ANCIENT CIVILIZATION ON THE NILE.

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

FRANKLIN AND WASHINGTON LITERARY SOCIETIES

EASTON, FJL..

During the Exercises of the Thirtieth Commencement, July 25th. 1865.

Rev. J. W. WOOD, A. M.

Glass of 1837. anb |Jasfor of tjje |)r£sbgf£nan <£bar£b, in gilicntoton. jla.

ANCIENT CIVILIZATION ON THE NILE.

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

FRANKLIN AND WASHINGTON LITERARY SOCIETIES

9

E ASTON, F A^..

During the Exercises of the Thirtieth Commencement, July 25th, 1865,

BY

Rev. J. W/WOOD, A. M.,

(Class of 1837, anb pastor of % |jrtsbjit£naii <£bnrr{j, in gilknioton, $a.

PUBLISHED BY THE FRANKLIN LITERARY SOCIETY.

LEWIS

EASTON, PA.: GORDON, PRINTER, 18G5.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Franklin Hall, Lafayette College, Sept. 13, 1865.

Rev. J as. W. Wood :

Dear Sib : — At a regular meeting of the Franklin Literary Society, held this day. the undersigned were appointed a committee to solicit, for publica- tion, a copy of your valuable and instructive address, delivered before the Frank- lin and Washington Literary Societies, July 24th, 1865. In discharging this most pleasant duty, allow us to join our own personal solicitations to those of the society.

With great respect,

Wm. Mckenzie, e. p. conkling, ' robt. j. hess,

Committee of Publication.

Allentown, Pa., Sept. 18, 1865.

Messrs. McKenzie, Conklino and Hess:

<J kntlemkn : — Your note of the 13th inst. was duly received. The Franklins, with their usual enterprise and kindness, solicit through you a copy of the address to which you allude for publication. As it was called forth by their flattering partiality, a loyal Franklin, as I claim to be, can do no less than submit it to your disposal.

Very truly, yours,

J. W. WOOD

ADDRESS

The student of the early condition of our race walks among the ruins of Empire, Art, and Morals. Yet these ruins contain in- structive evidences of much culture and advancement, in the periods of which they are the remains. Our race started from an elevated and highly civilized condition, but through sin its progress was gradually downward, until its descent was arrested by the elevating forces of a supernatural faith.

Man was the noblest work of God. In the brilliant worlds which rolled from the hands of the Great Architect — in the beauty and utility of our planet, and in the mysterious life of animals and plants, He seems to have employed every ideal pattern, and to have wrought it out. into some tangible expression of His wisdom and love. Himself alone remained as the prototype of the next creation, and He adopted even that, ''He created man in his own image — in the image of God created He him.'" and then constituted him lord of the world. Thus created and crowned, with a paradise for his home, was Adam an imbecile in intellect — a child in knowl- edge, a boor in manners? Was Eve a brainless beauty — a banter- ing belle — a barbarian bride Scripture, history, and reason answer, No. Humanity in them was at its highest elevation, and after sin transpired, such was the perfect adjustment of bodily and mental powers that life extended through nearly a thousand years. There was in them such a combination of physical and mental forces, that some of their descendants, for years after the Hood, were a highly civilized, intellectual and thrifty people. The deluge was sent to preserve the knowledge, the arts and the religion of the primitive eras, and these Were treasured and perpetuated by the children of Ham in Egypt. It is to this ANCIENT CIVILIZA- TION IN THE VALLEY of THE NlLE, and to a glance at its westward progress, that your attention i< solicited.

6

In the days of Peleg, the race was overtaken with laziness and pride, and made up its-mind to stay at home around a tower in the plain of Shinar. But the confusion of the pronunciation (in He- brew— the lip) of the one language, which all used, resulted in emigration. The history of the descendants of Shorn and Japheth is wholly lost, for nearly 900 years after the flood, excepting k few notices of individuals in the Bible. Not until the Exodus (B. C. 1491,) does the national history of the Jews properly begin. Not a single monument is known to exist, erected before the tern- pie of Solomon, to attest the skill and power of the descendants of Shcm and Japheth — while the works of the children of Ham — erect- ed before the Jewish temple, still remain, eliciting the admiration, and commanding the imitation of all subsequent ages. Ham was providentially selected to transmit to modern eras the secular knowledge and civilization of the more ancient times, just as Shem imparts, through a written revelation, the knowledge of religious ideas and purposes.. That the ancient Egyptians descended from Ham we know from the Bible, but Rawlinson in his notes on Her- oditus (vol. II, p. 21, 234,) also says, "their skull shows them to have been of the Caucasian stock, and distinct from the African tribes westward of the Nile." The recent investigations in Eth- nology agree with the suggestions of scripture and strengthen the probability that the negroes have descended from Shem, and not from Ham, so that matters grow worse and worse with the stupid theology that panders to slavery by imputing a curse on Ham !

