The New Englander

The Monuments of Egypt; or Egypt a Witness for the Bible. By FRANCIS L. HAWKS, D.D., LL.D. With illustrations. Second edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Geo. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. London: John Murray. 1850. New Haven: T. H. Pease.

THE former edition of this work has already received a brief notice in our pages. We take the opportunity of a second edition to discuss several topics of interest, either contained in it or suggested by its perusal.

Various circumstances have contributed to excite a deep interest in whatever relates to Egypt. Its physical peculiarities, its ancient achievements and glory, its parental relation to Grecian civilization, its wonderful dyrasties, awaking, as seen in the shadowy distance of far off centuries, the sublimest emotions of the soul; all its history, as the cradle of civilization and the land of the Monuments, its treasures of remotest antiquity, not more curious in themselves than in the manner of their transmission to us, its rich veins of historic learning yet to be explored, the contrast of its present abjectness with the colossal grandeur of the ruins of what it once was-these things would throw a thrilling interest around it, even if its history had no intimate connection with the Bible. But the fact that it has such a connection, must to the Christian scholar, immeasurably enhance this interest. Very naturally, therefore, has the attention of scholars been directed to Egyptian researches; and these have been rewarded by splendid results.

It is to be hoped this interest will steadily increase. Indeed we think it is to be expected, especially on the part of our own countrymen. For, through the present facilities for commerce and travel, Egypt is brought almost as near us as the Canadas were twenty years ago. Accordingly, it is but reasonable to anticipate that a people, like ours, active and full of enterprise, will resort thither, not alone on errands of commerce but of pleasure, and will thoroughly explore a region so replete in stirring and sacred associations, and indebted, scarcely less to antiquity than to nature, for its attractive features. Nor is Egypt destined to monopolize the interest which American scholars and Christians will feel in the countries of the Old World. Every country from classic and philosophic Greece to the hitherto unexplored and untutored regions of central Africa, from sacred Syria to the Siberian wilds, will as surely be visited by lovers of adventure and science as is now the majestic scenery of Switzerland, or the ruins of the Coliseum or of Pompeii. Indeed we cannot doubt that every point on the earth's surface is destined to an examination as much more minute than heretofore as the facilities for reaching it are more multiplied. Every such point is destined to furnish its tribute to the mighty aggregate of human knowledge.

Whoever adds to

And we are glad to think that it will be so. the stock of human knowledge, merits a commendation which sooner or later he is sure to receive. At the present time particularly we are disposed to applaud those who are fostering among us a love of research into antiquity. Happy if we emulate in this respect English and German scholars. Hitherto we have done in this field comparatively nothing. Nor have we appreciated its real productiveness, or the value of what it would yield.

It should be remembered that, although the process of decay goes on as time advances, yet God has fixed a limit to decay as to the ocean, with the decree, "hitherto shalt thou come and no further." He has prohibited the destruction of a single, the smallest atom of the universe, preserving to a wonderful extent in the crust of the earth even the forms of ancient organic life, and thus opening for the curiosity of the learned a long chapter on the natural history of the remotest ages. He has also preserved written or rock-recorded chronicles of generations far back toward the infancy of our race. He has overruled the destructive instincts of men and recovered by novel and surprising methods, historic knowledge which the vandalism of an Omar in burning the Alexandrian library, or the bigotry of ecclesiastics in obliterating the classic lore upon innumerable old parchments, had undertaken to extinguish. And to what but the providence of God shall be ascribed the fact, that, prior to the art of printing, whose value in transmitting the ideas of one generation to be the

starting point of that which succeeds, none can duly estimate, mankind were moved as by the impulse of a divine economy, to preserve their national records in enduring sculptures and paintings? What agency but his has so signally preserved these chronicles buried, as at Nineveh, beneath the ruins of an empire and the rubbish of forty centuries, or locked up, as in the hidden tombs of Egypt, in the mystery of hieroglyphic symbols? What agency but his has at length, when their perpetuity will by the art of printing be secured, guided the seeker after knowledge to their sealed repositories, and thus recovered them for the world?

