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The fearful flood had passed away, and nature,
recovering from the terrific shock of the contending
elements, hastened to reclothe the earth with a garb
consonant to the future wants of that race for which
the command had gone forth. “Be fruitful and
multiply, and replenish the earth.” To Adam had been
given but one command; a command, however, that
embraced all others,—obedience to God. To Noah and
his sons this com<<395>>mand had been amplified,
though its tenor was still obedience to God alone.
But evil, indeed, is the heart of man from his
youth; and how soon was the special providence
extended over Noah and his sons forgotten by their
own immediate descendants, even whilst Noah and his
sons lived still as witnesses of its truth! Abraham
was born two hundred and ninety-two years after the
flood, fifty-eight years before the death of Noah,
and yet at this early date had idolatry almost
blotted out the knowledge of the living God. But it
was to re-illuminate that faithful spirit, and its
light was to be so firmly impressed upon the hearts
of his descendants, that it should fade nevermore.
We
will make a short digression here, to take into
consideration the arguments derived from the ancient
records of Egypt, as expounded by Champollion and
others, from which they have deduced a longer
antiquity for Egypt than the Bible record warrants.
We will explain here (for our younger readers) how
ideas were conveyed by the hieroglyphical or
symbolical characters used by the ancient
Egyptians, and see if they will not agree with us,
that although these characters were engraven on
stone, and found upon the monuments of priests and
kings, they have but little weight when
contradicting (taking for granted they should even
do so) a plainly-written and well-authenticated
document.
Like the Hebrew when written without points, the
symbolical writing had no vowels; but, unlike the
Hebrew, it had many arbitrary signs representing the
same letter or sound. Even if this did not present
sufficient difficulties to the correct reading of
the events detailed, these arbitrary signs were of
the Coptic tongue, a language not used by any
nation now living on the earth. Now, suppose the
Hebrew was a dead language, only open, and that
imperfectly, to the researches of the learned and
curious, and yet we should take its mouldering
characters to convey an account of an event or a
chronicle; בד would
represent the consonants b, d, in the word abode;
but by supplying other vowels how many other words
might be formed from these two consonants? And as hieroglyphical writing is presented to the eye, not
through the form of an arbitrary sign, but by the
outline of a beast, a bird, or the drawing of
something in <<396>>the arts or mechanics as they
existed in that day, the difficulties of arriving at
a correct understanding of the event detailed is
still yet farther increased. But suppose that the
learning and ingenuity of man are sufficient to
master all these difficulties, and that the history
or record of the numerous monarchy said to have
lived and reigned in Egypt has been correctly read,
unless we have other corroborative testimony, this
only proves that the Egyptians, like all pagan
nations, wished to convey an idea of a remote
antiquity, as proving them more illustrious in their
origin. Who believes that the Chinese records of the
long duration of their empire are true, or in the
fabulous history of the Greeks and Romans?
From the entering of the household of Jacob into
Egypt to the Exodus was four hundred and thirty
years (Ex. xii.) and the seventy souls had increased
“six hundred thousand on foot that were men, besides
children,” and we may safely estimate the whole
number of both sexes who left Egypt at two millions,
showing a doubling of the descendants of Jacob once
every twenty-eight years. The family of Jacob
descended into Egypt five hundred and seventy-four
years after the flood, and we will assume that the
population of the world for the first three hundred
years after the flood doubled itself once in twenty
years: for the Almighty to enable man to fulfil his
injunction, “be fruitful and multiply,” had
prolonged the lives of the first five generations
after the flood, till length of days was no longer
necessary for this purpose. At this ratio of
increase, when Abraham was eight years old, the
population of the earth would have been 262,144:
from this date to the going down of Jacob into
Egypt, a period of two hundred and eighty-two
years, at a doubling of the earth’s population once
in twenty-eight years the ratio of increase of
Israel’s descendants, the number of human beings
then existing would be 268,435,456; and allowing the
population to double itself once in thirty years
during the time of the sojourn of the children of
Israel in Egypt, at the Exodus, in the thousand and
twelfth year* after the flood, the
<<397>>population of the earth would have amounted
to more than it could well provide for; but to stop
the too great increase of population, war, famine,
and the pestilence had no doubt been at work.
We
have thus shown by a simple arithmetical
calculation that there was ample time between the
deluge and the entrance of Jacob into Egypt to found
and build up mighty nations; and although in this
age we have built no cities like Babylon or Thebes,
and erected no temples like Luxor or Carnac, nor
raised any monuments equal to the Pyramids, yet all
these great works are only the aggregate of a
certain amount of human labour, not equal, perhaps,
to that required in the building of some of our
modern canals or railroads. As to the question of
the time required in their construction, we must
recollect that the ancient governments were absolute
in their nature, and could cause the whole
population to aid in carrying out their designs, if
they so willed it. We have a modern example to show
how soon a great work can be accomplished by a
people under an absolute governor. Mahommed Ali
undertook to make his great canal, men, women, and
children were impressed for the work; and although
twenty thousand persons are said to have perished
through the fatigue caused by the labour, or the
want resulting from so large a body of the
inhabitants being withdrawn from their regular
pursuits, the undertaking (if our memory is not, in
fault) was completed in two years.*
We
think then we have satisfactorily proven that no
reason exists for setting aside that part of the
chronology of the Bible between the deluge and the
Exodus, and will now proceed in our inquiry without
farther digression.