There was a period of 1340 years between the flood and the erection of Solomon's temple. To this period our remarks are con- fined, and it is beyond dispute, that 1340 years afford ample time for the planting — the growth and the monumental and literary works of a great and intelligent nation. It is less than 250 years since our fathers came to these shores to begin, in a rocky wilder- ness, the work which has already been accomplished. What for- ests have been felled — what cities built — canals dug — stone edifices erected — statuary chiselled — inscriptions cut — what giant machin- ery has been set in motion — what tunnels bored through mountains — what acqueducts and viaducts ! Now if this country were made a wilderness to-day, and should continue so a thousand years, the

T

intelligent traveller would then find most convincing proofs of our knowledge — our arts — our skill and our civilization among the ruins of cities, and on monuments inscribed with names and dates and histories. What curiosities would be found among the debris of the. United States Mint — what curiously shaped masses of iron on the site of forges, rolling mills and locomotive shops — what stone walls, piers and abutments — what a relic for an antiquarian to find, in the millenium, will be that little gun, made in the peace- ful State of Penn. — 17 feet long, and into the muzzle of which an Alderman might creep ! Would it be difficult to draw from such sources a reliable general estimate of the learning, power and civilization of this people ? The remains of Egypt are as abun- dant and decisive for the period which 1 have named.

Isolated from the ignorance and corruptions of Central Asia — separated and guarded by two wide deserts, and the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, the Egyptians were best situated to preserve uncorrupted the primitive arts and revelations made to Adam, to Enoch and to Noah. It was not chance that laid that green plain 600 miles through the desert — that dug the channel for the best river in the world, and flung over all the most enchanting skies. There, in the groves of her lordly palms, her scholars and archi- tects thought, invented and moulded for the world. While all clear ideas in morals and religion are preserved to man in the revelation made to the family of Abraham, almost all the uninspired, vet nor- mal forms of matter wrought by man, originated in Egypt. Gre- cian sa^es travelled thither to sit at the feet of her philosophers, and the architects, who crowned the Acropolis of Athens with its glory, found their patterns on the banks of the Nile. The agricul- tural, mechanical and musical arts cultivated in the family of La- ntech, and the science and skill of those who built the Ark. were not only not forgotten, but usefully employed and enlarged. The proportions of our mighty ocean craft, and the forme of our viols and organs, came down through Egypt from antediluvian times.

The ancient name of the Nile, as given by Homer, was EgypttlS. Its affluent floods are gathered on the high plateaus of the tropic, and after receiving its last tributary, it rolls yet 1700 miles to the sea. which it enters at about the same latitude as does our Missis-

8

sippi. There is an enchantment about this <>1<1 river. Its majestic flow is under a climate as calm and sweet as that of the Elysian fields, where Greece sought in fable the home of her gods. Wav- ing acres of grass and grain smilingly attest it- prodigal beneficence — groves, of the tall, plmme^crested palm, adorn its plains — birds of gorgeous plumage bathe in its waters — hoary pyramids and temples ami tombs recall the scenes of 4000 years ago ; and, as the christian traveller glides on its current, charmed, as by the river of a dream, with its magnificence and quiet beauty, he is more I than delighted with the probability, that he is gazing on the very symbol of heaven which John uses when he says: "And he shewed me a pure river of the water of life, in the midst of whose plain, even on either side of the river, was there the tree of life which bare twelve manner of fruits." Here, if anywhere, might the second infancy of the race be reared to manhood, and civilization receive some of its permanent forms.

Egypl alone, of all the countries mi the Mediterranean Sea. re- tains its ancient fertility. It has been recently shown by Dr. Cole- man in the Bibliotheca Sacra, that nearly one-third of the fertility of Spain, Italy. Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine and North Africa

has been lost by the destruction of their forests — by meteorological changes, and by war. while that of Egypt is renewed every year by the waters of its life giving river. The agricultural skill of the people made the country the granery of the ancient world, and without it the great population of Palestine under the kings could not have existed.

