plan could have been devised for putting down this idolatrous custom than to ordain, under a severe penalty for its infringement, that no one should kill any of the sacrificial animals even for food, without doing so before the door of the tabernacle, and making a partial offering to Jehovah. Such a law, it is evident, could have been possible only when the compact nature of the camp brought the tabernacle within every one's reach, and not when the people were dispersed in settled habitations over the length and breadth of the land. It supposes too that the people were so situated (as they actually were in the desert), that they could not command an abundant supply of animal food; for otherwise the tabernacle would have become one perpetual slaughter-house. And it implies, moreover, that by force of their Egyptian habits the people retained a strong bias to the worship of the Dy, who were at the same time the usual deities of the wilderness. In short, they were in the camp, and in the desert, and just emerged from the seductions of Egyptian idolatry.

This same proximity of the tabernacle to every member of the nation is supposed in the laws of Lev. xv. 2-33. For on the day immediately after their seven days' seclusion, those who have to undergo purification are ordered to present themselves at the door of the tabernacle (14, 29, 31).

So also it is assumed in the law that regulates the vow of the Nazarite (Num. vi. 1-21); who on the day after his seven days' separation (10) is to offer at the tabernacle door two turtle-doves or young pigeons.

The law on purification after childbirth (Lev. xii.) likewise assumes that the tabernacle is within easy distan for it requires from the mother on the fortieth day a per

sonal offering at the door of the tabernacle. How could such a law have been introduced with any prospect of its observance when the tribes were mostly far removed from the sanctuary? And how could all the mothers of the country, suckling their infants, be compelled to undertake the long and laborious journey when locomotion, especially for females, was so slow and difficult? Respect for ancient ordinances, with the modifications which time and altered circumstances introduce into the interpretation. of an irksome law, might reconcile the people to hardships which all had to undergo. But it is against common sense to imagine that it could have arisen at first in a state of things which made its observance impossible to the majority of those concerned.

The laws on leprosy, which are contained in Lev. xiii.— xiv. 1-32, all suppose that the camp is the dwelling-place of the nation (xiii. 46, xiv. 3, 8), and the tent of the family (xiv. 8). The same is understood in the appendix of Num. v. 1-3. So in the prescriptions about the lustral water to be prepared from the ashes of the red heifer (Num. xix.). For the camp is referred to (3, 7, 9), and the tent (14, 18). Once more, it is the camp that is spoken of in verses 5 and 6 in the law of the silver trumpets (Num. x. 1-10).

§ 2.-Legislation of the Pentateuch impregnated with Egyptian memories.

The laws and institutions of the Pentateuch are likewise so strongly impregnated with the memories and usages of Egypt, that nothing can adequately account for the peculiarity but their origin amid the freshness of the reminiscences. As if the whole national life, moral, religious, and political, were essentially bound up with these

remembrances, the foundation of the entire covenant-law is solemnly proclaimed to be the fact, that Jehovah, who claimed their devotion and obedience, had brought them out from the land of Egypt, and the house of bondage (Ex. xx. 2). And this idea runs naturally through the whole code (Ex. xxiii. 15, xxix. 46; Lev. xi. 45, xix. 36, xxii. 33, xxiii. 43, xxv. 38, 42, 55, xxvi. 13, 45; Num. xv. 41). The original law on the passover and feast of unleavened bread is inseparable from the midnight Exodus, and has indelibly impressed upon it the time and place and manner of its introduction (Ex. xii. 12, 17, 23, 27, xiii. 3, 9). The gentle treatment of strangers is powerfully enforced by an appeal to their own bitter experience of the stranger's lot in Egypt (Ex. xxii. 21, xxiii. 9; Lev. xix. 34). Israel is warned not to imitate the corrupt practices with which Egyptian contact had made them familiar (Lev. xviii. 3). And it seems to have been the multiform nature of Egyptian superstition that suggested the peculiar wording of the commandment on idolatry (Ex. xx. 4). For it was on the banks of the Nile that the human mind had exerted all its ingenuity to exhibit its notions of Divine Being in endless combinations of the things in heaven, on earth, and the supposed waters of Alu under the earth, where was to be found the 'great city of the waters.'

, 1

Strange too though it may appear, there is much in the outward ceremonial of the Levitical worship that indicates an Egyptian type. The fact need startle no For it is derogatory neither to the holiness of the Almighty nor to the inspiration of his delegate, that Moses should have borrowed from others rites which were good in themselves, and which became idolatrous only

one.

1 See the vignette in the Todtenbuch, c. 110; and Birch's translation (ib. 1).

then, when employed in the worship of false gods. The most of external forms are in themselves indifferent, and receive their determinate value from the feeling that prompts them, and the object to which they are directed: when given to God, they are divine worship; when given to idols, they are idolatry. Nor is inspiration jeopardised, because the material details may have come from a human source. Care and study and observation are not dispensed with in the mind that receives the divine communications; and Moses was instructed in all the wisdom and learning of the Egyptians for the very purpose of enabling him to use it to the best advantage.

Availing himself, therefore, of the knowledge thus acquired, and wresting from Amun-Ra what belonged legitimately to Jehovah, and so spiritualising the ceremonial to which Israel had been used in Egypt, he Mosaised the Nile forms of religion, as Aquinas afterwards christianised the philosophy of Aristotle, or rather as the Church consecrated to a higher purpose the temples and the rites and festivals found among the pagan populations at their conversion. We need not, then, be scandalised if we find the ark of Jehovah to be the counterpart of the shrine of Amun. The resemblance strikes at once on a glance at the woodcut taken from Lepsius' Denkmäler Ab. iii. Bl. 189. It is from the temple of Abusimbel, and belongs to the reign of the great Ramses, the contemporary of Moses. (See woodcut, p. 291.)

Or, should anyone think that Moses in this case might have suggested the idea, let him go to Karnak, and there (Denk. iii. Bl. 14) he will find the following from the XVIII. dynasty, long before Moses was born.