Testimony of The Ages: Confirmations of the Scriptures

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES claim to be God's; messages to mankind in all the world, and through all generations; and testimonies to the truth and validity of this claim have been springing up and multiplying ever since those messages were first delivered to men. Every successive age has produced not only additional proofs, but proofs peculiar to itself; of their Divine Origin. And our own age has been fruitful beyond any that went before both in the development of new testimonies, and in the recovery of old and lost ones. Every branch of modern science, every field of modern research, every pursuit which has been made the subject of modern study, has yielded both numerous and diversified corroborations of the Sacred Record. While the Bible makes everything speak for God, God, in these last days, has made everything speak for the Bible—even "the stone has cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber has answered it," that prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

These widespread testimonies and corroborations, so diversified in their sources, so striking in their character, and many of them so marvelous in their preservation and discovery and interpretation—all these, collected and methodically arranged, cannot but compose a volume of interest and importance unsurpassed in the estimation of every intelligent Christian reader. This will be evident from the following statements.

THE NATURAL SCIENCES have supplied numerous and remarkable confirmations of many of the fundamental truths taught in the Bible, such as these: that there is a God; that there is but one God; that the world was created, and had a beginning; that its formation was a progressive work carried on through so many days or stages; that the order in which it was fashioned and planted and peopled was that indicated in the first chapter of Genesis; that all nations of men have been made of one blood; that the Deluge of Noah was but one of many similar cataclysms that had occurred before; that all mankind were once of one speech or language; that they scattered to cover the whole earth from one common center. Science, while it offers demonstrative evidence of all this, also bears clear testimony to the truth and correctness of the Bible statements and allusions in regard to a multitude of other natural facts in the sea, on the land, and in the heavens.

Another wide and fruitful field of corroborative evidence we have in the ANCIENT LITERATURE which has come down to us. This embraces not only the voluminous productions of the early Christian Fathers, but also the Greek and Roman Classics-the History, Poetry and Philosophy of men who were the contemporaries of the Inspired Authors; of Seneca and Lucan, rho occupied distinguished positions at Rome at the very time when Paul was detained there a prisoner in chains; of Pliny and Statius and Martial, who were witnesses of the persecutions which banished John to Patmos, and gave Ignatius to be devoured by lions; of Cicero, Terrence and Plautus, who flourished during the first and second century B.C.; of Plato and Xenophon, who were coeval with Nehemiah and. Malachi: of Thucidydes, Herodotus and Euripides, who traveled and studied and wrote still earlier; of Sophocles and Æschylus and Pindar, who composed their works within the same half century that Haggai and Zechariah delivered their prophecies; of Pythagoras, Phocylides, Theognis and Anacreon, who were the contemporaries of Ezra, Esther and Daniel of Sappho and Alceus, who lived in the days of Jeremiah and. Ezekiel; of Mimnermus, Tyrtæus, Callinus and Hesiod, who flourished in the period embraced in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles; of Homer, who composed his Odyssey and Iliad when Solomon sat upon the throne of his father David; of Linus, Musæus and Orphæus, who lived in times still anterior. The writings of these and of others who lived in ages equally remote, furnish a great number and variety of corroborations of scenes, events, characters, laws, practices, wars, commerce, famines, captivities, pestilences, idolatries, crimes, etc., which are related or described in the Bible. And not a few of these ancient authors are eminently interesting and important to us, as, in following the thread of their discourses and narratives, they unconsciously relate the minute and complete fulfillment of numerous prophecies concerning cities and kingdoms, nations and individuals. As these writers must have been in total ignorance that any such predictions had ever been uttered, their testimony to their accomplishment is placed beyond all doubt and all suspicion.

The mystic RECORDS OF EGYPT, likewise, present a rich mine of Scripture evidences. These have been preserved to us in the Hieroglyphics graven on her temples, tombs and obelisks, some of which date back as far as the days of Abraham; and in her Papyri, as old as the Hebrew exodus. Both these, after having faded out of the knowledge and memory of the world, and remained sealed for thousands of years, have of late been successfully studied and translated into the speech of living men, and have thus revealed to us ages of history running parallel with that of the Sacred Volume, and bearing many notable testimonies to its truth. Egypt has also been found rich in Relics of greatest antiquity and most interesting nature; among these have been recognized various articles named or described in the early chapters of Scripture history. Besides all this, in that ancient Land, there have been bequeathed and handed down to us, from times equally remote, great numbers of graphic Pictures, clear in their outlines and fresh in their colors, exhibiting Egyptian life in all its grades and phases and occupations, and which both illustrate and confirm the Scripture narratives of Abraham's visit there, of Joseph's rule, of the Hebrews' bondage, of their deliverance by Moses and Aaron, and of numerous other events of later dates.

As on the banks of the Nile, so along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, corroborative evidences of highest antiquity and importance have been brought to light still more recently in ASSYRIAN SCULPTURES AND INSCRIPTIONS. On the eastern bank of the latter river a cluster of irregular hillocks had been known from time immemorial. These were covered with grass and weeds and bushes such as prevailed over the surrounding regions. On their summits villages had been built, and on their slopes vineyards had been planted, and fields of barley sown and harvested for centuries. They appeared like natural elevations, and by the natives were regarded as old as creation. But something now more than thirty years ago the idea dawned upon the mind of one or two intelligent Europeans of making an examination and a search into these hillocks.

Accordingly, shafts were sunk and tunnels were drilled into them at various points; and lo! what had been deemed natural hills were discovered to be through and through vast mounds of ruins—here was the site of "Nineveh, that great city"—here were entombed in their ashes her palaces, and temples, and monuments, once the pride of kings and the glory of the East. After protracted toil the pavements of streets and the walls of edifices were traced and cleared; and a Botta, a Layard, a Rawlinson, walked through the halls, rested in the courts, and wandered through the galleries, once occupied by Sargon, and Sennacherib, and Esarhadon. In these they found a vast number and variety of relics, tablets and statuary of 'greatest interest.

On the marble-paneled walls were Sculptured Pictures of objects and scenes pertaining to public and private life—battles, sieges, engines of war, chariots of pleasure, hunting expeditions, smoking altars, kings upon their thrones, captives in their chains, officers at their posts, and craftsmen at their toil. Not a few of these have furnished proofs of Scripture statements that had been disputed, and flashed unexpected light upon passages that had ever been regarded as doubtful or obscure.

But the most precious and important of all the discoveries made have been the Cuneiform Inscriptions, which have put us in possession of a large part of the early literature of Chaldea. From the ruins of Nineveh, and also from those of Babylon, Ur, Accad and Erech, there have been exhumed a very great number and variety of Tablets, Cylinders and Obelisks, all crowded with these inscriptions, often cut in characters clear and compact as those upon the printed page. In one instance, the remains of an extensive library, supposed to have originally contained no less than 10,000 inscribed tablets, were discovered lying together in a fragmentary condition, embracing (as afterward appeared) the collected records of many preceding centuries. At first discovery these strange writings were sealed and silent mysteries; 'none could read them, none divine their significance. But at length, though written in languages and in characters that long ages since had passed out of the knowledge and memory of all the living world, by insight and perseverance beyond example in human history, they were deciphered and translated into the languages of the present day. Some of them have been found to record histories that run back to the age of the earliest Patriarchs; others embody the account handed down to that age of the Creation, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel; others relate the movements of armies that invaded the Land of Israel, and the amount of spoil and number of Captives they carried away from Samaria and Jerusalem; and others still record the laws, the political precepts, the science, the philosophy and the religion of the time. Altogether these Assyrian Sculptures and Inscriptions furnish a number and variety of testimonies to the truth of the Scriptures that are equally marvelous and convincing. Having lain buried for full twenty-five centuries, they are as so many witnesses risen from the dead, whose testimony can neither be gainsaid nor resisted.

The systematic SURVEY AND EXPLORATION OF BIBLE LANDS, which have been made within a few years, have supplied another important contribution to the sum of Scripture evidences. These were undertaken at the expense and under the direction of Christian Associations, and conducted by companies of learned men and professional engineers, selected for their skill and experience, and equipped with the most perfect and costly instruments, as well as all other conveniences necessary for their work. The survey was carried on upon the same method of exact observation and triangulation as that adopted in surveying the coast and country in England. The whole "wilderness of Sinai" was thus accurately measured and mapped. The course of the Israelites through it was traced out; and many of their successive stations and halting-places, including the Wells of Elim, the waters of Marah, and the mount of the Law, were identified. Palestine also has been surveyed and mapped in like manner: the extent of its plains, the height of its mountains, the course of its streams, the indentations of its coast, and the depth of its lakes, have been carefully determined; its rocks and soil, its vegetation and living tenants have been patiently studied; the return and temperature of the seasons, the fall of rain, and even the directions of the wind have been registered. From all this there have been gathered scores and hundreds of happy evidences to the uniform correctness of Scripture statements and allusions respecting localities, distances, scenery, productions, climate, etc., of the Bible Lands.

Much also has of late been accomplished for the confirmation of Scripture by INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE. Men of intelligence and ample means—men versed in ancient languages and literature—men of science and observation—animated by Christian benevolence, or commercial enterprise, or love of learning and discovery, have made their way into every region and province on which the light of Revelation originally shone. They have stood where either prophet, priest, or king ever stood; their eyes have rested on the same natural phenomena; their ears have taken in the same sounds from wind and flood; and their nostrils have inhaled the odors of the same fields. They have gazed on the Oriental heavens; they have contemplated Oriental scenery; they have studied Oriental life. Some have tarried and devoted themselves to determine the sites and to delve into the ruins of cities whose names and histories have come down to us in the Sacred Volume; or, to search out the caves and explore the dark recesses that served for refuge to holy men of old; or, to scale perilous heights in order to read and copy rock-inscriptions that have survived the storms of fifty, sixty, and even seventy generations. Others have gone forth with the nomad tribes of the desert, followed their flocks, traveled with their caravans, eaten in their tents, drank from their wells, lodged in their khans, and in the heat of day rested beneath the shade of their vines and fig trees. Others still have directed their chief attention to their social spirit and religious rites, their marriage songs and funeral wailings, their maxims and daily proverbs, their imagery of speech, and their idiomatic forms of expression. All these have returned laden with the rich results of their respective industry—results that have served either to confirm or to illustrate the sacred Scriptures at a thousand different points.

Such is the “cloud of witnesses," such the numerous and diversified testimonies we have to the truth of the inspired writings. In short, it may now be safely affirmed that the materials are at hand—in other words, that evidences enough have already been actually discovered for the satisfactory confirmation of nearly every narrative, passage, fact, and event of essential importance in the whole Bible. But these testimonies and confirmations are widely scattered through a multitude of books—books treating of different subjects, written for different ends, and composed in different languages—and are, therefore, to a large extent out of the reach of the general reader. The great desideratum in this field has been, and still is, to have these multitudinous and diversified evidences collected and conveniently arranged. By this means only can a great part of them be made generally accessible; and in this way only can they be rendered available in their full and fair force to establish the credibility of the sacred volume as a whole.

This is the task which the writer has undertaken in the present Work, namely, To gather from all the foregoing sources, and from others, all known testimonies, of whatever nature, that serve to confirm the Inspired Book; and to arrange them in a convenient order for readers in general. Here are presented all the most important and direct evidences in support of the Bible which have been developed by the historian, the classical scholar, the astronomer, the geologist, the geographer, the archaeologist, the ethnographer, the philologist, the chemist, the zoologist, the botanist—in a word, by the student of nearly every branch of modern science and research.

This mass and variety of proofs and confirmations, it will be no presumption to say, have been reached and brought together by a course of reading and investigation far more extended than the circumstances of multitudes of Bible readers will permit them to hope to pursue for themselves. To this class, such a volume as the present, it is believed, cannot but prove both interesting and profitable.

The plan of the work is simple, and needs but little explanation. The passages of Scripture which receive confirmation are taken and produced in the book in the order in which they stand in the Bible throughout. Immediately under each of these passages are placed the testimonies to its truth or correctness. Each testimony is given in the exact words of its author or source, and followed by a full reference to the chapter or page of the work where it may be found, so that the reader can readily verify the evidence for himself.

At the close of the Volume is placed a complete Index of the subjects mentioned in it, and also a list of the principal authorities, inscriptions and documents whose testimonies are adduced in it. The names of modern writers are followed by the Titles of their works which are quoted. To the names of the ancient authors is annexed, as nearly as can be ascertained, the date or period at which they flourished, as upon this, in many instances, the value of their testimony must depend.

Of the need and importance of a work of this character the writer entertains no doubt. To the Christian, whatever contributes to illustrate or confirm the teachings of God's Word is always welcomed, always interesting. And with them who are not Christians, no class of evidences will have greater weight than such as are presented in this book. Here are placed upon the stand Witnesses whom they can neither charge with prejudice, nor suspect of partiality. Here are produced evidences that none can refute, and none deny, unless they deny the testimony of their senses. In the hope, therefore, that the light of facts accumulated through so many ages, and scattered over so many lands, thus concentrated into one focus, will serve to dissipate the doubts of the unbelieving, and to confirm the faith of the Christian, this Work, the product of years of toil, is now respectfully commended to the prayerful and candid consideration of both. H. W. M.

“How long will man, vex Heaven with unjust complaints? Will he never open his eyes to the light, and his heart to the insinuations of Truth and Reason? This Truth everywhere presents itself in radiant brightness, and he does not see it! The voice of Reason strikes his ear, and he does not hear it! Unjust man! if you can for a moment suspend the delusion which fascinates your senses; if your heart be capable of comprehending the language of argumentation, interrogate these ruins! read the lessons which they present to you! And you sacred temples! venerable tombs! walls once glorious! the witnesses of twenty different ages appear in the cause of Truth herself!... O names, forever glorious! celebrated fields! famous countries! how replete is your aspect with sublime instruction! How many profound truths are written on the surface of this earth! Ye places that have witnessed the life of man in so many different ages, unveil the causes of his misfortunes, teach him true wisdom, and let the experience of past ages become a mirror of instruction, and a germ of happiness to present and future generations."—VOLNEY'S Ruins of Empires.

"The Shasters of the Hindoos contain false astronomy, as well as false physiology; and the Koran of Mohammed distinctly avows the Ptolemaic system of the heavenly bodies; and so interwoven are these scientific errors with the religions of these sacred books that when you have proved the former you have disproved the latter. But THE BIBLE, stating only facts, and adopting no system of human philosophy, has ever stood, and ever shall stand, in sublime simplicity and undecaying strength; while the winds and the waves of conflicting human opinions roar and dash harmlessly around, and the wrecks of a thousand false systems of philosophy and religion are strewed along its base."—PROF. EDWARD HITCHCOCK'S Highest Use of Learning.

Genesis

THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND OF THE EARTH

REGINALD STUART POOLE, M. R. S. L., ETC.—The Biblical Cosmogony stands alone, as of all ancient accounts of the origin of things the only one which is not, on the very face, irreconcilable with the truths of natural science. The cosmogonies of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Greeks are utterly irreconcilable with natural truth; yet more, are hopelessly opposed to it; whereas that of the Hebrew Scriptures has not been proved to this day to contain an insurmountable difficulty.—The Genesis of Earth and Man, p. 8,

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—As a historical record, the first chapter of Genesis is without a compeer. It is un-approached. Its first announcements distinguish the Bible from all other books. Its simplicity, its directness of statement, its boldness of conception, its subdued grandeur, are throughout conspicuous. Vast in its outline, it is yet so scrupulously strict in its more minute details, that it may be read without dubiety, not only in the midst of the exactest records of antiquity, but in the light of those modern discoveries in physical science which bear most directly on its statements. In reliability and in consistency it stands alone. In the very first verse we have an announcement which distances all that natural science can reach or reveal.—Blending Lights, p. 15, 20, 22.

The Beginning

Genesis 1:1.—In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, F. R. S., etc.—The earth is filled with evidence that it has not been going on forever in the present state.—Geological Time, p. 16.

SIR CHARLES LYELL, F. R. S., etc.—There is not an existing stratum in the body of the earth which Geology has laid bare, which cannot be traced back to a time when it was not; and there is not an existing species of plants or animals which cannot be referred to a time when it had no place in the world. Their beginnings are discoverable in succeeding cycles of time. It can be demonstrated that man, also, had a beginning, and all the species contemporary with him; and that, therefore, the present state of the organized world has not been sustained from eternity.—In Blending Lights, p. 26.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, D. D.—The existence of a resisting medium in space leads us towards a point which the Nebular Hypothesis assumes—a beginning of the present order of things. There must have been a commencement of the motions now going on in the solar system. Since these motions, when once begun, would be deranged and destroyed in a period which, however large, is yet finite, it is obvious we cannot carry their origin indefinitely backwards in the range of past duration. The argument is, indeed, forced upon our minds, whatever view we take of the past history of the world. The doctrine of a resisting medium once established, renders the idea of the earth's eternity untenable; and compels us to go back to the origin, not only of the present course of the world, not only of the earth, but of the solar system itself; and thus sets us forth upon that path of research into the series of past causation, where we obtain no answer of which the meaning corresponds to our questions, till we rest in the conclusion of a most provident and most powerful Creating Intelligence.

—Bridgewater Treatise, American Ed., p. 112, 113.

PROF. PRITCHARD, Oxford.—As to the idea of all things being potentially contained in atoms—our knowledge of these atomic forces, so far as it at present extends, does not leave us in serious doubt as to their origin; for there is a very strong presumptive evidence drawn from the results of the most modern scientific investigation that they are neither eternal nor the products of evolution. No philosopher of recent times was better acquainted than Sir John Herschel with the interior mechanism of nature. From his contemplation of the remarkably constant, definite, and restricted, yet various and powerful interactions of these elementary molecules, he was forced to the conviction that they possessed all the characteristics of manufactured articles. The expression is memorable, accurate, and graphic; it may become one of the everlasting possessions of mankind. Prof. Maxwell, a man whose mind has been trained by the mental discipline of the same noble university, arrives at the same conclusion; but, as his knowledge has exceeded that of Herschel on this point, so he goes further in the same direction of thought. "No theory of evolution," he says, "can be formed to account for the similarity of the molecules throughout all time, and throughout the whole region of the stellar universe, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of nature, since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. We have reached the utmost limits of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that, because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been created. These molecules continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are the essential constituents of the image of Him, who in the beginning created not only the heaven and the earth but the materials of which heaven and earth consist." And this, my friends, this is the true outcome of the deepest, the most exact, and the most recent science of our age. A grander utterance has not come from the mind of a philosopher since the days when Newton concluded his “Principia," by his immortal scholium on the majestic personality of the Creator and Lord of the universe.—Address before the Church Congress, at Brighton, England.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—That the universe must have had a beginning no one now needs to be told. If any philosophical speculator ever truly held that there has been an eternal succession of phenomena, science has now completely negated the idea by showing us the beginning of all things that we know in the present universe, and by establishing the strongest probabilities that even its ultimate atoms could not have been eternal.—Origin of the World, p. 88.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—By this positive exclusion of eternity from the existence of the universe, and by repelling the idea of accidental creation, the fact of a "beginning" is raised in the Bible not only above all the entangling, speculations of recent philosophy, but above the boldest reasonings of modern skepticism.—Blending Lights, p. 23.

Primeval Chaos

Gen. 1:2.—And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S.—The material of out globe is held by many of the scientific to have existed at first in the form of an extended vaporous mass or cloud, spread out over a space nearly two thousand times greater in diameter than that which it now occupies. Within this mass, slowly and silently, the force of gravitation is compressing the particles in its giant hand and gathering the denser toward the center, while heat is given forth on all sides from the condensing mass into the voids of space without. Little by little the denser and less volatile matters collect in the center as a fluid molten globe, the nucleus of the future planet; and in this nucleus the elements, obeying their chemical affinities hitherto latent, are arranging themselves in compounds which are to constitute the future rocks. And now the atmosphere, still vast in bulk, and dark and misty in texture, contains only the water, chlorine, carbonic acid, sulfuric acid, and other more volatile substances; and as these gather in dense clouds at the outer surface, and pour in fierce corrosive rains upon the heated nucleus, combining with its materials, or flashing again into vapor, "darkness," dense and gross, settles upon the vaporous deep. In the meantime, radiation, and the heat abstracted from the liquid nucleus by the showers of condensing material from the atmosphere, have so far cooled its surface that a crust of slag or cinder forms upon it. Broken again and again by the heaving of the ocean of fire, it at length sets permanently, and receives upon its bare and blistered surface the ever-increasing aqueous and acid rain thrown down from the atmosphere, at first sending it all hissing and steaming back, but at length allowing it to remain. Then began the reign of “the waters"—a shore-less sea—filled with earthy and saline materials, thick and turbid, until these were permitted to settle to the bottom and form the first sediments and first stratified rocks. Perhaps no word-picture of this period of the first phase of mundane history can ever equal the two negative touches of the inspired penman—"without form and void"—a world destitute of all its present order, and destitute of all that gives it life and animation.—The Story of the Earth and Man, p. 2-12.

HUGH MILLER. —During the Azoic period, ere life appears to have begun on our planet, the temperature of the earth's crust seems to have been so high that the strata, at first deposited apparently in water, passed into a semi-fluid state, became strangely waved and contorted, and assumed in its composition a highly crystalline character. A continuous stratum of steam, then, that attained to the height of even our present atmosphere, would wrap up the earth in a "darkness," gross and palpable as that of Egypt of old, a darkness through which even a single ray of light would fail to penetrate. And beneath this thick canopy, the unseen deep would literally boil as a pot, wildly tempested from below; while from time to time more deeply seated convulsions would up heave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outwards to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the times of the earlier gneiss and mica schist deposits-times buried deep in that chaotic night which must have continued to exist for mayhap many ages after that beginning of things in which God created the heavens and the earth, and which preceded the first day. —The Testimony of the Rocks, p. 196, 197.

First Day

Gen. 1:3.—And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S.—With this fiat the actual work of reducing old chaos to order and life begins, and begins with scientific appropriateness. The Hebrew word used here for light includes the allied forces, of heat and electricity. It represents that incomprehensible ether which vibrates, and whose vibrations are so regulated as to give light with its prismatic colors, and heat with all its vast powers, and the still more strange and wonderful actinic power which puts in motion all the vital machinery of plants, and so is the material source of life. If science can anywhere find evidence of design in the revelations of physical agencies, if it can anywhere find a stepping-stone to lift it from the grossness of atomic matter, surely it is here.

It is a remarkable fact that Moses can distinguish light from luminaries, and that he attaches so great importance to the introduction of that marvelous ethereal vibration (or luminiferous ether) to which we owe all the great vivifying powers of nature; and that thus without any actual scientific teaching or committing himself to any theory, he falls into harmony with all that we know up to this time of Light, Heat and Electricity, all of which are included under the word he uses.—Nature and the Bible, p. 92, 94.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—The sublimity of the description in the Bible of the origin of Light has often been lost amid the sneers of the infidel and the atheist.

“How could there be light before the sun?" was one of the triumphant questions which Voltaire and his followers rarely failed to press upon the Bible student. But the mystery has been receding as discovery has advanced. That there may be light without the visible sun is now admitted; and it is not going further than the facts warrant to suppose that light of old did thus exist. When it was said, " Let there be light," there was not so much a new creation as the evolution of a new fact, or rather the presentation of a new condition of things, in the already created heaven and earth. This view is sustained by recent inferences to which observation of the sun has led.—Blending Lights, p. 39, 40

BARON HUMBOLDT.—Light is developed not only through the influence of the sun upon the planets, but also through an independent agency belonging to the planets themselves. The phenomenon of Northern Light derives most of its importance from the fact that the earth becomes self-luminous, and that in the capacity of a planet, besides the light which it receives from the central body, the sun, it shows itself capable, in itself, of developing light. The intensity of the terrestrial light exceeds somewhat, in cases of the brightest colored radiation toward the zenith, the light of the moon in its first quarter. Occasionally printed characters have been read by this light, without difficulty. This almost uninterrupted terrestrial development of light in the polar regions of the earth, leads us to the interesting phenomenon presented by Venus. The portion of this planet which is not illumined by the sun, often shines with a phosphorescent light of its own. It is not improbable that the Moon, Jupiter, and the Comets shine with a light of their own, in addition to reflected solar light, noticeable as such through the polariscope. Without speaking of the problematical but very common species of cloud-lightning, in which a heavy lowering cloud may be seen to shine with an uninterrupted flickering light for many minutes together, we still meet with other instances of terrestrial development of light in our atmosphere.—Cosmos, Vol. I., p. 207.

PROF. ELIAS Looms, LL. D.—Auroras exhibit an infinite variety of appearances, and their duration is very variable. Some last only an hour or two; others last all night, and occasionally they appear on two successive nights under circumstances which lead us to believe that, were it not for the light of the Sun, an aurora might be seen almost uninterruptedly every clear night. In the neighborhood of Hudson's Bay, the aurora is seen for months almost without cessation. Auroras are sometimes observed simultaneously over large portions of the globe, The aurora of August 28th, 1859, was seen over more than 140 degrees of longitude, from California to Eastern Europe, and from Jamaica on the south, to an unknown distance in British America on the north. The aurora of September 2nd, 1859, was seen at the Sandwich Islands; it was seen throughout the whole of North America and Europe; and the magnetic disturbances indicated its presence throughout all Northern Asia, although the sky was overcast, so that at many places it could not be seen. An aurora was seen at the same time in South America and New Holland.— Treatise on Meteorology, p. 177.

G. H. VON SCHUBERT.—May not that polar light, which is called an aurora of the north, be the last glimmering light of a departed age of the world, in which the whole earth was enclosed in an expanse of aerial fluid, from which, through the agency of the electromagnetic forces, streamed forth an incomparably greater degree of light, accompanied at the same time with animating warmth, almost in a similar mode to what still occurs in the luminous atmosphere of our sun?—Wettgeb., p. 218.

PROF. JOHN HENRY KURTZ, D. D.—Let us not be understood to assert that that light which, according to the Mosaic account, was created before the sun, was a northern light, or a phenomenon related to it; we desire only to show (from facts such as the above) that even yet, since the establishment of the relation which now exists between the sun and the earth, the latter still possesses in itself a capacity of developing light; and that there is nothing to prevent us from ascribing to it prior to that point of time, the same capacity in a degree much greater and vastly more magnificent and effective.— The Bible and Astronomy, p. 431.

Second Day

Gen. 1:6.—And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., ETC.—The statements in Genesis respecting the expanse, or " firmament," suppose a previous condition of the earth, in which it was encompassed with a cloudy, vaporous mantle, stretching continuously upward from the ocean, and not divided by the film of clear transparent air, which in all but a few exceptional cases now separates the clouds above from the sea below. Such a condition probably antedates geological time; yet it is not unknown to scientific theory. If, as seems probable, the earth was once in an intensely heated state, a. time would come, in the process of cooling, when a heated ocean would send up abundant vapors, producing a perpetual mist or fog to be constantly condensed by the cold of space without into continual rains. The change from this to the present state of the earth would introduce that nice and delicate balancing of evaporation under the influence of the sun, and condensation from the radiation of heat into space and the mixture of air at various temperatures, which now gives us the stratum of air in which we live and move, the beauty of the azure sky and its floating clouds, and the regulated supply of fertilizing rain.—Nature and the Bible, p. 51, 52.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—This, harmonizes with what is known of the process of evaporation to which the clouds are subject as they float above us—lakes of water in the azure vault. The firmament sustains the waters collected in its scattered clouds, and separates them from those resting on the surface of the earth.—Blending Lights, p. 71.

PROFESSOR E. Loomis, LL. D.—Rain is but the condensed vapor of the air, and this condensation can only be caused by cooling the air below the temperature of the dew-point. And there is no mode in which this can be done so readily as by forcing the air up to an elevation of one or two miles above the earth's surface. The temperature of the air sinks about thirty-five degrees in two miles of elevation; and if air from the earth's surface should be forced up to this height, a large portion of the vapor which is carried up with the air must be condensed, and fall in rain. The average annual fall of rain in the State of New York is thirty-seven inches (that is, a sufficient quantity to convert the entire State into a lake more than three feet deep). In Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky the average annual fall amounts to forty-eight inches; in Alabama and Louisiana, to fifty-six inches. The average rate increases as we advance toward the south; in latitude 20°, it—amounts to seventy inches; in latitude 10°, to eighty-five inches; at the Equator to 104 inches. On the island of Guadeloupe, near the summit of a mountain of 5,000 feet elevation, the fall of rain, in 1828, was 292 inches, while near the base it amounted to no less than 127 inches. Along the western coast of Hindustan runs a range of mountains whose summits are deluged with rain, the average amounting to 254 inches.. At Vera Cruz, 278 inches of rain have been known to fall in a single year, and the mean annual fall is 185 inches. On the southern slope of the Himalaya Mountains, at a height of 4,500 feet, there have been registered in a single year 610 inches of rain; and of this 547 inches fell in the month of June. In India fifteen inches of rain have fallen in a single day; while at several places in the vicinity of Switzerland thirty inches have been reported to fall in a single day.—Treatise on Meteorology, 110-119.

J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., etc.—The quantity of water suspended in the atmosphere is enormous; and the rains, the springs, and rivers which fertilize the earth and sustain its inhabitants, are only the overflowing of this vast aerial reservoir, upheld by the laws established by God.— Nature and the Bible, p. 53.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—With these facts of nature before us, it is easy to apprehend what is meant by the sacred historian when he tells us that "the firmament divided the waters that were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." One portion of the dense watery shroud which had invested the surface of the earth, the lighter particles thereof, was exhaled, rarefied and carried up into the clouds, remaining suspended in the upper regions of ether; the remaining and heavier portion was at the same time forced down, and merged into the waters that covered the earth; and the expanse left void by their separation is the expanse or " firmament" which formed the work of the second day.

— Daily Bible Illustrations, Vol. I., p. 24.

Third Day

Gen. 1:9.—And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S.—Under the primeval ocean were formed the first stratified rocks, from the substances precipitated from its waters, which must have been loaded with solid matter. In the meantime all is not at rest in the interior of the new-formed earth. Under the crust vast oceans of molten rock may still remain, but a solid interior nucleus is being crystallized in the center, and the whole interior globe is gradually shrinking. At length this process advances so far that the exterior crust, like a sheet of ice from below which the water has subsided, is left unsupported; and with terrible earthquake-throes it sinks downward, wrinkling up into huge folds (or ranges of lifted land), between which are vast sunken areas, into which the waters subside. So arose the first dry land.— The Story of the Earth and Man, p. 12.

PROF. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D., LL. D.—The present continents of the globe (except, perhaps, some high mountains) have been for long periods beneath the ocean, and have been subsequently elevated. Proof |iI|. Two-thirds at least of these continents are covered with rocks, often several thousand feet thick, abounding in marine organic remains; which must have been quietly deposited, along with the sand, mud, and calcareous or ferruginous matter in which they are enveloped, and which could have accumulated but slowly. 2. Some very high mountains contain marine fossils at or near their summits. For example, there are marine shells of cretaceous age upon the tops of the Pyrenees; cretaceous and tertiary fossils upon the summits of the Rocky Mountains, and foraminifera of cretaceous age high up on the flanks of Mt. Lebanon.—Elementary Geology, p. 370.

G. CHAPLIN CHILD, M. D.—Mountains, exhibit wonderful proofs of the force displayed in the arrangement of the surface of the earth. Geology tells us that many of them, like the lofty peaks of the Andes, or Ailsa Craig, or Teneriffe, have been cast forth as liquid lava from the interior of the earth by the force of fire. Others, again, though deposited originally at the bottom of the seas, have been lifted as it were on the back of other rocks, so as now to form lofty ridges. There are limestone strata of marine origin, labeled with shells identical with others found in low-lying beds near Paris, which are now placed at a height of 10,000 feet above the ocean, crowning the summit of the Diablerets among the Swiss Alps. Examples of similar elevations are met with among the Himalayas, in Tahiti, and elsewhere. Many mountain masses and level strata consist chiefly of the remains of animals that formerly existed on the globe. Many species of beautiful marbles owe their variegated markings to the shells which successive generations of creatures built up and left behind. And one feels astounded at the profusion of ancient life revealed by those "medals of creation. ''—Benedicite, p. 227.

PROF. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D. D.—All observers admit that the strata were formed beneath the water, and have been subsequently converted into dry land; and whatever may—have been the agents that caused the movements of the gross unorganized materials of the globe, we find sufficient evidence of prospective wisdom and design, in the benefits resulting from these obscure and distant revolutions, to future races of terrestrial creatures, and more especially to man.—Bridgewater Treatise, p. 44.

Gen. 1:10.—And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good.

PROF. ARNOLD GUYOT. —In inorganic nature, the bodies are only simple aggregations of parts, homogeneous or heterogeneous, and differing among themselves, the combination of which seems to be accidental. Nevertheless, to say nothing of the law that assigns to each species of mineral a particular form of crystallization, we see that every aggregation, fortuitous in appearance, may constitute a whole, with limits, and a determinate form which, without having anything of absolute necessity, gives to it, however, the first lineaments of individuality. Such are the various geographical regions, the islands, peninsulas and continents. Each of these terrestrial masses, considered as a whole, as an individual, has a particular disposition of its parts, of the forms which belong only to it, a situation relatively to the rays of the sun, and with respect to the seas or the neighboring masses, not found identically repeated in any other.

In considering them simply in a geological point of view, it may appear quite accidental that such a plain should or should not have arisen from the bosom of the waters; that such a mountain rises at this place or that; that such a continent should be cut up into peninsulas, or piled into a compact mass, accompanied by or deprived of islands. But in physics, neither of these circumstances is unimportant. Simple examples, without further demonstration, will be sufficient to set this in a clear light.

Is the question of the forms or contour? Nothing characterizes Europe better than the variety of its indentations, of its peninsulas, and of its islands. Suppose, for a moment, that beautiful Italy, and Greece with its entire Archipelago, were added to the central mass of the continent, and augmented Germany or Russia by the number of square miles they contain; this change of form would not give us another Germany, but we should have an Italy and a Greece the less. Unite with the body of Europe all its islands and peninsulas into one compact, mass, and instead of this continent, so rich in various elements, you will have a New Holland with all its uniformity.

Do we look to the forms of relief, of height? Is it a matter of indifference whether an entire country is lifted into the dry and cold regions of the atmosphere, like the central table-land of Asia, or is placed on, the level of the ocean? See, under the same sky, the warm and fertile plains of Hindustan, adorned with the brilliant vegetation of the tropics, and the cold and desert plateaus of Upper Tibet; compare the burning region of Vera Cruz and its fevers, with the lofty plains of Mexico and its perpetual spring; the immense forests of the Amazon, where vegetation puts forth all its splendors, and the desolate paramos of the summits of the Andes, and you have the answer.

And the relative position? Do not the three peninsulas of the south of Europe owe to their position their mild and soft climate, their lovely landscape, their numerous relations, and their common life? Is it not to their situation that the two great peninsulas of India are indebted for their rich nature, and the conspicuous part one of them, at least, has played in all ages? Place them on the north of their continents: Italy and Greece become Scandinavia, and India a Kamtschatka.

All Europe is indebted for its temperate atmosphere to its position relatively to the great marine atmospheric currents, and to the vicinity of the burning regions of Africa. Place it at the east of Asia, it will be only a frozen peninsula.

Suppose the Andes, transferred to the eastern coast of South America, hindered the trade wind from bearing the vapors of the ocean into the interior of the continent, and the plains of the Amazon and Paraguay would be nothing but desert.

In the same manner, if the Rocky Mountains bordered the eastern coast of North America, and closed against the nations of the East and of Europe the entrance to the rich valley of the Mississippi; or if this immense chain extended from east to west across the northern part of this continent, and barred the passage of the polar winds, which now rush unobstructed over these vast plains;—let us say even less; if preserving all the great present features of this continent, we suppose only that the interior plains were slightly inclined towards the north, and the Mississippi emptied into the Frozen Ocean, who does not see that, in these various cases, the relations of warmth and moisture, the climate, in a word, and with it the vegetation and the animal world, would undergo the most important modifications, and that these changes of form and relative position would have an influence greater still upon the destinies of human society, both in the present and in the future?

But to contemplate the form and elevation, the relations and functions of the great masses of dry land, as it was elevated from the deep, from a physical standpoint merely, is not enough. To understand and appreciate them at their full value, to study them in their true point of view, we must rise to a higher position. We must elevate ourselves to the moral world to understand the physical world; the physical world has no meaning except by and for the moral world. The earth was made to be the abode of man.—Earth and Man, p. 24-29.

Gen. 1:11—And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.—There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theater of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or a merely molten period, does not much matter—its condition was unfit for either animal or vegetable life.—Fragments of Science, p. 158.

PROF. SEDGWICK. —It is beyond dispute, and is proved by the physical researches of the earth, that there, the visible forms of organic life (plantal as well as animal), had a beginning in time.— Discourse, p. 17

PROF. HUXLEY, LL. D., F. R. S.—As the result of his experiments, Francesco Redi, a man of the widest knowledge and most versatile abilities, reached the conclusion, that no life, animal or vegetable, is of spontaneous generation. Omne vivum ex vivo, no life without antecedent life, aphoristically sums up his doctrine. The researches of Schroeder and Dusch, in 1854, and of Schroeder alone, in 1859, confirmed this doctrine by experiments which are simply refinements upon those of Redi. And the last link necessary to complete its demonstration was supplied by M. Pasteur in those beautiful researches which will ever render his name famous; and which, in spite of all attacks upon them, appear to me now, as they did seven years ago, to be models of accurate experimentation and logical reasoning.— Lay Sermons, No. XV.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—Plant-life—whence is it? How has it appeared? It is a result beyond physical law. Mark how it acts. Vital force overcomes the law of gravitation, and while it uses chemical combinations, is in its origin independent of them. To all intents and purposes, plant-life is, in relation to the inorganic world, miraculous or supernatural. Higher laws are framed which suspend or modify chemical and mechanical forces. All that chemistry has achieved amid transformations which often startle, and always instruct us, has failed to organize a single form in which life may take up its abode. Life makes its own form, and plies its own force. Plant-life was a new thing in our world. It came into or upon it, supernaturally, not from it.—GOD said, Let the earth bring forth.—Blending Lights, p. 342.

Gen. 1:12.—And the earth brought forth grass, and herbs yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

PROF. JAMES D. DANA, M. A.. LL. D.—It strikes us naturally with wonder, that even in senseless plants, without the emotional repugnance of instinct, and with reproductive organs that are all outside, the free winds being often the means of transmission, there should be rigid law sustained against intermixture. The supposed cases of perpetuated fertile hybridity are so exceedingly few, as almost to condemn themselves as no true examples of an abnormity so abhorrent to the system. They violate a principle so essential to the integrity of the plant-kingdom, and so opposed to Nature's whole plan, that we rightly demand long and careful study before admitting the exceptions.— Quoted in What is Truth? p. 189.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—The brief description of Moses is (in 5:12) repeated with emphasis, as if it were intended to be noticed. Its aptness, as related to Botanical science, will be acknowledged even by those who refuse to admit otherwise its importance. While the Linnæan system of classification according to distinctions in the flower, was brought as near perfection as possible, and served useful ends, it was felt to be inadequate, and in some degree unscientific. Botanists strove to establish a more natural method, and they have succeeded by making the character of the seeds and other affinities of structure the basis of classification. This was found to be so satisfactory, that not long ago it was regarded as another trophy of science. It was, indeed, a new height gained, or rather an old one reached; for Moses was seated there with that very principle written on his scroll, more than three thousand years ago. His distinctions are the same; plants are classified by him according to their " seed" and " kind " or structure; he intimates a basis which is sufficient for every natural division, by whatever route it may be reached, whether by the elementary, the nutritive, or the reproductive function, and to which the labors of Jussieu, De Candolle, Endlicher, Lindley, and others, have added nothing essentially new.—Blending Lights, p. 48.

THE COMPILER.—And God saw that it was good.—Nothing can be more astonishing than the unbounded variety of trees, herbs and grasses that furnish and adorn the earth; nor can anything more clearly exhibit the abounding goodness of the Creator. Nothing that either the necessity, or the improvement, or the pleasure of His creatures could demand, appears to be wanting. Grasses and herbs, in endless diversity, abound, to meet the various tastes and habits of all living things. Fruit-plants and fruit-trees, adapted to every climate and soil, proffer food to man and beast and bird, in every form and of every flavor. Flowers to delight us with their beauties, and to regale us with their odors. Shrubs and vines, without number, to shade and adorn our habitations. Add to all these the forest-trees, which offer to man timber fitted for all the purposes of art and industry—the soft pine and poplar; the hard oak, beech and holly; the light cedar and lime; the heavy ebony and lignum vitae; the flowery mahogany and rosewood; the tough hickory and elm; the incorruptible teak, and durable yew; and a hundred other kinds adapted both for use and ornament. What munificence is here displayed And the grass, the general vegetative covering given to the earth—in this, as in all else, the Divine wisdom and goodness are equally conspicuous. Upwards of three hundred genera, and more than five thousand different species of grass, grow upon the Surface of the earth. This needful sustenance of our herds and flocks, and of the beasts of the forests, is everywhere spread over its dusky soil, and is so constituted as to grow without care or cultivation; nay, in spite of every kind of abuse and violence. Like a living carpet, it covers and adorns the face of Nature. Self-propagating and self-perpetuating, it supplies the wants of every passing age, with undiminished abundance. Though ever trodden upon, and fed upon, it still lives. Lay it low to-day, and to-morrow it is stronger than before. Cut it down, and it renews and multiplies its shoots with fresher vigor. Crush it with the foot, and it sends up richer perfume. Bury it through all the winter months, beneath ice and snow, and in the spring it starts forth with all the glowing verdancy of its first creation. And then the beauty of the grass—in every landscape it is the most conspicuous object, the ground color on which nature embroiders her varied patterns, and from the midst of which the gay hues of flowers come forth in greater brilliancy, by the force of contrast, to arrest the admiring gaze. "The grass of the field: "the very sound carries in it all the charms of nature, all the delights of spring and summer; the silent scented paths; the green banks of the murmuring brook; the waving meadows; the pastures of the meditative shepherd; the verdant lawns, glittering with the pearls of early dew. What a concourse of wonders and beauties and blessings, have we, then, even in the grass, that we so heedlessly and constantly trample under foot! How true and appropriate the words that close the record of the third creative day—"And God saw that it was GOOD. "—Science and the Bible, p. 202—204.

Fourth Day

Gen. 1:14, 15.—And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—The dry land has appeared; the waters have retired to their ocean beds; the scene is invested with all the variety and beauty of vegetation. What more is wanting? More light; by the full manifestation of those bright luminaries, that as yet are hidden by the dense clouds above, which their rays have not been able to dissipate and rarefy into pure azure sky.— Bib. illustrations, p. 27.

HUGH MILLER.—That lower stratum of the heavens, formerly occupied by seething steam, or gray, smoke-like fog, has Been cleared and made transparent, only in an upper region do clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold, an upper sea of great waves, separated from those beneath by the transparent firmament, and, like them, too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation, its most notable feature being the existence of a transparent atmosphere; of a firmament stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters below. And now, again, the Creator speaks, and those manifold clouds break up, disperse, and the stars look out from openings of deep unclouded blue; and as day rises, and the planet of morning pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from bronze into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course rejoicing. It is a brilliant day; the waves of a deeper and softer blue than before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with little else to attract the gaze, has assumed a garb of brighter green; and as the sun declines amid even richer glories than those which had encircled his rising, the moon appears full orbed in the east, to the human eye the second great luminary of the heavens, and climbs slowly to the zenith as night advances, shedding its mild radiance on land and sea.—Test. of Rocks, 207-209.

Gen. 1:16.—And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.

ROBERT BOYLE, F. R. S.—In almost all ages and countries the generality of philosophers and contemplative men were persuaded of the existence of a Deity from the consideration of the phenomena of the universe; whose fabric and conduct they rationally concluded could not justly be ascribed either to chance or to any other cause than a Divine Being.—Tract on the high Veneration Man's Intellect owes to God.

IDEM.—I am by all means for encouraging the contemplation of the celestial part of the universe, and the shining globes that adorn it, and especially the sun and moon, in order to raise our admiration of the stupendous power and wisdom of Him who was able to frame such immense bodies; and notwithstanding their vast bulk and scarce conceivable rapidity, keep them for so many ages constant both to the lines and degrees of their motion, without interfering with one another.—Essay on Final Causes.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.—This beautiful system of suns, planets, and comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. He governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of the universe.—Optics, scholium in fine.

COLIN MACLAURIN.—Such an exquisite structure of things, as the Solar System, could only arise from the contrivance and powerful influences of an intelligent, free, and most potent Agent.—Account of Newton's Philosophy, p. 407.

WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A., F. R. S.—These magnitudes and proportions of the universe which leave our powers of conception far behind; that ever expanding view which is brought before us, of the scale and mechanism, the riches and magnificence, the population and activity of creation; may reasonably serve to enlarge and elevate our conceptions of the MAKER and MASTER of all; to feed an ever-growing admiration of His wonderful nature; and to excite a desire to be able to contemplate more steadily, and conceive less inadequately, the scheme of his government and the operation of his power. —Bridgewater Treatise, p. 146.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, D. C. L., F. R. S.—The greater Light to rule the day. What I am going to say about the sun will consist of a series of statements so enormous in all their proportions, that I dare say, some may be disposed to regard them as incredible as the mythical stories of the Hindus. And yet there is nothing more certain in modern science than the truth of these statements. The sun is the center of that system of planetary worlds, of which our world is one. By his powerful and all-pervading attraction he holds and guides all these in their appointed orbits, though moving with inconceivable velocities, and at the distance of hundreds and even thousands of millions of miles from him. His diameter is not less than 882,000 miles; his mass or weight is equal to 360,000 times that of the earth; while in bulk he exceeds it 1,331,000 times.

The sun is the dispenser of light and warmth to the whole system, as well as the center of attraction. But how shall I attempt to convey ally conception of the scale on which the great work of warming and lighting is carried on in the sun? All word-painting must break down, and it is only by bringing before you the consideration of great facts in the simplest language, that there is any chance of doing it. The quantity of light and heat that falls upon one square mile of the hot deserts of the equator is great; yet upon the whole sphere of our globe there falls without intermission 50,000,000 times that quantity.

What then must be the amount that descends on the vastly larger globes of Jupiter and Saturn? But take all the planets together, great and small; the light and heat they receive is only one-227 millionth part of the whole quantity thrown out by the sun. All the rest escapes into free space, and is lost among the stars; or does there some other work that we know nothing about.

The temperature or intensity of heat at the surface of the sun is found, by calculation, to be more than 90,000 times greater than the intensity of sunshine here on our globe at noon and under the equator, a heat far greater than sufficient to melt gold, and even plating, into liquid. The heat thrown out from EVERY SQUARE YARD of the sun's surface is equal to that which would be produced by burning on that square yard six tons of coal per hour, and keeping up constantly to that rate of consumption. The most brilliant and beautiful light which can be artificially produced is that of a ball of quicklime kept violently hot by a flame of mixed ignited oxygen and hydrogen gases playing on its surface. This is of an intensity far too great for the eye unprotected. ‘Yet the sun gives out a light 146 times more intense.

Every ray of light which comes from the sun is not a simple but a compound thing; it may be separated, split, sub-divided, not into four, but into many hundreds, nay thousands, of perfectly distinct rays or things, or rather of three distinct sorts or species of rays; of which one sort affects the eyes as light; one the sense of feeling and the thermometer as heat; and one the chemical composition of everything it falls upon, and which produces all the effects of photography. A ray of sunlight is a world in miniature, and if I were to set down all that experiment has revealed to us of its nature and constitution, it would take more volumes than there are pages in this lecture.

The sun not only sways the whole planetary system by his gravitating force, and cheers and animates it by his light and heat, but pours forth also a subtle yet powerful magnetic influence upon its every member. The earth, during certain agitations in the sun, has been thrown into a perfect convulsion of electro-magnetism; creating the most wonderful auroras in the heavens, and thrilling the whole frame of nature.

The solid globe of the sun is wrapped in a luminous atmosphere. This, at times, appears perforated with apertures of various forms and sizes, that seem like so many dark spots on his surface. Such spots, embracing an area of between seven and eight hundred millions of square miles, are by no means uncommon. One spot which I measured in the year 1837 occupied no less than 3,780 millions; and the black space or "umbra" in the middle of one, which was very nearly round, would have allowed the earth to drop through it leaving a thousand miles clear of contact on every side: and many instances of much larger spots than there are on record. What are we to think, then, of the awful scale of hurricane and turmoil and fiery tempest which can in a few days totally change the form of such a region, break it up into distinct parts, open up great abysses in one part, such as that I have just described, and fill up others beside them?

Such, then, is the scale of things with which we become familiar when we contemplate the sun. In what has been said I have been more anxious to dwell upon facts than theories, and rather to supply the imaginations of my readers with materials for forming a just conception of the stupendous magnificence of this member of GOD'S creation, than to puzzle them with physical and mathematical reasonings and arguments.—Lectures on Scientific Subjects, No. II.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. The lesser light to rule the night.—The moon, though apparently about the same size as the sun, is, in reality, far smaller, her diameter being only one four-hundredth part of that of the sun, and the light of her full-orbed face but one three-hundred-thousandth part of his light.—See Outlines of Astronomy, Arts. 404, 417.

Gen. 1:17.—And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

G. CHAPLIN CHILD, M. D.—Who can adequately appreciate the evidences of Power, Wisdom, and Beneficence crowded into this glorious creation, and how little do they comprehend its full value who see nothing in it beyond its convenience or its beauty! Light is an essential condition of animated nature—the pivot on which life turns. All that lives upon the earth lives by light. Without it plants could not grow, or assimilate their food, or breathe, or purify the air; and, without plants, animals must perish.— Benedicite, p. 97.

THE COMPILER.—And God saw that it was GOOD.—We are constantly partakers of a thousand benefits that flow from the “great light" that rules the day. The rays of the sun are the ultimate cause of almost every motion which takes place on the face of the earth. By its heat are produced all winds, and all those electrical disturbances we call thunder-storms, which purify the atmosphere we breathe. By its heat also the waters of the ocean ascend in vapors, travel through the air, descend in showers, irrigate the land, supply the springs, and form the rivers. By its vivifying action vegetables are enabled to draw their support from the soil and the air, to put forth their blossoms, to ripen their fruits and seeds, and to become, in their time, the support of man and beast. Through its illuminating power we enjoy the inestimable advantages, and receive all the indefinable pleasures of vision. Every animal, every plant, owns that life and health are due to its light, and all living things rejoice in its presence. Foreseeing these and ten thousand other beneficent rests that would flow from the celestial luminaries, rightly did the Great Creator pronounce them “good. "—Science and the Bible, p. 254.

Fifth Day

Gen. 1:20.—And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

J W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—It will be observed that, according to Genesis, all the arrangements of the inorganic world were perfected, and the dominion of what geologists term " existing causes " fully introduced before the creation of animals. Further, a whole creative on elapsed between the completion of these arrangements, as far as the, earth was concerned, and that event. The first animals are produced by the waters; but these waters are not now the shore-less ocean of the first day. They include depths and shallows of the sea, estuaries, and probably lakes and fresh water streams as well. Thus they afford all the conditions required for a varied and abundant' aquatic fauna.—Nature and the Bible, p. 114.

