Another singular fact has also been established respecting the alphabets of these two neighbouring races. They constructed their alphabets on the same principle without borrowing from each other a single character or the name of a character, as seems to be universally the case in later transmissions of the art of writing from nation to nation; and yet the two people had from the remotest antiquity been in very close intercourse with each other. How is this anomaly to be accounted for? No conjecture, however ingenious, will furnish any satisfactory solution of it; but the word of God at once solves the difficulty. At Babel the Lord did confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter men abroad upon the face of all the earth, Gen. xi. 9. That fearful expression of the wrath of God which fell at Babel upon the children of men, whereby their language was confounded, would seem to have been so far mitigated in the case of the descendants of Shem and of Mizraim that they still retained the recollection of the principle upon which the primitive alphabet had been constructed. This is in analogy with the rest of the dealings of Him who in wrath remembers mercy.

But let us proceed to inquire if we cannot discover some further traces of the curse of Babel.

The descendants of Shem were permitted to retain not only the principle upon which an alphabet was constructed, but its proper use as an alphabet. The Shemitic races have always written alphabetically. They were also permitted to take up their abode in countries not far removed from the scene of this terrible visitation, Gen. x. 21-24. These facts would seem to mark the commencement of the prophetic blessing which Noah, the second father of the human

family, pronounced upon his son Shem, the continuance of which is also the subject of the history of the Old Testament, and which was accomplished when our Lord Jesus Christ became incarnate in the form of a descendant of Shem. The Shemitic alphabets were the root whence all other alphabets were derived, and we have already given our reasons for thinking that God had long before taught to man an alphabetic system of writing.

The unhappy sons of Mizraim, the son of Ham, appear to have wandered forth from their habitations, disabled from any longer articulating the sounds of that which from the first had been the language of the whole human race; and also had erased from their memories all recollection of the meaning of that language.

Diodorus Siculus* and Plutarch+ were informed by the Egyptian priests that when the twice great Thoth first came among mankind, they were not able to speak, but only uttered cries like brute animals: and however lightly we may be inclined to value such traditions, it is perhaps not assuming too much to say, that generally they are not without some foundation in fact. Now let the very peculiar structure of the language of ancient Egypt be taken into consideration. It appears that the language and the writings have formed and modified each other; the writing as often assisting the language, as the language the writing. It is a writing of pictures, expressing the ideas of a language of pictures. The roots of this language prove to be, according to the tradition, literally the cries of animals: every thing, as far as possible, being named from the sound pro

duced by it. The verbs and adjectives were, many of them, (probably all, for the subject is still under investigation,) the names of objects, animate or inanimate, suggesting the peculiarities of their appearance and habits; as a cameleopard, to be long, to extend; a wolf, to be cunning; a scarlet ibis, to be red. To this extent all was picture in the language as well as in the writing. It also consists of comparatively a small number of sounds; the same sound expressing many different ideas; probably because different qualities of the same animal were thus variously employed. So that it seems scarcely possible to arrive at any other conclusion than that the language and writing arose together.

But we have observed the same intimate union between the writing and the idolatrous system of this singular people, and shown the probability, we might perhaps say certainty, that it also was invented together with the writing, and therefore with the language. Yet are all the three, as we have seen, systems of great intricacy and refinement. These are also facts, resulting from the recent researches into the antiquities of Egypt. And how, we ask again, are these strange anomalies to be reconciled? A generation of men highly cultivated, possessed of great mental powers, yet without religion, writing, or even language! It is contrary to all experience that a civilized state of society should exist without religion it is equally opposed to all analogy to assume that men may be civilized without writing; but without language, civilization is plainly impossible. There are traces, nevertheless, of much thought and reflection in the construction of the language, writing, and religion of ancient Egypt, and the three appear to have arisen together. Its inventors, therefore, must have acquired the mental culture

which enabled them to construct these systems by the help of some other language, at any rate. How came they then to lose this language? We leave to those who deny or lightly esteem the revelation of God, the suggestion of any theory they can devise whereby to answer the question. Those who reason rightly upon it, who follow the process of close induction by which the mode of reading hieroglyphics was discovered, will scarcely fail to perceive the conclusive and satisfactory nature of the answer which is afforded by that revelation. The language of the first settlers in Egypt had been miraculously confounded, and in that melancholy condition they had to frame for themselves a new language and system of writing.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MONUMENTAL HISTORY OF EGYPT.

PART I.

THUS far the absolute necessity of the inspired history to explain and reconcile the facts which our examination of the antiquities of Egypt has elicited, is sufficiently apparent. The monumental traces of the first migration of the children of Mizraim into Egypt also fully coincide with the account which is recorded in the Bible.

It is much to be regretted that upon the point which first requires attention, a conclusion entirely opposed to this account has been, nevertheless, very hastily admitted by certain authors, whose laborious researches in this intricate subject are otherwise well entitled to our praises. Some of them belong to a school of which it is not too much to say that their credulity as to every thing in the Greek authors is only equalled by their incredulity as to the Bible.

With them that which is narrated by Herodotus, or Diodorus Siculus, is a fact, unless the monuments prove it to be a falsehood; while that which has no authority but the Bible is deemed untrue, and unworthy of notice, unless the monuments, or the historians, or both, prove it to be a fact. So that on no other authority than that of Diodorus, it is assumed and reasoned upon as an admitted fact, that