that time, about 180 years before Christ, were settled in Egypt.

It was likewise in Egypt that the Jews first came in contact with the Greek philosophy. A sect arose among them at Alexandria called the Hellenising Jews, who debased the revelation that God had vouchsafed to them by mingling it with the vain imaginations of Plato. This school flourished during a long period; and unhappily its tenets were embraced by the Christians of Alexandria, early in the third century, and almost immediately upon the introduction of Christianity into that city.* Thus again did the Jews learn in Egypt an idolatry (polished and refined, it is true, but nevertheless an idolatry) which has perhaps done as much to impede the progress of divine truth in the hearts of men, and to provoke God's wrath against his church on earth, as even the grosser animal worship which their ancestors had also acquired there.

The close and intimate communication between the Israelites and Egyptians, well accounts and prepares the way for the last, but deeply interesting event, in which Egypt is connected with the inspired narrative. It is thus recorded in the New Testament:-"And when the wise men were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son," Matt. ii. 13-15. The Hope of all mankind is once

* See the "Life of Origen," published by the Religious Tract Society.

more in Egypt. Eighteen hundred years before, Egypt had received into her bosom, and preserved alive in the earth, that seed in which all the families thereof should be blessed. Now the promised blessing has come down from heaven : God is now manifest in the flesh; and it shall be out of Egypt that the world shall receive her Saviour; and again shall Egypt keep for awhile in safety the most precious jewel in the treasure-house of heaven.

In the days of old, Israel went forth from Egypt to inherit in the promised land the fulness of the temporal blessing wherewith God had blessed Abraham. Now out of Egypt will God call his Son, that the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ may be made manifest unto the whole world. In Adam all die, for all have sinned. Already dead in trespasses and sins, the grave waits to receive man's perishing body; and the still more fearful abyss of hell yawns for his immortal but polluted spirit. There is no escape for sinful man from these, the spiritual, temporal, and eternal consequences of his sin, but in that young child with whom his mother flees away from their enemies into Egypt.

Many dangers surround them; but amid the terrors of the wilderness, and among strangers in Egypt, the holy family is as safe as in the third heaven. For "out of Egypt” will God call his Son, to manifest him unto men, and in the fulness of time to deliver him into the hands of the wicked; to lay upon him the iniquity of us all. And, obedient to the call of Him whose will it was his meat to accomplish, he came as a lamb, without blemish and without spot, to take away the guilt and the power of Adam's sin in his posterity by the sacrifice of him

self. He gave his back to the smiters, and his cheek to them that plucked off the hair; He hid not himself from any shame or ignominy that the malice of men could invent, and the wickedness of men could inflict upon him. To make atonement for the sin of man, His tender limbs were stretched and pierced with nails upon the accursed tree, where his body underwent all the extremities of torment; and, still more fearful, his pure and holy soul, which burned incessantly with the love of God, and which knew no motive but to do his Father's will, and finish his work, was racked at the same time with the agony which burst forth in the doleful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matt. xxvii. 46. All this he endured for six hours, and then the sacrifice was complete; the Divine justice was satisfied. And "he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost," John xix. 30. And now henceforth God can be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus, Rom. iii. 26. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved," Acts iv. 12.

CHAPTER II.

CLIMATE AND MONUMENTS OF EGYPT.

EGYPT, whose history is thus closely interwoven with so much of the inspired narrative, is distinguished from all other countries by certain peculiarities of situation and of climate to which we have already alluded, and which we now proceed more fully to explain.

It lies between the parallels of latitude which are immediately to the north of the tropic of Cancer, and in both hemispheres and on every part of the earth's circumference, the countries so situated are remarkable for extreme drought and a consequent tendency to sterility. This is peculiarly the case with Egypt. It is a valley hemmed in by two ranges of mountains of no great elevation, extending from south to north, and flanked on three sides by deserts; on the east by the deserts of Arabia, interrupted only by the narrow gulf of the Red Sea; to the south and west by the Libyan desert, a vast expanse of sterile sand which stretches away southward into the very heart of Africa, and westward to the shores of the Atlantic. It is thus in the centre of the largest tract of uninterrupted desert on the surface of the earth; and, in consequence, rain is well nigh unknown in Egypt. In Upper Egypt, called also the Thebaid, rain was accounted a prodigy; and in the lists of the kings of Egypt

which were prepared by Manetho, a priest of Sibennytus, in Greek, by the command of Philadelphus, he has thought it worth recording that the year before the disastrous invasion of Darius Ochus there was rain in the Thebaid. The same peculiarity has also been noticed by modern travellers. Rain in that district excites astonishment and alarm amongst the inhabitants from the extreme infrequency of its occurrence.

The whole extent of the valley of Egypt is traversed by the magnificent river which is so intimately connected with its entire history, and so familiar to every one whose attention has been at all directed to that country, the Nile. The fertility of Egypt, yea its very existence otherwise than as a tract of desert, depends upon the phenomena connected with this river. The Nile ordinarily rolls a broad majestic stream of clear blue water to the sea, the pleasantness and salubrity of which as a beverage are acknowledged by all travellers, and praised by the inhabitants as far surpassing in excellence any other waters in the world; so much so, that the more opulent among them carry with them the waters of the Nile when they have occasion to visit other countries; and all ranks in Egypt regard the privation of the delicious draughts of their beloved river as one of the greatest hardships connected with absence from home. But regularly every year, about the time of the summer solstice, June 21, the waters of the Nile suddenly change their appearance and become red and turbid, so that in the course of a few hours its hitherto limpid stream seems to be turned into a river of blood. There is no atmospheric change in Egypt to account for this. The burning sun, the clear sky, and the dry atmosphere for which it is remarkable at all times, appear at this