Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1891-10-30

| give such thrill OF rapture as a sail on
| the Nile? The Pyramids in sight. the
remains of cities that are now only a
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. / 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 it 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 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 thousand one hum
dred years, or nearly ten times as long
as the United States have existed.
| Here is recumbent statue seventy
| five feet long. Bronzed gateways.
metropolis called 1.-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
i visit city with such exalted an
| ticipations an never did my anticipa-
tions drop SO fiat Not pillar stands
Not wall is unbroken Not foun-
tain losses in 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 there a letter
of some elaborate inscription. a 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, 1 said TO our party
land don't wait for me-" And as |
stood there alone, the city of Memphis
in the glory of past centuries returned.
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 rs
chylus. Ptolemy the Egyptian King
! discovered that in the great library at
! Alexandria there was no copy of rs
chylus. The Egyptian king sent up to
/ Athens, Greece, TO borrow the book
and make copy of it, Athens de-
manded deposit of S17,7O0 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
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 n life,
our only comfort in death, and our
only hope for blissful immortality.
If two nations could afford to struggle
for one copy of 1Eschylus, how much
more can all nations afford to struggle
for the possession and triumph of the
holy scriptures?
But the dead cities strung along tn e
Nile not only demolish inhdelity. but
thunder down the absurGity of modern
doctrine of evolution which says the
world started with nothing and then
rose, and human nature began with
nothing but evolved into splendid
manhood and wonanhood of it
self. Nay; the sculpture of the world
was more wonderful in the days
of Memphis and 1hebes 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.
|
weighing eight hundred and eighty
seven tons, transported from the
quarries two hundred miles away
and how was it lifted? Tell
us, modern machinists. How we're
those galleries of rock, still
standing at Thebes, filed with
paintings surpassed by no artists pen
Gil of the present day? Tell 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, Migdol, Hierapolis, Zoan.
Thebes, Goshen, Carthsqe-all of
them developing downward instead
Of upward They have evoluted from
magnificence into destruction The Cos
pei of Jesus Christ is tho only elsva-
tor of individual and social national
character. Let all the living cities
know that pomp and opulencs and
temporal prosperity are not security.
Those ancient cities lacked nothing
but good morals. Dissipation and sin
| slew them and unless dissipation and