ictated by custom. He
was surrounded from his youth by young men of his own age--sons of
priests, chosen for their virtue and piety.

Thus he was freed from the influence of evil advisers, and even had he
so wished it, had neither means nor power of oppressing his subjects,
whose rights and privileges were as strictly defined as his own. In a
country then, where every man followed the profession of his father,
and where from time immemorial everything had proceeded on precisely
the same lines, the fact that Ameres, the son of the high priest of
Osiris, and himself destined to succeed to that dignity, should
entertain opinions differing even in the slightest from those held by
the leaders of the priesthood, was sufficient to cause him to be
regarded with marked disfavor among them; it was indeed only because
his piety and benevolence were as remarkable as his learning and
knowledge of science that he was enabled at his father's death to
succeed to his office without opposition.

Indeed, even at that time the priests of higher grade would have
opposed his election; but Ameres was as popular with the lower classes
of the priesthood as with the people at large, and their suffrages
would have swamped those of his opponents. The multitude had, indeed,
never heard so much as a whisper against the orthodoxy of the high
priest of Osiris. They saw him ever foremost in the sacrifices and
processions; they knew that he was indefatigable in his services in
the temple, and that all his spare time was devoted to works of
benevolence and general utility; and as they bent devoutly as he
passed through the streets they little dreamed that the high priest of
Osiris was regarded by his chief brethren as a dangerous innovator.

And yet it was on one subject only that he differed widely from his
order. Versed as he was in the innermost mysteries, he had learned
the true meaning of the religion of which he was one of the chief
ministers. He was aware that Osiris and Isis, the six other great
gods, and the innumerable divinities whom the Egyptians worshiped
under the guise of deities with the heads of animals, were in
themselves no gods at all, but mere attributes of the power, the
wisdom, the goodness, the anger of the one great God--a God so mighty
that his name was unknown, and that it was only when each of his
attributes was given an individuality and worshiped as a god that it
could be understood by the finite sense of man.

All this