Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

rich in details that throw light upon the habits of the people and on their moralstate. Then there is for five hundred years a long and unbroken silence, and we read no more of Egypt till the days of Solomon. It is evidently the aim of the inspired writers to give religious knowledge only, or we should be tempted to exclaim, What inquiries and theories would have been spared us, if the facts of those five hundred years had been indicated, however briefly; and we had been told what dynasties then filled the thrones of Thebes, Memphis, and On! urrito

[ocr errors]

il

f

་་ U t

The profane historians begin with Herodotus, "the father of history." i He lived a thousand years later than Moses, He was born half a century after the return of the Jews from Babylon, and while the inspired prophets of the Old Testament were uttering their latest predictions. Haman was preparing to exterminate all the Jews that were left in the far East, and Esther was preparing the deliverance which the feast of Purim commemorates; Themistocles had recently visited Persia; and Cincinnatus was returning, like another Garibaldi, from his dictatorship to his farm-while Herodotus was writing his history. Ezra was arranging the Old Testament canon the very year (B.c. 446) he recited it to the assembled Greeks. All the older Egyptian dynasties, therefore, had long before passed away.m

[ocr errors]

In preparing this history he visited On, the City of the Sun, where Joseph had resided and where Moses had studied ten or twelve centuries before. There the priests showed him their sacred papyri, talked with him on the origin of Egyptian civilization, and told him, much that was fabulous. Yet classic history begins with him; and modern research has proved that he was oftener in the right than earlier criticism was ready to allow.

Two hundred years later Manetho, a priest of On, undertook to correct the narrative of Herodotus, and compiled a history which was intended to astonish the Greeks by revealing an antiquity greater than their own. He appealed to the monuments of Egypt, and professed to explain them. His succession of gods and heroes who reigned over, Egypt covers 25,000 years. Then comes, the first human king, Menes, who reigns 5,702 years before Christ, and is followed by ninety dynasties of 495 kings! A hundred years later, Eratosthenes, one of the keepers of the great library at Alexandria, formed a list of Egyptian kings, which he professed to take from the registry of Thebes. He begins with Menes, who reigned, he tells us, (not B.c. 5702, but) B.C., 2600. The works of both these authors have perished Fragments of Manetho, however, were preserved by Josephus, by Julius Africanus (fl. 220), and by George, the assistant or Syncellus of a patriarch of Constantinople (A.D. 792). In the recently discovered Chronicon of Eusebius the lists of Africanus, and in part of Manetho, are also given. This is that Manetho of whose name modern scholars hear so much. He would hardly deserve attention but for the fact that his fragments have suggested the Egyptian chronology of the Chevalier Bunsen. Bunsen stands entirely alone in the dates and periods he has given, and his theories

[ocr errors]

to.

T

pronounced absolutely baseless by Sir Cornewall Lewis and her authorities. gol youpe si arm'i de azilɔdo rozin I And yet the mistake is not unnatural. Till Milton's day English history was supposed to begin with Brutus, the Trojan king, and the name Britain was quoted in proof. Nor would it be difficult to lengthen our chronology by making the kings of the Heptarchy successive and noti contemporaneous. A like principle would add the reigns of the chiefs of Wales and of Ireland to the list. out of fodt ha gult yea -- 1 to al odroz ob 79]*

The most remarkable sources of our knowledge of Egypt, however, are the monuments. In the creation and preservation of these records two causes seem to have combined. In the first place, the Egyptians had an intense desire to preserve the memory of themselves and of their doings to posterity. Instead of burning their dead or burying them in the earth, they embalmed them with an art which seems to defy corruption, and which enables us to fill our museums with men and women who died three thousand years ag ago. Every man's grave was made a biography. All the scenes of his life were frescoed on the walls of his chamber, or sculptured on his coffin, or brilliantly painted on the graveclothes that bound him. J

I

[ocr errors]

In the same way the national history, the law and religionTo the country, are written on buildings innumerable. With the exception of the pyramids, all the ruined temples and palaces of Egypt are covered with sculptures and painting. At Herculaneum and Pompeii we have pages from the history of ancient Italy. In the Nineveh sculptures we have in stone the grotesque conceptions and some of the history of the Assyrians. But in Egyptian antiquities we have Egypt herself living and moving before us. Egypt to the life" would be no inappropriate inscription over the Egyptian rooms of our Museum, or over the pictures brow odt flogs 29urent dow of Rosellini and Champollion. jad,

one

And further, this tendency of the people has been wonderfully aided by the climate. Surrounded as Egypt is on three sides by desert, moisture he great agent in decay is almost unknown. The winds from the east, west, and south have all their moisture drunk up by the burning sand, while the clouds that come from the Mediterranean carry their rain to the mountains of Syene or of the Moon. The effect is that fragments of temples which Cambyses threw down four-and-twenty centuries ago still retain their polish, while on the walls of roofless buildings the figures and even the colouring may be traced. The very obelisk of Alexandria, which has been in ruins for sixteen centuries, is as fresh and as sharp on the north or protected side as if it had come within a few years from the workman's hand. Even when we take less favoured climates the monuments seem superior to decay. Opposite the church of St.

