abstain almost entirely from any direct or distinct mention of either. A wider connexion, indeed, might be maintained if we could trust the later descriptions of Egyptian theology and philosophy. It was strongly believed in the Greek schools of Alexandria, that behind the multitude of forms, human, divine, bestial, grotesque, which filled the Egyptian shrines, there was yet in the minds of the sacred and the learned few a deep-seated belief in one Supreme Intelligence; and thus the distinguishing mark of the Mosaic Revelation would have been not so much that it disclosed and insisted on this fundamental truth, but that what had been hitherto confined to a priestly caste was for the first time made the common property of a whole people. Such may possibly have been the case. But it is not the natural impression left by the monuments. The crowd of gods and goddesses, above all the overwhelming deification of the Pharaohs, of which I have before spoken, seems almost impossible to reconcile with any strong Monotheistic belief in Egypt, however far withdrawn into the recesses of schools or priesthoods. One ever-recurring symbol, however, of such a belief appears in colour and sculpture on the Egyptian monuments, as in the Hebrew records it appears also both in word and act. Everywhere, but especially under the portal of every temple, are stretched out the wide-spread wings,-blue as if with the cloudless blue of the overarching heavens,-covering the sanctuary, as if with the shelter of some invisible protector. This recurrence of a symbol so simply and naturally expressive of a beneficent overruling Power may be merely accidental. But it is the nearest authentic approach which the Egyptian monuments furnish to such an idea. It is the image to which, in one sublime passage at least, the Divine presence is compared, as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, as if it were the 'body of heaven in his clearness.' 2 It is an exact likeness of

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1 In lesser particulars may be mentioned: (1) The long hair and beards of the Israelite as contrasted with the closely shaven Egyptian priests. Lev. xxi. 5; Herod. ii. 36. (2) The prohibition of the Egyptian usage of offering food to the dead. Deut.

xxxvi. 13, 14. (3) The prohibition of trees round the altar. Deut. xvi. 21. See Sharpe's Egypt, Book ii. § 16.

2 Ex. xxiv. 10. Compare our own use of the word 'Heaven'

the wings which formed the covering of the ark in the Tabernacle and the Temple,-a direct expression of the feeling which has been made immortal in the words, 'Under the shadow of 'Thy wings shall be my refuge.' 1

1 Ps. lvii. 1. For the amplification of the detailed relations of Egyptian to Israelite

history, see Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses.

MOSES

V. THE EXODUS.

VI. THE WILDERNESS.

VII. SINAI AND THE LAW.

VIII. KADESH AND PISGAH.

SPECIAL AUTHORITIES FOR THIS PERIOD.

I. (a) The last four books of the Pentateuch (Hebrew and Septuagint). (b) Ps. lxxvii. 12–20; lxxviii. 12–54; lxxxi. 5–16; xc. ; xcv. 8-11; cv. 23-44; cvi. 7-33; cxiv.; cxxxv. 8, 9; cxxxvi. 10-76: Isa. lxiii. 11-14: Hos. xii. 12-13: Micah vi. 4-9: Ecclus. xlv. 1-22: 2 Macc. ii. 10.

2. The Jewish traditions preserved

(a) In the New Testament (Acts vii. 20–38; 2 Tim. iii. 8,9; Heb. xi. 23-28; Jude 9) : in Josephus (Ant. ii. 9-iv. 8, 49) : and Philo (De Vita Mosis).

(b) In the Talmud, the Targum Pseudojonathan, and the Midrashim ; extracted in Otho's Lexicon Rabbinicum.

3. The Heathen traditions of Eupolemus, Artapanus, Ezekielus, and Demetrius (Eusebius, Præp. Ev. ix. 26-29): Manetho, Chæremon, Lysimachus (Josephus, c. Apion. i. 26–34): Apion. (ib. ii. 2): Strabo (xvi. 2): Diodorus Siculus (xxxiv. 1, xl. from Hecatæus): Tacitus (Hist. v. 3, 4): Justin (xxxvi. 2): Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata, i. 22-25.

4. The Mussulman traditions in the Koran, ii. v. vii. x. xi. xviii. xx. xxviii. xl.; collected in Lane's Selections from the Kur-án, §§ xv. xvi.; Weil's Biblical Legends, p. 91; D'Herbelot's Bibl. Orientale ('Moussa,' 'Caroun,' i.e. Korah, Feraoun'); and Jalaladdin, ch. xvi.

5. The Christian traditions in Apocryphal books: (1) Prayers of Moses, (2) Apocalypse of Moses, (3) Ascension of Moses, (4) Prophecy of Balaam, Book of Jannes and Jambres, &c., in Fabricius, Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. i.

MOSES.

LECTURE V.

THE EXODUS.

THE HISTORY, strictly speaking, of the Jewish Church begins with the Exodus. In one sense, indeed, ' History herself was 'born on that night when Moses led forth his countrymen from 'the land of Goshen.' 1 Traditions, genealogies, institutions, isolated incidents, isolated characters, may be discovered here and there, long before. But in Pagan records there is no continuous narrative of events; in the Sacred records, whatever history exists is the history of a man, of a family, of a tribe, but not of a people, a nation, a commonwealth. This marked beginning, visible even in the Jewish annals themselves, is yet more clearly brought out, when considered from an external point of view. To the outer heathen world the earlier period of the Hebrew race, with the single exception of Abraham, was an entire blank. Their origin in the far East, their first settle ment in Canaan, the name of their first father, whether Jacob or Israel, these were all but unknown to Greeks and Romans It is the Exodus that reveals the Israelite to the eyes of Europe. Egypt was the only land which the Gentile inquirers recognised as the birthplace of the Jews. Moses is the character who first appears, not only as the lawgiver, but as the representative of the nation. In many wild, distorted forms, the rise of this. great name, the apparition of this strange people, was conceived.

'Bunsen's Egypt, i. 23.

Let us take the brief account-the best that has been handed down to us by the careful and truth-loving Strabo.

'Moses, an Egyptian priest, who possessed a considerable 'tract of Lower Egypt, unable longer to bear with what existed 'there, departed thence to Syria, and with him went out many 'who honoured the Divine Being (rò cîov). For Moses main'tained and taught that the Egyptians were not right in likening 'the nature of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans, 'nor even the Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the form of " men. He held that this only was God,-that which encom'passes all of us, earth and sea, that which we call Heaven, ' and the Order of the world, and the Nature of things. Of 'this who that had any sense would venture to invent an image 'like to anything which exists amongst ourselves? Far better 'to abandon all statuary and sculpture, all setting apart of 'sacred precincts and shrines, and to pay reverence, without 'any image whatever. The course prescribed was, that those who have the gift of good divinations, for themselves or for 'others, should compose themselves to sleep within the 'Temple; and those who live temperately and justly may 'expect to receive some good gift from God, these always, and none besides.' 1

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These words, unconsciously introduced in the work of the Cappadocian geographer, occupying but a single section of a single chapter in the seventeenth book of his voluminous treatise, awaken in us something of the same feeling as that with which we read the short epistle of Pliny, describing with equal unconsciousness, yet with equal truth, the first appearance of the new Christian society which was to change the face of mankind. With but a few trifling exceptions, Strabo's account is, from this point of view, a faithful summary of the mission of Moses. What a curiosity it would have roused in our minds, had this been all that remained to us concerning him! That curiosity we are enabled to gratify from books which lay within Strabo's reach, though he cared not to read

1 Strabo, xvii. 760. He probably takes his account from Hecatæus (see Ewald, ii.

74), which is given with further and less accurate details in Diodorus (xl.)