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SACRED POETRY.

THE CHRISTIAN'S JOY.

"Rejoice evermore."-1 THESS. v. 16.

"Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, rejoice.”—
PHILIP. IV. 4.

THE bondsman rejoiced when the jubilee came,
And the glad sound of liberty rang through the land;
The captive rejoiced, for he knew he could claim

The rights which the free and the noble demand.
What rebel, condemn'd by his sovereign to die,

Unheeding, the tidings of pardon can learn ? Ah! beams not with gladness the prodigal's eye, When a kind father meets him, and hails his return?

Rejoice then, O Christian! more urgent by far

Is the call of thy Saviour on thee to rejoice: Let faith, while she gazes on Bethlehem's Star, In praise everlasting lift loudly her voice. Rejoice! for the trumpet of jubilee sounds,

The day of salvation has dawn'd on our world; True, sin has abounded, but grace more abounds, Messiah the banner of peace has unfurl'd. Rejoice! for thou'rt stranger and alien no more; Thy home is in heaven-thy Father is thereRejoice! for the terrors that scared thee before, Remov'd by thy Saviour, no longer shall scare. Rejoice for the bondage of Satan is o'er;

The fetters that gall'd thee asunder are riv'n; Rejoice! for thy foot is on Liberty's shore,

Redeem'd by Messiah-a freedman of heav'n.
Rejoice! for the Lord is thy surety-thy guide;
Thy fears shall evanish-thy faith still increase;
No arrows shall harm thee-no evil betide;

Thy heart shall be comfort-thy spirit be peace.
Rejoice then, dear brother! rejoice evermore!
United to Jesus, what prospects arise!
Salvation is thine and, when life's dream is o'er,
In glory thy spirit shall soar to the skies.

WILLIAM W. DUNCAN.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Providential Preservation. The following remarkable incident is narrated by Holman the Blind Traveller :-There were two pilots living at George Town, but the captain of the port resided at Launceston. This was a Mr Walsh, who had been an officer in the Bridgewater, at the time she sailed from New South Wales, in company with the ship Cato, and his majesty's strip Porpoise, on board of which vessel was the celebrated navigator, Flinders. The desertion of the two latter vessels by the captain of the Bridgewater, is too well known to require a recital; but as the ultimate fate of the Bridgewater herself is not so generally known, I will introduce a short account of it. The fact of her two companions having run on a coral reef, was evident to all on board the Bridgewater; and when the captain expressed his intention of proceeding on his voyage, some of his officers remonstrated strongly with him on the inhumanity of abandoning the crews of those vessels, who had escaped from the wreck to a small part of the shoal that was above the level of the sea. Their endeavours to induce him to approach the reef to leeward, to afford them assistance, were, however, useless, as he persisted in his intention of prosecuting his voyage. They were thus abandoned to their own resources, from whence they were providentially delivered through the great exertions of Captain Flinders, who reached Sydney in an open boat on the 8th of September, where he procured vessels and speedily

repaired to their relief; while the unfortunate Bridgewater, with her perverse captain, foundered at sea on her passage from Bombay to England. Mr Walsh and another officer had left her in India, in consequence of a dispute with the captain, arising from the above affair; thus they were providentially preserved, from the circumstance of their having advocated the cause of humanity.

The demoralizing consequences of War.-Schiller, in his History of the Thirty Years' War, gives the following account of the taking of Magdeburg, by the soldiers of the Catholic League :-" Here commenced a scene, to describe which history has no language, poetry no pencil. Neither the innocence of childhood, nor the debility of old age; neither youth, sex, beauty, nor condition, could disarm the fury of the conquerors.'

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Fifty-three dead bodies of women, who had been beheaded, were found in the cathedral; the Croats amused themselves in throwing children into the flames,-Pappenheim's Walloons in murdering infants at the breast. Some officers of the Catholic League, shocked at these frightful scenes, entreated Tilly to stop the effusion of blood. 'Return in an hour,' was his stern answer, 'the soldier must have some reward for his toils.' The massacre lasted with incessant fury until the smoke and flames interrupted the plunderers. To augment the confusion, and prevent the resistance of the inhabitants, the town had been set on fire in different quarters, a storm arose which spread the flames with rapidity, and soon made them universal. The horrors of the scene were augmented by the dead bodies, falling ruins, and streams of blood; the atmosphere was heated, the intenseness of the vapour at length compelled the conquerors to take refuge in their camp. 'The entire amount of the slaughtered was calculated at thirty thousand.' The entry of the General took place on the 14th," the next day a solemn mass was performed, and Te Deum sung under a discharge of artillery!!!"

