the sacrifice of Isaac, of Balaam, of Jephthah's daughter, and in the paragraphs on "The signs and wonders in Egypt," "Traces of Egyptian customs in the religious institutions of the books of Moses." That his purpose was apologetic cannot obscure the worth of these investigations.

The influence which Egyptian art and science must have exerted upon the culture of the Israelites, as well as the antagonism between Israelitish and Egyptian character, has been treated in a summary way by SAM SHARPE in his History of Egypt.* How much the Israelites owed to Egypt in respect to science and art is an interesting chapter in ancient history; and here something should be said on the relation of the religion of Egypt to that of Israel. Moses, whose name is Egyptian, and means "son of water," was brought up in the neighborhood of Heliopolis, the chief school of Egyptian philosophy, and, according to the legend, received through Jannes and Jambres most careful instruction in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, while many Israelites had given themselves to the idolatry and superstition of the land. This is the reason, according to Manetho, why so many Egyptian customs are expressly forbidden in the Mosaic law, whilst others, which were harmless, are accepted in it. A comparison of the customs of both nations would throw much light upon their relative positions. The grand purpose of the separation of the Israelites from other nations was the unequivocal maintenance of monotheism. Moses therefore declared that the gods which were commended to the veneration of the ignorant masses by the Egyptian priests were false gods. The Egyptians worshipped the stars as the representatives of the gods, the sun by the name Ra, the moon as Joh or Isis; but among the Israelites a worshipper of any of the heavenly bodies was stoned. Among the Egyptians sculpture was the great support of religion; the priests had the god hewn out in the temple, and there prayed to it; they worshipped statues of men, of irrational beasts, birds, and fishes; but the Israelites were forbidden to bow down before a chiseled or carved image. Egyptian priests shaved off their hair, but the Israelites were forbidden to make a bald place, or even to cut the ends of the beard. The inhabitants of lower Egypt cut marks on their bodies in honor of their gods, but the Israelites were forbidden to cut their flesh or to make any marks in it. The Egyptians put food in the grave with the corpses of their friends, and on their behalf sent presents of food into the temples; but the Israelites were forbidden† to put any food with a corpse. The Egyptians planted groves in the courts of their temples (like the later Alexandrine Jews in the courts of their synagogues); but the Mosaic law forbid the Israelites to plant any tree near the altar of the Lord. The sacred bull, Apis, was chosen by the priests of Memphis on account of black color and white spots, and Mnevis, the sacred bull of Heliopolis, bore nearly the same marks; but the Israelites were ordered in preparing the water of purification to take a red heifer, perfect and young. Circumcision and abstention from swine's flesh was common to both Egyptians and Israelites; but the Egyptians offered swine's flesh to Isis and Osiris, and ate of it once a month, on the day after the full moon, after the sacrifice.

In addition to their knowledge of nature, the Egyptian wise men were acquainted with sorcery and magic, which they used for the deception of the common people. When Moses came before Pharaoh with signs and wonders, their magicians imitated him in some cases The Egyptian sorcerers and magicians exerted a great and often injurious influence on the spirit of the nation; they spoke as if they were the messengers of heaven; an abuse which two thousand years after the law could hardly restrain, though it condemned to punishment any who asked their advice. But the Mosaic law empowered the people to punish those who would seduce them, and commanded them to stone any who practised magic or witchcraft.

We must now speak of some things which the Israelite law-giver borrowed from the land he left. The Egyptians inscribed the praises of their kings and gods on the inner and outer sides of the walls of their buildings, and in the same manner the Israelites were commanded to write the chief commands of their law upon the posts of their doors and gates. The Egyptians adorned the carved images of their gods with wings; the Israelites were commanded to place at each end of the ark a cherub with outstretched wings. In a picture of a religious * [I have been unable to verify this reference in the last edition of SHARPE's Egypt.-H. O.]