W. FRASER, LL. D.—Moses tells us that the lowest forms of life commenced to exist; Plants first, Animals next. This is as it ought to be. Plants drawing their nourishment from inorganic substances were first created; and as animals could live only on plants or animals, they were next introduced. Vegetable form-, as they spread, act on the carefully prepared materials in the soil and water; they manufacture food for themselves, and, storing it up in their own fabric, they provide support for the succeeding animals. The Bible record thus harmonizes with that which science has shown to be necessary. Whence all this accuracy? Can it possibly be the outcome of chance?—.Blending Lights, P. 47.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—It is remarkable that both the record of Nature and the record of the Bible concur in ascribing the origin and earliest existence of animal life to the sea, where we are told there are "creeping things innumerable." The sea is even yet the great storehouse of animal life, and it would seem' for long geological ages to have been the only theater of its development. This great comical truth, revealed to the ancient Hebrew prophet, is not without its scientific significance. In a physiological point of view, it indicates the important fact that the conditions of animal life are easier in the sea than on the land. There both the most minute and the grandest forms of life can find suitable conditions, and there the feebler tissues and the less energetic vitality can succeed in the battle of life. In its geological relations, it shows that it was necessary that the land itself, to be suitable to the support of the higher forms of life, must be born from the sea, and that the action of marine organisms in heaping up beds of their skeletons was one of the necessary preparations for the actual condition of our continents. Both records give us a grand procession of dynasties of life, beginning from the lower forms and culminating in man.—Nature and the Bible, p. 118.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Fishes are included in the first chapter of Genesis among the moving creatures created on the fifth day, along with great whales (reptiles) mid birds. They are thus set forth as having been brought into existence prior to the inhabitants of the dry land. The researches of geology have illustrated this order of creation in a striking manner. Fishes, as they are the lowest class in organization of any of the vertebrate animals, so they are the earliest to appear in the strata of which the crust of the earth is composed. In the Old Red Sandstone rocks a few species of Ganoid and Placold fishes are found; and they become more numerous in the more recent strata, until they reach their full development at the end of the Secondary Period or the Chalk epoch, just as warm-blooded mammals or quadrupeds were first beginning to predominate on the earth. Thus geological research' corroborates the order of sequence in the Mosaic record, testifying that “the moving creature that hath life “appeared upon the earth in the waters long before it existed on the dry land.

Let the WATERS bring forth the moving creature and fowl that may fly.—Fish, reptiles and birds are combined in the creation of this day, and all are said to be produced from the water. And it is very noticeable that certain peculiarities are common to them all. All these classes of animals are oviparous, or bring forth their young from eggs or spawn, whilst the creations of the sixth day bring forth their young alive. Besides this point of affinity, between the different orders of the fifth day, microscopists assure us that the globules of the blood of birds and fishes, when closely examined, are seen to be the same, and do not at all resemble the globules of the blood of mammalia, or animals which sprang from the earth on the sixth day.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 282, 283. Gen. 1:21.—And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind.

J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., ETC.—Let us pause here a moment to contemplate the greatness of the fact we have been studying—the introduction into our world of the earliest known vertebrate animals which could open their nostrils and literally "breathe the breath of life." All previous animals that we know had respired in the water by means of gills or similar apparatus. Now we have animals which must have been able to draw in the vital air into capacious chambered lungs, and with this power must have enjoyed a far higher and more active style of vitality; and must have possessed the faculty of uttering truly vocal sounds. What wondrous possibilities unknown to these creatures, perhaps only dimly perceived by such rational intelligences as may have watched the growth of our young world, were implied in these gifts! It is one of the remarkable points in the history of creation in Genesis, that this step of the creative work is emphatically marked. Of all the creatures we have noticed up to this point, it is stated that God said, "Let the waters bring forth;" but it is said that " God created (not whales but) great reptiles "—taninim. No doubt these great taninim culminated in the succeeding Mesozoic age, but their first introduction dates as far back as the Carboniferous; and this introduction was emphatically a creation, as being the commencement of a new feature among living beings.—Story of the Earth and Man, p. 150.

H. B. TRISTRAM, M. A., LL. D., F. R. S., ETC.—In the summary of the history of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, birds are described as being brought into existence after fishes and sea-monsters. This position of birds in the Mosaic record is remarkably in accordance with the geological chronology of their appearance. The earliest traces of birds yet discovered are in the Triassic period; and it is only in the Chalk period, just after the reign of the great sea-monsters and reptiles of the Wealden, that birds appear to any extent in the fossil remains.—Natural History of the Bible, ft. 156.

HUGH MILLER.—God CREATED every living creature after his KIND. The infidel seeks to develop fishes of a higher order out of those of a lower by insensible and fortuitous variation. He substitutes progression for Deity; Geology robs him of his god.—Old Red Sandstone, p. 41.

PROF. AGASSIZ.—While it may be said in a general sense that lower forms have preceded higher ones, it is not true that all the earlier animals were simpler than the latter. On the contrary, many of the lower animals were introduced under more highly organized forms than they have ever shown since, and have dwindled afterward. Animals that should be ancestors, if simplicity of structure is to characterize the first-born, are known to be of later origin; the more complicated forms have frequently appeared first, and the simpler ones later, and this in hundreds of instances. The Development assertion does not bear serious examination. It is just one of those fancied results following the disclosure or presentation of a great law which captivates the mind, and leads it to take that which it wishes to be true for, TRUTH.—Lectures before Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, No. XII.

ST. GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S.—Great whales after their KIND. Those remarkable fossil reptiles, the Ichthyosauria and Plesiosauria, extended through the secondary period, probably over the greater part of the globe; yet no single transitional form has yet been met with in spite of the multitudinous individuals preserved. The same is true with their modern representatives, the Cetacea, or whales.— Genesis of Species, p. 146.

H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Every winged jowl after his KIND.—Birds are the most distinctive and best characterized class in the whole animal kingdom. There is a constancy in the nature of their covering, which does not admit of the variations found in mammals, reptiles and fishes; for every bird, whether capable of flight or not, is clad with feathers. No species of bird brings forth its young alive, or produces them in any other way than from eggs, consisting invariably of yolk, white and a calcareous shell, and incubated, by artificial heat. No bird deviates in its skeleton from the typical form, as the whale does among mammals, and the serpent among reptiles. No bird deviates from the ordinary mode of generation of its class, as do the marsupials from other quadrupeds.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 157.

PROF. JOSEPH LE CONTE.—The evidence of Geology, to-day, is that species seem to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their place apparently by substitution, not by transmutation.—Religion and Science, p. 22.

Gen. 1:22.—And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—The teeming multitudes of marine creatures in the Cambrian and Silurian periods were so great, that thick beds of limestone are often made up of fragments of their skeletons, and it appears that the seas then brought forth the lower forms of life in abundance since unsurpassed.—Nature and the Bible, p. 122.

Sixth Day

Gen. 1:24.—And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

PROF. JAMES D. DANA, M. A., LL. D.—The order of events in the. Scripture cosmogony corresponds essentially with that which has been given in this Treatise. First, the lower animals, those that swarm in the waters; then creeping and flying species on the land; then beasts and cattle; and, lastly, man. In this succession, we observe not merely an order of events, like that deduced from science; there is a system in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy; to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed. The record in the Bible is, therefore, profoundly philosophical in the scheme of creation which it presents. It is both true and divine.—Manual of Geology, Revised Ed., p. 744-746.

J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—The first animals belong to the lower grades of the aquatic fauna. As we ascend in the geological series, vertebrate life has its commencement, beginning like the lower forms, in the waters, and represented at first only by the fishes; and it is not until we are approaching the close of the: Paleozoic that reptile life is introduced. Reptiles and birds make their appearance abundantly in the earlier and middle Mesozoic, in which also reptilian life culminates in the gigantic and multiform Dinosaurs and their allies, of what is par excellence the Reptilian age. In like manner, the Scripture record of creation, after stating the creation of lower forms, goes on to specify the gigantic reptilian animals of the Mesozoic by the term taninim, and connects with them the birds, which, with allied winged reptiles, were their contemporaries in geological time.

As we pass into the next creative mon, the Mammalia, represented in the Mesozoic of geology by only a few small species, become dominant; and here we have, in the prominence given to the larger Herbivora, a position corresponding to their grandeur and dominance in the Eocene; while in the introduction of the beasts of the earth, or carnivorous mammalia, we have the inauguration of an era, the later Tertiary, in which these assume the highest rank in nature, and take the place of the great reptilian life-destroyers of the Mesozoic. Lastly in this long procession, Man appears, not the product of a separate day, but, in accordance with the revelations of geology, at the close of the same great period, in which the mammalia became dominant.

The progress in animal life thus shortly sketched is sufficient to show the remarkable manner in which Revelation had long ago foreshadowed what in these last days the rocks have opened their mouths to tell.—Nature and the Bible, P. 122.

Gen. 1:25.—And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind.

DUKE OF ARGYLL.—The various hypotheses of Development (i. e., of the derivation of one animal from another by slow and fortuitous variations), of which Darwin's theory is only a new and special version, are indeed destitute of proof; and in the form which they have as yet assumed, it may justly be said that they' involve such violations of, or departures from, all that we know of the existing order of things, as to deprive them of all scientific basis:,—Reign of Law, p. 29.

PROF. J. D. DANA, M. A., LL. D.—Species have not been made out of species by any process of growth or development, for the transition forms do not occur.; the evolution or plan of progress was by successive creations of species, in their full perfection. The types are wholly independent, and are not connected lineally, either historically or zoologically. The earliest species of a class were often far from the very lowest, although among the inferior. In many cases the original or earliest group was but little inferior to those of later date, and the progress was toward a purer expression of the type. But geology declares, unequivocally, that the new forms were new expressions, under the type-idea, by created material forms, and not by forms educed or developed from one another.—Bibliotheca Sacra, January and July, 1856.

PROF. L. AGASSIZ.—I wish to enter my earnest protest against the transmutation theory. It is my belief that naturalists are chasing a phantom, in their search after some material gradation among created beings, by which the whole animal kingdom may have been derived by successive development from a single germ, or from a few germs. I confess that there seems to me a repulsive poverty in this material explanation, that is contradicted by the intellectual grandeur of the universe. I insist that this theory is opposed to the process of nature as we have been enabled to apprehend it; that it is contradicted by the facts of Embryology and Paleontology, the former showing us worms of development as distinct and persistent for each group as are the fossil types of each period revealed to us by the latter; and that the experiments on domesticated animals and cultivated plants, on which its adherents base their views, are entirely foreign to the matter in hand.—In Pater Mundi.

IDEM.—That presentation of paleontological phenomena which would make it appear that the whole animal kingdom (says the same authority) has been marshaled in a consecutive procession beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest, is false to nature. There is no inevitable repetition, no mechanical evolution in the geological succession of organic life. It has the correspondence of connected plan. It has just that kind of resemblance in the parts, so much and no more, as always characterizes intellectual work proceeding from the same source. It has that freedom of manifestation, that independence, which characterizes the work of MIND as compared with the work of Law. I believe that all these correspondences between the different aspects of animal life are the manifestations of MIND acting consciously with intention toward one object from beginning to end. This view is in accordance with the working of our minds; it is an instinctive recognition of a mental power with which our own is akin, manifesting itself in nature. For this reason more than any other, perhaps, do I hold that this world of ours is not the result of the action of unconscious organic forces, but the work of an INTELLIGENT, CONSCIOUS POWER.— Lects. before the Museum of Comp. Zoology, No. XII.

God made the: beast, the cattle, and everything that creepeth, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

E. F. BURR, D. D.—Animated Nature is a system philosophic, exquisite and beautiful in a very high degree. The further our researches go into the mechanism and physiology of plants and animals, the louder grows the call for admiration. —Pater Mundi, p. 167.

THE COMPILER.—If the theory of Development had been true, and the earth had been peopled with all its varieties of living creatures by " fortuitous variations," we should discover in Nature nothing like a general Plan, nothing like a System of animal types, nothing like Symmetry of organization, nothing like Order as to age, strength, stature, instinct or habit; for plan, system, symmetry and order cannot proceed from accident or fortuity. We should meet in living creatures with all manner of excesses and deficiencies, all kinds of misplaced and mis-paired members; all kinds of irregularities as to age, stature and disposition; all kinds of deformities and monstrosities; in short, universal disorder and confusion. But how widely different from all this is the existing creation around ups! Nature, through all her realms, clearly exhibits the Plans of far-reaching and all-comprehending INTELLIGENCE—design and adaptation, order and harmony and beauty, are everywhere apparent. The more extended and thorough our study of the characters, habits and wants of animals, whether beasts or birds, reptiles or fishes, insects or worms, the more profoundly are we impressed with the wisdom and goodness displayed in their several allotments; every one being 'fitted for its habitation, and every habitation suited to its given occupants. In all the myriad bundles of living machinery enfolded in animal forms, there is not an organ, not a feature of construction, wherein human wisdom could suggest an improvement, or devise a change that would be for the benefit of the individual in its particular sphere and line of life. "And God saw that it was good."—Present Conflict of Science with the Christian Religion. 213, 216.

Gen. 1:26.—And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

HUGH MILLER.—To the close of the Tertiary period, “the evening of the sixth day," Man belongs, at once the last created of terrestrial creatures, and infinitely beyond comparison the most elevated in the scale; and with man's appearance on the scene the days of creation end.—Testimony of the Rocks, p. 203.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—In the distant past not a trace of man's presence has been found. He is of yesterday. While the stone volume has preserved for us the slight impressions of the Annelid and the foot trail of perished mollusks in the soft mud over which they crawled; while it has restored to us in perfect shape the delicately-constructed many-lensed eye of the Trilobite, and has kept exact record of the death struggles of fishes on the sands of olden seas; while it has delineated, on carboniferous columns, fern-leaves' exquisitely delicate in structure as the finest species of modern times; and while the raindrops of long bygone ages have left imprints which revealed to us the course which even the wind followed; not a trace of man is visible. Only at the close does he appear; science finds him where the Scriptures place him, and sees in him the crown which continuous type had long fore-shadowed.—Blending Lights, p. 83

PROF. JAMES D. DANA, M. A., LL. D.—In the preceding chapters the progress of the vegetable and animal tribes has been followed through the three grand divisions of geological time, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. In the latter part of the last era, the animated kingdom reached the highest grade of development presented by the merely animal type. In the era now opening, the animal element is no longer dominant, but Mind in the possession of a being at the head of the kingdoms of life. At the same time the animal structure is brought to its highest perfection in the erect form of Man, completing, as Agassiz has observed, the possible changes in the series to its last term. —Manual of Geology, Revised Ed., p. 573.

PROF. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D., LL. D.—The whole depth of rock from which animal remains have been dug out is between 50,000 and 60,000 feet; but I know of no example in which it is pretended that human bones occur as deep below the surface as 100 feet.—Religious Truth Illustrated from Science, p. 193.

DAVID KING, LL. D.—The recent origin of man is one of the hest established facts in geological science. The absence of human remains from all but the most modern and superficial deposits, although very remarkable, is only a fragment of the evidence we can adduce.—Principles of Geology Explained, p. 188.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—The continents had now attained to their greatest extension; animal and vegetable life had again overspread the new land to its utmost limits. The glacial period, with its snows and ice, had passed away, and the world rejoiced in a spring-time of renewed verdure and beauty. Many great and formidable beasts of the Tertiary time had disappeared in the revolutions which had occurred, and the existing fauna of the northern hemisphere had been established on the land. Then it was that Man was introduced by an act of creative power.—The Story of the Earth and Man, p. 289, 377.

Gen. 1:27.—So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—The term "image" or "likeness" seems intended to express man's personality, and his resemblance to the Infinite and Uncreated in every Way possible with a being finite and created. Man, accordingly, though at an immeasurable distance from the infinite I AM, has knowledge, wisdom, power, and therefore dominion over all that has been placed within the sphere of his influence. As he was intellectual and could know, as he was moral and could love, he had a sway which no other creature on earth could wield. With these forces combined, he came forth controlling all the resources of nature which were placed within his reach; and in possessing this spirit, he could be rightly regarded as the lord of this lower world and as the representative of Deity.—Blending Lights, p. 92.

IDEM. —Man, made capable of looking "to the Unseen and Eternal," cherishes the distinctive idea of immortality. His intellect, with its power of comparing; his reason, with its grasp to generalize; his imagination, with its faculty to invent and combine; his conscience, with its recognition of right and wrong; his memory, with its power of reproducing the past; and his conceptions of responsibility, obligation, virtue, and the sanctions of law, connect him with an economy which is utterly beyond the reach of the lower animals. In his intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature, he is supernatural to all beneath and around—p. 345.

CICERO. —This animal—prescient, sagacious, complex, acute, full of memory, reason, and counsel, which we call Man-has been generated by the supreme God in a most transcendent condition. For he is the only creature among all the races and descriptions of animated beings who is endued with superior reason and thought. And what is there, I do not say in man alone, but in all heaven and earth, more divine than reason? The Deity was pleased to create and adorn man to be the chief and president of all terrestrial creatures. The human mind, being derived from Divine Reason, can be compared with nothing but the Deity Himself.—De Leg., lib. I, c. 7 and 9; and Tusc., lib. V, c. 13.

Gen. 1:28.—And God blessed them and said unto them-Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—Man was invested with "dominion " over the animal tribes by being created with powers of a higher grade, such as gave him immense advantages over them, and made him capable, in great measure, of reducing them to subjection, and thus of making them subservient to his pleasure or use. —Notes on Genesis.

M. LOUIS FIGUIER. —Intelligence and speech are really the attributes which constitute man; these are the qualities which make him the most complete being in creation, and the most privileged of God's creatures.—L'Homme Primitif, p. 30.

PROF. T. H. HUXLEY, F. R. S., F. L. S.—A great gulf intervenes between the lowest man and the highest ape in intellectual power. There is an immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the human from the Simian stirps. There is an enormous gulf between them. No one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes, or is more certain that, whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of them. He alone possesses the marvelous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a ray from the Infinite Source of truth.—Man's Place in Nature, p. 120-132.

PROF. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D., LL.D.—But man's chief glory lies in his moral nature-that is, in his power of distinguishing right and wrong, virtue and vice; feeling a satisfaction when he conforms to the one, and dissatisfaction when he yields to the other. This power assimilates him more than anything else to the Deity, whose approval of holiness and hatred of sin are infinitely strong.—Religious Truth Illustrated from Science, p. 207.

Gen. 1:29.—And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

WILLIAM FRASER, LL.D.—Not until we enter upon the Tertiary period do we find flowers, amid which man might have profitably labored as a dresser of gardens, a tiller of fields, or a keeper of flocks and herds. Not, indeed, until late in this period is there any appearance of several orders and families of plants which are useful to man, and which contribute largely to his pleasure. Among these orders we may mention that of the Rosaceæ, to which gardeners invariably look with unfailing interest. It includes the apple, the pear, the cherry, the plum, the peach, the apricot, the nectarine, the raspberry, the strawberry; nor ought we to omit reference to those delight-giving and useful flowers, roses and potentillas, the history of which commenced with that of man. It is no less remarkable that the true grasses, a still more important order, including the grain-giving plants, oats, barley, wheat and others which sustain at least two-thirds of the human species, and which also, in their humble varieties, form the staple food of the grazing animals, do not appear until close on the human period. There are other plants, also, which add to man's comfort or gratify his senses, which are not found in the fossil state—lavender, mint, thyme, hyssop, basil, rosemary, marjoram. They have apparently been introduced to prepare for man their varied fragrance and virtues.

There is distinct evidence of preparation for man in the distribution and adjustments of color, which alone must interest every student of the Bible and the natural sciences. The very appearance of all things has been adapted to the human constitution.—Blending Lights, p. 84-86.

Gen. 1:30.—And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—While plants draw their nourishment from the inorganic, animals cannot; they live on the organic; they utilize the materials which plants elaborate.—Blending Lights, p. 343.

Gen. 1:31.—And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.

G. CHAPLIN CHILD, M. D.—In whatever direction we survey the universe, we see that nothing is isolated, and no one thing exists without being adjusted to other things. All is in the most perfect harmony, and everything perfectly answers the end for which it was made. Creation is a Book written by the finger of God himself, and of which every 'page is filled to overflowing with illustrations of his wisdom; it is a picture in which his goodness is painted in colors of perfect truth; it is a sculpturing in which his power is expressed in marvels of form and harmony. Nothing that could be added, or that could be withdrawn, would make creation more perfect than it is.—Benedicite, p. 363, 367.

The Chaldean Record of Creation

MR. GEORGE SMITH, of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum.—When excavating at Nineveh, in 1873, I discovered a fragment of a tablet, which I afterward recognized as a part of the Chaldean Story of the Creation. Continuing the work of excavation, I afterward found another portion belonging to this story, far more precious—in fact, I think, to the general public, the most interesting and remarkable cuneiform tablet yet discovered.

This turned out to contain the story of man's original innocence, of the temptation and the fall. These tablets were composed of fine clay, and were inscribed with cuneiform characters while in a soft state; they were then baked in a furnace until hard, and afterward transferred to the royal library. Judging from the fragments discovered, there were probably in this library, at Nineveh, over 10,000 inscribed tablets of this kind, including almost every subject in ancient literature. Owing, however, to the vicissitudes through which they have passed—fire, and rains, and overturning—most of them are in a broken or mutilated condition, while others are in whole or in part altogether missing. The Story of Creation, as indicated by the fragments found, when complete, must have consisted of some dozen tablets at least. Those discovered were found in the debris which covers the palaces called the South West Palace, and the North Palace, at Kouyunjik, the former building being of the age of Sennacherib, and the latter belonging to the time of Assurbanipal, who reigned over Assyria B. C. 670, and every copy of the Genesis legends yet found was inscribed during his reign. These tablets of Assurbanipal, it must be observed, are not the originals, but copies from far older texts. During the earlier ages of the world, the history of the creation of the universe and of the infancy of the human race was preserved in the form of traditions. Now, it appears from indications in the tablet inscriptions, that there happened in the interval from B. C. 2000 to B. C. 1850, a general collecting and development of the various traditions of the Creation, Flood, Tower of Babel, and other similar legends. The tablets of Assurbanipal relating the Story of Creation, which have just been discovered, were copies of these more ancient Babylonian texts, which must date at the lowest from the 18th century B. C. Hence his transcribers state that in some cases the old copies had become partly illegible even in their day.

The fragment I found of the First Tablet of Creation gives a description of the void of chaos, and of the generation of the gods, and is as follows:

“When the upper region was not yet called heaven, and the lower region was not yet called earth, and the abyss of Hades had not yet opened its arms, then the chaos of waters gave birth to all of them, and the waters were gathered into one place. No men yet dwelt together; no animals yet wandered about; none of the gods had yet been born; their names, were not spoken; their attributes were not known."

This corresponds to the first two verses of the first chapter of Genesis: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The correspondence between the inscription and the Scripture is here complete, both stating that a watery chaos preceded the creation, and formed, in fact, the origin and groundwork of the universe. We have here not only an agreement in sense, but, what is rarer, the same word used in both narratives as the name of this chaos, and given also in the account of Damascius.

Next we have in the Inscription the creation of the gods Lahma and Lahama, personifications of motion and production, and correspond to the moving of the Spirit in Genesis. The next stage in the Inscription gives the production of Sar and Kisar, representing the upper expanse and the lower expanse. Here the text becomes so mutilated that little can be made out from it. The three next Tablets are absent altogether, there being only two doubtful fragments of this part of the story. One of these fragments refers to the establishing of the dry land, and reads thus:

“When the foundations of the ground of rock thou didst make, the foundation of the ground thou didst call... thou didst beautify the heaven... to the face of the heaven... thou didst give..."

The next recognizable portion of the Creation Story is the upper part of the Fifth Tablet, which gives the creation of the heavenly bodies, and runs parallel to the account of the Fourth day of creation in Genesis. Here is a translation of it:

"He constructed dwellings for the great gods. He fixed up constellations, whose figures were like animals. He made the year. Into four quarters he divided it. Twelve months he established, with their constellations, three by three. And for the days of the year he appointed festivals. He made dwellings for the planets: for their rising and setting. And that nothing should go amiss, and that the course of none should be retarded, he placed with them the dwellings of BEL and HEA. He opened great gates, on every side: he made strong the portals, on the left hand and on the right. In the center he placed luminaries. The moon he appointed to rule the night, and to wander through the night, until the dawn of day. Every month without fail he made holy assembly-days. In the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, it shot forth its horns to illuminate the heavens. On the seventh day he appointed a holy day, and to cease from all business he commanded. Then arose the sun in the horizon of heaven in glory."

The colophon at the close of Tablet V. gives us a part of the first line of the VI.th Tablet, but not enough to determine its subject. It is probable that this dealt with the creation of the creatures of the water and fowls of the air.

Of the next Tablet, the following is the only fragment that has yet been found:

“When the gods in their assembly had created... were delightful the strong monsters.... they caused to be living creatures.... cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and creeping things of the field.... they fixed for the living creatures.... cattle and creeping things of the city they fixed.... the assembly of the creeping things the whole which were created.... which in the assembly of my family.... and the god Nin-si-ku caused to be two.... the assembly of the creeping things he caused to go.... flesh beautiful.... pure presence.... pure presence."

This tablet corresponds to the Sixth Day of Creation. It commences with a statement of the satisfaction a former creation, apparently that of the monsters or whales, had given (Gen. 1:23). It then goes on to relate the creating of land animals, three kinds being distinguished, exactly agreeing with Genesis; and then we have a curious but broken account of Nin-si-ku creating two beings to be with the animals, the wording of the next fragmentary lines—" flesh beautiful... pure presence "—leading to the suspicion that this was the opening of the account of the creation of Man.

On the next fragment we possess we have what appears to be an address of the Deity to the newly-created human pair. That on the obverse side of the tablet is spoken to the man, and is as follows: ".... evil.... which is eaten by the... stomach.... in growing....consuMed.... extended, heavy... ly thou shalt speak.... and the support of mankind.... thee. Every day thy God thou shalt invoke, sacrifice, prayer of the mouth and instruments.... to thy God in reverence thou shalt carry. Whatever shall be suitable for divinity, supplication, humility, and bowing of the face, fire thou shalt give to him, and thou shalt bring tribute, and in the fear also of God thou shalt be holy. In thy knowledge, and afterward in the writing, worship and goodness.... shall be raised. Sacrifice saving.... and worship.... the fear of God thou shalt not leave.... the fear of the angels thou shalt live in.... With friend and enemy speech shalt thou make.... under speech thou shalt make good.... When thou shalt speak also he will give.... When thou shalt trust also thou.... to enemy also.... thou shalt trust a friend.... thy knowledge also...."

The reverse of this tablet, so far as the sense can be ascertained, appears to be addressed to the woman, informing her of her duties towards her partner:

.... Beautiful place also.... divide.... in beauty and.... thy hand ... and thou to the presence.... thee to the end, in the presence of beauty and.... thou shalt speak of thy beauty and.... beautiful and.... to give drink, circle I fill.... his enemies his rising he seeks.... the man... with the lord of thy beauty thou shalt be faithful; to do evil thou shalt not approach him, at thy illness.... to him at thy distress.... "

The next fragment is a small one, but of importance, because it mentions a speech of Hea to man, and alludes to the dragon in connection with a revolt against the Deity. Connected with this fragment is the account of the curse after the fall. From this it appears that the dragon is included in the curse, and that the gods invoke on the head of the human family all the evils which afflict the race. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him—he shall have family quarrels—shall submit to tyranny—will anger the gods—he shall not eat of the fruit of his labor—he shall be disappointed in his desires—he shall pour out useless prayer—he shall have trouble of mind and body—he shall commit future sin.

Such is the Babylonian Story of Creation, and which substantially agrees, as far as it is preserved, with the Biblical account. According to it, there was a chaos of watery matter before the creation, and from this all things were generated. We have then a considerable blank, the contents of which we can only conjecture, and after this we come to the creation of the heavenly orbs—the constellations of the stars, the signs of the zodiac, the planets, the moon and the sun. After another blank we have a fragment, which relates the creation of wild and domestic animals, the latter being designated as the "animals of the city." Our next fragments refer to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as in the Bible; he is made perfect, and instructed in his various religious duties; but afterward he joins with the dragon of the deep, the spirit of Chaos, and offends against his God, who curses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.—Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 11-91, and 303.

The Sabbath

Gen. 2:2, 3.—And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

SACRED HISTORY.—The first Scriptural notice of the Sabbath is that at the close of the record of creation. It is next refereed to, as is generally supposed, in the phrase respecting the sacrifices of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:3): “In process of time;" literally, " at the end of days." It is also to be traced in the narrative of the subsidence of the Flood (Gen. 8:10): "And he stayed yet other seven days." And we find it recognized by Laban the Syrian (Gen. 29:27): “Fulfill her week." This division of time is a marked feature of the Mosaic law, and an institution clearly recognized down through all the history of the Jews, even to the present day.

BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMICAL TABLETS, compiled for Sargon, king of Agane, in the 16th century before Christ.—The moon a rest—on the 7th day, the 14th day, the 21St day, the 28th day—causes.—Trans. of Soc. of Bib. Archœ., Vol. III., p. 145.

BABYLONIAN CREATION TABLET.—Every month without fail he made hold assembly days. In the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, the moon shot forth its beams to illuminate the heavens. On the seventh day he appointed a holy day, and to cease from all business he commanded.— Trans. of Soc. of Bib. Archœ., Vol. IV., p. 67.

FRANCIS GARDEN, M. A.—The antiquity of the division of time into weeks is so great, its observance so widespread, and it occupies so important a place in sacred things, that it has been very generally dated from the creation of man, who was told from the very first to divide his time on the model of the Creator's order of working and resting. The week and the Sabbath are, if this be so, as old as man himself; and we need not seek for reasons either in the human mind or the facts with which that mind comes in contact, for the adoption of such a division of time, since it is to be referred neither to man's thoughts nor to man's will. A purely theological ground is thus established for the Week, and for the sacredness of the seventh day. —Smith's Diet of Bible, art. Week.

PROF. B. B. EDWARDS.—The measuring of time by a day and night is pointed out to the common sense of mankind by the diurnal course of the sun. Lunar months and solar years are equally obvious to all rational creatures; so that the reason why time has been computed by days, months, and years, is readily given; but how the division of time into weeks of seven days, and this from the beginning, came to obtain universally among mankind, no man can account for, without having respect to some impressions on the minds of men from the constitution and law of nature, with the tradition of a sabbatical rest from the foundation of the world. Yet plain intimations of this weekly revolution of time are to be found in the earliest Greek poets—Hesiod, Homer, Linus—as well as among the nations of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Cyclop of Religious Knowledge, p. 1039.

FRANCIS GARDEN, M. A.—The prevalence of the weekly division was very great. It was adopted by all the Shemitic races, and, in the latter period of their history at least, by the Egyptians. Across the Atlantic we find it, or a division all but identical with it, among the Peruvians. It also obtains now with the Hindus, but its antiquity among them is a matter of question. It is possible that it was introduced into India by the Arabs and Mohammedans. So in China we find it, but whether universally or only among the Buddhists admits of doubt.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3490.

IDEM.—Six days' work and the seventh day's rest conform the life of man to the method of his Creator. In distributing his life thus, man may look up to God as his Archetype. God's rest consists in his seeing that all that he has made is very good; and man's works are in their measure and degree very good when a six days' faithful labor has its issue in a seventh of rest after God's pattern.—Ib., p. 2761.

HESIOD calls the seventh day, "The splendid light of the sun;" and HOMER characterizes it, "The sacred day."

Garden of Eden

Gen. 2:8-14.—And the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had forMed. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison-of the second Gihon —of the third Hiddekel—and of the fourth Euphrates.

PROF. J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—The last point that I think necessary to bring forward here, is the information which Geology gives as to the locality of the introduction of Man. There can be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate regions of the Old Continent belongs the honor of being the cradle of humanity. In these regions are the oldest historical monuments of our race; here geology finds the most ancient remains of human beings; here also seems to be the birth-place of the fauna and flora most useful and congenial to man; and here he attains to his highest pitch of mental and physical development. In the preceding geological changes a region of western Asia had been prepared for his residence. It was a table-land at the head waters of the rivers that flow into the Euxine, the Caspian, and the Persian Gulf. Its climate was healthy and bracing, with enough of variety to secure vigor, and not so inclement as to exact any artificial provision for clothing or shelter. Its flora afforded abundance of edible fruits, and was rich in all the beautiful forms of plant life; while its clear streams, alluvial soil, and undulating surface, afforded every variety of station and all that is beautiful in scenery. It was not infested with the more powerful and predacious quadrupeds, and its geographical relations were such as to render this exemption permanent. In this paradise Man found ample supplies of wholesome and nutritious food. His requirements as to shelter were met by the leafy bowers he could weave. The streams of Eden afforded gold which he could fashion for use and ornament, pearly shells for vessels, and agate for his few and simple cutting instruments. He required no clothing, and knew of no use for it. His body was the perfection and archetype of the vertebrate form, full of grace, vigor, and agility. His hands enabled him to avail himself of all the products of nature for use and pleasure, and to modify and adapt them according to his inclination. His intelligence, along with his manual powers, allowed him to ascertain the properties of things, to plan, invent and apply in a manner impossible to any other creature. His gift of speech enabled him to imitate and reduce to systematic language the sounds of nature, and to connect them with the thoughts arising in his own mind, and thus to express their relations and significance. Above all, his Maker had breathed into him a spiritual nature akin to his own, whereby he became different from all other animals, and the very shadow and likeness of God; capable of rising to abstractions and general conceptions of truth and goodness, and of holding communion with his Creator. This was Man Edenic, the man of the golden age, as sketched in the two short narratives of the earlier part of Genesis, which not only conform to the general traditions of our race on the subject, but bear to any naturalist who will read them in their original dress, internal evidence of being contemporary, or very nearly so, with the state of things to which they relate.—The Story of the Earth and Man, p. 373, 378, 379.

GOGUET.—When we examine with attention the manner in which Moses speaks of the abode of the first man, we cannot fail to recognize all the traits which characterize an exact geographical description. He says that the garden was situated in the land of Eden, towards the East; that out of Eden there went forth a river, which divided itself into four branches. He describes the course of each of these streams, and names the countries which they watered: and not only this, but he enumerates the more conspicuous and characterizing productions which each of these countries offered to notice. He even specifies them in a particular manner; he not only tells us that the land of Havilah produces gold, but adds that the gold of that land was good. “There also," continues he, " are found the bdellium and onyx-stone." Such details render it sufficiently evident that, long before the time of Moses, the science of Geography must have made some considerable progress. —Origine des Lois, Vol. I., p. 202.

Gen. 2:15.—And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The first fact in the history of mankind, as placed before us in Genesis, is the primitive innocence of our race, and its existence in a delightful region—the abode of purity and happiness—for a certain space after its creation. A remembrance of this blissful condition seems to have been retained among a large number of peoples. (The following are examples.)—Historical Illust. of the Old Test., p. 8.

THE GREEKS.—In the Golden Age, men lived the life of the gods—a life free from care and without labor or sorrow. Old age was unknown; the body never lost its vigor; existence was a perpetual feast, without a taint of evil. The earth brought forth spontaneously all things that were good in profuse abundance, peace reigned, and men pursued their several employments without quarrel. Their happy life was ended by a death which had no pain, but fell upon them like a gentle sleep.— Hesiod Op. et D. ll. 109-119.

PLATO.—It is said that there was once an earth-born race whom the Deity himself tended and watched over. They had fruit in abundance from many different trees, not grown by tilling, but given spontaneously by the earth. They lived, too, for the most part, naked—the temperament of the seasons not being painful to them. Theirs were soft beds of grass, springing up without grudging from the soil. The men of that time were ten-thousand-fold happier than those of the present.— c. 15, 16.

THE ANCIENT MAGI.—In the Zendavesta, Yima, the first Iranic king, lives in a secluded spot, where he and his people enjoy uninterrupted happiness. Neither sin, nor folly, nor violence, nor poverty, nor deformity have entrance into the region; nor does the Evil Spirit for a while set foot there. Amid odoriferous trees and golden pillars dwells the beautiful race, pasturing their abundant cattle on the fertile earth, and feeding on an ambrosial food which never fails them.—Vendidael, Farg. ii. § 4-41.

THE CHINESE.—In the ancient Books of this people we read that, during the period of the first heaven, the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness: everything was beautiful; everything was good; all beings were perfect in their kind. In this happy age, heaven and earth employed their virtues jointly to embellish nature. There was no jarring in the elements, no inclemency in the air—all things grew without labor, and universal fertility prevailed. The active and passive virtues conspired together, without any effort or opposition, to produce and perfect the universe.—Faber's Horœ Mosaicœ, p. 146.

THE HINDOOS.—The literature of this people tells of a " first age of the world when justice, in the form of a bull, kept herself firm on her four feet; virtue reigned; no good which mortals possessed was mixed with baseness, and man, free from disease, saw all his wishes accomplished, and attained an age of four hundred years."—Kalisch, Com. on Gen., p. 64.

Traces of a similar belief are found among the THIBETANS, the MONGOLIANS, the CINGALES, and others.

Gen. 2:19.—And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—We must not understand the Bible as picturing an Eden in which all the animals of the world were contained. This kind of representation belongs only to nursery toy-books. It is expressly said that man was placed in Eden with a selected group of animals as well as of plants, and these animals and plants were with him to spread the habitable earth, replacing everywhere those surviving from the Tertiary age. This is the Bible theory of the mode of the introduction of man, and it corresponds with geological fact, and with what we would a priori expect in the case of the introduction of any new and important type. In both records man is geologically modern, coming at the close of the great procession of animal life; and it is remarkable that geology concurs with revelation in not finding any new species introduced since the creation of man.—Nature and the Bible, p. 176.

SIR CHARLES LYELL, F. R. S.—The study of the actual geographical distribution of organic beings has led naturalists to adopt very generally the doctrine of specific centers, or, in other words, to believe that each species, whether of plant or animal, originated in a single birth-place. Species, and often genera, and still larger groups, have such a range in space as implies that they have spread in all directions from a limited area called a "center of creation," until their progress was stopped by some natural barriers, or conditions in the organic and inorganic world, hostile to their further extension.—Principles of Geology, Vol. II., P. 333, 336.

Gen. 2:21, 22.—And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

PLATO.—Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was then one man-woman; whose form and name partook of and was common to both the male and the femAle. Then Jupiter said, I will divide them into two parts.—Sympos., C. 14, 15.

The Fall of Man

Gen. 3:1.—Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

W. HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—It was an ancient belief both amongst Orientals and the people of the Western world, 'that the serpent was endued with a large share of sagacity. The ancients give various reasons for regarding serpents as being endued with wisdom, as that one species, the Cerastes, hides itself in the sand, and bites the heels of animals as they pass; or that, as the head was considered the only vulnerable part, the serpent takes care to conceal it under the folds of the body. Serpents have in all ages been considered as emblems of cunning craftiness. The particular wisdom alluded to by our Lord refers, it is probable, to the sagacity displayed by serpents in avoiding danger. The disciples were warned to be as prudent in not incurring unnecessary persecution. The Chinese consider the serpent as a symbol of superior wisdom and power, and ascribe to the kings of heaven bodies of serpents. And in the Egyptian symbolical alphabet the serpent represents subtlety and cunning, lust and sensual pleasure. In the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, Ahriman or the lord of evil, who first taught men to sin, is represented under the guise of this reptile.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2928.

Gen. 3:4, 5.—And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

PLUTARCH.—It was a very ancient opinion, that there are certain wicked and malignant demons, who envy good men, and endeavor to hinder them in the pursuit of virtue, lest they should be partakers at last of greater happiness than they enjoy.—Plut. Dion., § 2.

Gen. 3:6, 7.—And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

W. FRASER, LL. D.—Traditions of the fall of primitive man are almost as widespread as the human family. Their prevalence is utterly inexplicable, except through the Bible narrative.—Blending Lights, p. 134-136.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—Seeing that all mankind are descended from one pair who were tempted to disobedience under the enticements of the serpent, and whose disobedience "brought death into the world, and all our woe," we should expect to find throughout the world variously corrupted traditions of that event. The fact that such traditions do exist, and that in them all the main circumstances, as related by Moses, may be recognized, is of very material importance. The variations are not greater than might be expected to arise in the course of ages, among different nations, in different regions, under different degrees of cultivation, and within different systems of religious corruption. Indeed, taking these differences into account, the substantial agreement among them in the essential facts is wonderful, and can in no other way be accounted for than by the literal truth of the account of this event which the Scripture has given to us, and by the belief that, as Moses affirms, all the races of men have a common origin.—Bible Illust., Vol. I., p. 58.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The races that have retained a remembrance of the primitive state of man have all of them a tradition of the Fall. With some the fall is more gradual than with others. The Greeks pass by gentle degrees from the golden age of primeval man to the iron one, which is the actual condition of human kind when the first writers lived. The Hindus, similarly, bring man, through a second and a third age, into that fourth one, which they recognize as existing in their day. But with some races the Fall is sudden. In the Edda, corruption is suddenly produced by the blandishments of strange women, who deprive men of their pristine integrity and purity. In the Thibetan, Mongolian, and Cingalese traditions, a similar result is brought about by the spontaneous development of a covetous temper. In the earliest of the Persian books, the Fall would ahem to be gradual; but in the later writings, which are of an uncertain date, a narrative appears which is most strikingly in accordance with that of Genesis. The first man and the first woman live originally in purity and innocence. Perpetual happiness is promised to them by Ormazd, if they persevere in their virtue. They dwell in a garden, wherein there is a tree, on whose fruit they feed, which gives them life and immortality. But Ahriman, the Evil Principle, envying their felicity, causes another tree to spring up in the garden, and sends a wicked spirit, who, assuming the form of a serpent, persuades them to eat its fruit, and this fruit corrupts them. Evil feelings stir in their hearts; Ahriman becomes the object of their worship instead of Ormazd; they fall under the power of demons, and become a prey to sin and misery.—Historical Illustrations of the Old Test., p. 11

LAMAISM.—Then were men holy, invisibly nourished and possessing the power of ascending at pleasure to the skies. In an evil hour the earth produced a kind of manna, a honey-sweet substance; a glutton ate of it, and seduced the rest of mankind to follow his example. From that time, man lost his happiness and innocence. His body became gross. His commerce with the skies was passed. His days were shortened; and his stature no longer attained its original gigantic proportions. In time, the manna failed, and man resorted by degrees to food more and more gross; and, at last, all virtue fled the world, and wickedness prevailed. Eventually the spontaneous increase of the earth no longer sufficed, and man began with labor and sorrow to till the ground.—Palas' Travels, Vol. I., p. 334.

CHINESE MYTHOLOGY.—Man, in the beginning, was obedient to the gods. His state was one of innocence and happiness. There was no sickness, no death. He was good and wise by nature. He was all spirit. But his strong desire for knowledge, with the temptation of the woman, was his ruin. Man held no more power over himself; lust and passion gained the ascendency over him, and he lost, his intellectual pre-eminence. All beasts and birds and reptiles now waged war against him; and as he acquired science,' all creatures became his enemies.—Memoires Chinoises, Vol. I., p. 107.

VISHNU PURANA.—The beings who were created by Brama were, at first, endowed with righteousness and perfect faith. They abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any, impediment. Their hearts were free from guile; they were pure, made free from soil by the observance of the sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they were filled with perfect wisdom, where-with they contemplated the glory of Vishnu. After a time, that portion of Hari which has been described as one with Kala, infused into created beings sin, as yet feeble, though formidable, and passion, and he like. The impediment of the soul's liberation—the seed of iniquity—arose from darkness and desire. The innate perfectness of human nature was then no more evolved. All the perfections were impaired, and these becoming feeble, sin gained strength, and mortals became subject to pain.—Professor Horace Wilson's Translation.

Gen. 3:15.—And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise its heel.

EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS.—On the monuments of Egypt there not infrequently occurs the figure of a man in regal costume (probably an incarnate deity), piercing with a spear the head of a large serpent—remarkably suggestive of a tradition of the prophecy that "the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." —Tristram's Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 280.

TEMPLES OF INDIA.—In one of the most ancient pagodas of India is a figure of Chreeshna, one of the Avatars of Vishnu, trampling on the crushed head of a serpent, the kali-naga, or black snake—it is his triumph. In another figure, the serpent is seen compassing Chreeshna with its folds, and biting his heel. In all this, and much more, we cannot fail to perceive adumbrated the remarkable prediction which accompanied the fall of man.—Murray's Truth of Revel. Demonstrated, p. 197.

ANCIENT COINS.—In a Tyrian coin, a serpent appears twisted around a tree, with a Petra ambrosiana on either side. Ancient coins of Athens, from their figures, appear associated with the same mythological belief—on them is represented a human figure in connection with the serpent-god. And on an early Roman coin is represented a female with a mural crown, a palm branch in her hand, and a dove by her side; she is trampling on a serpent.—Ib, p. 199, 200.

Gen. 3:17-19.—Unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

THE NINEVEH CREATION TABLETS.—Hea called his assembly. He said to the gods his sons.... I made them.... shall not stretch, until before he turns. Their wickedness I am angry at, their punishment shall not be small, I will look to judge the people, in their stomach let food be exhausted, above let Vul drink up his rain, let the lower regions be shut up, and the floods not be carried in the streams, let the ground be hardened which was overflown, let the growth of corn cease, may blackness overspread the fields, let the plowed fields bring forth thorns, may the cultivation be broken up, food not arise, and it not produce; may distress be spread over the people, may favor be broken off, and good not be given.—Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 154.

Gen. 3:24,—So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

MR. GEORGE SMITH, British Museum.—The tree of life, in Genesis, certainly appears to correspond to the sacred grove of Anu, which the following fragment states was guarded by a sword turning to all the four points of the compass.

CHALDEAN TABLET, describing the battle between Bel, Creator and Lord of the world, and the Dragon:

" ... . and with it his right hand he arMed. His flaming sword he raised in his hand. He brandished his lightnings before him. A curved scymitar he carried on his body. And he made a sword to destroy the dragon, which turned four ways; so that none could avoid its rapid blows. It turned to the south, to the north, to the east, and to the west."—Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 88 and 96.

Development of Trades and Arts

Gen. 4:2, 20, 21, 22.—Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.—Jabal was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle.—Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.—Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.

ARCHBISHOP RICHARD WHATELEY, D. D.—The process by which men emerged from their primitive state, and gradually invented the various arts of life, has been supposed to be this: One man, wishing to save himself the trouble of roaming through the woods in search of wild plants and roots, would bethink himself of collecting the seeds of these, and cultivating them in a plot of ground cleared and broken up for the purpose. And finding that he could thus raise more than enough for himself, he might agree with some of his neighbors to exchange a part of his produce for some of the game or fish taken by them. Another man, again, it has been supposed, would contrive to save himself the labor and uncertainty of hunting by catching some kind of wild animals alive, and keeping them in an enclosure to breed, that he might have a supply always at hand. And again, others, it is supposed, might devote themselves to the occupation of dressing skins for clothing, or of building huts or canoes, or of making bows and arrows, or various kinds of tools, each exchanging his productions with his neighbors for food. And each, by devoting his attention to some one kind of manufacture, would acquire increased skill in that, and would strike out new inventions. And then, these having in this way become divided into husbandmen, shepherds, and artisans of several kinds, would begin to enjoy the various advantages of division of labor, and would advance, step by step, in all the arts of civilized life.— Exeter Hall Lects., 9-11.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The early invention of the arts, recorded in Genesis 4., is in harmony with the Greek tradition, according to which Prometheus, in the infancy of our race, not only " stale fire from heaven," but taught men "all the arts, helps and ornaments of life," especially the working in metals. It is in equal agreement with the Babylonian legend of Oannes, who, long before the Flood, instructed the Chaldeans both in art and in science, "so that no grand discovery was ever made afterward." And it receives confirmation from the fact that, both in Egypt and in Babylonia, the earliest extant remains, which go back to a time that cannot be placed long after the Flood, show signs of a tolerably advanced civilization, and particularly of the possession of metallic tools and implements.— Historical Illust. of the Old Test., p. 14.

Longevity of the Antediluvians

Gen. 5:5-32.—And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died. And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died.—Etc.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Patriarchal longevity presents itself as one of the most striking of the facts concerning mankind which the early history of the Book of Genesis places before us. Objections have been brought against it on grounds which are called scientific. But these have little weight, as they have failed to convince such men as Haller and Buffon. Now it is beyond a doubt that there is a large amount of consentient tradition to the effect that the life of man was originally far more prolonged than it is at present, extending to at least several hundred years. The Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese exaggerated these hundreds into thousands. The Greeks and Romans, with more moderation, limited human life within a thousand or eight hundred years. The Hindus still further shortened the term. Their books taught that in the first age of the world, man was free from diseases, and lived ordinarily four hundred years; in the second age the term of life was reduced from four hundred to three hundred; and in the third it became two hundred; and in the fourth and last it was brought down to one hundred. So certain did the fact appear to the Chinese, that an Emperor who wrote a medical work proposed an inquiry into the reasons why the ancients attained to so much more advanced an age than the moderns.—Hist. Illust. of the Old Test., p. 13.

THE MAHA-WANSI, of Buddhism.—At that time all beings lived an assankaya of years (incredible number of years); no sin was in the world; the immense duration of their life caused men to forget their birth, and to be unmindful of their death; they knew not the infirmities of life nor the miseries of the world. They derided the very deities, as these were not the fortunate partakers of such a length of days; so that at that time the life of mankind in this world outlasted the existence of the gods.—Upham's Literal Translation.

JOSEPHUS.—Let no one upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument, that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life. I have for witnesses to what I have said, all those that have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and Barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian history, and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean monuments, and Mochus and Hestiæus, and besides these Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those that composed the Phenician history, agree to what I here say. Hesiod also, and Hecatæus, and Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived a thousand years.—Antiquities, B. I., chap. 3, § 9.

Giants

Gen. 6:4.—There were giants (nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—Nephilim—by the Greeks, this class of men are termed Gigantes, from two words, signifying to be born of the earth; a term from which we learn both the origin and the import of the English word "giant." The giants of the ancient mythology are fabled to have sprung from the earth, from some broken traditions respecting these antediluvian apostates, who, in the sense of being earthly, sensual, vile, despising heavenly things, might be justly denominated “earth-born."—Notes on Genesis.

PLUTARCH.—Those times produced men of strong and indefatigable powers of body, and of extraordinary swiftness and agility; tut they applied those powers to nothing just or useful; on the contrary, their genius, their disposition, and their pleasures, tended only to insolence, to violence and rapine.—Thes., c, 6.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S.—The oldest men whose remains have been found are not of a different species from modern men, but, on the contrary, are nearly allied to the most widely distributed modern race; while their great stature and physical power remind us of the Nephilim, or Giants, of Genesis. They testify, in short, to a specific identity and common descent of all men; and their great bodily development, accompanied probably with great longevity, is such as geological facts would lead us to anticipate in the case of a new type recently introduced, rather than in one which had descended through a long course of struggle for existence from an inferior ancestry.—Nature and the Bible, p. 177.

J. W. FARRAR, D. D.; F. R. S.—All nations have had a dim fancy that the aborigines who preceded them, and the earliest men generally, were of immense stature. Berosus says that the ten antediluvian kings of Chaldea were giants. That we are dwarfs compared to our ancestors was a common belief among the Latin and Greek poets.—In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 911.

The Deluge

Gen. 6:5, 13, 14, 15.—And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an Ark of gopher wood. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of.

HESIOD.—

(Speaking of those of the silver or second age of the world)—

Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe;

Nor mutual outrage would their hand forego;.

Nor would they serve the gods, nor altars raise,

That in just cities shed their holy blaze.

Them angry Jove engulfed, who dared refuse

The gods their glory and their sacred dues.

Oper. et. Dier. v. 126.

ARATUS.—

What an unworthy and degenerate race

Our golden sires bequeathed!