Happiness not in worldly honours and enjoyments.The following is the testimony of a well known worldling, Lord Chesterfield, to the vanity of the world and all its enjoyments:" I have run the silly rounds of business and pleasure, and I have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world; and consequently know their futility and do not regret their loss. I appraise them at their real value, which is, in truth, very low; whereas those who have not experienced, alway overrate them. They only see their gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare. But I have been behind the scenes; I have seen all the coarse pullies, and dirty ropes, which exhibit and move the gaudy machine. I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and admiration of an ignorant multitude. When I reflect back on what I have seen, and what I have heard, and what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself, that all that frivolous hurry, and bustle, and pleasure of the world had any reality; but I look upon all that has passed as one of those romantic dreams, which opium commonly occasions; and I do by no means wish to repeat the nauseous dose, for the sake of the fugitive dream."

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REPENTANCE.

BY THE REV. JOHN MACFARLANE,
Minister of Collessie.

MAN, considered as capable of religion, may be viewed in a twofold aspect; as a rational creature, and as a creature ruined by sin. Two separate classes of duties arise out of his condition. As a rational creature, he is bound in common with all other beings endowed with intelligence, to love God, and to love his fellows; and, as a fallen creature, he is required to cultivate those dispositions of mind, which indicate a restoration to spiritual sensibility, and a return to the path of obedience from which he has gone astray.

Of this latter class of duties, one of the principal is, repentance. Of duties I have said, for it is a duty enjoined upon us, as well as a grace we must receive from above. Its propriety and necessity arise out of the peculiar circumstances of the human race. Had there been no sin, there had been no occasion for the exercise of repentance upon earth, more than there is in heaven. Had there been no provision of mercy, repentance had been as unavailing on earth, as it is in hell. The permission of evil in our world therefore, notwithstanding the mystery which it involves, gives occasion for a display of the divine character, of which it must have been impossible for us otherwise to have conceived. In the purity and happiness of angels, we have a manifestation of God's goodness to bless. In the hopeless misery of fallen spirits, we have a proof of his justice to punish. In the restoration of the debased and corrupted mind of man to spiritual health and loveliness, we have an evidence of his compassion to heal.

That some such change of disposition and character as has received the general name of repentance is necessary, has been universally admitted. As it is allowed even by those who take the most partial views of the moral condition of man, that he is liable to sin, and chargeable with deficiency and error, so they acknowledge that in some sense, there is room and occasion for the exercise of this grace. But great variety of opinion, and much misapprehension, seem to prevail as to what really VOL. II.

PRICE 1d.

constitutes repentance, and the place which it occupies in the great work of the sinner's salvation. In pursuing our observations upon a subject so interesting, let our thoughts therefore be directed, in the first instance, to the nature of true repentance-the qualities by which this grace of the Christian life may be distinguished from every delusive appearance, which may be mistaken for its existence in the soul.

And, in our inquiry into the nature of repentance, let this simple principle be kept in view, that it is not merely a preparation for, but an actual part of salvation, that it is one of the immediate and necessary consequences of faiththe first step of the regenerated sinner's progress in the path that leads to the true perfection of his spiritual nature.

Viewing repentance as thus evincing the restoration of the mind to spiritual life as forming the incipient stage of its return to the love and obedience man owes to his Maker, we are furnished with a test, by which it seems not difficult to ascertain the reality of its existence. By a very easy application of this principle, we may conclude that repentance does not consist in regret for the present consequences of sin, nor in restraint put upon natural inclination, by a view of the evils to which indulgence might expose. The shame of detection in a dishonourable act-the loss of health, or of reputation, to which perseverance in an unlawful course might subject the rebukes of a conscience, which, though neither very enlightened, nor very sensitive, is not altogether seared, may fill the mind with deep and bitter remorse upon the review of sins which are not felt to be hateful, and may deter from giving form and expression to the secret purposes and desires of the heart. But this is not repentance; it indicates not the return of the soul to the love of holiness and of God.

