expiring sinner to the incomparably greater peril of entering eternity unwarned and unforgiven? Is it not a cruel tenderness which, to save him from excitement, exposes him to such a calamity as eternity cannot sufficiently bewail? Will not his blood be required at some watchman's hand?

It may be too much to say, that there can be no circumstances which would justify a physician for withholding from him that is ready to perish the knowledge of his true condition. But as a general rule, whose exceptions are few, if any, where the reasoning powers are not impaired, it is the wiser and more Christian course to inform him of his state. Let him have the full benefit of being in a world where is the merciful promise of God, and Christ's mediation, and the Spirit of all grace, ere he is summoned away where none of these are found. Even to the latest glimmerings of life's waning lamp, so far as his reason remains undisturbed, let him have the prayers and counsels of holy men and pious friends, with the teachings of the Scripture, and all other means of grace, adapted to his situation. If his time be short, there is the more need of improving it to the utmost for the great purpose for which it is given.

In uttering these opinions, we feel that we are recommending no course but that which we should wish to have taken in our own case under any circumstances whatever. "For though late repentance be seldom true, yet true repentance is never too late."

EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THE Bible was written in the East. It took the form in which ideas most readily and forcibly reached an Eastern mind. We read it; and the mode of thought and illustration, which gave it weight in Syria, seems to us unnatural; and, at times, grotesque. But go and stand in the hill country of Judea, or even among the ruins of Egypt, with Arabs about you, or mingle in the throngs of its compressed cities, and you will feel that you have around you, the life of the Bible. It was under such a sky, with seasons varying like these, it was amidst the peculiarities of nature and of man such as you now look upon, that the Bible was written; and it is as true to life in the East now, as when first it came from the Spirit of God.

Of this we propose to furnish a few illustrations.

What means the wise man, when he says, Eccl. xi. 1. “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days?" It is an injunction to charity, beautifully urged in language which Egypt understood, and must explain. When the retiring waters of the Nile left the soil richly prepared to nourish a future harvest, the husbandman scattered the seed upon the waters and the slime; and though the seed was lost to sight, the sheaves were sure. The Scriptures thus encourage us to works of compassion and of mercy, for the benefits we confer are like the seed scattered and hidden in the soil under the waters of the Nile, and our reward shall be an Egyptian harvest.

What is the meaning of Deut. xi. 10, where it is said to Israel: "The land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs?" How water the land with the foot? Modern Egypt is familiar with the practice, and testifies to the minute exactness of the Scriptures. The valley of the Nile is hemmed in by two ranges of mountains, which sometimes rise abruptly from the very banks of the river; but usually recede from it at distances ranging up to fifteen or even twenty miles, though commonly not more than from five to seven. The valley of the Nile, which is the cultivated part of Egypt, presents a convex surface, cut in the highest part of it by the channel of the river, and gently falling off on either side towards the mountain barriers. So that the cultivated land is lowest, where it is next to the desert, and highest at the banks of the river. When the river is in flood, the waters naturally find their way first, through the canals, to the borders of the desert, and flow back over the land towards the river. But the banks of the river are so high, that no ordinary rising of the Nile can overflow them. Here, then, the Egyptian builds his water-wheel, turned by buffaloes; or raises his shadoof, the same thing as the well-sweep of the New England farm, except that, instead of the old oaken bucket, he has a hoop with a shallow sack made of a goat's skin. He forms a little basin at the base of the bank, from which he lifts the waters of the Nile to a higher level; and, if necessary, by a succession of shadoofs, until thus laboriously, the water can be raised and poured over the bank. Here the land has been arranged into little beds, perhaps twelve feet by

nine, separated from each other by dividing ridges of the mud of the Nile, some nine inches high. Acres are prepared with excessive toil in this way; and the top of the dividing ridge is hollowed out to form a channel for the waters to pass upon it. Thus it is conveyed to every part of the field; while the husbandman who wishes to water any particular plot, has only to break down with his heel the barrier ridge of mud, and the waters cover the bed. And thus the land was "watered with the foot."

