met his eye. Starting
from these words he put this question to his hearers, "How do we
apprehend the Goodness of the Divinity?"

He challenged one priest after another to treat this subject as if he
were standing before his future congregation.

Several disciples rose, and spoke with more or less truth and feeling. At
last it came to Anana's turn, who, in well-chosen words, praised the
purpose-full beauty of animate and inanimate creation, in which the
goodness of Amon

[Amon, that is to say, "the hidden one." He was the God of Thebes,
which was under his aegis, and after the Hykssos were expelled from
the Nile-valley, he was united with Ra of Heliopolis and endowed
with the attributes of all the remaining Gods. His nature was more
and more spiritualized, till in the esoteric philosophy of the time
of the Rameses he is compared to the All filling and All guiding
intelligence. He is "the husband of his mother, his own father, and
his own son," As the living Osiris, he is the soul and spirit of all
creation.]

of Ra,

[Ra, originally the Sun-God; later his name was introduced into the
pantheistic mystic philosophy for that of the God who is the
Universe.]

and Ptah,

[Ptah is the Greek Henhaistas, the oldest of the Gods, the great
maker of the material for the creation, the "first beginner," by
whose side the seven Chnemu stand, as architects, to help him, and
who was named "the lord of truth," because the laws and conditions
of being proceeded from him. He created also the germ of light, he
stood therefore at the head of the solar Gods, and was called the
creator of ice, from which, when he had cleft it, the sun and the
moan came forth. Hence his name "the opener."]

as well as of the other Gods, finds expression.

Pentaur listened to the youth with folded arms, now looking at him
enquiringly, now adding approbation. Then taking up the thread of the,
discourse when it was ended, he began himself to speak.

Like obedient falcons at the call of the falconer, thoughts rushed down
into his mind, and the divine passion awakened in his breast glowed and
shone through his inspired language that soared every moment on freer and
stronger wings. Melting into pathos, exulting in rapture, he praised the
splendor of nature; and the words flowed from his lips like a limpid
crystal-clear stream as he glorified the eternal order of things, and the
incomprehensible