Phenom., V. 1 2 3.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, Trevor Hall.—The history of the great wickedness of men, and of a general inundation, as related in the Mahâbhârata and other Indian Asiatic writings, affords an unmistakable agreement with the Mosaic writings. In the translation of a part of that work out of the Sanskrit, the eminent orientalist, Prof. Bopp, states the substance of the story as follows:—" The Lord of creatures, Brahmâ, the highest existence, appeared to a pious king named Manus, and announced to him the impending deluge, which was to destroy everything. He commanded him to build a ship, and in the time of danger to enter it, and to take with him seeds of all kinds, as they would be named to him, separated from one another. Manus obeyed the command of the Deity, and brought all seeds into the ship, into which he himself then entered. But the ship, guided by the Deity, swam many years upon the sea, until it finally settled upon the highest summit of the mountain Himawân, when it was bound fast at the command of the Deity. And from Manus descends the present race of mankind."—Bibl. Sacra, XXII., 422.

POLYNESIAN TRADITIONS. —Traditions of the Deluge have been found to exist among the natives of the South Sea Islands, from the earliest periods of their history. The principal facts are the same in the traditions prevailing among the inhabitants of the different groups, although they differ in several minor particulars. In one group, the accounts stated that Taarsa—the principal god, according to their mythology—being angry with men on account of their disobedience to his will, overturned the world into the sea, when the earth sunk in the waters, excepting a few projecting points, which, remaining above its surface, constituted the present cluster of Islands.—Ellis' Polynesian Researches, Vol. II., p. 57, etc.

CHALDEAN TRADITION.—During the reign of Xisuthrus, in the tenth generation of mankind, the god Chronos appeared to this king in a vision, and warned him that, on the fifteenth day of the month Dasius, there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and to trust himself fearlessly to the deep. In obedience to these directions, Xisuthrus built a vessel five stadia (nearly three quarters of a mile) in length, and two in breadth, into which he put everything, he had prepared, and last of all went into it himself, with his wife, children and friends—Cory’s Ancient Fragments.

GREEK MYTHOLOGY.—There was another race of men before the present, which owes its origin to Deucalion. The first race of men were a fierce and haughty people, who committed most heinous iniquities. For this a horrible calamity came over them. All at once the waters burst forth from all parts of the earth, and floods of rain came down from above, till the earth was covered with water, and all mankind perished. Deucalion alone was preserved, on account of his piety and uprightness, for the propagation of a new race. He had a very large chest, into which he packed his wives and children, and last of all went in himself. Just as he was entering, there came running to him all kinds of wild beasts and creeping things, pair-wise. He took them all in, and Jupiter instilled into them such peaceful dispositions that they did him no harm, but lived in the most peaceful accord together, and were thus preserved in the chest, as in a ship, so long as the flood lasted.—Lucian, De Dea Syria.

ASIATIC INDIAN TRADITIONS. —In ancient times, the god Vishnu appeared to the sun-born monarch, Satyavrata, in the form of a fish, and said: “In seven days all creatures that have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be preserved in a capacious vessel miraculously forMed. Take therefore all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grains for food, and, together with seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear." Satyavrata conformed himself to these directions, when, after seven days, the floods descended and drowned the world.-Sir William Jones' Asiatic Researches, Vol. II., p. 116, 117.

CHINESE TRADITION.—Fa-he, the reputed founder of Chinese civilization, is represented as escaping from the waters of a deluge; and he reappears as the first man at the production of a renovated world, attended by his wife, three sons, and three daughters.—Hardwick's Christ and Other Masters, Part III., p. 16.

AMERICAN TRADITIONS.—Traditions of the Flood are, if possible, more common in the New World than in the Old. The form in which the natives relate them agrees so strikingly with the traits of the Bible History, that we cannot blame the astonished Spaniards, the first European discoverers, if they were ready to believe, on account of these and similar traditions, that the Apostle Thomas must have preached Christianity there.—Prof. Hackett's Translation from Auberlen.

MEXICAN TRADITION.—This people had a tradition that a deluge had destroyed all animals, with the exception of one man and his wife, who escaped in the hollow trunk of an Ahahuete, or cypress tree; and that, after this, they had a numerous race of children born to them.—Humboldt's Vues des Cordil leras, p. 26, 206, 207.

MECHOACHAN TRADITION.—This nation, neighbors to the Mexicans, believed that mankind, becoming forgetful of their duties and origin, were punished by a universal deluge, from which the priest Tezpi, and his wife and children, were alone preserved. He shut himself up in a large chest of wood, into which he nut all kinds of animals and useful seeds. When the Great Spirit ordered the waters to subside, Tezpi sent out a bird called Aura, which, finding food in dead carcasses, returned; then several other birds, till at length the hummingbird returned with a branch in his beak.—Humboldt's Researches, Vol. II., p. 65.

THE GREAT LAKE TRIBES' TRADITION.—These, believe that the father of all their Tribes originally dwelt towards the setting sun, where, being warned in a dream that a Flood was coming, he built a Raft, on which he preserved his own family, and the whole of the animal world. The Raft drifted for many months upon the waters, till at length a new earth was made, and man and the animals placed upon it.—Thatcher's Indian. Traits, II., 148, 149.

Gen. 6:9.—Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations; and Noah walked with God.

HESIOD.—

The sea gave Nereus life, unerring seer

And true; most ancient of his race, whom all

Hail as the sage, for mild and blameless he:

Remembering still the right, still merciful

As just in counsels.

Theog., V. 233.

OVID.—

(Speaking of the survivors of the Flood, says)—

The most upright of mortal men was he,

The most sincere and holy woman she.

Metam., Lib. I., v. 322.

Gen. 7:7.—And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark.

CHINESE TRADITION.—Fa-he, the father and founder of the nation, after escaping the perils of the Flood, reappeared as the first man at the production of the renovated world, attended by his wife, three sons, and three daughters (daughters-in-law).—Hardwick's Christ and Other Masters, Part III., p. 16,

FIGI TRADITION.—The Figi Islanders have a very clear and distinct tradition of a deluge, from which one family only, eight in number, was saved in a canoe.—Hardwick, III., p. 185.

Gen. 7:11, 12, 19.—In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

THE COMPILER.—Geology offers proofs that a Deluge was possible.—The developments of geology abundantly demonstrate that the occurrence of a deluge is quite possible, and entirely credible. Infidels were wont to argue that all the waters of the earth were altogether insufficient to overflow the land—and, in fact, that ocean must be heaped upon ocean to do so. But this bold and seemingly decisive objection against the Mosaic Deluge, like many others, has vanished before the progress of science. It is now proved, and conceded by every intelligent man, that any region, however elevated above the level of the sea, may, by subsidence of that region, be laid beneath its waters; and that, as a matter of fact, every portion of the earth's surface has once and again been the bed of the ocean. In the Cretaceous or Chalk Period, Europe was but an archipelago, by far the larger portion of its present area being submerged, as was also that of Asia, while the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Himalayas did but just lift their tops above the general level of the waters. And since that period, the British Isles and the proximate parts of the continent have been upheaved and submerged, again and again.—Present Confl. of Sci. with Religion, 509.

Geology furnishes examples and illustrations of a Deluge.—At one of the most charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, England, you will see the boulder clay forming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must consequently have come into existence after it. Interposed between the chalk and the drift is a comparatively insignificant layer, containing vegetable matter. But that layer tells a wonderful history. It is full of stumps of trees, standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew-trees, beeches and alders. Hence, this stratum is appropriately called the "forest bed." It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and converted into dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the bolls of some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed remained in the same condition for long ages. And not only do the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, and other great wild beasts. When you look at a collection of such remains, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the " forest bed " is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the tree-stumps.

Thus there is a writing upon the wall of the cliffs of Norfolk, and whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority that cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the great game whose spoils have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time brought its revenges" in those days as in these. The dry land, with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with 'rouge masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant; and at length what we call the history of England dawned.—Huxley's Lay Sermons, No. IX.

Geology points to specific Facts corroborative of the Mosaic. Deluge.—As we have already stated, says M. Figuier, there is very distinct evidence of two successive deluges in our hemisphere, during the Quaternary Epoch. The two may be distinguished as the European Deluge, and the Asiatic Deluge. The European Deluge occurred prior to the appearance of man; the Asiatic Deluge happened after that event; and the Human Race, then in the early days of its existence, certainly suffered from this cataclysm.— World Before the Deluge, 367.

In the Post-glacial Era, relates Principal Dawson, the land had reached its maximum elevation, but its foundations, " standing in the water and out of the water," were not yet securely settled; and it had to take one more plunge-bath before attaining its modern fixity. This seems to have been a comparatively rapid subsidence and re-elevation, leaving but lender traces of its occurrence, but changing to some extent the levels of the continents, and failing to restore them fully to their former elevation, so that large areas of the lower grounds still remained under the sea. If, as the greater number of geologists now believe, man was then on the earth, it is not impossible that this constituted the Deluge recorded in the remarkable " log-book" of Noah preserved to us in Genesis, and of which the memory remains in the traditions of most ancient nations. This is at least the geological deluge which separates the Post-glacial period from the modern, and the earlier from the later pre-historic period of the archeologists. I have long thought that the narrative in Gen. 7 and 8 can be understood only on the supposition that it is a contemporary journal or " log " of an eyewitness incorporated by the author of Genesis in his work. The dates of the rising and fall of the water, the note of soundings over the hill-tops when the maximum was attained, and many other details, as well as the whole tone of the narrative, seem to require this supposition, which also removes all the difficulties of interpretation which have been so much felt.—Story of Earth and Man, 290.

Geology shows the means and manner in which the Deluge might have been produced.—If we take a slender brass or iron hoop, and with the finger press it inward at any point, it will necessarily bulge out on either side in proportion to the depression made by the finger; and conversely, if we push it outward, the parts on this side and on that side of the point of pressure will sink or be drawn inward. Now similar results are produced in the earth's crust by the pressure of subterranean forces; the elevation by these of a continent, or of any considerable part of a continent, will be attended by a corresponding depression of the bed of the adjoining ocean; or, the elevation of that ocean's bed will necessarily be followed by a depression of the continent. This is not mere theory, but an established fact. At this present time, while Scandinavia on one side of the North Atlantic is steadily rising from its waters, Greenland on the other side is as steadily sinking into them. This fact may help us to a conception of the manner in which the Noahian deluge was brought about.

Noah, and the living creatures to be preserved with him, having been safely lodged in the ark, and the fatal hour decreed having arrived, let us suppose that, at the behest of Omnipotence, the ocean beds encompassing that region of the globe inhabited by the antediluvians had been elevated step by step by the repeated impulses of subterranean forces, occurring, as they often do, at 'intervals of one, two, or three days; and that at the same time the whole of that region, and to a distance beyond, had subsided at the same rate: what would have been the consequences of all this? what would have taken place in the ocean, and what would have befallen the land and its inhabitants? The answer is obvious—the waters of the ocean, on every side, in far-reaching and tumultuous waves, would have rushed in upon the land, as if "the fountains of the great deep had been broken up."

It was in some such manner as this, we may suppose, the Noahian deluge was brought about; at any rate, many of our eminent geologists hold that some of the formidable cataclysms of the Pre-Adamite periods were occasioned in this way, by the sudden upheaval of vast tracts of the sea-bed, which, by displacing great bodies of water, and rolling them outwards in the form of enormous waves, inundated wide regions, elevated hundreds of feet over the ocean level, and strewed them over with the clays, gravels and organic remains of deep sea-bottoms.

It is further worthy of notice, as evidence of the accuracy of Scripture history, that just such rains as are indicated by the forcible expression, “the windows of heaven were opened," are the usual concomitants of convulsions and cataclysms, such as was the Deluge. “Subterranean movements and volcanic eruptions," 'says Sir Charles Lyell (Principles, I, 595), "are often attended not only by incursions of the sea, but also by violent rains."—Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 529, 534, 535.

DAVID KING, LL. D.—It is now proved and conceded that vast regions of the earth have been laid under water, and that such events as the deluge have incontrovertibly happened. It is of great consequence to observe that deluges are thus shown to be a part of the course of nature. When this is admitted, and no one now denies it, all that we are required to believe in regard to the Noahian deluge is that God, in a particular instance, employed, in a very signal manner, his natural and usual administration to fulfill his moral purposes. Principles of Geology Explained, p. 65.

Gen. 41:21, 22, 23.—And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

LYCOPHRON.—

Jove spread the sluices of the skies

In wild uproar: Earth heard the billows break

About her, and above; high palaces

Came crashing down; and the pale sons of men

Swam, and saw death in every swelling wave.

On fruits, and acorns, and the growth of grapes,

Sea-monsters batten'd: e'en upon that couch

Where luxury had languished, cumbrous forms,

Dolphins, and orcs, wallowed unwieldily.

—Cassand., v. 79.

THE COMPILER.—Such is the Scripture account of the most terrible catastrophe that has I befallen our world since it has been inhabited by man—an event so appalling that it so strongly impressed itself on the mind of the race that it has never been forgotten, but has lived and floated down through the ages, in one form or another, in the traditions of all the branches of the human family. The mythologies and histories of all the ancient nations are full of the remembrances of it. It is described in the stories of the Greeks, and sung in the verses of the Latins. Its memory is enshrined in the sacred books of the Parsee, the Brahmin and the Mahommedan, and has been assigned a place in the Legend of the Scandinavian, and in the mythic records of the Chinaman. His symbols are found stamped on the coins of ancient Greece, may be traced amid the hoary hieroglyphics of Egypt, recognized in the sculptured caves of Hindustan, and detected even in the pictured writings of Mexico. In Cuba and Tahiti, on the banks of the Orinoco, on the Pampas of Brazil, in the mountains of Peru, and in the Islands of the Pacific, the traveler has met with traces or traditions of the Flood, the Ark, and the rescue of the Favored Few. "The tradition of the Flood," says Hugh Miller, " may be properly regarded as universal,, seeing there is scarcely any considerable race of man among which, in some of its forms, it is not to be found." And Humboldt speaking of this fact says: “These ancient traditions of the human race, which we find dispersed over the whole surface of the globe, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, are highly interesting in the philosophical study of our own species. How many different tongues, belonging to branches that appear totally distinct, transmit to us the same facts. The traditions concerning races that have been destroyed, and the renewal of nature, scarcely vary in reality, though every nation gives them a local coloring. In the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the Pacific Ocean, it is always on the nearest and loftiest mountain that the remains of the human race have been saved; and this event appears the more recent in proportion as the nations are uncultivated, and as the knowledge they have of their own existence has no very remote date." So long as the descendants of Noah remained together in one region, the story of the Deluge would be one and the same among all. But as they multiplied and became dispersed, the account which the different tribes carried with them would unavoidably grow more or less blurred, and in time more or less distorted., as affected by the events of their own history, and by the features of their respective localities, till, though retaining the main facts, it assumed the varied, forms and colorings in which we now find it among the different nations of the globe. In these widespread but wonderfully concurrent traditions, therefore, we have a remarkable corroboration of the sacred history; for on no other ground can we rationally or credibly account for them, than that they have had their origin in one and the same event—the Deluge of the Bible.—Present Conflict of Science with Religion, 503.

Gen. 8:1.—And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged:

PINDAR.—

In tales of ancient lore 'tis said

O'er earth, the whelming waters spread,

Urged all their congregated force.

But Jove's high will his headlong course

Bade the usurping foe restrain,

And sink absorbed the refluent main.

—Olymp., IX., 75.

Gen. 8:4.—And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

MAHABHARATA.—The ship, guided by the deity, swam many years upon the sea, until it finally settled upon the highest summit of the mountain Himawân (Himalaya), when it was bound fast at the command of the deity. This summit is therefore still named at this day Nau Bandhanann (i. e., ship-binding); and from Manus descends the present race of mankind.—Prof. Bopp's Translation from the Sanskrit.

NICOLAUS. —There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore on the top of it, and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved.—Quoted in Josephus, Antiquities, B. I., Chap. 3, §6.

BEROSUS.—But there was one among those ancient giants that reverenced the gods, and was more wise and prudent than all the rest. This man, fearing the destruction, which he foresaw from the stars, would come to pass, began, in the seventy-eighth year before the inundation, to build a ship covered like an ark. Seventy-eight years from the time he began to build this ship, the ocean of a sudden broke out, and all the inland seas and the rivers and fountains bursting from beneath, attended by the most violent rains from heaven for many days, overflowed all the mountains, so that the whole human race was buried in the waters, except this man and his family, who were saved by means of the ship, which, being lifted up by the waters, rested at last upon the top of the Gendyœ or mountain, on which, it is reported, there now remaineth some part, and that men take away the bitumen from it, and make' use of it by way of charm or expiation to avoid evil.—Josephus, Ib.

OVID.—Here a mountain, named Parnassus, advances with two tops toward the stars, and with his lofty front rises above the clouds. When here Deucalion (for the sea had covered all the rest), carried in a little bark with the partner of his bed, first rested, they adore the Corycyan nymphs, the, deities of the mountains.—Metamorphoses, lines 315-320.

Gen. 8:6, 7, 8.—And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made; and he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground.

CHALDEAN TRADITION.—After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent Out birds from the vessel, which, finding no food or place for rest, returned to him. After some days he sent them forth again, and they returned with their feet tinged with mud. Subsequently he made a third trial with them, and they returned no more, by which he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and on looking out found that it was stranded upon a mountain, which he afterward found to be in the land of Armenia.—Cory's Ancient Fragments.

MECHOACHAN TRADITION.—When the Great Spirit ordered the waters to subside, Tezpi sent out a bird called aura, which, finding food in dead carcasses, returned; then several other birds, till at length the humming bird returned with a branch in its beak.—Humboldt's Researches, Vol. II., p. 65.

MEXICAN TRADITION.—The Mexicans had paintings, representing the event, which showed a man and woman in a boat, or on a raft, a mountain rising above the waters, and a dove delivering the gift of language to the children of the saved pair.—Prescott, History of Mexico, Vol. III., p. 309, 310.

Gen. 8:18.—And Noah went forth [of the ark], and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him.

APAMÆAN MEDAL.—We have a striking memorial of Noah and his family quitting the ark in the famous Apamæan Medal. It was struck during the reign of Philip the Elder (in the fourth century B. C.), at the town of Apamæa in Phrygia. The city is known to have been formerly called Kibotos, or "The Ark;" and it is also known that the coins of cities in that age exhibited some leading point in their mythological history. The medal in question represents a kind of square vessel floating in the water. Through an opening in it are seen two persons, a man and a woman, the latter wearing a veil. Upon the upper verge of this chest or ark is perched a bird, and over against it another, which seems to flutter with its wings, and bears a branch, with which it approaches the ark. Before the vessel is a man following a woman, who, by their attitude, seem to have just quitted it, and to have gotten on the dry land. These are doubtless the same pair, shown at successive points of time in the scene. Whatever doubt might be entertained as to the purport of this representation, seems to be removed by the letters engraved upon the ark itself, beneath the persons enclosed therein. These letters are NΩE,. Noe; being the very name of Noah in its Greek form, and as used in the New Testament. This is a most surprising circumstance; not the representation, for we have others nearly as distinct, but that the very name of Noah should have been so long preserved among the heathen, in nearly its original form.—See Seguin's Selecta Numismata Antigua.

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS.—Eminent Egyptologers assure us that the name of Noah is found on the monuments, represented as the "god of water." Osburn cites Champollion and Birch in favor of this interpretation of Nh, Nuh, Nou, etc., and has no doubt that the name is that of the Patriarch through whom the race was perpetuated after the Flood. The names of the First of the eight great gods of the Egyptians, as given by Wilkinson from the monuments, are believed to be different forms of the name of Noah. In the legend of Osiris, the chief primitive divinity of the Egyptians, incidents are stated which seem clearly to identify that deity with Noah of the Hebrew Scriptures. And we have perhaps a reminiscence of the three sons of Noah in the occurrence of numerous localities in Egypt in which a triad of deities was worshipped. Wilkinson gives a list of a number of such places, among them Thebes, with the names of the deities.—Prof. Hackett's Note in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 2187.

Gen. 8:20.—And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar.

ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTIONS.—In the story of the Flood occurs this notable passage:—I sent the animals forth from the vessel to the four winds. I poured out a libation. I built an altar on the peak of the mountain, by seven herbs I cut, at the bottom of them I placed reeds and pines and simgar. The gods collected at its burning, the gods collected at its good burning, the gods like sum be over the sacrifice gathered. From of old also, the Great God in his course, the great brightness of Anu had created; when the glory of these gods, as of Ukni stone, on my countenance I could not endure; in those days I prayed that forever I might not endure.—Mr. George Smith's Translation.

POLYNESIAN MEMORIAL.—The tradition preserved by the inhabitants of Eimeo of the deluge states, that, after the inundation of the land, when the water subsided, a man landed from a canoe, near Tiatarpura, in their island, and erected an altar in honor of his god, and offered sacrifice.—Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Vol. II., p. 57.

Gen. 9:1.—And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, A. M.—To deny the occurrence of a Deluge, or to conclude that, in respect to mankind, it was partial, because some of the great divisions of the human family had no tradition on the subject, is to draw a conclusion directly in the teeth of the evidence. The evidence shows a consentient belief-a belief which has all the appearance of being original and not derived—among members of ALL the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind. Among the Semites, the Babylonians, and the Hebrews—among the Hamites, the Egyptians—among the Aryans, the Indians, the Armenians, the Phrygians, the. Lithuanians, the Goths, the Celts, and the Greeks—among the TUranians, the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Red Indians, and the Polynesian Islanders, held the belief, which has thus the character of universal tradition—a tradition of which but one rational account can be given, namely, that it embodies the recollection of a fact in which all mankind was concerned.

It is remarkably confirmatory of the Biblical narrative to find that it unites details, scattered up and down the various traditional accounts, but nowhere else found in combination. It begins with the warning, which we find also in the Babylonian, the Hindu, and the Cherokee Indian versions. It comprises the care for animals, which is a feature of the Babylonian, the Indian and of one of the Polynesian stories. It reckons the saved as eight, as do the Fiji and Chinese traditions; as in the Chinese story these eight are a man, his wife, his three sons, and three daughters-in-law. In assigning a prominent part to birds in the experiments made before quitting the ark, it accords (once more) especially with the tradition of the Babylonians. In its mention of the dove, it possesses a feature preserved also by the Greeks and by the Mexicans. The olive-branch it has in common with the Phrygian legend, as appears from the famous medal struck at Apamæa Chibotus. Finally, in its record of the building of an altar, immediately after the saved quitted the ark, it has a touch that forms equally a portion of the Babylonian and of one Polynesian story.

Altogether, the conclusion seems irresistibly forced upon us that the Hebrew is the authentic narrative, of which the remainder are more or less corrupted versions. It is impossible to derive the Hebrew account from any of the other stories, while it is quite possible to derive all of them from it. Suppose the Deluge a fact, and suppose its details to have been such as the author of Genesis declares them to have been, then the wide-spread, generally accordant, but in part divergent, tradition is exactly what might have been anticipated under the circumstances. No other theory gives even a plausible explanation of the phenomena.—Historical Illust. of the Old Test., 21-23.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—Some fifteen years ago, in excavating the site of the old palace of Nineveh, the debris of the royal library was found there. History in that age was written on clay tablets, and some of those found here were twenty-five hundred years old. They were brought to England, and deposited in the British Museum. Among those who have studied these inscriptions is Mr. George Smith, connected with the Museum, whom Sir Henry Rawlinson pronounces the greatest Assyrian scholar now living. Among these tablets Mr. Smith found some relating to the Flood, of which three different copies exist containing duplicate texts, and belonging to the time of Assurbanipal, about 670 B. C. The original text, as appears from the tablets, must have belonged to the city of Erech, and have been translated into the Semitic Babylonian at a very early period. The original composition is decided to be as old at least as the Nineteenth Century before the Christian era. The principal personage in these legends is Izdubar, a king who lived near the time of the great Deluge, and belonged to Erech, the capital of Nimrod. Izdubar, having conquered Belesus, a great king, and put on his rival's crown, and having married Ishtar, a princess of great beauty, became ill and began to fear death, man's great enemy. To escape such a fate he wandered forth in search of a patriarch named Sisit, whom the Babylonians supposed to have become immortal without having died. Izdubar hoped to learn from him the secret of his escape from the common lot of mortals, Arrived at the place where Sisit dwelt, he made known his request to him-but must converse across a stream which divided the immortal and the mortal from each other. Izdubar inquires of Sisit how he became immortal. Sisit, in answer to this question, relates

The Chaldean Story of the Flood

Izdubar after this manner said to Sisit afar off: Sisit, the account do thou tell to me, the account do thou tell to me to the midst to make war. I come up after thee; say how thou hast done it and in the circle of the gods life thou hast gained.

Sisit after this manner said to Izdubar: I will reveal to thee, Izdubar, the concealed story, and the wisdom of the gods I will relate to thee. The city Surippak, the city which thou hast established.... placed, was ancient, and the gods within it dwelt.... The great gods Anu, Bel, Ninip, lords of Hades, their will revealed in the midst of hearing, and he spoke to me thus: Surrippakite, son of Ubaratulu, make a great ship for thee. I will destroy the sinners and life; cause to go in the seed of life, all of it to preserve them. The ship which thou shalt make, cubits shall be the measure of its length, and cubits the amount of its breadth and its height. Into the deep launch it. I perceived, and said to Hea my lord, " Ilea, my lord, this that thou commandest me I will perform, it shall be done." Hea opened his mouth and spoke, and said to me his servant, " Thou shalt say unto them, he has turned from me and fixed.... " (Here there are about fifteen lines entirely lust; the absent passage probably'. scribed part of the building of the ark.).... I brought on the fifth day.... it. In its circuit fourteen measures.... Its sides, fourteen measures it measured....

Over it I placed its roof on it.. I enclosed it. I rode in it for the sixth time.

I ... . for the seventh time into the restless deep.... Its planks the water within it admitted. I saw breaks and holes.... My hand placed three measures of bitumen I poured over the outside; three measures of bitumen I poured over the inside; three measures the men carrying its baskets took.... They fixed an altar.... the altar for an offering. Two measures the altar ... .Paziru the pilot for... slaughtered oxen of ... .in that day also. Altar and grapes like the waters of a river, and like the day I covered, and when.... covering my hand placed. And Shamas ... . the material of the ship completed. Strong and reeds I spread above and below. Went in two-thirds of it. All I possessed I collected it; all I possessed I collected of silver. All I possessed I collected of gold. All I possessed I collected of the seed of life; the whole I caused to go up into the ship; all my male and female servants: The beasts of the field, the animals of the field, and the sons of the army all of them, I caused to go up.

A flood Shamas made, and he spake saying in the night, "I will cause it to rain from heaven heavily; enter to the midst of the ship, and shut thy door." A flood he raised, and he spake saying in the night, “I will cause it to rain from heaven heavily." In the day that I celebrated his festival, the day which he had appointed, fear I had. I entered to the midst of the ship, and shut my door. To guide the ship, to Buzursadirabl the pilot, the palace I gave to his hand. The raging of a storm in the morning arose from the horizon of heaven extending and wide. Vul in the midst of it thundered, and Nebo and Saru went in front; the throne bearers went over mountains and plains; the destroyer Nergal overturned; Ninip went in front, and cast down; the spirits carried destruction; in their glory they swept the earth. Of Vul the flood, reached to heaven; the bright earth to waste was turned; the surface of the earth, like....it swept; it destroyed all life from the face of the earth. The strong tempest over the people reached to heaven. Brother saw not his brother, it did not spare the people. In heaven, the gods feared the tempest, and sought refuge; they ascended to the heaven of Anu. The gods, like dogs with tails hidden, couched down. Spake Ishtar a discourse, uttered the great goddess her speech,—" The world to sin has turned, and then I in the presence of the gods prophesied evil; to evil were devoted all my people; and I prophesied thus,—' I have begotten man, and let him not like the sons of the fishes fill the sea.' “The gods concerning the spirits, were weeping with her; the gods in seats, seated in lamentation; covered were their lips for the coming evil.

Six days and nights passed, the wind tempest and storm overwhelmed; on the seventh day in its course, was calmed the storm, and all the tempest, which had destroyed like an earthquake, quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind and tempest ended. I was carried through the sea. The doer of evil, and the whole of mankind who turned to sin, like reeds their corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light broke in; over my refuge it passed; I sat still, and over my refuge came peace. I was carried over the shore, at the boundary of the sea, for twelve measures it ascended over the land. To the country of Nizir went the ship; the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship, and to pass over it, it was not able. The first day and the second day, the mountain of Nizir the same. The third day and the fourth day, the mountain of Nizir the same. The fifth and sixth, the mountain of Nizir the same.

On the seventh day, in the course of it, I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and searched, and a resting-place it did not find, and it returned. I sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and searched, and a resting-place it did not find, and it returned. I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went, and the corpses on the waters it saw, and it did eat, it swam, and wandered away, and did not return. I sent the animals forth to the four winds. I poured out a libation. I built an altar on the peak of the mountain; by seven herbs I cut, at the bottom of them, I placed reeds, pines, and simgar. The gods collected at its burning, the gods collected at its good burning, the gods like sum be over the sacrifice gathered. From of old also, the great God in his course, the great brightness of Anu had created; when the glory of these gods, as of Ukni stone, on my countenance, I could not endure; in those days I prayed that forever I might not endure.

May the gods come to my altar; may Bel not come to my altar, for he did not consider, and had made a tempest, and my people he had consigned to the deep from of old; also Bel saw, in his course, the ship; and went Bel with anger filled to the gods and spirits: " Let not any one come out alive, let not a man be saved from the deep." Ninip his mouth opened and spake, and said, to the warrior Bel: “Who then will be saved? " Hea the words understood, and Hea knew all things. Hea his mouth opened and spake, and said to the warrior Bel: " Thou prince of the gods, warrior, when thou wast angry a tempest thou madest; the doer of sip did his sin, the doer of evil did his evil, may the exalted not be broken, may the captive not be delivered; instead of thee making a tempest, may lions increase and men be reduced; instead pf, thee making a tempest, may leopards increase and men be reduced; instead of thee making a tempest, may pestilence increase and men be destroyed." I did not peer into the wisdom of the gods, reverent and attentive a dream they sent, and the wisdom of the gods he heard.

When his judgment was accomplished, Bel went up to the midst of the ship; he took my hand and brought me out, me he brought out; he caused to bring my wife to my side; he purified the country; he established in a covenant, and took the people in the presence of Sisit and the people. When Sisit and his wife and the people, to be like the gods, were carried away, then dwelt. Sisit in a remote place at the mouth of the river; they took me, and in a remote place, at the mouth of the rivers, they seated me; when to thee whom the gods have chosen, thee and the life which thou hast sought, after thou shalt gain, this do for six days and seven nights, like I say also, in bonds bind him, the way like a storm shall be laid upon him. Sisit after this manner said to his wife: "announce that the chief who grasps at life the way like a storm shall be laid upon him; " his wife, after this manner, said to Sisit afar off: "Purify him, and let the man be sent away the road he came may he return in peace, the great gate open, and may he return to his country "Sisit, after this manner, said to his wife: "The cry of a man alarms thee; this do, his scarlet cloth place on his head; " and the day when he ascended the side of the ship, she did; his scarlet cloth she placed on his head, and the day when he ascended on the side of the ship.

Izdubar and Urhamsi rode in the boat, where they placed them they rode. His wife, after this manner, said to Sisit afar off: "Izdubar goes away, is satisfied, performs that which thou hast given him, and returns to his country;" and he heard, and after Izdubar he went to the shore. Sisit, after this manner, said to Izdubar: “Izdubar, thou goest away, thou art satisfied, thou performest that which I have given thee, and thou returnest to thy country. I have revealed to thee, Izdubar, the concealed story."—Mr. George Smith's Translation.

THE COMPILER.—The above Legend, while it embraces some things that are fabulous and not a little that is obscure, yet clearly embodies all the main facts connected with the deluge and the saving of Noah and his family, as related in the Bible. In it we have plainly set forth the excessive wickedness of mankind—God's warning of a coming Flood to destroy them—His command to his righteous servant to build an ark or ship—The measurements and directions given for its construction—The pitching of it within and without—The collecting of animals and food into it—The closing of the door—The heavy rain—The attendant earthquake convulsions—The rising of the waters higher and higher—The Flood over sweeping the whole face of the earth—All human and animal life destroyed—The gradual subsiding of the water—The ship or ark resting at length on the top of a mountain—The sending forth of birds one after another—The living creatures disembarked—The good man and his wife finally going forth—Their building of an altar and offering a sacrifice—And the gracious covenant of the Deity with them as they are sent forth to replenish the earth The number, the definiteness, and the high antiquity of these various corroborations of the sacred narrative, place this Assyrian Legend among the most wonderful and important archaeological discoveries of the present age.

Unity of the Race

Gen. 9:18, 19.—And the sons of Noah that went forth of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

PROF. HUXLEY, LL.D., F. R. S.—I am one of those that believe that, at present, there is no evidence whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of Man.—Origin of Species, p. 113.

PROFESSOR OWEN, F. R. S.—I have come to the conclusion that man forms one species, and that differences are but indicative of varieties. The unity of the human species is demonstrated, by the constancy of those osteological and dental characters to which the attention is more particularly directed in the investigation of the corresponding characters in the higher quadrumana.—Lecture before Cambridge University, p. 103.

PROF. CHARLES DARWIN, LL.D.—I have no doubt that all the races of man are descended from a single primitive stock.—Desc. of Man, I., p. 220.

DR. JOHN HARRIS.—Physiology demonstrates the identity of the various races of mankind in all the great laws of animal economy. The most dissimilar races are found also to be psychologically identical. All are amenable to the same laws of motive and action. Sympathies and emotions in common proclaim "the whole world kin." Comparative Philology, likewise, tends, as far as its researches have hitherto gone, to affirm positively the unity of the human race. The descent of mankind from a single stock is further supported by analogy. In short, all the branches of evidence appropriate to the inquiry support each other, and unite in authenticating the conclusion that the human species is one, and that all the differences which it exhibits are to be regarded merely as varieties.—Man Primeval, 26-30.

BARON HUMBOLDT.—The different races of men are forms of one sole species; they are not different species of a genus. Deeply rooted in the innermost nature of man, and enjoined upon him by the highest tendencies, the recognition of this bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mar kind.—Cosmos.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—That all the tribes and nations of mankind have a common origin, is the doctrine of Scripture, and that doctrine has been abundantly confirmed by the most learned and able researches into the physical history of man.—Daily Bible Illustrations, p. 163.

Noah Drinking Wine

Gen. 9:20-23.—And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And them and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and they saw not the nakedness of their father.

HENRY HUNTER, D. D.—Behold the juice of the grape in a new state, possessing a quality unheard of before. Eaten from the tree, or dried in the sun, it is simple and nutritious, like the grain from the stalk of corn; pressed out and fermented, it acquires a fiery force, it warms the blood, it mounts to the brain, it leads reason captive, it overpowers every faculty, it triumphs over its lord. How often have arts been invented which have proved fatal to the inventors?—. Sacred Biography.

THE PADMA-PURAN, of the Hindus.—Satayvarman (the Rescued One), being continually delighted with devout meditation, and seeing his sons fit for dominion, laid upon them the burden of government, whilst he remained honoring and satisfying the gods, and priests, and kine. One day, by the act of destiny, the king, having drunk mead, became senseless, and lay asleep naked; then was he seen by C'harma, and by him were his two brothers called, to whom he said, " What now has befallen? In what state is this our sire?" By those two was he hidden with clothes, and called to his senses again. Having recovered his intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed 'C'harma, saying, "Thou shalt be the servant of servants; and since thou wart a laughter in their presence, from laughter thou shalt acquire a name." Then he gave to Sherma the wide domain, on the south of the snowy mountains; and to Jyapeti he gave all in the north of the snowy mountains; but he, by the power of religious contemplation, attained supreme bliss.—Sir William Jones Translation.

Genealogy of the Sons of Noah

Gen. 10:1-32.—Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah; Shem, Ham and Japheth and unto them were sons born after the flood, etc.

W. FRASER, LL. D.—The very first historical sections of the Bible, so long held in contempt, have of late not only attracted the attention of the greatest scholars, but have won their homage. No unbiased scholar will now dare to scoff at the tenth chapter of Genesis. To this chapter, as an ethnological table, scholars of opposite religious tendencies have united in paying homage. In the study of the earliest monarchies—the Egyptian, the Chaldæan, and the Assyrian—historians thankfully turn to the Book which was long scoffed at by those who plumed themselves on their varied scholarship. It sheds so much light on the first movements of different peoples, and on the foundation of empires, that it cannot be repudiated without injury to historical science.—Blending Lights, 253-255.

PROF. TAYLOR LEWIS.—The tenth chapter of Genesis is as essential to an understanding of the Bible, and of history in general, as is Homer's catalog in the second Book of the Iliad to a true knowledge of the Homeric poems and the Homeric times.—Lange's Commentary on Genesis, In loco.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—In the genealogy of the tenth chapter of Genesis, the first feature which strikes us is the enumeration of the various races under three heads—" the sons of Japheth," " the sons of Ham," and " the sons of Shem." Now here it is at once noteworthy, that modern ethnological science, having set itself by a careful analysis of facts to establish a classification of races, has similarly formed a triple division of mankind, and speaks of all races as either, Semitic, Aryan, or TUranian. Moreover, when we examine the groups which the author of the tenth chapter of Genesis has thrown together, we find, to say the least, a most remarkable agreement between the actual arrangement which he has made, and the conclusions to which ethnological inquirers have come from a consideration of the facts of human language and physical type. Setting aside the cases where the ethnic names employed are of doubtful application, it cannot reasonably be questioned that the author has in his account of the sons of Japheth, classified together the Cymry or Celts (Gomer), the Medes (Madai), and the Ionians or Greeks (Javan), thereby anticipating what has become known in modern times as " the Indo-European theory," or the essential unity of the Aryan (Asiatic) race with the principal races of Europe, indicated by the Celts and the Ionians. Nor can it be doubted that he has thrown together, under the one head of " children of Shem," the Assyrians (Asshur), the Syrians (Aram), the Hebrews (Eber), and the Joktanian Arabs (Joktan), four of the principal races which modern ethnology recognizes under the heading of " Semitic." Again, under the heading of “sons of Ham," the author has arranged " Cush," i. e., the Ethiopians; " Mizraim," the people of Egypt; " Sheba and Dedan," or certain of the southern Arabs; and " Nimrod," or the ancient people of Babylon; four races between which the latest linguistic re searches have established a close affinity. Beyond a question, the tendency of modern ethnological inquiry has been to establish the accuracy of the document called in Genesis the Toldoth Beni Noah, or the Genealogy of the sons of Noah, and to create a feeling among scientific ethnologists that it is a record of the very highest value; one which, if it can be rightly interpreted, may be thoroughly trusted.—Hist. Illust. of the Old Test., p. 24-26.

SIR H. RAWLINSON.—The tenth chapter of Genesis is the most authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of nations.—Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. XV., p. 230.

DR. KARL RITTER.—Of all the writings of antiquity, none are receiving such confirmation from the modern researches in geography and ethnography as this chapter of Genesis.-Quoted by Prof. H. B. Hackett.

DR. KALISCH. —This unparalleled list, the combined result of reflection and deep research, is no less valuable as a historical document than as a lasting proof of the brilliant capacity of the Hebrew mind.—Comment. on Genesis, p. 194.

Primitive Babylonian Kingdom

Gen. 10:8, 10.—And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. And the beginning of his kingdom was. Babel, etc.

BABYLONIAN DOCUMENTS.—The primitive Babylonian kingdom is declared in the tenth chapter of Genesis to have been Cushite. Baron Bunsen held that there were no Cushites out of Africa, and that "an Asiatic Cush existed only in the imagination of Biblical interpreters, and was the child of their despair." But an analysis of the earliest documents recovered from Babylonia has shown that the primitive Babylonian people, that which raised the first structures whereof any trace remains in the country, and whose buildings had gone to ruin in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, was (at any rate to a large extent) Cushite, its vocabulary being " undoubtedly Cushite or Ethiopian," and presenting numerous analogies with those of the non-Semitic races of Abyssinia. Hence modern historical science, in the person of one of its best representatives, M. Lenormant, commences now the history of the East with a " First Cushite Empire," which it regards as dominant in Babylonia for several centuries before the earliest Semitic Empire arose.—Prof. Geo. Rawlinson, Modern Skepticism, p. 271.

Gen. 10:9.—He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.

DR. DANIEL MARCH.—The founder of Nineveh is described in the Bible as “a mighty hunter before the Lord." His successors in the monarchy retained the spirit and prowess of their great ancestor. Tiglath-pileser, who repeatedly overran Palestine with his devastating armies, caused his exploits in the chase to be recorded upon a terra-cotta cylinder, which was found amid the ruins of his palace. In that inscription he claims to have killed 920 lions with his own hand. The bas-reliefs of other kings make them as mighty in conflict with the king of beasts. The walls of temples and palaces are covered with sculptures and inscriptions, representing these mighty hunters engaged in hand-to-hand conflict with lions, bulls, buffaloes and wild boars. They claim the homage of their people and the admiration of mankind as much for victories over beasts as for the defeat of great armies, and the capture of strong cities.—Research and Travels in Bible Lands.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER. I. (B. C. 1150.)—.I have omitted many hunting expeditions which were not connected with my warlike achievements. In pursuing after the game, I traversed the easy tracts in my chariots, and the difficult tracts on foot. I demolished the wild animals throughout my territories. Under the auspices of Hercules, my guardian deity, four wild bulls, strong and fierce, in the desert, with my long arrows tipped with iron, and with heavy blows I took their lives. Their skins and their horns I brought to my city of Ashur. Ten large wild buffaloes in the country of Kharran, and the plains of the river Khabur, I slew. Four buffaloes I took alive. Under the auspices of my guardian deity Hercules two sass of lions fell before me. In the course of my progress on foot I slew them, and 800 lions in my chariots, in my exploratory journeys, I laid low. All the beasts of the field and the flying birds of heaven I made the victims of my shafts.—Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 20.

Gen. 10:10.—And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

MR. GEORGE SMITH, BRIT. Mus.—I identify Nimrod with Izdubar. In the Chaldean Tablets, Izdubar is a prominent and leading character. He appears as a mighty leader—a man strong in war and hunting—a giant who gained dominion in Babylonia. The whole Euphrates valley was at this time divided into petty kingdoms, and Izdubar, by his prowess, subdued many of these, making thus the first empire in Asia. The center of his empire appears to have lain in the region of Shinar, at Babylon, Accad, Erech, and Nissur, and agrees with the site of the kingdom of Nimrod, according to Genesis. All these cities were ultimately within the dominion of Izdubar, whose character as a hunter, leader and king corresponds with that of Nimrod. For these and other reasons I identify him with Nimrod.—Chaldean Genesis, p. 174.

Relation of Assyria to Babylonia

Gen. 10:11, 12.—Out of that land (Shinar) went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; the same is a great city.

MESOPOTAMIAN MONUMENTS.—Of this account by Moses the most remarkable points are, (1) The contrast of ethnic character noted as existing between the two neighboring peoples; (2) The priority ascribed to Babylon over Nineveh, and to the primitive Babylonian over the Assyrian Kingdom; and (3) The derivation of the Assyrians from Babylonia. Till within a few years these statements seemed to involve great difficulties. Almost all ancient writers spoke of the Babylonians and Assyrians as kindred races, if not even as one people. Those who profess to be acquainted with their early history declared that Assyria was the original seat of empire; that Nineveh was built before Babylon; and that the latter city owed its origin to an Assyrian princess, who conquered the country and built there a provincial capital. It is one of the main results of the recent Mesopotamian researches to have entirely demolished this view, which rests really on the sole authority of Ctesias. The recovered monuments show that THE MOSAICAL ACCOUNT IS, IN ALL RESPECTS, TRUE. The early Babylonians are proved to hive been of an entirely distinct race from the Assyrians, whose language is Semitic, while that of their southern neighbors is Cushite. A Babylonian kingdom is found to haste flourished for centuries before there was any independent Assyria, or any such city as Nineveh.—Prof. George Rawlinson, Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament, p. 32, 33.

The City of Calah

Gen. 10:11—Asshur builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah.

ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTIONS.—J. L. Porter identifies Calah with Kalah-Shergat, forty miles south of Nimrûd, on the right bank of the Tigris. This, he observes, was one of the most ancient places in Assyria. On a cylinder discovered there is an inscription recording the fact that the King Tiglath-pileser restored a monument which had been taken down sixty years previously, after having stood for 641 years. It must, therefore, have been founded about B. C. 1870. On the bricks and pottery found at Kalah are the names and titles of the earliest known Assyrian Kings. The name Asshur is found among them.—Smith's Dirt. of the Bible, ft. 343.

Confusion of Tongues

Gen. 11:1.—And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

WILLIAM LATHAM BEVAN, M. A.—No one can doubt that the tendency of all linguistic research is in the direction of unity of language. Already it has brought within the bonds of a well-established relationship languages so remote from each other in external guise, in age, and in geographical position as Sanskrit and English, Celtic and Greek. It has done the same for other groups of languages equally widely extended, but presenting less opportunities of investigation. It has recognized affinities between languages which the ancient Greek ethnologist would have classed under the head of "barbarian" in reference to each other, and even in many instances where the modern philologist has anticipated no relationship. The lines of discovery therefore point in one direction, and favor the expectation that the various families of tongues may be combined by the discovery of connecting links into a single family, comprehending in its capacious bosom all the languages of the world.—In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 3287.

JAMES COWLES PRICHARD, M. D., F. R. S., M. R. I. A.—There is internal evidence in the whole group of Japhetic languages themselves sufficient to prove that they grew by gradual dialectic development out of one common matrix. Any person who considers, with competent knowledge of these languages, the nature of their relations to each other, the fact that their original roots are for the most part common, and that in the great system of grammatical inflection pervading these languages there is nothing else than the varied development of common principles, must be convinced that the differences between them are but the result of the gradual deviation of one common language into a multitude of diverging dialects; and the ultimate conclusion that is forced upon us is that the Indo-European nations are the descendants of one original people, and consequently, that the varieties of complexion, form, stature and other physical qualities which exist among them, are the results of deviation from an original type. —Report on Ethnology, p. 244.

W. FRASER, LL.D.—The inference is fully warranted by what has been ascertained, that nothing valuable has been added to the substance of languages, that its changes have been those of form only, and that no new root or radical has been invented by later generations. The Teutonic languages of Europe are illustrated by the language of Persia; the Latin of Italy connects itself with Russian idioms; and Greek with the Sanskrit of India. From Ceylon, with its fragrant breezes, to Iceland with its wintry storms, there is, irrespective of form, of color, of social life, and religious institutions, but one belt of language. The

American tribes of the far West, Humboldt has assured us, are indissolubly united to the inhabitants of Asia; the languages of Shem, Ham and Japheth have a common affinity; hills, plains, and climates change, but language in its substantial elements is really more enduring than the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Palmyra, or the statues of Greece.—Blending Lights, p. 132.

KLAPROTH.—All languages in the world are connected with one origin: a universal affinity is completely demonstrated. HERDER.—The human race and human language go back to one source.—Quoted In Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 380.

The various facts that have proved to the satisfaction of such men as HUXLEY, DARWIN, HUMBOLDT, LYELL, PRICHARD, SMITH, BALBI, ADELUNG, ROUGEMONT, and BACHMAN, that the whole human race has descended from a single primitive stock-prove with equal conclusiveness that there was a time when, according to the Scripture, " the whole earth was of one lip and of one speech."

Gen. 11:3.—And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

HERODOTUS.—The earth of the trench (for the walls of Babylon) was first of all laid in heaps, and when a sufficient quantity was obtained, made into square bricks, and baked in a furnace. They used as cement a composition of heated bitumen, which, mixed with the tops of reeds, was placed between every thirtieth course of bricks.—Clio, c. 179.

XENOPHON.—The wall of Media was built of burned bricks laid in bitumen.

—Anab., Lib. II., c. 4.

STRABO.—The liquid asphaltus, which is called naphtha, is found in Susiana; the dry kind, which can be made solid, in Babylonia. There is a spring of it near the Euphrates. Others say that the liquid kind also is found in Babylonia. —Strati., Lib. XVI., c. 1.

Gen. 11:4.—And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven: and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

ALEXANDER POLYHISTOR.—(This writer, who flourished about one hundred years before Christ, has the following passage): Eupolemus, in his book concerning the Jews of Assyria, says, that the city of Babylon was first built by those who had been preserved from the Deluge; that they were giants; that they also erected the tower of which history gives account; but that it was overthrown by the mighty power from God, and consequently the giants were scattered abroad over fly:, whole earth.—As quoted in Noah and his Times, p. 336.

ABYDENUS.—(This writer lived in the fourth century before Christ, and states): There are some who say that the first men sprung out of the earth; that they boasted of their strength and size; that they contemptuously maintained themselves to be superior to the gods; that they erected a lofty tower where now is Babylon; then, when it had been carried up almost to heaven, the very winds came to assist the gods, and overthrew the vast structure upon its builders. Its ruins were called Babylon. The men, who before had possessed one tongue, were brought by the gods to a many-sounding voice; and afterward war arose between Saturn and Titan. Moreover, the place in which they built the tower is now called Babylon, on account of the confusing of the prior clearness with respect to speech; for the Hebrews call “confusion” Babel.—Abyden. ap. Euseb. Prœp., Ev. IX., 14.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—It may have been a recollection of this event, though one much dimmed and faded, which gave rise to the Greek myth of the war between the gods and the giants, and the attempt of the latter to scale heaven by piling one mountain upon another.—Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament, p. 28.

Gen. 11:5, 7.—And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded; and there confounded their language that they might not understand one another's speech.

REV. W. FRASER, LL. D.—It would have been inconsistent with the method of the divine government, so far as we can judge, to introduce a multitude of dialects, and make each, man unintelligible to his companion; and it appears from the record itself that the confusion was orderly or regulated, for we are told anticipatively in the tenth chapter that the descendants of Japheth, of Ham, and of Shem, were divided " after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." Of each of the three, successively, is the same account given. Is it not very significant to find the descendants of Japheth, Ham, and Shem separately described as peopling the earth “after their families and after their tongues?" From these families, it would seem, have all the languages in the world been gradually evolved; and is it not perfectly consistent with this Bible statement to find eminent philologists of all ranks concurring in the conclusion, that the languages and dialects of the world are reducible to three distinct families or groups—the Aryan, the Semitic, and TUranian?—Blending Lights, p. 255.

CHEV. BUNSEN.—Comparative philology would have been compelled to set forth as a postulate the supposition of some such division of languages in Asia, especially on the ground of the relation of the Egyptian language to the Shemitic, even if the Bible had not assured us of the truth of this great historical event.

It is truly wonderful—it is matter of astonishment—it is more than a mere astounding fact, that something so purely historical, yet divinely fixed-something so conformable to reason, and yet not to be conceived of as a mere natural development—is here related to us out of the oldest primeval period, and which now, for the first time, through the new science of philology, has become capable of being historically and philosophically explained.—Blending Lights, 256.

Gen. 11:8.—So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

BARON VON HUMBOLDT.—The comparative study of languages shows us that races now separated by vast tracts of land are allied together, and have migrated from one common primitive seat; it indicates the course and direction of all migrations, and, in tracing the leading epochs of development, recognizes, by means of the more or less changed structure of the language in the permanence of certain forms, or in the more or less advanced destruction of the formative system, which race has retained most nearly the language common to all who had emigrated from the general seat of origin.—Cosmos, II., 471.

CHEV. BUNSEN.—From the mutual affinities exhibited by their languages, all the nations which, from the dawn of history to our days, have been the leaders of civilization in Asia, Europe and Africa, must have had one beginning. This is the chief lesson which the knowledge of the Egyptian language teaches us.—Report on Ethnology, p. 294.

