stood not." Acts vii. 25. Both Moses and his brethren have suffered much during this interval. Both have learnt much also.

"And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel, Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go?" Exod. v. 1, 2.

This was Sethos II.; and we have here another event in his monumental history to relate. It was an act of gross and mad impiety to which the monuments of Egypt have recorded no parallel, in the history of any other individual that ever lived there. It appears that when the tidings of the death of Siphtha reached Thebes, it became the duty of Sethos as his co-regent and successor, to visit the valley of the kings, for the purpose doubtless of being present at certain ceremonies preparatory to the sepulture. Here the exquisite beauty of the resting-place of his kind and most indulgent relatives Siphtha and Thouoris, and the disgraceful contrast to it, presented by his own slovenly, unfinished, and neglected vault, would be strongly impressed upon him. The course he adopted would send a thrill of horror and disgust through the entire of his subjects, of which we can form but a feeble conception. He

ordered the names and portraits of his aunt, to whom he owed it that he was king of Egypt, and of his uncle, who had carried on the affairs of the nation for him, and built temples whereon he had inscribed the titles of Sethos to the exclusion of himself, to be covered with stucco, and wrote over them his own recreant name. It would not have been possible to have framed any other act of daring wickedness, whereby the higher and better feelings of ancient Egypt would have been so grossly outraged.

The next act of Sethos II. is recorded in the present passage, and is worthy that which went before it. The answer of the infatuated king to the message from the God of Israel is exactly that which we might have anticipated from the violator of the tomb of his benefactors. The tyrant knew not his country's gods, for he had despised and neglected the elementary precept of their religion regarding his own tomb. He knew not the natural feelings of affection and respect towards his deceased relatives, nor even the still commoner obligation of gratitude to the memories of liberal and disinterested benefactors. Upon these, the very elements of all right and reverential feeling in man, he had trampled ruthlessly and with mockery. How should such a man know the God of Israel, or care to obey him?

"And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us let us go, we pray thee, three days journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or the sword. And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? Get you unto your burdens. And Pharaoh said [to his courtiers], Behold the people of the land are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens." Exod. v. 3-5.

The moral identification of the monumental Sethos with the Pharaoh of the Exodus, yields in perfectness of coincidence to no other in the entire history. A reckless, hardened profligate, and impudent contemner of the commonest conventionalities of outward decency, ignorant through the wanton neglect of abundant opportunities of learning wisdom, and heady, headstrong, boisterous, and uncontrollable in the exact measure of his ignorance, the same individual must have sat for both portraits. The man who could perpetrate the grossest of all outrages upon the memory of his foster-parents before their funeral ceremonies were commenced, at the same time petrifying with horror the whole kingdom by the blasphemous impiety of the act, and this merely to gratify a whim of vanity and self-opinion,-this is the king of Egypt we should have chosen from the entire list of them for

the opponent of Moses, even if there had been no chronological data to guide us in the selection!

The tyrant's address to the Egyptians around him, further illustrates the view of the real oppressors of Israel, of which other passages had also afforded us the shadow and outline. The kings of Egypt, and not the people of Egypt, were the enemies of Israel. It was to the authorities and great officers of the city of Ramses that the sordid and brutalized tyrant addressed the last of these objurgations. We could not have had a more convincing proof of the correctness of our previous assumptions regarding this matter, than the passage before us.

"And Pharaoh commanded the same day, the taskmasters of the people [Egyptians] and their officers [Israelites] saying,"-ver. 6.

This also was addressed to the whole body of the executive of the officers over the forced labours of Israel, whom he had peremptorily summoned into his presence. The Egyptians and the Israelites both stand before Pharaoh, and listen to the commands of the tyrant.

"Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon them: ye shall not diminish ought thereof; for they be

idle, therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. Let there more work be laid upon them, that they may labour therein, and let them not regard vain words."

"And the taskmasters of the people [Egyptians] went out, and their officers, [Israelites] and they spake to the people saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go ye, get you straw where you can find it: yet not ought of your work shall be diminished.

"So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt, to gather stubble instead of

straw.

"And the taskmasters were urgent, saying, Fulfil your works, even your daily works, as when

there was straw.

"And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, saying, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your daily task both yesterday and to-day, as heretofore? Then came the officers of the children of Israel and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say unto us, Make brick, and behold thy servants are beaten ; but the fault is in thine own people. But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to Jehovah. Go therefore now and work;