A LETTER FROM MOUNT SINAI.
From the “Summit of Mount Sinai, 4 o’clock Sabbath afternoon, Feb. 5, 1843,” Dr. John P. Durbin, the eminent preacher, wrote to Bishop Waugh as follows:— I have stood upon the Alps, in the middle of July, and looked around upon the snowy empire; I have stood upon the Apennines, and looked abroad upon the plains of beautiful, eventful Italy; I have stood upon the Albanian mount, and beheld the scenes of the Æneid from the Circean promontory, over the Campagna, to the eternal city and mountains of Tivoli; I have sat down upon the pyramids of Egypt, and cast my eyes over the sacred city of Heliopolis, the land of Goshen, the fields of Jewish bondage, and the ancient Memphis, where Moses and Aaron, on the part of God and his people, contended with Pharaoh and his servants, the death of whose “first-born of man and beast in one night,” filled the land with wailing: but I have never set my feet on any spot from whence was visible so much stern, gloomy grandeur, heightened by the silence and solitude that reigned around; but infinitely more heightened by the awful and sacred associations of the first great revelation in form from God to man. I feel oppressed with the spirit that breathes around me, and seems to inhabit this holy place. I shall never sit down upon the summit of Sinai again, and look upon the silent and empty plains at its feet; but I shall go down a better man, and aim so to live as to escape the terrible thunders at the last day, which once reverberated through these mountains. I can scarcely tear myself away from the hallowed summit, and I wish I too could linger there forty days in converse with the Lord.—The Armory.