gazing on which, and uttering an incantation, the chief priest heard the voice of the oracle issuing from the precincts of the sanctuary; that Urim and Thummim were little golden images shut up in the breastplate, which answered with an articulate voice the questions addressed to them by the Pontiff. But whatever may have been the mode of invoking the oracle, the evidence of monuments and mummies discloses the Egyptian origin of Urim and Thummim.

The sacerdotal judges of Egypt wore on a golden chain an image of Truth (Aletheia), formed of some precious stone, and symbolising the purity which should characterise their office; and the Septuagint, the literary product of Egypt, translates Thummim with the word Aletheia (Αλήθεια). In the centre of the pectorale, on the breasts of priestly mummies as they recline in modern museums, is the mystic scarabæus, adopted from its brilliant wing-cases as the symbol of the sun, light, and vitality; and in the word Urim Hebrew scholars read light or fire, confirmed by the Greek versions of Aquila and Theodotion, who render Urim by pwτioμós-illumination.

Orthodox theologians, at first alarmed by this unseemly borrowing of heathen pontificalia for the service of the sanctuary, are now reconciled to monumental evidence, and suggest, as the modus operandi of Mosaic oracles, that the high priest, looking on the sacred symbols of truth and light, became mesmerised by fixity of gaze, and, losing self-consciousness in profound abstraction, passed into that mysterious condition of mental suicide supposed to invite divine inspiration. How marvellous the vitality of ancestral superstition,

which thus persuades intelligent and educated men of the nineteenth century that the Supreme Deity, whom they worship, once utilised the phenomena of cataleptic hypnotism as media of divine revelation !

Whatever may have been the method of divination through oracular gems, the fact remains that Moses, claiming to be in direct communication with Jehovah, taught the Hebrews to seek supernatural knowledge through pre-existent arts of divination, and we thence infer that his Thus saith the Lord' meant nothing more than his own thoughts and words, sanctioned by the illusory oracles of Urim and Thummim.

As we possess no authentic Life of Moses, our sources of information respecting the fabulous wanderings of forty years are limited to the compilations of Ezra. Our ideal of Moses trained in the midst of Egyptian civilisation is much higher than warranted by Scripture, but we must deal with the unsatisfactory materials at our disposal. Thus we see the Hebrew prophet ascending Mount Sinai to receive the Law under conditions more characteristic of human jugglery than divine revelation. The congregation of Israel are commanded not to approach the Mount, under penalty of death, until summoned by the trumpet; when Jehovah would 'come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai.'1 But instead of this public attestation of Theocracy, we hear of nothing but a thunderstorm, and of fire and smoke as of a furnace, in which Jehovah is said to have descended on the Mount. Then comes a voice summoning Moses to ascend; and the people are again threatened with the danger of

1 Exod. xix. 11.

Jehovah rushing forth upon them, should they approach to gaze. Savage races have from time immemorial associated the war of the elements with terror of the gods: is it therefore credible that the Deity proclaimed His presence by evoking the superstitious terrors of primeval barbarism? Or does not rather the entire narrative read as if the Prophet were availing himself of popular ignorance to prevent too close an inspection of the sacred rites of conjuration ?

Turning to a different phase of divine intervention, we read of a battle with the Amalekites, during which Moses stood upon a hill, and when he held up his hands Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hands. Amalek prevailed:' so that, to accomplish victory, it was necessary for Aaron and Hur to hold up the arms of the prophet on either side. How hopelessly demoralised must not Hebrew troops have grown under a theocratic system of warfare, in which courage and strategy did not count, and success depended on the miraculous, controlled by the endurance of prophetic muscles! In thus associating military success or disaster with the supernatural, the Hebrews were already doomed to subjugation by nations holding that practical view of human warfare which places Providence on the side of 'big battalions.'

We refer to one more episode in the drama of the wilderness. When Moses had fled as an exile from Egypt, he was most hospitably received by Jethro, priest of Midian, who bestowed on him Zipporah, one of his seven daughters, with whom the prophet seems to have lived happily for forty years. After the Exodus, Jethro came to visit Moses at Rephidim with

F

Zipporah and her two sons, joined in the worship of Jehovah as the greatest of all the gods, and displayed so much practical sagacity that the inspired Moses adopted his suggestions for the improvement of judicial procedure among the Hebrews;1 and yet it is upon the Midianites that the appalling atrocities were committed, as recorded in Numbers xxxi.

The enticing fascinations of the Midianitish women was the pious pretence for wholesale murder: but when fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives had been slain, Moses issued the command: 'Kill all the males among the little ones, but keep all the virgins alive for yourselves!' By a pious fiction, thirty-two of these young girls were assigned to Jehovah as His share of the spoil, and appropriated by Eleazar the priest, As the Lord commanded Moses.'

It is superfluous to dwell upon the miseries of the desert. We see the men, who had lived as slaves in Egypt, going forth to die as savages in the wilderness, to be succeeded by a new generation, trained in the fierce barbarism of the desert for the career of rapine and murder awaiting them in the land of Canaan. We see them decimated by plagues, bitten by serpents, consumed by fire, swallowed by the earth—as manifestations of divine vengeance for complaining of pangs of hunger and thirst, or seeking the alleviation of their misery through the favour of other gods. Even modern Piety might grumble if divinely fed on manna, and impiously test its nutritive qualities by chemical analysis. The ancient Hebrews were sorely afflicted with cutaneous diseases, for which modern derma

the

1 Exod. xviii.

tologists would prescribe a change of diet. And what were the alleged judgments of God for idolatry but the interpretation of natural events through the same spirit of religious intolerance which, from time immemorial, has attributed national calamities to theological error? In the days of Moses, mankind believed in many gods; in modern times they trust in divergent creeds. But as we no longer burn men for conscientious heresy, is it not full time to acquit the Deity of ruthless persecution of the Hebrews, for participation in the universal faith of multiform divinity, inherited from ages unconscious of the existence of the Mosaic Jehovah ?

The Chosen Race had departed from Egypt in reliance on the unconditional promise of their Deity, that they should obtain possession of a land flowing with milk and honey and yet, with two exceptions, they all found graves in the wilderness. They were not a self-denying people, and would not have chosen misery and death for the prospective benefit of their descendants. As therefore each of the old brickmakers of Egypt found his end approaching, he doubtless reviled Moses in his heart as a political adventurer, who had deceived the multitude by the false pretence of an earthly home, whilst withdrawing the Egyptian hope of another and better world, in which he might yet find consolation for the intolerable misery of his life on earth. Can we wonder if surviving relatives, thus witnessing despairing death, broke forth into the captious or clamorous complaints so sternly punished by the national God?

A new generation entered the promised land, and disclosed the savage training of the desert in ruthless