† [Is not the author mistaken as to any prohibition of this?-H. O.]

procession in the time of Rameses III., there is a representation of a statue of the god Chem being carried, which measures two and a half cubits in length, and one and a half cubit in height, agreeing in form and measure with the ark which the Israelites made for the tabernacle. When the Israelites in the desert were bitten by serpents, Moses made a serpent of copper, and fastened it upon a pole, that those bitten might look upon it and be healed; similar serpents are often seen on Egyptian standards; and finally, when the Israelites fell into idolatry, and demanded that Aaron should make them a god, he made them a golden calf, the same animal they had frequently seen worshipped at Heliopolis under the name Mnevis, and which they themselves perhaps had worshipped.

The Israelites brought with them from Egypt a knowledge of the art of writing, and in the perfection of the alphabet and the mode of writing, as well as the more important matters of religion and philosophy, they soon surpassed their teachers. The Egyptian hieroglyphics, at first representing syllables, made no further progress except that later they were used as phonetic signs of syllables. In the enchorial character (current hand) on papyrus, the more clumsy signs were omitted, and all strokes were made of equal thickness by a reed pen. Unfortunately Egyptian religion forbade all attempts at change or reform, and therefore in all ornamental and important writings the hieroglyphics were retained, which otherwise would probably have been changed to signs of letters. The enchorial writing was used only in current hand; but it never reached the simplicity of a modern alphabet. The Hebrew square characters were derived directly from the hieroglyphics, and the world owes it to the Hebrews that instead of writing in symbols an alphabet was formed by which a sign expresses a sound. The Israelites admired the grand buildings of the Egyptians, but made no attempt to imitate them. They early saw the great pyramids, and might have known when and how they were built, but they probably satisfied themselves with the remark, that giants built them. That Israelite religion and philosophy were not derived from the valley of the Nile appears from the following: among the Israelites there was no encouragement to trade, for the taking of interest was forbidden by law; women were not permitted to be priests; the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked was not, as among the Egyptians, expected after death, but here on earth;* religious mysteries were as foreign to the Israelites as to the Egyptians the thought that the earth could be deluged by rain. In general, Heliopolis, from its close connection with Chaldea, received far more science and instruction from Babylon than it returned thither. On the similarity between Egyptian and Israelite customs comp. Thoth by UHLEMANN, p. 7. EBERS, Egypten und die Bücher Moses, Vol. I., Leipzig, 1868.

Growth of Israel in Egypt.

If we regard the sojourn of Israel in Egypt as so short in duration as Lepsius would

* [This is the common view, but it does not accord with some of the plainest facts of revelation. At the beginning of the Pentateuch stands the account of the death of Abel by the hands of Cain. Accepted as righteous by God (Gen. iv. 4; Heb. xi. 4), the younger brother, for no crime on his part, is murdered by the elder; and this murderer, though under a curse, lives to become the head of a long line of descendants, who enjoy in rich abundance the good things of this world. The righteous is cut off in early youth. The wicked lives in security and wealth. If there were no other revelation on this subject in the Pentateuch, this account would be sufficient to teach every believer in God, who is just, that His rewards and punishments are not confined to this world, but must be expected beyond death. Enoch was righteous before God, but he had not lived to half the age of the other patriarchs before the Flood when he was translated. Was his reward here? Heb. xi. 5, 6. The expectations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as to their reward, were utterly deceived, if they were confined to this world. And what was the reward of Moses on earth? He tells us in the 90th Psalm that after three-score years and ten the strength of man is "labor and sorrow;" and in Deuteronomy he rehearses to the people the pangs of the burden he had borne in leading the people, and declares that death on the eastern side of the Jordan was to be his punishment for his sin at Meribah. No, all these patriarchs prove by their lives the truth of Paul's words respecting all believers that "if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." Their latter days must have been shrouded in impenetrable gloom if they looked for their reward here-and in that gloom the promise of God must have vanished for them and for us. But the New Testament plainly says that all these men were men of faith. "Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. ***** But without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Heb. xi. 1, 2, 6. Jesus says the doctrine of the resurrection was taught by Moses (Matt. xxii. 32; Ex. iii. 6), and the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts that both Abraham and Moses believed it (Heb. xi. 1319, 26). The only rational solution of their lives is a belief in rewards and punishments after death. The earliest revelation, in the first four chapters of Genesis, was enough by itself to establish this faith.-H. O.]

