sinful career, by a crew of baboons. The doctrine of the Egyptians taught them to believe in a system of transmigration, somewhat analogous to parts of the singular creed still maintained by the Hindoos. The soul returned to earth as a punishment for "the deeds done in the flesh,” and after passing through many changes, and enduring long degradation and suffering, it was at length permitted to resume the human form, and reappear at the judgment seat to be again tried by the dread Osiris. In this as in so many other heathen creeds we can detect many elements manifestly derived from the pure source of Divine revelation; we can even in many of them detect ideas not only of retribution but of atonement. But the real nature of all is

the same. Their final elements are not productive of hope but of gloom and terror, and in the purest of them we look in vain for the doctrine of Divine atonement, which gives to Christianity its noblest element of assured hope, and consistently justifies the ways of God to man.

No ruins of Ancient Egypt surpass, either in remarkable character or interesting associations, those of Ancient Thebes. Wilkinson remarks of this extensive city, when describing its varied features: "The time of its foundation still remains, like that of Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt, enveloped in that obscurity which is the fate of all the most ancient cities; but probability favours the conjecture, that though Menes, the first king of Egypt, found it in the humble condition of an infant capital, its foundation will date several generations before the accession of that monarch to the throne of his native country.

"The most ancient remains now existing at Thebes are unquestionably in the great temple of Karnak, the largest and most splendid ruin of which perhaps either ancient or modern times can boast, being the work of a number of successive monarchs, each anxious to surpass his predecessor by increasing the dimensions and proportions of the part he added. It is this fact which enables us to