Gen. 11:9.—Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.

THE NINEVEH CREATION TABLETS.—The father.... of him, his heart was evil.... against the father of all the gods was wicked... of him his heart was evil.... Babylon brought to subjection, small and great he confounded their speech. Their strong place (tower) all day long they founded; to their strong place in the night entirely, he made an end. In his anger also word thus he poured out: to scatter abroad he set his face. He gave, this command, their counsel was confounded.... the course he broke... fired the sanctuary. —Chaldean Account of Genests, p. 160.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—A further tangible evidence of the confusion of man's speech in Babylonia, or, at any rate, a fact which harmonizes completely with the scriptural statement that Babylonia was the scene of the confusion, is to be found in the character of the language which appears on the earliest monuments of the country-monuments which reach back to a time probably as remote as B. c. 2300, and almost certainly anterior to the date of Abraham. This monumental language is especially remarkable for its mixed character. It is TUranian in its structure, Cushite or Ethiopian in the bulk of its vocabulary, while at the same time it appears to contain both Semitic and Aryan elements. The people who spoke it must, it would seem, have been living in close contact with Aryan and Semitic races, while they were themselves TUranian, or Turano-Cushite, and must have adopted from those races a certain number of terms.

This would be natural if the varieties of human speech were first found in Babylonia, and if the dispersion of mankind took place from thence, for some portions of the race that migrates almost always remain in the original country. It must be added that, except in Babylonia, a mixed character is not observable in such early languages as are known to us, which are commonly either distinctly TUranian, distinctly Aryan, or distinctly Semite.—Hist. Illus. of O. T., p. 28.

DR. OPPERT.—(This writer, who is admitted to be the highest authority on Babylonian antiquities, makes the following' statements): The history of the confusion of languages was preserved at Babylon, as we learn by the testimonies of classical and Babylonian authorities. The Talmudists say that the true site of the Tower of Babel was at Borsif, the Greek Borsippa, the Birs Nimrud, seven miles and a half from Hillah, S. W., and nearly eleven miles from the northern ruins of Babylon. The Babylonian name of this locality, Barsip, or Barzipa, we explain by "Tower of Tongues." The French Expedition to Mesopotamia found at the Birs Nimrud a clay cake, dated from Barsip, the Both day of the 6th month of the 16th year of Nabonid, and the discovery confirmed the hypothesis of several travelers, who had supposed the Birs Nimrud to contain the remains of Borsippa. Borsippa, or the Tongue Tower, was formerly a suburb of Babylon, when the old Babel was merely restricted to the northern ruins, before the great extension of the city, which, according to ancient writers, was the greatest that the sun ever warmed with its beams. The historical writers respecting Alexander state that Borsippa had a great sanctuary dedicated to Apollo and Artemis, and the former is the building elevated on the very basement of the Old Tower of Babel. This building, erected by Nebuchadnezzar, is the same that Herodotus describes as the Tower of Jupiter Belus. The temple of Borsippa is written with an ideogram, composed of the signs for house and spirit, the real pronunciation of which was probably Sarakh, Tower. Nebuchadnezzar gives notice of this building in the Borsippa inscription (given below). He named it the temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, i. e., the planets.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3303.

BORSIPPA INSCRIPTION.—Nabuchodonosor, king of Babylon, shepherd of peoples, who attests the immutable affection of Merodach, the mighty ruler-exalting Nebo; the savior, the wise man who, lends his ears to the orders of the highest god; the lieutenant without reproach, the repairer of the pyramid and the Tower, eldest son of Nabopallassar, king of Babylon.

We say: Merodach, the great master, has created me: he has imposed on me to reconstruct his building. Nebo, the guardian over the legions of heaven and the earth, has charged my hands with the scepter of justice.

The pyramid is the temple of the heaven and the earth, the seat of Merodach, the chief of the gods; the place of the oracles, the spot of his rest, I have adorned in the form of a cupola, with shining gold.

The Tower, the eternal house, which I founded and built, I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir, and pine.

The first, which is the house of the earth's base, the most ancient monument of Babylon, I built and finished it; I have highly exalted its head with-bricks covered with copper.

We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the House of the Seven-lights of the Earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa: a former king built it (they reckon 42 ages), but he did not complete its head. Since a. remote time people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time, the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great lord, excited my mind to repair this building. I did not change the site, nor did I take away the foundation-stone. In a fortunate month, an auspicious day, I undertook to build porticos around the crude brick masses, and the casing of burnt bricks. I adapted the circuits. I put the inscription of my name in the Kitir of the porticos.

I set my hand to finish it, and to exalt its head. As it had been in former times, so I founded, I made it; as it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.

Nebo, son of himself, ruler who exaltest Merodach, be propitious to my works to maintain my authority. Grant me a life until the remotest time, a seven-fold progeny, the stability of my throne, the victory of my sword, the pacification of foes, the triumph over the lands! In the columns of thy eternal table, that fixes the destinies of the heaven and of the earth, bless the course of my days, inscribe the fecundity of my race.

Imitate, O Merodach, king of heaven and earth, the father who begot thee: bless my buildings, strengthen my authority. May Nebuchadnezzar, pie king-repairer, remain before thy face!

This allusion to the Tower of the Tongues is the only one that has as yet been discovered in the cuneiform inscriptions. The story is a Shemitic and not only a Hebrew one, and we have no reason whatever to doubt of the existence of the same story at Babylon. The ruins of the building elevated on the spot where the story placed the Tower of the Dispersion of Tongues, have therefore a more modern origin, but interest nevertheless by their stupendous appearance.— Oppert, in Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3304.

Egypt in the Time of Abraham

Gen. 12:10-20.—And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there: for the famine was grievous in the land. And it came to pass, when he was come near, etc.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—This history is very concise. Abram is living as a nomad chief in Palestine, when there occurs a severe famine, which induces him to take refuge in Egypt. There the king of the country, who is called Pharaoh, hearing of the beauty of Abraham's wife, whom he has represented as his sister, sends for her, intending to marry her; but before the marriage is consummated, discovering her real relationship to the patriarch, he rebukes him and sends the pair away. The narrative is very brief; but we learn from it: 1. That Egypt was already under a settled government, having a king, and "princes" who acted as the king's subordinates. 2. That the name or title of the monarch was one which to the ears of the Hebrews sounded “Pha-ra-oh." 3. That the country was one to which recourse was naturally had by the inhabitants of neighboring lands in a time of scarcity. Now on all these points the sacred narrative is in harmony with profane sources. History Proper, the history of states, begins with Egypt, where there is reason to believe that a settled government was established, and monarchical institutions set up, at an earlier date than in any other country.

That a name, or title, near to Pharaoh, might be borne by an Egyptian king, appears from Herodotus; and modern hieroglyphic research has pointed out more than one suitable title (ex. gr. Ph' Ra, Peraa, Perao), which Hebrews might represent by the characters found in Genesis. The character of Egypt as a granary of surrounding nations is notorious; and this character has attached to her throughout the entire course of her history. The narrative of Gen. 12:10-20, therefore, brief as it is, contains at least three points capable of confirmation or refutation from profane sources, and on all these points those sources confirm it.—Hist. Illus. of the O. T., p. 35-37.

Abraham at Bethel

Gen. 13:3, 4.—And Abram went on his journeys from the south even to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai; unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first: and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Crystal Palace, London.—When on the spot little doubt can be felt as to the localities of this interesting place. The round mount southeast of Bethel must be the mountain on which Abram built the altar, and on which he and Lot stood when they made their division of the land (Gen. 13: 10). It is still thickly strewn on its top with stones formed by nature for the building of “altar " or sanctuary. As the eye turns involuntarily eastward, it takes in a large part of the plain of Jordan opposite Jericho; distant it is true, but not too distant to discern in that clear atmosphere the lines of verdure that mark the brooks which descend from the mountains beyond the river, and fertilize the plain even in its present neglected state. Further south lies, as in a map, fully half of that sea which now covers the once fertile oasis of " the cities of the plain," and which in those days was " as the garden of the Lord, even as the land of Egypt." Eastward again of this mount, at about the same distance on the left that Bethel is on the right, overlooking the Wady Suweinit, is a third hilt crowned by a remarkably desolate-looking mass of gray debris, the most perfect heap of ruin to be seen in that country of ruins. This is Tell er-Rijmeh, “the mound of the heap," agreeing in every particular of name, aspect, and situation with Ai.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 289.

Gen. 13:5, 6.—And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together; for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—The sojourn of Abram and Lot with their flocks and herds in this region implies that it was very fertile, and Well' suited to their pastoral occupations. The writer can testify that it maintains still its ancient character in this respect. The cattle which he saw there surpassed in number and size any that he saw at any one time in any other place. Springs abound: and a little to the west, toward Jafna, the Roman Gophna, was a flooded meadow, which as late as the 28th of April was almost large enough to be called a lake.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 290.

Gen. 13:10.—And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar.

J. L. PORTER, A. M.—In the early morning, crossing a rocky glen, I ascended the mountain to the spot where Abraham pitched his tent and built his altar, "having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east." Here I found a little plateau, stony but fertile, on the very crest of the hill; and on reaching it the valley of. the Jordan, and the glittering waters of the Dead Sea suddenly burst upon my view, lying deep, deep down at the foot of a dreary wilderness. On this spot Abraham and Lot had that memorable interview after their herdsmen had disputed, and “they found that the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together, for their substance was great." There and then they resolved to separate; and "Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan that it was well watered: " and he chose that region as his abode. How wonderfully graphic did the whole narrative appear to me as I read it on that mountain-top!—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 178.

Gen. 13:14, 15.—And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and lo thy seed forever.

PROF. ARTHUR PENRHY STANLEY, D. D.—Bethel was the first place where Abraham is said to have "pitched his tent," when he journeyed through the land, "going on still toward the south," on his way to Egypt; and to the same spot, " even to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first " (so emphatically is the locality marked), he came again as to the familiar scene of his first encampment, on his return to Egypt. The tent and the altar were not, however, strictly speaking, at Bethel, but on “the mountain east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west, and Ai on the east." This is a precision the more to be noticed, because it makes the whole difference in the truth and vividness of the remarkable scene which follows. Immediately east of the low gray hills on which the Canaanitish Luz and the Jewish Bethel afterward stood, rises—as the highest of a succession of eminences, each now marked by some vestige of ancient edifices—a conspicuous hill, its topmost summit resting, as it were, on the rocky slopes below, and distinguished from them by the, olive grove which clusters over its broad surface above. From this height, thus offering a natural base for the patriarchal altar"; and a fitting shade for the patriarchal tent, Abraham and Lot must be conceived as taking the wide survey of the country " on the right hand and on the left," such as can be enjoyed from no other point in the neighborhood. To the east there rises in the foreground the jagged range of the hills above Jericho; in the distance the dark wall of Moab; between them lies the wide valley of the Jordan—its course marked by the tract of forest in which its rushing stream is enveloped; and down to this valley, a long and deep ravine, now, as always, the main line of communication by which it is approached from the central hills of Palestine; a ravine rich with vine, olive, and fig, winding its way through ancient reservoirs and sepulchers, remains of a civilization now extinct, but in the times of the patriarchs not yet begun. To the south and the west the view commanded the bleak hills of Judaea, varied by the heights crowned with what were afterward the cities of Benjamin, and overhanging what in a later day was to be Jerusalem; and in the far distance the southern range on whose slope is Hebron. Northward are the hills which divide Judaea from the rich plains of Samaria.

This is the view which was to Abraham what Pisgah was afterward to his great descendant. "And the Lord said to Abram after that Lot had separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever.... and I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee." Those bleak hills were indeed to be the sites of cities whose names would be held in honor after the very ruins of the seats of a corrupt civilization in the garden of the Jordan would have been swept away; that dreary view, unfolded then in its primeval desolation before the eyes of the now solitary patriarch, would be indeed peopled with a mighty nation through many generations, with mighty recollections " like the dust of the earth in number, forever."—Sinai and Palestine, ft. 214-216.

Invasion of Chedorlaomer

Gen. 14:1-12.—And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations; that these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar, etc.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—It appears by the narrative of this chapter ‘Gen. 14.) that in the interval between the time of Nimrod and that of Abraham, power had passed from the hands of the Babylonians into those of a neighboring nation, the Elamites, who exercised a suzerainty over the lower Mesopotamian country, and felt themselves strong enough to make warlike expeditions into the distant land of Palestine. The king of Elam in the time of Abraham was Chedor-laomer; who, assisted by his vassal-monarchs, invaded Palestine, defeated the princes of the country, and forced them to become his subjects. After twelve years, however, they revolted, and a second expedition was led by Chedor-laomer into the country, which resulted in another defeat of the Palestinian monarchs.—Hist. Illust. of the Old Testament, p. 37.

IDEM.—Now till very recently there was no profane evidence that Elam had ever been an independent state (as indicated in Scripture), much less a powerful kingdom, and still less one that at so remote a date could have exercised suzerainty over so many and such important nations. But the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions have shown that throughout almost the whole of the Assyrian period Elam maintained herself as an independent state, and one of considerable military strength, on the south-eastern borders of the empire; and very recently (1868) it has further been discovered that, according to the Assyrian belief,-an Elamite king was strong enough to invade and plunder Babylonia; at a date which expressed in our ordinary manner would be B. c. 2286, or somewhat earlier than the time commonly assigned to Abraham.—Modern Skepticism, 273.

IDEM.—Of the expeditions into Palestine profane history contains no account. But the change in the position of Babylon, the rise of the Elamites to power and pre-eminence, and the occurrence about this time of Elamitic expeditions into Palestine or the adjacent districts, are witnessed to by documents recently disinterred from the mounds of Mesopotamia. The name, too, of the Elamitic king, though not yet actually found on any monument, is composed of elements both of which occur in Elamite documents separately, and is of a type exactly similar to other Elamitic names of the period. To give the evidence more fully, it is stated in an inscription of Asshurbanipal, the son of Esar-haddon, that 1635 years before his own capture of Susa, or about B. C. 2286, Kudur-Nakhunta, then king of Elam, led an expedition into Babylonia, took the towns, plundered the temples, and carried off the images of the gods to his own capital, where they remained to the time of the Assyrian conquest. From Babylonian documents of a date not much later (B. C. 2200-2100), it appears that an Elamitic dynasty had by that time been established in Babylonia itself, and that a king called Kudur-Mabuk, an Elamite prince, who held his court at Ur, in Lower Chaldea, carried his arms so far to the westward, that he took the title of " Ravager of the West," or " Ravager of Syria,"—a title which is found inscribed on his bricks. The element Kudur, which commences the name of this prince, and also that of Kudur-Nakhunta, is identical with the Hebrew Chedor, while Lagamer is elsewhere found as an Elamitic god, which is the case also with Mabuk and Nakhunta. Thus Chedor-laomer (Kudur-Lagamer) is a name of exactly the same type with Kudur-Nakhunta and Kudur-Mabuk; its character is thoroughly Elamitic; and it is appropriate to the time at which the writer of Genesis places the monarch bearing it.—Hist. Illust. of Old Test., p. 39.

Gen. 14:3.—All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the Salt Sea.

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS.—" The Salt Sea "—this is the most ancient and at the same time most natural name of the lake now known as the Dead Sea. This is pre-eminently the Salt Sea. From careful analysis, it appears that each gallon of the water, weighing 12¼ lbs., contains nearly 37, lbs. of matter in solution-an immense quantity when we recollect that sea-water, weighing 10¼ lbs. per gallon, contains less than half a pound. Of this 31/3 lbs., nearly 1 lb. is common salt (chloride of sodium); about 2 lbs. chloride of magnesium, and less than half a pound chloride of calcium. The quantity of salt in solution in this lake is very large, and is supplied from the salt rocks of Jebel Usdum, and the copious briny springs on both shores.—U. S. Expedition, 4 to, pp. 204, 377.

Gen. 14:10.—And the vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled and fell there.

H. B. TRISTRAM, M. A., LL. D., F. R. S.—Bitumen is sometimes found in large masses floating on the surface of the Dead Sea, especially after earthquakes. We gathered some very large fragments. It also appears in the adjoining Wadys in the form of Bituminous shales, and sometimes oozes through the limestone as pure bitumen, at other times strongly impregnated with sulfur. There are also bitumen wells in other parts of the Jordan valley, the "slime-pits” of Siddim of old. There are also bitumen wells as far north as the neighborhood of Hasbeiya, under Hermon.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 24.

Ishmael and His Descendants

Gen. 16:2.—And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—In the East, it is not uncommon for a man of property to keep a concubine in the same house with his wife; and, strange as it may appear, it is sometimes at the wife's request. I know a couple with whom this occurred; and the wife delights in nursing and bringing up the offspring of her husband's Concubine.—Orient. Illust., p. 25.

Gen. 16:11, 12.—And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

ALEXANDER KEITH, D. D.—The fate of Ishmael is here identified with that 'of his descendants; and the same character is common to them both. The historical evidence of the fact, the universal tradition, and constant boast of the Arabs themselves, their language, and the preservation for many ages of an Original rite (circumcision) derived from him as their progenitor,—confirm the truth of their descent from Ishmael. The fulfillment of the prediction is obvious. The Arabs have maintained a perpetual independence. “The arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, says Gibbon, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia." The independence of the Arabs was proverbial in ancient as well as in modern times. They not only subsist unconquered to this day, but the prophesied and primitive wildness of their race, and their hostility to all, remain unsubdued and unaltered. They are a wild people; their hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against them.

In the words of Gibbon, which strikingly assimilate with those of the prophecy, “they are armed against mankind." Plundering is their profession. Their alliance is never courted, and can never be obtained; and all that the Turks or Persians or any of their neighbors can stipulate for from them is a partial and purchased forbearance. They have continued wild or uncivilized, and have retained their habits of hostility towards all the rest of the human race, though they possessed for three hundred years countries the most opposite in their nature from the mountains of Arabia. The greatest part of the temperate zone was included within the limits of the Arabian conquests; and their empire extended from India to the Atlantic, and embraced a wider range of territory than ever was possessed by the Romans; those boastful masters of the world. The period of their conquest and dominion was sufficient, under such circumstances, to have changed the manners of any people; but whether in the land of Shinar or in the valleys of Spain, on the banks of the Tigris or the Tagus, in Araby the Blessed or Araby the Barren, the posterity of Ishmael have ever maintained their prophetic character: they have remained, under every change of condition, a wild people; their hand has still been against every man, and every man's hand against them.—Evid. of Proph., 247.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER. —In all ages historians have described the Bedouin Arab as a “wild man," or a wild ass man; as roving, predatory, engaged in ceaseless feuds with his neighbors, reckless of the milder restraints of civilization, and setting at defiance those international laws which regulate the intercourse of surrounding nations. The Ishmaelites or Arabians have ever held fast by the same country. Anchored in one land, they have swung over surrounding communities, only to settle, at last, in their own appointed territory, and to retain precisely the same characteristics. The “wildness " which in other tribes and nations has been first softened, then effaced, has, in their features, never been lessened by the lapse of ages. Not dispersed by conquest, nor wasted by migration, they dwell still “in the presence of all their brethren," a strange national spectacle, utterly inexplicable by those laws which regulate other races. Comparatively fugitive and unstable as are the general characteristics „of nations while the influence of centuries sweep over them as tidal waves on the shore, the Ishmaelites remain the same as when the strangely-expressed prophecy was first uttered by the angel of the Lord. The more powerful national influences, the attractions of fairer lands, and the luxury of indolent races, utterly failed to change, in the least, their characteristic features, during that splendid period when their empire extended from the borders of India to the Atlantic. Through all, they stood forth a perpetual representation of the facts predicted in their history, and their present condition harmonizes with that of many ages ago.—Blending Lights, p. 305.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—"And he will be a wild man." In the original it is a wild ass-man, and the learned Bochart translates it, "tam ferus quam onager," as wild as a wild ass. But what is the nature of the creature to which Ishmael is so particularly compared? It cannot be described better than it is in the book of Job: “Who hath sent out the wild ass as free? or who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing." Ishmael, therefore, and his posterity were to be wild, fierce, savage, ranging in the deserts, and not easily softened and tamed to society: and whoever hath read or known anything of this people, knoweth this to be their true and genuine character.

“His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him." The one is the natural and almost the necessary consequence of the other. Ishmael lived by prey and rapine in the wilderness; and his posterity have all along infested Arabia and the neighboring countries with their robberies and incursions. They live in a state of continual war with the rest of the world, and are both robbers by land and pirates by sea. As they have been such enemies to mankind it is no wonder that mankind have been enemies to them again, that several attempts have been made to extirpate them; and even now as well as formerly travelers are forced to go with arms, and in caravans or large Companies, and to march and keep watch and guard like an army, to defend themselves from the assaults of these freebooters, who run about in troops, and rob and plunder all whom they can by any means subdue. These robberies they also justify by alleging the hard usage of their father Ishmael, who, being turned out-of-doors by Abraham, had the open plains and deserts given him by God for his patrimony, with permission to take whatever he could find there. And on this account they think they may, with a safe conscience, indemnify themselves as well as they can, not only on the posterity of Isaac, but also on everybody else; always supposing a kind of kindred between themselves and those they plunder. And in relating their adventures of this kind, they think it sufficient to change the expression, and instead of “I robbed a man of such or such a thing," to say, "I gained it."

"And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren." This is very extraordinary, that “his hand should be against every man, and every man's hand against him," and yet that he should be able to " dwell in the presence of all his brethren; " but, extraordinary as it was, this also hath been fulfilled, both in the person of Ishmael and in his posterity. One would think it should be for the interest of the neighboring princes and states at any hazard to root out such a pestilent race of robbers, and actually it hath several times been attempted, but never accomplished.' They have from first to last maintained their independency, and, notwithstanding the most powerful efforts for their destruction, still dwell in the presence of all their brethren, and in the presence of all their enemies.

We do not find that they were ever subject to either of their powerful neighbors. So true is the assertion of Diodorus, that " neither the Assyrians formerly, nor the kings of the Medes and Persians, nor yet of the Macedonians, were able to subdue them; nay, though they led many and great forces against them, yet they could not accomplish their attempts." When, in all human probability, they were upon the brink of ruin, then they were signally and providentially delivered. Alexander was preparing an expedition against them, when an inflammatory fever cut him off in the flower of his age. Pompey was in the career of his conquests, when urgent affairs called him elsewhere. Ælius Gallus had penetrated far into the country, when a fatal disease destroyed great numbers of his men, and obliged him to return. Trojan besieged their capital city, but was defeated by thunder and lightning and whirlwind. Severus besieged the same city twice, and was twice repelled from before it; and the historian Dion, a man of rank and character, though an heathen, plainly ascribes the defeat of these two emperors to the interposition of a divine power. We, who know the prophecies, may be more assured of the reality of a divine interposition; and indeed otherwise how could a single nation stand out against the enmity of the whole world for any length of time, and much more for near four thousand years together? The great empires round them have all in their turns fallen to ruin, while they have continued the same from the beginning, and are likely to continue the same to the end; and this in the natural course of human affairs was so highly improbable, if not altogether impossible, that as nothing, but a divine prescience could have foreseen it, so nothing but a divine power could have accomplished it. This is having as it were ocular demonstration for our faith. This is proving by plain matter of fact that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men," and that his truth, as well as his mercy, endureth forever.—Dissertations on the Prophecies, p. 25-37.

DR. THOMAS SHAW.—With regard to the manners and customs of the Bidoweens, it is to be observed that they retain a great many of those we read of in sacred as well as profane history; being, if we accept their religion, the same people they were two or three thousand years ago, without sever embracing any of those novelties in dress or behavior, which have had so many periods and revolutions in the Moorish and Turkish cities. While they often exhibit great hospitality, yet the outward behavior of the Arab frequently gives the lie to his inward temper and inclination. For he is naturally thievish and treacherous, and it sometimes happens that those very persons are overtaken and pillaged in the morning, who were entertained the night before with all the instances of friendship and hospitality. Neither are they to be accused for plundering strangers only, and attacking almost every person whom they find unarmed and defenseless, but for those many implacable and hereditary animosities, which continually subsist among them, literally fulfilling to this day the prophecy, that " Ishmael should be a wild man; his hand should be against every man, and every man's hand against him."—Shaw' s Travels, p. 300, etc.

SIR ROBERT K. PORTER.—On the smallest computation, such must have been the manners of those people for more than three thousand years; thus in all things verifying the prediction given of Ishmael at his birth, that he, in his posterity, should be a wild man, and always continue to be so, though they shall dwell forever in the presence of their brethren. And that an acute and active people, surrounded for ages by polished and luxuriant nations, should, from their earliest to their latest times, be still found a wild people, dwelling in the presence of all their brethren (as we may call these nations), unsubdued and unchangeable, is, indeed, a standing miracle—one of those mysterious facts which, establish the truth of prophecy.—Travels, p. 304.

Gen. 17:20.—And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—"Twelve princes shall he beget." This circumstance is very particular, but it was punctually fulfilled; and Moses has given us the names of these princes, by which we are to understand, not that they were so many distinct sovereign princes, but only heads of tribes or clans. Strabo frequently mentions the Arabian phylarchs, as he denominates them, or rulers of tribes; and Melo, quoted by Eusebius from Alexander Polyhistor, a heathen historian, relates that "Abraham of his Egyptian wife begat twelve sons (he should have said one son who begat twelve sons), who, departing into Arabia, divided the region between them, and were the first kings of the inhabitants, whence even to our days the Arabians have twelve kings of the same names as the first." And ever since the people have been governed by phylarchs, and have lived in tribes, and still continue to do so, as Thevenot and other modern travelers testify.

"And I will make him a great nation." This is repeated twice or thrice; and it was accomplished as soon as in the regular course of nature it could be accomplished. His seed in process of time grew into a great nation, and such they continued for several ages, and such they remain to this day. They might, indeed, emphatically be styled a great nation when the Saracens had made those rapid and extensive conquests, and erected one of the largest empires that ever were in the world.— Dissert. on Prophecies, p. 26.

Circumcision

Gen. 17:10.—This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee, Every man child among you shall be circumcised.

ALEXANDER KEITH, D. D.—Every man and male child of the Hebrew race bears in his body the " token of that covenant " which the Lord made with Abraham; and after the extinction of a hundred generations, it is at this day a memorial of the fact, in confirmation of which it was ordained as an ordinance forever.—Demonstration of the Truth of Christianity, p. 117.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—It is certainly a fine corroboration of the book of Genesis to stand in the plain of Mamre (as I have done), and witness the ceremonies of that solemn religious rite which Abraham here received as a seal of the righteousness of faith which he had, yet being uncircumcised.—The Land and the Book, II., 403.

Gen. 14:25.—And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

JOSEPHUS. —And they circumcised Isaac upon the eighth day; and from that time the Jews continue the custom of circumcising their sons within that number of days. But as for the Arabians, they circumcise after the thirteenth year, because Ishmael, the founder of their nation, who was born to Abraham of the concubine, was circumcised at that age.—Ant., 1., 12, § 2.

PROF. T. T. PEROWNE, B. D.—Though Mohammed did not enjoin circumcision in the Koran, he was circumcised himself, according to the custom of his country; and circumcision is now as common amongst the Mohammedans as amongst the Jews.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 464.

W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—What does this curious and irregular procession signify? I inquired. “It is a circumcision," replied our friend; " and it is generally attended with just such music and buffoonery." Well, that is interesting, certainly, to find this rite still practiced in the very place where it was first instituted by command of God, nearly four thousand years ago, and among the descendants of Ishmael, the great ancestor of these Arabs, who was among the very first to receive the rite.— Land and Book, II., 401.

Patriarchal Hospitality

Gen. 13:1-8.—And Abraham sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do as thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it to a young man; and he hasted to dress it. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by 'them under the tree, and they did eat.

F. L. PORTER, A. M.—Both the land and people of Moab remain thoroughly Oriental. Nowhere else is patriarchal life so fully or so strikingly exemplified. The social state of the country and the habits of the people are just what they were in the days of Abraham or Job. As we neared Hebrân, our little cavalcade was seen approaching, and ere we reached the brow of the hill the whole population had come out to meet and welcome us. The sheikh, a noble-looking young Druse, had already sent a man to bring a kid from the nearest flock to make a feast for us, and we saw him bounding away through an opening in the forest. He returned in half an hour with the kid on his shoulder. We assured the hospitable sheikh that it was impossible for us to remain. Our servants were already far away over the plain, and we had a long journey before us. He would listen to no excuse. The feast must be prepared-," My lord could not pass by his servant's house without honoring him by eating a morsel of bread, and partaking of the kid which is being made ready. The sun is high; the day is long; rest for a time under my roof; eat and drink, and then pass on in peace." There was so much of the true spirit of patriarchal hospitality here, so much that recalled to mind scenes in the life of Abraham, and Manoah, and other Scripture celebrities, that we found it hard to refuse.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 17, 87.

Gen. 18:4, 8.—Rest yourselves under the Tree. And Abraham stood by them under the Tree, and they did eat.

H. B. TRISTRAM, M.A., LL. D., F. A. S.—The most famous existing Oak of the species Q. pseudo-coccifera in the Holy Land, is the so-called Abraham's Oak near Hebron, which has for several centuries taken the place of the once-renowned Terebinth which marked the site of Mamre, on the other sick of the city. The Terebinth existed at Mamre in the time of Vespasian, and under it the captive Jews were sold for slaves. It disappeared about A. D. 330, and no tree now marks the grove of Mamre. The present Oak is the noblest tree in Southern Palestine, being twenty-three feet in girth, and the diameter of the foliage, which is unsymmetrical, being about ninety feet.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 369.

Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

Gen. 19:24, 25.—Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

ESDRAS.—Remember what the Lord did unto Sodom and Gomorrah, whose land lieth in clods of pitch and heaps of ashes.—Book II., ch. 2, v. 9.

JOSEPHUS. —Adjoining this sea is Sodomitis, once a blessed region abounding in produce and in cities, but now entirely burnt up. They say that it was destroyed by lightning for the impiety of its inhabitants. And even to this day the relics of the Divine fire and the traces of five cities are to be seen there.—B. J., IV., 8, § 4.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The materials for the conflagration were at hand in the sulfur abounding near, and in the bitumen with which, dug from the slime-pits of the plain, the houses were probably constructed, or at least cemented. (Nat. Hist., 25.) There are exposed on the sides of Wady Mahawat, a broad, deep ravine at the north end of Jebel Usdum, large masses of bitumen, mingled with gravel. These overlie a thin stratum of sulfur, which again overlies a thick stratum of sand, so strongly impregnated with sulfur that it yields powerful fumes on being sprinkled over a hot coal. Many great blocks of the bitumen have been washed down the gorge, and lie scattered on the plain below, along with huge 'boulders and other traces of tremendous floods. The phenomenon commences about half a mile from where the Wady opens up on the plain, and may be traced at irregular intervals for nearly a mile further. The bitumen has many small water-worn stones and pebbles embedded in it. Again, the bitumen, unlike that which we pick up on the shore, is strongly impregnated with sulfur, and yields an overpowering sulfurous odor; above all, it is calcined, and bears the marks of having been subjected to extreme heat.—I have a great dread of seeking forced corroborations of Scriptural statements from questionable physical evidence, for the skeptic is apt to imagine that when he has refuted the wrong argument adduced in support of a Scriptural statement, he has refuted the Scriptural statement itself; but so far as I can understand this deposit, if there be any physical evidence left of the catastrophe which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, or of similar occurrences, we have it here. The whole appearance points to a shower of hot sulfur, and of an eruption of bitumen upon it, which would naturally be calcined and impregnated by its fumes; and this at a geological period quite subsequent to all the diluvial and alluvial action of which we have such abundant evidence. The vestiges remain exactly as the last relics of a snow-drift remain in spring—an atmospheric deposit. The catastrophe must have been since the formation of the Wady, since the deposition of the marl, and while the water was at its present level; therefore probably during the historic period.—Land of Israel, 356-362.

DR. SAMUEL WOLCOTT.—No historic proof can be more clear and complete, than that the site of Sodom, from the time of its destruction to the Christian era, and subsequently, was a blasted region, an utter desolation (such as Moses describes it in his own day, Deut. 29:23). The entire southwest coast and adjacent territory from above Sebbeh round to the fertile border of the Ghor essâfieh on the extreme southeast, relieved at a single point by the verdure of the small oasis of Zuweirah, is, and has been, from the time of Sodom's destruction, the image of enthroned desolation. The sombre wildness and desolateness of the whole scene; the tokens of volcanic action, or of some similar natural convulsion; the Sodom mountain, a mass of crystallized salt, furrowed into fantastic ridges and pillars; the craggy sun burnt precipices and ravines on the west; the valley below Usdum, with the mingled sand, sulfur, and bitumen, which have been washed down the gorges; the marshy plain of the adjacent Sabkah, with its briny drainings, destitute of every species of vegetation; the stagnant sea, with its border of dead driftwood; the sulfurous odor; "the sterility and death-like solitude " (Robinson); "desolation elsewhere partial, here supreme; nothing in the Saharah more desolate" (Tristram); "the unmitigated desolation" (Lynch); "scorched and desolate tract" (W.); "desolation which, perhaps, cannot be exceeded anywhere upon the face of the earth" (Grove); "utter and stern desolation, such as the mind can scarcely conceive" (Porter); these and the like features impress all visitors as a fit memorial of such a catastrophe as the sacred writers have recorded.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, 3072.

Well of Beer-Sheba

Gen. 21:30-32.—These seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this Well. Wherefore he called that place Beersheba, because there they sware both of them. Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Crystal Palace, London.—The wells of Beersheba are among the first objects encountered on the entrance into Palestine from the south, and being highly characteristic of the life of the Bible, at the same time that the identity of the site is beyond all question, the Wells of Beersheba never fail to call forth the enthusiasm of the traveler. The two principal wells are close to the northern bank of the Wady es-Seba'. They lie just a hundred yards apart, and are so placed as to be visible from a considerable distance. The larger of the two, which lies to the east, is, according to the careful measurements of Dr. Robinson, 12½ feet in diameter, and at the time of his visit (April 12) was 44½ feet to the surface of the water: the masonry which encloses the well reaches downward for 28½ feet. The other well is 5 feet in diameter, and was 42 feet to the water. The curbstones round the mouth of both wells are worn into deep grooves by the action of the ropes of so many centuries, and look "as if frilled or fluted all round." Round the larger well there are nine, and round the smaller five large stone troughs; some much worn and broken, others nearly entire, lying at a distance of 10 or 12 feet from the edge of the well. There were formerly ten of these troughs at the larger well. The circle around is carpeted with a sward of fine short grass with crocuses and lilies. The water is excellent.—In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, J. 266.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—The Wells of Beersheba, in the wide frontier valley of Palestine, are indisputable witnesses of the life of Abraham.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 146.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—About two clock we reached Beersheba, where the tents were already pitched round one of Abraham's wells. These wells vary from five to thirteen feet in diameter. The one at which we were camped was twelve and a half feet in diameter, thirty-four feet till we reached the living rock, and, as we were told by the Arabs, twice that depth. At present the water stood at thirty-eight feet from the surface. The native visitors to our camp pointed out, with all the pride of race, that the wells were the work of Ibrahim el Khulil—"Abraham the Friend." The well above the rock was built with finely-squared large stones, hard as marble, and the ropes of water-drawers for 4,000 years have worn the edges of the hard limestones with no less than 143 flutings, the shallowest of them four inches deep. The ancient marble troughs were arranged at convenient distances round the mouth in an irregular circle, some oblong, most of them round, for the convenience of the cattle. From their style and material, they are probably coeval with the original well. All day long, our men, or the Bedouin herdsmen and their wives, were drawing water in skins, and filling these troughs for the horses, camels, cattle and sheep, recalling many a scene in the lives of the Patriarchs of Rebecca and of Zipporah. There are traces of an ancient open roof over the well.—Land of Israel, p. 376, 377.

Burial of Sarah

Gen. 23:1-20.—And Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight, etc.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—No city in Palestine so carries one back to Patriarchal times as Hebron. Manners and customs, and modes of action, and even idioms of speech, have changed but little since the Bible was written, or from what they were when Abraham dwelt here among " the sons of Heth." Take the account of the death and burial of Sarah, as it is found in the 23rd chapter of Genesis as an example. " Sarah died in Kirjath-arba—the same is Hebron— and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her." There is something formal in this remark, but it is in perfect accordance with present customs. Should such a person die here to-morrow, there would be a solemn public mourning and weeping, not as indicating the grief of the family so much as in honor of the dead. Such was this funeral mourning of the great emeer Abraham; but, besides this public tribute to the memory of Sarah, he, no doubt, sincerely lamented her death in the privacy of his own tent.

Abraham's negotiation for a sepulcher is also very oriental and striking. Such a purchase was quite necessary. There has always been in this country the utmost exclusiveness in regard to tombs, and although these polite Hittites said: " Hear us, my lord; thou art a mighty prince among us; in the choice of our sepulchers bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulcher, but that thou mayest bury thy dead." Abraham was too experienced an Oriental not to know that this was merely compliment. The thing was quite out of the question; nor would Abraham himself have consented thus to mingle his dead with the dust and bones of strangers, even if they had been willing. He knew well how to understand the offer, and therefore pressed his request to be allowed to purchase. Nor is such a negotiation easily arranged. If you or I had occasion to make a similar contract to-day from these modern Hittites, we should find it even more delicate and tedious than did Abraham. I do not believe that we could succeed, even with the aid of all the mediators we could employ.

In concluding the purchase with Ephron, we see the process of a modern bargain admirably carried out. The polite son of Zohar says " Nay, my lord, hear me; the field give I thee, and the cave that there is within I give it thee. In the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee; bury thy dead." Of course! And just so I have had a hundred houses, and fields, and horses given to me, and the bystanders called upon to witness the deed, and a score of protestations and oaths taken to seal the truth of the donation; all which, of course, meant nothing whatever, just as Abraham understood the true intent and value of Ephron's buksheesh.—He therefore urged forward the purchase, and finally brought the owner to state definitely his price, which he did at four hundred shekels of silver. Now, without knowing the relation between silver and a bit of barren rock at that time and in this place, my experience of such transactions leads me to suppose that this price was treble the actual value of the field. “But," says the courteous Hittite, "four hundred shekels! what is that betwixt me and thee? ‘Oh! how often you hear those identical words on similar occasions, and yet, acting upon their apparent import, you would soon find out what and how much they meant. Abraham knew that, too; and as he was then in no humor to chaffer with the owner, whatever might be his price, he proceeded forthwith to weigh out the money. Even this is still common; for, although coins have now a definite name, size and value, yet every merchant carries a small apparatus by which he weighs each coin, to see that it has not been tampered with by Jewish clippers. In like manner the specifications in the contract are just such as are found in modern deeds. It is not enough that you purchase a well-known lot; the contract must mention everything that belongs to it, and certify that fountains or wells in it, trees upon it, etc., are sold with the field. If you rent a house, not only the building itself, but every room in it, above and below, down to the kitchen, pantry, stable and hen-coop, must be specified. Thus Abraham bought this field, and the cave that was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, and that were in all the borders round about, were made sure. I see this negotiation in all its details enacted before me, and hear the identical words that passed between the parties. The venerable patriarch, bowed down with sorrow, rises from beside the couch on which lay the lifeless body of his beloved Sarah. He stands before the people—the attitude of respect which etiquette still demands. He addresses them as beni Heth—sons of Heth; and in the same words he would address these Arabs about us as beni Keis, beni Yemen, etc., etc., according as each tribe is now designated. Again, Abraham begins his plea with a reference to his condition among them as a stranger—the very idiom now in use—I, a stranger, and ghurîb; and this plea appeals strongly to the sympathies of the hearers. It is by such an appeal that the beggar seeks now to enlist your compassion, and succeeds, because all over the East the stranger is greatly to be pitied. He is liable to be plundered and treated as an enemy, and among these denizens of the desert strangers are generally enemies, and dealt with as such. The plea, therefore, was natural and effective.

Abraham stood and bowed himself to the children of Heth; another act of respect in accordance with modern manners, and the next step is equally so. He does not apply directly to the owner of the field, but requests the neighbors to act as mediators on his behalf; and were we anxious to succeed in a similar bargain with these people, we must resort to the same roundabout mode. There is scarcely anything in the habits of Orientals more annoying to us Occidentals than this universal custom of employing mediators to pass between you and those with whom you wish to do business. Nothing can be done without them. A merchant cannot sell a piece of print, nor a farmer a yoke of oxen, nor any one rent a house, buy a horse, or get a wife, without a succession of go-betweens. Of course, Abraham knew that this matter of the field could not be brought about without the intervention of the neighbors of Ephron, and therefore he applies to them first. How much maneuvering, taking aside, whispering, nodding of heads, and clasping of hands there was before the real owner was brought within reasonable terms, we are not told, but at length all the preliminary obstacles and conventional impediments are surmounted according to the most approved style of etiquette, and the contract is closed in the audience of all the people that went in at the gate of the city. This also is true to life. When any sale is now to be effected in a town or village, the whole population gather about the parties at the usual place of concourse, around or near the gate, where there is one. There all take part, and enter into the pros and cons with as much earnestness as if it were their own individual affair. By these means, the operation, in all its circumstances and details, is known to many witnesses, and the thing is made sure, without any written contract. In fact, up to this day, in this very city, a purchase thus witnessed is legal, while the best drawn deeds of a London lawyer, though signed and sealed,, would be of no avail without such living witnesses.—So Abraham obtained the cave of Machpelah for the possession of a burying-place for himself and his descendants, and thus became legal proprietor of a portion of the promised inheritance.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 381-384.

Eliezer Seeking a Wife for Isaac

Gen. 24:4.—Thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.

W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—This is in exact correspondence with the custom of the Eastern nobility; nor need we limit the remark to the higher classes. Certain degrees of affinity excepted, a relative always has the preference in matrimonial negotiations. The strict injunction of Abraham, therefore, to bring none but a relative from his own family, though enforced by religious considerations, was in no sense a departure from established usages and social laws in regard to marriage.— The Land and the Book, II., 403.

Gen. 24:10.—And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hands: and he arose and went into Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The preparation and outfit for this journey agree in all respects with the persons concerned, the nature of the country, and the habits of the people. Eliezer took ten camels loaded with provisions and presents; and such an expedition would not now be undertaken from Hebron with any other animals, nor with a less number.—The Land and the Book, II., 404.

Gen. 24:11.—And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—To enable the camel to receive its load, by a special provision of Nature, it is formed to kneel down whenever it desires to rest, or to drink, and it also prefers feeding in this posture. This habit of kneeling down is not merely the result of training; it is their natural posture of repose, as is shown also by the callosities upon the joints of the legs, and especially by that upon the breast, which serves as a pedestal to support the huge body.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, 60.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Every phrase of the eleventh verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Genesis contains an allusion to matters Oriental. “He made the camels kneel "—a mode of expression taken from actual life. The action is literally kneeling; not stooping, sitting or lying down on the side like a horse, but kneeling on his knees, and this the camel is taught to do from his youth. The place is said to have been by "a well of water," and this well was “outside the city." In the East, where wells are scarce, and water indispensable, the existence of a well or fountain determines the site of the village. The people build near it, but prefer to have it outside the city, to avoid the noise, dust and confusion always occurring at it, and especially if the place is on the public highway. It is around the fountain that the thirsty traveler and the wearied caravan assemble; and if you have become separated from your own company before arriving at town, you need only inquire for the fountain, and there you will find them. It was perfectly natural, therefore, for Eliezer to halt at the well. The time was evening; but it is further stated that it was when the women go forth to draw water. True to life again. At that hour the peasant returns home from his labor, and the women are busy preparing the evening meal, which is to be ready at sunset. Cool, fresh water is then demanded, and of course there is a great concourse around the well. But why limit it to the women? Simply because such is the fact. About great cities men often carry water, both on donkeys and on their own backs, but in the country, among the unsophisticated natives, women go only to the well or the fountain; and often when traveling, have I seen long files of them going and returning with their pitchers, "at the time when women go out to draw water."—The Land and the Book, II., p. 404.

Gen. 24:15-18.—And it came to pass before Eliezer had done speaking (in prayer), that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder; and she went down to the well and filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me I pray thee drink a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord: and she halted and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Again: the description of Rebekah; the account she gives of herself, and the Whole dialog with Eliezer, agree admirably with Oriental customs. Even the statement as to the manner of carrying her pitcher, or rather jar, is exact—on her shoulder. The Egyptian and the Negro carry on the head, the Syrian on the shoulder or the hip. She went down to the well; and nearly all wells in the East are in wadies, and many of them have steps down to the water—fountains of course have. Eliezer asks water to drink; she hastens and lets down the pitcher on her hand. How often have I had this identical act performed for myself, when traveling in this thirsty land. Rebekah's address to the servant, Drink, my lord—Ishrub ya seedy—will be given to you in the exact idiom by the first gentle Rebekah you ask water from.—The Land and the Book, II., p. 405.

Gen. 24:22.—And it came to pass, as the camels had done drinking, that the man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The jewels, also, for the face, forehead and arms, are still as, popular among the same class of people as they were in the days of Abraham. Not only are the head, neck and arms adorned with a profusion of gold and silver rings, chains, and other ornaments, but rings are suspended on the face, from the side of the nose, etc., etc.—The Land and the Book, II., p. 405.

Gen. 24:29, 31, 32.—And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban: and Labatt ran out unto the man, unto the well. And he said, Come in, thou blessed of the Lord. Wherefore standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels. And the man came into the house: and he ungirded his camels, and gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and the men's feet that were with him.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Laban's address, " Come in, thou blessed of the Lord," is still in good taste. I have often been welcomed in set phrases even more complimentary and sacred. The camels, it appears, were included in the invitation, and were brought "into the house;” and I have often slept in the same room with these peaceful animals, in company with their owner and all his family. "Straw and provender” were given to them; that is tibin, and some kind of pulse or grain. There is no hay in the East. Water to wash the feet of the wearied travelers was of course given, and the same kind act will be done to you under similar circumstances.—The Land and the Book, II., p. 406.

F. L. PORTER, A. M.—We are among a people of patriarchal manners and genuine patriarchal hospitality. We were looked on and treated as welcomed guests. We could not pass town or village without being entreated to accept hospitality. “Will not my lord descend while his servants prepare a little food?" is the urgent language of every village sheikh. The coffee is always on the hearth; a kid or lamb is at hand, and can be "got ready" with all the dispatch of ancient days. Food for servants, “provender" for horses, accommodation for all, are given as matters of course. In traveling through Bashan one fancies himself carried back to the days when the patriarchs sat in their tent doors, ready to welcome every visitor and hail every passerby.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 48.

Gen. 24:50, 51, 53.—Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The thing proceedeth from the Lord: we cannot speak unto thee bad or good. Behold. Rebekah is before thee; take her, and go, and let her be thy master's son's wife, as the Lord hath spoken. And the servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah: he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—So also the mode of negotiating the marriage contract, the presenting of gifts, etc., are all in perfect accordance with modern usages. The parents manage the whole affair, often, however, with the advice of the eldest son and heir, as Laban was in this case. And if the father be dead, the eldest son takes his place, and assumes his authority in the disposal of his sisters. Presents are absolutely essential in betrothals. They are given with much ceremony before witnesses, and the articles presented are described in a written document, so that if the match be broken off, the bridegroom can obtain them back again, or their value, and something more as a compensation for the injury.—The Land and the Book, II., p. 406.

Gen. 24:61, 63, 64, 65.—And the servant took Rebekah, and went his way. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and behold, the camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel; and she took a veil and covered herself.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Finally, the behavior of Rebekah, when about to meet Isaac, was such as modern etiquette requires. It is customary for both men and women, when an emir or great personage is approaching, to alight some time before he comes up with them. Women frequently refuse to ride in the presence of men, and when a company of them are to pass through a town, they often dismount and walk. It was, no doubt, a point of Syrian etiquette for Rebekah to stop, descend from her camel, and cover herself with a veil in the presence of her future husband. In a word, this Biblical narrative is so natural to one familiar with the East, so beautiful also, and life-like, that the entire scene seems to be an affair in which he has himself been but recently an actor.—The Land and the Book, II., 406.

Death and Burial of Abraham

Gen. 25:8, 9.—And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age. And his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar, the Hittite, which is before Mamre.

DEAN STANLEY.—And now I am in Hebron, looking on the sight of a sepulcher whose genuineness has never yet been questioned. The cave of Machpelah is concealed, beyond all reasonable doubt, by the Mosque of Hebron. (See the testimonies given under Gen. 49:30, and 1:12, 13.)—Sinai and Palestine, 102, 148.

Jacob's Red Pottage

Gen. 25:29-34.—Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Lentil is a species of Vetch, very like some of our wild sorts, especially the Tine-tare, and is much Cultivated on the poorer soils in Palestine. There are several varieties recognized, but the Red Lentil is considered the best. We have eaten it mixed with meal for bread; but it is more generally used as pottage, or cooked as the Spaniards cook haricot beans, stewed with oil, and flavored with red pepper. It is by no means an unsavory dish.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, 462.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—In my rambles about the outskirts of Hebron last evening, I lit upon a company of Ishmaelites sitting round a large saucepan, regaling themselves with their dinner. As they said “Tufuddal " very earnestly, I sat down among them, and, doubling some of their bread spoon-fashion, plunged into the saucepan as they did, and I found their food very savory indeed. The composition was made of that red kind of lentils which we examined in the market, and I can readily believe that to a hungry hunter it must have been very tempting. It is a singular fact that our Frank children born in this country are extravagantly fond of this same adis pottage. I can testify, also, that when cooking, it diffuses far and wide an odor extremely grateful to a hungry man. It was, therefore, no slight temptation to Esau, returning weary and famished from an unsuccessful hunt in this burning climate. I have known modern hunters so utterly spent as to feel, like him, that they were about to die.—The Land and the Book, II., 397.

The Oath of Peace

Gen. 29:28, 29.—Then Abimelech said to Isaac, Let there be now an oath betwixt us, Even between us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee; that thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Just so at this day the towns, and even cities, such as Hamath and Hums in the north, and Gaza and Hebron in this region, cultivate with great care friendly relations with the sheikhs of prosperous tribes on their borders. The strife about the wells had been a fruitful source of annoy-pee to both parties no doubt.—The Land and the, Book, II., 350.

Watering the Flocks

Gen. 29:9-11.—And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep; for she kept them. And it came to pass when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept.

DR. H. B. TRISTRAM. —Many of the most attractive scenes of Oriental life and history cluster round the sheep-troughs. It was at the well where they waited to water the sheep that Jacob first saw his cousin Rachel, and " went near and rolled away the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban, his mother's brother, and Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept." By a well in the land of Midian the exiled Moses sat down, and defended the daughters of Reuel from the shepherds, who would have disputed their right of watering their flocks, and for his gallant protection was soon rewarded by finding a home and a wife among them. And still “the places of drawing water" are the spots where the youth and girls of Bedouin life congregate, and at the wells alone is Oriental courtship carried on to this day. The Syrian girl, especially if a Druse or Christian, unlike the secluded daughter of the towns, is frequently entrusted, like Rachel or Zipporah, with the care of her father's flock. The well, the most precious of possessions, is carefully closed with a heavy slab until all those whose flocks are entitled to share its water have gathered. The time is noon. The first-comers gather and report the gossip of the tribe. The story of the twenty-ninth chapter of Genesis is, in its most minute details, a transcript of tie Arab life of to-day.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, 141, 142.

Tender Eye

Gen. 29:17.—Leah was tender-eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—Ophthalmia is perhaps more common in Syria and Egypt than anywhere else in the world, especially in the fig season, the juice of the newly ripe fruit (according to Hippocrites) having the power of giving it.—Smith's Dict., 1863.