make it, then it would not have been possible in that time for Jacob's family to become a great nation. But if, on the other hand, we accept twice the length of time given in the Bible it would be questionable whether the people, through so long an oppression, could have preserved their Jewish peculiarities and religious traditions, as in this interim, they were left to natural development on the basis of patriarchal revelation. "It has been argued from 1 Sam. ii. 27 that there was not an interruption of divine revelation during the stay in Egypt. But the argument is unsound. The meaning of the words, 'I plainly appeared unto the house of the fathers, when they were in Egypt, in Pharaoh's house,' etc., is fully exhausted if we suppose them to refer to the last year of the sojourn of the Israelites there. At the same time it is a strong proof that religious consciousness was kept alive in the hearts of the people, that in so many of the proper names which were given during that period (Numb. iii.) the name of God is found as one of the component parts." KURTZ, Vol. II., p. 177.

Moses found existing among his people an organization of the tribes, heads of tribes, who as elders exercised authority in their tribes (Ex. iv. 29). The religious zeal which Levi first manifested in fanaticism (Gen. xxxiv.) seems to have remained in a purer form in the tribe of Levi, as appears from the call of Moses, from the course of the sons of Levi at the punishment of the idolatry of the golden calf, and from the blessing of Moses.

A tendency of the Jews to dispersion, the opposite pole to their strong coherence in their peculiarities, in its loftier motive prefigured by the emigration of Abraham (Gen. xii.), first shows itself in the separation of Judah (Gen. xxxviii.), and seems to have been felt frequently during the settlement of the Israelites in Goshen. Concerning an earlier emigration (1 Chron. vii. 21) of some of the sons of Ephraim to Canaan, and a colonization of some of the sons of Judah in Moab (1 Chron. iv. 22), comp. Kurtz, vol. 2, p. 177. The Danites in the time of the Judges (Judg. xviii.) left their home and conquered the city Lais in northern Canaan, and gave to it the name Dan. Later the tribe of Simeon left their narrow bounds within the tribe of Judah and disappear among the other tribes (1 Chron. v.): a circumstance which throws light on the last statement of the tradition in the blessing of Moses in which Simeon's name is wanting. Even in Egypt many Israelites seem to have exchanged their home in Goshen for settlements among the Egyptians, for in this way alone could arise the familiar relations with Egyptian neighbors, which appear in the presents to the Jews of articles of silver and gold. Similar to the tax-gatherers under the Romans in the time of Christ were the Jewish scribes and bailiffs whom the Egyptians obtained among the Jews themselves to confirm their despotic rule over them. In like manner the two midwives, who probably were the heads of a class of midwives (Ex. i. 15), are described as Hebrews.

9. MOSES.

Comp. the articles under this title in WINER, HERZOG, ZELLER (bibl. Wörterbuch), and the index of the literature further on. We regard as the peculiarity of Moses, legal conscientiousness in a highly gifted nature under the leading of the revelation of God. Hence he stands in the history of the kingdom of God as Kar' ¿§oxh, the servant of God in contrast to the Son in the house, who in a yet higher, the very highest sense, was the servant of God (Heb. iii.). Hence his renunciation of the world is based upon his " respect to the recompense of the reward" (Heb. xi. 26). As a champion of the law, but in misunderstanding of the law, he smote the Egyptian (Ex. ii. 12); then he became the protector of the oppressed women in the desert. For forty years he maintained his faith clear; then he thought he had failed of the conditions of his call, and felt that by the wrath of God he was brought near to death because his Midianite wife had probably long been a hindrance to the circumcision of his sons (Ex. iv. 24). It is specially remarkable that though he governed the people in the desert with a strong hand by the law, he condemned himself because for an apparently small omission or transgression (Numb. xx. 12) he saw prescribed by Jehovah his great punishment, which indeed he prescribed for himself,* that he should not with the people