From the calling forth of Abraham, himself and
descendants were to be separate and apart from all
other people, and they should be hedged in as it
were with peculiar observances, tried in prosperity
and schooled in adversity, until those great truths
so necessary for man’s guidance should form a part
of their <<398>>nature to that degree, that they
could not, even if they wished, entirely divest
themselves from their influence. The very dislikes
that their peculiar doctrines engendered in the
minds of those with whom they came in contact, was
one of the grand means of impressing them more
firmly on their own hearts. The pure stream quaffed
by Abraham was imbibed by Isaac, and supported the
wanderer Jacob in his weary pilgrimage. In the
children of the latter was the germ of a nation; and
what means so powerful to bind them together, when
they increased and multiplied, as to plant them
within the borders of a people who held their
pursuits in abhorrence? Perverse is the heart of
man! Contradict him, decry the ideas which he
advances, and he is ready to endure the gibbet and
the stake in witness of his firm belief in doctrine
which, perhaps, if no opposition had met him, he
would have thrown carelessly by.
But in addition to
the differences existing between the customs and
faith of the Egyptians, and the manners and religion
of the Hebrews, another force, that of common
insults and equal misery was to bind the latter
still more indissolubly together; since all suffered
from an aggravated slavery, a universal and cruel
wrong, from which none was to be exempt. How
deadening that usage was to the intellectual
development of the people their after-history too
sadly proved. The only advantage, as far as the
human mind can perceive, resulting from their
bondage, was to cause such a spirit of nationality
to spring up amongst them, that, having its
foundations imbedded in misery and anguish, no
after-injuries, how great soever the sufferings they
produced, no accumulated wrongs, how great soever
their burden, should in the future have the power of
destroying this nationality.
The majesty of God was now to be displayed in all
its terrible power! A God of love to the oppressed!
of vengeance to the oppressor! Not to a single
individual, not before one family was the divine
manifestation be made; but before a nation
powerful—before a people degraded by heart-rending
bondage. Proud of his power, glorying in his battle
array, what cared Pharaoh for the unknown God? He
laughed in scorn at the request of the messenger to
allow his slaves to depart, and leave the land they
had enriched by years of toil to
<<399>>the care
only of his Egyptians, and to lose this immense
property;
and for what? The commands of a Being whom he knew
not, though he knew not the God of Israel, nor
dreaded his power, as chaff before the wind it
scattered him—it withered his mighty hosts; thus
teaching the sublime lesson to man, that though God
for a time may delay the exercise of his justice,
the bolt, though long withheld, is still
all-powerful to destroy.
To
the scoffer, to the unspiritualized, the act of
faith required by the Most High of the Israelites
prior to their redemption may seem of little worth.
Of what efficacy could the blood of a lamb sprinkled
on the door-posts of their house be in warding off
the doom of the first-born? Could the All-seeing not
discover the abode of the Hebrew without this mark?
Ah, yes! it was to be a pledge of their faith in
God, of their obedience to all his commands, whether
their minds could grasp their meaning or not. As the
infant rushes to its mother’s arms confident of
protection from the supposed danger, so was Israel
required to have a childlike faith and trust in
their Heavenly Parent. We may think after the
wonders displayed in Egypt before our ancestors,
that their bosoms should have been divested of all
fear, and though the sea in front of them debarred
their egress from the land, when they heard the
approach of Pharaoh’s conquering host, they should
have rejoiced that the time had at length arrived to
repay some part a that ill-treatment they had
received in times past. But is it a wonder that the
heart of the slave should faint in the presence of
his master—that the many, long‑used to bow before
the few, should still tremble at the prestige of
their presence? Their faith was too new to imbue
them with courage in the presence of an overwhelming
danger; and He, who could have given that strength
to them, left them to the schooling of their own
hearts, to teach them yet again that their
deliverance was to be brought about by God alone,
and that the agent He employed in their
preservation, should be the avenging sword by which
their adversaries should be destroyed.
But if they showed little faith under the
deadening effects of so terrible a bondage, how much
less do we? We have no dreaded enemy in our
rear to make our hearts cower; we dwell in a land of
peace, where Providence, with a lavish hand spreads
plenty <<400>>around; and yet so small is our faith,
so weak is our trust in Divine Omnipotence, that we
daily break the covenant of Sinai, to provide for
that morrow which may never dawn for us; or, in our
haste to reach some earthly goal, we brush from our
paths the sweet flowers of purity, humility, and
love. |