1 will not tax your patience with the details of the wonderful monuments of the ancient Egyptians, which attest their learning and civilization. In the vast National Cemetery, near the ruins of Ancient Memphis, we gaze with wonder on the huge old Pyramids — the Sphynx. the tomb of the Apis, and the countless sepulchres of heroes, artisans, princes, millionaires, and sa vans, chiselled in the living rock, and adorned with the arts of sculpture, painting and writing. In like manner, for 500 miles up the sacred river, tem- ples, statues, obolisks and records, bear witness to a race of men who thought and wrought, with a skill equal to that which built the tomb of Napoleon, or the Capitol at Washington. Thebes, the

••populous No" of the Bible, baffles description. The temple of Karnac is 1200 feet long and 275 broad ! Who shall describe its avenues of sphvnxes. its propyla, its statues of Gods and men, its adytum and its inscriptions ? Its obolisks alone seem more like the work of angels than of men. A single shaft of granite 97 feet high, 8 feet square at the base and 4 at the top, its sides dressed till thev converge with mathematical precision, and the whole so per- fectly polished that one can see his face in it after 3000 years, with its inscriptions carved one inch deep with a sharpness of outline nowhere excelled : such was not the work of a rude and ignorant people. Its union of gracefulness and grandeur, of beauty and sublimity is such that Heaven might well preserve it for good spirits to gaze upon. It looks as if the angels had caught a stream of the Northern Aurora and turned it into granite, and as you see it standing against the gorgeous after-gloAv of an Egyptian sun-set. as if it stood upon a plain of burnished gold you may well imagine that holy ones would gather round it to mark its incomparable gracefulness and to chant the supremacy of its beauty. How out of taste to remove such a noble testimony of primitive civilization, and to cobble it up in the Champs d' Elvsie in Paris ! None but freaky Frenchmen would thus offend the honor justly due to an- tiquity. Luxor, with its stupendous columns and architraves, is on the same side of the river. On the west side are the Colossi on the plain, the Memnonium. Medenet Haboo, Goornah, the tombs of the kings, and the statue of Rameses the great. This statue represented the king in a sitting posture, and was 00 feet high, made of a single block of granit. and was brought 200 miles from Asouan !

I have only to say, that the men who could rear these structure* and adorn them as they did, must have been far advanced in those departments of knowledge which constitute a large portion of the civilization of modern nations.

Within 300 years after the flood they began their records which an- now being read, and the art of writing wa< common among them 500 years later, as the writing of the pentateuoh by Moses plainly shows. The pen is one of the mighty instrumentalities of a progressive people.

10

By their knowledge of astronomy they were the first to adopt, the solar year, and they intercalated one day every fourth year as we do ; and they inscribed the Zodiac on the ceilings of their tem- ples. They understood what we call the Copernican system — that the ecliptic was oblique — that the moon shown by borrowed light, and that the milky way was a grand nebulae of stars. They surveyed their lands, and planned their temples, statues, and ob- olisks, by the axioms and problems of geometry ; they managed water by the modern principles of hydraulics, and used figures on the decimal and fractional system. Medicine was reduced to a science, and by the compounding of drugs, and the division of prac- tice into anatomy, surgery, embalming, dentistry, &c, Egypt be- came the school to which the studeous of other nations resorted for instruction. Mummies are found. 4000 years old, with teeth filled with gold ; with bones ouce broken properly set, and with wi<rs upon their heads !

In architecture ancienl Egypt remains the master of the world. What are usually known as the Doric and the Corinthian orders, are familiar objects among the monuments. The grouped column, credited to the rise of the Gothic style, is to be seen in the tombs at Beni Hassan, which are among the oldest in the country. The parts of a column, the plinth, the shaft, (square, polygonal, fluted, or round) the capital, the abacus, as well as the architrave, frieze, and cornice, were conceived and executed long before Athens and Corinth had a name. Greece is pre-eminent in her conceptions of the beautiful, and, in her unequalled taste, she is a model for all times ; but while she excelled in ornaments, the forms on which she placed them were learned in the valley of the Nile.

