CONTENTS. iii 8. Omero, dalla Rapsodia IX. dell' Iliade: La Reposta de Achille. Nella Versione inedita di Ago VI. 1. A Chapter of Autobiography. By the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone, M.P. 1868. 3. The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance. A Political Expostulation. By the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone, M.P. 1874. VII. Forgiveness and Law. Grounded on Principles In- terpreted by Human Analogies. By Horace 382 Beardsley's Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D.D. . THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1874. ART. I.-1. Egypt's Place in Universal History. By C. C. J. BARON BUNSEN, D.Ph., &c. Translated from the German, by SAMUEL BIRCH, LL.D. London: 1867. Vol. V. 2. Elteste Texte des Todtenbuchs, nach Sarkophagen des altägyptischen Reichs im Berliner Museum, herausgegeben. Von R. LEPSIUS. Berlin: 1867. 3. Sai an Sinsin, sive Liber Metempsychosis veterum Egyptiorum. Edidit HENRICUS BRUGSCH. Berolini : 1851. 4. Die ägyptische Gräberwelt. Von HEINRICH BRUGSCH. Leipzig: 1868. TRUTHS which no man of himself could ever have conceived were known to sages of both East and West long before the mission of Moses. Considering the superior antiquity of Moses before Herodotus, and of most of the Hebrew prophets before the Greek and Latin poets, we might conclude that the younger borrowed from the elder, and that the wiser classics owe some of their wisdom to the Bible, and such a conclusion we consider to be reasonable enough. But, after all, it is undeniable that we now possess written monuments of older date than the oldest of the inspired Scriptures, and that these monuments contain truths which inspired writers had not yet given to the world, but which no man could have known unless they had been revealed to him, directly or indirectly, by God. How is this to be accounted for? Was there not a primeval revelation from above? Did VOL. XLIII. not some portions of mankind retain the tradition of a faith transmitted through Noah to the postdiluvian world? And was not that tradition continued down to the giving of the Mosaic law, and thence more fully and authoritatively sent to us by authenticated prophets, and by Christ and the Apostles made known yet more perfectly? We believe that it was so. There were ancient vestiges of a faith in the resurrection and immortality of man, a final judgment, and a future state of reward or punishment; but these were things unseen, and therefore not possible to be known by direct evidence or human testimony; could only be made known at first by Divine teaching, and only such teaching could command entire faith. "Faith cometh by hearing," and men cannot believe what they have not heard on sure authority. It is, however, just possible that a speculative philosopher might put forth notions of resurrection and a future state. He might, by bare possibility, devise such a process of conjecture concerning the existence of a soul, distinct from the body, and capable of living without the body, as a few Deists of the last century ingeniously imagined for themselves, and, after such a happy conception, he might pursue his fancy without restraint; but, although he had commanded the assent of many thoughtless lovers of what is marvellous, and believers of what is incredible, he would certainly provoke the contradiction of many others, and raise such a controversy on insufficient data as would be likely to issue in general unbelief. We see not any trace of such controversy, but there are signal traces of a widely spread faith in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, a final judgment to be pronounced on men's actions, and a future state. Recently deciphered monuments, bearing these traces, powerfully stimulate curiosity and invite study. The monuments to which we now refer are chiefly Egyptian and Assyrian. The latter are comparatively few, but are likely to be much increased and very much better known within a very short time, and we shall therefore but glance at them in passing; the former, from Egypt, are now read with comparative ease by a daily increasing number of Egyptian scholars. Amidst much error, and nearly lost in an inextricable agglomeration of absurdities, they nevertheless contain so much of what we can only conceive to be originally revealed truth, that some sceptical critics fancy them to be in some way the originals of our Sacred Books, and imagine that either we have in the Bible a mere reproduction of truths at first evolved by dint of reasoning, or that the works of our inspired writers are no more than copies of originally heathen legends. The earlier generations of mankind, they may say, knew the doctrine of a future life, and therefore no inspiration was needed for Job, or Jesus, or St. Paul, to teach over again. what the elder civilisations of the world believed already. This, however, is forgetting that what was originally known had ceased to be thought of, or was obstinately disbelieved, or was so obscured by fable and falsehood, that a renewed revelation, and nothing less, was required to bring back life and immortality to light. We therefore attach high importance to the evidences of a primeval faith that are interwoven with the remains of old systems of religion, however false. A chief witness of the kind is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. When that large collection of mingled myth and tradition is laid side by side with the inspired writings of the Bible, notwithstanding their utter contrariety in all but the little that is common to them both, the fundamental truth that was dimly shadowed forth and sadly disguised in Egypt, appears clear as meridian light in Palestine. The Book of the Dead, and a few other books of the same kind, if indeed they be not all fragments of the same, contain unquestionable fragments of the primeval revelation of immortality in which we venture to believe. The very learned Egyptologues whose names are placed at the head of this article, all of them above suspicion of credulity or speculation, have enabled us to read the book. Dr. Lepsius, many years ago, published the Egyptian text, and Dr. Birch gave the world a complete translation of it into English. The Oldest Texts of Lepsius comprehends the seventeenth chapter only, but is accompanied with a very comprehensive treatise. The fragment translated by M. Brugsch is also admirably edited, and the whole constitutes a mass of evidence on the subject before us amply sufficient for the information of any inquirer. With regard to this part of the religion of the ancient Egyptians, Herodotus and Diodorus the Sicilian had long been the chief authorities. Herodotus is the more valuable of the two. He had visited Memphis and Thebes, the capitals of Lower and Upper Egypt, and also the famous |