THE ALTAR AND PILLAR TO JEHOVAH.

IX.

The reader is requested to bear in mind that the object of this first division of our subject, "The Altar to Jehovah," is simply to show that the Great Pyramid was truly an altar-in its battlemented condition an altar of self-sacrifice, and in its finished or tombic condition a memorial altar, or altar of witness-and that whatever is said respecting the builder of it is incidental, being involved in the exposition of passages of Scripture touching the utilitarian objects of its construction. The Scripture at present under consideration is Jehovah's address to Shebna in the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah, beginning with a clear proof of the convertibility of a treasure-stronghold into a monumental tomb. Having considered some of the reasons for believing that the person with whom Shebna is compared was Joseph, and that his "sepulcher on high" was the king's chamber in the Great Pyramid, it is now in order to enquire what is meant by

(9) His Habitation in a Rock. A sepulcher for the dead and a habitation for the living are in a manner the correlatives of each other; and if the "sepulcher on high" was the cavernlike king's chamber, with its empty sarcophagus, it is natural to suppose that the correlative "habitation in a rock" was the cottage-like queen's chamber, with its empty niche. The only incongruity in this supposition is that the relation of the sepulcher for the dead to the habitation for the living, in respect to altitude, is the reverse of what is customary and seemingly proper; but this reversal of one of our most ordinary ideas of the fitness of things is to be explained by whatever adequate reason can be assigned for the half-finished condition of the subterranean chamber, showing, as it does, an abandonment of the use for which that chamber was intended, and a transfer of this use to the king's chamber, as indicated by the presence of the

granite sarcophagus in this chamber rather than in that. To any one who believes in the inspirational character of the Great Pyramid, the explanation of this anomaly very readily suggests itself. It is simply that the transfer was made, and that the sepulcher for the dead was exalted above the habitation for the living, by a man inspired with the grand truth of his own resurrection from the dead, as well as that of the patriarchs before him, through faith in the promised Redeemer, who said before his crucifixion, as truly as he says still, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die."

A habitation for the living may also, I think, be very properly assigned to a life-like statue of the inhabitant, such as "the diorite statue," traditioned to have once occupied the niche in the queen's chamber, if I am right in identifying this statue with the co-called "statue of Cephren" in the Boulak museum. Such a statue, though as life-like as Pigmalion's Galatea, could have no use for air-channels, never having breathed the breath of life, and, therefore, being incapable of revival. On the other hand, a dead body, having once lived, might aptly represent the dead in trespasses and sins, and their capability of resurrection to newness of life through the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit; and so the king's chamber, with the dead body in its granite sarcophagus, was furnished with air-channels, while the queen's chamber, with the diorite statue in its limestone niche, was furnished with none. Moreover, the queen's chamber, with its salt-incrusted vestibule, its walls of submarine limestone, its sunken floor and its depressed niche, speaks of the sadly remembered, conservative, fosciliferous past, all the more pathetically for its desertion by the life-like statue that once commemorated the presence of its mortal inhabitant. The king's chamber, on the contrary, above and beyond, regnant with the upheaved granite of its walls, of its raised floor, of its roof and chambers of construction, and of the raised block and uplifted portcullis in its antechamber, speaks of the triumphant and glorious future, of the resurrection and the coming of the Christ in his kingdom, all the more eloquently for the absence

of the prophetic bones that once occupied its granite sarcophagus. These contradistinctions between the king's and queen's chambers, including that between the dead body and the diorite statue of the treasurer who "hewed him out a sepulcher on high and graved a habitation for himself in a rock," seem to me very appropriately symbolic of the contradistinction between "the house of Joseph" and "the house of Judah."

But what proof is there that the traditional diorite statue in the niche of the queen's chamber was an actuality, and that it was sufficiently life-like and far-removed from monstrosity not to have been intended as an object of idolatrous worship, as some suspect it to have been? I have already intimated its identity with the Egyptian statue, or rather statue in Egypt, called Cephren's; but as to the correctness of this ascription, whoever will attentively consider it from the standpoint of philosophic and artistic criticism, must recognize in the so-called statue of Cephren such a wonderful superiority to all purely. Egyptian types and works of art, and such a striking similarity in physiognomy to the descendents of Joseph through Ephraim and Manasseh, as to furnish the best of reasons for believing it to have been a work of divine inspiration, representing neither Cheops nor Cephren, but their divinely inspired prime minister, the Hebrew builder of the Great Pyramid. Cephren, having been the survivor of the good Philitis by more than forty years, must have been the Pharoah to do him appropriate honors. For this reason I think that Cephren not only placed the body of Joseph in the coffin in the king's chamber, but also placed his statue in the niche of the queen's chamber, and that this became an object of idolatry under Mycerinus. I think, too, that when Rateses, the grandson of Cephren, became aware of the desecration of the Great Pyramid in the abstraction of the bones of its deified builder, he ordered a removal of the idolized statue of this august personage to Cephren's temple of the Sphinx, affording in this natural association of ideas equally natural reasons for the development of the supposition that the statue was Cephren's.