We may also omit the details of their household furniture, their implements of husbandry and their weapons of war. The manufac- turing of these, and of other things, is often depicted on the walls of their tombs. Chairs were used instead of the more modern divan ; and herein is evidence, that when a nation leaves its chairs to sit on the floor, its progress is downward. Gold, silver and pre- cious stones, were beautifully wrought into a great variety of arti- cles, and wood, inlaid with wood of other colors, or with metals, ivory and stone, or carved into the forms of animals and fruits.

11

graced their homes. Glass, plain, colored, and ground, was man- ufactured into beads, bottles, vases, mosaics, and tiles, or was cut by the diamond, or fused by the blow pipe. Large numbers of these and of other articles arc to be seen in the Museums of Cairo, London, and New York.

At the Exodus, Egypt had lived long enough to have lapsed into gross idolatry, and to begin to die ; yet in religion, too, she led the early states of Europe, so that, when Jehovah rebuked idolatry by the hand of Moses in Egypt, he rebuked it at its source. Herodi- tus says that, "almost all the gods came into Greece from Egypt," and from Greece they were adopted by Rome. Amun was Jupiter — Sate was Juno — Pthah was the Pemiurgus — Neith was Minerva — Kem was Pan — Seb was Saturn — Thoth was Mercury, and so on. almost ad infinitum. But. Osiris was the most celebrated god of Egypt, and the character which they gave him is among the marvels of antiquity. It was held, that he came into this world to do mankind good — that his title was. The Manifester of Good and Truth — that he was put to death through the malice of the Evil oiu — that he was buried — that he rose from the dead — and that now he is the judge of all men at their death ! Was not this the remains of an early revelation, concerning our saviour and judge 1

It is manifest from an inspection of Egyptian temples, and the records of religious rites practiced in them, that the author of the Mosaic system did not reject everything, because it had been per- verted from its original purpose, and been used in the service of idols. That the heathen bow to their false deities. i< no reason that christians should not bow to the true God. Sacrifices and in- cense first commanded to Adam, came to be used in heathen tem- ples, yet they might properly be again commanded for the taber- nacle. We find it to be a fact, therefore, that Jehovah did not at the Exode intend to invent every form anew, but, that he chaleng- ed for himself alone, much that had before been devoted to idolatry. The tabernacle with it< holy and most holy place, and the temple of Solomon with its walls, open courts, and porches had their pro- totype in Egypt. The Ark was a continuance of the sacred boat,

which is represented on the walls of the temples :is carried by Btai e*

I

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on the shoulders of the priests. The Urim and Thummim — the robes of the high priest, the offering of incense and of fruits and animals, and a daily sacrifice', were known in the idol worship of Egypt before they were commanded in the Jewish economy. But from these forms, the Decalogue sweeps away all idol gods, and the true Deity assumes his exclusive right to the homage of man : and tenches the world in the retention of appropriate forms although once used in ignorant devotions, that acceptable worship is not in forms and modes, but in the spirit of the worshipper, and the object before which he bows.

One of the crowning evidences of the high civilization of the most ancient Egyptians, is found in the treatment and position accorded to woman. The king, the priest and the men. had each but one wife. The royal household was. indeed, graced with the most accomplished ladies within reach, but in early times, they held much the same position as do the maids of honor around the Brit- ish throne. The wife or the daughter of a Pharoh, succeeded to the throne and reigned : the husband and his wife sat together at meals and public entertainments on a large fautaeil, and were en- tombed side by side at death. Women appear in the sculptures as priestesses, and as holding honorable positions in society. Greece rejected, but Home adopted the Egyptian usage : and on the Nile and the Tiber, the married me]) could proudly say with Cornelius Nepos — "Which of us is ashamed to bring his wife to an enter- tainment, and what mistress of a family can be shown, who does not occupy the chief and most frequented room in the house ?" Ladies mingle freely with the other sex. or. engaged with each other in animated conversation on household affairs, on patterns, jewelry, matrimonial prospects and politics. They emulated each other in the value and fashion of their garments and in the arrange- ment of their hair in braids, or curls, or puffs, or waterfalls — in offering to a friend the prettiest boquet, or in complimenting the taste and liberality of their host.

