sparkling stars of heaven, every spot of which was consecrated to the worship and adoration of that Father, King, and God, whose gentle law was the law of love. To them the hallowed Sabbath afforded a season of cessation from grateful toil, for sublime and serene contemplation, for awful and intimate communion with "the Word" of the Lord God that walked in the garden.

"But Adam lost Paradise-eternal tale,

Repeated in the lives of all his sons."

We must not suffer the host of questions that start themselves for discussion, or passing from the normal to the remedial, educational, and restorative constitution of humanity, to divert us from the prosecution of our present purpose, baffling, as they mostly do, the futile attempts at comprehension or explanation. We accept the facts, as they are faithfully recorded, we doubt not, in all their stern and severe literality of accomplishment. We track the footsteps of rebel man and woman from heaven to earth. Alas, how fallen! We behold paradise blighted, blasted, and beslimed by the trail of the old serpent, the devil,-humanity ravaged by ruin, trampled by destruction, harrassed and harrowed in heart by restlessness and remorse, divested of immortality, and debarred from the tree of life by "Cherubims and a flaming sword," and war to the death proclaimed on the battlefield of a late tranquil and peaceful world. We hail with as mingled satisfaction as it must have been welcomed by the first guilty pair, the Πρωτευαγγέλιον, the first gospel of glad tidings that fell on the ears of fallen humanity on the eve of the expulsion, which synchronises with the commencement of what is generally termed the patriarchal dispensation.

It is quite evident that the personal communications of "the Word of God" to Adam in paradise, obviated all necessity for the employment of those subordinate methods to which we are indebted for the acquisition, whether of divine or human knowledge. But when man had rendered himself obnoxious to the curse of the violated law, and had thereby interrupted the close communion which he had been privileged to hold with divinity, his altered condition demanded a new revelation, his rebellious nature and alienated affections, the dire result of his disobedience, an education, discipline, and training; accordingly we find that humanity in childhood is placed under a new regime, viz., under domestic government in the family, under which it remained until the patriarchal merged into the Jewish national dispensation.

Domestic government is the first, equally in the infancy of the child as in the infancy of the world, whose influence is brought to bear upon their destinies. It does not appear that magistracy in its several grades, existed in the antediluvian social system, a fact which may serve to account for the impunity with which a Cain sheds the blood of an Abel, and a Lamech, one of his descendants, boasts of having slain a young man, while he retains all the privileges of citizenship, and for aught we know to the contrary, the respect and esteem of his wives and cotemporaries. The family, indeed, constituting as it does the type of the church and kingdom of God on earth, is the primitive institution estab

lished for the restoration of that order disturbed by the fall, and in which childhood is trained to habits of filial obedience and educated for immor. tality and heaven. It cannot fail to be observed that the church and kingdom of God were circumscribed by the limits of the family circle, during the course of the Patriarchal dispensation, and that the Father combined in his own person the offices both of priest and king, the respective duties of which he discharged in his household.

But what were the duties, what the mode of worship entailed upon humanity in accordance with the new revelation graciously vouchsafed in the "First Gospel" under the remedial constitution? We apprehend it will not be disputed that an avenger, deliverer, or restorer was promised to mankind in that brief and primitive revelation in which it is declared that the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of their deceiver and destroyer? Now if Christ be at once proto-type and antitype of the deliverer, as authentic history bears ample testimony, in what manner shall the revelation of this great fact be intelligibly expressed and imparted to the childhood of humanity? Such was the problem that offered itself for solution to the divine wisdom, at the origination of that scheme of salvation by which mankind are restored to the possession of the forfeited original rights and privileges of sons in the family of God.

When we assert that vicarious and piacular animal sacrifice was the divine institutional expression of the fundamental and essential idea of Christianity, the atonement of Christ, we doubt not that we embody in language the fact which commends itself as the basis of the religious faith and creed of Christendom.

