The long procession of the Pharaohs passes, and each inscribes indelibly on rocky walls his faith in the great God who holds human destiny in his hands.
Moses comes, and leads out of Egypt the chosen people to prepare the way for the expected Messiah.
The Assyrians and the Persians come, and, while seeking to read their destiny in the courses of the stars, pay homage to the same great hope.
The Greeks come, and, even amid gross licentiousness and idolatry, erect magnificent temples, in attestation of a belief in human destiny which, however degraded, still survived.
The Romans come, and in this mystic land lay aside their legal codes, and add their testimony to the same great truth.
The Christian hermits come, and make the storied stones of the Pharaohs re-echo with their triumphant songs.
The Arab comes, and, as morning and evening he gazes into the East, sees visions of the glorious Mecca of his hopes for which the Sphinx has looked so long.
Last of all, the modern traveler comes, and he journeys in vain if he does not recognize in all this aspiration and all this yearning the attestation of those spiritual truths which to him the risen Christ has revealed.
As in material nature every unemployed organ distinctly points to a previous use or to a future fruition: so, in the spiritual world, every striving is a promise of a possible good; and these yearnings of humanity, which have come down through the ages, are as truly a promise of the Eternal as were the words spoken to Abraham on the plains of Mamre.
Coming home from the East, we can not fail to see, more clearly than before, how artificial are most of the conventionalities of our modern civilization, and how greatly such cares of the world tend to obscure the great distinction between the spiritual and the material which is ever present to Oriental thought; and this is especially true in our own country, where the demands of material nature are so pressing, and where the physical wants, which our highly artificial life entails, so completely engross the attention of us all.