It was to give to the descendants of Abraham the advantages of such a country, and of such a civilization, that Joseph was sent down, and made '"governor over all the land :" and subsequently, his father and all his house. It was the school where they learned

those lessons of science and that practice of the arts, which enabled them in the wilderness to construct and ornament the tabernacle — to make the ark and its mercy seat of gold — to carve, or to mould the cherubims — to elaborate the golden candlestick, and the neces- sary furniture for their worship and their wants. Although Israel fell for a time under the cruelty of an oppressive monarch, it was that thev might go out under a leader ''learned in all the wisdom

■I DO

of the Egyptians," and carrr with them rhe knowledge and the wealth of Pharonic time-. Fur 500 years, Egypt and Israel, both strong nations, lived side by side in an honorable friendship and peace. Solomon became a favorite in Pharoh's family, and Pales- tine drew from the banks of the Nile, her science, her architecture, her arithmetic, her weights and measures, her chariots, horses and linen yarn, and many of her social and religious forms. Indeed, so great was their intimacy, that Israel leaned too much on Egypt, and provoked the divine interference.

Egypt has her place in history, not as an antagonist to the rev- elation made to the Jews, as Baron Bunsen puts it, but she is to- day, so far as she is understood, a grand repository of evidences to the truthfulness of the biblical records, and a helper to the faith and civilization of Christendom. Learned men have been guilty of very impudent folly, in seizing with relish anything that seems to make against the historical statements in the word of God. The Savans, who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, found a lintel of a doorway in the temple at Dendora, on which was inscribed the Zodiac, and some historical records. They pried it out, and brought it to Paris. The magi of the University assembled around it with eye glasses, microscopes and books ; and the inscription on the poor stone was made to testify, that man had been on the earth 12000 years before the Mosaic date of his creation, and the French- men were ready to swear, that the Bible was a delusion. Books and pamphlets attested the new-born faith. Some unstable Pro- testants were alarmed, but the Romanists are never much worried when the scriptures are assailed, if tradition is let alone; and, since the infallibility of the Pope stands pledged against Galileo's doc- trine that the earth turns round, the incumbent of the chair in which Saint Peter never sat, lias turned his attention to polities

14

more than to exegesis. But in a few years Youngs and Ohain- polion arose and correctly read the Denderian tablet, and it turned out that Tiberias had made that inscription, to show that he had erected a part to that old temple ! It is said that the learned books, first published in Paris about the Zodiac, are out of print !

So, too, some smaller Eg}^ptologists in this country — like Mr. Gliddon — have paraded a superficial knowledge of Nilotic lore, against the Mosaic chronolegy, while the more competent and judi- cious, Wilkinson and Rawlinson, assure us that, " with regard to the age of Menes — the first king of Egypt — and the chronology of the Egyptian kings, all is very uncertain. No era is given by the monuments, which merely recofd some events that happened under particular kings ; and any calculation based on the duration of their reigns given to Manetho, must be even more uncertain than that of gcneologies." M. Mariatte, now exploring Egypt under the Pasha, and before this a strong advocate of the anti-biblical chronology, has just discovered a stela at Memphis which, he ac- knowledges, takes 1500 years from his former calculations ! Let them keep on digging and decyphering for the old Bible stands good yet ! It deserves to be said with emphasis, that every fact that has been agreed upon and settled by those most learned in Egyptian records, corresponds with, and corroborates, the common Hebrew chronology given in our English Bible.

But Egypt is dead. She lacked the revelation of truth — it came too late for her in the Septuagint — and it is the experiment of Providence to prove, that without that revelation, and its super- natural grace, a sustained civilization is an impossibility on this earth. Idolatry and slaveay corrupted her life ; her kings, no longer nursing fathers, became despots, and her priests deceivers. Egypt and Palestine fell together — the nurse and the child. It is said that it took Rome three hundred years to die — it took Egypt more than a thousand ! 525 B. C. Cambyses struck the corrupted, decrepid old nation the first fatal blow. Greece and Rome succes- sively fell upon her writhing form, and Mahommed wove the dark

pall that now mantles her remains Egypt is dead ! The

pale crescent only, shines on the night of her tomb !

