worshippers are truly under the Pharos! Whatever the system may seem or suggest to those who are afar off, it can only render the darkness visible to those who are nearest.

Amram was too keen a discerner of facts to overlook this. Neither the antiquity nor the mystery, the splendour nor the power of the system, could blind him to its absurdities. He had no love, and but little veneration, for Judaism; but he loathed mean ideas, whether embodied in miniature or colossal forms. A hawk-headed idol was, to him, a caricature of omniscence; and a ram-headed idol, a parody of omnipotence. Idols, in every form, awoke his indignation, and made him blush for man. He blushed for himself too at this moment; for the gods of Egypt, by disgusting him, had thrown his mighty mind, full-toned, upon the Revelation of the true God. 66 By what but inspiration," he exclaimed, "could Moses have conceived and embodied the character of Jehovah ? there is nothing in these statues to suggest a feature of it. There is every thing in

them to chain down the mind amongst the senses. Brute force is the character of all their power; and passion, of all their beauty. What is vast, conveys no idea of infinity; what is durable, no idea of eternity. Nothing is incomprehensible, except what is not worth comprehending. Even Jupiter Ammon was chiselled under the Pharos !"

For a

Amram turned from the idols to the altars of Egypt. There the sacrifices were numerous, and the process of immolation solemn. moment, he seemed in the temple of his fathers. Blood flowed with equal profusion, and victims blazed with equal splendour. But here-the hecatomb terminated in itself. It looked back to no divine origin, nor forward to any divine end. Sacrifice was a shadow without a "substance." Priests offered it with solemnity; but no prophet stood by to interpret it. It shadowed forth no coming Saviour, nor any real atonement. Amram felt all this; and confessed to himself, that whatever mystery hung over the Mosaic sacrifices, they did not terminate in

themselves, but all anticipated "good things to come." They were to him the problems of Judaism; but in Judaism alone he found a rational origin, or a useful design for sacrifice. As the type of a real atonement, its flames irradiated the past and the future with mysterious glory.

From the altars of Egypt, Amram turned to its tombs. He was still willing to detect or degrade Moses in something; and here man seemed destined for immortality! The embalming of the dead, and the embellishment of their sepulchres, threw all the sepulture of Judea into the shade. "Were not the pyramids, and the catacombs of Memphis and Abydos, bold and brilliant assertions of a glorious immortality? Were they not the store-houses of the resurrection? Judaism whispered the hope of immortality; but, here, was it not thundered through all the caverns of the grave?" Under this impression Amram proceeded to examine them. He found, however, at every step, that whatever Egyptian sepulture implied for man, it implied

for beasts and reptiles. They too reposed in all the enshrinements of mortality. Kings and crickets were equally embalmed and entombed. Amram felt as under the Pharos again! In vain did the priests tell him of Amenthes, the Hades of the Egyptians. The return of souls to reanimate their bodies, was blended with the immortality of the Ibis and Ichneumon, and regulated by no law, nor related to any specific time. Then, the translation of Enoch, and the ascension of Elijah to heaven, came before Amram with a glory unseen formerly. They shone out, like the sun and the moon, upon the Mosaic doctrine of immortality; and showed, at a glance, that Judaism was based upon the hope of eternal life; and dim only by the splendours of its theocratic providence.

Amram had now seen enough of Egypt. He said, "I will arise and go to my father, and say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy hired

servants. And he arose and came to his

father." Hillel, the holy, saw, at once, that his son was as weary of Egyptian wisdom, as the Tribes were of Egyptian bondage. He therefore welcomed him under the wings of the cherubim again; and, from the chair of Moses, magnified the God of Israel, who had, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, "brought his son out of Egypt.”

II. UNHALLOWED CURIOSITY REPROVED.

AMRAPHEL, the son of Aholibamah, was of the nobles of Israel, and in the flower of youth. His mind was ardent as the autumnal lightning, and luxuriant as the vineyards of Engedi. He had sat, from boyhood, at the feet of Benkadesh, the son of Hillel, the holy, hearing the words of wisdom, in doctrines which dropped as the rain, and distilled as the dew. But cuRIOSITY was the ruling passion of his soul-the star WORMWOOD, which made the waters of knowledge bitter. Like the wild gourds of Gilgal, in the great pot of the sons of the Prophets