For the same reason it is obvious, that mere dread of the future punishment of sin does not constitute true repentance. The infliction of that punishment is no doubt felt to be a terrible evil by those who suffer it. They have an experience of the bitter consequences of disobedience to God, far more vivid and overwhelming than any conception of these consequences we can form. Yet there is no penitence in the place of perdition

And that, not only because there is no hope of mercy there because despair sits enthroned amid blackness and darkness for ever; but because there is no disposition there to return to the allegiance and the love which all intelligent creatures owe to the Author of their existence. The punishment of rebellion is dreaded, and its continuance is contemplated with horror, but the moral nature is unchanged, or rather, the inveteracy of its hatred is increased by the infliction. Were the punishment of sin to be remitted, or its severity so far mitigated as to permit inclination to flow in its -natural channel, it would burst forth in an overwhelming torrent of impiety and crime. Now, though there is a difference between the state of sinners in this world, and of sinners in the next, just as there is a difference between the fear of punishment threatened, and fear for the continuance of punishment endured, the love of sin in both cases may be the same. He, therefore, who is deterred from the commission of sin merely by a regard to the future evils it may entail,-whose life is spent in a miserable conflict between the inclination to sin upon the one hand, and the dread of its punishment upon the other, is not a true penitent. There is nothing in his case that denotes the return of the soul to the love and the homage it owes to its Maker.

duction to holiness, the first step in the renovation of the soul,-it indicates, wherever it truly exists, the commencement of a process which will, and must be completed.

An application of the test by which we would detect the fallacy of certain appearances that may be mistaken for repentance, even that this grace of the Christian life forms an essential part of salvation, will lead us to the further conclusion, that the changing of one sinful course for another less flagrantly so, does not indicate true penitence of heart. A variety of causes may render it expedient or agreeable, to adopt such changes as have been alluded to; while the power of sin, and the disposition to commit it remain unsubdued. Men may want the inclination, or they may want the ability to pursue the course which they have hitherto maintained, while the tendency of an unsanctified mind may be evinced, by their pursuing another course more inviting, or more easy of access. Their conduct may be influenced by taste, or by fashion, or by necessity. A particular vice may so pall upon their appetite as no longer to allure. Opinion, like the flowing of the tide, may set powerfully in against the current of sinful inclination, and force it into an opposite channel. Or the means and opportunities may be wanting of giving a depraved taste the gratification it craves. Upon the same principle, even that repentance In such cases, there is no doubt, a change induced, is an essential part of the restoration of a fallen but it is a change of circumstances, not of inclicreature to holiness, we perceive, that no tempo- nation. The tendencies of an unrenewed heart rary and evanescent excitement of the feelings can are exhibited in different aspects, but its essential indicate the possession of this saving grace. That elements are the same. As the cloud, whether there is an adaptation of the truths of religion to gilded by the sunbeam, or laded with the shower, the condition and the wants of man, is a fact, is which next to the promise of the Spirit, is most of all fitted to sustain and encourage the efforts of the Christian ministry in exhibiting and enforcing those truths. There is probably no individual in a Christian country, and, especially, no indivi-human character may be influenced and adorned by dual living under an enlightened and faithful ministration of the Gospel, to whose conscience and heart the truth has not commended itself at some time, or in one or other of its various aspects. Its impressions on different minds may be more or less vivid and permanent. Its effects may be various, in awakening the fears, or in exciting the expectations of men, but a certain stirring of mind seems, in every case, to bear witness to the force and the reality of the representations of the Bible. In addition to such impressions, some affecting visitation of divine providence, in the form of personal affliction, or of heavy bereavement, or of remarkable deliverance from imminent danger, may seem to soften and subdue the heart. But, whatever may be the cause or the extent of such excitement,-how fair soever the blade of Christian promise may seem to arise, glittering to human appearance in the dew of the divine blessing, or basking to human appearance in the sunshine of the divine favour, if no maturity is attained, if no fruit is yielded, the seed of true repentance has not been planted in the breast. For, since repentance is the intro

only a floating vapour, and into how many varied forms soever it may be shaped by the winds of heaven, or how rich soever the hues with which it may be tinged by the radiance of the rising, or of the setting sun, is itself cold and changeless; so the

a variety of external causes and circumstances, while its original nature and tendencies remain.

