ent the world-worship of "the Hidden One"; not Amun, god of the
dead, fused with Ra, with Amsu, or with Khnum: but that other "Hidden
One," who is God of the happy hunting-ground of savages, with whom the
Buddhist strives to merge his strange serenity of soul; who is adored in
the "Holy Places" by the Moslem, and lifted mystically above the heads
of kneeling Catholics in cathedrals dim with incense, and merrily
praised with the banjo and the trumpet in the streets of black English
cities; who is asked for children by longing women, and for new dolls
by lisping babes; whom the atheist denies in the day, and fears in the
darkness of night; who is on the lips alike of priest and blasphemer,
and in the soul of all human life.

Edfu stands alone, not near any other temple. It is not pagan; it is not
Christian: it is a place in which to worship according to the dictates
of your heart.

Edfu stands alone on the bank of the Nile between Luxor and Assuan. It
is not very far from El-Kab, once the capital of Upper Egypt, and it is
about two thousand years old. The building of it took over one hundred
and eighty years, and it is the most perfectly preserved temple to-day
of all the antique world. It is huge and it is splendid. It has towers
one hundred and twelve feet high, a propylon two hundred and fifty-two
feet broad, and walls four hundred and fifty feet long. Begun in the
reign of Ptolemy III., it was completed only fifty-seven years before
the birth of Christ.

You know these facts about it, and you forget them, or at least you do
not think of them. What does it all matter when you are alone in Edfu?
Let the antiquarian go with his anxious nose almost touching the stone;
let the Egyptologist peer through his glasses at hieroglyphs and puzzle
out the meaning of cartouches: but let us wander at ease, and worship
and regard the exquisite form, and drink in the mystical spirit, of this
very wonderful temple.

Do you care about form? Here you will find it in absolute perfection.
Edfu is the consecration of form. In proportion it is supreme above
all other Egyptian temples. Its beauty of form is like the chiselled
loveliness of a perfect sonnet. While the world lasts, no architect can
arise to create a building more satisfying, more calm with the calm of
faultlessness, more serene with a just serenity. Or so it seems to me. I
think of the most lovely buildings I know in Europe--of the Alhambra at
Granada, of the Cappella Palat