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which are said over them. Isis is the great enchantress, and she delivers the sick and suffering from the gods and goddesses who afflict them, even as she delivered her son Horus from his wounds received in his battle with Set. The sun-god Ra had himself been ill, and the gods Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut and Isis, had prepared medicine for him. Even when no medicines are taken, palm-sprigs may serve as a charm, if a formula be pronounced relative to the palm-branch with which Horus defended himself against Set, and if Isis, the mother of Horus, be invoked. But sometimes the speaker boldly says, "I am Anubis, the son of Nephthys; I am Anubis, the son of Ra; I am Horus, I am Amon, I am Mentu, I am Set." Sometimes threats are uttered. The person using the spell relies upon of revealing power knowledge, and consequently on his mysterious secrets. "N., son of N., is the messenger of Ra.... He is the messenger of every god and every goddess, and he utters the proclamation of Tehuti. N., son of N., knows the mysterious chest which is in Heliopolis, and all the hidden things of Heliopolis." "If he who is in the waters opens his mouth, ... I will cause the earth to fall into the sea, the south to be changed into the north, and the whole world to be overturned." There is a terrible spell in behalf of a lady in childbirth. The lady is first identified with Isis, and the gods are invoked to prepare a place for her delivery. They are told that, in case of their not doing

his

so, "You shall be undone, you cycle of the gods; there shall no longer be any earth; there shall no longer be the five supplementary days of the year; there shall be no more any offerings to the gods, lords of Heliopolis. There shall be a sinking of the southern sky, and disasters shall come from the sky of the north; there shall be cries from the tomb; the midday sun shall no longer shine; the Nile shall not furnish its waters at its wonted time. It is not I who say this; it is not I who repeat it; it is Isis who speaketh; she it is who repeateth it."

The very same kind of threats are spoken of by Porphyry, about 270 A.D., as mentioned by Chaeremon, a sacerdotal scribe in the first century, and affirmed by him to be of potent efficacy. "What a height of madness," says Porphyry, "does it not imply in the man who thus threatens what he neither understands nor is able to perform, and what baseness does it not attribute to the beings who are supposed to be frightened by these vain bugbears and figments, like silly children!" An Egyptian priest of the name of Abammon is introduced in the work of Jamblichos as replying to the objections of Porphyry. He distinguishes between the gods, properly speaking, and the Saíμoves, who are subordinate ministers, and he says that it is to the latter alone that threats are used. And the authority of the theurgist he derives from identification. with the divinity. But the days of the Egyptian reli

gion were already numbered when the book of Jamblichos was written. Constantine was reigning, and the gods of Egypt were already being deserted by their worshippers, who transferred their devotion to Christianity in one of its austerest forms. A very few years after the work of Jamblichos was written, the emperor Valens issued an edict against the monks of Egypt, and a detachment of cavalry and infantry, consisting of three thousand men, was sent into the desert of Nitria to compel the able-bodied ascetics who had retired thither to enlist in the imperial armies. In the next generation, Gibbon tells us, "The stately and populous city of Oxyrinchus, the seat of Christian orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; and the bishop who might preach in twelve churches computed 10,000 females and 20,000 males of the monastic profession. The Egyptians, who gloried in this marvellous revolution, were disposed to hope and to believe that the number of monks was equal to the remainder of the people."

We have unfortunately no history of the gradual conversion of the Egyptians to Christianity. But when we compare the notions of the Divinity as contained in the authorized books of Egyptian theology with those which we ourselves hold, we cannot but ask whether so intelligent a people never came nearer to the truth than their most recent books would appear to show.

What, then, do we mean by God? I will not venture to use my own words, but will use those of one of the greatest masters of the English language.

True Notion of God.

"I mean, then, by the Supreme Being, one who is simply self-dependent, and the only Being who is such; moreover, that he is without beginning, or eternal; that in consequence he has lived a whole eternity by himself; and hence that he is all-sufficient, sufficient for his own blessedness, and all-blessed, and everblessed. Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the supreme Good, or rather is the supreme Good, or has all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness; all wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all beautifulness; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such that we do not know, and cannot even imagine of him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean, moreover, that he created all things out of nothing, and preserves them every moment, and could destroy them as easily as he made them; and that in consequence he is separated from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in all his attributes. And farther, he has stamped upon all things, in the hour of their creation, their respective nature, and has given them their work and mission, and their length of days,

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greater or less, in their appointed place. I mean, too, that he is ever present with his works, one by one, and confronts everything he has made by his particular and most loving Providence, and manifests himself to each according to its needs; and has on rational beings imprinted the moral law, and given them power to obey it, imposing on them the duty of worship and service, searching and scanning them through and through with his omniscient eye, and putting before them a present trial and a judgment to come."

1

Now as I carefully examine each paragraph of this beautiful passage (in which many will at once recognize the language of John Henry Newman), I am obliged to acknowledge that single parallel passages to match can be quoted from Egyptian far more easily than either from Greek or from Roman religious literature. I am not speaking of philosophy, which both in Greece and Rome was generally subversive of the popular religion. Where shall we find a heathen Greek or Latin saying like that of a papyrus on the staircase of the British Museum: "The great God, Lord of heaven and of earth, who made all things which are"? Or where shall we find such a prayer in heathen Greek or Roman times as this: "O my God and Lord, who hast made me, and formed me, give me an eye to see and an ear to hear thy glories"? On the other hand,

1 "Idea of a University," p. 60 and following.