and other periods of growth and development, must have preceded the building of the gigantic Pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty. During the thousands of years preceding the era of authentic history, the Egyptians progressed so far that nothing seemed too difficult for their accomplishment. The Pyramids bear witness to this. How proudly self-conscious must the people have been who thus set up a perpetual memorial for themselves. And whilst their passion for the huge was relinquished in succeeding centuries, it should be regarded merely as an evidence of a greater refinement of Life, the grace of which still looks forth from the monuments of the Fifth Dynasty.

Then a dark age intervened.

From the Sixth to the Twelfth Dynasty events are shrouded in mystery which, however, is gradually yielding to the efforts of modern scholarship and is becoming clearer. With the dawn of the Twelfth Dynasty the second period of Egyptian history begins. No doubt it was during this golden age, comprising some two centuries (from about B. C. 2778 to B. C. 2565), upon which the Egyptians of succeeding generations looked back as the classic period of their literature, that Egyptian arms were first carried to remoter lands. Then it was that Nubia became an Egyptian province, and the gold of its deserts thenceforth belonged to the Pharaohs. Traditions of this period are embodied in the semi-mythical figure of the Great King-Sesos

tris. According to the traditions of the time, that monarch subjugated distant lands to the north, but we have little means of knowing how much truth there may be in such legends. It seems clear, however, that at about that time, the Egyptians maintained commercial relations with the nations of the Mediterranean seaboard, for their dainty vases are found in Egyptian rubbish heaps of that period, and may have been imported into the Valley of the Nile then, as later, as receptacles for delicate oils.

Again, the history of Egypt is veiled in obscurity. The continuity of the narrative, as reconstructed by modern scholarship, is broken. She fell a prey to foreign conquerors, and the Hyksos long reigned in Egypt as her lords. But, gradually the little City of Thebes arose to power and mastery, and eventually expelled the foreign kings. With the commencement of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt was again free. Then it was that that upper Egyptian line established a kingdom which rendered the name of Thebes, its City, and Amun, its God, forever famous. Then dawned the greatest era of material prosperity which the Valley of Egypt ever saw.

The military expeditions of the great warriors of that Dynasty subjugated a region which extended to northern Syria and eastward to the Euphrates. "Egypt became the neighbor of the kingdom of Matanni (or Mitanni) on the Euphrates, of the rising power of Assyria, of ancient Babylonia."

Then it was that the two civilizations, which had been developing for thousands of years on the banks of the Euphrates and in the Valley of the Nile, were brought into direct contact, and "we shall hardly be wrong in saying that during those centuries a great part of the civilized world, whose heirs we are, then met together in common life." And whilst the Egyptians had been wont to consider all other peoples as wretched barbarians, they found that narrow view untenable when once they had met face to face the civilization of ancient Babylon. Trade and commercial intercourse exerted a powerful influence; and in the long result their traditional repugnance for and their fear of foreigners passed away, and Chaldean fashions came into vogue among wealthy Egyptians. And although it is difficult to estimate the effect of Egyptian supremacy on the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, recent discoveries show conclusively that great quantities of small Egyptian wares, of glass, bronze, and silver were exported during that period. And the inference forces itself upon the mind that it was then that the industrial art of Phoenicia acquired its Egyptianized style. Then it was that our civilization adopted all those things which still play their part in our daily lives, the forms of household furniture, of columns, of statues, seals, weapons, and many other articles which were undoubtedly perfected in the Valley of the Nile, and

which are met with in the oldest Greek and Etruscan times.

During that period of Egyptian supremacy, her influence was felt throughout the countries bordering the Mediterranean; an influence, of which we can now estimate the force only by these traces which have survived the ravages of time; and it is a reasonable inference that her intellectual riches, her customs and laws, her poetry and religion, her arithmetical and medical skill were no less widely diffused. "If, for example, our Religion tells us of an immortality of the soul more excellent than the melancholy ex-istence of the shades, the conception is one first met with in ancient Egypt; and Egyptian, likewise, is the idea that the fate of the dead is determined by the life led upon earth. These conceptions come to us by way of the Jewish scriptures, but may not the Jews have obtained them from Egypt, the land that bore its dead so heedfully in mind?" The silent paths by which such thoughts have passed from nation to nation, and from age to age, are, it is true, beyond all showing. Again, if much of our Bible reminds us forcibly of the proverbial literature of Egypt, the idea of seeking its origin in the Valley of the Nile is one which readily occurs. Nor is the search fruitless. The conclusion that this, as well as much else which we have long called our own, comes to us from the civilization of ancient Egypt can no longer be successfully challenged. So Vin thought.

CHAPTER III.

THE POWER OF THOUGHT.

Thought, like Truth, is Eternal.

The Thought of the ages of man's past is the Law of the Present; it will be the law of the future. After our physical bodies shall have moldered away and joined their kindred dust, that which shall live, as a part of the great body of Truth, is the only Act worth doing, the only Thought worthy of expression. And whilst, after the physical change called Death, the Soul can see and understand and appreciate what takes place on this planet, and can watch over the welfare of those it loves, its greatest happiness must consist in seeing its beneficent influences widening from age to age, helping to shape for good the destinies of Individuals, of States, and of the World, its bitterest punishment must consist in seeing its evil influences causing misery and suffering.

Because Thought is supreme, because Truth is Eternal, the human family is bound together by those invisible ties which, in the highest sense, do make for Brotherhood. That which other men, during the long past, have thought and said, and done, forms a vast network of circumstance which conditions and controls us all. This is the Choir Invisible. Not one in ten thousand but takes his Faith on trust. We believe as