Could we by any possible means discover and stereotype the religious creed of Childhood, we are confident that while ignorance blended with superstition in its crude and imperfect construction, it would present a view of the nature of the Deity consonant to truth and closely corresponding to the creed of the patriarchal period. We do not profess to have transcribed a child's creed from the tablet of its youthful heart; but we appeal to the earliest recollections of our readers, if the conception that they formed of their God was not a being of human form, clothed with at least the attributes of omnipotence aud omniscience, an almighty Father indeed, their Maker, the remembrance of whose invisible presence filled their hearts with superstitious fear, and at the voice of whose thunder they crouched in terror and dismay? And was not "the almighty God" the name that he assumed to himself in his communications with the patriarchs? And were not the exhibitions of his almighty Sovereignty and righteous rigidity of divine retribution in barring all egress to paradise by a flaming sword,-in blighting the earth with his curse, in the institution of bloody animal sacrifice with its harrowing and heart-rending associations,-in course of time by sweeping away myriads of mankind into a premature and watery grave by the deluge, and by overwhelming Sodom and Gomorrah in a lake of fire and brimstone; we say, were not exhibitions of his almighty sovereignty such as these calculated to strike awe and terror into the minds of the children of humanity? Be that as it may. Contemplate the creed

VOL. XXIII.

M

which by implication is professed in the very observance of vicarious sacrifice, the nature and character of offended Deity, the confession of guilt equally as of penitential submission to the will of God as the part of the offerer, the self sacrificing obedience of faith, in a word to which it gives emphatic and unmistakeable expression, and shall we hesitate to recognise the patriarchs, who "by faith" offered "the Lamb of God" on their rough-hewn altars, as "Sons of God," the true "primitive Christians," to whom the gospel was proclaimed in its pristine purity and originality? And may we not trace the personal identity of Christianity, in the reflection of "the Image of God" in the lives and characters of that royal roll of saintly heroes of the covenant, inaugurated by the proto-martyr Abel, and to be completed on the accession of the last son of God to his throne in the kingdom of heaven?

We shall not stay to demonstrate the perversity of intellect which those philologists and critics display, who deny the patriarchs the knowledge of the all-Father of Humanity, their relationship to Him, as well as their prospects in an immortality of future weal or woe. Did we astutely blind ourselves to the statements and comments of inspired penmen of Scripture, as e.g. that " they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth," that they desired "a better country that is an heavenly," and "looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God,"-we might possibly rank ourselves amongst the disciples of Warburtonianism, though we doubt much whether the recollection of the sacrifice and resurrection of Isaac "in a figure," and the translation of Enoch, would not stagger our misbelief and redeem us from the depths of stubborn infidelity.

There is one feature which stamps with peculiarity the Patriarchal in common with the Jewish, and which disappeared at the introduction of the Christian economy, we refer to the ministration of angels. We certainly have been accustomed to regard the ministry of the angel-world as extraordinary, accidental rather indeed, to the earliest dispensations of Christianity; yet we make bold to maintain, that arranged as the remedial constitution of humanity manifestly is, in harmony with the laws which we observe operating in the microcosmic child, as well as in the universe, its absence would have been considered as an anomaly. Let it never be forgotten in prosecuting our investigations on this subject that the Divine Teacher, "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," who opened his mouth in parables to the incipient manhood of humanity, has not displayed a less amount of wisdom and skill than his human representatives, that He has adapted and accommodated his communications and instructions to the capacities of those world-pupils upon whom he was bestowing his divine education.

We do not deem it necessary to tread upon the patience of our readers by adducing evidence at length in support of the doctrine that Christ is "the Word of God," "the Angel," and "Messenger of the Covenant," who held communication in an incarnate form with man in paradise, patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings. The divine authority which that august personage wields, the titles which he assumes, and the worship which he regards it no robbery, no blasphemy, to receive, all clearly

testify that no subordinate ambassador of Heaven has been commissioned to treat with the revolted and rebellious family of God on earth.

Now, withdraw the presence of the Father, the representative of God to his child,-from his family, and cast it into orphanage, and is it not tantamount to plunging its members into homelessness, friendlessness, wretchedness, ignorance, oft-times into prodigality, criminality, ruin and death? And could you, ye sciolists, ye hierophants in modern Christendom, prognosticate the horoscope of this dis-guardianed world, had it even in its unlettered childhood, hugged the completed Old and New Testaments in its youthful bosom? Had you as its "tutelary Deity," reclined in state on the inaccessible summit of some Olympian cloudland, and surveyed with the sang froid and nonchalance of father "Pan," the fatherless and friendless family breathing their piteous wail into the heartless atmosphere, would the scene of your desperate and indignant children flagellating your marble image, have excited your astonishment?

