The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

But to Akhnaton, although he had absolutely no precedent upon which to launch his thoughts, God was the intangible and yet ever-present Father of mankind, made manifest in sunshine. The youthful high priest called upon his subjects to search for their God not in the confusion of battle or behind the smoke of human sacrifices, but amidst the flowers and the trees, amidst the wild duck and the fishes. He preached an enlightened nature-study: in some respects he was, perhaps, the first apostle of the Simple Life.

But to Akhnaton, although he had absolutely no precedent upon which to launch his thoughts, God was the in

the young Pharaoh was in no sense one of those old deities which our God ultimately replaced in Egypt. The Aton is God as we conceive Him. There is no quality attributed by the king to the Aton which we do not attribute to our God. Like a flash of blinding light in the night-time the Aton stands out for a moment amidst the black Egyptian darkness, and disappears once more,—the first signal to this world of the future religion of the West. No man whose mind is free from prejudice will fail to see a far closer resemblance to the teachings of Christ in the religion of Akhnaton than in that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The faith of the patriarchs is the lineal ancestor of the Christian faith; but the creed of Akhnaton is its isolated prototype. One might believe that Almighty God had for a moment revealed himself to Egypt, and had been more clearly, though more momentarily, interpreted there than ever He was in Syria or Palestine before the time of Christ.