history of what once had been. All had been overthrown: but the Christian ideas and sentiments, which had done the work, were too grand and simple for Egypt, where the most inveterate of all instincts was for the mind to be swathed. And so the new revelation was soon obscured. The reaction came in the forms of asceticism and theology. But asceticism and theology are not religion; or, at all events, not such religion as can inspire much nobility of soul, or which has any power and vitality, except under the circumstances which created it: and so this, too, fell; and the religion which superseded it—that of the Egypt of to-day—is, in its simplest expression, a reversion to the old oriental idea, which seems always to have been a necessity there, of authoritative, unchangeable legislation, combined, however, with the Christian idea of the brotherhood of mankind. The form in which the Christian idea has been incorporated into it is that of an universal religion, which gives no sanction to exclusive pretensions, either of nationality, or of caste. It is natural for the traveller to wish that he could behold Egypt in its old world order and glory; but he must console himself with the reflection that what perished was what deserved to perish—what had become narrow and false; and that what was good, true, and wise, including the lessons Egypt’s history teaches, survived the crash. Of all that we are the inheritors. * * * * * The fortunes and the future of the Christian idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind, which gave the new doctrine so much of its power to overthrow the wisdom of old Egypt, interests and concerns us all. From the days of its first triumphs down to our own day it has been actively at work in Europe. Through all these centuries it has been gaining strength. The first logical deduction from it which, like its parent, becomes a sentiment as well as an idea, is that of universal equality, for if all are brothers, then none is greater or less than another. The flower with which this offshoot blossoms is that of humanity. Under the old exclusive systems, which placed impassable barriers between peoples, cities, and tribes; and then between the classes of the same community; and had therefore, said to human hearts, ‘So far may you go, and no further; beyond this you need not—you ought not—to feel pity; beyond this hatred and repulsion, the sword, the torch, the chain are only to be thought of;’ the idea of humanity had been impossible: but when all men are recognized as in essentials equally men, that which makes them men assumes the definite form of this idea. ‘Honour all men’—that is, do all in your power to elevate every one you may come in contact with, and nothing that has a tendency to degrade any human being, whatever may be his complexion, blood, caste, or position—was, we know, a very early injunction.