Marriage Deception

Gen. 29:21-27.—And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold it was Leah.... And Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the first-born.

REV. JOHN HARTLEY.—In a conversation with an Armenian of Smyrna, the following fact was related to me: A young Armenian in Smyrna had solicited in marriage a younger daughter who had obtained his preference The girl's parents consented to the match; but when the time for solemnizing the marriage arrived, the eldest daughter was conducted (closely veiled) by the parents to the altar, and the young man was quite unconsciously married to her. The deception was not discovered till it could not be rectified. I naturally exclaimed, “Why that is just the deception that was practiced upon Jacob." “What deception? “he replied. As the Old Testament is not yet translated into any language with which the Armenians are familiar, he was ignorant of the story. And this father, as the relator stated, excused his conduct in precisely the same way as Laban, alleging that custom did not warrant the marriage of the younger before the elder daughter.—Researches in Greece and the Levant.

ROBERTS.—It has been said, and with much truth, that could Alexander now revisit India, he would find the same customs and manners that prevailed in his day. From age to age there is a careful and reverent adherence to ancient fashions and usages. When the eldest daughter is deformed, or blind, or deaf, or dumb, then the younger may be given first; but under other circumstances it would be disgraceful in the extreme. Should any one wish to alter the order of things, the answer of Laban would be given. Should a father, however, have a very advantageous offer for a younger daughter, he will exert all his powers previously to obtain a suitable match for the elder; and this can be accomplished, the younger will not be married.—Orient. Plus., p. 34.

Mandrakes

Gen. 30:14.—And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The mandrake is a plant of very peculiar appearance. It sends up in early spring a broad disk of leaves, lying flat on the ground, being a foot in length and four inches wide. In the center of these come out the blossoms singly; they are cup-shaped, and of a rich purple color. The fruit is of the size of a large plum, quite round, yellow, and full of soft pulp. The mandrake is universally distributed over all parts of Palestine, and its fruit is much valued by the natives, who still hold to the belief, as old as the time of Rachel, that when eaten it ensures conception.-Nat. Hist. of the Bible, 466.

W. HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—Venus was called Mandragositis by the ancient Greeks, and the fruit of the plant was termed “apples of love."—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1778.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Reuben gathered mandrakes in wheat harvest, and it is then that they are still found ripe and eatable on the lower ranges of Lebanon and Hermon, where I have most frequently seen them. The Arabs believe them to be exhilarating and stimulating.— Land and the Book, II., 380.

Household Gods

Gen. 31:30, 34—Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods? Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, and found them not.

JOSEPHUS.—It was the custom of the Mesopotamians to have all the idols (teraphim) they worshipped in their own houses, and to take them with them on their journeys.

REV. DR. W. M. THOMSON.—It is still very common for Arabs to hide stolen property under the padding of their saddles. Nor does this act of stealing a god to worship strike these people as monstrous or absurd. I have known many such thefts of modern teraphim, pictures and images, and that by women, too. And why not? It is surely not absurd to steal the god whose aid you invoke to assist you to steal other things. The Moslems often pray for success in their lowest intrigues.—The Land and the Book, II., 24.

Shepherd Life of Jacob

Gen. 31:36-40.—And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban: This twenty years have I been with thee; thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not eaten. That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it: of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. Thus I was; in the day time the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes.

W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The terms with which Laban and Jacob reproved and berated each other are in admirable keeping with the parties and the story, and abound in allusions to Oriental customs, especially of a pastoral people. Twenty years long, cries Jacob, have I served thee. The ewes of thy flock have not cast their young; evidence of most careful and successful treatment. The rams of thy flock have t not eaten; implying that then, as now, the males of the flock alone were used for food, or sold to the butcher. Then, as now, wild beasts tore some of the flock: but Jacob the shepherd, not Laban the landlord, bore the loss. Then, too, as at this day, thieves prowled about; but Jacob made good whatever was stolen. Of course, he had to watch by day and by night, in winter's storms and summer's burning suns. It was, therefore, no mere figure of speech that the drought consumed him by day and the frost by night.

Thus do the hardy shepherds suffer in the same regions at the present time. But it is a dog's life, in spite of all the Eclogues and pastorals of love-sick poets. —The Land and the Book, II., 26.

Gen. 31:53.—And Jacob sware by the fear of his father Isaac.

ROBERTS.—One of the most solemn oaths taken in the East is that of swearing by the Father, whether he be living or dead. Is a man accused of some great crime? he says, "By my father I swear that I am innocent." "I have sworn in the name of my father, therefore believe me."—Orient. Illust., p. 38.

Mount Seir

Gen. 32:3.—And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Crystal Palace, London.—Seir was the original name of the mountain ridge extending along the east side of the Valley of Arabah, from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf. This mountain range was originally inhabited by the Horites, or "troglodites," who were doubtless the excavators of those singular rock dwellings found in such numbers in the ravines and cliffs around Petra. They were dispossessed, and apparently annihilated, by the posterity of Esau, who dwelt in their stead. The history of Seir thus early merges into that of Edom.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2902.

Milch Camels

Gen. 32:15.—And Jacob took of that which came to his hand a present for Esau his brother:—thirty milch camels with their colts.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Camels' milk is very largely used in the East, and is excellent. The milk is rich and strong, but not very sweet. It is usually curdled and drunk sour, in which state it is both nourishing and refreshing, and to many a traveling Arab supplies both food and drink.— Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 65.

Flocks Journeying

Gen. 32:16.—And Jacob delivered them into the hands of his servants, every drove by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—During the months of November and December, 1853, the whole line of coast was covered with flocks; they came from Northern Syria and from Mesopotamia; and their shepherds, in dress, manners, and language, closely resembled those of Abraham and Job, as I believe. At a distance the flocks look exactly like droves of hogs going to Cincinnati; their progress is quite as slow, and their motions are very similar. The shepherds put a space between drove and drove, and then lead on softly, as Jacob's shepherds did, and for the same reason. If they over-drive them, the flock dies, and even with the greatest care many give out and perish.—The Land and the Book, I., 513.

Deborah's Grave

Gen. 35:8.—Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried beneath Beth-el, under an oak.

DR. H. B. TRISTRAM.—Great and remarkable Oaks were favorite resorts for the performance of idolatrous rites; and of old under their shadow great persons were buried, as to the present day they are invariably chosen for the burial places of Arab sheikhs or saints.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, 371.

Rachel's Tomb

Gen. 35:16, 19, 20.—And they journeyed from Beth-el: and there was but little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed and she had hard labor. And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar on her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day.

REV. W. L. GAGE.—On the highland a little north of Bethlehem, at a place called Ephrath, Rachel died and was buried. The place of her burial, kept in remembrance by successive structures, one of which, of comparatively modern construction, can be seen even now, is unquestionably authentically preserved. She could not be carried to Hebron, it would seem; she must be buried by the wayside, where she fell.—Studies in Bible Lands, p. 61.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—From there we passed round to the southwest, and came in fifteen minutes to the tomb of Rachel. This is a plain Saracenic mausoleum, having no claims to antiquity in its present form, but deeply interesting in sacred associations, for, by the singular consent of all authorities in such questions, it marks the actual site of her grave. Such a spot must ever be regarded with that sort of respect and tender emotion which are accorded to deep sorrow.—The Land and the Book, II., 501.

DEAN STANLEY.—The sepulcher which is called the Tomb of Rachel agrees exactly with the spot described as "a little way from Bethlehem."—Sinai and Palestine, p. 147.

Dothan

Gen. 37:17.—And the man said, Thy brethren are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.

MR. GEORGE GROVE. —Dothan was known to Eusebius, whit) places it twelve miles to the north of Sebaste (Samaria); and here it has at length been discovered in our own times by Mr. Van de Velde and Dr. Robinson, still bearing its ancient name unimpaired, and situated at the south end of a plain of the richest pasture, four or five miles southwest of Jenin, and separated only by a swell or two of hills from the plain of Esdraelon.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 613.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT.—The situation of Dothan, on the present line of travel from East-Jordan to Egypt, confirms the truth of the Biblical History; for it is implied that the Dothan of Moses was on the great thoroughfare which led from Gilead beyond the Jordan to the great center of traffic in the valley of the Nile. Mr. Tristram speaks of meeting there “a long caravan of asses and mules laden” (like the Ishmaelites of old), " on their way from Damascus to Egypt." Precisely here is found, at the present day, the best pasturage in all the region; and thus, though the narrative is silent as to the reason why the sons of Jacob went from Shechem to Dothan, we see that it is the very place which herdsmen, such as they were, would naturally seek after having exhausted the supplies of their previous pasture-ground. It is distant from Shechem about twelve miles, and could be easily reached.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 614.

Gen. 37:23, 24.—And it came to pass when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped him of his coat, his coat of many colors that was on him; and they took him and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, and there was no water in it.

LIEUT. S. ANDERSON, R. E.—In the continuation of this plain, and a little to the westward, is a hill called Dotan, which has been recognized as the site of Dothan, where Joseph's brethren were feeding their flocks, when he came from his father's settlement, at Hebron, to visit them. The numerous rock-hewn cisterns that are found everywhere would furnish a suitable pit into which they might have thrust him; and as these cisterns are shaped like a bottle, with a narrow mouth, it would be impossible for anyone imprisoned within to extricate himself without assistance.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 360.

Gen. 37:25.—And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down into Egypt.

DR. VINCENT.—Here, upon opening the oldest history in the world, we find the Ishmaelites from Gilead conducting a caravan loaded with the spices of India, the balsam and myrrh of Hadramant; and in the regular course of their traffic proceeding to Egypt for a market. The date of this transaction is more than seventeen centuries before the Christian era, and notwithstanding its antiquity, it has all the genuine features of a caravan crossing the desert at the present hour.—Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients, II., 262.

Egypt in the Time of Joseph

Gen. 39:1.—And Joseph was brought down to Egypt.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Some thirty or forty years ago, attempts were made in Germany to prove that the description of Egypt contained in the latter portion of the book of Genesis exhibited "numerous mistakes and inaccuracies; " but the " mistakes and inaccuracies" alleged were scarcely of an historical character, and the writers who alleged them have been so triumphantly refuted by Hengstenberg, and others, that the skeptical school has ceased to urge the point, and now allows the entire truthfulness and accuracy of the whole account. Few things are in truth more remarkable than the complete harmony and accordance which exist between the picture of ancient Egypt and the ancient Egyptians, as drawn for us by Moses, and that portraiture of them which is now obtainable from their own contemporary writings and monuments. —Modern Skepticism, p. 274.

Gen. 39:1—And Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, bought Joseph of the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down thither.

ROSELLINI.—Pharaoh had a body-guard, which is constantly seen on the sculptures, in close attendance upon his person.—Monuments of Egypt, II., 201.

J. KENDRICK, M. A.—The monuments have given us a long list of officers, who ministered to the state and luxury of the sovereign. The king always appears surrounded by numerous military and sacerdotal attendants. Men of high rank, and even princes of the blood, formed his train, screening him from the heat or cooling him, and chasing away the flies with a feather fan.—Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, Vol. IL, p. 28.

Gen. 39:4.—And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand.

REV. DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—Potiphar made Joseph overseer in his house, and the whole management of everything in the great establishment of the Egyptian lord was left in the hands of the Hebrew stave. Joseph himself had such a confidential steward after he became prime minister to Pharaoh. In a tomb at Kumel el Ahmar is a picture for which Joseph might have sat when he managed the affairs of Potiphar's house. The steward is taking an account of stores received and given out. His clerks are about him with account-books and implements of writing. One has the pen over his ear, the paper in his hand, and the writing-table under his arm.—Research and Travel in Bible Lands, in “Wood’s Animals of the Bible," p. 697.

Gen. 39:7.—And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph: and she said, Lie with me.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The liberty allowed to women is likewise seen on the monuments, where, in the representation of entertainments, we find men and women frequently sitting together, both strangers and also members of the same family; and that this liberty was liable to degenerate into license, appears both from what Herodotus says of the character of Egyptian women, and from the story told in the Papyrus d'Orbiney.—Historical Illust. of the O. T., p. 47.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Sod. of Biblical Archœology.—The corrupt manners of the period, to which so many allusions are found in the Pentateuch, are fully proven by an Egyptian romance written to entertain king Rameses II., and recently translated by M. Chabas. This Novel, probably the oldest in the world's literature, turns entirely upon the affection of two brothers for each other, the wife of the elder of whom, Anepou, endeavors to seduce the younger into an adulterous connection with her. On his resistance, her guilty passion, artifice and hatred, all the story turns, and the interposition of the gods is at last necessary to avenge the innocent and to punish the guilty.—Faith and Free Thought, P. 227.

Gen. 40:2.—And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers.

LENORMANT.—The domestic establishment and court of Pharaoh were magnificent, and comprised various grand functionaries, whose tombs are among the most splendid of the early remains of Egyptian art.—Manuel d'Histoire Anc. de I' Orient., I., 333

Gen. 40:3.—And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The authority of the Egyptian king was well nigh, if not altogether, absolute, as abundantly appears from Herodotus, Diodorus, and others. He enacted laws, administered justice, and executed or pardoned offenders at his pleasure.—Ancient Egypt, II., 22.

Gen. 40:9-11.—And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine was before me; and in the vine were three branches; and it was as though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes: and Pharaoh's cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Though Herodotus denies the existence of the vine in Egypt, and Plutarch states that wine was not drunk there till the reign of Psammetichus, yet it is now certain, from the monuments,. that the cultivation of the grape, the art of making wine, and the practice of drinking it, were well known in Egypt, at least from the time of the Pyramids.—Histor. Illust. of the O. T., p. 52.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—Wine was universally used by the rich throughout Egypt, and beer supplied its place at the tables of the poor, not because they had no vines in the country, but because it was cheaper.— In Rawlinson' s Herodotus, Vol. II., p. 107.

REV. DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—In the oldest tombs of Gizeh are representations of vines trained upon poles, of gathering grapes in baskets, treading the wine-press, straining of the juice, bottling, decanting, and storing the wine. At Thebes, boys are seen frightening 'away birds from the vineyards. At Beni Hassan kids are browsing among the vines after the vintage. Many monuments represent kings presenting offerings of wine to the gods. And these pictures go back to the time when the chief butler told his dream to Joseph in prison.—Research and Travel in Bible Lands, in “Wood’s Bible Animals," p. 697.

Gen. 40:16.—And the chief baker said unto Joseph, I also was in my dream, and behold I had three white baskets on my head.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The form of the Egyptian bread-basket is delineated in the Tomb of Rameses III. And the practice of men carrying burdens “on the head " both appears on the monuments, and is also noticed by Herodotus.—Ancient Egypt, II., 151, 385.

Gen. 40:17.—And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bake meats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head.

REV. DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—This verse describes just what I have seen many a time in the streets of old Cairo—bakers and confectioners carrying wide wicker-baskets on their heads, and birds flying about among the people and alighting on the burdens which men and beasts are carrying. In the ancient tombs at Biban el Moluk and elsewhere are found fancy loaves of wheaten and barley bread, kneaded in the form of stars, triangles, disks, and other figures; and the monuments show that the custom of carrying on the head was then, as now, universal.—Research and Travel in Bible Lands, in " Wood's Bible Animals," p. 697.

Gen. 50:20.—And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh's birth-day, that he made a feast unto all his servants.

WILKINSON.—The birth-days of the kings were in Egypt celebrated with great pomp. They were looked upon as holy; no business was done upon them, and all classes indulged in the festivities suitable to the occasion. Every Egyptian attached much importance to the day, and even to the hour of his birth.—Ancient Egypt, V., 290.

Gen. 41:14.—Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—Western Asiatics have always cherished the beard as the badge of the dignity of manhood, and attached to it the importance of a feature. The Egyptians, on the contrary, sedulously, for the most part, shaved the hair of the face and head, and compelled their slaves to do the like. Herodotus mentions it as a peculiarity of the Egyptians, that they let the beard grow in mourning, being at all other times shaved. Hence Joseph when released from prison, “shaved “his beard to appear before Pharaoh.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 258.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—In any country mentioned in the Bible, excepting only Egypt, dressing the beard or the hair, instead of “shaving," would have been the kind of preparation required. But in Egypt, arid in Egypt only, a man put himself into decent condition by an operation which, in any other country, would have been ignominious. But this is one of the minute touches by which the exact historical truth of the narrative is established: for the testimony of all antiquity, as well as the sculptured and pictured monuments, concurs with this intimation in describing the Egyptians as a shaven people.—Daily Illustrations, p. 364.

Gen. 41:22.—And I saw in my dream, and behold, seven ears came up in one stalk, full and good.

REV. W. HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—Egypt, in ancient times, was celebrated for the growth of its wheat; the best quality, according to Pliny, was grown in the Thebaid; it was all bearded; and the same varieties, Sir G. Wilkinson writes, existed in ancient as in modern days, among which may be mentioned the " seven-eared " quality described in Pharaoh's dream.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3510.

Gen. 41:23.—And, behold, seven ears, withered, thin and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them.

UKERT.—As long as the southeasterly wind, in Egypt, continues, doors and windows are closed, but the fine dust penetrates everywhere; everything dries up; wooden vessels warp and crack. The thermometer rises suddenly from 16:20 degrees up to 30, 36, and even 38 degrees Reaumur. This wind works destruction upon everything. The grass withers, so that it entirely perishes, if this wind blows long.—See Ægypten and Mose, p. 10.

Gen. 41:37, 38.—And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The king of Egypt was assisted in the management of state affairs by the advice of a council, consisting of the most able and distinguished members of the priestly order.—Diod. Sic., I., 73.

Gen. 41: 41, 42.—And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—The ring was no doubt the signet of sovereignty with which the royal acts were to be sealed, and which rendered them authentic and authoritative. It empowered the person who held it to enforce his measures by the royal authority. It doubtless contained the name or insignia of the king. We are well acquainted with the signet and other rings of the ancient Egyptians, as many specimens have been found. They are usually of gold. The form of the scarabæus, or sacred beetle, was that usually preferred for this purpose. In some cases the stone, flat on both faces, turned on pins, like many of our seals at the present day; and the ring itself was bound round at each end, where it was inserted into the stone with gold wire.—Daily Illust., P. 373.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The use of a signet-ring by the monarch of Egypt has recently received a remarkable illustration by the discovery of an impression of such a signet on fine clay at Koyunjik, the site of the ancient Nineveh. This seal appears to have been impressed from the bezel of a metallic finger-ring; it is an oval, two inches in length by one inch wide, and bears the image, name, and titles of the Egyptian king, Sabaco. Other impressions of royal signets have been found in Egypt; and the actual signet-rings of two of the ancient monarchs, Cheops and Horus, have been recovered.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 48.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—One of the largest ancient signets I ever saw was in the possession of a French gentleman at Cairo which contained twenty pounds worth of gold. It consisted of a massive ring, half an inch in its largest diameter, having an oblong plinth, on which the devices were engraved, one inch long, six-tenths in its greatest, and four-tenths in its smallest breadth. On the face was the name of a king, the successor of Amunoph III., who lived about 1460 B. c.; on the other a lion, with the legend “lord of strength," referring to the monarch: one side a scorpion, on the other a crocodile. (Here then we have an undoubted specimen of a royal signet.,—In Kitto's Daily Illust., P. 374.

Gen. 41:42.—And he arrayed Joseph in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—I have in my possession actual specimens of Egyptian "fine linen," the quality of which fully justifies all the praises of antiquity, and excites equal admiration at the present day; being to the touch comparable to silk, and not inferior in texture to our finest cambric.—In Kitto's Daily Illust., 375.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Society of Biblical Arehœology.—When Joseph appeared before Pharaoh, the Bible asserts that he was vested in a chain and collar of gold, and garments of fine linen. True in even its smallest details is this wonderful narrative, for the Egyptian monuments have shown us, that what we should call the blue ribbon of a military official, or a distinguished civil officer, was a golden collar. This, king Amenophis I. is reported to have bestowed on his servant Aahmes; in whose tomb at Beni Hassan there is a picture, which has been several times engraved, representing a similar investiture. In the Berlin Museum, there are portions of similar decorations.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 221.

Gen. 41:43.—And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had: and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—When Pharaoh left his palace for any purpose, he invariably rode in a chariot. His subjects, wherever he appeared, bowed down or prostrated themselves. These prostrations are frequently represented in the sepulchers.—Ancient Egypt, II., p. 24.

Gen. 41:44.—And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I AM PHARAOH: and without thee shall no man lift his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Society of Bib. Archœology.—I am Pharaoh—this mode of expression was quite in accordance with a principle of the Egyptian theology, only recently revealed to us. According to the tenets of that faith, the king, from the moment of his accession, became deified, and spoke with corresponding assumption and authority. “I am Ra in the land of the Living," says the King, in an inscription yet preserved to us. "The King is as God," declares another Papyrus, that of Prisse d'Avennes. "Even from thy birth thou hast been as God," attests the inscription of Karnak to Rameses II.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 220.

Gen. 41:45.—And he gave him to wife, Asenath the daughter of Potiphera, Priest of On.

REGINALD STEWART POOLE, British Museum.—The city of On, or Heliopolis, was situated on the east side of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, just below the point of the Delta, and about twenty miles northeast of Memphis. The chief object of worship at Heliopolis was the Sun, under the forms RA (the sun simply), and ATUM (the setting sun). The temple of the Sun described by Strabo, is now only represented by the single beautiful obelisk, which is of red granite, 68 feet 2 inches high above the pedestal, and bears a dedication, showing that it was sculptured in or after the thirtieth year of Sesertesen I., or B. C. 2050. There were probably far more than a usual number of obelisks before the gates of this temple, on the evidence of ancient writers, and the inscriptions of some yet remain elsewhere, and no doubt the reason was that these monuments were sacred to the sun. The name of Asenath's father was appropriate to a Heliopolite, and especially to a priest of that place, for it means "Belonging to RA," or the sun.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, 2251, 2252.

DEAN STANLEY.—At the very extremity of this cultivated ground; the ruins of On or Heliopolis remain to this day. They consist simply of a wide enclosure of earthen mounds, partly planted with gardens. In these gardens are two Vestiges of the great Temple of the Sun. One is a pool, overhung with willows and aquatic vegetation-" The Spring of the Sun." The other, now rising wild amidst garden shrubs, the solitary obelisk which stood in front of the temple, then in company with another, whose base alone now remains. This is the first obelisk I have seen standing in its proper place, and there it has stood for nearly 4,000 years. It was raised before the coming of Joseph; it has looked down on his marriage with Asenath; it has seen the growth of Moses; and Plato sat under its shadow.—Sinai and Palestine, 31. page.

Gen. 41:48, 49.—And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same.

REV. DANIEL. MARCH, D. D.—In the tombs of Elethya and Beni Hassan there are pictures of the storehouse and of the whole process of taking in grain as it was prescribed by Joseph. The accountant stands by, writing down the number of bushels, the measurer pours the grain into sacks, porters carry the full bags into the granary, and still another overseer chalks down the tally of bushels in rude characters on the wall of the storehouse. And these pictures run parallel to the words of Moses, that Joseph gathered corn as the sands of the sea very much, till he left off numbering.—Research and Travel in Bible Lands, in " Wood's Bible Animals," p. 697.

Gen. 41:56.—And the famine was over all the face of the earth: and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians: and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt. PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON.—To deny, as Von Bohlen does, the possibility of famine in Egypt, is absurd. Ancient writers constantly notice its liability to this scourge, when the inundation of the Nile falls below the average; and history tells of numerous cases in which the inhabitants of the country have suffered terribly from want. Several famines are mentioned on the monuments,—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 54.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The monuments abound with representations of Stewards and Granaries.—See Ancient .Egypt, II., 135.

Gen. 42:14, 15.—And Joseph said unto them, Ye are spies: hereby ye shall be proved. By the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come hither.

W. R. COOPER, Sec, of Soci. of Bib. Archœ.—Joseph, here, as an Egyptian, swore the official oath, and that very act of his, which has been explained away by some commentators, palliated by others, and been a stumbling-block to all, is in itself an inferential evidence of the truth of the narrative which contains the adjuration. The common ranks of Egyptian society swore by their namesake, or local gods; priests swore by the deity to whose worship they were devoted; but all who filled an official capacity, swore “By the life of Pharaoh."

Men from the common ranks were prohibited from swearing thus “by the king; " to do so was a punishable offense. One Mesu, a slave, having committed this sin, was immediately reported to the proper officer: the report is preserved on a fragment of a Papyrus, in the Musee de Louvre, and which reads as follows: " I have sent this report of the slave Mesu to my lord, not being willing to, and not knowing how to, act till I receive his instructions upon it; for it is no part of my duty to punish him for his oath By the life of Pharaoh." Hence from a mutilated fragment of papyrus is derived a wonderful explanation and a singular attestation of the veracity of an event in the life of Joseph.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 222-224.

Gen. 42:26.—And they laded their asses with the corn, and departed thence.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Returning from my ramble down the vale of Hebron this morning, I met a company of men and donkeys, going out apparently for grain, and I was struck with the resemblance of the animals themselves to those in pictures now found on the monuments of Egypt. The saddles and sacks of some appeared to be precisely like those used in the days when the sons of Jacob descended along the same valley to get corn from Egypt. Doubtless there has been but little change in all these matters from that time to this, and the resemblance is often still more exact from the fact that when the crops of this country fail through drouth or other causes, the people still go down to Egypt to buy corn, as they did in the time of the patriarch.—The Land and the Book, II., 407.

Gen. 43:16.—And when Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the ruler of his house, Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready; for these men shall dine with me at noon.

REV. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The denial of the use of flesh for food among high-caste Egyptians is one of those curious errors into which learned men occasionally fall, strangely and unaccountably. There is really no ancient writer who asserts that even the priests abstained ordinarily from animal food, while the best authors distinctly declare the contrary (Herod., 2., 37). And the cooking scenes, which abound on the Egyptian monuments of all ages, show that animal food was the principal diet of the upper classes.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 52.

Gen. 43:32.—And they set on for Joseph by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians which did eat with him by themselves: because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—The table used by the ancient Egyptians is very similar to that of the present day in Egypt. This is a small stool supporting a round tray, on which the dishes are placed. These tables were sometimes brought in and removed with the dishes on them. Occasionally each guest had a table to himself.—Daily Illustrations, 13th week.

HERODOTUS.—This writer testifies clearly and fully to the strong feeling of the Ancient Egyptians with respect to " uncleanness," and to their fear of contracting defilement by contact with people of another nation.—See Herod., ii., 45.

Gen. 43:33.—And they sat before him.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The practice of sitting at meals, which was unlike the patriarchal and the common Oriental custom, is in complete accordance with the numerous representations of banquets found in the tombs.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 47.

REGINALD STUART POOLE,. British Museum.—The account of the noontide dinner of Joseph agrees with the representations of the monuments, although it evidently describes a far simpler repast than would be usual with an Egyptian minister. The attention to precedence, which seems to have surprised Joseph's brethren, is perfectly characteristic of Egyptian customs.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 678.

Gen. 44:4, 5.—Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? ye have done evil in so doing.

PROF. GEO. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Divination by cups is noted as an Egyptian superstition by Jamblichus.—Hist. must., p. 48.

REGINALD STUART POOLE.—A Gnostic papyrus in Greek, written in Egypt in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, now preserved in the British Museum, describes the practice of the boy with the bowl, and alleges results strikingly similar to the alleged results of the well-known modern magician, whose divination would seem, therefore, to be a relic of the famous magic of Ancient Egypt.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1745.

JOSEPH BENOMI, F. R. S. L.—The evidences upon the walls lead us to suppose that in this chamber were practiced the mysteries of Divination, both by the cup and arrows. Many cups of the form of those seen in the hand of the king were found by Layard, in the ruins of Nimroud, and are now deposited in the British Museum. They are made of bronze, of exquisite workmanship, embossed in separate compartments with numerous figures, representing men and animals.

One of the most frequently-repeated figures is that so common in Egyptian sculptures, bearing reference to time, or cycles, or periods. There can hardly exist a doubt, from the nature of the decoration, that these are cups for divining—a practice common to Syria and Egypt.—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 269.

Gen. 45:59.—Take you wagons out of the land of Egypt, for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father and come.

REV. HENRY WRIGHT PHILLOTT, M. A.—In the monuments of Ancient Egypt representations are found of wagons or carts, with two wheels, having four or six spokes, used for carrying produce, and of one used for religious purposes having four wheels with eight spokes.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 392.

Gen. 46:34.—Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—Whatever may have been its origin or cause, the Egyptian aversion and contempt for herdsmen appear abundantly on the monuments, where they are commonly represented as dirty and unshaven; on the tombs near the Pyramids of Geezeh, they are caricatured as a deformed and unseemly race.—See Ancient Egyptians, Vol. II., p. 16.

Gen. 47:13.—And there was no bread in all the land: for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine.

EDWARD STANLEY POOLE, M. R. A. S.—The modern history of Egypt throws some curious light on these ancient records of famine; and instances of their recurrence may be cited to assist us in understanding their course and extent. They have not been of very rare occurrence since the Mohammedan conquest.

One of great severity, following a deficient rise of the Nile, was experienced A. D. 1200. But the most remarkable famine was that of the reign of the Fatimee Khaleefeh, El-Mustansir billah, which is the only instance on record of one of seven years' duration in Egypt since the time of Joseph. This was A. D. 1064-1071. This famine exceeded in severity all others of modern times. Vehement drought and pestilence continued for seven consecutive years, so that the people ate corpses, and animals that died of themselves; the cattle perished; a dog was sold for five deenars, and a cat for three deenars; and an ardeb (about five bushels) of wheat for one hundred deenars—and then it failed altogether. All the horses of the Khaleefeh, save three, perished. Numerous instances are given by the historian of the terrible visitation of the straits to which the wretched inhabitants were driven, and of the organized bands of kidnappers who infested Cairo and caught passengers in the streets by ropes furnished with hooks and let down from the houses. This account is confirmed by El-Makreezee, from whom we further learn that the family, and even the women of the Khaleefeh fled, by the way of Syria, on foot, to escape the peril that threatened all ranks of the population. The whole narrative is worthy of attention, since it contains a parallel to the duration of the famine of Joseph, and at the same time enables us to form an idea of the character of famines in the East.—In Smith's Dict: of Bible, p. 811.

Gen. 47:22.—Only the lands of the priests bought he not; for the priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them: wherefore they sold not their lands.

HERODOTUS AND DIODORUS. —While the monuments offer no evidence of the priests' privilege with respect to land, yet this is mentioned by both Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.—See Herod., ii., 168, and Diod. Sic., i., 73.

Gen. 47:23.—Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Soci. of Bib. Archœ.—The sale of families and children occurs again and again on the tablets in the British Museum, which form a class by themselves. The kings of Egypt, in other respects some of the most enlightened sovereigns the world ever possessed, were but slave-dealers on a large scale, and many of their wars were undertaken for no less brutal a purpose.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 226.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—It may be broadly stated that, in the entire description given in Genesis, there is not a single feature which is out of harmony with what we know of the Egypt of this remote period from other sources. Nay, more, almost every point in it is confirmed either by the classical writers, by the monuments, or by both—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 43.

The Prophetic Blessing of Jacob

Gen. 48: 1, 5.—And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And Jacob said unto Joseph, Now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt, before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—Thus Joseph, who otherwise would have obtained but a single share of the promised inheritance, obtained a double portion. Joseph, accordingly, in the subsequent history (of the Jews) is reckoned as two tribes instead of one.—Notes In loco.

The Blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh

Gen. 48:16.—The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—According to the purport of this prophetic blessing, the issue of Joseph by his two sons, amounted in the time of Moses, to 85,000, a number surpassing that of any of the rest of the tribes.—Notes In loco.

Gen. 48:18, 19.—And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head. And his father refused and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—According to this saying we find that at the first numbering of the people of Israel in the wilderness the children of Ephraim exceeded those of Manasseh by upwards of eight thousand; and in later times it is clear that Ephraim was the chief of the ten tribes that separated themselves from the children of Judah. We have no account of the comparative numbers of the tribes; but we know that Ephraim was frequently the royal tribe, and that it gave a name to the whole kingdom.—Notes In loco.

The Blessing of Reuben

Gen. 49:1-.4.—And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.—Reuben, thou art my first-born:— unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—This tribe never rose to any eminence in Israel; was not so numerous by one-third, as either Judah, Joseph or Dan, when Moses took the sum of them in the wilderness, and was among the first that was carried into captivity.—Notes In loco.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal., London.—No judge, no prophet, no hero of the tribe of Reuben is handed down to us.—In Smith's Dict., 2721.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—We learn from the sacred narrative that this tribe, which was few in number, and reproached for their pusillanimity by Deborah, never distinguished themselves by any noble exploits. None of the ancient heroes whose names are yet famous belonged to this tribe. Neither the priesthood nor the royalty was given to the tribe of the first-born of Jacob. Though there were Kings of the different tribes, yet none, as far is we know, of the tribe of Reuben.—Notes In loco.

The Blessing of Simeon and Levi

Gen. 49:5-7.—Simeon and Levi are brethren: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—Both were divided and scattered. But how differently!" The dispersion of the Levites arose from their holding the post of honor in the nation, and being spread, for the purposes of education and worship, broadcast over the face of the country. In the case of Simeon the dispersion seems to have arisen from some corrupting element in the tribe itself, which first reduced its numbers, and at last drove it from its allotted seat in the country; not as Dan, because it could not, but because it would not stay; and thus in the end caused it to dwindle and disappear entirely.—In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 3043.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—The tribe of Simeon, as we learn from Joshua 19., was in great measure merged in that of Judah; and their inheritance was within the inheritance of the children of Judah; while that of Levi had their cities assigned them in the midst of the other tribes, all over the land of Canaan.—Notes In loco.

The Blessing of Judah

Gen. 49:8-12.—Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee: etc.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—The intrepid and successful bravery of the men of Judah was often the subject of admiration. As soon as the tribes of Israel sent forth separate armies against the Canaanites, the tribe of Judah gained a high distinction, which was well maintained in succeeding generations. The fiercest giants about the region of Hebron could not stand before Caleb and his brave associates. David was of the tribe of Judah. By him was the kingdom of Israel raised to a pitch of power and glory which made his name great in distant lands. —Notes In loco.

Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grates: his eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk. This indicates the exceeding fertility of his inheritance in the land of Canaan, particularly in the production, of the vine. So luxuriant should be the growth of vines in his allotment that it should not be unusual for men to bind their young asses to them as they do in other countries to any kind of barren timber, nor would they heed their eating their tender shoots and leaves, any more than if they were grass. And not only so; wine was to be produced in such rich abundance, that the people might wash their garments in wine, and their clothes in the blood of grapes, as if it had been so much water. Of course the language is to be understood as a hyperbolical expression for the most teeming fecundity of soil. In support of this, reference is made to the mammoth cluster of grapes which grew at Eschol, in the tract assigned to Judah, which was carried back on a staff between two, as a specimen of the growth of the country.—Ibid.'

DEAN STANLEY.—The Lowland, or that broad belt between the central highlands and the Mediterranean Sea, was the garden and the granary of the tribe. Its cities at this day are remarkable for the beauty and profusion of the gardens which surround them; the scarlet blossoms of the pomegranates, the enormous oranges which gild the green foliage of their famous groves. From the edge of the sandy tract, which fringes the immediate shore, right up to the very wall of the hills of Judah, stretches the immense plain of corn-fields. These rich fields must have been the great source at once of the power and the value of Philistia; the causes of its frequent aggressions on Israel, and of the unceasing efforts of Israel to master the territory. It was in fact a "little Egypt." From these fields were gathered the enormous cargoes of wheat, which were sent by Solomon in exchange for the arts of Hiram, and which in the time of the Herods still nourished the countries of Tyre and Sidon. There were the olive-trees, the sycamore-trees, and the treasures of oil, the care of which was sufficient to task the energies of two of David's special officers.—See Sinai and Palestine, 253, 254.

The Blessing of Zebulun

Gen. 59:13.—Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for a haven of ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon.

JOSEPHUS.—The tribe of Zebulun's lot included the land which lay as far as the lake of Genesareth, and that which belonged to Carmel and the Sea.—Ant. v., 1, § 22.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—It is unquestionable that a portion of the tribe of Zebulun occupied the havens on the coast, and addicted themselves to seafaring pursuits. This prophetic designation, uttered two hundred and fifty years before the event took place, corresponds with remarkable exactness with the geographical character of the lot of Zebulun in Canaan. It extended from the vicinity of the Mediterranean Sea, on the west, to the lake of Genesaret on the east, and lay therefore very commodiously for the purpose of trade and navigation.—Nothing but the inspiration of the speaker can account for this clear and accurate designation of the country which Zebulun was to occupy in Canaan. Jacob says concerning the inheritance of this tribe what would not have been true had it been said of any other of the inheritances of the twelve tribes, except Asher, and yet was strictly true concerning them, that they should dwell at the haven of the sea, and enjoy the advantages of commodious harbors in the neighborhood of the ancient city of Zidon. How could Moses, too, when he committed this prophecy to writing, have known that it would be verified? In no other way but by his faith in the word of God. There could be no artifice used to effect an agreement between the lots used in the division of the land, and the prophecies of Jacob or Moses. The whole disposing of the lot was of God. Thus we know enough to fill us with wonder and praise, and to banish all doubts concerning the divine original of the word of prophecy.—Notes In loco.

Gen. 49: 14, 15.—Issachar is a strong ass, couching down between two burdens ; and he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute.

PROF. G. BUSH.—The qualities of the ass are patience, gentleness, great capability of endurance, laborious exertion, and a meek submission to authority.

And Issachar was the progenitor of a race singularly docile, and distinguished for their patient industry.— Couching down between two burdens. The two panniers of the laden ass form prominences, sticking upon each side above the back of the animal when lying down, which is the posture here described. This expression, as applied to a region of country, would naturally be supposed to imply two very marked and conspicuous limits, as for instance two ranges of mountains enclosing a valley ; and by a very remarkable coincidence the tribe of Issachar received for its lot, in the distribution of the land, the fertile and delightful vale of Esdraelon, lying between ranges of hills, in the peaceful and industrious occupancy of which they might very justly be likened to an ass reposing between his protuberant panniers. And he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant. Surrounded by the other tribes, and seeing, his portion of the good land that it was very fertile, he devoted himself to the labors of husbandry. Accordingly Josephus says of Issachar's inheritance, "It is fruitful to admiration, abounding in pastures and nurseries of all kinds, so that it would make any man in love with husbandry."—Notes In loco.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—The territory of Issachar was, and still is, among the richest land in Palestine. Westward was the famous plain which derived its name, " The seed-plot of God "—such is the signification of Jezreel—from its fertility. On the North is Tabor, which even under the burning sun of that climate is said to retain the glades and dells of an English wood. On the East, behind Jezreel, is the opening which conducts to the plain of the Jordan—to that Bethshean which was proverbially among the Rabbis the gate of Paradise for its fruitfulness. It is this aspect of the territory of Issachar which appears to be alluded to in the Blessing of Jacob.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, 1179.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—But there is another aspect under which the Plain of Esdraelon must be considered. Every traveler has remarked on the richness of its soil—the exuberance of its crops. Once more the palm appears, waving its stately tresses over the village enclosures. The very weeds are a sign of what in better hands the vast plain might become. The thoroughfare which it forms for every passage, from east to west, from north to south, made it in peaceful times the most available and eligible possession of Palestine. It was the allotted portion of Issachar ; and in its condition—thus exposed to the good and evil fate of the beaten highway. of Palestine—we read the fortunes of the tribe which, for the sake of this possession, consented to sink into the half-nomad state of the Bedouins who wander over it—into the condition of tributaries to the Canaanite tribes whose iron chariots drove victoriously through it. “Issachar is a strong ass, couching between two burdens ; and he saw that rest was good; and the land that it was pleasant ; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute." Once only did the sluggish tribe shake off this yoke ; when under the heavy pressure of Sisera, the chiefs of Issachar were with Deborah.—S. and P., p. 340.

The Blessing of Issachar

Gen. 49:14, 15.—Issachar is a strong ass, couching down between two burdens; and he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute.

PROF. G. BUSH.—The qualities of the ass are patience, gentleness, great capability of endurance, laborious exertion, and a meek submission to authority. And Issachar was the progenitor of a race singularly docile, and distinguished for their patient industry.—Couching down between two burdens. The two panniers of the laden ass form prominences, sticking upon each side above the back of the animal when lying down, which is the posture here described. This expression, as applied to a region of country, would naturally be supposed to imply two very marked and conspicuous limits, as for instance two ranges of mountains enclosing a valley; and by a very remarkable coincidence the tribe of Issachar received for its lot, in the distribution of the land, the fertile and delightful vale of Esdraelon, lying between ranges of hills, in the peaceful and industrious occupancy of which they might very justly be likened to an ass reposing between his protuberant panniers. And he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant. Surrounded by the other tribes, and seeing, his portion of the good land that it was very fertile, he devoted himself to the labors of husbandry. Accordingly Josephus says of Issachar's inheritance, “It is fruitful to admiration, abounding in pastures and nurseries of all kinds, so that it would make any man in love with husbandry."—Notes In loco.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—The territory of Issachar was, and still is, among the richest land in Palestine. Westward was the famous plain which derived its name, “The seed-plot of God "—such is the signification of Jezreel—from its fertility. On the North is Tabor, which even under the burning sun of that climate is said to retain the glades and dells of an English wood. On the East, behind Jezreel, is the opening which conducts to the plain of the Jordan—to that Bethshean which was proverbially among the Rabbis the gate of Paradise for its fruitfulness. It is this aspect of the territory of Issachar which appears to be alluded to in the Blessing of Jacob.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, 1179.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—But there is another aspect under which the Plain of Esdraelon must be considered. Every traveler has remarked on the richness of its soil—the exuberance of its crops. Once more the palm appears, waving its stately tresses over the village enclosures. The very weeds are a sign of what in better hands the vast plain might become. The thoroughfare which it forms for every passage, from east to west, from north to south, made it in peaceful times the most available and eligible possession of Palestine. It was the allotted portion of Issachar; and in its condition—thus exposed to the good and evil fate of the beaten highway of Palestine—we read the fortunes of the tribe which, for the sake of this possession, consented to sink into the half-nomad state of the Bedouins who wander over it—into the condition of tributaries to the Canaanite tribes whose iron chariots drove victoriously through it. “Issachar is a strong ass, couching between two burdens; and he saw that rest was good; and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute." Once only did the sluggish tribe shake off this yoke; when under the heavy pressure of Sisera, the chiefs of Issachar were with Deborah.—S. and P., p. 340.

The Blessing of Dan

Gen. 16-48.—Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!

REV. WILLIAM HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—The habit of the serpent, Shephiphon, alluded to in Jacob's prophecy, namely, that of lurking in the sand, and biting at the horse's heels, suits the character of a well-known species of venomous snake, the celebrated horned viper, the asp of Cleopatra, which is found abundantly in the sandy deserts of Egypt, Syria and Arabia.—In Smith's Dict. op the Bible, 30.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal., Lond.—Dan furnished a "prince" to the apportionment of the land; and the tribe was appointed to stand on. Mount Ebal, at the ceremony of blessing and cursing; and “the prince of the tribe of Dan " is mentioned in the list of 1 Chron. 27:22.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, is. 533, 534.

PROF. GEO. BUSH.—" Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel." Accordingly it is expressly stated (in the sacred history) that Samson, of the tribe of Dan, “judged Israel twenty years." “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, etc." Although, Dan in the person of his future representative should be renowned as a warrior, yet he should not accomplish his victories so much by open bravery and the direct force of arms as by subtlety and stratagem, surprising the enemy by unexpected assaults, as a serpent concealed by the wayside suddenly darts upon the unwary traveler. We have only to consult the history of Samson's warfare with the Philistines to see how strikingly this predicted character was then realized.—Notes In loco.

The Blessing of Gad

Gen. 49:19.—Gad, a troop shall overcome him; but he shall overcome at the last.

PROF. GEO. BUSH.—The drift of the oracle is to pre-intimate the fact, abundantly verified by the history, that this tribe should be annoyed, wasted, and sometimes brought into subjection by the predatory bands of Ammonites, Philistines, Hagarines, and other hostile, powers bordering upon their territory.— Notes In loco.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—The character of the 'tribe of Gad is throughout strongly marked, fierce, and warlike, "strong men of might, men of war for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, their faces the faces of lions, and like roes upon the mountains for swiftness." Such is the graphic description given of those eleven heroes of Gad, “the least of them more than equal to a hundred, and the greatest to a thousand," who joined their fortunes to David at the time of his greatest discredit and embarrassment, undeterred by the natural difficulties of " flood and field " which stood in their way. Surrounded, as they were, by Ammonites, Midianites, Hagarites, “Children of the East," and all the other countless tribes, animated by a common hostility to the strangers whose coming had dispossessed them of their fairest districts, the warlike propensities of the tribe must have had many opportunities of exercise. One of its great engagements is related in I Chron. 5:19-22. Here their opponents were the wandering Ishmaelite tribes of Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab, nomad people, possessed of an enormous wealth in camels, sheep and asses, to this day the characteristic possessions of their Bedouin successors. This immense booty came into the hands of the conquerors, who seem to have entered with it on the former mode of life of their victims: probably pushed their way further into the eastern wilderness in the “steads" of these Hagarites. "A troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last."—In Smith's Dict, of the Bible, p. 849.

The Blessing of Asher

Gen. 49:20.—Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—The territory of Asher contained some of the richest soil in all Palestine, and in its productiveness it well fulfilled the promise involved in the name "Asher" (fatness), and in the blessings which had been pronounced on him by Jacob and by Moses. Here was the oil in which he was to " dip his foot," the bread which was to be " fat," and the royal " dainties " in which he was to indulge.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 173.

The Blessing of Naphtali

Gen. 49:21.—Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—The translation of this difficult passage given by Ewald (Geschichte, ii., 380) has the merit of being more intelligible than the ordinary version, and also more in harmony with the expressions of Deborah's song: Naphtali is a towering Terebinth; he hath a goodly crest. The allusion, at once to the situation of the tribe at the very apex of the country, to the heroes who towered at the head of the tribe, and to the lofty mountains on whose summits their castles, then as now, were perched—is very happy, and entirely in the vein of these ancient poems.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 2066.

The Blessing of Joseph

Gen. 59:22-26.—Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall: etc.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—The drift of the blessing is to announce the prolific character of the seed of Joseph, the numerous issue that should proceed from his two sons. The emblem of "the vine running over the wall” aptly denotes a population swelling beyond the compass of the bounds which they were to occupy. How strikingly this was fulfilled in the case of Joseph, may be seen from the ensuing narrative: "And the children of Joseph spice unto Joshua, saying, Why hast thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit, seeing I am a great people, forasmuch as the Lord hath blessed me hitherto? And Joshua spake unto the house of Joseph, even to Ephraim and Manasseh, saying, Thou art a great people, and hast great power; thou shalt not have one lot only But the mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: and the outgoings of it shall be thine." Thus that part of the birthright which consisted in the "double portion" still accrued to Joseph.—Notes In loco.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—The territory allotted to the house of Joseph was in central Palestine—consisting of rounded hills, separated by valleys, with wide plains in the heart of the mountains, streams of running water, and continuous tracts of vegetation. All travelers bear testimony to the general growing richness and beauty of the country in going northwards from Jerusalem, the innumerable fountains and streamlets, the villages more thickly scattered than anywhere in the south, the continuous cornfields and orchards, the moist and vapory atmosphere: these are the precious things of the earth, and the fullness thereof which were invoked and predicted to the house of Joseph.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, 753.

The Blessing of Benjamin

Gen. 49:27.—Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

DEAN STANLEY.—Small as the tribe of Benjamin was, its ambiguous situation gave it considerable importance-an importance which was increased by a further peculiarity of the Benjamite territory. Of all the tribes of Israel, none, except perhaps Manasseh, contained such important passes of communication into the adjacent plains—none possessed such conspicuous heights, whether for defense or for “high places" of worship. These advantages in the hand of a hardy and warlike tribe ensured an independence to Benjamin, which the Hebrew records constantly contrast with its numerical feebleness, and limited territory. In his mountain fastnesses—the ancient haunts of beasts of prey— "Benjamin ravined as a wolf in the morning," descended into the rich plains of Philistia on the one side, and of the Jordan on the other, and “returned in the evening to divide the spoil." In the troubled period of the Judges, the tribe of Benjamin maintained a struggle, unaided, and for some time with success, against the whole of the rest of the nation. And to the latest times they never could forget that they had given birth to the first king.— Sinai and Pal., p. 196.

Death and Burial of Jacob

Gen. 49:29-31.—And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—I have no doubt that this El Haram encloses the identical cave, and the graves of the six ancestors of the Hebrew nation, and therefore regard it as the most interesting of all spots on the face of the earth. Others might be equally sacred and precious could we be sure of their identity —the manger at Bethlehem, Calvary in Jerusalem, or the last resting place of Adam or Noah, for example; but doubt and obscurity, absolute and impenetrable, rest on all such sites. Here, however, there is no room for skepticism. We have before us the identical cave in which these patriarchs, with their wives, were reverently “gathered unto their people," one after another, by their children. Such a cave may last as long as " the everlasting hills " of which it is a part; and from that to this day it has so come to pass, in the providence of God, that no nation or people has had possession of Machpelah who would have been disposed to disturb the ashes of the illustrious dead within it.—It is located on the declivity of the hill, with the town mostly below in the wady south and west of it. The rock above it is intensely hard, and portions of it are of a pale red color, like that from which books, crosses, and other curiosities are made for the pilgrims. I succeeded, in 1838, in breaking off specimens of it, though not without danger of a mob. The cave is beneath this foundation of hard rock.—The Land and the Book, II., 385.

Gen. 1: 2.—And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father.

HERODOTUS.—Egypt claims the invention of the healing art. And the medical practice among the Egyptians is divided as follows: each physician is for one kind of sickness, and no more; and all places are crowded with physicians; for there are physicians for the eye, physicians for the head, physicians for the teeth, physicians for the stomach, and for internal disease.—In Kitto's Ill. In loco.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—Egypt was the earliest home of medical skill for the region of the Mediterranean basin, and every Egyptian mummy of the more expensive and elaborate sort involved a process of anatomy. This gave opportunities for inspecting a vast number of bodies, varying in every possible condition. Such opportunities were sure to be turned to account by the more diligent among the faculty. The reputation of its practitioners in historic times was such that both Cyrus and Darius sent to Egypt for physicians.—In Smith's Dict., p. 1854.

Gen. 1:1, 2.—And the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him three score and ten days.

HERODOTUS.—(This historian describes the process of embalming as follows:) The embalmers first removed part of the brain through the nostrils, by means of a crooked iron, and destroyed the rest by injecting caustic drugs. An incision was then made along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and the whole of the intestines removed. The cavity was rinsed out with palm-wine, and afterward scoured with pounded perfumes. It was then filled with pure myrrh pounded, cassia and other aromatics, except frankincense. This done, the body was sewn up, and steeped in natron for seventy days. When the seventy days were accomplished, the embalmers washed the corpse and swathed it in bandages of linen, cut in strips and smeared with gum. They then gave it up to the relatives of the deceased, who provided for it a wooden case, made in the shape of a man, in which the dead was placed.—Herod., ii., 86-89.

Gen. 1:12, 13.—And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: for his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah.

REV. W. L. GAGE.—It is not too much to say that, in a good measure of probability, the body of Jacob, embalmed as it was in Egypt, is in as perfect a condition there to-day as are the mummies which are disinterred on the Nile; and it may be, the first layers of the masonry to be still seen at Hebron were laid by Joseph himself, on the occasion of his father's sumptuous funeral. That this is no idle fancy is shown by the power and the wealth of the man, whose father had been a Hebrew shepherd, but who had wrought out his fortune with such signal success in Egypt. Here Joseph had become habituated to magnificent sepulchers, as well as to sumptuous sepulchers, and after that costly pageantry of burial described so strikingly in the closing chapter of Genesis, it is hardly to be supposed that he would fail to designate, with some architectural memorial, the simple rock-grave which his great-grandfather purchased, and which for three generations had lain in its original rudeness.—Studies in Bible Lands, 55.

