THE EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The valley of the Nile is one vast sepulchre. Tombs and temples!
Temples and tombs! This is the sum of the monuments which ancient
Egypt has left us. Probably no equal portion of the earth's surface
was ever so populous, at once with the living and the dead. It is but
a narrow strip of territory--a line of green between two deserts; and
yet on this mere _ribbon_ of Africa lived the millions that made one
of the most populous and powerful of ancient empires. They were fed by
the marvellous fertility of the Nile valley, till they stood upon it
almost as thick as the ranks of corn that waved around them: and here,
when life was ended, they found a resting-place in the bosom of the
earth that nourished them, on which they slept as children on a
mother's breast. This strip of earth, long and narrow like a grave,
has been the sepulchre of nations. Here the myriads of Egypt's ancient
reigns--from the time of Menes--through the long line of the Pharaohs
and Ptolemies--the generations that built the Pyramids and those that
came after--laid themselves down to sleep in the great valley. Thus
the very dust of Egypt was made up of the dust of ancient Egyptians.
But this was only the lot of the common people, to mingle their dust
with common clay--their tomb the common earth, their end to be exhaled
into the common air, or to reappear in other natural forms, living in
plants, blooming in flowers, or in broad-leaved palms, casting a
shadow on the earth from which they sprung. But for her great ones,
more enduring monuments were reared to guard their dust and perpetuate
their names. No people, ancient or modern, ever lavished so much on
these sacred and pious memorials. They expended more on the tombs of
the dead than on the houses of the living, for they reasoned that the
latter were but temporary dwellings, while the former were everlasting
habitations. The kings of Egypt cared more for great tombs than great
palaces, and they reared such mausoleums as the earth never saw
before. The Pyramids were their tombs, and the mountains were hollowed
into royal sepulchres. The rock tombs of Beni-Hassan are cut in the
side of the hills. The barren mountain that looks off upon the great
Libyan desert, is honeycombed with vast and silent halls of the dead.
At Thebes the traveller, ascending from the Nile, winds his way among
hills of sand into a valley of desolation. The summits around are not
covered with pines like our own darkly wooded hills, nor do even the
rocks gather moss--but all is bare and desolate. The desert has
overflowed the earth like a sea, and not a shrub nor a blade of grass
has survived the universal deluge. Yet here where not a living thing
can be found, has been discovered underground the most remarkable
series of tombs which exists. A whole mountain is pierced with deep
excavations. Passages open into its rocky sides, running many hundred
feet into the bowels of the earth, and branching off into recesses
like side chapels. These Halls of Death are like kings' palaces, with
stately chambers broad and high, whose sides and ceilings are covered
with hieroglyphics and illustrative symbols.
A fact so remarkable as this, that the architecture of a great empire
which has built the most colossal structures in the world, has this
tomblike character, must have a meaning. The Egyptians were a very
religious people. They were not a gay and thoughtless race, like some
of their Asiatic and European neighbors. There is something grave even
in their faces, as seen in ancient statues and monuments. Their very
architecture had this heavy and solemn character. These colossal
temples, these silent sphinxes, seem oppressed with some great mystery
which they cannot reveal. These tombs show that the Egyptian mind was
full of the idea of death, and of another life. The Egyptians were not
Atheists, nor Sadducees. They believed devoutly in God, and in a life
to come.
How strongly the idea of another life had taken hold of the Egyptian
mind is evident from the symbols in their religion. The symbol most
frequently employed is that of the _scarabaeus_--or beetle--the image
of which appears everywhere, which by analogy teaches that life, in
passing through death, may be born to a new life. The beetle lays its
eggs in the slime of the Nile; it buries them in mud, which it works
into a ball, and rolls over and over, back to the edge of the desert,
and buries in sand. There its work is ended: nature does the rest. Out
of this grave comes in time a resurrection, and life is born of death.
The ostrich eggs hung up in mosques, have the same symbolical meaning.
The ostrich buries its eggs in the sand, and nature, that kind mother
which watches over all life, gives them being. Thus is conveyed the
same idea as in the analogy of the chrysalis and the butterfly.
