ite was of extreme
antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
was a priest.

The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and so
imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.

One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The emb