religion of the country, except in the fact that a majority of the people are adherents of that faith.

Not only have Church and State been separated, but a provision to that effect has been incorporated in the Constitution; and not only is it thus a national provision, but on the 27th of September, 1873, all officials and employés of the Government, of whatever rank and order they might be, from the President down to the lowest clerk, were required solemnly to protest, which is the legal oath, that they would maintain this and the other laws of reform. It was our privilege to be present when Señor Lerdo, the President of Mexico, and his cabinet took upon themselves the solemn obligation. Not only have convents and monasteries been proscribed, but a constitutional amendment has been adopted forbidding their re-establishment, to enforce which all employés have, in like manner, been obliged to protest; and these laws take effect throughout the whole nation, from the Rio Grande and Lower California on the north and west, to Yucatan and Tehuantepec on the south and east.

These statutes have not only been made a part of the Constitution of Mexico, not only are all judges and officials required solemnly to swear that they will maintain them, but the Federal Government itself has shown that it is determined on their enforcement. In the region of Temascaltepec some of the priests inspired the inhabitants, who were of the uneducated class, to rise in mass against the laws of reform. The troops of Government were immediately sent against them, who routed the rebels and captured their leader. The latter, who was mortally wounded in the conflict which occurred, confessed before his death that it was at the instigation of one of their priests that the people had risen-that, as this priest urged them on to a massacre of all who attempted to maintain the laws of the country, he had assured them that, if they wished to save themselves in the future world, they must kill the Protestants, and that those of his flock who died while they were executing this pious work went direct to heaven. The Government troops succeeded in capturing the priest, who was put upon trial, and it was supposed that he would be speedily executed. The Government, we say, is determined to enforce the law, and not leave it to lie a dead letter on the statute-book. Not long

since an attempt was made to re-establish nunneries on a small scale. Though every one of their vast convent buildings had been confiscated and taken away from them, a few friars and nuns gathered together in private houses, with a view of collecting the wrecks of the forbidden communities. On the night of the 20th of May, 1873, the police made a raid upon them and captured two hundred women and seventy men, sending the women to their homes and conveying the men to the city prison. In the language of a Spanish paper in the city of Mexico, "The unfortunate women, the greater part of whom were deprived of their liberty contrary to their wish, returned to the bosom of their families, and are freed from the toils of those who have, for wrong purposes, made use of their credulity and fanaticism." So summary was the action of the Government that nineteen of the friars, by a decree dated May 23, 1873, three days after their capture, were sentenced to be expelled from the country; and this decree was shortly after carried into effect, with the exception as to two of their number, who pleaded that they were citizens of the United States, the final decision as to whom we have not learned. The judges, the educated class of men, the Government officials, the men of influence, are, almost without exception, enemies of the Jesuits, enemies of all monastic institutions, and on the side of liberty of worship. Many of them, as far as they dare express it, are Protestant in their religious views.

If Romanism shall continue to be the religion of Mexico she must become vitalized, she must gird herself with new force and energy; otherwise the wave of advancing knowledge. which is rolling on with the progress of the world, will either sweep her into infidelity or evangelical Protestantism. If this knowledge shall come to her impregnated with materialism she will lose all religious belief, like the educated classes of France; but if knowledge and the Gospel go together, her people, as they yield up trust in the forms and superstitions of Romanism, will see the beauty of the simple, plain precepts of Christ, of simple faith in Jesus alone, and she will become our ally in the work of spreading the Gospel, and, raised up to a high national prosperity by that righteousness which exalteth a nation, she will be a most valuable commercial neighbor.

ART. III.-EGYPT AND THE PENTATEUCH.

The Books of Moses Illustrated by the Monuments of Egypt. By Dr. E. W. HENGSTENBERG. Edinburgh: Thomas Clarke.

Ancient Egypt. By Rev. GEORGE DEVOR, M.A. London: Religious Tract Society. The Egyptians in the Time of the Pharaohs. By Sir J. GARDINER WILKINSON. London: Bradbury & Evans.

The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia. By Sir SAMUEL W. BAKER, M.A., F.R.G.S. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

Sinai and Palestine. (Introduction.) By DEAN STANLEY.

THE history of a country is usually associated with the course of its principal rivers. This is pre-eminently true of Egypt, whose very existence depends upon the Nile. Any reference, therefore, to the monuments of ancient Egypt, as throwing light upon the Pentateuch, would be incomplete without some account of its grand and mysterious river.

