CHAPTER III.

MORNING-THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS-MOONLIGHT

SCRIPTURAL FACTS.

Ir is said that there was in ancient Egypt a statue of Memnon, the son of Aurora, looking towards the east, and that it spoke as soon as the rays of the rising sun fell on its mouth. The description of another ancient writer is more particular: "The statue emits sounds every morning at sun-rise, which can be compared only to that of breaking the string of a lyre." Strabo speaks only of a single sound which he heard, but Juvenal, who had probably often listened to it, describes it as if it emitted several sounds. These were afterwards formed into intelligible words, and even into an oracle of seven verses.

According to Sir David Brewster, a modern traveller, Sir A. Smith, accompanied by a party, examined the statue, and heard very distinctly, at six o'clock in the morning, the sounds which, for ages, had been so celebrated. It is also stated, on the same authority,

that the problem it presents was first solved by means of an observation made by a solitary traveller wandering on the banks of the Orinoco. "The granitic

rock," says Baron Humboldt,

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on which we lay, is one

of those where travellers on the Orinoco have heard, from time to time, towards sun-rise, subterraneous sounds, resembling those of the organ. The mission

1

aries called these stones loxas de musica. 'It is witchcraft,' said our young Indian pilot. We never ourselves heard these mysterious sounds, either at Carichana Vieja, or in the upper Orinoco; but from information given us by witnesses worthy of belief, the existence of a phenomenon that seems to depend on a certain state of the atmosphere cannot be denied. The shelves of rocks are full of very narrow and deep cre-vices. They are heated during the day to about 50°. I often found their temperature at the surface during the night, 39°, the surrounding atmosphere being at 28°. It may easily be conceived that the difference of temperature between the subterraneous and the external air attains its maximum about sun-rise, or at that moment which is at the same time farther from the period of the maximum of the heat of the preceding day. May not these sounds of an organ, which are heard when a person sleeps upon the rock, his ear in contact

STATUE OF MEMNON.

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with the stone, be the effect of a current of air that issues out through the crevices? Does not the impulse of the air against the elastic spangles of mica that intercept the crevices contribute to modify the sounds? May we not admit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same observation on some rocks of the Thebaid, and that the music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of the priests in the statue of Memnon ?"

It is also a singular fact, that about the same time Humboldt was traversing the wilds of South America, three travellers in Egypt heard at sun-rise, in a monument of granite, situated near the centre of the spot on which the palace of Carnac stands, a noise resembling that of a breaking string, the very expression by which Pausanias described the sound of the statue of Memnon.

It appears strange, however, that the Prussian and the French travellers should not have gone a step farther, and solved the problem of two thousand years, by maintaining that the sound of the statue was a natural phenomenon, or a granite sound produced at sun-rise by the very same causes which operated on the Orinoco, and in the temple of Carnac, instead of regarding it as a trick in imitation of natural sounds. If, as Humboldt supposes, the people of Egypt, passing up

As, however, it is

and down the Nile, became familiar with the music of granite rocks, how could the imitation of such natural and familiar sounds be rendered a means of deceiving the people? They would only consider the granite statue as like the granite rock, and regard the sounds from each as merely natural effects. a mere conjecture that such sounds were common in that part of the earth, it is probable, as Brewster thinks, that a granite rock possessing the property of giving forth sounds at sun-rise had been discovered by the priests, and that the block was employed in forming the statue of Memnon, for the purpose of enabling them to maintain their influence over a credulous people.

But while rocks give forth their sounds at the rising of the sun, a tribute is certainly due to its great Creator from all his intelligent creatures. How beautifully has

Milton described that of our first parents!

"To the field they haste;

But first, from under shady arborous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring and the sun, who, scarce uprisen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim,
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide landscape all the east
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains,
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began

THE MORNING HYMN.

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Their orisons, each morning duly paid

In various style."

The song our great poet has described them as raising, thus begins :

"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty! Thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable! who sittest above these heavens,
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works; yet these declare

Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine."

Having called on universal nature to extol the Eternal Father, first, last, midst, and without end, the morning hymn of Adam and Eve thus concludes :—

66 Hail, universal Lord! be bounteous still
To give us only good; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil or concealed,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark."

And truly every morning calls for our tribute to God. To be preserved by Him "in whom we live, and move, and have our being;"-to sleep in safety, and to rise in peace, because He sustains us;-to have the provision ready which is needful for our bodily wants;—and to be welcomed to his footstool, there to entreat a continuance of his favours, is an exalted privilege. Let it be ours, then, to consider it so, and diligently to improve