Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-10-30

| give such thrill of rapture as a sail on
the Nile2 The Pyramids in sight, the
remains of cities that are now only
name, the villages thronged with pop
ulation. Both banks crowded with
historical deeds of forty or sixty CEN
turtles Oh, what book the bible Is
when read on the Nile!
Nations of sepulchres. And
one is tempted to call it an empire of
tombs i never saw such place as
! Egypt is for graves. And now we un-
derstand the complaining sarcasm of
the lsraelites when they were on the
way from Egypt to Canaan: because
there are no graves in Egypt hast thou
taken us away to die in the wilder
ness?" Down the river bank come the
buffalo and the cattle or kline to drink.
| And 1t was the ancestors of these
cattle that inspired Pharaoh's dream
of the lean kline and the fat kline.
Here we disembark little while for
| Memphis, off from the Nile to the
| right Memphis founded by the first
King of Egypt and for a long while
the capital. A city of marble and gold.
Home of the Pharaohs City nineteen
miles in circumference. Vast
colonnades through which imposing
| professions marched. Here stood the
Temple of the Sun, itself in brillancy
a sun shone on by another sun. Thebes
in power over a thousand one hum
bred years, or nearly ten times as long
as the United States have existed.
Here is recumbent statue seventy
five feet long. Bronzed gateways A
metropolis called "the haven of the
blessed" Here Joseph was Prime
Minister. Here Pharaoh received
Jacob. All possible splendors were
built up into the royal city. Hosea,
Ezekiel, jeremiah and Isaiah speak of
it as something wonderful Never did
visit city with such exalted an
| ticipations an never did my anticipa-
tions drop so fat Not pillar stands
Not a wall is unbroken. Not n fouu-
tain losses III the sun Even the ruins
have been ruined and all that remains
are chips of mar BILE, small pieces of
fractured sculpture and splintered hui
man bones. Here and sthere a letter
of some elaborate inscription. toe or
ear of a statue that once stood in niche
of palace wall. Ezekiel prophesied its
blotting out and the prophecy has been
fulfilled. ride on" said TO our party
land don't wait for me-" And as l
stood there alone, the city of Memphis
in the glory of past centuries returned.
And heard the rush of her chariots
and the dash OF her fountains and the
conviviality of ner palaces and saw the
drunken mobiles roll on the floors of
mosaic, while in startling contrast
amid all the royalties of the place l
saw Pharaoh look up into the face of
aged rustic Jacob, the shepherd, say
ing: How old art thou?"
Two great nations, Egypt and
| Greece, diplomatized and almost came
to battle for one book, a copy of hs-
chylus. Ptolemy the Egyptian King
discovered that in the great library at
Alexandria there was no copy of As
chylus. The Egyptian king sent up to
Athens, Greece, to borrow the book
and make copy of it. Athens de-
manded n deposit of Sl7,700 as seer
rity. The Egyptian king received the
book, but refused to return that which
he had borrowed and so forfeited the
seventeen thousand seven hundred dol
| lars. The two nations rose in conten-
ton concerning that one book Beau
tiful and mighty book indeed! But it
is book of horrors, the dominant idea
that we are the victims of hereditary
influences from which there is no
escape, and that fate rules the
world. and although the author
| QOtS JSll Oh Il TOmeNneuS WHO was cruel
fed on the rocks for sympathy for
mankind. powerful suggestion of the
sacrifice of Christ in later years, it is
| very poor book compared with that
] book which we hug to our hearts be-
cause it contains our only guide in life,
our only comfort in death, and our
only hope for a blissful immortality
If two nations could afford to struggle
for one copy of Eschylus, how much
more can all nations afford to struggle
for the possession and triumph of the
holy scriptures?
But the dead cities strung along the
Nile not only demolish infidelity. but
thunder down the absuroity of modern
doctrine of evolution which says the
! world started with nothing and then
1 rose, and human nature began with
nothing but evolved into splendid
manhood and womanhood of IL
self. Nay; the sculpture of the world
was more wonderful in the days
of Memphis and Thebes and Car
thage than in the days of Boston and
New York. Those blocks of stone
weighing three hundred tons high up
in the wall at Karnae imply machinery
equal to, If not surprising. the ma
chinery of the nineteenth century.
| How was that statue or RameSeS,
weighing eight hundred and eighty
seven tons, transported from the
quarries two hundred miles away
and how was it liftedp Tell
us, modern machinists. How were
those galleries of rock, still
standing at Thebes, flled with
paintings surpassed by no artists pen
ell Of the present day? Toll us, artists
of the nineteenth century. The dead
cities of Egypt so far as they have left
enough pillars, or statues, or sepul-
chres, or temple ruins to toll the story
-Memphis, Migdel, Hierspolis, Zsas.
Thebes, Goshen, Cartha1e-all of
them developing downward instead
of upward. They have eveluted frsm
magnifieence into destruction. The Cos
pei of Jesus Christ is the ealy elsva-
tor OF individual and social national
character. Let all the living cities
know that pomp and opulencs and
temporal prosperity are not security.
These ancient cities lacked nothing
but good morals Dissipation and sin
slew them and unless dissipation aud
sin are halted, they will some day
Stay eur modern cities, and leave our
/ palaces of merchandise and eur sal-