[There is no warrant for this in Numb. xx. 12; xxvii. 14; Deut. xxxii. 51, 52; Psalm cvi. 33, or elsewhere, that I am aware of. Moses' death was not brought about by his remorse, but was accomplished as God had foretold and by God.-II.0.]

enter the land of promise. This is the legal conscience of an eminently ethical mind. Moses thus stands in strong contrast to a fanatical spiritualization, which, like the company of Korah, would anticipate New Testament relations, as well as to the soulless perversion of the law into mere rules, else he could hardly have broken the first tables of the law, or have come down with the second tables from Sinai with his face shining, or in the original documents forming the basis of Deuteronomy, have drawn the lines of a spiritual interpretation of the law. Aaron, who could play the fanatic (Ex. xxxii. 5), as a man of mere legal rules, together with Miriam, at times opposed Moses (Numb. xii.). As the faithful steward of the law, Moses stands in harmonious contrast to the Gospel economy; only a temporary and intermediate evangelist, who on Sinai (Ex. xxxiv.) had heard Jehovah's exposition of His name; the faithful theocrat, who by law and symbol pointed to Christ (Numb. xi. 29).

As nature points beyond itself to the region of spirit, as the law points beyond itself to the Gospel and its royal law of freedom (James i. 25; ii. 8), the law of the Spirit (Rom. viii.), so the mediator of the divine law points beyond himself to the Prophet of the future (Deut. xviii. 15). At the beginning and the end of his declaration of the ethical law in the decalogue there are the germs of the coming law of freedom, "who brought thee out of the house of bondage," "thou shalt not covet."

Besides Moses' relation to Christ we must mark within the Old Testament his relation to Elijah and Elisha. Elijah is the Old Testament counterpart of Moses on the side of legal retribution; but Elisha is the expounder of Moses as to the spirituality of the law, its gentleness and mercy, the coming gospel.

The grandeur of the genius of Moses appears in striking contrasts, pre-eminently in the contrast of his firm conscientiousness with his prophetic power as a seer; then in the contrast of his eminent worldly wisdom, with his inner spiritual life; in the contrast of his delicacy with his heroic vigor; in the contrast of his deep sensitiveness to the signs of the curse and the signs of the blessing; and finally in the opposite traits of the mildest humanity, yea, of priestly self-sacrifice (Ex. xxxii. 11, 31; Numb.: the laws of humanity) and of the inexorable firmness of the law-giver (Ex. xxxii. 27; Numb. xiv. 28; chap. xiv.).

That Moses should not be identified with Jewish superficial legality, with the letter of the law that "killeth," though as a national law-giver he was compelled to exercise specially the office of death (2 Cor. iii. 7), that this was not his whole office (as Luther would lead us to infer), is apparent from the fact that by the side of the ethical law he has placed the law of atonement, the theocratic reform of the traditional law of offerings. And that he did not intend to establish a real hierarchy is proved by his laying the basis of civil rights, the first article of which regulates the emancipation of slaves. We judge the Papacy too leniently and wrongfully when we assert that it is a return to the Old Testament priesthood-a priesthood that would absorb utterly all prophecy and all political authority!

Among the great law-givers of antiquity Moses stands in solitary grandeur. He alone gave to others the two most popular offices in national life: the high-priesthood to Aaron, the chief command of the army to Joshua. As prophet he points beyond himself and his institutions to the future; he does not obliterate the hope of the future which Abraham had impressed upon his religion, but filled it with life and unfolded it chiefly through symbols. But it was the Spirit of God who, in addition to his great genius, and by means of special direction, made him capable of these great things. The common characteristic of all mighty men of God and of faith, who made known the revelation of God, unconquerable patience and endurance, the sign of the victorious perseverance of the kingdom of God, especially of Christianity, as it appeared in many individuals, the firmness of Noah, Abraham, Jeremiah, but pre-eminently the patient and long-suffering perseverance of the Lord, these also appear in typical traits, and though imperfect, yet in peculiar beauty, as the special marks of the character of Moses. Hence in his old age a single act of impatience, reflecting the severely punished impatient act of his earlier years, was sorely requited, though this single false step was so turned by God as to give to his life a solemn and glorious ending on the eve of enter

ing Canaan (Deut. xxxiv.). He was not allowed to pass into obscurity behind Joshua, the general, or to close his life without solemnity at an unimportant time.