DEAN STANLEY.—This afternoon we walked, under the guard of the Quarantine, around the western hills of Hebron. There was little to add to the first impressions, except the deep delight of treading the rocks and drinking in the view which had been trodden by the feet and met the eyes of the patriarchs and kings. And marvelous it was, too, to think that within the massive enclosure of that Mosque, lies, possibly, not merely the last dust of Abraham and Isaac, but the very body—the mummy—the embalmed bones of Jacob, brought in solemn state from Egypt to this (as it then was) lonely and beautiful spot.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 103.

Death of Joseph

Gen. 1:20.—As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

SOCRATES.—To a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his' concerns neglected by the gods. And what has befallen me is not the effect of chance; but this is clear to me, that now to die and be freed from my cares is better for me. On this account the warning in no way turned me aside; and I bear no resentment towards those who condemned me, or against my accusers, although they did not accuse, me with this intention, but thinking to injure me; and in this respect they deserve to be blaMed.—Plat. Socr. Apolog., c. 33.

Gen. 1:25, 26.—And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

HERODOTUS.—The body after having been duly embalmed, was given back to the relatives, who enclosed it in a wooden case which they made for the purpose, shaped into the figure of a man.— Rawlinson' s Herodotus, ii., 143.

WORDSWORTH.—If a massive tomb or lofty pyramid had been erected to his memory, and if his mortal remains had been deposited there like those of the princes of Egypt, it would have been supposed that his body would remain in Egypt till the day of doom. But he would not permit this to be done; he took an oath of the children of Israel that they should carry up his bones from Egypt to Canaan, and for this reason he was content with a simple coffin of wood.—Genesis, p. 197.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The coffin of Menkeres, discovered in the third pyramid (which belongs to about B. C. 2300-2200), was of sycamore wood—Hist. Illust. of O. T. p. 46.

BURDER.—Antique coffins of stone and sycamore wood are still to be seen in Egypt—Annot In loco.

PROF. W. JENKS, D. D.—Coffins of wood, containing mummies, have reached America.—Comp. Com. In loco.

J. KENRICK, M. A.—In a mummy found at Saccara, thin plates of gold were wrapped round each limb and each finger, inscribed with hieroglyphics. Exterior to all bandages was a case usually of sycamore wood, sometimes excavated from the solid tree, at others composed of several pieces and secured by wooden pegs, which fasten the receptacle and the cover firmly together. This is sometimes enclosed in a second, and that in a third wooden case, the outermost being also adorned with hieroglyphics, and with rich colors and elaborate gilding. The outermost case is of various forms, but most commonly adapted to that of the mummy. According to Herodotus, when the process of embalmment was completed, the case in which the body was enclosed was deposited in a sepulchral chamber against the wall. This however was done only when the tomb was not ready, or when interment was forbidden or delayed.—Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, Vol. I., p. 416, 418.

Exodus

PROFESSOR G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—In Exodus, as in the later chapters of Genesis, almost every custom recorded can be confirmed either from the ancient accounts of Egyptian manners which have come down to us, or from the monuments, or from both—Hist. 74.

Oppression of the Hebrews

Exodus 1:7.—And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.

ARISTOTLE.—One woman in Egypt, at four births, brought forth twenty children; for she had five at a time, and the greater part of them were reared. Hist. Anim., lib. vii., c. 4.

PLINY.—When a greater number of children than three is produced at one birth, it is looked upon as portentous; except, indeed, in Egypt, where the water of the Nile, which is used for drink, is a promoter of fecundity—Hist. Nat., lib. vii., c. 3.

Exod. 1:8.—Now there arose a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

JOHN KENRICK, M. A.—This points to a change of dynasty; and the commencement of the new monarchy, rather than the succession of a sovereign of the same family. Pharaoh, not being a personal name, its recurrence is no proof that one sovereign is intended throughout. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Israelites, who, though not the same, were closely connected with them, naturally became an object of alarm, and the kings of the 18th dynasty endeavored first to check their increase and then to break their spirit.—Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, II., 267.

Exod. 1:9-11.—And he said unto his people, Behold the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also to our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them, up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities (cities of store, or depots), Pithom and Raamses.

JOHN KENRICK, M. A.—Besides erecting monuments of stone, this monarch, Thothmes III., appears to have been the author of extensive constructions of bricks. Egypt affords abundant material for this manufacture, and a few days' ,exposure to the sun hardens them sufficiently, unless they are to be subject to the action of water. Bricks bearing his titular shield, the scarabœus, the crenellated parallelogram, and the disk of the sun, are more common than those of any other sovereign. There is a tomb at Thebes, the inscriptions of which show, that its occupant, Roschere, was superintendent of the great buildings, in the reign of Thothmes III.: on its walls the operation of brick-making is represented. Men are employed, some in working up the clay with an instrument resembling the Egyptian hoe, others of them in carrying loads of it on their shoulders, molding it into bricks, and transporting them, by means of a yoke laid across the shoulders, to the place where they are to be laid out for drying in the sun. The physiognomy and color of most of those who are thus engaged show them to be foreigners, and their aquiline nose and yellow complexion suggest the idea that they are Jews. Their labor is evidently compulsory; Egyptian taskmasters stand by with sticks in their hands; and though one or two native Egyptians appear among them, we may easily suppose that they have been condemned to hard labor for their crimes. As the foreigners do not resemble any of the nations with whom Thothmes carried on war, and who are well known from the paintings and reliefs of subsequent monarchs, it is not probable that they are captives taken in war. They can therefore hardly be any other than the Israelites, whom we know from their own history to have been employed in this drudgery. Their oppression began with the accession of the 18th dynasty, and the expulsion of their kindred Hyksos. It was a natural fear, that when any war fell out they should join themselves to the enemies of Egypt, and fight against her. The kings of Egypt, therefore, while they endeavored by a cruel expedient to prevent their increase, and by hard labor to break their spirit, employed that labor to strengthen the frontier on the side of Arabia and Palestine, whence their danger came. The valley of Goshen, which was their place of settlement, was the direct road from Palestine to Memphis. By employing them to build two fortresses, Raamses at the eastern, and Pithom at the western extremity of this valley, the Pharaohs provided at once a barrier against future invasions and the means of keeping the children of Israel in subjection. Both these objects were important to a sovereign like Thothmes, who, during his Mesopotamian expeditions, must have left his country exposed to his neighbors, and whose long absences might tempt revolt.—Egypt under the Pharaohs, II., 194.,

PLINY.—It is asserted by most persons that the only motive for constructing the Pyramids of Egypt was, either a determination on the part of the monarchs not to leave their treasures to their successors, or to rivals that might be plotting to supplant them, or to prevent the lower classes from remaining unoccupied.—His. Nat., lib. 36., c. 16.

ARISTOTLE.—It is the policy of a tyrant to render his subjects poor; that he may be compelled to maintain a guard against them; and that they, being engaged in procuring their daily food, may have no time for plots and conspiracies—Polit., lib. v., c.

Exod. 1:14.—And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Notwithstanding the great abundance of stone in Egypt, and the fact that most of the grander buildings were constructed of this material, yet there was also an extensive employment of brick in the country. Pyramids, houses, tombs, the walls of towns, fortresses, and the sacred enclosures of temples, were commonly, or, at any rate, frequently, built of brick by the Egyptians. A large portion of the brick-fields belonged to the monarch, for whose edifices bricks were made in them, stamped with his name. Immense masses of bricks are now found at Belbers, the modern capital of Tharkiya, i. e., Goshen, and in the adjoining district—.Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 71.

Exod. 1:15, 16.—And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, and said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—That women practiced midwifery among the Egyptians is a fact verified from the sculptures.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, III., p. 1855.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—A strong confirmation of the Mosaic narrative has been obtained by modern inquiry; the curious expression, when ye see them upon the stools, being in remarkable accordance with the modern Egyptian practice, as stated by Mr. Lane. " Two or three days," he says, " before the expected time of delivery, the layah (midwife) conveys to the house the kursee elwiladeh, a chair of peculiar form, upon which the patient is to be seated during the birth."—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, III., 1929.

ROBERTS.—The females of the East are not accouched as their sex are in England. Instead of reclining on a couch or a bed, they sit on a stool about sixteen inches high, or on the rice-mortar inverted. —Orient. Illust., p. 61.

Exod. 3.—And when Jochebed could not longer hide the child, she took for him an ark of bulrushes (papyrus), and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.

PLINY AND LUCAN.—Pliny speaks of the “naves papyraceas armentaqui Nili"—the boats made of the papyrus, and the equipments of the Nile. And Lucan, the poet, has, “conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro "—the Memphian (or Egyptian) boat is made of the thirsty papyrus.—Prof. Bush, Notes In loco.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The practice of making boats out of the papyrus is specially Egyptian, and was not in vogue elsewhere. It is distinctly mentioned by Herodotus, Plutarch, and, many other ancient writers, and is thought to be traceable on the monuments. The caulking of these boats with pitch and bitumen, a practice not mentioned anywhere but in Exodus, is highly probable in itself; and is so far in accordance with the Remains, that both pitch and bitumen are found to have been used by the Egyptians—Hist. of the O. T., p. 78.

INSCRIPTION OF SARGON.—I am Sargina, the great King; the King of Agani. I knew not my father: my family were the rulers of the land. My city was the city of Atzu-pirani, which is on the banks of the river Euphrates. My mother conceived me: in a secret place she brought me forth: she placed me in an ark of bulrushes: with bitumen my door she closed up: she threw me into the river, which did not enter into the ark to me. The river carried me: to the dwelling of Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me. Akki, the water-carrier, in his goodness of heart lifted me up from the river. Akki; the water-carrier, brought me up as his own son. Akki, the water-carrier, placed me with a tribe of Foresters. Of this tribe of Foresters Ishtar made me king: and for.... years I reigned over them.—Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 3 and 56.

PLUTARCH. —Faustulus, pursuant to his orders, hid the children in a small trough cradle, and went down towards the river with a design to cast them in; but seeing it very rough, and running with a strong current, he was afraid to approach it. He therefore laid it down near the bank and departed—Romul., c. 3.

Exod. 5.—And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and the

maidens walked along the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

SIR GEORGE WILKINSON.—The bath is frequently visited by Eastern ladies, and may be reckoned among their principal recreations. Those Egyptians, who lived at the earliest period of which we have any account, were in the habit of bathing in the waters of the Nile. In one of the tombs at Thebes there is found a striking representation of an Egyptian bathing scene—a lady with four female servants, who attend upon her, and perform various offices-forcibly reminding us of the daughter of Pharaoh.—Ancient Egypt., III., 389.

Moses in the Land of Midian

Exod. 2:15.—Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—He that willfully killed a free man, or even a slave, was by the law of Egypt to die—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 77.

Exod. 2:15-17.—Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Who that has traveled much in the East has not often arrived at a well in the heat of the day which was surrounded with numerous flocks of sheep waiting to be watered? I once saw such a scene in the burning plains of northern Syria. Half-naked, fierce-looking men were drawing up water in leather buckets; flock after flock was brought up, watered, and sent away; and, after the men had ended their work, then several women and girls brought up their flocks and drew water for them. Thus it was with Jethro's daughters when Moses stood up and aided them; and thus, no doubt, it would have been with Rachel, if Jacob had not rolled away the stone and watered her sheep. I have frequently seen wells closed up with large stones, though in this part of the country it is not commonly done, because water is not so scarce and precious. It is otherwise, however, in the, dreary deserts.—The Land and the Book, II., 399.

Exod. 3:2, 5.—And the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

WILLIAM LATHAM BEVAN, M. A.—It was a mark of reverence to cast off the shoes in approaching a place or person of eminent sanctity: hence the command to Moses at the bush, and to Joshua in the presence of the angel. In deference to these injunctions the priests are said to have conducted their ministrations in the Temple barefoot; and the Talmudists even forbade any person to pass through the Temple with shoes on. This reverential act was not peculiar to the Jews; in ancient times we have instances of it in the worship of Cybele at Rome; in the worship of Isis as represented in a picture at Herculaneum; and in the practice of the Egyptian priests, according to Sil. Ital. iii., 28. In modern times we may compare the similar practice of the Mohammedans of Palestine before entering a Mosque, and particularly before entering the Kaaba at Mecca; of the Yezidis of Mesopotamia before entering the tomb of their patron Saint; and of the Samaritans as they head the summit of Mount Gerizim.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, IV., p. 2837.

Exod. 3:8.—I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

TACITUS.—The soil of Syria is rich and fruitful. In all those fruits of the earth which are common with us, they abound; and besides this they enjoy the Palm-tree, and that which produces balm. The palms are lofty and beautiful. —Hist., lib. v., c. 6.

PLINY.—The more remarkable quality of the dates of Judea is a rich and unctuous juice; they are of a milky consistency, and have a sort of vinous flavor, with a remarkable sweetness like that of honey.— Hist. Nat., lib. xiii., c. 9.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, M. A., F. L. S., etc.—The visitor to the Wady Kurn, when he sees the busy multitudes of bees about its cliffs, cannot but recall to mind the promise, "With honey out of the stony rock would I have satisfied thee." There is no epithet of the Land of Promise more true to the letter, even to the present day, than this, that it was "A land flowing with milk and honey."—Land of Israel, p. 88.

Exod. 3:14.—And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hash sent me unto you.

PLATO.—We say a thing was, is, or will be, while, according to truth, the term it is is alone suitable, was and will be being expressions only suitable to generation which proceeds through time; whereas what exists eternally the same and immovable, neither becomes at any time older or younger, neither has it been generated in the past, nor will be in the future.— Timœus, c. 10.

PLUTARCH.—We must confess that God Is, and that, not with reference to time, but as being eternal and immutable, whom nothing can be before or after, past or future, younger or older. Being essentially one, his eternity is included in a present existence; the always in the now. And God alone can thus truly be said to be, having neither a past nor a future existence, having neither beginning nor end. By this name then, when worshipping Him, we ought to salute and call upon Him. The Deity is to be addressed by the name Eî,—Thou Art, because in Him there is no variableness or change. The word Eî is an expression of admiration and reverence addressed to God as an eternal Being.—De Ei apud Delph., c. 19, 20, 21.

Exod. 4:6.—And the Lord said unto him, Put now thy hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow.

REV. HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—One principal feature of leprosy is a bright white spot, but especially a white swelling in the skin, with a change of the hair of the part from the natural black to white or yellow.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, II., p. 1631.

Exod. iv: to, it.—And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent; but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I, the Lord?

THE COMPILER.—Here the organs of speech are affirmed to be the work of God, and the ability to employ them his gift. This is true, and the proof is sufficiently manifest in the marvels of the endowment itself. In order to ready and accurate utterance the mouth itself must be so constituted that its several parts shall be capable of assuming a distinct configuration for every word and every sound. The proper muscles must bring instantaneously the jaws, the teeth, and the lips into their precise position. Each syllable of articulated sound also requires for its utterance a specific action of the tongue; and to qualify this member for its marvelous office, its muscles are required to be, so numerous, and so implicated with one another, that they cannot be traced by the minutest dissection; yet all must be so arranged that neither their number, nor their complexity, nor the entanglement of their fibers, shall in anywise impede its motion, or in any degree render its action uncertain. And nothing is more remarkable in all the living world than the variety, quickness and precision of motion, of which the tongue is capable. How instantaneously are its positions assumed, and how instantaneously dismissed! How numerous are its permutations, yet how infallible! Besides all this, from the back part of the mouth, there must be opened a passage of remarkable construction for the admission of air into and out of the lungs; and connected with this are whole systems of muscles, some in the larynx, and without number in the tongue, for the purpose of modulating that air in its passage with the requisite variations, compass, and precision. And lastly, there must be a specific contrivance for dividing the pneumatic part from the mechanical, and for preventing one set of actions interfering with the other.

Nothing, can exceed the exactness and perfection required, in all these parts, in order to the ready, accurate, and clear utterance of the mind's thoughts. “I am speaking to you this moment," says Prof. Huxley, " but if you were to alter, in the minutest degree, the proportion of the nervous forces now active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my glottis, I should become suddenly dumb. The voice is produced, only so long as the vocal cords are parallel; and these are parallel only so long as certain muscles contract with exact equality; and that again depends on the equality of action of those two nerves I spoke of, So that a change of the minutest kind in the structure of one of these nerves, or in the structure of the part in which it originates, or of the supply of blood to that part, or of one of the muscles to which it is distributed, might render all of us dumb."

Such is the apparatus of speech—an apparatus the most complicated and yet the most perfect in its structure, the most delicate in its adjustments and yet the most infallible in its operations—an organism of inestimable advantages as well as of unfathomable consequences to man; the organism, indeed, which gives to him his power and pre-eminence over all the living tenants of the globe, and without which he never could attain his high intellectual and moral destiny. In the marvelous organs of speech, then, we have indisputable and convincing evidences that they are, as the Scripture before us affirms, the work of none other khan of Him who possesses infinite knowledge, skill and power. This is the 'instant and instinctive decision of natural reason.—See Present Conflict of Science with Religion, by the Compiler, p. 234-236.

Exod. 4:12.—I will be with thy mouth.

XENOPHON.—From the gods it is that we have received the gift of speech.— Memor., lib. iv., c. 3.

PLUTARCH.—Of all those things that are in man, there is nothing more divine than the gift of speech.—De Isid. et Osirid., c. 68.

QUINTILIAN.—Eloquence is the greatest blessing which the immortal gods have given to mankind.—Quintl., lib. xii., c. II.

Exod. 4:25.—Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut of the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—The region of Sinai is abundantly strewed with flints, or sharp stones. —Notes In loco.

PROF. HORATIO B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—It is well known that in the Sinaitic Peninsula stone or flint knives have often been discovered on opening ancient places of sepulture. The Abyssinian tribes at the present day use flint knives in performing circumcision. Stone knives in early times were common in Egypt.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, II., p. 1573.

The Hebrews' Task Increased

Exod. 5:1, 2.—And Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.

EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS.—The spirit and style of language ascribed by Moses to Pharaoh, such as, "Who is the Lord," " I know not the Lord," " I am Pharaoh," etc., are in striking accord with what has been discovered in the ancient Papyri and wall Inscriptions; the same sublime and unconscious egotism appears in both. “I am Ra in the land of the living," says one inscription. “Even from thy birth thou hast been as God," says another. “The king is as God," declares the papyrus of Prisse d'Avennes.—See Faith and Free Thought, p. 220.

Exod. 5:6, 7.—And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Chopped straw was an ordinary material in the bricks, being employed as hair by modern plasterers, to bind them together, and make them more firm and durable.—Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament, p. 71.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The use of crude brick, baked in the sun, was universal in Upper and Lower Egypt, both for public and private buildings. Enclosures of gardens, granaries, sacred circuits encompassing the courts of temples, walls of fortifications and towers, dwelling-houses and tombs, in short, all but the temples themselves, were of crude brick. So great was the demand for them, that the Egyptian government, observing the profit that would accrue to the revenue from the monopoly of them, undertook to supply the public at a moderate price, thus preventing all unauthorized persons from engaging in their manufacture. And in order to obtain more effectually their end, the seal of the king, or of some privileged person, was stamped upon the bricks at the time that they were made. Now, it is manifest from the sacred narrative, though the fact is not expressly stated there or by any ancient writer, that the bricks were made under the immediate direction of the king through his officers.

And this renders more interesting and important the above incidental corroboration which the study of Egyptian antiquities has recently produced.—Ancient Egyptians, II., p. 26 and 79.

Exod. 5:12.—So the people were scattered abroad throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—Stubble and straw both existed in ancient Egypt, wheat being occasionally cut with a portion of the stalk; while the remainder, or more commonly, the entire stalk, was left standing in the fields. And both stubble and straw have been found in the bricks.—Ancient Egyptians, IV., 5-83, and I., 50.

ROSELLINI.—The bricks which are now found in Egypt belonging to the same period, always have straw mingled with them, although in some of them that are most carefully made it is found in very small quantities—Monumenti dell 'Egitto, II., 252.

Exod. 5:14.—And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and to-day as heretofore?

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Captives and foreigners commonly did the work in the royal brickfields; and Egyptian taskmasters, with rods in their hands, watched their labors, and punished the idle with blows at their, discretion. The bastinado was a recognized punishment for minor offenses—Hist. Illust. of O. T., 72.

Exod. 6:3.—Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON.—The hearing of complaints and pronouncing of judgments by the king in person, was very usual throughout the East; and the existence of the custom in Egypt is illustrated by many passages in ancient authors. Herodotus notices this custom in ii., 115, 121, etc.—Hist. Mist. of O. T., p. 76.

Divine Titles

Exod. 6:3.—I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.

ORPHEUS.—I say that the highest of all the Gods is IAO—Apud Macro& Saturn., lib. i., c. 18.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Moses asserted that the God who is called by the Jews. IAO, was the author of his Laws—Diod. Sic., I., 94.

The Rod Turned Into a Serpent

Exod. 7:10, 11.—And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt they also did in like manner with their enchantments.

W. R. COOPER, Secretary of the Society of Biblical Archœology.—An Egyptian painting in the British Museum represents certain priests carrying serpent-shaped sticks in their hands, for with them the cobra or basilisk was the emblem of eternal life; and hence that reptile was called, " the serpent of immortal years.' To this day, in India, the serpent-charmers possess the art, by pressure on the nape of the neck, of throwing the Naja, or spectacle snake, into a rigid, cataleptic position. Be it granted, then, that the magicians of Pharaoh were acquainted with a similar knack, and the whole mystery of their enchantment becomes apparent, for the act of flinging the serpent on the ground would restore it to its original consciousness and vivacity.—Faith and Free Thought. p. 224.

Plague of Blood

Exod. 7:20, 21.—And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded: and he lifted up the rod and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. And the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians would not drink of the water of the river; and there was blood throughout the land of Egypt.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of the Soci. of Bib. Archœology.—Perhaps on no group of subjects has more information been obtained from the monuments of Egypt than on those terrible calamities which are detailed in the 7th and four following chapters of the book of Exodus, and are popularly called the Ten Plagues. Much trifling criticism has been bestowed by infidel critics upon the trifling character of many of these judgments; but that very circumstance attests the authenticity of the narrative, for things deemed of little consequence in later times held then no unimportant rank in the book of Egyptian Theology. Permit me therefore, very briefly to notice these events in their succession, bearing in mind that the purport of all those inflictions was to show the Egyptians that "I am God," for” against all the gods of the Egyptians I will execute judgment, saith the Lord."

The first judgment was the conversion of the waters of Egypt into an apparently sanguineous fluid, revolting to the sight, nauseous to the taste, and offensive to the smell. To Moses, and to the Egyptians, the purport of this miracle of vengeance was obvious, for the Nile was a deity of the country; and at the annual festival of the Niloa, Pharaoh, attended by all his court, paid, in the name of all his people, divine worship to this river. Popular tradition supposed the bounteous Nile to flow from heaven, and a lustral power was attributed to bathing in its waters. Many even of its fishes were venerated and adored, and the figure of one species was worn around the neck as an amulet and an ornament. At the touch of the rod of Moses the water of that river, famous as being the purest and sweetest in all the world, was rendered loathsome and impure; unable to preserve their sacred lives, the deified fishes died under the shadow of their own temples: the celestial river attested the hand of a celestial messenger, and in its blood-stained waves was contained an omen of the destruction of the people who stood around its banks, and whose fathers in years past had reddened its stream with the carcasses of the Hebrew children.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 228, 229.

HERODOTUS.—To all rivers the Egyptians pay extreme veneration; they will neither spit, wash their hands, nor throw any filth into any of them, and a violation of this custom may not happen with impunity.—Clio, c. 138.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Egyptians account their river Nile to be Oceanus, on whose banks the birth of the gods took place—Dia. Sic., lib. i., c. 12.

PLUTARCH.—The Nile, the father and Savior of Egypt—Symp., VIII., 8.

IDEM.—There is nothing so much honored among the Egyptians as the river Nile.—De Lid. et Osirid., c. 5.

REGINALD STUART POOLE.—The plague of blood was doubly humiliating to the religion of the country, as the Nile was held sacred, as well as some kinds of its fish, not to speak of the crocodiles which probably were destroyed. It may have been a marked reproof for the cruel edict that the Israelite children should he drowned, and could scarcely have failed to strike guilty consciences as such, though Pharaoh does not seem to have been alarmed by it.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, III., 2540.

Plague of Frogs

Exod. 8:5, 6.—And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod, over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up over the land of Egypt. And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.

H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The common, and indeed the only water-frog of Egypt, is the edible frog Rana esculenta. It is larger than our common' frog, and generally of a bright green color, prettily spotted. It is found in myriads in all parts of Egypt where there is marsh or water, and its loud croaking by night is perfectly deafening.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 280.

PLINY. —The inhabitants of a district in Gaul were driven from their country by frogs—Hist. Nat., lib. viii., c. 43.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Soci. of Bib. Archœology—The plague of frogs was no less significant than that of blood. Pthah, the creator of animal life, was venerated under the special form of a frog, that creature being supposed to be spontaneously generated from the mud of the Nile, by the vivific rays of the sun. From their immense fecundity, the frog and tadpole were used as the hieroglyphics of a million, and the titles “Lord of Life" and "Lord of the Land" were frequently engraved upon the statuettes of this Batrachian. Hence the people of Lower Egypt venerated the frog, and hence their animal worship was rebuked, and the very creatures they venerated were made a torture to them, so that even Pharaoh himself was compelled to exclaim, " Take away these (gods though they be) out of the land.”—Faith and Free Thought, p. 229.

Plague of Lice

Exod. 8:16, 7.—And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so: and it became lice in man and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Vermin of all kinds are notoriously abundant in the East—none more so than these disgusting insects, which are harbored everywhere by the filthy habits of the Bedouin and the Fellahin, or country people. But the Egyptians had by no means the Arab indifference to vermin, and no plague could have been more loathsome than this to that people. So scrupulous were they in their cleanliness that, we are told by Herodotus, the priests shaved their heads and persons every third day, lest they should harbor any lice, and so be polluted when performing their religious rites. This, therefore, was more than merely a loathsome visitation; it rendered the whole of that superstitious people ceremonially polluted.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 305.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Soci. of Bib. Archœology.—The plague of lice conveyed a warning no less important than that which preceded it. According to both monumental and historical testimony, the strictest care was taken by the priests to avoid defilement by any unclean insect. For this purpose the whole of the body was scrupulously shaved, vestments of woolen were especially forbidden; linen, or linen and cotton united, often washed, and oftener changed, were alone allowed to be used. Stated and repeated ablutions formed a part of the routine life of the sacerdotal orders, and the touch of an unclean insect rendered them ceremonially impure. That plague, therefore, the magicians could not imitate (and doubtless, secretly, did not wish to imitate), as the act would defile themselves, and thereupon came from their lips the reluctant exclamation, “This is the finger of God!”—Faith and Free Thought, p. 230.

Plague of Flies

Exod. 8:21, 24.—If thou wilt not let my people go, behold I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are. And the Lord did so; and there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt: the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies.

EDITOR OF THE PICTORIAL BIBLE. —The original word here translated “flies “is arob, concerning the true meaning of which there exists some difference of opinion. Upon the whole' we strongly incline to the opinion of Oedman, Kalisch and others, that the Egyptian beetle is here intended. All the circumstances which the Scriptures in different places intimate concerning the arob apply with much accuracy to this species. It devours everything that comes in its way, even clothes, books and plants, and does not hesitate to inflict severe bites on man. This beetle is about the size of the common beetle, and its general color is black. It is chiefly distinguished by having a broad white band upon the anterior margin of its oval corslet. That this beetle occupied a conspicuous place among the sacred creatures of the Egyptians seems to be evinced by the fact that there is scarcely any figure which occurs more frequently in Egyptian sculpture and painting. Visitors to the British Museum may satisfy themselves of this fact; and they will also observe a remarkable colossal figure of a beetle in greenish colored granite. Figures of beetles cut in green-colored stone occur very frequently in the ancient tombs of Egypt. They are generally plain, but some have hieroglyphic figures cut on their backs, and others have been found with human heads. If now we conceive that one object of these plagues was to chastise the Egyptians through their own idols, there is no creature of its class which could be more fitly employed than this insect.—See In loco.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Sod. of Bib. Archeology.—In the fourth plague, that of Flies, or, as the word implies, Beetles, the Ateuchis Sacer, or Sacred Scarab of the Egyptians, was selected as the minister of vengeance. This insect was a beautiful little beetle, and very abundant, which from its habit of laying its eggs in a ball of mud, and then rolling it to be hatched by the heat of the sun, was supposed to represent the care of the Creator over the world both in forming and preserving it, and was therefore representatively worshipped as the emblem of Kheper Ra, the formator of the world. The multiplication of figures of this insect in all sizes and all materials, from the huge specimen in basalt, nearly five feet across, in the British Museum, down to another in crystal, scarce a quarter of an inch in diameter, in the same collection, was something almost incredible. Every one wore it—sometimes not only one, but as many as fifty—in chains around the neck. It was wrought in the cheapest as well as the costliest stones, from the tender Stealite to the stubborn Jasper. Figures of the Scarabæus were used interchangeably with rings for currency. The living wore it on their fingers; the priests upon their breasts; and the dead, protected by the sacred amulet, were expressly said by the Egyptian liturgy to “pass through the place of dangers, and to await in safety all their transformations."—But now, at the word of Moses, all this was reversed. Willingly or unwillingly, the people in self-defense were compelled to slay their own divinities, and the 24th verse of the 8th chapter of Exodus shows that Kheper Ra, instead of preserving the land which worshipped the beetle, by the myriads of those dead insects, corrupted it.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 230, 231.

Exod. 8:26.—Lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?

HERODOTUS.—The Egyptians put no cattle to death—Euterpe, c. 41.

TACITUS.—The ox, which the Egyptians worship for the god Apis, the Jews sacrifice.— Hist., lib. v., c. 4.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—He that willfully kills any of the sacred beasts of Egypt is put to death; but if any kill a cat, or the bird Ibis, whether intentionally or not, he is dragged away to death by the multitude without any formal trial or judgment. Of an instance of this, I was an eye-witness at the time of my travels into Egypt.—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 83.

Plague of Murrain

Exod. 9:1, 2, 3, 6.—The Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go that they may serve me. For if thou refuse to let them go and wilt hold them still, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain,— And the Lord did that thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of Egypt died.

HERODOTUS.—The Egyptians esteem bulls as sacred to Epaphas, and cows are sacred to Isis.— Euterpe, c. 38-41.

IDEM.—The god Apis is the calf of a cow which can have no more young. The Egyptians say that on this occasion, the cow is struck with lightning, and from which she conceives and brings forth Apis.—Thal., c. 28.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The priests of Egypt hold bulls in great veneration, and renew their mourning for Osiris over the graves of those beasts.—Diod. Ste., lib. i., c. 21.

STRABO.—At Memphis the ox Apis is kept in a sort of sanctuary, and is held to be a god. In front of the sanctuary is a court, in which there is another sanctuary for the dam of Apis. Into this court Apis is let loose at times for the purpose of exhibiting him to strangers.—Strab., XVII., c. I.

IDEM.—Heliopolis contains a temple of the sun, and the ox Mneyis, which is kept in a sanctuary, and is regarded by the inhabitants as a god, as Apis is regarded by the people of Memphis.—Ibid.

IDEM.—At Hermonthis, both Apollo and Jupiter are worshipped. They also keep an ox there.—Ibid.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Sod. of Bib. Archœology.—Still the awful signs proceed, and in the fifth, the plague of Murrain, Apis, the bull-god, suffered, with all his bovine tribe,—that Apis, the first of animal deities, one of the incarnations of Osiris, the god of agriculture, and the most popular deity throughout the land of Egypt,—that Apis which was stalled in a golden manger, and fed to the sound of music, with perfumed oats, and straw from golden plates,—that bovine deity, who bleated oracles, and whose very excrements were holy—who was supposed to be born of a virgin cow by the direct influence of the rays of the moon, and upon whose life depended the welfare of Lower Egypt,—that same Apis then became hopelessly smitten with the same murrain whereby the less sacred domestic cattle of Egypt were destroyed. So important was the birth of the Apis, that his discovery was a triumphant festival,—his death a national mourning. That time of mourning was now come. “I am the LORD; and against all the gods of the Egyptians I will execute judgment."—Faith and Free Thought, p. 232.

Plague of Boils

Exod. 9:8-10.—And the Lord said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handsful of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt. And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The goddess Isis used to reveal herself to the people in Egypt in their sleep, when they labored under any disorder, and afforded them relief. Many who placed their confidence in her influence were wonderfully restored—Diod. Sic., I., 25.

IDEM—Orus, the last of the gods who reigned in Egypt, is reported to have learned the science of physic, as well as of prophecy, from his mother Isis. Diod. Sic., I., 25

HERODOTUS.—In Egypt, one physician is confined to the study and management of one disease. There are of course, therefore, a great many who study this art.—Euterpe, c. 84.

PLINY.—The Egyptians will have it that the medical art was first discovered among them—Hist. Nat., VII., 57.

TACITUS.—Many writers concur in the following account: That when Egypt was overrun by a pestilent disease, contaminating living bodies, and very foul to behold, Bacchoris, the king, applying for a remedy to the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, was ordered to purge his kingdom by removing into another country that generation of men (the Hebrews) so detested by the deities. —Hist., V., 3.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of the Soci. of Bib. Archœology.—The sixth plague converted the Ashes of blessing into the instruments of curse. The priests, by supernatural power the prescriptive doctors of the people, fled from the infliction, and were powerless to cure or to avert it, and hence they and their gods were shown to be inutile. Three treatises on medicine written in ancient hieroglyphics exist; one of these, published by M. Brugsch, and ascribed to the time of Rameses I., treats of the cure of diseases by the use of amulets, incantations and sympathetic remedies—all superstitious, empirical, and absurd to an extreme degree. When, therefore, in the sixth judgment, both physician and patient were attacked by the plague of boils, neither charm nor prayer availed them, no rank excepted, or amulet protected—all suffered alike.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 233.

Plague of Hail

Exod. 9:18.—Behold, to-morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, British Museum.—Hail is now extremely rare, but not unknown, in Egypt, and it is interesting that the narrative seems to imply that it sometimes falls there. Thunder-storms occur, but though very loud and accompanied by rain and wind, they rarely do serious injury.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, III., 2542.

LEPSIUS.—In January, 1843, we were surprised by a storm. Suddenly this storm grew to a tremendous hurricane, such as I have never seen in Europe and hail fell upon us in such masses, as almost to turn day into night.—Letters from Egypt, p. 27.

Exod. 9:20.—He that feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—We see on the monuments that cattle were kept, both in the field, where they were liable to be overtaken by the inundation, and also in stalls or sheds.—Cambridge Essays, 1858.

Exod. 9:23.—And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground (literally, toward the earth); and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail.

PROF. ELIAS Loomis, LL. D.—Large hail seldom if ever falls except during thunder-storms. Large hail is most common about the hottest part of the day. It falls at the commencement of the storm or during its continuance. It very rarely follows rain. Treatise on Meteorology, p. 129.

Exod. 9:25.—And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hall smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.

PROF. ELIAS Loomis, LL. D.—Within (or near) the tropics hail is of rare occurrence at the level of the sea; but when it does occur the stones are generally of very large size. On the 11Th of May, 1855, about 6 P. M., near the Himalaya Mountains, in India, in latitude 29°, hailstones fell weighing from eight to ten ounces, and one or two weighed more than a pound. On the 22nd of May, 1851, in latitude 13° north, in the southern part of India, many hailstones fell about the size of oranges. The quantity of hail which falls from the sky in a single shower is sometimes enormous. On the 17th of August, 1830, in the streets of Mexico, hail fell to the depth of sixteen inches.—Treatise on Meteorology, p. 230, 131.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of the Sod. of Bib. Archœology—Thus the 7th act of the drama of the Dies Irœ opened with a fearful storm. Rain, which seldom fell in Egypt, was believed to be under the particular control of the Feminine Deities, Isis queen of heaven, Sate goddess of the material sky, and Neith goddess of wisdom. But in this plague, regardless of, and restrainless by, feminine deities, the hail and lightning descended, and, terrified by the awful judgment, the king, disowning his own divinity, declared that he was wicked, a concession of a nature which only those who well understand the Egyptian theology can duly appreciate.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 234.

Exod. 9:31, 32.—And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was boiled. But the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up. SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The representations made by Moses with respect to Egyptian agriculture, feeding of cattle, etc., are borne out both by the ancient remains and the ancient authorities. The cultivation depicted on the monuments is, especially that of wheat, flax, barley, and rye or spelled.—Ancient Egyptians, Vol. II., p. 398

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—However late or early the Barley harvest may be, there is always an interval between it and the Wheat harvest, generally not less than three weeks, more frequently a month. In consequence of the earlier ripening of the Barley, it was destroyed in Egypt by the plague of hail, when the wheat escaped.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 421.

Exod. 9:26.—Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail.

PROF. ELIAS Loomis, LL. D.—Hail-storms usually travel rapidly over the country, and often in straight bands of small breadth as compared with their length. Many notable instances of this kind have been observed. On the 13th of July, 1788, a hail-storm traveled from the southwest part of France to the shores of Holland, at the rate of forty-six miles per hour. There were two distinct bands of hail, the breadth of that in the west being eleven miles, and that in the east six miles, with a space of fourteen miles between them. Each band of hail extended a distance of about five hundred miles.—Treatise on Meteorology, p. 132.

Plague of Locusts

Exod. 10:12, 13.—And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt, and at every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath left. And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning the east wind brought the locusts.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The statement that the plague of locusts arrived in Egypt with an east wind, is confirmed in an interesting manner by modern observations. They are noticed always to come from the east into Egypt, and from the south and southeast into Syria, being in fact nurtured in the wilds of Arabia, and nothing destroys them until they are driven by the wind into the sea, as was the case when, on the intercession of Moses, the west wind drove them into the sea.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 310.

Exod. 10:14. And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they;—for they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—For several days previous to the first of June (1845), we had heard that millions of young locusts were on their march up the valley toward our village, and at length I was told that they had reached the lower parts of it. Summoning all the people I could collect, we went to meet and attack them, hoping to stop their progress altogether, or at least to turn aside the line of their march. Never shall I lose the impression produced by the first view of them. I had often passed through clouds of flying locusts, and they always struck my imagination with a sort of vague terror; but these we now confronted were without wings, and about the size of full-grown grasshoppers, which they closely resembled in appearance and behavior. But their number was astounding; the whole face of the mountain was black with them. On they came like a living deluge. We dug trenches and kindled fires, and beat and burped to death heaps upon heaps, but the effort was utterly useless. Wave after wave rolled up the mountain side, and poured over rocks, walls, ditches and hedges, those behind covering up and bridging over the masses already killed. After a long and fatiguing contest, I descended the mountain to examine the depth of the column, but I could not see to the end of it. Wearied with my hard walk over this living deluge, I returned and gave over the vain effort to stop its progress. I have this dreadful picture indelibly fixed on my mind. For several nights after they came to Abeîh, as soon as I closed my eyes the whole earth seemed to be creeping and jumping, nor could I banish the ugly image from my brain.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 102, 107.

Exod. 10:15.—And they did eat every, herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green things in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, throughout all the land of Egypt.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, British Museum.—The severity of the plague bf locusts can be well understood by those who, like the writer, have been in Egypt in a part of the country where a flight of locusts has alighted. In the present day locusts often appear suddenly in the cultivated land, coming from the desert in a column of great length, and where they alight they devour every green thing, even stripping the trees of their leaves. Mr. Lane, writing of, Nubia, says: “Locusts not infrequently commit dreadful havoc in. this country. In my second voyage up the Nile, when before the village of Boostan, a little above Ibreem, many locusts pitched upon the boat. They were beautifully variegated, yellow and blue. In the following night a southerly wind brought other locusts in immense swarms. Next morning the air was darkened by them, as by a heavy fall of snow, and the surface of the river was thickly scattered over by those which had fallen and were unable to rise again. Great numbers came upon and within the boat, and alighted upon our persons. They were different from those of the preceding day, being of a bright yellow color, with brown marks. The desolation they made was dreadful. In four hours a field of young durah (millet) was cropped to the ground. In another field of durah more advanced only the stalks were left. Nowhere was there a space on the ground to set the foot without treading on many. A field of cotton-plants was quite stripped. Even the acacias along the banks were made bare, and palm trees were stripped of the fruit and leaves."—In Smith's Dict. of Bib., III.,. p, 2543.

REV. F. W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—In vain the Arabs who had charge of the convent gardens beat iron pans, and shouted, and brushed them away from the beds with palm leaves; they swarmed in till every green thing was, eaten. The locusts appear to prefer death to a retreat. They swarm up the trees and strip them of every leaf; olives, and even oaks are not spared by them; but they attack the apricots and mulberries first. Sad it was to see the poor people beaten by the overwhelming flights, and hopelessly wringing their hands over their little gardens overrun by the locusts, which crunched up every green thing.—first journey to the Wilderness of Sinai.

Exod. 10:19.—Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, in haste, and he said, I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of the Soci. of Bib. Archœ.—As the seventh act of the drama with Storm, so the eighth with locusts, devastated the land, and the trees, which themselves were sacred, the vegetable gods, despised by Juvenal and ridiculed by Pliny—the Pine, the tree of life; the Tamarisk, the tree of knowledge; the Lotus, sacred to the dead; the Papyrus, sacred to the gods, and many lesser vegetables or lesser deities—all were smitten now—all devoured by the locusts! Horror-stricken and confounded, "then Pharaoh called for Moses' and Aaron in haste, and said, I have sinned against the Lord your 'God, and. against you—forgive, I pray you, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord for me!” —Faith and Free Thought, p. 234.

Exod. 10:19.—And the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts and cast them into the Red Sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt.

PLINY.—There is another mode which the locusts perish: the winds carry them off in vast swarms, upon which they fall into the sea or standing waters. —Hist. Nat., XI., 35.

MR. BARROW.—In the southern district of Africa, which I visited, the surface of nearly 2,000 square miles might be said to be covered with locusts. The water of a wide river was scarcely visible in consequence of the innumerable drowned locusts which floated on its surface. By and by these countless hosts were driven into the sea by a violent wind; and their bodies, being thrown back on the shore, formed a bank about three feet high, and of many miles in length.—Quoted in Science and the Bible, p. 455.

Plague of Darkness

Exod. 10:21-23.—And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—In Egypt they worship the Sun under the name of Râ. —Diod. Sic., I., II; See Wilkinson's Ancient Egypt, IV., 289.

PLUTARCH.—Horus, the son of Isis, was the first to sacrifice to the, sun. The Egyptians offer three times every day incense and sweet odors to the sun.—De Isid. et Osirid., c. 52.

W R. COOPER, Sec. of Society of Bib. Archœ.—This visitation, as it was the last directly theological, so it was also, in one sense, the most conclusive. At the root of all the Egyptian Theogony lay the great deity, Amun Ra, who was believed to inhabit the heaven of heavens, and was symbolized by “eternal light; " the Sun was his representative. Now, at the word of the God of Israel, that Sun, that Amun Ra, is wrapped in a veil of darkness that utterly hides him from the view of his erring worshippers. Three days' curse to his threefold claims; Amun Ra, father of divine life; Kheper Ra, father of animal life; Kneph Ra, father of human life; he, even he, by the God of Israel, is blotted out for three days.—Faith and Free Thought, 235.

Plague of the First-Born

Exod. 12:29.—And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat upon his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of cattle.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Society of Bib. Archœ.—Last of all, descended the horrors of the tenth plague. The Egyptians having felt, and the Israelites having witnessed, the powerlessness of the gods they had been accustomed to venerate, the long-delayed retribution fell upon the Pharaoh and his servants; and those who had made the Israelites childless were by an invisible and irresistible executioner rendered childless themselves. Fancy cannot imagine, artist cannot paint, nor poet describe, the scene which produced the cry which rang throughout the land of Egypt, when under the very shadow of the gods whom he worshipped, with their amulets upon his heart, and their adorations inscribed in the bracelets upon his hands, the first-born of every Egyptian lay agonized, paralyzed, dead!—Faith and Free Thought, 236.

The Passover

EXOD. 11:1, 2.—And the Lord said unto Moses-Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver and jewels of gold.

Exod. 12:35, 36.—And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required; and they spoiled the Egyptians.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The wide-spread possession, by the Egyptians, of articles in gold and silver, vases, goblets, necklaces, armlets, bracelets, ear-rings, and finger rings, is among the facts most conspicuously attested by the extant remains, and is also illustrated by the ancient writers, who even speak of so strange an article as a golden foot-pan.—Historical Illustrations of the O. T., p. 77.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The ornaments of gold found in Egypt consist of. rings, bracelets, armlets, necklaces, ear-rings, and numerous trinkets belonging to the toilet.—Gold and silver vases, statues, and other objects of gold and silver, of silver inlaid with gold, and of bronze inlaid with the precious metals, were also common at the same time.—Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III., p. 225, and p. 370-377.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, LL. D.—The Egyptian Museums, in London, Paris and Berlin, contain almost as great a variety of ornaments for personal decoration (ivory, gold, silver) as are known to the fashions of modern life. They have been found in' Egyptian tombs, pyramids, and mummy-pits, and many of them must be as old as the age of the Pharaohs and the pyramids.—Note, in Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 77.

Exod. 12:3-13.—Speak unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house, etc.

REV. JOSEPH PARRISH THOMPSON, D. D.—The Passover contains features so unnatural, so remote in themselves from mere imagination or invention, that one cannot conceive of their origin except in some fact of actual occurrence. This is true especially of the time and manner of killing the lamb, and of the sprinkling of the blood on the side-posts and the upper door-posts of the houses. As the observance itself witnesses for the departure out of Egypt, so do these unique features of it witness for the facts which are recorded as having attended its own institution.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, Vol. III., p. 2546.

Exod. 12:14.—And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations: ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.

THE COMPILER.—Of the actual occurrence of what is related in this chapter, namely, the institution of the Feast of the Passover, we have the unbroken testimony of history and of its perpetual observance down through all the ages to the day in which we live. The deliverance from Egypt was regarded as the starting-point of the Hebrew Nation. The Israelites were then raised from the condition of bondmen under a foreign tyrant to that of a free people owing to no one but Jehovah. Hence, through all their generations, and especially in the, periods of great national reformations and restorations, the Passover was observed in the most solemn and devout manner, to remind the people of their true position, and to mark their renewal of the covenant which their father's had made. It was thus observed by Moses again, in the Desert (Num. 9.) It was celebrated by Joshua at Gilgal, when about to enter and possess the Promised Land (Josh. 5.) It was kept with acts of special devotion by Hezekiah, on the restoration of the National worship to its original purity (2 Chron. 30.) It was similarly observed by Josiah in the 18th year of his reign (2 Chron. 35.) So also by Ezra after the return from Babylon (Ezr. 6.) It was kept with punctilious reverence by the Jews in our Savior's time (John 18:28.) And it has been yearly held in sacred remembrance by their descendants through, all the centuries that have elapsed since, in all their wanderings dyer the face of the earth; while through the same period, the event has been perpetually celebrated, by all Christian nations under the form of the Lord is, Supper.

Exod. 12:26, 27.—And it shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.

REV. WILLIAM C. BROWNLEE, D. D.—A political skeptic might say, I do not believe, I deny the authenticity and genuineness of your Declaration of Independence., How should we meet this skeptic? Thus: Why, the whole American people had witnessed and experienced the oppression of the British government. Their leading men were engaged in drawing up that Declaration. The whole people at the time read it, or heard it proclaiMed. They celebrated the event with heroic rejoicing; and they have annually celebrated it in like manner ever since. It cannot possibly, therefore, be a forgery or an imposture. It could not have been fabricated in the days of the Old Congress. The people of that day could not have been so imposed on, as to believe it, if they had not seen with their eyes, and heard with their ears, all these revolutionary movements, and this National Document setting them forth. Nor could this Declaration possibly have been fabricated since the death of those patriot fathers. How could any man, or any conspiracy of impostors, persuade the whole American Nation, unanimously to receive and credit the Declaration of our National Independence, and, in memory thereof, to celebrate the 4th of July,—if no such national event had taken place?

Now apply this form of argument to the proof of the authenticity and genuineness of the institution of the Jewish Passover. How close and striking the parallel before us! The Hebrews had long been sorely oppressed, and they were now on the eve of their deliverance. The divine mission of Moses had been established before the nation by the many miracles wrought in Egypt. These facts were such that the people's outward senses could judge of them. They were performed in the most public manner. His divine mission being thus established, he delivered to the officers of the nation the code of laws and the system of worship which they were to observe; a copy of this was put in the hands of the rulers; a copy was publicly deposited in the ark, and this was, by a national law, brought out every seventh year, and read aloud in the ears of the national assemblies. In this public document Moses declares to the nation that God had brought wasting judgments on Egypt, and had slain the first-born in every family; that he had brought them out of that land with a mighty arm; and had made them walk through the Red Sea in a miraculous manner; that they and their fathers had celebrated the national festival of the Passover; and that this was the grand and divinely appointed monument to perpetuate the memory of the miracles of their deliverance from bondage. And to all this are added the solemn words, " Know ye, this day; for I speak not to your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord, his greatness, his mighty hand, his miracles and acts: but your eyes have seen the great acts of the Lord, which he did."

Now Moses could not possibly have persuaded the whole Hebrew nation that these things had actually taken place BEFORE THEIR EYES, if they really had never so happened. He could not have persuaded the whole nation to celebrate the Passover in memory of their grand national deliverance, if they never had been so miraculously delivered. Their national celebration of this festival was an unanimous national declaration of their unshaken faith in all those miracles of Moses, which issued in their final emancipation. Hence the ordinance of the Passover could not possibly have been fabricated by Moses, nor by any in his day, or in the days of those who came out of Egypt. It is equally impossible that it could have been forged in an after age. What man can gravely allege that a whole nation, such as the Hebrews, could have been persuaded by any combination of impostors whatever, to believe, and to receive, as a nation, a code of laws and observances on whose pages it was declared that they had, as a nation, been delivered by the most stupendous miracles out of Egypt, if they had never heard of these miracles before?

How could any impostor persuade a whole nation to receive this as God's law, delivered to their forefathers in Egypt, if they had never heard of that law before? What human power could induce a whole nation unanimously to celebrate annually their Grand National festival, in commemoration of their escape from Egypt, if that event had never happened, and they, as a nation, had never heard of it? Hence it is manifest that the position which infidels assume here is infinitely more difficult to be believed than any position of the Christian. For infidels profess to believe, in the face of reason and common sense, an absurdity the most palpable and ludicrous!—National Preacher, Vol. X., p. 257.

Exod. 12:34-36.—And the people took their dough before it was leavened, etc... And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

TACITUS. —As a standing proof of the Jews having by robbery supplied themselves with gain, the Jewish bread is still baked without leaven—Hist., lib. v., c. 4.

Israel's Departure Out of Egypt

Exod. 12:37.—And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The great fact recorded, which stands out as historically true, and which no petty criticism can shake, is the exit from Egypt of a considerable tribe, the progenitors of the later Hebrew nation and their settlement in Palestine, after a sojourn of some duration in the wilderness. Of this fact the Hebrews and Egyptians were equally well convinced, and as both nations enjoyed a contemporary literature, and had thus the evidence on the point of witnesses living at the time, only an irrational skepticism can entertain a doubt respecting it—Hist. Illust. of the Old Test., p.