[ocr errors]

John Lateran at Rome is the obelisk that commemorates the victories of a Pharaoh who was probably contemporary with Moses. It is covered with exquisite sculptures, was conveyed from On by Constantine to Alexandria, and thence by his son to Rome. Four empires rose and fell while it was in Egypt, and it has witnessed unchanged all the vicis

[merged small][ocr errors]

situdes of Roman history from the fourth century of our era.

Luxor obelisk at Paris is scarcely less ancient. It comes dand was old at the date of the siege of Troy effo

9

n

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The

Thebes,

01:55

In this

whom

lotus

369 079

ort The inscriptions on these monuments are all hieroglyphic. They represent men and animals, plants, instruments, and natural objects of bvarious kinds. And they answer a threefold purpose. of In many of the scenes represented they are pictures way they tell the life, the employment, the victories of they describe. In other scenes the hieroglyphics are symbols, and describe not the object represented, but some other object ideal or > material. Thus an eye represents seeing a sceptre, a king; the lo and papyrus, Egypt Upper and Lower. So a also a transitive verb is Trepresented by legs walking, and the fact that "shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptian," by painting one of despised race on the sole of the shoe, that the wearer might have the luxury of keeping him down At the end of the last century the capture of the 6 “Rosetta stone," which is now in the British Museum, led to the disPidovery of a third use of hieroglyphic writing. That stone contains an in escription in three languages, hieroglyphic, Enchorial, or popular Egyptian, and Greek. This inscription was published, and finally deciphered by D Thomas Young, and by Champollion. The result was, in brief, that each u figure was found to represent a letter or a monosyllabic word and eac each hepicture a longer word. Alphabets have since been invented, and though there is still some uncertainty in the application of the discovery, there is undoubted truth in it, and some of the results are very satisfactory. To orgive a single example of the system; a teacher might be represented pictorially by a figure of a man, teaching; symbolically, as in Greek painting, oby a hand passing on a torch; phonetically (as it is called) by pictures of kartube,cam eye, an axe, a cat, a house, eye, a rope, the initial letters of which names spell the word. Judging from examples we have seen, an ycold Egyptian historian would not have scrupled to describe a teacher by two signs, jone, representing tea and the other cheer! What light the inquiries and discoveries have thrown on the Pentateuch we leave to be bexamined in another paperib suntziom vindt He wred ddros bus Jaw nier Meanwhile our readers may be pleased to see the remains of one of ather earliest Egyptian, temples. / The Frontispiece represents Phila, a ogbeautiful island of the Nile, in Nubia, just beyond Egypt, though included in Egypt after the Persian conquest. The temples were de dedicated to Athor, the Egyptian Venus, who was also known as Isis. In one d the temples is a chamber in which is depicted the birth of the child-god 7 Horns Among the sculptures is one of two priests, who worship a serpent suspended on a cross. It is to the fable of Isis seeking the pieces of the body of her murdered husband Osiris Milton refers in a well-known passage in his "Areopagitica,"я de irroted affoł,

formesurge >[ Buerg 5. # ois, domed¶ n

[merged small][ocr errors]

of

THE FIRST PERIODICAL FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL

[ocr errors]

V broad akk zd not TEACHERS, bouzet om vol buf den ze 29must-izo to tro 225g fromp bimodz a