And, as regret for the present consequences of sin-as fear for its coming punishment as a transient and unproductive excitement of the feelings, and the abandonment of one course of disobedience for the adoption of another, do not, when taken separately, constitute repentance; so though they were all combined in one individual, their union entitles him not to be viewed as a true penitent. And for this simple reason, that neither of them by itself, nor all of them united, indicate the return of the soul to the love of God, or to the desire of holiness. Each, and all of those feelings may be experienced, and those appearances displayed by the man, in whose heart the love of sin remains unbroken.

Yet, alas! how very often are such appearances mistaken for a contrite heart. Men cannot, indeed, fail to know that they need repentance; but the deceitfulness of sin mournfully appears in their cherishing a delusion. Their very sorrow worketh death-their very repentance needeth to be repented of. The offspring of delusion, it perpe

tuates the evil from which it springs. They mistake the spurious plant that grows up out of the natural soil of their own hearts, for that introduced by the hand of God, and if the axe of true conviction is not now laid at the root of the tree under whose shadow they repose in fatal security, it shall be cut down by the hand of death, and become wormwood in the cup of their future woe. This grace of the Christian life, as distinguished from every delusive appearance, is produced by His Spirit, who is exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance to Israel. It consists in an apprehension and feeling of the real character and malignity of sin. The true penitent desires to avoid and subdue it, because it is the object both of his dread and of his hatred. He mourns over even its partial existence within him, on account of the debasement it has occasioned, and the ingratitude it involves. He seeks not to cover or to extenuate his offences; and his ingenuous and unreserved confession of sin, is accompanied with an unfeigned desire to prevent or to remedy the evils, which his former disobedience may have produced. The grief which his repentance includes is felt for "secret faults" which no human scrutiny could detect, as well as for more open and flagrant violations of the divine law; and he has formed a resolution, deep, and steady, and in dependence upon a power higher than his own, to overcome all sin, as equally forbidden by the authority, and contrary to the love, to which he has yielded the unreserved homage of his heart.

His is not a sordid and reluctant abandonment of a course, which, but for the misery it entails, he would still pursue. His repentance is quickened in its exercise, and all the springs whence his godly sorrow flows, are opened afresh, by the full manifestation of pardoning mercy. Should he even attain the happy consciousness that his is the blessedness of "the man to whom the Lord imputeth not his sin ;"-should the sweet assurance be brought to his heart, that all his guilt has been carried away upon the head of the great expiatory sacrifice into the wilderness of oblivion, this very

assurance softens and melts his heart.

caravans in the East, to have been consigned to the management of five presiding officers, the chief burden devolved on Moses; and from the moment of his putting himself at the head of that laborious and difficult enterprise, he followed, with implicit faith, the directions of the heavenly guide, who preceded the horde of wanderers in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. Even at the starting-point there was a necesFor at Rameses, sity for his exercising this faith. which, lying near the modern Cairo, was probably the ancient Goshen, and which was the place of general rendezvous for all the Hebrew slaves from the different cities in which they were located, there were two routes to Canaan, the one northward by the sea coast, which was the nearest and most common,† the other lay along the western arm of the Red Sea, through the wild and inhospitable desert that divides Egypt from Arabia impracticable, as it ran through the heart of the country of the Philistines, a fierce and warlike tribe, who would be sure to dispute the entrance of so vast a body of people within their territories, and whose determined opposition might tend to dispirit the emigrants at the outset of their journey. By the latter, therefore, though much more circuitous, Moses was commanded to set out with the people; and while his own inexperience of this unfrequented track precluded the possibility of his being able to choose the stages best adapted for the accommodation of shade and water; and while the mind of so vigilant and reflecting a leader would anticipate the exhaustion in a short time of the few hasty out his having the means of dealing out further rations preparations that had been made for the journey, withto the people, he scrupled not to commit himself with his mighty charge to the hazards of an expedition through the interminable wilderness, confidently relying on his father's God for the necessary supplies, as well as for rendering them all the offices of a safe and unerring guide. The first two stages were at Succoth and Etham, both of which lay in the direct line of Canaan ; and nothing occurred during that preliminary part of their journey to put the faith of Moses and his followers to any severe test of its stability. They had, as yet, seen no cause to dread either the opposition of a new, or the pursuit of their old, enemy; and even if such encamped on the borders of the desert, into which a an unexpected crisis had arrived, they were already short march would have placed them beyond the reach of their pursuers, as the chariots and horsemen, of which the militia of Egypt chiefly consisted, could have for the broad hoof of a camel. Everything was calmade little progress over dry and yielding sand, fit only