MANETHO AND CHEREMON. —There are passages in the writings of Manetho and Cheremon, Egyptian priests of high scholarship, which, though in reference to some things somewhat confused, are yet so specific as to the names of Joseph and Moses, and in some instances, so minute as to facts, that the following conclusions may be held established: 1. That the Egyptians had a tradition of an Exodus from their country of persons whom they regarded as unclean-persons who rejected their customs, refused to worship their gods, and killed for food the animals which they held as sacred. 2. That these authors connected this race and this exodus with the names of Joseph and Moses. 3. That they made southern Syria the country into which the unclean people withdrew; and 4. That they placed the event in the reign of a certain Amenophis, son of Rameses, and father of Sethos, who reigned toward the close of the 18th dynasty, or about 1400 B. C.—See Josephus Contr. Apion, I., 26, 27, 32.

HERODOTUS. —This people (the Hebrews), by their own account, once inhabited the coasts of the Red Sea, but migrated thence to the maritime parts of Syria, all which district, as far as Egypt, is denominated Palestine—Polymnia, c. 89.

DIODORUS SICULUS. —In ancient times there happened a great plague in Egypt, and many ascribed the cause of it to God, who was offended with them because there were many strangers in the land, by whom foreign rites and ceremonies were employed in their worship of the deity. The Egyptians concluded, therefore, that unless all strangers were driven out of the country, they should never be freed from their miseries. Upon this, as some writers tell us, the most eminent and enterprising of those foreigners who were in Egypt, and obliged to leave the country, betook themselves to the coast of Greece, and also to other regions, having put themselves under the command of proper leaders for that purpose. Some of them were conducted by Danaus and Cadmus, who were the most illustrious of the whole. There were besides these a large but less noble body of people, who retired into the province now called Judea, which was not far from Egypt, and in those times uninhabited. These emigrants were led by Moses, who was superior to all in wisdom and prowess. He gave them laws, and ordained that they should have no images of the gods, because there was only one deity, the heaven, which surrounds all things, and is Lord of the whole—Diod. Sic., lib. 1., ap. Phot.

STRABO. —Among many things believed respecting the temple and inhabitants! of Jerusalem, the report most credited is that the Egyptians were the ancestors of the present Jews. An Egyptian priest named Moses, who possessed a portion of the country called lower Egypt, being dissatisfied with the institutions there, left it and came to Judea, with a large body of people who worshipped the Divinity.— Strab., lib. xvi., c. 2.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—It is certain that migrations of tribes, quite as large as that of Israel is said to have been, have from time to time taken place in the East, and indeed in the West also. Such migrations have frequently been sudden; the emigrants have started off with their women and children and all their possessions on a certain day-they have traversed enormous distances, much greater ones than the Israelites traversed, and have finally settled themselves in new abodes. That the Israelites made such a migration there cannot be a doubt. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, all accepted the fact as certain. —Modern Skepticism, p. 280; See Num. 1:2, etc.

M. HOMMAIRE DE HELL.—It was on the 5th of January, 1771, the day appointed by the High Priests, that Oubacha began his march, with seventy thousand families. Most of the hordes were then assembled in the steppes, on the left bank of the Volga, and the whole multitude followed him.—Travels, p. 227.

Exod. 12:38.—And flocks, and herds, even very much cattle (went up with them.)

REV. F. W. HOLLAND.—(The alleged difficulty of subsistence in the case of the Israelites with their numerous flocks, during the forty years in the Wilderness, has been very much exaggerated. The above authority, who has repeatedly traversed that region, says): Large tracts of the northern portion of the plateau of the Tih, which are now desert, were evidently formerly under cultivation. The Gulf of Suez (probably by means of an artificial canal connecting it with the Bitter Lakes) once extended nearly fifty miles further north than it does at present, and the mountains of Palestine were well clothed with trees. Thus there formerly existed rain-making area of considerable extent, which must have added largely to the dews and rains of Sinai. Probably, also, the Peninsula itself was formerly much more thickly wooded.

The amount of vegetation and herbage in the Peninsula, even at the present time, has been very much underrated; and a slight increase in the present rainfall would produce an enormous addition to the amount of pasturage. I have several times seen the whole face of the country, especially the wadies, marvelously changed in appearance by a single shower.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the convent gardens at the foot of Jebel Musa, and those in Wady Feiran, and at Tar, mark the only three spots where any considerable amount of cultivation could exist in the peninsula. Hundreds of old monastic gardens, with copious wells and springs, are scattered over the mountains throughout the granite districts; and I could mention at least twenty streams which are perennial, excepting perhaps in unusually dry seasons.

It has been said that the present physical conditions of the country are such as to render it impossible that the events recorded in the Book of Exodus can ever have occurred there. It is wonderful, however, how apparent difficulties melt away as our acquaintance with the country increases. I see no difficulty myself in the provision of sufficient pasture for the flocks and herds, if, as I have shown, there are good reasons for supposing the rain-fall was in former days larger than it is at present; and with regard to the cattle, I will point out one important fact, which appears to me to have been overlooked, namely, that they were probably used as beasts of burden; and, in addition to other things, carried their own water, sufficient for several days, slung in water-skins by their side, just as Sir Samuel Baker found them doing at the present day in Abyssinia. (The statements of Bishop Colenso, so different from this testimony of experienced travelers, are exaggerated and misleading).—See Recent Explorations in the Peninsula of Sinai—made in 1869.

Exod. 14:1-3.—And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel that they turn and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon; before it shall ye encamp by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.

REV. F. W. HOLLAND.—Goshen probably comprised the district called El Wady, the fertile valley on the edge of the desert, through which now flows the fresh-water canal, leading from the Nile to Ismailia. The starting-point of the Israelites cannot have been very far from the latter place. It appears from the history of the Exodus that the Red Sea was only three days' journey from that point—a distance which exactly agrees with that to the head of the Gulf of Suez.

The passage of the Israelites, across the Sea, is generally supposed to have taken place in the immediate neighborhood of Suez, and a careful examination of the Isthmus and head of the Gulf has led me fully to concur in this opinion. On leaving Egypt the Israelites had probably intended to cross over into thy wilderness of Etham, or Shur, by the higher ridge of land which separates the head of the Gulf of Suez from the Bitter Lakes on the north. This was the natural road to have taken on the way to Sinai, but God commanded Moses to alter their intended course: he bade them turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the Sea—that is, probably in the desert which lies between the range of Jebel Attakah and Suez. Pharaoh coming up in pursuit of them, and seeing that they had missed the road leading round the head of the Gulf, would naturally exclaim: “The wilderness hath shut them in!” The sea was on their left, a high range of Desert Mountains on their right, beyond them a narrow road along the shore, leading only to a yet more barren desert. Escape was impossible unless God had opened a way for them through the Sea.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 408, 413.

Exod. 14:5, 6.—Why have we done this that we have let Israel go from serving us? And Pharaoh made ready his chariot, and took his people with him.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The practice of the king to lead out his army in person, is abundantly evident, and will scarcely be doubted by any. It was indeed a practice universal at the time among all Oriental sovereigns—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 75.

Exod. 14:7.—And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The monuments show that in Ancient Egypt by far the most important arm of the military service was the chariot force. The king, the princes, and all the chiefs of importance fought from chariots.—Ancient Egyptians, I., 335

Exod. 14:27.—And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord over-threw the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—It is an ancient report among the Ichtheophagi, who inhabit the shores of the Red Sea, that by a mighty reflux of the sea which happened in former days, the whole gulf became dry land, and appeared green all over; and that the water overflowed the opposite shore, and that all the ground continued bare to the very lowest depth of the gulf, until the water, by an extraordinarily high tide, returned to its former channel—Diod. Sic., lib. iii., c. 40.

Exod. 15:1-25.—Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing, etc.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—The circumstances which called forth this grateful song of praise were indeed unparalleled. We behold an immense congregation just rescued in a marvelous manner from the power of their enemies, standing upon the shore of the sea, which was strewed with the dead bodies of men and horses, with the broken pieces of chariots and weapons of war scattered in all directions, and all the other wrecks of that awful catastrophe.—Notes In loco.

F. W. HOLLAND.—Ayoun Musa—" The Wells of Moses "—formed probably their first halting-place after the passage. Here, about eight miles south of Suez, are at the present day several springs or pools.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p 413.

E. H. PALMER, M. A.—Here tradition places the site of the passage of the Red Sea; and certain it is that, at least, within the range over which the eye can wander, the waters must have closed in upon Pharaoh's struggling hosts. —Desert of the Exodus, p. 42.

Exod. 15:10.—Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A., Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge. Lead was early known to the ancients. The rocks in the neighborhood of Sinai yielded it in large quantities, and it was found in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians used it for fastening stones together in the rough parts of a building, and it was found by Mr. Layard among the ruins of Nimroud—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, II., p. 1619.

Journey from the Red Sea to Sinai

Exod. 15:22.—So Moses brought the Israelites from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—The word " Shur," in Hebrew, signifies a wall; and as we stand at Ayun Musa and glance over the desert at the Jebels er Rahah and er Tih, which border the gleaming plain, we at once appreciate the fact that these long wall-like escarpments are the chief, if not the only, prominent characteristics of this portion of the wilderness, and we need not wonder that the Israelites should have named this memorable spot after this most salient feature, the wilderness of Shur or the Wall. —Desert of the Exodus, p. 44

Exod. 15:22.—And they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—From the Wells of Moses we traversed an unvaried desert plain for three days: there is nothing to attract attention but the bleached camel bones that mark the track, and nothing to afford food for reflection but the thought that, like the Israelites, you have gone " three days in the desert and have found no water."—Desert of the Exodus, p. 45

Exod. 15:23.—And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah (i. e., bitterness).

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—On the third day we reached Ain Hawarah, which most previous travelers have sought to identify with the Marah of Scripture. It is a solitary spring of bitter water, with a stunted palm-tree growing near it, and affording a delicious shade. The quality of the water varies considerable at different times.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 45.

REV. F. W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—The water of Ain Hawarah varies much in bitterness. I have found it at one time so bitter that I could not even hold it in my mouth, at another more pleasant to drink than the water I had brought in water-skins from Suez. The size of the spring is very small, but the mass of calcareous deposit which surrounds it seems to prove that the water supply from it was formerly larger than at the present time.—Appendix to Smith's Dia. of the Bible, p. 3650.

Exod. 15:24, 25.—And the people murmured against Moses, saying. What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet.

PROF. GEORGE BUSH.—" The Lord showed him a tree; "Greek, showed him a wood. It is clear that the Lord by some special monition or suggestion indicated to Moses a peculiar kind of tree or wood, which when thrown into the water rendered it sweet and fit for use. There is no doubt that certain species of vegetable productions have this corrective property, and that they have often been employed for this purpose. A modern traveler in South America speaks of a shrub called Alumbre, a branch of which put into the muddy stream of the Magdalena, precipitated the mud and earth, leaving the water sweet and clear. The first discoverers of the Floridas are said to have corrected the stagnant and fetid waters they found there, by infusing into it branches of Sassafras; and it is understood that the first use of Tea among the Chinese, was to correct the waters of their ponds and rivers.—Notes In loco.

PROF. JAMES F. JOHNSTON, M. A., F. R. S.—Well-waters sometimes contain vegetable substances of a peculiar kind, which render them unwholesome, even over large tracts of country. When boiled, the organic matter coagulates, and when the water cools separates in flocks, leaving the water wholesome, and nearly free from taste or smell. The same purification takes place when the water is filtered through charcoal, or when chips of oak wood are put into it. Such is the character of the waters in common use in the Landes of the Gironde around Bordeaux, and in many other sandy districts. The waters of rivers, and of marshy and swampy places, often contain a similar coagulable substance. Hence the waters of the Seine at Paris are clarified by introducing a morsel of alum, and the river and marshy waters of India by the use of the nuts of the Strychnos potatorum, of which travelers often carry a supply. One, or two of these nuts, rubbed to powder on the side of the earthen vessel into which the water is to be poured, soon causes the impurities to subside. In Egypt, the muddy water of the Nile is clarified by rubbing bitter almonds on the sides of the water-vessel in the same way. In all these instances the principle of the clarification is the same. The albuminous matter is coagulated by what is added to the water, and in coagulating it embraces the other impurities of the water, and carries them down along with it. These cases, and especially that of the sandy Landes of Bordeaux, and elsewhere, throw an interesting light upon the history of the waters of Marah, as given in the 15th chapter of Exodus. As in our European sandy dunes, the waters of that sandy wilderness may contain an albumen-like substance which an astringent plant will coagulate. The discovery of such a plant among the natural vegetation of the desert would give, therefore, the means of purifying and rendering it wholesome, as cuttings of the oak tree render salubrious the waters of the Landes of La Gironde.—Chemistry of Common Life, vol. i., p. 36.

ROBERTS.—In India, water is often brackish in the neighborhood of salt-pans, or the sea; and the natives correct it by throwing into it the wood called “perru-nelli," Phylanthus emblica. Should the water be very bad, they line the well with planks cut out of this tree. In swampy grounds, or where there has not been rain for a long time, the water is often muddy, and very unwholesome. But providence has again been bountiful by giving to the people the "teata maram," Strychnos potatorum. Those who live in the neighborhood of such water, or who have to travel where it is, always carry a supply of the nuts of this tree. They grind one or two of them on the side of an earthen vessel: the water is then poured in, and the impurities soon subside.—Orient. Illust., p. 73

REV. H. H. MILMAN.—Some water from the fountain called Marah has been brought to England, and has been analyzed by a medical friend of mine. His statement is subjoined: “The water has a slightly astringent bitterish taste. Chemical examination shows that these qualities are derived from the selenite or sulphate of lime which it holds in solution, and which is said to abound in the neighborhood. If, therefore, any vegetable substance containing oxalic acid (of which there are several instances) were thrown into it, the lime would speedily be precipitated, and the beverage rendered agreeable and wholesome."—NOTE in History of the Jews.

EDITOR of Comprehensive Commentary.—The above facts would lead us to suppose that the discovery of this “tree" to Moses, is alone to be considered miraculous: "and the Lord showed him a tree."—In loco.

Exod. 15:27.—And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and three-score and

ten palm-trees: and they encamped there by the waters.

STRABO.—On the Arabian Gulf, contiguous to Poseidium, is a grove of palm-trees, well supplied with water, which is highly valued, because all the district around it is burnt up, and is without water or shade. —Strab, XVI., c. 4.

H. PALMER, M. A.—Here again, our own experience accords with that of the Israelites. Here the eye is again refreshed by the sight of green tamarisks and feathery palms, and just off the customary track is a pleasant stream of running water. This is Wady Gharandel, generally regarded as Elim, and whether or no the grove and stream are the lineal descendants of the twelve springs and seventy palm-trees which the Israelites found there, it is clear that the site of Elim must lie somewhere in the immediate neighborhood.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 46, 226.

W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—On joining the road which leads from 'Ain Howarah, and mounting the southern bank of Wady Gharundel, a raised and undulating plain of considerable extent is reached; this plain is drained by Wady Useit, and contains a few water-holes and scattered palm-trees. The station of Elim is generally thought to have been situated in this plain, and in spite of its present barrenness, it is quite possible that the ancient inhabitants, 'by sinking wells and utilizing the water thus obtained, may have rendered it a pleasant spot for an encampment. The marvelous effect that water has in producing vegetation in the most barren desert is exemplified a few miles further northward, where a small natural basin receives the drainage of the surrounding ground, and produces a luxuriant crop of grass and other herbs. It is called by the Arabs Engi el ful, “the bean fields." It is, therefore, by no means improbable that these few water-holes, and groups, of palm-trees, may mark the site of the “twelve wells of water, and three-score and ten palm-trees," which the children of Israel found at Elim.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 416.

Exod. 16:1.—And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children, of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai.

H. PALMER, M. A.—After a thorough examination of all the other passes, we are forced to the conclusion that, after leaving Elim, Wady Taiyebeh was the only road down which the children of Israel could have marched. And on the supposition that they did so, the Wilderness of Sin will be the narrow strip of desert which fringes the coast south of Wady Taiyebeh.—Desert of the Exodus, 227.

W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—At the mouth of the Wady Taiyebeh is found a considerable plain, which would afford an admirable position for a temporary camp. To the south the mountains approach nearer to the sea, but sufficient space is left for a road along the shore for several miles until the mountains again recede, and the plain of El Murkhah is reached. There can, I think, be little doubt that this plain marks the site of the Wilderness of Sin, where the children of Israel made a long halt, and where God gave them bread from heaven, and they were fed with manna and quails. This plain extends as far south as Wady Feiran, a distance of about twenty-five miles. Like most of the coast plains, it is somewhat barren now; still, it is not without vegetation, and probably in former days, when the rain-fall was larger, and the drainage from the mountains descended gradually, instead of sweeping everything before it, as at the present time, it would have afforded excellent pasturage.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 418.

Exod. 16:11-13.—And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God. And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp; and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.

WILLIAM HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—The quail migrates in immense numbers. See Pliny, H. N. X. 23. Tourneyfort says that all the islands of the Archipelago at certain seasons of the year are covered with these birds. Col. Sykes states that such quantities were once caught in Capri, near Naples, as to have afforded the bishop no small share of his revenue, and that in consequence he has been called “Bishop of Quails." The same writer mentions also that 160,000 quails have been netted in one season on this little island; according to Temminck, 100,000 have been taken near Nettuno in one day. The Israelites would have had little difficulty in capturing large quantities of these birds, as they are known to arrive at places sometimes so completely exhausted by their flight as to be readily taken, not in nets only, but by the hand. Sykes says, They arrive in spring on the shores of Provence so fatigued that for the first few days they allow themselves to be taken by the hand. It is interesting to note the time specified by Moses; “it was at even “that they began to arrive, and they no doubt continued to come all the night. Many observers have recorded that the quail migrates by night.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2650.

Exod. 17:1, 8.—And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink.—Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim.

F. W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—On the site of Rephidim, where the battle with the Amalekites was fought, my opinion differs from that of Captain Wilson and Mr. Palmer. They believe the battle to have been fought in the Wady Feiran, near the site of the ancient city of Paran, and that Jebel Tahunah was the hill on which Moses sat, with Aaron and Hur supporting his arms. The road up this bill, and the churches and chapels on its summits and sides, certainly mark this hill as a very sacred spot in the eyes of the old inhabitants of Paran.—I am strongly of opinion, however, that the Israelites marched up the Wady es-Sheikh, and that the narrow defile of el-Watiyeh, about twelve miles from Jebel Musa, marks the site of the battle of Rephidim. All the requirements of the account of the battle are found at this spot. There is a large plain, destitute of water, for the encampment of the Israelites; a conspicuous hill on the north side of the defile, commanding the battle-ground, and presenting a bare cliff, such as we may suppose the rock to have been which Moses struck. There is another plain on the south of the pass for the encampment of the Amalekites, with abundance of water within easy reach; and, curiously enough, at this very spot, at the foot of the hill on which Moses sat, if this be Rephidim, the Arabs point out a rock, which they call “the seat of the prophet Moses. "—Appendix to Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3651.

Exod. 18:21.—Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens; and let them judge the people at all seasons.

REV. W. L. GAGE.—It is a curious fact that the polity which Jethro, priest of Midian, here, imparted to Moses, his son-in-law, is singularly like that which prevails among the Bedouins of the present time. The taking away of that single responsibility which was slowly crushing the strength of the great lawgiver by overtaxing his power, was followed by that delegation of trust to rulers of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens, which is a marked feature of Arab polity; and every line in the description of the interview of Moses and Jethro, recorded in the 18th chapter of Exodus, is faithful to the experience of all close observers of the Bedouin character.—Studies in Bible Lands, p. 85.

Exod. 19:1, 2.—In the third month when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.

REV. W. L. GAGE.—From the foot of Serbal, and the luxuriant verdure of Wady Feiran, there runs a broad, curving valley, the largest and most important in the whole peninsula, bearing the name of Wady Sheikh. This doubtless was the one taken by the main body of the Israelites. Emerging from the broad mouth of Wady Sheikh, the traveler stands on the meet of Sinai. A plain is seen, vast in size when one thinks how rare it is to meet any continuous tract in that broken and rocky country, for it embraces no less than a square mile. At one extremity there towers the lofty, craggy pile known as Ras Sasafeh, the northern abutment of Sinai. Its grandeur and precipitousness, taken in connection with the great plain at its base, suggests to the mind, in a moment, that here was the scene of the Delivery of the Law.—Studies in Bible Lands, p. 88.

THE COMPILER.—The mountain peaks, which forth the granitic kernel of this whole region, are divided into three groups; the central cluster is Jebel Musa, or the Mount of Moses. This range is some three miles long, and about one mile in breadth. It is an isolated mass of rugged and precipitous rocks, being cut off from the other mountains on three sides by deep wadys or valleys, and partially on the fourth or south side by two smaller valleys. On it are three prominent points that demand special notice. Near the southern extremity is the Jebel Musa, or Mount of Moses, 7,359 feet high. About the middle is Mount Horeb, of lesser elevation. And at its northern end is Ras Sufsafeh, a bold headland surmounted by two peaks, which abruptly and almost perpendicularly terminates the range. Curving along the foot of this stupendous promontory is the wide valley of Rahah, presenting an open and even space, two miles long, and half a mile wide, gently sloping down to the very base of the mountain. From the southern side of this natural and magnificent amphitheater, the two peaks of Ras Sufsafeh rise precipitously to the height of 2,000 feet, “standing out in lonely grandeur against the sky, like a huge altar." On this plain, and at the foot of this altar, both ancient tradition and modern research have fixed the scene of the thousands of Israel assembled to receive the Law at the mouth of God. The late Ordnance Expedition were unanimous in this conviction.—See Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 571.

Exod. 19:11, 12, 17.—Be ready against the third day: for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall surely be put to death.—And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—No one who has approached the Ras Sasafeh through that noble plain, the Wady Es-Sheykh, or who has looked down upon the plain from that majestic height, will willingly part with the belief that these are the two essential features of the view of the Israelite camp. That such a plain should exist at all in front of such a cliff is so remarkable a coincidence with the sacred narrative, as to furnish a strong internal argument, not merely of its identity with the scene, but of the scene itself having been described by an eyewitness. The awful and lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary, would have been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. The low line of alluvial mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly answer to the "bounds" which were to keep the people off from "touching the mount." The plain itself is not broken and uneven and narrowly shut in, like almost all others in the range, but presents a long retiring sweep, against which the people could “remove and stand afar off." The cliff, rising like a huge altar, in front of the whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of " the mount that might be touched," and from which the voice of God might be heard far and wide over the stillness of the plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the influence of all the contiguous valleys. Here, beyond all other parts of the Peninsula, is the adytum, withdrawn as if in the "end of the world," from all the stir and confusion of earthly things.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 43

F. W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—The account which we have in Scripture of Mount Sinai is but scanty. Still there are certain points in connection with it which appear to be indisputable. First. It must have been a mountain easy of approach, and having before it an open space sufficiently large for the congregation of the children of Israel to have been assembled there to receive the Law. Secondly. It was evidently a prominent mountain, rising up abruptly from the plain before it, for the people are said to have come near, and "stood under the mountain," and it is described as a mountain that could be " touched," and "at the nether part " of which the people stood. It seems also to have been separated by valleys from the surrounding mountains, since bounds were ordered to be placed around it. Thirdly. Its immediate neighborhood must have afforded a plentiful supply of water and pasturage.

Let us now see how far Jebel Musa meets these necessary requirements. Under this name I include the peaks of Ras Sufsafeh, which, in fact, form the northern portion of Jebel Musa. Its two peaks rise up precipitously from the bottom of the plain of Er Rahah to a height of about 2,000 feet, being distinctly visible from every part of that plain. It is also isolated by valleys from the mountains on every side, so that it would be by no means difficult to set bounds round about it; while at the same time, its northern cliffs rise so steeply from the plain beneath that it might well be described as "a mountain that could be touched," and at the nether part of which the people could stand. No place could be conceived more suitable than the plain of Er Rahah for the assembling together of many thousands of people, both to witness the thunders and lightning upon the mount, and to hear the voice of the Lord, when he spake unto them. The plain itself is upward of two miles long, and half a mile broad, and slopes gradually down from the water-shed on the north to the foot of Ras Sufsafeh. About 300 yards from the actual base of the mountain there runs across the plain a low, semicircular mound, which forms a kind of natural theater, while further distant on either side of the plain the slopes of the enclosing mountains would afford seats to an almost unlimited number of spectators. And with regard to the water supply, there is no other spot in the whole Peninsula which is nearly so well supplied as the neighborhood of Jebel Musa. Four streams of running water are found there, besides numerous wells and springs.—For the above reasons the members of our Expedition were unanimous in their conviction that the Law was given from Ras Sufsafeh to the Israelites assembled in the plain of Er Rahah.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 408-412.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—It is clear from the Biblical account that the place from whence the Law was proclaimed was a prominent if not an absolutely isolated mountain. Such passages as "and ye came near and stood under the mountain," and " they stood at the nether part," point conclusively to the fact that it was what the apostle describes it to be, "A mountain that could be touched." Here, again, the block of Jebel Musa answers in every way to the description; it is so separated from the adjacent mountains by narrow, rugged valleys that it would be easy to "set bounds about the mount;" a cordon across the mouths of the Wadies ed Deir and Sh'reich, and a few men posted upon Jebel Moneijah to keep the pass leading into Wady Sebaiyeh, would be sufficient to accomplish this task. The “nether part of the mount," namely the bluff Ras Sufsafeh, rises so abruptly from the plain that you may literally stand under it and touch its base. Again, it is clear that at the foot of Sinai there was a plain commanding a view of the mountain from every part, and sufficiently large to admit of the people maneuvering upon it—for them, at one time, to "come near and stand under the mountain;" at another, "to remove and stand afar off." It is not necessary to suppose that all the Israelites were actually encamped upon the plain itself, nor do the words of the Bible even imply it; for we are expressly told that “Moses brought the people forth out of the camp to meet God." They would doubtless spread over a considerable area, and occupy many of the neighboring glens, valleys, and mountain sides, especially where there was plenty of water and pasturage for their flocks and herds. All that is required is a plain capable of affording standing-room for the Israelites as spectators, and the plain of Er Rahah more than satisfies this condition. A calculation made by Captain Palmer, from the actual measurements taken on the spot, proves that the space extending from the base of the mountain to the water-shed, or crest of the plain, is large enough to have accommodated the entire host of the Israelites, estimated at two million souls, with an allowance of about a square yard for each individual.—The neighborhood of Jebel Musa is also the best watered in the whole Peninsula, running streams being found in no less than four of the adjacent valleys.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 101, 102.

Exod. 19:20.—And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—It is clear from the accounts given in the Bible that there must have been a secluded tract of ground on the Mountain, but independent of the summit; for it was after Moses had gone up into Sinai to meditate apart from the people that "the Lord called him up to the top of the mount." The physical characteristics of the mountain, considered as a whole, satisfy the conditions required. First there is the awful descent of the Lord in thunder and fire upon the mountain in the sight of the assembled host; then Moses is called up to the secluded summit to receive the words of the Law from God's own mouth, and again he is sent down to proclaim them to the people. The sequence of events is perfectly natural, and in strict accordance with the present topography of the place.—Desert of the Exodus., p. 100.

Exod. 20:1.—And God spake all these words, saying, etc.

REV. W. L. GAGE. —A person sitting on the summit of Ras Sasafeh, and speaking in ordinary tones, can be understood at the base, for there is not the sound of a bird, or insect, or brook to mingle with his voice. The desert is inhabited by absolute, unbroken silence.—Studies in Bible Lands, p. 94.

DR. ROBINSON. —I know not when I have felt a thrill of stronger emotion, than when in first crossing the plain of Rahah, the dark precipices of Ras Sasafeh rising in solemn grandeur before us, I became aware of the entire adaptedness of the scene to the purpose for which it was chosen.—Bib. Repos., April, 1839.

Exod. 32:15-20.—And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two Tables of the Testimony were in his hand.—And when Joshua heard the noise of the people, as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome; but the noise of them that sing do I hear. And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—It is clear from the account in Exodus that the camp was within hearing of, though not visible from, the path by which Moses and Joshua came down from the mount. If, therefore, the people were encamped in the neighborhood of the plain, this path was probably at that end of the mountain which is nearest to Er Rahah. Now there is a path, called " Jethro's Road," at the northeastern corner of the mountain, close by the mouth of Wady ed Deir, and consequently nearest to the plain. This path emerges into the valley at the foot of the “Hill of the Golden Calf," where our own camp was also situated; it was therefore selected by the members of the Expedition as the most convenient and quickest road. Often in descending this, while the precipitous sides of the ravine hid the tents from my gaze, have I heard the sound of voices from below, and thought how Joshua had said unto Moses as he came down from the mount, “There is a noise of war in the camp."—Desert of the Exodus, p. 101.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—There are some details of the plain of Er Rahah which remarkably coincide with the 'scene of the worship of the Golden Calf, evidently the same as that of the encampment at the time of the Delivery of the Law. In this instance the traditional locality is happily chosen. A small eminence at the entrance of the convent valley is marked by the name of Aaron as being that from which Aaron surveyed the festival on the wide plain below. This tradition, if followed out, would of necessity require the encampment to be in the Wady Er Rahah, as every other circumstance renders probable. But there are two other points which meet here, and nowhere else. First, Moses is described as descending the mountain without seeing the people; the shout strikes the ear of his companion before they ascertain the cause; the view bursts upon him suddenly as he draws nigh to the camp, and he throws down the Tables and dashes them in pieces “beneath the mount." Such a combination might occur in the Wady Er Rahah. Anyone coming down from one of the secluded basins behind Ras Sasafeh, through the oblique gullies which flank it on the north and on the south, would hear the sounds borne through the silence from the plain, but would not see the plain itself till he emerged from the Wady El Deir or the Wady Lejâ; and when he did so, he would be immediately under the precipitous cliff of Sasafeh. Further, we are told that Moses strewed the powder of the fragments of the idol on the “waters “of the "brook that came down out of the mount." This would be perfectly possible in the Wady Er Rahah, into which issues the brook of the Wady Leja, descending, it is true, from Mount St. Catherine, but still in sufficiently close connection with the Gebel Mousa to justify the expression, " coming down out of the mount.''—Sinai and Palestine, p. 43.

Conclusion

F. W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—At last the obscurity which has so long hung over the Peninsula of Sinai, with regard to the possible determination of the route of the Israelites through the desert, has been removed. Almost the whole of the country has now been explored; and that portion of it which possesses the greatest interest for us has been most carefully mapped, by an Expedition sent out under the auspices of the Director-General of our Ordnance Survey. Until lately no one traveler had traversed more than two of the routes of the desert. Hence no just comparison could be instituted between the facilities, or the difficulties, which attended them all. Now, however, we have had gathered up by professional men, the well-known accuracy of whose work places their report and maps beyond suspicion, all the materials that the desert affords for setting at rest the important topographical questions which have, been at issue. It was my privilege to form one of the Exploring Party; having been requested, in consequence of my knowledge of the country, and personal acquaintance with the Arabs, gained during three previous visits in 1861, 1865, and 1867, to accompany the expedition in the capacity of guide.

The Israelites, having crossed the Red Sea somewhere in the neighborhood of Suez, kept down the east coast. They first "went three days in the wilderness, and found no water." They then came to Marah, where "the water was bitter, so that they could not drink it." From there they removed to Elim, and from thence they removed to their encampment "by the sea." Now, the traveler to this day, on his journey to Mount Sinai, after traversing a long, strip of barren desert without water that extends down the coast, comes to a district where the water is brackish and unwholesome; a day's journey next brings him to an elevated plain, where there are wells of water and palm-trees; and then he descends again to the sea-coast, having been forced to pass round the back of a mountain, which reaches out into the sea. Thus, the character of the country, and distances from point to point, exactly agree with the Bible narrative. And this is the case the whole way to Mount Sinai; for next comes a large plain, that answers well to the wilderness of Sin, where the Israelites were first fed with manna; and from the plain one of the principal Wadies affords an easy road to Mount Sinai; a day's journey from which is a spot which tradition marks as the site of the battle of Rephidim, and which agrees well with the short description we have of that battle-field. So mountainous is the country that there is only one other route which could possibly have been followed by the Israelites; and the mention of encampment “by the sea " renders that almost impossible. Thus the features of the country bear out and explain the Bible narrative; and research here, as elsewhere in Bible Lands, confirms our belief in the truth of that history of God's chosen people which has been given us in the Holy Scriptures.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 403, and Scenes from Bible Lands (London, 1872).

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—We have found that the natural route from Egypt to Sinai accords exactly with the simple and concise account given in the Bible of the Exodus of the chosen people of God. In these conclusions all the members of the expedition are agreed. Mr. Holland, it is true, dissents upon "one point, the position of Rephidim. In the main facts of the routes, however, and in the identification of Jebel Musa with Mount Sinai, our investigations have led us to form one unanimous opinion. Me are thus able not only to trace out a route by which the children of Israel could have journeyed, but also to show its identity with that so concisely but graphically laid down in the Pentateuch. We have seen, moreover, that it leads to a mountain answering in every respect to the description of the Mountain of the Law; the chain of topographical evidence is complete, and the maps and sections may henceforth be confidently left to tell their own tAle.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 228.

F. W. HOLLAND, F. R. G. S.—The Ordnance Survey Expedition consisted of Captains Wilson and Palmer, of the Royal Engineers; Mr. E. H. Palmer, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, whose knowledge of Arabic, and rare power of distinguishing between those letters in the language which are so puzzling to European ears, rendered his services of infinite value in many ways, and especially in collecting the traditions and ascertaining the correct nomenclature of the country; Mr. Wyatt, whose occupation was the collection of specimens of natural history; myself; and four non-commissioned officers of the Royal Engineers, all of whom were specially selected for the work from the staff of the Ordnance Survey, one of them, Sergeant-Major MacDonald, being an experienced photographer.—Not a single member of this Party returned home without feeling more firmly convinced than ever of the truth of that sacred history which he found illustrated and confirmed by the natural features of the desert. The mountains and valleys, the very rocks, barren and sun-scorched as they now are, seem to furnish evidences, which none who behold them can gainsay, that this was that " great and terrible wilderness," through which Moses, under God's direction, led his people.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 404, 429.

The Ten Commandments

Exod. 20:3-17.—Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, etc.

REV. WILLIAM JAY.—The Law of the Lord is perfect. The righteousness and excellency of its requirements claim my implicit obedience. Each of its prohibitions only says, Do thyself no harm. Each of its injunctions is an order to be wise, and rich, and noble, and happy. While following them, my understanding never blushes; my conscience never reproaches me. Their demands are always a reasonable service.—Morning Exercises, Sep. 16.

DR. T. DWIGHT, President of Yale College.—The Law of the Ten Commandments is the product of Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. It requires the best possible moral character. It proposes and accomplishes the best possible END—the glory of God, and the happiness of the Intelligent Creation. It is perfectly fitted to the State and Capacity of intelligent creatures; it is so short as to be wholly included in two precepts, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself; and so intelligible as to be understood by every moral being, who is capable of comprehending the meaning of the words, God and Neighbor. In the meantime, these two Precepts, notwithstanding their brevity, are so comprehensive, as to include every possible moral action. The archangel is not raised above their control; nor can any action of his exceed that bound which they prescribe. The child, who has passed the! verge of moral agency, is not placed beneath their regulation; and whatever virtue he may exercise is no other than a fulfillment of their requisitions. All the duties which we immediately owe to God, to our fellow- creatures, and to ourselves, are by these precepts alike comprehended, and required. In a word, endlessly various as moral action may be, it exists in no form, or instance, in which he who perfectly obeys these precepts, will not have done his duty, and will not find himself justified and accepted of God.

These features of the Divine Law will advantageously appear by a comparison of it with the most perfect human laws. I shall select for this purpose those of Great Britain. The Statute Laws of that kingdom are contained, if I mistake not, in about eighteen or twenty folio, or about fifty octavo volumes. The Common, or, as it is sometimes styled, the Unwritten Law, occupies a number of volumes far greater. To understand them is a work of deep science; the employment of the first human talents; and the labor of a life. The great body of them can never be known by the generality of men; and must, therefore, be very imperfect rules of their conduct. In the meantime, multitudes of cases are continually occurring, which they do not reach at all. Those which they actually reach, they affect in many instances injuriously; and in many more, Imperfectly. The system of happiness, which they propose, is extremely defective; a bare state of tolerable convenience; and even that attended with many abatements. They also extend their influence only to a speck of earth, and a moment of time. Yet these laws were devised, reviewed, and amended, by persons of the first human consideration for learning and wisdom.

But the Law, which we have been examining, is comprised in Two Precept: only: is so short; so intelligible; so capable of being remembered, and applied, as to be perfectly fitted to the understanding, and use, of every moral being. At the same time, it is so comprehensive, as to reach, perfectly, every possible moral action; to preclude every wrong, and to secure every right. It is equally fitted to men and angels, to earth and heaven. Its control extends with the same efficacy, and felicity, to all worlds, and to all periods. It governs the Universe; it reaches through Eternity. The system of happiness, proposed and accomplished, by it, is perfect, endless, and forever progressive.—Must not candor, must not prejudice itself, confess, with the Magicians of Egypt, that here is “The Finger of God?"—System of Theology, Serm. XCI.

THOMAS DICK, LL. D.—The Ten Commandments, when properly considered, carry in them an evidence of their divine origin, as striking, and, perhaps, more convincing than any other. Thy unfold to us the moral laws of the universe—they present to us a summary of moral principles and precepts, which is applicable to all the tribes and generations of men, to all the orders of angelic beings, and to all the moral intelligences that people the amplitudes of creation—to man, during his temporary abode on earth, and to man when placed in heaven, so long as eternity endures—precepts, which, if universally observed, would banish misery from the creation, and distribute happiness, without alloy, among all the intellectual beings that exist throughout the empire of God. Can these things be affirmed of any other system of religion or of morals that was ever published to the world? Now, can it be supposed, for a moment, that a Jew, who had been born and brought up in a land of gross idolatry and superstition, and who had spent forty years of his manhood life as a shepherd in a desert country, who lived in a rude age of the world, who had never studied a system of Ethics, and whose mind was altogether incapable of tracing the various relations which subsist between intelligent beings and their Creator, could have investigated those moral principles and laws which form the foundation of the moral universe, and the basis of the divine government in all worlds, unless they had been communicated immediately by Him, who, at one glance, beholds all the physical and moral relations which exist throughout creation, and who can trace the bearings and eternal consequences of every moral law? Surely it must be admitted by all that the unassisted powers of the human mind were inadequate to such a task. The very simplicity which distinguishes these precepts of universal application is characteristic of their Divine Author, who, from the general operation of a few general principles and laws in the system of Nature, produces all the variety we perceive in the material world, and all the harmonies, the contrasts, the beauties, and the sublimities of the universe. If, then, we find in a book which professes to be a revelation from heaven, a system of moral laws which can clearly be shown to be the basis of the moral order of the universe, and which are calculated to secure the eternal happiness of all intellectual beings-it forms a strong presumptive proof, if not an unanswerable argument, that the contents of that book are of celestial origin, and were dictated by Him, who gave birth to the whole system of created beings.—Philosophy of Religion, c. III. See Deut. 5:6-21.

Special Laws

Exod. 21:5, 6.—But if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.

PLAUTUS.—Stalin. Would you prefer to be single and a freeman, or as a married man to pass your life, with your wife and children, in slavery! Whichever condition you prefer, take it—Chalinus. If I am free, I live at my own cost; at present I live at yours—Casin., Act II., sc. 4.

PROF. CHARLES BUSH.—This boring of the ears was in the Eastern countries a badge of servitude.—Notes In loco.

JUVENAL.—Why should I fear or doubt to defend 'the place, though born on the banks of the Euphrates, as the tender perforations in my ear evince Sat. I., 102.

First come, first served, he cries, and I, in spite

Of your great lordships, will maintain my right:

Though born a slave, though my torn ears are bored,

'Tis not the birth, 'tis money makes the lord.

—Sat. I., 102.

Exod. 21:23-25.—And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The lex talionis, or law of like for like, prevailed among both the Greeks and Romans. Among the latter it constituted a part of the “Twelve Tables," so famous in antiquity; but the punishment was afterward changed to a pecuniary fine, to be levied at the discretion of the Praetor.— Com. In loco.

PROF. C. BUSH.—In several countries of the East, we find the law of retaliation obtaining at the present day in regard to the same class of injuries as those which came under its operation in the Hebrew statute book.—Notes In loco.

Exod. 22:6.—If fire break out, and catch in thorns, so that the stacks of corn, or the standing corn, or the field, be consumed therewith, he that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.

HARMER.—It is a common custom in the East, to set the dry herbage on fire before the autumnal rains; which fires, for want of care, often do great damage; and in countries where great drought prevails, and herbage is generally parched, great caution was peculiarly necessary; and a law to guard against such evils, and to punish inattention and neglect, was highly expedient—Obs. viii., p. 310.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—When I was crossing the plain of Gennesaret, in 5848, during harvest I stopped to lunch at 'Ain et Tiny, and my servant kindled a very small fire to make a cup of coffee. A man detached from a company of reapers, came immediately and stood patiently by us until we had finished, without saying what he wanted. As soon as we left, however, he carefully extinguished our little fire, and upon inquiry I found he had been sent for that purpose. Burckhardt, while stopping at Tiberias, hired a guide to the caves in Wedy el Hamam, and says that this man was constantly reproving him for the careless manner in which he threw away the ashes from his 'pipe. He then adds, " The Arabs who inhabit the Valley of the Jordan invariably put la death any person who is known to have been even the innocent cause of firing the grass; and they have made it a public law among themselves that, even in the height of intestine warfare, no one shall attempt to set his enemy's harvest on fire." The ordinance of Moses on this subject was a wise regulation, designed to meet a very urgent necessity. To understand the full value of the law, we must remember that the wheat is suffered to become dead ripe, and as dry as tinder, before it is cut; and farther, that the land is tilled in common, and the grain sown in one vast field, without fence, ditch, or hedge to separate the individual portions. A fire catching in any part, and driven by the wind, would consume the whole, and thus the entire population might be stripped of their year's provisions in half an hour.—The Land and the Book, Vol. I., p. 529.

Exod. 22:21.—Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

EURIPIDES.—It is impious for a state to reject the suppliant prayer of the strangers—Heracl., v. 107.

PLAUTUS.—You must be a worthless, bad servant, to be laughing at one who is a foreigner and a stranger. —Pœn, Act V., sc. 2.

ÆNEAS.—

Enter, my noble guest! and you shall find,

If not a costly welcome, yet a kind;

For I myself, like you, have been distressed,

Till heaven afforded me this place of rest.

Like you, an alien in a land unknown,

I learn to pity woes so like my own.

—Virgil,. Æn., I., 631.

APOL. RHODIUS.—Jove, the Friend of strangers—Arg., III., 986.

Exod. 22:29.—Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—From the practice of the Hebrews, in obedience to this law, the heathens borrowed a similar one, founded on the same reason.—Com. In loco.

PLINY.—The Romans never tasted either their new corn or wine, till the priests had offered the first- fruits to the gods—Hist. Nat., lib. xviii., c. 2.

TIBULLUS.—

My grateful fruits, the earliest of the year,

Before the rural god shall daily wait,

From Ceres' gifts I'll cull each browner ear,

And hang a wheaten wreath before her gate.

—Eleg., lib. i., 13.

CENSORINUS.—Our ancestors, who held their food; their country, the light, and all that they possessed, from the bounty of the gods, consecrated to them a part of all their property; rather as a token of their gratitude, than from the conviction that the gods needed anything. Therefore, as soon as the harvest was got in, before they had tasted of the fruits, they appointed libations to be made to the gods. And as they held their fields and cities as gifts from their gods, they consecrated a certain part, in the temples and shrines, where they worshipped.—De Die Natali.

Exod. 23:3.—Thou shalt not countenance a poor man in his cause.

QUINTILIAN.—Both kinds of injustice are to be avoided. A bribe is not to be received from the rich against the poor; nor, on the other hand, is that more plausible habit of supporting the feeble against the powerful to be adopted; for fortune does not in itself make any cause just or unjust—Quint., lib. xii., c. 7.

The Three Great Feasts

Exod. 23:17.—Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.—Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord God.

Exod. 36:24.—Neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year.

PROF. CHARLES BUSH.—It might seem at first view that there was signal impolicy in leaving the land defenseless, while all the adult male population were congregated at a distance from their families and homes. Humanly speaking, it is indeed surprising that the hostile nations on their borders did not take advantage of their exposedness. For the matter was no secret; it was publicly known that at three set times every year they actually attended at Jerusalem. Why, then, were not inroads made at these seasons, to slay the old men, women and children, to burn the cities and carry off the spoil? How shall we account for the enmity of their foes being asleep at these particular times, when the land was defenseless? and perfectly awake at every other season, when they were at home, and ready to oppose them? Unless the Scriptures had given a solution, the matter would have been deemed inexplicable; but from this source we learn that the same Being who appointed those feasts guaranteed the security of the land while they were attending them. Thus runs the promise, “Neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God, thrice in the year." Thus to remove all apprehensions as to the safety of their property or their families, he pledged himself to protect their frontier, and so overrule the minds of their enemies, that they should not even "desire" to invade their land at any of those seasons. Accordingly we look in vain throughout the whole course of their subsequent history for an instance of foreign aggression made under these circumstances. Can anything afford us a more striking instance of a particular providence? During the whole period between Moses and Christ, we never read of an enemy invading the land at the time of the three festivals; the first that occurs was thirty-three years after they had withdrawn from themselves the divine protection, by embracing their hands in the Savior's blood, when Cestius, the Roman General, slew fifty of the people of Lydda, while all the rest were gone up to the Feast of Tabernacles, A. D. 66.—Notes in locis.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—What a manifest proof was this of the power and particular providence of God! How easy would it have been for the surrounding nations to have taken possession of the whole Israelitish land, with all their defensed cities, when there were none left to protect them but women and children! Was not this a standing proof of the divine origin of their religion, and a barrier which no deistical mind could possibly surmount? Thrice every year did God work an especial miracle for the protection of his people: controlling even the very "desires" of their enemies, that they might not so much as meditate evil against them.—Comment. In loco.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—This remarkable promise would form, while the people continued to observe the solemn feasts, a full demonstration of the divine origin of their religion, and three times in the year they would put this matter to a new proof. No instance is recorded, through the whole history, of the land being invaded on these occasions. No false prophet would ever have inserted such an engagement in his writings, by which his own imposture would always be liable to detection.—Comment. In loco.

Exod. 23:19.—The first of the first-fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God.

ARISTOTLE.—The ancient sacrifices and general meetings seem to have been held after collecting the fruits of the earth as first-fruits.—Eth., lib. viii., c. 10.

OVID.—Thou, O Bacchus, having subdued the Ganges and all the East, didst set apart the first-fruits for the mighty Jove.—Fast., lib. iii., v. 729.

Construction of the Tabernacle

Exod. 25:8, 9, etc.—And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The state of the arts as represented among the Hebrews when in the wilderness (Exod. 25:2-8) has sometimes been objected to as “unduly advanced; " but all that we read of there is in entire accordance with the condition of art in Egypt at the period. The Egyptian civilization of the 18th and 19th dynasties embraces all the various arts and manufactures necessary for the construction of the tabernacle and its appurtenances, for the elaborate dress of the priests, and for the entire ceremonial described in the later books of the Pentateuch. The employment of writing, the arts of cutting and setting gems, the power of working in metals—and especially in gold, in silver, and in bronze—skill in carving wood, the tanning and dyeing of leather, the manufacture of fine linen, the knowledge of embroidery, the dyeing of textile fabrics, the employment of gold thread, the preparation and use of highly-scented unguents, are parts of the early civilization of Egypt, and were probably at their highest perfection about the time that the exodus took place. Although the Hebrews, while in Egypt, were, for the most part, mere laborers and peasants, still it was natural that some of them, and, even more, that some of the Egyptians who accompanied them (Ex. 13:38), should have been acquainted with the various branches of trade and manufactures established in Egypt at the time. Hence there is nothing improbable in the description given in the Pentateuch of the Ark and its surroundings, since the Egyptian art of the time was quite equal to their production.—Historical Illustrations of the O. T., p. 80.

The Urim and Thummim, and Priestly Robes

Exod. 28:2, 4, 30.—And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.... And these are the garments which they shall make; a breastplate, and an ephod, etc.... And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart, when he goeth in before the Lord: and Aaron shall hear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually.

ÆLIAN.—Among the Egyptians those who judged were formerly priests, and of these the eldest was the chief; he pronounced the law to all, and it behooved him to be the justest and most impartial of all men. He wore suspended from his neck an image of sapphire, which was called “Truth"—Var. Hist., lib. xiv., c. 34.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—An adequate stipend was awarded to the judges by the king; the chief judge receiving the largest income. He wore suspended from his neck by a golden chain a small figure which was called “Truth," set with precious stones. As soon as the chief judge had placed this image upon his neck the pleading of a cause began—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 75.

PROF. EDWARD HAYES PLUMTREE, M. A.—" Urim and Thummim "—of these words, “Light and Truth " is the translation given in the Vulgate; but " Light and Perfection " would probably be the best English equivalent... Seeing the Urim and Thummim are mentioned with no description or explanation, we must infer that they and their meaning were already known, if not to the other Israelites, at least to Moses. And if we are to look for their origin anywhere, it must be in the customs and symbolism of Egypt. And here we find at once a patent and striking analogy. The priestly judges of Egypt, with whose presence and garb Moses must have been familiar, wore, each of them, hanging on his neck, suspended on a golden chain, a figure which Greek writers describe as an image of Truth, often with closed eyes, made sometimes of sapphire or other precious stones, and, therefore, necessarily small. They were to see in this a symbol of the purity of motive, without which they would be unworthy of their office. With it they touched the lips of the litigant as they bade him speak the truth, the whole truth, the perfect truth. (Diod. Sic., lib. i., 48, 75; Ælian, Var. Hist., xiv., 34.)... This custom was of very ancient origin; it is set forth on the older monuments of Egypt. There round the neck of the judge are seen the two figures of Thmei (Thummim), representative of Truth, Justice. (Wilk., Ancient Egyptians, V., 28.)... On the breast of well-nigh every member of the priestly caste of Egypt there hung a pectoral plate, corresponding in position and in size to the Choshen or Breastplate of the High Priest of Israel. And in many of these we find, in the center of the pectorale, right over the heart of the Priestly Mummy, as the Urim was to be "on the heart" of Aaron, what was a known symbol of Light. In that symbol were united and embodied the highest religious thoughts to which man had then risen. It represented the Sun and the Universe, Light and Life, Creation and Resurrection... Position, size, material, meaning, everything answers the conditions of the problem.... The High Priest, in the use of the Urim and Thummim, fixing his gaze on "the gems oracular " that lay " on his heart," fixed his thoughts on the Light and Perfection which they symbolized, on the Holy Name inscribed on them. The act was itself a prayer, and„ like other prayers, it might be answered... All disturbing elements—selfishness, prejudice, and the fear of man—were eliminated. He received the insight which he craved.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3357, etc.

Exod. 28:31, 33.—Thou shalt make the robe of the ephod all of blue.... And beneath, upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about: a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about.

PLUTARCH.—The High Priest of the Jews wears a vesture of deer-skin, wrought with gold, together with a long robe, reaching to the feet, and buskins: and many little bells are suspended from his garments, jingling as he goes—Symp., IV., 6.

PLAUTUS.—I'll fetch two sacrificers with their bells—Pseud., a. I., sc. 3.

