196 THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 
“This sketch is but a repetition of scores of 
instances of the sweeping desolation left behind 
these winged messengers of destruction. It is 
the story graphic as of old, when the ‘ locusts 
went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested 
in all the coasts of Egypt; very grievous were 
theyand ‘ they covered the face of the whole 
earth, so that the land was darkened, and they 
did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit 
of the trees which the hail had left.’ Look at 
this terror of the East, and he seems wholly 
incapable of compelling history to put on record 
such a fearful testimony of his deeds. Indeed, 
the page that sets forth his conquering flight 
over Egypt is not sufficiently graphic in pic¬ 
turing his devastations, and so the mouth of 
prophecy pauses in its foretelling to give the 
fitting embodiment of this winged terror. In 
all the settings forth of divine wrath there is 
nothing more terrible in descriptive strength 
than the reference to the scourge of locusts in 
the second chapter of Joel: ‘A day of dark¬ 
ness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of 
thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the 
mountains; a great people and a strong; there 
hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any 
