The only remaining objection which is noticed by the author, is one which he considers as capable of receiving the same satisfactory solution.
It is objected that the name of Sesostris is not mentioned in Scripture, nor any feature of his history recognised. To this, the investigations made by Champollion and the calculations of Champollion Figeac are made to answer. The commencement of the reign of Sesostris is fixed by these, in the year 1473, B. C.; consequently, this was seventeen or eighteen years after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. While they were wandering in the wilderness, Sesostris overran Palestine, which was then in possession of its primitive inhabitants, and before the Israelites reached that land, the expedition of Sesostris had long passed, for Diodorus tells us, that it terminated in the ninth year of his reign. The silence of Scripture, therefore, as to Sesostris, is in no wise remarkable, as the people of Israel had no connexion with him, either as friend or foe.
The tenth chapter of the Essay, relates to the Egyptian Zodiacs. To our readers who have examined the subject at all, the history of these is now familiar,—the curious may turn to the Number of this Journal for December, 1827, p. 520, where will be found an ample description.
We have thus given a detailed description of the Essay of Mons. Greppo, and we cannot resist the pleasure before we close, of presenting the few remarks with which he concludes his discussion.
"We come now to the conclusion of our undertaking. With the aid of the new discoveries in Egypt, we think that we have shed some light upon various passages of the sacred annals, and that we have resolved, in a more satisfactory manner, certain difficulties which were opposed to their veracity. We have attentively examined the resources which the writings and monuments of Egypt afford, in the interpretation and defence of a religion, whose lot has been, in all ages, to meet with enemies, when it should have found only admirers and disciples. But the researches to which we have been attending very naturally, as we think, give rise to a thought consoling to the Christian.
"Providence, whose operations are so sensibly exhibited in the whole physical constitution of the world, has not abandoned to chance the government of the moral or intellectual world. By means often imperceptible even to the eye of the man of observation, and which seem reserved for his own secret counsel, God directs second causes, gives them efficiency according to his will, and makes them serve, sometimes even contrary to their natural tendency, to accomplish his own immutable decrees, and to propagate and support that religion which he has revealed to us. It is in this way that, consistently with his own will, he delays or accelerates the march of human intellect; that he gives it a direction such as he pleases; that he causes discoveries to spring up in their time, as fruits ripen in their season; and that the revolutions which renew the sciences, like those which change the face of empires, enter into the plan which he traced out for himself from all eternity.
"Does not this sublime truth, which affords an inexhaustible subject of meditation to the well instructed and reflecting man, but which needs for its development the pen of a Bossuet,—does it not apply with great force to the subject that we have been considering?
"Since the studies of our age have been principally directed to the natural sciences, which the irreligious levity of the last age had so strangely abused to the prejudice of religion, we have seen the most admirable discoveries confirming the physical history of the primitive world, as it is given by Moses. It is sufficient to cite in proof of this fact, the geological labours of our celebrated Cuvier. Now that historic researches are pursued with a greater activity than ever before, and the monuments of antiquity illustrated by a judicious and promising criticism, Providence has also ordered, that the writings of ancient Egypt should in turn confirm the historic facts of the holy books: facts against which a systematic erudition had furnished infidelity with so many objections that were unceasingly repeated, though they had been a thousand times refuted. We cannot doubt that human knowledge, as it becomes more and more disengaged from the spirit of system, and pursues truth as its only aim, will still attain, as it advances, to other analogous results.
"Thus, as has been often said, revealed religion has no greater foe than ignorance. Far from making it her ally, as men who deny the testimony of all ages have not blushed to assert, she cannot but glory in the advance of the sciences. She has always favoured them, and it is chiefly owing to her influence, that they have been preserved in the midst of the barbarism from which she has rescued us. Thus the progress of true science, the progress of light (to use a legitimate though often abused expression,) far from being at variance with revealed religion, as its enemies have represented,—far from being dangerous to it, as some of its disciples have appeared to fear, tends, on the contrary, each day to strengthen its claims upon all enlightened minds, and to prove, in opposition to the pride of false science, that this divine religion, confirmed as it is by all the truths to which the human mind attains, is the truth of the Lord which endureth forever."
We have ventured upon this protracted notice of the Essay of Mons. Greppo, because the subject itself is one of gratifying pursuit even to the mere scholar, but still more because it is vitally connected with the evidences of revealed religion in which we hope that none of our readers are altogether uninterested. There is in the Essay, no question as to any of the minor points of the Christian faith,—there is here nothing but what all may peruse with satisfaction. The question is one entirely connected with evidence; and science and literature are pressed fairly into the service of truth. The work is peculiarly valuable, because it is the only work connected with the labours of Champollion which has been made to wear an English dress. The works of both the Champollions are locked up in a foreign language from most of our readers; and we fear that the time will not soon come when there will be sufficient encouragement either to translate or publish in this country the splendid volumes of these brothers, who are, by their discoveries, raising up for France the gratitude of the world. Until there shall be liberality enough in our republic of letters, to enable us to possess these works, with all their riches of illustration, and thus have ancient Egypt brought to the inspection of American eyes, we would recommend the work of Mons. Greppo, as the best, and indeed only substitute at present known, always excepting the pages of our own journal.