THE appearance of the Sunday School Teacher seems to call for some d notice, in its first number, of those periodicals of a similar character *** which have preceded, and to which it is the legitimate successor 1939) The objects of the Sunday School Union were declared, at its formalion in 1803, to be 1st, to stimulate and encourage each other in the education and religious instruction of children and youth; 2nd, by mutual communication to aim at improving each other's method of instruction; and 3rd, to promote the opening of new schools by influence and personal assistance wherever it might be deemed expedient. The first ⠀ two of these objects were sought to be carried out by the publication of '. sound elementary works, adapted to assist teachers in their labours, and by the quarterly meetings of teachers, which were held in various parts of London. The reports read and the discussions conducted at these meetings excited attention, encouraged and instructed teachers, and led to the establishment of many new schools, as well as to the improvement of existing schools, coitimmo") odt ̧rezazod yusz izal ult to 9-uros odt ud In the year 1812, Mr. William Freeman Lloyd, who had become the \ secretary of the Union, thought that something more was required, and ought to be attempted, in order to carry out these important objects more efficiently: He accordingly, in the April of that year, submitted to the Committee of the Union a prospectus of the Sunday School -1 Teachers Magazine.That prospectus was examined by Mr. Stephen Warner and Mr. Edward Thomas, two members of the Committee, and 16 500 copies of it were ordered to be printed and circulated at the ''' first public breakfast of the Union, held at the New London Tavern, on¶I Wednesday May 13th. The Committee, however, seem to have con- ⠀⠀ fined themselves to this sanction of the publication, probably feeling - ́a reluctant to incur the attendant expense. Mr. Lloyd, therefore, at his own risk commenced the periodical on January 1, 1813, under the91 b title of the Sunday School Repository, or Teachers' Magazine, and fort twenty-two years conducted its as editor. It was at first only published quarterly, but afterwards became a monthly periodical. The Union rendered/ some pecuniary assistance from time to time; but at length it became remunerative, and some part of the profits was contributed to the funds of the Union.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

When Mr. Lloyd retired from the office of editor, he handed it over to several members of the Committee of the Sunday School Union, among-l whom were Daniel Benham, William Bugby, Francis Cuthbertson, Wile liam Groser, John Mann, Peter Jackson, and John Stoneman. These became the proprietors, and Mr. Henry Althans was appointed the editor, to whom after some time the copyright was given. Upon his death it passed into the hands of his son. In May, 1859, the Committee of the Union learnt with regret that, in consequence of the sudden decease of Mr. H. R. Althans, the magazine had ceased to be published, there being no

J

[ocr errors]

one prepared to step forward and carry it on. There were pecuniary considerations which might have made it desirable that the periodical, which had long since assumed the title intended for it by Mr. Lloyd, The Sunday School Teachers' Magazine, should quietly pass out of existence; but the Committee, feeling that its maintenance was likely to promote the improvement of Sunday schools and the encouragement of teachers,' determined to undertake the publication of the magazine, which has for nearly nine years been conducted under their direction. to toordo d'L. The pecuniary considerations referred to were connected with the Union Magazine for Sunday School Teachers, which was commenced in the year 1844, in consequence of a suggestion made to the Committee that a cheaper periodical would be very useful to the teachers. That magazine has been carried on with great success, and under the editorship of " Mr. W. J. Morrish, obtained a large circulation. It was obvious that the discontinuance of the Teachers' Magazine would in all probability cons siderably increase that circulation, and thus materially benefit the funds of the Union. The Committee did not allow this to influence their decision, and have used every effort in their power to render both magazines effectual for the purposes they were designed to accomplish. In the course of the last year, however, the Committee were compelled to receive the resignation of the editor of the Shinday School Teachers' Ma agazine, They had besides this seven other monthly periodicals, five of which were conducted gratuitously by members of their body, while the whole received their careful supervision. The labour attending this is necessarily great, and they did not find it practicable to induce one of their number to occupy the vacant post. The cheapness and excellence of the Union Magazine and the Teachers' Magazine, now published for the benefit of Church of England and Wesleyan schools, all render it impossible to obtain a large circulation for a magazine published at a price which now appears large, but which could not be reduced without risk of loss, They therefore hesitated at incurring the expense of engaging an editor, who must have been adequately remunerated, and determined upon the course of which the Sunday School Teacher is the o result thus merging both their former periodicals for teachers into one, the conduct of which has been undertaken by the editor of the * Union Magazine; and its excellence, usefulness, and success will, it is trusted, far exceed those of its predecessorsintezen vudumosWo H-Warobsta of botndian09 287 zaitong ora te truq ouroz bas ovitumomio5_98998 tour offt to about cut of 176 di bobud CHRIST IN THE HEART. beritor bro!I IL modW "In the Highlands they tell that the Queen went one day into a poor The old woman did not know who was seated under her roof, and even she did not say much of what she felt, to see her Queen there. But when the Queen rose to go, she set aside the chair on which she had sat, and said, "None shall' ever sit on that seat again.' It was a loyal word. In a way just as real as that Jesus comes into the soul; and He brings as much with Him when He comes to he guest in the richest home and with the best-loved of the sons of men, as when He comes to the poorest child's or vilest sinner's dwelling."

[ocr errors]

1

cotta de 19797 cottage. Even when told,

« ZurückWeiter »