Finally there is one trait in the character of Moses to be considered which has been almost entirely overlooked, because, in the interest of an abstract supranaturalism, or of a criticism which resolves them into myths, his miracles have been discussed without respect to their means. If we believe in a charism, that is, that a gift of nature is always the basis of a gift of grace, and this gift of nature becomes a charism by being purified and inspired by the Spirit of grace, we will find this synthesis constantly appearing in heroic proportions in the sphere of revelation. And accordingly it was a sense of nature grand and deep, an instinctive sensibility for nature which Jehovah made the exponent of His revelations in nature in Egypt and the wilderness, the miracles of Moses. For if every scriptural miracle is a miracle both of knowledge and of power, then in the miracles of Moses there is surpassing knowledge, a piercing into the depths of nature which the Spirit of the Lord opened to him. His power is a dauntless trust in God, by which he lifts his rod, which accomplishes the miracle, not as by magic, but as a symbol, pointing to the strong arm of the Lord. With respect to Moses' knowledge of the deep things of nature, we can distinguish his knowledge of natural history, of the earth, of geology, of psychology, and of the laws of health; but each of these the Spirit of revelation had made a charism.

10. THE DESERT AND THE MIDIANITES.

It seems to be a primary law of the divine economy and instruction that the people of God should be born in servitude and brought up in the desert (Hos. ii. 14; ix. 10). For not only did the nation of Israel come forth from the house of bondage and take its stamp in the desert, but also Israel's reformation after the Babylonian captivity under Ezra, its second Moses; and Christians grew to be the people of God under the despotism of the old world and in the great desert of asceticism, and the Christian Reformation was compelled to pass through servitude and the desert. For the German Reformation the desert was prepared by the devastations of the thirty years' war; the French Reformation received its purification in the Church of the desert.

As the land arose out of the earlier formation of the sea (Gen. i.), so the deserts, like the steppes, appear to have come forth by changes in the formation of the sea, as though they were bottoms of seas, rocky, stony, salt and sandy plains, without water or vegetation. The old world is to a large extent covered with deserts, and the Arabian desert, with which we are concerned, with its many parts and projections, is pre-eminently the desert (see WINER, Wörterbuch), having, in connection with the great stretch of desert from the northwest coast of Africa to northern Asia, two great wings, the desert of Sahara in North Africa and the desert of Zobi in Northern Asia. The desert is nearly allied to the region of the dead, to Hades; it forms dead places of the living earth, and is the place of death to many pilgrims who attempt to cross it. Yet water has won for itself many parts of the desert (as the earth has won a portion of the sea by the formation of islands), steppe-like pasture-lands, real shepherds' commons (7) and spice-bearing oases. The most remarkable conquest has been that of the Nile, the father of Egypt, over the desert on its right and left bank. The Red Sea also intersects the desert.

As to the configuration of the Arabian desert, we refer to the articles in the lexicons on the desert and Arabia, as well as to the most important narratives of travels and to maps.

The Midianites, to whom Moses fled, and among whom he was prepared for his calling, seem to have been a nomadic branch of an Arabian tribe, descendants of Abraham and Keturah (Gen. xxv. 2-4), which had its home on the eastern side of the Elanitic gulf, where the ruins of the city of Madian still testify to their settlement, and which carried on the caravan-trade between Gilead and Arabia, from eastern lands to Egypt, whilst another branch extended eastward to the plain of Moab. Thus they became closely interwoven with the history of the Jews. Midianite merchants brought Joseph as a slave to Egypt; with the nomad Midianite prince, Jethro, Moses found a refuge for many years; and Jethro exerted important influence even in the organization of the Mosaic economy, and assisted the mis