Petræa. The former the divine oracle declared to be

The senculated to keep in high spirits both the people and their sibility of his soul is awakened and increased, by so leader, the one, exulting in their newly acquired indetouching a display of sovereign grace. The good-pendence, and feeling, as yet, only the pleasures, without ness of God leads to a deeper repentance. The contrition of the humble penitent is not an evanescent feeling, but a habit of the mind. It proves that upon his bosom there has dawned a new and holy light, which, while it unfolds to him the horrors of the captivity of sin, inspires the hope of deliverance from its bondage, and sustains the endeavour to be made for ever free.

SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF MOSES.
BY THE REV. ROBERT JAMIESON,
Minister of Westruther.
No. III.

THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.

IN conducting the march of the Israelites from Egypt, though it seems, after the immemorial arrangement of

either the tedium or the privations incident to a migratory life, and the other, buoyed up with the patriotic ambition of establishing his countrymen in the inherit ance of their fathers, marched on from day to day in the mutual satisfaction that every fresh journey was bringing them a stage nearer to Canaan. But at Etham, instead of pursuing their journey eastward, with the sea on their right, they were suddenly commanded to diverge to the south, keeping the gulf on their left,-a route which not only detained them lingering on the confines of Egypt, and, consequently, within reach of their ancient oppressors, but, in adopting it, they actually turned their backs on the land of which they had set out to obtain the possession. A movement, so unex

*In Exodus xiii. 18, it is said, "The children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt." The original means also "five in a rank," i. e., as the editor of Calmet justly remarks, embodied under five, according to the ordinary laws and usages of encampments and caravans.

The journey from Egypt to Canaan by this way could be accom plished in three days.-Phito de vita Mosis.

pected, and of which the ultimate design was carefully concealed, could not but excite the astonishment of Moses, who, as he was then approaching the pastoral tracts of Jethro, was well acquainted with the geogra phical bearings of that part of the desert. Nevertheless, he obeyed the mandate of the oracle; and by the ready and unhesitating part he acted, both in the then alteration of his course, and in the extraordinary crisis which followed, shewed that he was animated by a faith in the promise and the power of God, capable of sustaining the shock of the severest trials. Pi-hahiroth, the place where he was commanded to encamp, was a spacious bay, formed by the extremities of the mountain chains of Gewoubee and Attaka, which, after running at a great distance from each other on either side of an extensive valley, terminate almost in a junction on the western shore of the Red Sea. Never, to all appearance, was there a position more injudiciously taken, as it was not only, from its narrow limits, ill adapted for a regular encampment, but so totally unprovided with facilities either for resistance or retreat, that it would have seemed the last place a skilful and experienced general would have chosen, who had reason to dread the sudden incursions of an enemy. On either side it was surrounded by rugged and precipitous cliffs, the passes of which were so strait, that a single person Never, perhaps, was the fortitude of a man more could with difficulty penetrate them, while their sum- severely tried than that of Moses on this memorable mits, being easily accessible from without, afforded a occasion, exposed, as he was, to various and inevitable vantage-ground, from which an enemy could, with im- dangers, the most formidable of which, undoubtedly, was punity, discharge a shower of missiles on the defencethe vengeance of a seditious and desperate multitude, less crowd below. Before them was a gulf, many ready to burst in concentrated fury on his devoted head. miles in breadth,* a terrific spectacle to a people whom But not more immovable stood the rocks of Gewoubee the stern laws of slavery had never permitted to wander and Attaka amid the dashing of the waves of the Red from their native hovels, and who had never seen any Sea, than he was in that dreadful emergency amid “the greater expanse of water than the Nile, or the artificial tumults of the people:" and the attitude of meek and canals by which Egypt was irrigated. In this natural magnanimous composure in which he stood before that basin Moses halted with his followers; and scarcely had host of mutineers, maddened by the most lawless and they pitched their tents, when the plain behind them discordant passions, while an enemy, burning with reappeared glittering with armed men, in whose impetuous venge, was almost on the borders of the camp, and the movements, and scythe-armed chariots, and peculiar wild, pent-up locality showed that all hope of natura! war-cry, they descried their Egyptian oppressors. The relief or covert was vain, presents one of the sublimest apparition of fabled warriors that suddenly sprung from examples of moral courage to be found in the whole the teeth of the Cadmean dragon could not have struck compass of history. And whence did that courage the beholders with more astonishment and terror, than arise? Neither in the powers of his own mind, nor in the arrival of Pharaoh's horsemen spread through the the resources of experience, could he find any expedient ranks of the Hebrews. In their situation, all the dis- to meet the crisis. His pacific habits as a shepherd had advantages of which instantly forced themselves on totally unfitted him to form the line, or their view, where could they look for deliverance? The mountains on the right and left presented an insurmountable barrier to so vast a multitude. The sea, on whose shore they were encamped, had no ford, or, if it had, they were too little acquainted with its ebb and flow to trust to the tide so long a period as was necessary for transporting three millions of people.† Their only rational hope of preservation, therefore, lay in the direction of the defile through which their pursuers were advancing. But they were so panic-struck, that the idea of resistance was as much a stranger to their breasts, as the weapons of war were to their undisciplined hands; to flee on foot, and over sand, encumbered, as they were, with children, cattle, and other effects, was impracticable, from an enemy provided with the means of rapid pursuit; while to throw themselves on the tender mercies of the Egyptians, the only alternative left to them, seemed the most desperate course of all, their imaginations already picturing the bastinado, the dungeon, the triple chains, with which

