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TOMBS OF THE MAMELUKES, NEAR CAIRO.

$375 each. This covers everything included in the main itinerary from New York back to New York, except the steward's fees, laundry, and personal expenses. It, of course, is not intended to cover side trips, which, being optional, may be taken at from $3 to $90 as desired.

We strongly advise taking as many of these side trips as possible, because they include some of the very best features of the tour, and when one has come so far it would be a great pity not to take advantage of them. The most important of these is the overland route to Damascus and Baalbec, over Mount Hermon, through Galilee and Samaria, to Jerusalem. This costs $95 extra, but in no other way can one fully realize the beauty and glory of the Lord's land.

Another side trip that should on no account be omitted is that to Jericho, the Jordan and Hebron, the extra cost being only $11. The best features of Egypt, the most interesting ruins, those of Luxor, Karnak, Thebes, and Philæ at the first cataract, where the great new dam is constructed, are all above Cairo and should on no account be omitted if they can possibly be taken. The cost of this side trip by rail is $75, and is well worth the money.

We strongly recommend also the side trip provided through Italy and Switzerland to London and New York, occupying thirteen days longer, and costing $160 more. We think we can claim to speak with some comprehension of the facts, as we have traversed the whole of this route, much of it several times.

HOW TO APPLY.

First of all secure your accommodations on the steamer by sending $25, with your name and address, to the Treasurer of the American Central

Committee, Mr. W. N. Hartshorn, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachu setts. In case you are not confirmed as a delegate, Mr. Hartshorn will re turn to you the $25 forwarded.

The accompanying pictures show many interesting places and characters to be seen in this tour. The first presents the ruins of what Dean Stanley has called "the most majestic temple ever erected for the worship of the Supreme Being," the famous temple of Karnak. It is four hundred feet wide by twelve hundred feet long. The majestic columns, of which the very ruins are stupendous, are thirteen feet in diameter and sixty-two feet high. The lofty obelisk is that of Queen Hatasu, said to be that daughter of Pharaoh who drew Moses out of the water. It is a hundred and eight feet high, of a single stone. A twin obelisk of similar size lies prostrate on the ground in fragments. An inscription declares that they were hewn from the quarry at Assuan, two hundred miles distant, and erected on this spot within six months.

From the top of this great temple, where we are certain Moses must have stood, for it was the great university of Egypt in his day, we watched the sun set over the Nile, turning the river again into blood. As the swiftly coming darkness filled the Hall of Columns with its shadows we descended and mounted our camel and

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TYPICAL NUBIAN, UPPER EGYPT.

rode off in the twilight to the neighbouring town of Luxor.

One small cut shows the tombs of the Mamelukes, near Cairo. The very names of the mighty men whose ashes they cover are unknown. Amid desolation the surrounding in the warm glow of the setting sun, as we saw them, they are wonderfully impressive. Then, as the sun dipped beyond the horizon the muezzin came out upon the minaret and uttered his musical call to prayer, which five times every day for over a thousand from years has come thousands of minarets from Morocco to Delhi.

The most striking features of Egypt are the ever present, tall, and stately palms, with their feathery foliage and corrugated trunk. They cast but little shade, but as a feature in the landscape are wonderfully impressive. the side We strongly recommend

trip of this excursion as far as the first cataract, where the gigantic dam, to hold back the waters of the Nile and fertilize Lower Egypt, has been erected by the British. The ancient saying, that Egypt is the gift of the Nile, will be still more true when its life-giving waters are held back for distribution throughout the rainless year, for in Lower Egypt it almost never rains.

At Assuan we enter the Torrid Zone, and at the summer solstice the sun is vertically overhead. Herodotus speaks of a well here into which the sun's This is on rays penetrate at noon. the borders of Nubia, and the native

Nubians, whose characteristic type of face is well shown in our cut, swarm in its crowded bazaars. Yet with the rhinoceros-hide shields and savage weapons of the Soudan and relics of ancient Egypt are blended the electric lights and is heard the scream of the iron horse. The most gorgeous shoeblacking stand we ever saw was here, and a score of natives assisted by their presence while the present writer had his understanding brightened by a Nubian boy.

