While British infidels were admiring the sacred writings of the Hindoos, and holding them up before the world as superior to the word of God, French skeptics were busy in a similar employment. When Napoleon invaded Egypt, in 1798, he took with him a large corps of scientific men. In the ceiling of a temple at Dendera, in Upper Egypt, some of these scientists discovered a stone, tablet covered with strange characters. These characters, it was concluded, were a representation of the relative positions of the sun, moon and stars at the time the temple was built; and, calculating backwards, it was found that this could not be less than seventeen thousand years ago. This tablet was taken from the ceiling of the temple and carried away to France, and placed in the national library in Paris. Hundreds of thousands came to see the antediluvian monument, and infidel commentators were never wanting to inform them that this remarkable stone proved the whole Bible to be a series of lies. One of the discoverers, afterwards a professor in the University of Breslau, published a pamphlet, entitled, "Invincible proof that the earth is at least ten times older than is taught by the Bible." During the next thirty years, scores of such publications followed; and the base slander received many additions and improvements, until it was a common saying that this stone proved that "the priests of Egypt were carving astronomy on their pyramids ten thousand years before Adam was born."
It did not shake their credulity in the least, that no two of their wise men were agreed by some thousands of years, how old the stone was—that no one even knew the first principles of the Egyptian system of astronomy, and that none of them could read the hieroglyphics.
But, in 1832, the curious Egyptian astronomy was studied, and it then appeared that this object, which had caused so much commotion, was simply a calendar stone to aid in the measurement of time; and that the positions of the sun, moon and stars were so placed to enable common observers to ascertain the beginning of the year. At length, by means of the Rosetta Stone—which furnished a key to these hieroglyphics—Champolion and others learned to read the inscriptions on Egyptian monuments.
[Rosetta Stone, showing present and original form, and specimens of Greek, Coptic and Hieroglyphic characters.]
The Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French, in 1799, at Rosetta, Egypt. When in a perfect condition it was a tablet of black basalt, three feet high, two feet five inches wide, and ten inches thick. The inscription was in three languages:
Coptic, Greek and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. On the publication of the inscriptions it was found that they were the key to the hieroglyphic characters. It was then discovered that the names of Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, were engraved on the stone, as well as the names of the Roman emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and Domitian. The inscriptions revealed the fact that they had no reference to early Egyptian history. The edifice in which the first-mentioned stone was found was
simply a heathen Roman temple, built between the fourteenth and eighty-first years of the Christian era. Even at the present time, in the noon-day of modern science and so-called civilization, astrologers, mediums, clairvoyants and fortune-tellers by the hundred find a profitable business among those who consider themselves too learned, wise and progressive to believe in the word of God. One infidel lecturer even advertises that he will reveal to you the secrets of the future and cure you of any disease you may have, if you will only enclose in a letter a few hairs taken from your right temple and—and—a—ten dollar bill. Concerning the future life, infidels have every variety of oracles, conjectures and suppositions; but for their guesses they have no proof. The only thing upon which they seem agreed is in denying the resurrection of the body. According to their ideas, a poor, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obliged to fly over the world at the sigh of any brainless fop or silly, sentimental girl, or the bidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of all the great and good men and women that have lived upon the earth. To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it rejects the gospel, for only through it life and immortality are brought to light. A year or two since, the leader of American infidels, Robert Ingersol, was called to deliver a funeral oration over the body of his brother. In that short discourse there were many beautiful sentiments: