their sacred seasons were those of the new moon and the seventh day of each week, but no uniform customs or ideas prevailed among such loosely united folk, whose roaming life tended to bring about unlikeness in their manners and notions.

II.

The Israelites in Egypt.

EGYPT is a long, ribbon-like strip of fertile land in the north-east corner of Africa, bordered on either side by low and barren hills, which on the west protect it from the blinding sandstorms of the Libyan desert, and on the east separate it from the narrow waters of the Red Sea.

It is in truth the bed of the Nile, "the gift," as an old writer calls it, of that mighty river which, supplied by the outpour of great lakes in Central Africa, flows through an expanse of rock and desert, and, broken here and there into splendid cataracts, at last enters the fissure along which it has spread a layer of fruitful soil.

In the autumn of every year, its waters, swollen by melting snows and tropical rains, flood the valley, leaving as they recede a rich mud, into which the peasants, a down-trodden race to this day, cast their seeds. This valley, the like of which is found nowhere else in the world, is but a few miles wide until it nears the coast, where the many-mouthed river has spread its deposits into a fan-shaped plain called the delta, from its resemblance in form to the Greek letter A.

The land was altogether happily placed for the growth of a great empire, and from a remote time had been peopled by a race which probably came from Asia. The Egyptians shared the

weakness which causes nations and families to exalt themselves by proof of ancient or noble descent, for we find that like the Chaldæans, Chinese, Hindus, and other people, they had piled up fabled accounts of royal gods whose reigns stretched over tens of thousands of years; but when these are cast aside there is abundant proof left that their kingdom was a mighty one centuries before the Israelites arrived in Goshen.

Some of the huge tombs called pyramids, the building of which was begun by each king when he came to the throne and carried on till his death, so that the longer his reign the bigger became his tomb, were full a thousand years old when those shepherd tribes first saw them, and the priests of Sais when Solon came to visit their temple said to him with truth, "You Greeks are but children." For the knowledge and skill and control of men which are needed for vast structures come not ready to hand, and long ages pass before from roughly piling stones into cairns and circles, men are able to upraise shapely tombs and stately temples.

The king, or "Pharaoh,"1 that being his common title, was worshipped as one of the gods, and ranked among them after his death. The whole of the land was treated as his, one-third of it, according to one account, being taxed for the support of the priests, who, to make the more

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1 Not from "P-ra," "the sun," as is often said, but from "Pir'ao," "the great house; as in Turkey the "Porte," meaning "gate," is applied to the supreme power; as, too, in England we say "the court" for "the judge.”

sure of so large a share, pretended, with the cunning of their craft, that it had been so decreed by the goddess Isis when she dwelt among men.

The picture-writings and paintings on tombs and temple walls, which the rainless climate has kept from decay, tell us the thoughts and set before us in minutest detail the daily life of men in the valley of the Nile five or perchance six thousand years ago. But the old and the new so mingled in their religion that much remains to be put in order before we may hope to get clear ideas both of its secret and open features, and any account of it is at best but patchwork. We know that each nome or province had its gods, who were grouped in series of threes or fours, the most famous "triad" being Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Around Osiris touching legends gathered of his mission to earth to bless men, of his death for their sakes at the hands of the god of darkness, of his resurrection and office as judge of the dead. He was one of many names for the sun; indeed, speaking broadly, the Egyptian religion was a worship of that orb

under the many aspects which he wore from rising to setting, and in his yearly course through the heavens. In the life-giving powers battling with the powers of darkness, the river god with the sand-blinding Typhon, the day with the night, the same story meets us which attends the nature-worshipping stage of every people. The scenery of their solemn landscape lent its impress to the fixed, awful majesty of the Egyptian gods, among the crowd of whom we seem to catch sight now and again of one loftier than the rest, but all is vague. These deities were not only carved in stone, but worshipped through living animals in whom their spirits were believed to dwell, doubtless a survival in higher form of ancient animal-worship. Chief among these were sacred bulls, which with other creatures had honour paid them while living, their bodies, like those of the Egyptians themselves, being embalmed after death to preserve them from decay.

The Egyptians had an exalted code of morals, in which honour to parents, kindness to the