Studying the religious faith of the Egyptians a little more closely,
we see that they believed not only in the immortality of the soul, but
in the resurrection of the body. The doctrine taught by Paul, was long
before taught by the priests of Egypt. Their tombs were not merely
memorials of those who had ceased to live, but resting-places for the
bodies of those whose spirits were absent but would some day return.
For this, bodies were embalmed with religious care; they were buried
in tombs hewn out of the solid rock, laid away in Pyramids, or in
caverns hollowed out of the heart of the mountains. There, embedded in
the eternal rocks, locked up with the bars of the everlasting hills,
it seemed that their remains would rest secure till the morning of
the resurrection day.
Further, they believed not only in immortality and in resurrection,
but also in retribution. The soul that was to pass into another life,
was to go into it to be judged. There it was to be called to account
for the deeds done in the body. Even the funeral rites indicated how
strong was the belief of a judgment to come for all who departed this
life. After the bodies were embalmed, they were borne in solemn
procession to the Nile (most of the tombs being on the western bank),
or to a sacred lake, across which they were to be ferried. (Did not
this suggest to later Roman mythologists the river Styx, and the
boatman Charon who conveyed departed souls to the gloomy shades of
Pluto?) As the funeral procession arrived at the borders of the lake,
it paused till certain questions were answered, on which it depended
whether the dead might receive burial: or should be condemned to
wander in darkness three thousand years. If it passed this ordeal, it
moved forward, not to its everlasting repose, but to the Hall of
Judgment, where Osiris sits upon his throne as the judge of all
mankind. This scene is constantly represented in sculptures, in
bas-reliefs, and in frescoes on the walls of tombs. In one of them a
condemned wretch is driven away in the shape of a pig! (Was it here
that Pythagoras, who studied in Egypt, obtained his doctrine of the
transmigration of souls?) Before Osiris is the scribe, the recording
angel, who keeps a faithful record of the deeds done in the body. A
long line of judges--forty-two in number--sit arrayed as the final
arbiters of his fate--each with his question, on the answer to which
may depend the destiny of the departed soul.
The "Book of the Dead" (copies of which are still found wrapped up
with mummies: several are in the British Museum) gives the answers to
be made to these searching questions, and also the prayers to be
offered, and the hymns that are to be sung, as the soul enters the
gloomy shades of the under-world.
In this Egyptian doctrine of a future life there are Christian ideas.
Some indeed will say that Egypt gave rather than received; that she
was the mother of all learning and all wisdom in the ancient world;
that the Greeks obtained their philosophy from her (for Plato as well
as Pythagoras studied in Egypt); that the Eleusinian mysteries came
from Africa; that Moses here found what he taught the Hebrews; and
that even the Christian mysteries and the Christian faith came from
the banks of the Nile.
There is certainly much food for reflection in this reappearance of
certain religious ideas in different countries and under different
forms. But there is a contrast as well as a resemblance. While the
Hebrews learned so much from the Egyptians, it is very remarkable that
they did _not_ imbibe that strong faith in the reality of the
invisible world, which lies at the foundation of religion. One would
suppose that the Israelites, coming out of Egypt, would be full of
these thoughts, and of the hopes and fears of a life to come. Yet in
all the books of Moses, rarely, if ever, are these motives addressed
to the Hebrews. The German critics argue from this that the Hebrews
did not believe in another life. The late Dr. Edward Robinson, the
distinguished Hebrew scholar, said that he could not find that
doctrine in the Old Testament. Without admitting such an extreme view,
it is certainly remarkable that that idea is much less prominent in
the Old Testament than in the New. It is not Moses, but Christ who has
brought life and immortality to light.
But the Egyptian doctrine of a future life, while very curious and
interesting as a study of ancient belief, is utterly unsatisfying. The
ideas are detached and fragmentary, and wholly without evidence or
authority; they are merely the crude fancies of mythology, and not the
precise teachings of Revelation. And so in all the tombs and temples
of Egypt there is nothing which can relieve the doubts of a troubled
mind, or the sorrows of a heavy heart.