What means the Psalmist when he imprecates the judgments of God against the enemies of heaven, and says, Psalm lxxxiii. 13: "O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind?" The translation conveys no intelligible idea to the mind; but Egypt can explain it, as well as Palestine. When the heat of summer has dried the soil of Egypt, it becomes cleft to an unknown depth, and its surface is reduced to mere powder and dust. It then daily occurs, that the heat of a mid-day sun, induces an intense rarefaction of the air, which, as it ascends, carries spirally up with it the dust of the earth, the chaff, and stubble, and light objects of every kind, forming an immense pillar of sand with its top diffused indistinctly in the region of the clouds, and its foot on the earth. But it is restless, and never still; advancing, receding, with no aim or direction; now covering the Arab huts with its impalpable dust, now stripping the yards of the Nile boats of their canvass. At times, you will notice several of them at once, and as the sun shines through them, they may well be taken for fiends with wings of fire, ranging over the land and river, until their force is spent and they descend in a shower of small dust. "Make them like a wheel," saith the Psalmist, of the enemies of God; make them as aimless and empty, to be scattered, as the stubble and the dust by the whirlwind, over the face of the earth.

And in the glowing imagery of Ezekiel, where he describes the goings of the cherubim, he refers to these whirling pillars of the desert. He says, Ezek. x. 16, "When the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings, to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them." But here these fire-steeds of the desert are made subject to a divine control; and move in grandeur and in wrath, obedient to a master's will.

With us, grief is silent, and weeps in secret, or strives to hide its tears; but the usages of the East are widely different. "Call for the mourning women," saith Jeremiah ix. 17: "that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters." The weepers of Jeremiah, in conformity with the unchanging usages of the East, may be heard at every funeral at the present day, in Cairo; either seated before the house of the dead, or attending the corpse to the grave; filling the air with their distressing shrieks, and intermingling their cries with a list of the virtues of the deceased. Indeed, there is hardly any thing in Egypt, ancient or modern, but casts light upon the Bible. The golden calf of Aaron, and the calves of Jeroboam, which tempted Israel to idolatry, had their origin in the Egyptian Apis, worshipped as a god under the form of a bull.

The chamber of imagery, which Ezekiel describes, Ch. viii. 8, was an idea borrowed from the tombs of Egypt. "Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do there. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, — with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up." The idolatry of Israel was but a copy of that of Egypt. A brief description of one of the tombs of the kings, in the city of the dead, near Thebes, will suffice to show the identity. The Egyptians were compelled by the overflow of the Nile, to bury their dead in the mountains which hemmed in the valley. At an incredible expense, these resting places of the dead were prepared, with a magnificence unknown elsewhere the world over. You ascend a dismal valley, leaving all vegetation behind you, and amid the universal death about you, oppressed with the stillness which reigns, overpowered by a blazing sun, whose rays are every where reflected from the beds of flint stones, with nought to interest, but an occasional fossil shell, an indication of a life extinct, you reach at last the tombs of the kings. The tombs are dug out of the solid rock, into the heart of the mountains, the entrance being

a little above the level of the valley. They usually range from one hundred to five hundred feet in depth; though in one instance, the tomb penetrates to eight hundred feet; and the excavation covers one acre and a quarter. The face of the mountain is cut down, so as to admit of a perpendicular door-way. The entrance was usually from ten to twelve feet broad, and from twelve to twenty-five feet high, leading by a succession of inclined planes or steps to the lowest level of the tomb. The first descent usually brings you to a large chamber, where the roof was supported by square pillars of the native rock, and where the immense sarcophagus of polished granite, intended for the remains of royalty, usually stood. The passages of the tomb branch out in various directions, without much reference to order; and throughout the whole, little chambers constantly occur, cut out of the walls of the tomb. The walls of passages and chambers, are uniformly perpendicular, and made perfectly smooth, and covered with pictures and hieroglyphics. Sometimes the picture, or char. acter, was painted on the rock. Sometimes the back ground was painted, leaving the picture unpainted, of the color of the native rock. Sometimes the picture was cut into the rock; at others, the rock was cut away so as to leave the intended form raised on the surface of the stone. All the colors known to us, were used in painting the walls; and often retain a freshness undimmed by centuries. Occasionally the black lines of the apprentice, who traced a rough outline of his work, and the red lines of the master correcting his departure from good taste or true proportion, are distinctly visible. And here were portrayed on the walls the varied mythology of Egypt; the whole series of her idols, with the forms of worship, the presenting of offerings by kings, priests and nobles. Doubtless these noble catacombs were often the scenes of idolatrous rites, such as Ezekiel saw with horror, in the chamber of imagery. Besides these rites of religion, there was an exhibition of Egyptian life in all its forms. There was sowing and reaping, the tracking of boats on the Nile, the ardor of the chase, the details of the kitchen, the various trades, the struggle of battle, and the exultation of victory. The air is perfectly dry; but fetid with the abominations of bats, which now abide where kings have rested; and they often are rank and offensive at the entrance, from the Arab who has made them the home of his family, including dogs, apes and children; while he pursues his