But a noble career and an honourable destiny awaited humanity, and the Divine Teacher himself,-the Word of God,-did not disdain to assume his office in propria persona, in the critical period of its childhood and nonage, and orally instilled into the minds of his patriarchal pupils that revelation which gladdened them in their pilgrimage on earth, and emboldened them to dis-entabernacle themselves for immortality. But we must pass on, and content ourselves with the suggestions we have thrown out on this interesting and important topic.

Pursuing pastoral occupations as did those great forefathers of our race, and nomadic in their habits, the rites which their religious worship demanded were kindly adapted to the primitive simplicity of their manners and mode of life. Pitching their tents as they did on the first green oasis that offered pasturage and waterage for their flocks, beneath the plumes of the stately palms that waved their Creator's welcome of hospitality to the "Pilgrim Fathers," they reared with ease an altar of stones on which they laid their morning and evening sacrifice to their paternal God. Was the remedial constitution designed to restore the order infringed by rebellion, and the image of God erased by the foul breath of the destroyer? Let the scene exhibited by a patriarchal family be our practical response. Behold in that Abrahamic household, in which the church is commensurate with the kingdom, the kingship with the priesthood, in its fatherhood, in its brotherhood, and in the ties which unite them in the bonds of love and communion, the faint and imperfect copy of the divine original of paradise! While the vast earth was the home, it was synonymous with the Altar of the Universal Father of the Patriarchs," in whom all the families of the earth were blessed." This universality which is so eminently characteristic of the patriarchal, painfully contrasts with the particularity of the Jewish National dispensation to which it gave place, in the great cycle of pro

vidence.

EGYPT: ANCIENT AND MODERN.1

IN these two works we have one of the most ancient and interesting countries in the world brought us, at widely distant epochs in its history. In the first we have the Egypt of to-day, and in the second we have the Egypt of three or four thousand years ago. From whatever point of view we regard Egypt, it must ever be invested with the deepest interest. Not that its soil is classic like that of Greece and Rome, nor that its scenes are sacred, like the hallowed spots in the Holy Land. It has given us no philosophers, poets, or historians, whose writings we are called on to study and admire. And although many mighty miracles were wrought there in days of old, yet were they miracles of wrath and vengeance. Notwithstanding the absence of sacred and classic associations, still Egypt has an interest of its own, in its extreme antiquity, in the vastness of its ancient monuments, in its climate, customs, language, and in the light which recent discoveries in its tombs, temples, sculptures, and hieroglyphics, have thrown on the Sacred Scriptures.

The object of the first of these two works is to show us that Egypt possesses a remarkably mild winter climate, and that it is worthy of becoming a place of resort to those who dread the rigours of our insular home. By steam communication, Egypt has been recently brought within the distance of a fortnight's journey from this country. All the travellers who have published their observations on the country, have never failed, whatever else they saw to dislike and condemn there, to praise its exquisitely pure air and delicious climate. In ancient times it was esteemed by the Roman physicians a highly beneficial resort for the delicate, and the character which it possessed in former days is now in the fair way of being fully revived in consequence of the increasing facilities for reaching it. The excellence of its climate, and its comparative exemption from consumption and some other diseases, have been admitted by several of our first physicians. The book is written in a clear and unpretending style, and the facts which Mr Rhind adduces in support of his position are of great importance. The hints which he gives to intending travellers in Egypt supply us with some interesting information respecting the modes of travelling, and the state of things existing generally at the present day in Egypt :

"I feel the more bound, therefore, having professed to discuss the character of the climate, to supply the data for judging of it also in this connec tion. If, in doing so, I should mention some things already made familiar by the many popular books of Eastern travel, it will be in the course of describing what at the present time, is the state of matters with regard to the every-day life awaiting the visitor to Egypt. In any case, I shall not

incur the criticism of wishing to intrude on the broader field already so successfully occupied; but by confining myself chiefly to the humbler details hitherto very generally omitted, I shall hope to be allowed the credit of at least attempting to be useful.

1 Egypt: Its Climate, Character, and Resources, as a Winter Resort. By A. Henry Rhind, F.S.A.

Egypt and the Books of Moses, by Dr E. W. Hengstenberg.