After this the left side of the door, the threshold of the door, the lock, the key, the panels, the door posts, the ground, and finally the porter, speaks. Here we resume the literal translation of the manuscript: "The porter says to him: I will not announce thy name if thou hast not told me mine. He replies and says: Thy name is He who knows the constitution of the heart and who knows what is within the bosom.

"The porter says to him: I will bring thee before the god who is present.

"The Osiris Pamont says to the porter: Who is the god who is present?

"He replies to him: It is he who is great in the world. He says to him: Who is he who is great in the world?

"He replies to him: It is Thot, who will save thee. "Thot speaks to him as follows: Let them bring you. Come before Osiris! I will bring thee in. What have you

to say for yourself?

"The Osiris Pamont speaks before Thot, saying: I am pure from all evil, from all sin. I am not among those who in their day have erred. Thot says to him: I will bring thee before him who is in the heaven of fire; before him whose divine abode is surrounded by living cobras, in whose house is found the water which envelops the earth.

"Enter, he adds, before Osiris. I will bring thee in there. I will provide thee with the bread from the store-house; the offerings, hotep, of the store-house. O Osiris Pamont, son of Pamont! I will forever justify thy speech."

All of this, though still impregnated with Gnosticism, is much clearer than the corresponding paragraphs of the one hundred and twenty-fifth chapter of the hieroglyphic Book of the Dead.

In short, the demotic ritual of Pamont constitutes, as a whole and in its details, a work intelligently conceived, harmonious, and entirely original. It is also signed and dated:

"This has been written by Menkara, son of Pamont, for his great father whom he loves, Pamont, son of Pamont, son of Hermodorus, brought forth by Tsepsemont, in order that his soul might live before Osiris Ounnofre, the king of the whole world, the king of the abyss, the chief of Amenti. May he bless Menkara his son before Osiris, the great god, and also his children, forever! Written in the tenth year of Nero Claudius Cæsar Sebastos Germanicus, Autocrator."

What strikes us in this subscription is that the son, considering his father a god, asks him to bless him and his children forever before the supreme god.

This Egyptian doctrine appears to be the same that began to invade the rest of the world, at the epoch when, on the site now occupied in the city of Rome by the Christian convent of Minerva (St. Mary upon Minerva), there rose a temple of Isis, of which numerous absolutely Egyptian remains have recently been discovered; at the time when, on the site of St. Germain-des-Pres, in Paris, there rose another temple to this same Isis, of whom one statue, preserved until the last century (when it was relegated to a place under the porch), was then destroyed, because some good women performed acts of adoration before it; at the epoch when, as we see from Petronius, even in Italy the pillage of the boat of Isis was considered one of the greatest of sacrileges.

Egyptian doctrine came before the people with these two faces: one all Gnosticism, the other all morality. Of these two faces the one which most faithfully represented the old traditions in all their purity was certainly that of morality. Egyptian ethics is at times of striking beauty. Far superior to Jewish morality [?], it sometimes equals Christian ethics. The son of Pamont has summed up the great features of this ethics in a clear and forcible manner.

His father, justifying the words of the good being, conforming himself to his precepts, must not merely do no evil,

but he must also do right. He not only did not kill, did not steal, did not commit injustice; did not bear false witness; did not defame; did not dishonor any one's hearthstone; made no one infirm; caused no one to hunger or thirst; caused no one to weep! But he gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, a boat to him who, having lost his own, found himself thus deprived of his means of existence. He also fulfilled all his duties towards all classes of society; wounding no one by his pride, respecting those whom he ought to respect, not making his people work to excess, not wronging any slave in the mind of his master: showing himself in all his life, in all his actions, in all circumstances, a good being, like the supreme good being, carrying in himself the image of the divine Osiris, and by this means becoming another Osiris after death.

In the study of Egyptian law, our admiration is often excited by the equity, the gentleness, of this legislation, which, in so many features, resembles our own, particularly in all that concerns the condition of women, the rights of children, etc., which often may be be regarded, if we are unprejudiced, as being superior to it. This legislation is the daughter of that ethics, which so profoundly separates the Egyptian religion from the infamous paganisms of Asia Minor, for example.

In this religion the Gnostic part, the mythology properly so called, could change infinitely, from city to city, from epoch to epoch. But that which remained always and everywhere, that dominated even to the point of causing all the rest to be neglected, was the idea of the good Being and of his imitation by man, called to be good like him. The Egyptian temples in Italy, Spain, Gaul, Brittany, in all parts of the ancient world, were specially consecrated to the myth of Osiris, that is, to the mythological history of that good Being whom one must imitate upon earth. One must not be astonished that this myth spread at the same time with

Christianity and was confounded with it in the Valentinian and in the other Gnostic sects. This was only the acting out of this Egyptian morality, the wisdom of Egypt, which was so much admired by the sages of Greece and of Judæ.

It seems to me that among all the monuments from the valley of the Nile, established for eternity, none had a more solid base than this Egyptian wisdom, which rose higher and higher in succeeding generations, but which appears to us in its earliest form brilliant, colossal, dominating the ancient nations, in the maxims of Ptah-hotep, while the pyramids were building, and more sublime, more resplendent still perhaps, in that negative confession of which we find so many reflections on the funeral tablets of the ancient empire.

ARTICLE III.

IS SPACE A REALITY? OBSERVATIONS ON PROFESSOR BOWNE'S DOCTRINE OF SPACE, MOTION, AND CHANGE.

BY THE REV. professor C. M. MEAD, PH.D., BERLIN, GERMANY.

SINCE in the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1886 I made some animadversions on Professor Bowne's doctrine of Time, President Strong has discussed (Jan., 1888) the general subject of Modern Idealism. While his article may seem to have covered the whole ground, and to have refuted this Idealism in all its assumptions and positions, it may yet be well to follow it up with a more limited discussion, which seems to be needed as a complement to my previous article, and which, while less comprehensive than Dr. Strong's able discussion, may yet serve to bring out more sharply the points of difference between the Idealist and the Realist. In presenting these criticisms, I desire again to express my almost unqualified admiration of the ability and brilliancy of Professor Bowne's discussions of the deepest and driest of metaphysical problems. But together with a vast deal of clearheaded and masterful presentation of important truths, he advocates a system which, I am firmly persuaded, cannot stand the test of thorough inspection.

With respect to space, as with respect to time, our author finds himself constrained to say that it cannot be regarded as an objective reality, but only a way or form in which the mind views things. He admits that this notion conflicts with that of spontaneous thought. But, he thinks, we are