In the region of Central Africa, directly under the equator, and in latitude 33 east from Greenwich, lie the now celebrated twin lakes, Victoria and Albert N'yanza. The Victoria may be briefly described as a fresh-water sea, three thousand five hundred feet above the ocean level, fed by the almost incessant equatorial rains. Its southern boundary is some three degrees south of the equator, from which point it stretches northward a distance of two hundred and eighty miles. About midway of the northern shore the waters find an outlet, where they break in miniature cascades over the rocky barrier. These rapids mark the spot where the "strange, long wandering Nile" begins its journey of three thousand geographical miles.* During the first half of its journey the Nile receives many tributaries, chiefly from the west; but between 16 and 18° north latitude two powerful rivers flow in from the east, carrying with them the principal drainage of the high table lands of Abyssinia. The second of these rivers-the Atbara-forms a junction with the Nile at Berber, and from thence the entire drainage is conveyed to the Mediterranean, without any further tributary, through a course of nearly fifteen hundred miles.

The current of the Nile is broken by several rapids, the last of which occurs in latitude 24°, and only about half a degree north

*I am aware recent discoveries throw doubt upon the statement that the Victoria Lake is the absolute source of the Nile. But assuredly this is the highest point to which the stream itself has yet been traced.

of

of the Tropic of Cancer. At this spot the bed of the river is traversed by a ridge of rose-colored granite, from whence came the rich materials for the statues, columns, and obelisks, so abundantly produced by Egyptian art. About three miles below the cataract is the island of Elephantine, and it is at this point that Egypt proper begins. Syene, its frontier town, now called Assouan, stands on the right bank of the river, and is noted for its splendid granite quarries. At this point the valley has a width of only two miles. On the east lies the Arabian Desert, divided from the Nile valley by a range limestone hills. On the west, beyond another rocky chain, stretches the Sahara, or Great Desert of Libya. In the depression between these ridges flows the Nile. Sometimes there is a space between the river and the hills of several miles, sometimes of only a few yards. Immediately above the blue waters of the river-blue by contrast with the darker colors around-rises a bank of black mud, which, after the inundation, is clothed in the brightest verdure, "like an emerald set in the bosom of the desert." That strip of verdure, with an average width of seven miles, is Egypt; and to have lived below the cataracts, and drank the waters of the Nile, was to be an Egyptian.

From Assouan to Cairo, a distance of six hundred and twentynine miles, the valley is limited to an average width of seven miles, forming a strip of verdure drawn across the desert, like a ribbon, with the Nile for a central thread. Under the Pharaohs the upper valley was known as the "Southern region," and formed a distinct government from the "Northern region." The Greeks and Romans divided the upper valley into the Thebais and the Heptanomis, nearly corresponding to the modern divisions of Upper and Central Egypt. Upper Egypt is the most southerly portion. Its capital, Thebes, that magnificent city of whose hundred gates Homer sang, was the No or Nohair Ammon of the prophecies. Middle Egypt was anciently called Heptanomis, because divided into seven nomes, or districts. Its capital, situated at the apex of the Delta, was Memphis, the Noph of the Prophet Jeremiah, whose prediction, "Noph shall be laid waste," has been fulfilled to the very letter. On the right bank of the river stands the modern city of Cairo; and nearly opposite, on the left bank, a salient angle of the Libyan hills

serves as a pedestal to the eternal Pyramids, whose gigantic shadows the setting sun flings far over the groves of palmtrees that now cover the space where Memphis stood.

The civilization of Lower Egypt is more ancient, as shown by the monuments, than that of Upper Egypt. This proves that the lower portion was first colonized; and as the country formerly bore the name of Mizraim, the grandson of Ham, there can be little doubt that it was settled by the immediate descendants of that patriarch. After the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the consequent dispersion of the race, the family of Mizraim left the plains of Shinar, crossed what was afterward known as the Arabian Desert, skirted the southern extremity of Palestine, crossed the desert of Shur, and entered the valley of the Nile by way of the Isthmus of Suez. There they founded an empire and a civilization which has excited the admiration and the wonder of succeeding ages.

Egypt is emphatically the land of monuments. Next to the Nile, they form the chief feature of the country, as they stand in long procession on the banks of the river, witnesses of an unknown but profound antiquity. They are more abundant and more perfect than in any other country. "India, the battle-field of countless generations, has nothing to compare with them. Babylon and Nineveh wrote their history in brick or perishable alabaster; but Egypt, attaining to a greater superiority in art, was provided at the same time with a material well-nigh indestructible, and a climate which could bid defiance to the ravages of time." Its monuments, constructed of granite, serpentine, or basalt, are of gigantic proportions, ornamented with sculptures and the most brilliant paintings. "With no frosts to splinter, no storms to batter, no moisture to nourish mosses and creepers, the ruins remain as new in appearance as if they were but of yesterday." The monuments are found throughout Egypt, and its former dependencies in Ethiopia and Libya. Besides statues, tablets, and obelisks, they consist of ruined temples, palaces, and especially of sepulchers. In the latter we find the richest treasures of Egyptian lore.

Still, these monuments enwrap themselves in mystery. They have a language as well as a story of their own. Strange characters are carved upon them, known to conceal a history