THE delightful certainty which characterises the youth of an individual not infrequently finds its analogue in the initial phases of a science. At the outset assertion is dogmatic inversely to the evidence, and the flimsiest figments are made to serve as the basis of the widest generalisations. Maturity brings with it a curious restriction of certitude, but for this there is a compensation in the knowledge that for the faith which we do hold there is an adequate reason. Thus it has long been the custom to regard the religion of ancient Egypt as a tissue of the grossest idolatry, and this amongst persons who were not, in general, ill-informed. To such a view the education of the public school and the university has largely contributed, and those who were contented to mould their opinions upon classic authorities would be apt to remember nothing more than Juvenal's telling gibes, which practically epitomise the creed as that of the ape and onion. Whatever the poet's personal views may have been, those which the exigencies of his satire led him to express are far removed from the truth or, at least, they state it so partially as to be wholly misleading; and it may come as a surprise to many to learn the magnitude of the libel. As a matter of fact, the ideas and beliefs of the Egyptians concerning God closely approximated to those of the Hebrews, and of the Muhammadans at a later period; and they arrived at conceptions of man's immortality for which we look in vain in the Jewish record, and which we only re-encounter in the teaching of the Christian churches. Books on Egypt and Chaldaea. Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life; Egyptian Magic. By E. A. Wallis Budge 2 vols. Babylonian Religion and Mythology. By L. W. King 1 vol. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd., 1899.)