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EGYPTOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

There is no point, says the Sunday School Times, where the Bible record and the claim of infidel scientists—not sincere and reverent, but skeptical and scoffing scientists—are at greater variance, than as to man's beginning in knowledge and character. The Bible says that man started on a high plane, and gradually declined through sin and neglect of his privileges; the scoffing student of science says that man started on a level with the brute, and has been gradually making progress from that beginning until now. Whenever a rude stone hatchet, or a bit of primitive pottery, has been found in some subterranean cavern, it has been claimed by the doubter of the Bible as a new witness against Genesis. But the believer in the Bible has rested on the Bible story, without having his faith cut to pieces by a stone hatchet. From no land has there come better material for the study of the comparative chronology of learning and art than from Egypt.

In view of the recent remarkable discoveries there, a Cairo correspondent of the Nation has referred to "the growing conviction of Egyptologists [not of Bible defenders, but of Egyptologists, mark you!] that the earliest Egyptian civilization we know of is the highest and that all that we know of it is its decadence." Why, the book of Genesis tells us that "The oldest pyramid is the largest and best built; the oldest temple—that beside the Sphinx at Gizeh—shows masonry since unapproached; the oldest papyrus—though as yet hardly understood—is the wisest; and the tombs and temples of the Theban period are filled with extracts from ancient books not yet found complete." That's it! All that is necessary to bring a scientist to the defence of the Bible story is—science.

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