But we shall have occasion hereafter to notice the agency of providence in preserving for modern research the treasures of antiquity. We allude to it now only as an auspicious omen for those who are incited to explore the remote past. Doubtless there is a limit to productive research backward along the line of centuries. We are far enough, however, at present from that limit. There is a vast region of unexplored territory yet to be traversed by the antiquarian. Pompeii is not wholly disinterred. Many a street there, many a mansion, many a manuscript, many a choice specimen of ancient art, is yet to be uncovered. The ruins of ancient Nineveh are not explored in vain. The sculptured and painted records of that ancient empire, of which she was the renowned metropolis, are neither lost nor altogether beyond the sagacity of man to decipher. Many an old library in Europe contains, among its dust-covered manuscripts, treasures of ancient learning yet unrevealed. Many a tomb doubtless remains in Egypt whose hoary seal of thirty centuries has never yet been broken, whose mummies and precious relics are yet to be gathered. Many a hieroglyphic inscription is yet to be read and the intelligence, stored behind its mystery, to be divulged. Accordingly, the antiquarian scholar will dig in a rich mine. He wants neither a path nor an inducement, other than he now possesses, to urge him forward.

But if this be true generally of researches into antiquity, preeminently is it true of researches among the rocky and written remains of those splendid empires that lie about sacred Palestine, and whose history is inseparably interwoven with that of ancient Israel. Not to speak of the almost incredible massiveness of their architecture, an architecture whose imperishable material has preserved for us, upon its walls and ceilings, the delineations of the history of their people, as the art of printing will more perfectly preserve ours for posterity, other circumstances throw around their antiquities a peculiar charm. The connection of their history with that of God's people, for example, will greatly enhance the interest with which it will be investigated; particularly as this connection associates it intimately with the truth of the Bi

ble. So will the intrinsic character of that history, and its relation to the civilization of those nations with whose golden eras profane history may be said to have begun. These circumstances are fitted to kindle among scholars and Christians a livelier enthusiasm in researches like those of which the volume before us treats.

This volume aims to accomplish two praiseworthy objects; the one, to awaken among our Christian scholars a deeper interest in those portions of the field of antiquity which are most intimately connected with the Bible; the other, to meet the skeptic on his own ground, and demonstrate to him that, so far from the monuments of Egypt throwing suspicion on the Old Testament, they signally and in numerons particulars confirm its statements. The work is, in many respects, similar to the treatise on the same subject by Hengstenberg, a translation of which was published at Andover in 1843, although it differs from that in being, if not as learned, more extensive and more popular. It contemplates, at least in the concluding chapter, the application of monumental evidence to the entire Old Testament, while Hengstenberg has confined himself to the books of Moses. It will be more read than the German work and more serviceable to religion. The particular necessity for investigations like those in this volume, Dr. Hawks has well remarked, lies in the "bold assertions of those who have proclaimed their discovery in the monuments, of evidence directly contradicting the Bible," not in any real deficiency of the evidence of its authenticity. That these assertions of unbelievers and misbelievers give importance to these investigations is most true. But there are other reasons which very much magnify this importance. We believe that

undesigned coincidences between facts of an historic or scientific nature and the Bible, are often the best possible evidence with which to meet the infidel. They are often better than a thousand veteran arguments. And for this reason, that unbelief or misbelief is frequently the growth of a mere notion, or conjecture, which, when once it has obtained a lodgment in the mind, defies all regular argument and appeal. No ordinary process of reasoning, no logical missiles, can reach it. And yet, under these circumstances, apparently hopeless, an incidental testimony, an undesigned coincidence, will many times prove entirely effectual. We of course agree with Dr. Hawks, that the Bible needs no incidental testimony to support it. It stands impregnably founded on other and more direct evidence. At the same time, who would not covet material with which promptly to silence unbelief, and this by pointing, as if disdainfully, not to the main arguments, but only to incidental coincidences corroborative of scripture. However unpretending this kind of evidence may and ought to be, it will yet compare favorably in its popular influence with many of the standard evidences of Christianity.

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