not only hates wrong, but rights wrong; not only hates oppression, but puts oppressors down; not only pities the oppressed, but sets the oppressed free; a God who not only wills that man should have freedom, but sent freedom down to him from heaven.
Scholars have said that the old Greeks were the fathers of freedom; and there have been other peoples in the world’s history who have made glorious and successful struggles to throw off their tyrants and be free. And they have said, We are the fathers of freedom; liberty was born with us. Not so, my friends! Liberty is of a far older and far nobler house; Liberty was born, if you will receive it, on the first Easter night, on the night to be much remembered among the children of Israel—ay, among all mankind—when God himself stooped from heaven to set the oppressed free. Then was freedom born. Not in the counsels of men, however wise; or in the battles of men, however brave: but in the counsels of God, and the battle of God—amid human agony and terror, and the shaking of the heaven and the earth; amid the great cry throughout Egypt when a first-born son lay dead in every house; and the tempest which swept aside the Red Sea waves; and the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night; and the Red Sea shore covered with the corpses of the Egyptians; and the thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes of Sinai; and the sound as of a trumpet waxing loud and long; and the voice, most human and most divine, which spake from off the lonely mountain peak to that vast horde of coward and degenerate slaves, and said, ‘I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt obey my laws, and keep my commandments to do them.’ Oh! the man who would rob his suffering fellow-creatures of that story—he knows not how deep and bitter are the needs of man.