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broken and worn away at the edges, present a very practicable flight of steps, two hundred and three in number. The blocks which compose these successive layers decrease gradually in dimensions from the base to the summit of the pile, and vary from nine feet to three feet in height. The sloping ascent offers little difficulty to any one accustomed either to climb rocks, or to run over the rigging of a ship. Two Arabs officiously tendered me their help to mount, but soon lagged below in the course. In the time of Herodotus, 2,300 years ago, it was, doubtless,

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much more "hard to climb;" some would tell us, even inaccessible. We may be assured, at least, that the "father of history" mounted to the rocky platform on which it is built, and cast a keen view

around and beneath him on regions concerning which he has given us so many facts, and not a few fables. The surrounding features of nature may be much the same as when he surveyed them: a river with a fringe of verdure on each border, winding its way through a continent of sand. But a great change has come, since the days of the Halicarnassean, over the works and marvels wrought by the hand of man in this vicinity. Except these Pyramids, part of the ancient Necropolis of Memphis, no monuments here meet the eye to mark the site of that city once larger in extent than any four of modern days, if, as recorded, it measured thirty-six miles in diameter. These funeral piles, however, are well worthy to mark the grave of such a city, and of the buried splendours for which the capital of the Pharaohs was celebrated.

"From the top of those pyramids," said Napoleon to his soldiers, "forty centuries look down on you." Adopting this poetical imagery, how insignificant and petty a circumstance the march of Bonaparte and his army in comparison with other events which, from the apex of this pyramid, the flight of ages has witnessed;-events trivial, indeed, in appearance, but influencing the highest destinies of the whole human race.

Thirty-one centuries, on the lowest computation, have elapsed since the daughter of

Pharaoh, walking with her maidens along by the river's side, "saw an ark among the flags, and sent her maid to fetch it: and when she had opened it, she saw a child; and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, the Hebrews' children."*

This is one of

From this spot, the patriarch Joseph, more than thirty-three centuries ago, might look over the land of which he was made governor; and which his prophetic eye, at one glance, saw waving with seven years of golden plenty, and blighted by seven years of barrenness.

Doubtless, the prospective vision of the patriarch dwelt, likewise, on the ultimate afflictions and glories which awaited his race: their tribulations in a country not their own, when there should "arise a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph;" and their triumph, when the God of their fathers should interpose to bring them out of Egyptian bondage into the goodly land which He had promised to the seed of Abraham.†

The signs and tokens which God wrought by the hand of Moses form the first act of the mighty drama which all succeeding ages but tend to develop, bearing as its benign and all-embracing plan, the redemption of His people who serve Him from every yoke and bondage of body and soul. This very + Genesis 1. 24.

• Exodus ii. 5, 6.

pyramid is a monument which bespeaks the slavish toil of millions, to the sacrifice of their miserable lives, under the grinding tyranny of a heathen king and a heathen priesthood. Such slavery befitted those who, beyond all other nations of the earth, were enthralled to abominable idolatries, who bowed down to the vilest forms of bestial and reptile creation, saying, "Ye are our gods." But the burden under which the Egyptian serfs, who "sacrificed to devils," were condemned to groan, was not the lot reserved to the people who owned the Lord God as their King. This is the declared object of all the wonders which God showed in Egypt, that the world might "know how that the Lord put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel."*

Here arose the dawn of that Divine truth, of that great light which God decreed not only as the "glory of His people Israel," but to enlighten and bless all nations of the earth. The announcement which the prophet was commissioned to publish in Egypt, of comfort to the afflicted, deliverance to the captive, rescue to the oppressed,† is the very same in tenor with the message which Jesus was afterwards anointed to proclaim, * Exodus xi. 7.

"And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them."-Exodus iii. 7.

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as fulfilled in the ears of those who heard Him in the synagogue of Nazareth.

The same high mission God confides, in every age, to His faithful minister, whatever his sense of weakness and insufficiency. "I am slow of speech," he may plead, with Moses, "I am not eloquent." But "the Spirit of the Lord is upon him," far more powerful than all human eloquence, or poesy, or "science falsely so called," to proclaim, before princes and rulers, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the very message which the meekest man of his day was chosen by the Lord to declare, more than 3,000 years since, before the proud and cruel Egyptian monarch: that the will of God is good news to the poor, deliverance to the captive, healing to the broken-hearted, light to the ignorant, liberty to the bruised, to the degraded masses the acceptable year of the Lord.*

However various the reflections in which travellers of different mood may indulge on

"And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. As yet exaltest thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt not let them go?.. How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? let my people go, that they may serve me."-Exodus ix. x.

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