Your truly devoted son,
Sesostris
LETTER X.
Island Palace of Rhoda.
My dearest Mother:
It is with heartfelt pleasure I assure you of the recovery of the queen. The heart of the noble and devoted Remeses is lightened of a heavy weight of solicitude. Smiles once more revisit his features, and cheerfulness replaces his late depression.
"Sesostris," said he to me this morning, as we were returning in his galley from a visit to the pyramids and vast city of tombs that stretch between Memphis and the Libyan hills, "if my excellent and dear mother had died, I should have been made one of the most unhappy of men. I shall to-morrow, in testimony of my gratitude, offer in the Temple of Osiris a libation and incense to the God of Health and Life, wherever in his illimitable universe such a Being may dwell."
"Then you would not, my dear Remeses, offer it to Osiris himself?" I said.
"You have heard, my friend," he replied, "my views of these mysteries of faith: that I look, through all material and vicarious representatives, onward and upward to the Infinite and Supreme Essence of Life—the Generator, Upholder, and Guide of the worlds and all that dwell upon them. From a child I have never entered, as my dear mother does, into the heart and spirit of our worship. There is something within me which tells me that we consist of a twofold being—a soul within a body. The soul must have had a Soul as its creator; therefore, O Sesostris, do I believe in a Supreme Soul of the universe—the Fountain of all souls; a Being of thought, invisibility, intelligence, and reason, each supreme and eternal; for I can conceive no creator of a Soul, nor end of its existence. Before all things that actually exist, and before all beings, there is One Being whom I would designate, for want of another term, God of gods, prior to the first god or king of earth, remaining unmoved and unapproachable in the singleness of His own unity. He is greater than, as He was prior to, all material things, of which He is the sole fountain; and He is also the foundation of things conceived by the intellect, and from His intellect spring the spirits of the gods and the souls of men."