Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-11-20

streets of Cairo, Egypt, this December
morning in 1889? Stand back! We hear
loud voices and see the crowds of people re-
treating to the sides of the street The ex-
element of others becomes our own excite
ment. Footmen come in sight. They have
a rod IN the hand and tasseled cap on head,
and their arms and feet are bare. Their
GARD is black to the waist except as threaded
with gold. and the rest is white. They
clearing the way for an official dignitary in
q chariot or carriage. They are swift, and
sometimes run thirty or forty miles at
a stretch in front OF an equipage Make
way! They are the feetest footed men on
earth, but soon die, for the human frame
was not made for such endurance.
asked all around me who the man in the
carriage was but no one seemed to know.
Yet as | fell back with the rest to the wall
said This is the old custom found all I'D and
down the Bible, footmen running before the
rulers, demanding obeisance, as in Genesis
before Joseph's chariot the people were COM
manded, Bow the knee" and as 1 see the
swift feet of the men followed by the swift
feet of the horses, how those old words of
Jeremiah rushed through my mind, ''If thou
hast run with the footmen and they have
wearied thee, how canst thou contend with
horses?'
Now, my hearers, in this course of sermons
am only serving you as fCotman, and clear
ing the way for your coming into the
wonders of Egyptology, a subject that
would have you study far beyond anything
that be said in the brevity Of pull
pit utterance. Two hundred and eighty
nine times does the Bible refer to Egypt and
the Egyptians. No wonder, for Egypt was
the mother of nations. Egypt, the mother
of Greece; Greece, the mother of Rome;
Rome, the mother of England, the mother
OF our land According to that, Egypt is
our neutrality-suspicious.
On other Sabbaths [ left you studying
what they must have been in their glory;
the Hypostyle hall of Karnac. the archi-
tectural miracles of Luxor, the Colonnade
of Horemheb, the cemeteries of Memphis
the Sphinx, which with lips of stone speaks
LOUD enough to be heard across the centu-
ries HeIiopolis and Zoan, the conundrum of
archRologists. But all that extravaganza,
of palace and temple and monument was
the cause OF an oppression high as heaven
and deep hell. The weight Of those
blocks of stone, heavier than any modern
machinery could lift, came down upon the
Hebrew slaves, and their blood mixed the
mortar for the trOwels.
We saw again and again on and along the
Nile a boss workman roughly smite a SUBJ
ordinate who did not please him. It is no.
rare occurrence to SEQ long lines of men
under heavy burdens passing by taSkmas-
ters at short distances, flashing them as they
go by into greater speed, and then these
workmen, exhausted with the blasting heats
of the day, lying down upon the bare
ground, suddenly chilled with the night air,
Aiahr which neans o GodlO God! But
what must have been the olden times
cruelty shown by the Egyptians towards
their 1sraeiitish slaves is indicated by pic
ture in the Beni-Hassan tombs, where man
Is held down on his face by two men and
another holds up the victims feet while the
officials beat the bare back of the victim,
every stroke, I have no doubt fetching the
blood.
Now you see how the Pharaohs could af-
ford to build such costly works. 1t cost them
nothing for wages-nothing but the tears
and blood of the toilers, and tears and blood
are cheap drink for devils. Bricks without
straw" may not suggest much hardship
until you know that the bricks were usually
made with crushed straw" straw crushed
by the feet Of the oxen in the thrashing, and
this crushed straw denied to the workmen,
they had to pick up here and there a piece
Of stubble or gather rushes from the water
side. This story of the Bible is confirmed
BY the fact that many of the brick walls of
Egypt have on the lower layers brick made
with straw, but the higher layers of brick
made out OF rough straw or PUSHES from the
river bank, IN truth Of the Book of Exodus
thus written in the brick walls discovered by
The modern explorer.
That governmental outrage has always
been a characteristic OF Egyptian rulers
Taxation to the point Of starvation was the
Egyptian rule in the Bible times we'll
it is in our own time. modern traveller
gives the figures concerning the cultivation
Of seventeen acres, the value of the yield Of
the field stated in piasters:
Produce. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ,oUS
Expenses .................... 5000
Clear produce. Observation-Disclosures. $685.
Taxes. Observation-Disclosures. 493
Amount cleared by the farmer zee. 3151
Or as my authority declares, seventy per
cent. of what the Egyptian farmer makes is
paid for taxes TO the government. Now,
that is not so much taxation as assassination.
You say, "Why did they stand it," Be-
cause they had to stand it. You see along
hacS in the worlds twilight there a
famine in Canaan, and Old Jacob and his
sons came to Egypt for bread. The old mans
boy, Joseph, was prime minister, and Joseph
Il suppose the father and the brothers called
him Joe, for il does not make any difference
how much a boy is advanced III worldly sue
cess his father and brothers and sisters al
ways call him by the same name that he was
called by when two wears old--Joseph. by
Pharaohs permission gave to his family,
who had just arrived, the richest part OF
Egypt, the Westchester farms or the Lancas-
ter farms of the anrlentS. JACOBS descent
ants rapidly multipliei.
After awhile Egypt took e tyre at famine,
and those descendants OF Jacob, the Israel
ties, came to a great StOrehOuSe which Joseph
had provided, and paid in money for corn
But after awhile the money gave out and
then they paid in cattle. After awhile the
cattle were all in possession OF the govern
ment, and then the Hebrews bought corn
from the government by surrendering them
selves as slaves.
Where was help to come from? Not the
throne Pharaoh sat upon that. Not the
army, Pnaraoh'S officers commanded that.
Not surrounding nations, Pharaohs threat
mace them all tremDle. Not the gods Am
mon and Osiris or the goddess Isis, for
Pharaoh built their temples out OF the groan