Yet she lives in her works. Her genius, learning and arts, still

t5

swell the beneficent stream of human history, and, as 14 West- ward the star of Empire takes its way," we see unfolded the sublime purposes of the "blessed and only Potentate." The first great national movement, involved the disinheritance of Egypt from her patriarchal patrimony, when her ancient civilization, sep- arated from idolatry and despotism, and augmented by new revela- tions, was borne into the uncorrupted wilderness, by the Pillar of Fire and of Cloud. Within the mountain ramparts of Horeb it stood before Sinai, and, with unutterable solemnities, was invested with a heavenly robe — a written constitution — an elective govern- ment and an atoning service. In Palestine, the prophets of the true faith stood upon the mountains, feeding signal fires for a wan- dering world — incense, the shadow of prayer, rolled up in clouds — the throne of David typified the power, and his Egyptian harp, the music, of the coming kingdom — the expecting nations saw the gorgeous symbols of evangelic faith, until the Star of Bethlehem ushered the advent of the Prince of Peace ; who, beyond what Egypt ever knew, taught the world to say — " Our Father who

ART IN HEAVEN."

In the later Jewish times Greece inherited the architecture, the philosophy, the science, and, alas, the idolatry of Egypt. But the original contributions of Greece to the civilizing forces, will ever challenge the admiration and gratitude of mankind. It was not blind fate that reared her inspiring mountains — that opened her crystal springs, and hung over all her classic scenes the most be- witching skies. It was the beneficent creator of the human fac- ulties, who thus contrived to inspire the fine conceptions of the Grecian mind, to which "a thing of beauty was a joy forever." and so, to endow a higher school, with better masters, for Egyptian civilization — where unsurpassed taste should attach to ancient forms a diviner beauty, and adorn the world with its secular graces — where poetry might assume her stately measures, and find ex- pression in the cadences of song — where a Praxitiles might throw his imagination upon the cold marble, and almost warm it into life — where Pluto might think out, for all thinkers, the imperisha- ble doctrine of innate ideas and a priori truths, ami where a per- fected language might be prepared, which alone could best express

u;

the loving mission, and the infinite glory of the world's Redeemer.

In her turn, Rome became heir to the treasures of antiquity, and made, also, her contribution to the progress of the race. She invented but little in the physical arts, in poetry, or in religion. Egypt, Palestine, and Greece were the Patent offices whence she drew her models — but she did demonstrate the glory and utility of the Supremacy of Law. Her jurisprudence fought her battles — enfranchised her citizens — trained her orators — dignified her court? — developed h<*r literature, and bo-day, largely controls the eivil- ization of our age.

Apostolic love lavished its wisdom and zeal on this old iron em- pire, and the millenium would have been, chronologically, where the Dark Ages were, had not the quintessence of depravity gal- vanized dying paganism into life — enthroned the beast from the bottomless pit, and then by a stupendous fraud, imposed the in- vention upon Europe as the church of Christ. But Luther's ham- mer, as he nailed his Theses to the door of the Wittemberg church, aroused the nations. As when John "saw a door opened in heaven, and a throne, and He that sat upon it appeared with a rainbow round His head," so when Luther opened the Bible to the people, rightful authority, and inspiring hope reappeared on earth. He was the divinely selected switch-tender on the great road of human progress, and he ran the blood-reddened, rickety, Roman engine off the track. But its chief engineer still sticks to the old ma- chine ; and not able any longer to make fuel of Bibles and Saints, wherewith to fire it up, he amuses the age by throwing cold water on free presses and free pulpits.

At the Reformation, there had been prepared, for a disenthralled and scriptural civilization, the compass, the printing press, the re- vival of learning, and the discovery of a new continent. John Calvin organized a body of divine truth whose life is the Spirit of God ; and it ran, faster than Ezekiel's wheels, through Germany, France, Switzerland, and England. It was wonderfully borne into the Huguenot and Puritan mind, under Presbyterian forms, and winged them for their flight to these blest shores. They came--

"And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang With the anthem of the free."

17

Here are we, then, enriched with all the historic wealth of the past. Heaven throws its light upon us — and this is the year of American jubilee ! What manner of stewards, young gentlemen, ought we to he ? Shall we inherit Egypt's treasures, and owe her no service 1 She was an asylum for the infant Redeemer — who will tell her that He is "the resurrection and the life ?" Already, Reformed Presbyterians are there, to lift the dark pall from her tomb — the printing press throws off leaves for her healing — the telegraph flashes light on her gloom — and soon the love of God and of man, wielding the sweet forces of a christian civilization, will carry back to her greater blessings than she ever lost — and her good old rive:- will roll under brighter skies, when the songs indit- ed on Judeah's hills, shall be sung through her palmy plains.

DT61 .W87

Ancient civilization on the Nile : an

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