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y 4 . THE PRESBYTERIA THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS? Was He Drowned in the Red Sea? New light has recently come to us upon this mooted question of the centuries past. It comes in the form of the identification of a mummy that is now lying in the Bulak museum at Cairo, in Egypt. The reader needs not to be told that the word Pharaoh is not the name of a particular man but is rather descriptive of an office: it is similar to the word "King" or "President." Thus we have Pharaoh Ramcses I., who reigned just before the birth of Moses; and Pharnrtli PomAcoe TT ~ ^ J ^ 1? .xx., icigntu lur sixty-seven years in the days when Moses was being educated in Egypt, and who cruelly oppressed the Israelites; and Pharaoh Manephthah, who was king in the days of the ten plagues of Egypt. Of this last the question has been asked thousands of times whether he was drowned, along with his army, in the waters of the Red Sea. On this point the book of Exodus is silent. It declares that the host of Pharaoh was drowned, but not that Pharaoh himself was in the Sea. "And the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh; . . . there remained not so much as one of them." "His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea." Twenty-five years ago, the scientific explorers in Egypt found at Deir el Bahari, the mummies of a large number of the Pharaohs of that period, including those of Rameses I., and Rameses II., but they did not identify the mummy of Manephthah. If found, it was not recognized. There was also the striking fact that the tomb which (apparently) Manephthah had built for himself was used for the burial of his successor. The statement which we have seen is that this tomb originally bore the name of Manephthah, chiselled in the stone facade, but that this name was later covered with cement and the name of his successor was impressed in the cement. %From this we have been inclined to the opinion that he had met with death in the sea. But in a recent issue of the "Journal des Debats" Prof. G. Maspero states that in the summer of 1908, on unwrapping a mummy at the Museum, it was found to be that of Paraoh Manephthah. We do not know by what marks it is identified, but simply that Prof. Maspero is convinced of the fact. The discovery does not settle the question whether lip \\to c rlrnurnArl TM-?n o+a? A - r n a iiv wttiti <11 Liictl part 01 tne oea is not usually very deep, and the recovery of a particular body was not impossible. Nor does the present condition of the mummy give us any light. This question remains unanswered. But the identification of this king does much for us. It meets the cavils of those who write the word "traditions" across the pages of Exodus. It helps us, as other discoveries nave helped, to realize the verity of all the incidents of the Exodus. In the description of the appearance of this mummy there is much to interest. The account in Exodus represents him as weak, vacillating, and defective in will power. Prof. Maspero finds from the mummy that he was about eighty years old at the time of his death, that he had grown fat, and was evidently a victim of worse infirmities. There is here a correspondence wor% f N OF THE SOUTH. March 3, 1909. thy of note. And almost equally noteworthy is it that this discovery with its verification of Scripture should come to us just at the day when critics are trying to dissect the word of God, and in a form to discredit their efforts at dissection. OUR BRIGHT-SIDE LETTER. John Calvin Coming to His Own. No great name in history has been defamed so vigorously and so persistently as that of the Reformer of Geneva. His distinguished theological teachings have been bitterly denounced as horrible beyond expression, and ins relation to the death of the blasphemous and defiant anarchist, Servetus, has been held up to scorn and infamy, but next summer a great monument is to be ' unveiled at Geneva in celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Calvin's birth. And all around the world the celebration will be observed by great assemblies representing millions of Christian people of the most enlightened and most active of the Protestant churches in many lands. Before the world there will be shown a far greater monument than that at Geneva, the great Reformed Churches of Great Britain and America, of the Continent of Europe, of Australia, and of all the lands into which Christian missions have gone; and about that greater living monument will stand the theology which is today the backbone of the Church of Christ on earth, and the splendid literature it has produced, and the blessings it has given to men, in the rights of man, in civil and religious liberty, in republican government and popular education and a free press, and in the zeal for missions to the ends of the earth. A few years ago a company of twelve or more dis? j *i - * - imguisiicu geiiuemen sat around tlie table of a dinner party in Virginia. As the later courses came on, it was proposed that each one should write on the back of the menu card, the name of the three men, who in his esteem had done most for the welfare of mankind in the Christian Era, and the cards were read aloud hv thp host to the great entertainment of the company. Only on one card appeared the name of John Calvin, and it was received with expressions of surprise and a general tone of protest. It was evident that those gentlemen had little or no conception of the personal character of Calvin, or of his towering intellectual greatness, and no thought of him as the statesman, the founder of modern republican government, the author of popular education, the one man from whom came the teachings that delivered multitudes of his fellowmen from the op pression of the Romish Papacy and priesthood, and who made Switzerland and Holland, England, Scotland, and all America free, enlightened and Christian, to this day. With the approaching celebration will come a wide study of Calvin, and the Reformation, of the Reformed foUU 1 r r*. ami <mu us matuiy-ana 4ruus. mere will be defense of his name and character and a statement of his great work. With this should be the perfectly open account of his part in the death of Servetus, remembering that it was an age of universal intolerance and religious persecu