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And on the upward-climbing arc we have again to come to the same levels that we passed in our downward-going arc of the ages of the past. In the half circle we had first the Priest-King; and then the two side by side, co-operators; and then the separation and the rivalry; and, finally, an evil junction to oppress the ignorant and the poor.
Vulgar superstition or conviction is not, however, to be upset by evidence, and the locality of the monarchy was merely transferred by the people to Africa, and they fixed upon Abyssinia, with a show of truth, as the seat of the famous Priest-King. However, still some doubted.
Likewise the persecutors of God's faithful ones in the valleys of the Po, notably the priest-king and France, have been scourged; whilst the countries which befriended them in their long series of trials, the Protestant states of Germany, Holland, and our own land, have been distinguished by a constantly augmenting prosperity. Oh, that men were wise!
In a cautious and verbose sketch of his character and services, written after his death by his jealous brother, the priest-king, wherein he is by turns meanly disparaged and damned with faint praise, we find this curious statement:
It all seems visionary, unreal, fantastic, until we climb the bench by the end of the inner screen and look upon the Rock over which the Dome is built. This is the real thing, a plain gray limestone rock, level and fairly smooth, the unchanged summit of Mount Moriah. Here the priest-king Melchizedek offered sacrifice.
King Magnus was no match for the priest-king, and the rebel force grew until the contest assumed the shape of civil war. Sverre no longer led a band of wanderers, but was the leader of an army. This was not the ordinary army recruited from the settled classes of society, but an army made up of the lower stratum of the people, now first demanding their share of the good things of life.
Egypt was itself divided into two kingdoms, the one ruled by Northern descendants of the Ramessids at Tanis, the other by the priestly monarchs at Thebes, who reigned by right of inheritance as a result of the marriage of the daughter of Ramses with the high priest Amenhetep, father of Herhor, the first priest-king.
'From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth. These words are often misunderstood, and taken to be a description of the fresh, youthful energy attributed by the psalm to the Priest-King of this nation of soldier-priests. The misunderstanding, I suppose, has led to the common phrase, 'The dew of one's youth. But the reference of the expression is to the army, not to its leader.
There grew up the strange legend of Prester John, a Christian priest-king, ruling somewhere in the heart of Asia; and indeed little groups of Nestorian Christians did still survive in eastern Asia at this time.
The institution of the Sabbath went back to the Sumerian days of Chaldæa; the name itself was of Babylonian origin. The great festivals of Israel find their counterparts on the banks of the Euphrates. Even the year of Jubilee was a Babylonian institution, and Gudea, the priest-king of Lagas, tells us that when he kept it the slave became "for seven days the equal of his master."
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