on an ass Moses set his wife and his sons on his return from Arabia to Egppt;' an old man seated on an ass was the likeness of him which, according to Gentile traditions, his countrymen delighted to honor. On white asses or mules, through the whole period of the early history till their first contact with foreign nations in the reign of Solomon, their princes rode in state; the prophecy, fulfilled in the close of their history, was that "their King should come "riding on an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." It was the long-continued mark of their ancient, pastoral, simple condition. The rival horse came into Palestine slowly and unlawfully, and was always spoken of as the sign of the pride and power of Egypt; in the funeral procession of Jacob the chariots and horses of Egypt are specially contrasted with the asses of the sons of Israel; they who in later times put their trust in Egypt founded that trust in her chariots and horses. But we know not .only the Israelite, but the Egyptian feeling also. Whilst on the Theban monuments the war-horse is always at hand, the ass, in their minds, was regarded as the exclusive, the contemned, symbol of the nomadic race who had left them. On asses they were described as flying from Egypt; asses, it was believed, had guided them through the desert; 5 in the Holy of Holies (to such a pitch of exaggeration was the story carried) the mysterious object of Jewish worship was held to be an ass's head; and so deeply and so generally was this persuasion communicated to the heathen world,

4

1 Exod. iv. 20.

2 Diod. Sic. xxxiv. 1.

3 Judg. v. 10, x. 4, xii. 14; 2 Sam. xvi. 1, 2; 1 Kings i. 33, 38.

4 Plutarch de Iside, ch. 31.

5 Tac. Hist. v. 3. See Lecture VI

that when a new Jewish sect, as it was thought, arose under the name of "Christian," the favorite theme of reproach and of caricature was that they worshipped in like manner an ass, the son of an ass, even on the Cross itself. So long and far were the effects visible of this primitive diversity between the civilized kingdom of the Pharaohs and the pastoral tribe of the land of Goshen. So innocent was the occasion of this longstanding calumny, -a calumny not of generations or centuries, but of millenniums' growth before it was dispelled; perhaps the most remarkable of all the many like slanders and fables invented, in the course of ecclesiastical history, by the bitterness of national or theological hatred.

Points of contact.

5. Such are some of the points, greater or smaller, of lasting antagonism which their original relations left between Egypt and Israel. But there are also points of contact. It would be against the analogy of the whole history, to suppose that this long period was wasted in its effect on the mind of the Chosen People; that the same Divine Providence which in later times drew new truths out of the Chaldæan captivity for the Jewish Church, out of the Grecian philosophy and the Roman law for the Christian Church, should have made no use of the greatness of Egypt in this first and most important stage of the education of Israel.

We need not go to heathen records for the assurance that Moses was "learned in all the wisdom of "the Egyptians." Whatever that wisdom was, we cannot doubt it was turned to its own good purpose in the laws through him revealed to the people of God.

1 The Palatine inscription (Dublin Rev. April, 1857). Josephus, c. Ap i. 7; Tertullian, Apol. ch. 16.

The very minuteness of the law implies a stage of existence different to that in which the Patriarchs had lived, but like to that in which we know that the Egyptians lived. The forms of some of the most solemn sacrifices as, for example, the scapegoatare almost identical. The white linen dresses of the priests, the Urim and Thummim on the high-priest's breast-plate, are, to all appearance, derived from the same source as the analogous emblems amongst the Egyptians. The sacred ark, as portrayed on the monuments, can hardly fail to have some relation to that which was borne by the Levites at the head of the host, and which was finally enshrined in the Temple. The Temple, at least in some of its most remarkable features, its courts, its successive chambers, and its adytum, or Holy of Holies, -is more like those of Egypt than any others of the ancient world with which we are acquainted. In these and in many other instances we may fairly trace a true affiliation of such outward customs and forms, as in like manner, at a later period, the Christian Church took from the Pagan ritual of the empire in which it had sojourned for its four hundred years. It is but an expansion of the one fact which has always arrested the attention of commentators, and which in its widest sense is a salutary warning against despising the greatness and the wisdom of the heathen.

"This world of thine, by him usurp'd too long,

"1

Now all her stores to heal thy servants' wrong." 1

opens

Rachel carried off her father's teraphim from Mesopotamia; the wives and daughters of Israel carried off from Egypt the sacred gems and vestments, which

1 Ewald, ii. 87, 8, on Exod. iii. 22; xii. 45. Keble's Christian Year (38 S. in Lent).

66

afterwards served to adorn the priestly services of the Tabernacle. "When ye go, ye shall not go empty "But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour. "jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your 66 daughters. And the Lord gave the people "favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they "lent unto them such things as they required, and they spoiled the Egyptians."

66

Yet the contrast was always greater than the likeWhen we survey the vast array of an

Points of contrast.

ness.

cient ideas represented to us in the Egyptian temples and sepulchres, the thought forced upon us is rather of the fewness than of the frequency of illustrations which they furnish. Of this absence of influence perhaps the most remarkable instance lies in the fact that whilst the Egyptian sculptures abound with representations of the future state, and of the judgment after death, the Jewish Scriptures, at least in the Pentateuch, abstain almost entirely from any direct or distinct mention of either. A wider connection, indeed, might be maintained if we could trust the later descriptions of Egyptian theology and philosophy. It was strongly believed in the Greek schools of Alexandria, that behind the multitude of forms, human, divine, bestial, grotesque, which filled the Egyptian shrines, there was yet in the minds of the sacred and the learned few a deep-seated belief in One Supreme Intelligence, and thus the distinguishing mark of the Mosiac Revelation would have been, not so much that it disclosed and insisted on this fundamental truth, but that what had been hitherto confined to a priestly caste was for the first time made the common property of a whole people. Such may possibly

have been the case.
sion left by the monuments.
goddesses, above all, the overwhelming deification of
the Pharaohs, of which I have before spoken, seems
almost impossible to reconcile with any strong Mono-
theistic belief in Egypt, however far withdrawn into
the recesses of schools or priesthoods. One ever-re-
curring symbol, however, of such a belief appears in
color and sculpture on the Egyptian monuments, as in
the Hebrew records it appears also both in word and
act. Everywhere, but especially under the portal of
every Temple, are stretched out the wide-spread wings,
blue, as if with the cloudless blue of the overarch-
ing heavens, covering the sanctuary, as if with the
shelter of some invisible protector. This may be the
accidental recurrence of a symbol simply and naturally
expressive of a beneficent overruling Power. But it
is the nearest authentic approach which the Egyptian
monuments furnish to such an idea. It is the image
to which, in one sublime passage, at least, the Divine
presence is directly compared," as it were a paved work
"of a sapphire stone, as it were the body of heaven in
"his clearness." 1 It is an exact likeness of the wings
which formed the covering of the ark in the Taber-
nacle and the Temple, - of the feeling which has been
made immortal in the words, "Under the shadow of
Thy wings shall be my refuge." "

But it is not the natural impres
The crowd of gods and

1 Ex. xxiv. 10. Compare our own use of the word "Heaven."

2 Ps. lvii. 1. For the amplification

of the detailed relations of Egyptian to Israelite history, see Hengsten berg's Egypt and the Books of Moses