PHARAOH AND GALLIO.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 336, 13 August 1875, Page 3

PHARAOH AND GALLIO.

(From the * Saturday Eeview.')

One of the stock characters to be de-; flounced' from the" pulpit.is "Pharaoh happy when he: does not get f.pelled;"" Pbaroah."-: In Egyptian history-" there are: many. Pharaohs"; in the dialect of the pulpit '< here is only one./ To make orie.pha--raoli answerable for the" deeds "of -another is as unreasonable as to make one Ceesar answerable for the deeds of, another—to: father the crimes of JSero, for.instance, on Marcus or Julian. But this does not greatly matter when a Scripture character is to be improved to edification. The conventional Pharaoh is Pharaoh wh6 would.' not let the childvenof Isreal go, plus the. Pharaoh who caused their babes to 'be thrown into the river. ■- The narrative in Exodus distinguishes the two as clearly.as can be; at a certain stage of -story, it is said in so many words that "the King of Egypt died." And without such distinct statement, no one could believe, even with nil allowance for patriarchal length of j'eavs, 1 " that the King to whom Moses was sent at the age of eighty was his own 'quasigrandfather, the father of the princess by whom, he had been adopted. Yet, notwithstand-: ing the impossibility, notwithstanding the" direct staten.ent the other way; the two, we suspect, are relied into one in common belief, and it is certainty" not uncommon to preach about them as one and the same. "We have heard a sermon which was com - | posed throughout on the supposition that the two Kings of Egypt were theßame,

but in which, at one stage, the preacher j put in the qualification, " if these two Kings weie the, same."" The effect-was somewhat as if Cardinal Manning, the other day at Canterbury, when he was describing the disputes of Henry 11. with his Archbishop", had mixed up with them the disdutes .of Henry the •l i with, his 7 also, adding the qualificationr "it these - same. * But the Cardinal, though labouring under the common delusion of his class that' all the old worthies of, England were believers the cooked-up dogmas of yesterday, had at least got up the' most obvious iacts of Ms story.'l "Our preacher, on the other hand, would, seem not to have looked at the book of Exodus till his sermon was;written. Then, it would, seem, it stared .him in the face thaj; the single Pharaoh of this discourse was in truth two distinct Pharaohs. The manifest truth of the story called for so much of homage as might'be set forth, hi Richard the Thirds phrase, but ands." But to; have-sacrificed the whole sermon-to a mere truih f of facts would'have been, 100 much, especially-'as the contained one piece of analogy which might have done credit to .more famous-preachers. By water Pharaoh Lad sinned "water he was to. be punished. He who. had thrown'Heb.'ew children inWthe'jSile was himself to, be d; owned in/the IlecL-Sea Tiefore 'the eves of the rescued Hebrews.- -, To be sV. e Egyptologists tell us chat thePha-i raoii h'mseli was not- J di owned -with- his host: end any one wh"o readslhe narrative in\Exqdus, withihe care ~ with" which' She niostlikely would read ai'y narrative whiclt is not in the B >->le, will see that it is nowhere distinctly said that he was drowned. A careless reader would almost ; ceiiainly takeTpr'gianted that he was; but'nt is most certainly riot said so. ~ But it' might to expect a preacher to attend, at alllo "such'ungodly subtleties:as this,-fit only ibMlie'studyofihe text of pagan writ-, ers who have no spiritual application. T It would certainly betooinuch to expect him to sacrifice to a<iy such cor sideraiion the beautiful and instructive parallel about the sea and the river. Slilbifliere-'yeas.the distinct statement of the histoiy,that'the ; Pharaoh who was punKhed-by waier—for punished, in any case-he was by the loss of his army; —was a_difTeieni man horn the Pharaoh' who had'sinned by water. 'Here came "the trial. Was the' beautiful be sacrificed to the fact? of 'the case-?'- /That" was more than the 'pieacher- could' bring; himself to .* So S.he beaiitiajl:,itfuslration; was kept,-.and the facts were put off wiih. an " '£" " ' ~* But/iliis is not all ihat the unhappy Pha'raoh has io-undetgo.-~He is always set up as a gazing "stock in the character of " blasphemer." jSome of the stories told of William Rufus amount to blasphemy in the strict sense ; they imply beliel in God's 'being, and yet defiance of Him. And it is , mentioned, as one ot' the- special \irtuesJof I St.'.Louis, that he ate ver. in any case iused reviling to God or the saints. : the 'preacher cotnmo uly uses Pharaoh as an example of blasphemy in iln3 sense. Re is J partly led astray by the custom of j'ountranslatorSj.by .which, in-imitation-,of •Jewish, Greek, and practice, they commonly substitute "Loid "for'the-pro—-'per name of the Deity. Pharaoh is made ■ Id-defy-a power ■whicTuEe acknowledges as. !"Lord."' But what Pharaoh really says •is A J irress*age is delivered/ to .him in the name of" 1 Jehovah the God. ;of trie 'Hebrews,'" a description which' most -likely was altogether sLrange t<>.him. -He t 'asks who the God of the Hebrews is ; lie believes iruOsiiis, Isis, and .-the rest ofthe Gods of the Egyptians; of the God of the Hebrews' he knows nothing, and "will not 'yield obedience _in his name. To "take another instance, "careless .Gallio" has passed into another pro\eib. '' He cared for none of those things." What 'things?- In seimons and proverbs he-is the man who is careless about'religion, who will not give it a moment's thought.; He is careless in his personal capacity, he does toot lake heed" to the.ithings which concern his own soul. But the Gallio of ,the narrative in the Acts—to say nothing of his chaiacter as biouier of Seneca—is quite anoiher kind of peison. He is a magistiate who/does noi care as he ought to have cared for a gross breach of the peace. He does not &!ep iti as he ought to have done to punish the giossest_ foim o> con

teaipt oi' court done under bis own eyes. We saw the other day-a report, of a Liberalionist meeting, where Gallio appeared, in another light still. - He was. the model magistiale, who refused to interfere in the theological comroveisies'-'of contending sects. So far, so good; but surely it is pari of the duty of a magistrate to keep members of contending sects from beating one another, above ad to.keep them fom beating que in couil. . When the Jews. chai ; ge& Chris----ians "with " worshipping Gea v contrary to 'the ■law," the Proconsul felt much as a modern Judge would feel if he were suddenly called on to decide the controversies of (Jpneral and - Particular Baptists. He drove them from the judgement-seat, a little too scornfully perhaps, and without any breach of substantial justice. " Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the jiidgment-seat; and Gallio cared ■ for none of those things." What tilings ? Surely riot the' truths of Christianity, of which he had not heard a. word, but the disgraced! up; oar which was going on in the" court, which-he oughi to have stopped, but did not. He cared for none of those things ; he did not take the trouble to in-" terlere to save the unhappy Sosthenes from his beatings, or in truth to maintain the dignity of his own office. Let us suppose all the Proiestants beating Cardinal Manning, or all the Papists beating Mr. Whalley, under the eyes of a judge or" magis-" trate sifting in court, and the judge 51 car-, ing for none of those things," doing nothing to save the victimof persecution; then we shall see what was the real fault of Gallio. The fault was a grievous one, but one quite different from that for which he is preached at; he is " careless Gallio " indeed, but carol ess in quite another way about quite other things than thote which have made him pass into a proverb.