The most interesting feature of the tour will be the visit to the Lord's Land, the sacred city of Jerusalem and the hallowed scenes of Samaria and Galilee. The sad-eyed Jew in our illustration is a type of thousands one will see in Jerusalem-pilgrims from many lands come to kiss the sacred stones at the Jewish place of wailing and to read the Lamentations of Jeremiah on the scenes of the sacred city's desolation. There is something infinitely pathetic in these sons of the weary foot" who are waiting, after all these Christian centuries, for the Messiah, while rejecting Him who gave such full proof of His Messiahship.

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There is no place in Palestine where one realizes so fully that he walks in the very footprints of the Saviour as at the well of Samaria, by which He sat and spoke of the "Water of Life" to the sinning woman of the city of Sychar. A curious thing happened here to the Rev. Mr. Bond, the editor of the Guardian. While visiting this well he said: "I hope I shall not let my wife's Bible (which he carried) fall into it, as Dr. Bonar let his fall."

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But before he left, by accident, into the well it fell. The well was seventy or eighty feet deep, and he had nothing wherewith to draw, so it was left there. Mentioning the fact at the dinner-table at Damascus shortly after, the wife of a missionary who lived at Nazareth said she would try and get it. She did so and sent it to him. The well was dry when the Bible fell, but the book was stained around the edges when he received it, and thereby hangs a tale. A band of Russian pilgrims came along and wished some water from the sacred well. The Arab sheik, in anticipation, poured enough water down to supply

their need, and so the book became stained. We think Mr. Bond's Bible is perfectly unique. There is not one like it in the world.

No place in our Lord's ministry is fraught with such hallowed memories as the little Sea of Galilee, a very tiny sea, indeed, only nine miles long and five miles wide, yet haunted for ever with the memories of Him whose own city of Capernaum was on its shores, whose disciples were called from fishing in its waters, and whose tossing waves became adamant to His sacred feet. We shall never forget the day we spent on this spot, hallowed with such tender memories, nor the "little ship" like that shown in the cut, which was doubtless very similar to that in which our Lord preached to the multitude.

"O Saviour, gone to God's right hand,
But the same Saviour still;
Graved on Thy heart is this lovely strand,
And every fragrant hill."

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"THE GREATNESS AND THE LITTLENESS OF MAN."*

A thought that has (to use an expression of a now discredited diplomatist) staggered humanity frequently, is the utter insignificance of man and the world, in size, when compared to the mighty hosts of stars, that people the immensities of the universe, millions upon millions in number, the most of them apparently of greater mass than our sun; and the vastness of the spaces that separate them from each other and from us, light dashing outward from some of them taking two hundred years to reach us at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. Who has contemplated the problem and not been to some extent appalled by the utter littleness of man and all his works, his hopes and fears, his tiny ambitions as they rise and fall on the world-stage, which as but a mote flutters in the sunbeam ? This is poetry, however; but if one is liable to be overcome by the force of such pessimistic reveries, it is because he deserts for the moment the real, and takes refuge in comparisons. We become impressed with the idea that bigness must necessarily be the mark of value, and littleness of girth the badge of plebeian parts.

If we could find beings with heads the size of the moon (now you might say) and bodies in size like celestial Perseus or Orion, then these corporeal dimensions would surely seem to indicate importance sufficient to command respect. Though man is comparatively so small, yet has he been able to so master the forces of nature as to compel them to do his bidding, to a great and ever increasing extent. He has supplied himself with optical power for searching out his celestial neighbours, and means for inquiring into their affairs, which, if possessed in a natural way by a being built on the same plan as man now is, would require a corporeal frame in dimensional proportions something like that just suggested. The limits of this growing, who can tell? The limit of optical power has been named again and again only to be pushed further

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The aperture of the average human eye is one-fifth of an inch, with a focus of about one inch. The aperture of the new Paris telescope will be five feet, with equivalent focus (including eye-piece) of 50,000 inches. This optical power, if regarded as an eye in a being built on the same plan as man, and in like proportions, would require his head to be about six miles broad to contain it, and a body totalling sixty miles in height and weighing over a million million tons, whose bulk if converted into anthracite coal at $10 per ton would represent a being worth in round numbers about ten times that many million dollars. If a Parthian arrow were to pierce the heel of such a being, it would be upwards of an hour before he could be aware of the fact that time would be required for the sensation to travel along the nerves to the brain.