the merciless tyrants would revenge their conspiracy of rebellion and flight. Among a people who thus saw no alternative between the sword of their assailants and a watery grave, all sense of subordination to their leader was instantly lost. Notwithstanding the obvious tokens of the divine guidance and protection in the cloud that preceded them, they had come, from daily familiarity, to regard it with the same indifference as the other natural phenomena, by which the heavens declare the presence and the glory of God. The little faith which had ever leavened the multitude at large entirely vanished from men, in whose breasts fear had extinguished every manly and pious sentiment; and by a transition, not uncommon to people in a state of desperation, they fell into transports of unrestrained indignation against the man, whom, but a little before, they had followed and revered as the delegate of heaven. From one end of the camp to the other, the mingled cries of despair and execration arose, husbands and wives, parents and children, looking upon themselves as victims ready for the slaughter, doomed to what their Egyptianized imaginations represented as the most horrible fate,-to die without the rites of sepulture, and leave their carcasses a prey to the unclean and carnivorous tenants of the desert.*

Much difference of opinion long existed with regard to the part of the sea which the Hebrews crossed. From the accurate researches of Niebuhr and Burckhardt, it seems now established, that it was about ten hours' journey farther down than the modern Suez, at a place called Birket Faroum, the pool of Pharaoh. The sea is here from 12 to 14 miles in breadth.

The narrative of Moses states that there were six hundred thousand adults, which, including families, will, according to the most approved principles of statistics, amount to nearly three milbions.

"Head the embattled legions on the field." And even if desperation had wound him up to a pitch of unwonted daring, and he had thought of resorting to one of those stratagems of war, by which the genius of ancient commanders often extricated them from an

enemy superior in power and numbers; yet how could he look for his efforts being seconded by a people unprovided with arms, unaccustomed to discipline, and incapable of acting in concert? There was still open to him the easier and more promising arts of persuasion; a power which has been successful often

"In wielding at will the fierce democracy," " and which "the old man eloquent," might have used to scatter oil on the elements of discord around him, and render them willing instruments of his designs. But in speech he was as rude as in arms; nor would all the talents of a Demosthenes and a Cicero, had they been united in his person, have availed in such an extremity, when the speaker was incapable of devising or pointing out to his hearers any scheme for their mutual preservation. Still less hope could he found on the natural virtues of his rod and had any of the Hebrews, appealing to its celebrated triumphs over the waters of Egypt, have urged him to exercise its powers in commanding the retreat of the adjacent sea, his pious

Every reader is aware of the elaborate care and great expense bestowed by the ancient Egyptians in embalming the dead.

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