ound himself
confronting all the the well-known faces, he remembered what it was
he was called upon to do. He supported himself against the wall of the
court, and opened the papyrus-roll handed to him by his favorite pupil,
the young Anana. It was the book which twenty-four hours ago he had
promised to begin upon. He looked now upon the characters that covered
it, and felt that he was unable to read a word.

With a powerful effort he collected himself, and looking upwards tried
to find the thread he had cut at the end of yesterday's lecture, and
intended to resume to-day; but between yesterday and to-day, as it
seemed to him, lay a vast sea whose roaring surges stunned his memory
and powers of thought.

His scholars, squatting cross-legged on reed mats before him, gazed in
astonishment on their silent master who was usually so ready of speech,
and looked enquiringly at each other. A young priest whispered to his
neighbor, "He is praying--" and Anana noticed with silent anxiety the
strong hand of his teacher clutching the manuscript so tightly that the
slight material of which it consisted threatened to split.

At last Pentaur looked down; he had found a subject. While he was
looking upwards his gaze fell on the opposite wall, and the painted
name of the king with the accompanying title "the good God" 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