So much for bigness. But if we compare man's bulk to that of the infusorial microbe, the molecule, or the ultimate atom, his body is then excessively coarse, and he becomes a monster so gross in proportions as to be utterly beyond the comprehension of the animalcular mind. We take the microscope, however, and this manipulation of optical power enables us to reduce our focal vision to the extent that we can with artificial eyes peer into the kingdom of the minute, associate with, and appreciate, the manners and customs of the microbe, see as he sees, dissect him and approach the very essence of material structure. Man can therefore now, at will, by the application of scientific art and skill with optical aid, rise until his head literally towers among the stars, or almost to a shrink upon himself mathematical point, where he may associate with life in a water-drop and play with the bricks with which the great Artificer has formed the universe.

Thus it would appear when anything like a cosmopolitan view of astronomical and physical knowledge is entertained, man's place in the cosmos is as a not so entirely insignificant comparacasual glance or a one-sided " tive" view might at first seem to indicate. A certain poet, appearing in unfavourable public, overhearing an comment as to his want of height and girth, is said to have turned and remarked:

"Could I in stature reach the Pole

And grasp creation in a span, I'd still be measured by the soul— The mind's the measure of the man."

This view is advanced rather as a crumb of comfort to those worrying over the insignificance of man, than as an apology for the Artificer of the universe.

MAN'S PLACE IN

Much attention has been drawn to the remarkable utterance of Dr. Alfred R. Wallace on man's place in the universe. He points out the theological objection of sceptical science which asserts "the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable vastness of suns and systems should have any special interest in so pitiful a creature as man, while the idea that he should have selected this little world for the scene of the tremendous, unique and necessary sacrifice of his Son in order to save a portion of those miserable sinners was a crowning absurdity, too irrational to be believed by any rational being." To meet this difficulty Dr. Wallace endeavours to show that our world occupies a place of unique distinction in the universe, that it is situated in the very centre of immensities, that it is probably the only one of all the suns, stars, and systems that has intelligent inhabitants.

While recognizing the eminent scientific ability of Professor Wallace, and appreciating the purpose of his argument, it utterly fails to convince our judgment. Indeed, all the analogies of nature, all the probabilities of reason, seem against it. When this world of ours is so swarming with life; when the earth, the air, and the sea are teeming with varied forms of animated nature, that walk, or fly, or swim, in exquisite adaptation to their environment; when every leaf in every forest, when every flower in every field, when every drop of water in every stream or pool is swarming with infusorial life; when the higher powers of the microscope reveal new worlds of existence, it seems incredible and unthinkable that the countless worlds of space, whose number and vastness and majesty and

THE UNIVERSE.

might confound our imagination, that these are dull and lifeless deserts, the home of desolation and death.

It is much more in accord, we think, with devout and reverent conceptions, that God," rejoicing in the work of His hands," has peopled these vast realms with conscious intelligences, some of them, it may be, of loftier intellectual and moral powers than ours. The unique and wonderful fact that God so loved this lost world as to give His only begotten Son for its redemption, may well awake our adoring homage and thanksgiving. is it not in harmony with the truths our Lord Himself hath taught us? "If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety-and-nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray ?" We prefer to think that our little earth is the only "lost Pleiad of the skies," the only erring member of the sisterhood of the stars.

But

"Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

Peradventure, if there be in any of these myriad worlds spiritual intelligences which, like the fallen angels, kept not their first estate, still may we not conceive that the atonement of our blessed Lord on Calvary should avail also for them, that our earth was the great green altar of the universe on which the sacrifice was offered, not merely for the sins of the whole world, but of all worlds?

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