51 
from the Power of Apophis or the Evil One. From a very 
early period in Egyptian history, the myth — I use the term 
in no irreverent sense — of a personal Deliverer became an 
integral part of their theology. Many of the already- cited 
texts allude to it by implication, others directly state it. 
The fact is in itself indisputable, and the doctrine stands more 
prominently forth in the Egyptian theology than in any other 
except the Budhist and the Christian. Furthermore — and this 
feature of the cultus must be distinctly noted — it is only in the 
Egyptian and the Christian faith that the ideas of deliverance 
by a deity, and of [acquired] imputed righteousness underlie all 
the minor points of belief. The vicarious righteousness of the 
Budhist differed in this, that it was a righteousness of passive 
holiness, a negation of wrong-doing rather than a life of right 
action ; it made all life, animal and vegetable, equally sacred, 
without having regard to the personality or organization of 
the living being. The Egyptian and the Christian faith equally 
also regard life sacred, as a divine principle, but differing in 
degree. The Budhist would not pull up a blade of grass from 
the prairie, a Christian would not wilfully destroy a camel-thorn 
in the desert. Wrongly acting in the spirit of Pope’s lines — 
“ Who sees with equal eye, as Lord of all, 
A hero perish or a sparrow fall; 
Atoms or kingdoms into ruin hurled, 
And now a bubble burst, and now a world,”* — 
a Gooroo is taught to consider a flea and the man upon whom it 
feeds as of equal value in the sight of Boodh ; but the Christian 
regards a man as of far more value than many sparrows. 
The Egyptians esteemed sin or righteousness as reducing 
man to the rank of beasts, or elevating him as equal to 
the gods themselves. Horus redeemed men from the 
assaults of moral and physical evil, and the ideas of 
purgatory and of reward were measured according to the 
magnitude of the offence, independent of the rank or person of 
the offender, and solely in regard to the character of the indi- 
vidual culprit. These points of agreement between the Hamite 
and the Semite faith, between the metaphysical and the doctrinal 
theologies, are of the highest antiquity. It is not my province as 
an archaeologist to attempt to explain how or why these things 
should be. I present to you the facts, such as great Egyptian 
scholars of various religious schools of thought have interpreted 
them to be. I hold that they are the result of a traditional faith, 
Essaij on Man , lib. L, sec. 3. 
E 2 
