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embodies all that is intelligent, he is Imhotep; when he is he who
accomplishes all things with art and verity, he is Phthah; when he
is God good and beneficent, he is Osiris.’What the scribe means
by these words is the mysterious infinite which animates the
universe, the eternal, impenetrable to eyes of flesh, but perceived
vaguely by the eyes of the spirit. Behind the sensuous appearance,
behind the manifestation of the divine nature wherein the popular
imagination fancied it saw that nature itself, he beheld confusedly
a being obscure and sublime, a full comprehension of whom is
denied him, and the feeling of this incomprehensible presence
lends to his prayer a deep and thrilling accent, a sincerity of
thought and emotion, a thousand times more touching than that
medley of amorous puerilities, of mystic languors and morbid
contrition, which is so often the substitute for religious poetry.”
There were two deep-rooted conceptions in the Egyptian mind
which had much to do with the purity and sublimity of his
religious ideas. One of these was the conception of a divine law [247]
which governed the universe, and to which the gods themselves
had to submit. The other was that of a moral God, of a“good
being”who rewarded—not piety but—uprightness, and punished
iniquity. The world was ordered and controlled, not by chance or
caprice, but by a fixed law, which was, characteristically enough,
impersonated in the goddess Mât. And this law, unlike the blind
destiny of the Greek or Roman, was at once divine and moral;
it not only represented the order of the universe, against which
there was no appeal, but it also represented an order which was
in accordance with justice and truth. The law which all must
obey under penalty of being cast into outer darkness, was an
intelligent and moral law; it commended itself necessarily and
instinctively to all intelligent beings whose thoughts, words, and
deeds were alike righteous. Only those who had conformed to
it could be admitted after death into the paradise of Osiris or
into the company of the gods, and the seal of justification was
the pronouncement that the dead man had“spoken the truth,”