The necessity for an explanation of the fact that the statue in estion is called Cephren's, whether it is identical with the tra.

ditional diorite statue in the niche of the queen's chamber or not, is the absolute absurdity of the supposition either that it was a representation of an Egyptian king or the work of an Egyptian artist. In this dilemma reason justifies us in considering it both the representation and the work of an inspired Hebrew. There is nothing more incredible in this than in the fact that the statue of Thorwaldsen was the work of his own hands. Such a juvenile stage of artistic development as that which the ancient Egyptians exhibited in their ambitious attempts at sculpture and pictorial representation-showing such want of all ideas of grace and rules of perspective, and so forcibly reminding us of the similar, though better productions of the Aztec relatives of the Egyptians in Central and South America-seems to me no less inconsistent with a rational belief in the so-called "statue of Cephren" as the work of an Egyptian sculptor than with a rational belief in the so-called "Pyramid of Cheops" as the work of an Egyptian architect. Considering all the artistic truth to nature wrought into the one, and all the mathematical truth to nature wrought into the other, the inspirational theory is the only rational explanation of either; and to whom can the inspiration be more reasonably ascribed than to "such a man" as the interpreter of Pharaoh's dreams? For the accomplishment of works four thousand years ago equal to the highest art and science of the present day, we may look on Joseph after his ten years' imprisonment on account of his purity and goodness, and enquire, in the language of Pharaoh, "Can we find such another as this, a man in whom is the spirit of the Gods?" (Genesis) xli, 38.) Certainly the exceptional statue of which I speak is far more conspicuously superior to all unquestionably Egyptian statuary than the Great Pyramid is to all unquestionably Egyptian pyramids; and no one can recognize this fact without seeing that it is no more an image of Cephren than the Great Pyramid was the tomb of Cheops. Like the latter, it is "in Egypt, but not of Egypt."

Sir Henry Rawlinson, in his 'History of Ancient Egypt,' expresses the opinion that Cheops and Cephren, or Khufu and Schafra, as he prefers to call them, were the greatest tyrants that the world has ever known, earning the hatred and detesta

tion of their subjects by compelling them to build the two oldest and greatest of the pyramids, for no other purpose than to entomb their royal corpses, in honor of their infamous lives. And yet, in spite of his natural expectation of seeing the features and expressions of a Nero or a Caligula in a reputed statue of one of these tyrannical monsters, this is what he says of it:

Shafra is the first of the Egyptian kings whose personal appearance we can distinctly and fully realize. Two statues of him, in green basalt, his own gift to the temple of the Sphinx, show him to us such as he existed in life, bearing upon them as they do the stamp of a thoroughly realistic treatment. The figure of the king is tall and slender, the chest, shoulders and upper arm well developed, but the lower arm and the lower leg long and slight. The head is smallish, the forehead fairly high and marked with lines of thought, but a little retreating, the eye small, the nose well shaped, and the lips slightly projecting, but not unduly thick; the chin well rounded, and the cheek somewhat too fat. The expression, on the whole, is pleasing, the look thoughtful and intelligent, but with a touch of sensuality about the under jaw and mouth. There is no particular sternness, but there is certainly no weakness in the face, which is that of one not likely to be moved by pity or turned from his purpose by undue softness of heart. (Volume I, page 57.)

Considering the demand of the moral nature in every true man for self-conscious consistency, I think it probable that Rawlinson's physiognomical judgment of the supposed statue of Cephren conformed, as far as the stronger part of his moral nature would allow, to his a priori judgment of the character of the original. Had he taken this diorite or greenstone statue, as I do, for an image of Cephren's prime minister, produced by the minister's own hand under the influence of the spirit of truth in filial loyalty to nature, it is likely he would have seen no "touch of sensualty about the mouth," and no occasion to remark that the face "is that of one not likely to be moved by pity," though he might have thought of it as belonging to one not likely to be "turned from his purpose by undue softness of heart," his purpose being the fulfillment of the designs of Heaven for the greatest good of the greatest number, and for the reëstablishment of the church and kingdom of the Heavens on earth, in "the times of the restitution of all things."

From a utilitarian standpoint, the niche in the queen's chamber, with its width of over four feet to its height of thirteen feet on the sides, and with its depth of about three and a half feet to its height of fifteen feet in the middle, affords clear evidence of an intentionally grand and well-proportioned accommodation for a statue and pedestal of noble dimensions. Imag