I have had some sober thoughts while floating on the bosom of the
Nile. We cannot but see the world through our own eyes and through our
moods of mind. To those who have left their dead beyond the sea,
foreign travel has many sad and lonely hours. The world seems cold and
empty, and even the most religious mind is apt to be haunted with
gloomy thoughts. This is not a mood of mind peculiar to atheists and
unbelievers. Many devout men, in seasons of mental depression, are
tortured with doubts whether, after all, their religious faith is not
a delusion and a dream.
And so many dark and bitter questionings come to me here in this land
of sepulchres. I have come to Egypt to learn something of the wisdom
of the Egyptians. Tell me then, ye tombs and temples and pyramids,
about God; tell me about the life to come! But the Pyramids speak not;
and the Sphinx still looks towards the East, to watch for the rising
sun, but is voiceless and mute. This valley of the Nile speaks of
nothing but death. From end to end its rock-ribbed hills are filled
with tombs. Yet what do they all teach the anxious and troubled heart
of man? Nothing! All these hills are silent. Not a sound, or even an
echo, comes from these dark sepulchres. No voice of hope issues out of
the caverns hollowed in the bosom of the hills. The hard granite of
the tombs itself is not more deaf to the cry of human anguish, or the
voice of supplication.
I turn from the monuments of man to nature. I stand on the bank of the
Great River, and ask if it brings not some secret out of the heart of
Africa? Tell me, ye night winds, blowing from African deserts; tell
me, ye stars shining in the African heaven (this sky of Egypt is so
pure and clear that the stars seem higher and more distant from this
lower world), what light can ye throw on this great mystery of death?
And the stars twinkle, but speak not, and the palm trees quiver in
the night wind, but give no answer; and the great Nile flows on
silently to the sea, as life flows on to eternity. Nature is dumb; the
great secret is not revealed.
For the revelation of that secret we turn not to Egypt, but to
Jerusalem. While the Egyptians groped darkly after the truth, how do
these dim shadows, these poor emblems and analogies, set forth by
contrast the clearer and better truth of revelation! All that is
written on the tombs of Egypt; all that is carved in stone, or written
in hieroglyphics on ancient sarcophagi; all that is built in temples
and pyramids; is not worth that one saying of our Lord, "I am the
Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live."
We spent Christmas day at Thebes, where a number of English boats had
drawn up to the landing to keep the day, so dear to the hearts of
Englishmen throughout the world. On Christmas eve they were decorated
with palm branches, and at night were lighted up with Chinese
lanterns, while row-boats were floating about, the Arab boatmen
singing their wild, plaintive melodies.
Christmas brought a scene, if not so picturesque, yet far more sweet
and tender. It had been our good fortune to meet there Rev. Dr. Potter
of New York, the rector of Grace Church. He was going up the Nile with
Miss Wolfe, of Madison square. They were on two dahabeeahs, but kept
company, and anchored every night together. On Christmas day there was
a service on board Miss Wolfe's boat, which was attended by all the
English parties. It was held on the upper deck, which was spread with
carpets and covered with an awning on the top and sides to protect us
from the sun. Whether it was the strange scene, occurring in a distant
part of the world, or sad memories which were recalled by these
anniversary days, seldom has a service touched me more. It was very
sweet to hear the old, old prayers--some of them almost as old as
Christianity itself--to which we had so often listened in other
lands, and to join with the little company in the Christmas hymn:
"Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King;
Peace on earth and mercy mild;
God and man are reconciled."
Dr. Potter read the service in his clear, rich voice, following it
with a sermon which was quite extempore and brief, but so simple and
so appropriate to the day that it went to every heart. And when at the
close was celebrated the communion, we all felt how pleasant it was in
such a place, so far from home, in a country surrounded by the ruins
of the temples of old idolatries, to join in the worship of Him who on
this day was born to be the Light and the Hope of the world. Better is
this than all that Egypt can teach us about a life to come.
And so we turn from these great temples and tombs, which only mock our
hopes, to Him who has passed through the grave, and lighted the way
for us to follow Him. Let scholars dispute the first intent of the
words, yet nothing in the Old Testament or the New, more distinctly
expresses what I rest upon than this: "I know that my Redeemer liveth
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!"