Bunyan’s _Pilgrims Progress_ enables us to understand this Book of the Dead. The aim of both is the same. Each presents a picture of the hindrances and difficulties, both from within and from without, and of the requirements and aids of the soul, in its struggle to attain to the higher life. The Egyptian doctrine places the scene in the passage from this life to the next. The Elstow tinker places it, allegorically, in this life. But this is a difference that is immaterial. The ideas of both are fundamentally the same. The consciousness to which they both appeal is the same. The old Egyptian of 5,000 or 6,000 years ago received the teaching of his book on precisely the same grounds as we ourselves at this day receive the teaching of the Pilgrim. With how much additional authority does this discovery invest these ideas! The mind must be more or less than human that arrays itself against what has, so overwhelmingly, approved itself _semper, ubique, et omnibus_. The antiquity of the book is very great. Portions of it are found on the mummy cases of the eleventh dynasty. This shows that it was in use 4,000 years ago. But this was very far from having been the date of its first use; for even then it had become so old as to be unintelligible to royal scribes; and we find that, in consequence, it was at that remote time the custom to give together with the sacred text its interpretation. All collections of Egyptian antiquities contain copies of this book, or of portions of it. Several are to be seen in our British Museum. Of course this abundance of copies results from the nature of the book, and the use to which it was put. It was literally the viaticum, the itinerary, the guide and hand-book, the route and instructions, for the mummy to and through that world, from which no traveller returns. Each of its sections is accompanied by a rubric, and generally illustrated by a vignette, directing, and showing the mummy, how the section is to be used. I know nothing more instructive and more touching in human history than one of these old Egyptian Books of the Dead, with its doctrine, its invocations, its hymns, its prayers, its instructions, its rubrics, its illustrations. All its images are of the earth earthy. How could it be otherwise? The soul that has kept all the commandments, that has been tried in the balance and not found wanting, that has fought the good fight to final triumph through all the dangers, and temptations, and pollutions, that beset its path, reaches at last only a purer ether and eternal light.