Exod. 28:39.—Thou shalt embroider the coat of fine linen; and thou shalt make the miter of fine linen, and thou shalt make the girdle of needle-work.

HERODOTUS.—The priesthood in Egypt is confined to one particular mode of dress: they have one vest of linen, and their shoes are made of byblus—Euterpe, c. 37.

PLUTARCH.—The Egyptian priests wear no garments of wool, which they esteem to be impure, but surplices and vestments of linen.—De Isid. et Osiris., C. 4.

MARTIAL—The bare-headed priests of Isis, clad in linen vestments.—Mart., lib. xii., epgr. 29.

Sacrifice and Incense

Exod. 29:13.—And thou shalt take all the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul that is above the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and burn them upon the altar.

HOMER.—

The limbs they sever from the inclosing hide,

The thighs, selected to the gods, divide.

On these, in double cauls, involved with art,

The choicest morsels lie from every part.

—Iliad, II., 460.

STRABO.—Among the Persians, of the victim slain for sacrifice, they lay only a small piece of the caul upon the fire.—Strab., XV 3.

Exod. 29:40.—And with the one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an him of beaten oil, and the fourth part of an bin of wine for a drink-offering.

HOMER.—

The priest himself before his altar stands,

And burns the offering with his holy hands;

Gives the best morsels to the sacred fire,

Pours the black wine and sees the flames aspire.

—Iliad, I., p. 80.

HESIOD.—Propitiate the gods with libations and incense, both when you go to rest, and when the holy light has risen—Oper. et Dies, v. 336.

Exod. 30:19, 20.—Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat: when they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not, or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering by fire unto the Lord.

HOMER.—

Disposed in rank their hecatomb they bring,

With water purify their hands, and take

The sacred offering.

—Iliad, I., 448.

IDEM.—Bring water for the hands, and use words of good omen, that we may beseech Saturnian Jove, etc.—Iliad, IX., 171.

ROBERTS.—In the vestibule of every heathen temple, in India, a large brass laver is kept filled with water. In it the priest washes his hands and feet before he enters into the holy place.—Orient. Iliust., p. 80.

Exod. 30:23-25.—Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels, and of cassia five 'hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil-olive an him: and thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary.

PLUTARCH.—The composition called by the Egyptians cuphi, is a mixture of sixteen ingredients, among which are rosin, myrrh, mastich, cardamomum, and calamus. These are not compounded at a venture, but certain sacred writings are read to the apothecaries while they compound them.—De Isid. et Osirid., c. 81.

PLINY.—Scented calamus, which grows in Arabia, is common to both India and Syria—Hist. Nat., XII., 48.

REV. DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—Moses was commanded to prepare holy oil for the consecration of the tabernacle and all the vessels used in the service of the sanctuary. He was to compound it with sweet spices, after the art of the Egyptian perfumer, as he himself had known it to be done in Egypt. The vases in which these perfumes were kept have been found in the valley of the Nile. In some cases the precious ointment remains in the alabaster box just as it was put up by the Egyptian apothecary, and the spices still exhale their odor. The sweet savor of the costly preparation, 3,000 years old, in the tombs of Egypt, is a testimony that the word of Moses is true.—In Wood's Bible Animals, p. 690.

The Arts

Exod. 31:4.—To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, etc.

SIR WILLIAM DRUMMOND.—It follows from the numerous facts that have come into our possession, that when the Hebrews quitted Egypt, the knowledge of metallurgy, chemistry, and pharmacy, must have been already well advanced in that country. Origines, II., p. 272-275.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The artistic genius of Bezaleel and Aholiab was given to them originally by God, and the circumstances of life which gave them an opportunity to exercise and improve that genius in Egypt were determined by Him with a view to its ultimate employment in his special service.... The three metals, gold and silver and copper, were naturally the first which men appropriated to their service; and the scripture exhibits them as in use, and even abundant, in Egypt and Palestine, a few ages after the flood. We know not precisely, when these metals first became known; but at the time now immediately under our notice, the arts of metallurgy had certainly attained considerable perfection; various personal ornaments—various utensils—and even images—of gold and silver, have already been often mentioned in the sacred text. It seems to our mind, that a large mass of evidence in favor of the verity of the Pentateuch remains yet untouched—the evidence resulting from the perfect conformity of all its allusions, to the state of the arts and the materials on which the arts operate, as well as the agreement of its statements concerning the condition of men, with the natural progress of men, and of the arts they cultivate, and with the condition of things at the most early 'times of which profane history exhibits any knowledge. Even the silence of the Pentateuch, as to particulars which a writer later than Moses could scarcely have failed to notice, is not the least valuable of the internal evidences which the book bears of its own antiquity and truth. In the present instance, all history and all experience corroborate the statements of Moses with regard to the early and prior use of gold, silver, and copper. These are the metals which are the most easily found, which are found in the purest state, and which are the most easily wrought when they are found. —Pict. Bib. In loco.

The Molten Calf

Exod. 32:4.—And Aaron received the ear-rings at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It is expressly said that the Hebrews had, while in Egypt, served the gods of that country; and had this information been wanting, the fact of their predilection for the idolatry of Egypt would be sufficiently apparent from their conduct on the present and various other occasions. It is not at all questioned that the idol to which they turned aside at this time was an Egyptian god; and it is also very generally agreed that this god was no other than Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, under whose form Osiris was worshipped; or, perhaps, Mnevis, the sacred ox of Heliopolis, which was also dedicated to Osiris, and honored with a reverence next to that paid to Apis. These animals, as representatives of Osiris, were worshipped as gods throughout the land of Egypt. Thus as the Israelites were tainted with the idolatry of Egypt, and as Apis was one of the most conspicuous objects in the idolatrous system, a sufficient explanation seems to be given of the direction taken by the first apostasy of the Israelites from Him who had recently given them such large and manifest evidence of his mercy and regard—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Exod. 32:6, 19.—And the people sat, down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And it came to pass, as soon as Moses came nigh unto the camp that he saw the calf, and the dancing.

LUCIAN.—Of all the ancient mysteries no one is discoverable at which dancing was not in practice.—De Saltat., c. 15.

ARRIAN.—Dances are led up, and paeans sung in honor of the gods—Exped. Alex. IV., II.

XENOPHON.—And when they had performed the sacrifices, and sung their pæans, the Thracians rose up, and armed men danced to the sound of the pipe; and they sprang up nimbly and used their swords in the dance—Cyrop., V., 9.

Exod. 32:15, 16.—And Moses turned and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It would appear that the first and earliest purpose to which the art of writing was applied was to transmit Laws, and the memory of great events, to future times. And all our existing information points to stone as the substance on which writing was first executed; and men continued to engrave important documents on stone in times long subsequent to that in which writing was made subservient to the intercourse of life and the service of literature. Ancient inscriptions on the surface of perpendicular rocks are still found in different parts of Asia, many of them of such early date that the knowledge of the characters in which they were written is lost. —Pict. Bib. In loco.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The inhabitants of Panchæa possess a record, written, as they say, by Jupiter's own hand. They have also a large golden pillar, on which are letters inscribed, called by the Egyptians sacred writing, expressing the famous actions of Uranus, Jupiter, Diana and Apollo, written, as they say, by Mercury himself—Diod. Sic., V., 46.

GOGUET.—There is nothing in all antiquity more famous than the pillars or tables of stone on which Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, is said to have written his theology, and the history of the first ages. In Crete there existed very ancient columns, charged with inscriptions detailing the ceremonies practiced in the sacrifices of the Corybantes. In the time of Demosthenes there still existed at Athens a law of Theseus inscribed on a stone pillar. Origine des Lois, Vol. I., p. 204.

Work in Gold and Precious Stones

Exod. 35:21-28.—And they brought the Lord's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation and for all his service, and for the holy garments. And they came both men and women, as many as were willing-hearted, and brought bracelets, and ear-rings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold... And every man with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goat's hair, and red skins of rams, and badger skins, brought them... And the rulers brought onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod, and for the breastplate; and spice, and oil for the light, and for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.

REV. DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—Some have wondered how the Hebrews could contribute vast quantities of gold, and silver, and precious stones, as Moses says they did, for the construction of the tabernacle and its furniture in the desert. But they had learned the art of ornamentation from their masters, and they had conformed to the social life around them in the days of their freedom and prosperity; and now necklaces of gold and cornelian, engraved signets, girdles, rings, pendants, bracelets, armlets, amulets, chains, metallic mirrors, costly and elegant ornaments of every description, are found in tombs with mummies, and the forms are engraven and painted on monuments of the age of Moses. The explorer in the valley of the Nile to-day can see the models from which Bezaleel and Aholiab learned the art of setting precious stones, and of making wreathen chain-work in gold, and of carving in wood, and of devising all manner of tasteful forms in gold, and silver, and brass. The children of Israel also brought an offering of red skins of rams, and badger skins, for the service of the sanctuary: and the monuments show us the forms and device, which they used for the adornment of the sacred tent. In the tombs of Thebes leather has been found stamped with beautiful figures in various colors, with the names of the most ancient kings. Sandals, shields, harps, quivers, are ornamented with green morocco. The stamp of the lotus blossom can still be traced in the leather, and the shop of the workers is pictured on the walls of the tomb. At Beni Hassan the Bible student can see to-day the representation of the whole process of preparing the fine-twined linen which was used in making the curtains of the tabernacle, and the pictures are as old as the days of Moses. Men are beating the yarn with sticks to make it soft. They are boiling it in water to increase its pliability. Women join with men in twining the thread for weaving. The blue, and the purple, and the scarlet thread which the wise-hearted Hebrew women spun for the tabernacle in the desert has been kept 3,300 years in the dry air of Egypt for our eyes to see.—Research and Travel in Bible Lands, in " Wood's Bible Animals," p. 695.

Dyeing and Gilding

Exod. 35:35.—Work... in blue, and in purple, and in scarlet.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—As the Hebrews had just come from Egypt, there is no doubt that they employed the same coloring materials that were there in use, and it is therefore interesting to inquire what these were. The cloths in which the mummies are enfolded, is in application to the present subject. The colors of these are various, being pure yellow, brownish yellow, dark red, flesh color, and pale brick, or red color. The selvage of these cloths is sometimes adorned with blue stripes. A small pattern of edging to one of these cloths was composed of a strip of blue, followed by three narrow lines of the same color, alternating with three narrow lines of a fawn color, all apparently formed in the loom with threads previously dyed. A variety of colors may also be seen in the paintings which adorn their ancient tombs—Pict. Bible In loco.

Exod. 36:34.—And he overlaid the boards with gold, and made their rings of gold to be places for the bars, and overlaid the bars with gold.

HERODOTUS.—At Paprêmis, the image of the gal is kept in a small wooden shrine covered with plates of gold—Euterpe, c. 63.

IDEM.—Mycerinus conceived the wish to entomb his child in some unusual way. He therefore caused a cow to be made of wood, and after the interior had been hollowed out, he had the whole surface coated with gold; and in this novel tomb laid the dead body of his daughter. The cow was not placed under ground, but continued visible to my times—the head and neck are coated very thickly with gold, and between the horns there is a representation in gold of the orb of the sun—Euterpe, C. 129-132.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The gold used by the Egyptians for overlaying the faces of the mummies, and ornamental objects, is often remarkable for its thickness.—Rawlinson's Herod, Vol. II., p. 177, n.

Mirrors

Exod. 38:8.—And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of the looking glasses of the women assembling.

SIR G. WILKINSON.—The mirrors of the ancient Egyptians were made of a mixed metal, chiefly copper, wrought with such admirable skill, that they were susceptible of a luster, which has even been partially revived at the present day, in some of those discovered at Thebes, though buried in the earth for many centuries.—Ancient Egypt, III., 384.

EURIPIDES. —Having placed the golden chaplet around her tresses she arranges her hair in the radiant mirror.—Med., v. 1161.

IDEM.—I was binding my braided hair with fillets, looking into the round polished surface of the golden mirror—Hecub. v. 925.

PLINY.—Pure silver was formerly used for the purpose of making mirrors. The best mirrors in the times of our ancestors were those of Brundisium, composed of a mixture of stannum and copper—Hist. Nat., XXXIII., 45.

Leviticus

Sacrifices

Lev. 1: 2.—If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Only such animals as formed part of their herds and flocks, and were used for food, should be offered for sacrifice. This formed one important distinction between the sacrifices of the Hebrews and those of other ancient nations; for although the latter sacrificed oxen, sheep and goats, they also offered many other animals, clean and unclean, wild and tame. Thus, horses were sacrificed to the sun, hogs to Ceres and to Bacchus, dogs to Hecate, and wolves to Mars. In Arabia, camels were anciently sacrificed, as is still done occasionally—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Lev. 1:4.—And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—It is a fact, that when a Hindu makes an offering of a goat or a ram, he puts his hand on the head of the victim, while the, priest repeats the mantherams or prayers; after which the head is struck off at one blow.—Orient. Illust., p. 83.

Lev. 1:5.—And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord: and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Many curious and illustrative traces of this custom of sprinkling or offering the blood may be discovered among nations remote from each other in time and place. Among the Greeks the blood was reserved in a vessel and offered on the altar. Among the Scythians (who often sacrificed men) the blood of the victims was sprinkled on their deity; with blood also they profusely sprinkled the trunks of their sacred trees. The Indians who reside among the hills Rajamahall sprinkle the blood of their sacrifices on the shrine Chumda. Some Indian tribes worship a rude stone by an offering of blood. The Chaman Tartars stain their idols with blood—Pict. Bib. In loco.

The Sacred Fire

Lev. 6:13.—The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.

REV. J. J. STEWART BROWNE, B. D.—This fire was the symbol and token of the perpetual worship of Jehovah. For inasmuch as the whole religion of Israel was concentrated in the sacrifices which were offered, the extinguishing of the fire would have looked like the extinguishing of the religion itself.—In Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 76.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON, M. A.—The Chaldeans and Persians, and after them the Greeks and Romans, had sacred hearths on which they preserved a perpetual fire. In the temple of Apollo Carneus at Cyrene the fire upon the altar was never suffered to be extinguished: the same is related of the sacred fire in the temple of Aderbain in Armenia: the Caimachitæ of India also maintained a perpetual fire. Pausanias mentions the lamp of Minerva Pallas, at Athens, which never went out: and many of the Romans maintained a constant fire, not only in the temple, but in their private houses.—Testimony of the Heathen, p. 109.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—In imitation of this perpetual fire (upon the Hebrew altar), he ancient Persian Magi, and their descendants the Parsees, kept up a perpetual fire: the latter continue to the present day.—Note In loco.

Fat and Blood Prohibited

Lev. 7:23, 26.—Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat. Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—The prohibition on eating fat was salubrious in a region where skin diseases are frequent and virulent; and that on blood had, no doubt, a similar tendency.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3346.

Ablutions

Lev. 8:6.—And Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—We find at the heathen temples, lavers of a similar use to this at the tabernacle. The Egyptian priests washed themselves with cold water twice every day, and twice at night; the Greeks had their sprinklings, the Romans their lavations and lustrations; the ancient Christians practiced ablution before receiving the sacrament, and also bathed their eyes on entering a church. The Roman Catholic Church retains something of the practice of ablution before, and sometimes after, mass; and Calmet says that the holy-water vessels at the entrance of the churches are in imitation of the laver of the tabernacle. The Mohammedans wash before entering a Mosque. The Hindus rejoice in the purifying virtues of the Ganges. In fact, nothing is, or has been, more common than ablutions in the worship which different nations render to their gods; and there are few acts connected with their service which are not begun or ended with some rite symbolical of purification—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Clean and Unclean Animals

Lev. 11:2.—Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts' hat are on the earth.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—As regards the animals allowed for food, comparing them with those forbidden, there can be no doubt on which side the balance of wholesomeness lies. Nor would any dietetic economist fail to pronounce in favor of the Levitical dietary code as a whole, as insuring the maximum of public health.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3346.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The close connection that subsists between the body and the soul, we cannot fully comprehend; and as little can we comprehend the influence they have on each other. Many moral alterations take place in the mind in consequence of the influence of the bodily organs; and these latter are greatly influenced by the kind of aliment which the body receives. God knows what is in man, and he knows what is in all creatures; he has, therefore, graciously forbidden what would injure both body and mind, and commanded what is best calculated to be useful to both.—Comment on chap. 11., in fine.

Lev. 11:3.—Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Here we have a specific allusion to that order of the Mammalia which are called the Ruminantia, as embracing all those animals that chew the cud, and have the foot divided into two principal toes. The reader will not fail to observe that the beautifully simple and scientific division of quadrupeds here stated on Divine authority at so early a period, is one which has never yet, after all the improvements in natural history, become obsolete; but on the contrary, is one which the greatest masters of the science have continued to consider useful—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Lev. 11: 7, 8.—And the swine... of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch: they are unclean to you.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—Swine are said to be peculiarly liable to disease in their own bodies. This probably means that they are more easily led than other creatures to the foul feeding which produces it; and where the average heat is great, decomposition rapid, and malaria easily excited, this tendency in the animal is more mischievous than elsewhere. A meazel or mezel, from whence we have "measled pork," is the old English word for a “leper," and it is asserted that eating swine's flesh in Syria and Egypt tends to produce that disorder.—In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, P. 3346.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Of all animals, the hog is the only one subject to leprosy, and also to measles, and a disorder resembling the king's evil. The Hebrews were aware of this, and had a saying that the hogs received nine out of ten measures of leprosy that descended on the world—Pict. Bib. In loco.

MICHAELIS.—Whoever is afflicted with any cutaneous diseases must carefully abstain from swine's flesh if he wishes to recover. It has likewise long ago been observed, that the eating of swine's flesh produces a peculiar susceptibility of itchy disorders. Now in the whole tract of country in which Palestine lies, something more to the south, and something more to the north, the leprosy is an endemic disease: in Egypt it is peculiarly common; and the Israelites left that country so far infected with it, that Moses was obliged to make many regulations on the subject, that the contagion might be weakened, and the people tolerably guarded against its influence. Every physician will interdict a person laboring under any cutaneous disease from eating pork—Obs. In loco.

PLUTARCH.-As for swine's flesh, the Jews have it in great abomination. They suppose that the white leprosy may be engendered by feeding upon it—Sympos, 1. iv., qu. 5.

IDEM.—The bodies of those who drink the milk of swine break out into leprous and rough scabs.— De Isid. et Osirid., c. 8.

PLINY.—In cases of scrofula, the use of swine's flesh is forbidden to the patient. —.Hist. Nat., 1. xxx., c. 12.

Lev. 11:9, 12.—These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—Amongst fishes, those which were allowed contain, unquestionably, the most wholesome varieties, save that they exclude the oyster. —Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3344.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—We may observe that the fish with fins and scales are generally to this day regarded as wholesome, and often delicious, while the rest that differ in these particulars are frequently looked upon with disgust, and sometimes with horror, from the belief that they are sometimes poisonous. It is interesting to remark how the sentiments of mankind do generally, in this instance, coincide with the Divine precept—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Lev. 11:13.—And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls: they shall not be eaten.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—By the law of Moses, birds were divided into two classes, so far as food was concerned-the clean and the unclean. The unclean included all birds of prey, and carrion and fish-feeders. On other classes, as the passerine birds, game and poultry groups, the Duck tribe, and most of the Waders, excepting only the Herons and Storks, there was no restriction. In fact, the Mosaic Law permitted the eating of all those birds which are considered edible now, and only forbade those which, however repugnant to our tastes, are yet eaten by many of the half-savage tribes of Syria and Arabia; as the mountaineers of Lebanon will devour the flesh of the Eagle without scruple. The Law of Moses in this respect did but sanction by legislative enactment that which the instinct of civilized man has in all ages approved.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 158.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—As regards birds, the Raptores have commonly tough and indigestible flesh, and some of them are in all warm countries the natural scavengers of all sorts of carrion and offal. This alone begets an instinctive repugnance towards them, and associates them with what was beforehand a defilement. Thus to kill them for food would tend to multiply various sources of uncleanness.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3345.

Lev. 11:22.—Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, etc.

HERODOTUS. —The Nasamones hunt for locusts, which, having dried in the sun, they reduce to a powder, and eat, mixed with milk.—Lib. iv., c. 172.

STRABO. —There is a people of Arabia whose food consists of locusts, which the southwest and west winds, when they blow violently is the spring-time, drive in bodies into the country. The inhabitants catch them, by throwing into the ravines materials which, when ignited, cause a great deal of smoke. The locusts as they fly across the smoke are blinded, and fall down. They are pounded with salt, made into cakes, and eaten as food.—Lib. xvi., c. 4.

PLINY.—Some tribes of the Ethiopians subsist on nothing but locusts, which are smoke-dried and salted as their provision for the year.—Nat. Hist. 1. vic. 35.

M. LEWYSOHN.—A regular traffic used to be carried on with the chagabim (locusts), which were caught in great numbers, and sold after wine had been sprinkled over them; but the Israelites were only allowed to buy them before the dealer had thus prepared them—Zoölog. des Talm., § 384.

REV. WILLIAM HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—There are different ways of preparing locusts for food; sometimes they are ground and pounded, and then mixed with flour and water, and made into cakes, or they are salted and then eaten; sometimes smoked; boiled or roasted; stewed, or fried in butter.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1673.

Purification after Childbirth

Lev. 12:1-6.—If a woman have conceived seed, and borne a man-child: then shall she he unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean... And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid-child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying three-score and six days. And when the days of her purifying are fulfilled, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt-offering, etc.

ROBERTS.—After the birth of a child, the mother of the Brahmin caste is unclean eleven days; of the royal family, sixteen; of the merchant caste, twenty-one; of the Vellalah, and other castes, thirty-one days. No difference is made in the time of purification for a male or female child. As were the Hebrew women, so are these: they cannot touch any hallowed thing, nor even the vessels used for domestic purposes. When the days of her purification are over, the woman either takes or sends an offering to the temple. Orient. Illust., p. 86.

Leprosy

Lev. 13:2.—When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—The Egyptian bondage, with its studied degradations and privations, and especially the work of the kiln under an Egyptian sun, must have had a frightful tendency to generate this class of disorders; hence Manetho asserts that the Egyptians drove out the Israelites as infected with leprosy.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1630.

Lev. 13:9-11.—When the plague of leprosy is in a man, then he shall be brought unto the priest; and the priest shall see him: and behold if the rising be white in the skin, and it have turned the hair white, and there be quick raw flesh in the rising; it is an old leprosy in the skin of his flesh, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—There is a remarkable concurrence between the Æschylean description of the disease which was to produce " lichens coursing over the flesh, eroding with fierce voracity the former natural structure, and white hairs shooting up over the part diseased," and some of the Mosaic symptoms; the spreading energy of the evil is dwelt upon both by Moses and by Æschylus, as vindicating its character as a scourge of God. But the symptoms of " white hairs " is a curious and exact confirmation of the genuineness of the detail in the Mosaic account, especially as the poet's language would rather imply that the disease spoken of was not then domesticated in Greece, but the strange horror of some other land.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1633.

Lev. 13:47-49.—The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it be a woolen garment or a linen garment; whether it be in the warp or woof, of linen or of woolen; whether in a skin, or in anything made of a skin; and if the plague be greenish or reddish in the garment, or in the skin, either in the warp or in the woof, or in anything of skin; it is a plague of leprosy.

Lev. 14:34, 35.—When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession; and he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest.

HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—This classing of garments and house-walls with the human epidermis, as leprous, has moved the mirth of Some, and the wonder of others. Yet modern science has established what goes far to vindicate the Mosaic classification as more philosophical than such cavils. It is now known that there are some skin diseases which originate in an acarus, and others which proceed from a fungus. In these we may probably find the solution of the paradox. The analogy between the insect which frets the human skin and that which frets the garment that covers it, between the fungus growth that lines the crevices of the epidermis and that which creeps within the interstices of masonry, is close enough for the purposes of a ceremonial law, to which it is essential that there should be an arbitrary element intermingled with provisions manifestly reasonable. It is evident also that a disease in the human subject caused by an acarus or by a fungus would be certainly contagious, since the propagative causes could be transferred from person to person. Some physicians indeed assert that only such skin diseases are contagious. Hence perhaps arose a further reason for marking, even in their analogues among lifeless substances, the strictness with which forms of disease so arising were to be shunned.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1634.

Offerings for the Household

Lev. 16:6.—And Aaron shall make an atonement for himself, and for his house.

ROBERTS.—The Hindus make offerings for each other; thus a husband for his wife, or a brother for his brother. Should a person at a distance be in doubtful circumstances, his friends will make an offering for him. Whilst Kāsināden was being tried for his life, before the Supreme Court, his mother was making offerings for him at the different temples; and, after his acquittal, he employed two days in making additional ones, before he returned to his house. A father, in the offerings for his family, mentions the names of the different members. It is, however, more common for the priest to do this, and when he presents them, he repeats the name of the individual, as, “In the name of Muttoo."—Orient. Illust., p. 87.

Lev. 16:10.—But the goat, on which the lot fell to be a scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

ROBERTS.—When a person is sick, he vows, on his recovery, to set a goat at liberty, in honor of his deity. Having selected a suitable one from his flocks, he makes a slit in the ear, or ties a yellow string round its neck (as the Jewish High Priest did a long fillet), and lets it go whithersoever it pleases. Whoever sees the animal knows it to be a nate-kadi," the vowed goat," and no person will molest it. But it is not merely in time of sickness that they have recourse to this practice—when a person has committed what he considers a great sin, he does the same thing; but in addition to other ceremonies, he sprinkles the animal with water, puts his hands upon it, and prays to be forgiven.—Orient. Illust., p. 88.

The Blood

Lev. 17:10, 11.—I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people: for the life of the flesh is in the blood.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—" For the life of the flesh is in the blood "—this sentence, which contains a most important truth, had existed in the Mosaic writings for 3600 years, before the attention of any philosopher was drawn to the subject. That the blood actually possesses a living principle, and that the life of the whole body is derived from it, is a doctrine of divine revelation, and a doctrine which the observations and experiments of the most accurate anatomists have served strongly to confirm.—Note In loco.

PROF. T. H. HUXLEY, LL. D., F. R. S.—The function of the blood is to supply nourishment to, and take away waste matters from, all parts of the body. It is absolutely essential to the LIFE of every part of the body that it should be in such relation with a current of blood, that matters can pass freely from the, blood to it, and from it to the blood, by transudation through the walls of the vessels in which the blood is contained. And this vivifying influence depends upon the corpuscles of the blood. The proof of these statements lies in the following experiments: If the vessels of a limb of a living animal be tied in such a manner as to cut off the supply of blood from the limb, without affecting it in any other way, all the symptoms of death set in. The limb will grow pale and cold; it will lose its sensibility, and volition will no longer have power over it; it will stiffen, and eventually mortify and decompose. But, even when the death stiffening has begun to set in, if the ligatures be removed, and the blood be allowed to flow into the limb, the stiffening speedily ceases, the temperature of the part rises, the sensibility of the skin returns, the will regains power over the muscles, and, in short, the part returns to its normal condition.—Element. Physiology, p. 72.

Marriage Restrictions

Lev. 18:3.—After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The just and wise regulations which this chapter contains, forbidding the marriages of near relations, form the basis of the laws on this subject now in operation in most Christian States... A laxity respecting marriages among relatives distinguished the Egyptians, whose doings in this respect the Israelites are forbidden to imitate. The marriage with a sister, in particular, so strongly forbidden by Moses, was considered among them as unconditionally allowable. Philo (" De Spec. Legg.," p. 780) relates of the Egyptian Lawgiver, that he gave permission to all to marry their sisters, those who were sisters by birth not less than step-sisters, those of like age and older not less than younger. And Wilkinson says that by the sculptures in Upper and Lower Egypt it is a fact fully authenticated, that this law was in force in the earliest times. ("Anct. Egypts.," II., 63.)—Pict. Bib, In loco.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—It is, contrary to the common custom, lawful among the Egyptians to marry a sister, since such a union was, in the case of Isis, so fortunate in its consequences—Hist., I., 27.

PAUSANIAS.—Philadelphus in marrying his own sister did that which is by no means lawful among the Macedonians, but entirely in accordance with the law of the Egyptians, over whom he ruled.—Attica, I., 7.

Lev. 18:6.—None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.

REV. WILLIAM LATHAM BEVAN, M. A.—There is a difference in kind between the affection that binds the members of a family together, and that which lies at the bottom of the matrimonial bond; and the amalgamation of these affections cannot take place without a serious shock to one or the other of the two; hence the desirability of drawing a distinct line between the provinces of each, by stating definitely where the matrimonial affection may legitimately take root. —Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1798.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The duties owing by nature to relatives, might not be confounded with those of a social or political kind: for could a man be a brother and a husband, or a son and a husband, at the same time, and fulfill the duties of both? Impossible.—Comment. In loco.

REV. WILLIAM JENKS, D. D.—Distinguished physiologists assert, that in man, as in other animals, the offspring of near relations is deteriorated physically, and of course mentally. Michaelis allows that the offspring becomes smaller, and goes on to depict the terrible effects of the marriages here forbidden, from passion, jealousy, covetousness and ambition, which would be so rife, where continual family intimacy would present provocations, inducements and opportunities, unless checked by an inculcated horror of such connections. Domestic life being thus embittered by those worst of quarrels, family quarrels, the fountains of human happiness would be broken up, desecrated and poisoned:—reason enough why these laws are still binding on us and ours to the end of time.—Comprehensive Commentary, In loco.

Reproof

Lev. 19:17.—Thou shalt in anywise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him.

PLAUTUS.—To reprove one's friend for a fault that deserves it, is a thankless task; but sometimes it is needful and profitable. Therefore this day I will soundly reprove my friend for a fault that much deserves it. Unwilling am I, indeed, did not my friendship bid me do it—Trinum., Act I., sc. 1.

ARISTOTLE.—It is the characteristic of the good neither to commit faults themselves, nor to suffer their friends to be subservient to that which is wrong. —Eth., 1. viii., c. 8.

Retaliation

Lev. 19:18.—Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people; but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

PLATO.—It is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however one may have suffered from him—Crito, c. 10.

JUVENAL.—

To brutes our Maker, when the world was new,

Sent only life; to men a spirit too,

That kindred feelings might our state improve,

And mutual wants conduct to mutual love.

—Sat. XV.

Self-Mutilation

Lev. 19:28.—Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead; nor print any marks upon you.

HERODOTUS.—The royal Scythians on the death of their king cut off a part of their ear, shave their heads in a circular form, take a round piece of flesh from their arm, wound their foreheads and noses, and pierce their left hand with arrows.—Lib. iv., c. 7!.

PLUTARCH.—Solon forbade the people to tear themselves at funerals. —Solon., C. 21,

Honor to Age

Lev. 19:32.—Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man, and fear thy God.

HERODOTUS.—The Egyptians surpass all the Greeks, the Lacedæmonians excepted, in the reverence they pay to age. If a young man meets his senior, he instantly turns aside to make way for him; if a senior enter an apartment, the youth always rise from their seats. This ceremony is observed by no other of the Greeks. —Herodot., 1. ii., c. 80.

ARISTOTLE,—To every old man honor is to be rendered, according to his age, by rising up and giving way to him, and in other similar ways—Arist., Eth., 1. ix., c. 2.

The Promised Land

Lev. 20:24.—I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Few countries are more admiralty adapted for bees than this, with its dry climate, and its stunted but varied flora, consisting in large proportion of aromatic thymes, mints, and other labiate plants, as well as of crocuses in spring; while the dry recesses of the limestone rocks everywhere afford shelter and protection for the combs. Hence the rocks are spoken of as the treasure houses of the bees.—Nat. list. of the Bible, p. 323.

Blemishes in Priests

Lev. 21:16-24.—Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—A similar regulation operated in most ancient nations. A general opinion prevailed that the presence of a priest who was defective in any member was to be avoided as ominous of evil. Such persons were seldom admitted to the priesthood, or allowed to remain in it. Candidates were examined with great care; and if it happened that a priest, after consecration, suffered any bodily deprivation, he was expected to lay down his office. Several instances of this occur in the Roman history. Metellus, who lost his sight in preserving the Palladium from the flames which destroyed the temple of Vesta, was obliged to resign his priestly office, as was also M. Sergius when he lost his right hand in defense of his country—Pict. Bib. In loco.

ROBERTS.—The priesthood among the Hindus is hereditary, but a deformed person cannot perform a ceremony in the temple; but he may prepare the flowers, fruits, oils and cakes for the offerings, and also sprinkle the premises with holy water. The child of a priest deformed at the birth will not be consecrated. A priest having lost an eye or a tooth, or being deficient in any member or organ, or who has not a wife, cannot perform the ceremony called Teevasam, for the manes of departed friends. Neither will his incantations, or prayers, or magical ceremonies have any effect.—Orient. Illust., p. 92.

Feast of Tabernacles

Lev. 23:34.—Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord.

REV. THOMAS HARTWELL HORNE, B. D.—The Feast of the Tabernacles is one of several institutions which have been held sacred by the Jews ever since their appointment, and which are solemnly and sacredly observed among them to this day, and for these observances it would be impossible to account on any principle but the evidence of the facts on which they were founded.— Introd., p. 67.

PLUTARCH. —At harvest time the Jews observe one of their greatest and principal feasts; they spread out tables with all kinds of fruits under tents formed of vine branches and ivy woven together, and the day before this they call the Feast of Tabernacles, and a few days later they celebrate another feast, not under a figure, but openly in the name of Bacchus. There is also a feast of carrying vine branches, and another of carrying wands wreathed with ivy. These they bear into the temple, but what they do with them we know not. —Sympos., lib. iv., qu. 6.

The Sabbath

Lev, 25:4.—But in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord; thou shalt neither sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard.

TACITUS. —The Jews kept every seventh day a holiday; afterward through the growth and allurements of laziness, every seventh year, too, was devoted to sloth—Hist., 1. v., c. 4.

Predicted Judgments

Lev. 26:14-39.—But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments... I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, etc.

REV. THOMAS SCOTT, D. D.—This chapter is a kind of prophetic history of the Jewish nation, even to this present time, which could never have been written, except by inspiration of God.—Note In loco.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—How circumstantially were all these threatenings fulfilled in this disobedient and rebellious people! Let a Deist read over this chapter, and compare it with the state of the Jews since the days of Vespasian, and then let him doubt the authenticity of this word if he can.—Note in loco

Your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—By the concurring testimony of all travelers, Judea may now be called a field of ruins. Columns, the memorials of ancient magnificence, now covered with rubbish, and buried under ruins, may be found in all Syria. From Mount Tabor is beheld an immensity of plains, interspersed with hamlets, fortresses, and heaps of ruins. Of the celebrated cities Capernaum, Bethsaida, Gadara, Tarichea and Chorazin, nothing remains but shapeless ruins. Some vestiges of Emmaus may still be seen. Cana is a very, paltry village. The ruins of Tekoa present only the foundations 'of some considerable buildings. The city of Nain is now a hamlet. The ruins of the ancient Sapphura announce the previous existence of a large city, and its name is still preserved in the appellation of a miserable village called Sephoury. Ludd, the ancient Lydda and Diospolis, appears like a place lately ravaged by fire and sword, and is one continued heap of rubbish and ruins. Ramla, the ancient Arimathea, is in almost as ruinous a state. Nothing but rubbish is to be found within its boundaries. In the adjacent country there are found at every step dry wells, cisterns fallen in, and vast vaulted reservoirs, which prove that in ancient times this town must have been upwards of a league and a half in circumference. Cæsarea can no longer excite the envy of a conqueror, and has long been abandoned to silent desolation. The city of Tiberias is now almost abandoned, and its subsistence precarious; of the towns that bordered on its lake there are no traces left. Zabulon, once the rival of Tyre and Sidon, is a heap of ruins. A few shapeless stones, unworthy the attention of the traveler, mark the site of the Saffre. The ruins of Jericho, covering no less than a square mile, are surrounded with complete desolation, and there is not a tree of any description, either of palm or of balsam, and scarcely any verdure or bushes to be seen about the site of this abandoned city. Bethel is not to be found. The ruins of Sarepta, and of several large cities in its vicinity, are now mere rubbish, and are only distinguishable as the sites of towns by heaps of dilapidated stones and fragments of columns... How marvelously are the predictions of their desolation verified, when in general nothing but ruined ruins form the most distinguished remnants of the cities of Israel, and when the multitude of its towns are almost all left, with many a vestige to testify of their number, but without a mark to tell their name.— Evid. from Proph., p. 93.

Devoted Thing

Lev. 27:28.—No devoted thing that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord.

ROBERTS.—Among the Hindus, whatever has been devoted to the gods can never be sold, redeemed, or applied to any other purpose.... When a child becomes sick, the parents forthwith inquire, “Have we given all the things which we had devoted to the gods?" The medical man also (when the disease baffles his skill) inquires, “Have you given all the things which you devoted to the gods?"— Orient. Illust., p. 95.

Numbers

Census of Israel

Numbers 1:2, 45, 46.—Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel.... So all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel—were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—The increase of the Hebrews, in 430 years, from 70 persons to 603,550 males and upwards, of twenty years of age, besides 22,000 males of a month old and upwards among the Levites, has appeared to many incredible. The number of 600,000 men capable of bearing arms necessarily makes the whole number of people amount to 2,400,000. An anonymous writer, in the Literarischen Auzeiger, has demonstrated that the Hebrews, in 430 years, might have increased from 70 persons to 977,280 males above twenty years old. He supposes that of those 70 persons who went down to Egypt, only 40 remained alive after a space of 20 years, each one of whom had two sons. In like manner, at the close of every succeeding period of 20 years, he supposes one-fourth part of those who were alive at the commencement of that period to have died, while the remaining three-fourths are doubled by Natural increase. Hence arises the following geometrical progression.

After twenty years, of the seventy there are forty living, each having two sons:

Fare in Egypt

Num. 11:5.—We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic.

HERODOTUS. —On the outside of the pyramid of Cheops were inscribed in Egyptian characters the various sums of money expended in the progress of the work, for the radishes, onions and garlic consumed by the artificers.—Herod., I. ii., 125.

PLINY.—Ulpicum, generally known to the Greeks as Cyprian garlic, holds a high rank among the dishes of the rule population, more particularly in Africa; it is of a larger size than ordinary garlic.—Nat. Hist., 1. xix., c. 34.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—Fish and vegetables formed the chief food of the lower classes; and among the vegetables especially affected, gourds, cucumbers, onions, and garlic are distinctly apparent. According to Herodotus, some tribes of the Egyptians lived entirely on fish, which abounded in the Nile, the canals, and the lakes, especially in the Birket-el-Keroun, or Lake Mœris. The monuments represent the catching, salting and eating of this, viand.—Hist. Illust. of the Old Test., p. 76.

Quails

Num. 11:31.—And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The quail migrates in vast flocks, and regularly crosses the Arabian desert, flying for the most part at night; and when the birds settle they are so utterly exhausted that they may be captured in any numbers by the hand. Being birds of weak flight, notwithstanding their migratory habits, they instinctively select the shortest sea passages, and avail themselves of any island as a halting-place. Thus in spring and autumn they are slaughtered in numbers on Malta and many of the Greek islands, which they quit in a day or two, very few being seen until the period of migration comes round again. They also fly with the wind, never facing it, like many other birds. The period when they were brought to the camp of Israel was in spring, when on their northward migration from Africa. According to their well-known instinct, they would follow up the coast of the Red Sea till they came to its bifurcation, by the Sinaitic Peninsula, and then, with a favoring wind, would cross at the narrow part, resting near the shore before proceeding. Accordingly we read that the wind brought them up from the Sea, and that, keeping close to the ground, they fell, thick as rain, about the camp in the month of April, according to our calculation. Thus the miracle consisted in the supply being brought to the tents of Israel by the special guidance of the Lord, in exact harmony with the known habits of the bird. The Israelites "spread them" out, when they, had taken them, before they were sufficiently refreshed to escape, " round about the camp," to dry them and prepare them for food, exactly as Herodotus tells us the Egyptians were in the habit of doing with quails, drying them in the sun. (II. 77.) Again it was at even that they began to arrive, and by the morning the whole flock had settled. Thus throughout the Mediterranean the quails, arrive at night, as the wood-cocks do on our own east coast, in a similar state of exhaustion. I have myself found the ground in Algeria, in the month of April, covered with quails for an extent of many acres at daybreak, where on the preceding afternoon there had not been one. They were so fatigued that they scarcely moved till almost trodden upon; and, although hundreds were slaughtered, for two days they did not leave the district, till the wind veered, and they then as suddenly ventured northwards across the sea, leaving scarcely a straggler behind. The expression, "as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth," probably refers to the height at which the quails fly above the ground. At all times their flight is very low, just skimming the surface of the ground, and especially when fatigued it keeps close, never towering, like the Partridge or Sand-Grouse.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 231, 232.

The Graves of Lust

Num. 11:33-35.—And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah (the graves of lust): because there they buried the people that lusted. And the people journeyed from Kibrothhattaavah unto Hazeroth; and abode at Hazeroth.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—Here at Ain Hudherah are the remains of a large encampment, differing essentially in their arrangement from any others which I have seen.... The remains extend for miles around... Just outside the camp were a number of stone heaps, which from their shape and position, could be nothing else but graves. The sight is a most commanding one, and admirably suited for the assembling of a large concourse of people. Arab tradition declares these curious remains to be " the relics of a large Pilgrim or Hajj caravan, who in remote ages pitched their tents at this spot on their way to Ain Hudherah, and who were soon afterward lost in the desert of the Tih;" For various reasons I am inclined to believe that this legend is authentic, that it refers to the Israelites, and that we have in the scattered stones of Erweis'el Ebeirig real traces of the Exodus. Hazeroth corresponds with "Ain Hudherah in the Semitic orthography of the name.... These considerations, the distance—exactly a day's journey—from Ain Hudherah, and those mysterious graves outside the camp, to my mind prove conclusively the identity of this spot with the scene of that awful plague by which the Lord punished the greed and discontent of His people; where "the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people that 'lusted."... The length of time which has elapsed since the events of the Exodus furnishes no argument against the probability of this conclusion, for there are other monuments in the country in even better preservation, and of it date indisputably far anterior.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 212-114.

Zoan

Num. 13:22.—Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The great antiquity of Zoan is attested in this text, which states that it Was built seven years after Hebron, which already existed' in the time of Abraham: and it incidentally evinces how well acquainted with Egypt the writer was, that this reference to the date of the foundation of an Egyptian city should have been introduced. The locality is now covered with mounds of unusual height and extent, full of the fragments of broken pottery which such sites usually exhibit. These mounds extend for about a mile from north to south, and occupy nearly the same breadth. The area in which stood the sacred enclosure of the temple is about 1,500 feet by 1,250, surrounded by the mounds of fallen houses. Though in a very ruinous condition, the fragments of walls, columns, a gateway, and fallen obelisks, sufficiently attest the importance of the building to which they belonged. The obelisks, twelve in. number, are all of the time of Rameses the Great (1355 B. C.); and the gateway also bears his name. More interest, however, attaches to the fact that the oval of Osirtasen III., who was king when Joseph died, has also been found, as this shows that the town must then have existed: it forms a valuable corroboration of the present text. The modern village of Zan (in which the ancient name of Zoan may be recognized) consists of a few huts, and a ruined kasr of modern date. —Pict. Bib. In loco.

Grapes of Eschol

Num. 13:23.—And they came unto the brook of Eschol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bear it between two upon a staff.

STRABO.—Mauritania is said to produce a vine the girth of which two men can scarcely compass, and bearing bunches of grapes about a cubit in size—Strab., 1. xvii., c. 3.

DR. H. J. VAN-LENNEP.—The land of Judah is still celebrated for the size and excellence of its grapes, which, as a general rule, succeed best in similar hilly districts. There was situated the vale of Eschol, whence the spies sent by Moses procured the large cluster of grapes mentioned in Numbers; and it is affirmed that even now clusters of grapes are found in that locality weighing no less than twelve pounds; bunches weighing twenty pounds are often seen elsewhere. We ourselves have seen single grapes of the size of the largest damask plum, and have found clusters measuring eighteen inches in length. We have also counted more than seven hundred grapes on a single bunch.—Bible Lands, p. 112.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—This Eschol, or Grape Valley, a little to the south of Hebron, is still clad with vines, and the grapes are the finest and largest in Palestine. Clusters weighing ten or twelve pounds have been gathered. The spies doubtless bore the cluster between them on a staff, that the splendid grapes might not be crushed. With care and judicious thinning, it is well known that bunches weighing nearly twenty pounds can be produced. Not only are the bunches remarkable for their weight, but the individual grape attains a size rarely reached elsewhere.—Nat. Hist, of the Bible, p. 404.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—Even in our own country (England) a bunch of grapes was produced at Welbeck, and sent as a present from the Duke of Rutland to the Marquis of Rockingham, which weighed nineteen pounds. It was conveyed to its destination—more than twenty miles distant—on a staff, by four laborers, two of whom bore it in rotation.—Physical History of Palestine, p. 330.

Aaron's Rod

Num. 17:2.—Speak unto the children of Israel, and take of every one of them a rod according to the house of their fathers, of all their princes according to the house of their fathers twelve rods: write thou every man's name upon his rod.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—According to the monuments, the Egyptian nobles generally carried a staff from three to six feet long when they went out. One of them, preserved to our time, is of cherry wood; but it appears that those of acacia wood were generally preferred. Egyptian priests, and other persons of rank, are represented as walking with sticks. Frequently the name of the owner was written on his staff, instances of which may be seen on the monuments at Thebes.—Ancient Egypts., III., 386-8.

Num. 17:8.—And it came to pass that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and behold the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The Almond Tree hastens to bud and blossom long before any other has begun to wake out of the repose of winter, and before it has put forth its own leaves. In the instance of Aaron's rod the rapidity was certainly miraculous; but a rod was selected for the purpose from that tree which, in its natural development, is the most expeditious of all; and not only do the blossoms appear on it suddenly, but the fruit sets at once, and appears even while the flowers are yet on the tree—buds, blossoms, and almonds together on the same branch, as on this rod of Moses.—The Land and the Book, p. 495, 496

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Almond is the earliest of all the trees of Palestine to put forth its blossoms, which we gathered at Bethany in January; hence it Hebrew name Shaked, i. e., hasten. Aaron's rod, that miraculously budded, was of this tree. It is probably in commemoration of this event that the Jews to the present day carry boughs of Almond blossom to their synagogues on great festival days.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 332.

Uncleanness from the Dead

Num. 19:11-22.—He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.. When a man dieth in a tent; all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.... And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with the sword in the open fields, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —For these minute and careful regulations there were many reasons: (1.) They would tend to lessen the spread of any infectious disease of which the person may have died. (2.) They would, oblige the people to inter their dead soon, and not keep them embalmed in their houses for years, as did the Egyptians. (3.) They would ensure the timely burial of strangers. (4.) They would oblige them to bury all the slain, foes as well as friends, after a battle. (5.) They would lead them to take down the bodies of malefactors from the gibbet on the day of execution. (6.) They would oblige the people everywhere to have their places of interment outside of their towns, a wise practice which some parts of Europe have yet to learn. Thus the Hebrew law, by the simple principle of assigning a defiling quality to a dead body, effected, without detailed legislation, many important objects, at some of which modern civilization is only beginning to arrive. Such legislation is entitled to respect and admiration—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Mount Hor

Num. 20:23.—And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in Mount Hor, by the coast of the land of Edom.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—The position assigned to Mount Hor, namely, " by the coast of the land of Edom," the testimony of ancient writers, and constant tradition, all combine to identify that mountain with the lofty summit now called Mount Harún. This rises so conspicuously above the heights which form the “coast," or border, of Edom as to deserve the name given to it in the Bible, of Ha Hor, or The mountain. On the summit is shown the reputed tomb of Aaron.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 428.

.ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—Mount Hor is one of the very few spots connected with the wanderings of the Israelites, which admits of no reasonable doubt.—Sinai and Pal., p. 87.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal., London.—Mount Hor is situated on the eastern side of the great valley of the Arabah, the highest and most conspicuous of the whole range of the sandstone mountains of Edom, having close beneath it on its eastern side—though strange to say the two are not visible to each other—the mysterious city of Petra. In the Onomasticon of Eusebius and Jerome it is, Or Mans—a mountain in which Aaron died, close to the city of Petra. Its height is about 4,800 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, and about 1,700 feet above the city of Petra.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1087.

Num. 20:27, 28.—And Moses did as the Lord commanded: and they went up into Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount.

ALEXANDER KEITH, D. D.—The tomb of Aaron, on the summit of Mount Hor, is one of the most conspicuous objects in the land of Edom, and, surrounded as it is by many an evidence of prophetic truth, still bears testimony to the death and burying-place of the first High Priest of Israel. Though situated in the midst of the land of the enemies of Israel; and though for many ages possessed by the wild Arabs, neither of Israelitish nor of Christian faith, yet there, on the top of Mount Hor, where he died, is the tomb of Aaron, a memorial on the spot.—Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion, p. 102.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—The first thing which met our eyes when we stepped' upon the small plateau, immediately below the summit, was a heap of ruins, and, beside the rock, a huge black caldron, used for boiling the sheep, which are there sacrificed to "the Prophet Aaron." A flight of steps cut in the rock leads up a steep precipice to the tomb itself, and about halfway up these steps is a large cistern or chamber covered in with arches, over which the staircase is built. The door of the tomb was locked at the time, but we contrived to look inside, and saw that the roof was decorated with ostrich shells, and similar ornaments.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 365.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—Mount Hor is marked far and nearby its double top, which rises like a huge castellated building from a lower base, and, on one of these is the Mohammedan chapel erected out of the remains of some earlier and more sumptuous building, over the supposed grave of Aaron. There was nothing of interest within; only the usual marks of Mussulman devotion, ragged shawls, ostrich eggs, and a few beads. These were in the upper chamber. From the flat roof of the chapel we overlooked what must have been Aaron's last view—that view which was to him what Pisgah was to his brother. To us the northern end was partly lost in haze; but we saw all the main points on which his eye must have rested. He looked over the valley of the Arabah, countersected by its hundred watercourses, and beyond, over the white mountains of the wilderness they had so long traversed; and at the northern edge of it, there must have been visible the heights through which the Israelites had vainly attempted to force their way into the Promised Land. This was the Western view. Close around him on the East were the rugged mountains of Edom, and far along the horizon the wide downs of Mount Seir, through which the passage had been denied by the wild tribes of Esau who hunted over their long slopes. A dreary moment, and a dreary scene—such at any rate it must have seemed to the aged priest.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 87.

Fiery Serpents

Num. 21:6.—And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit tile people, and much people of Israel died.

HERODOTUS.—In the age preceding the invasion of Darius, the Neuri were compelled to change their habitations from the multitude of serpents which infested them. Besides what their own soil produced, these came in far greater numbers from the deserts above them. —Herod, 1. iv., v. 105.

STRABO.—141 The country of the Sabæi, in Arabia, are snakes of a dark red color, a span in length, which spring up as high as a man's waist, and whose bite is incurable.—Strabo, 1. xvi., c. 4.

REV. W. L. GAGE.—The discovery by Burckhardt, of venomous reptiles near the northern portion of the Gulf of Akabah, seems not only to corroborate the striking veracity of the sacred narrative, but to fix the place where this evil befell the wandering Israelites.—Studies in Bible Lands, p. 104.

Heshbon

Num. 21:25, 26.—And Israel dwelt in the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all the villages thereof. For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites.

REV. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Heshbon stood on the western border of the high plain and on the boundary-line between the tribes of Reuben and Gad. The ruins of Hesban, twenty miles east of the Jordan, on the parallel of the northern end of the Dead Sea, mark the site, as they bear the name, of the ancient Heshbon. The ruins stand on a low hill, rising out of the great undulating plateau. They are more than a mile in circuit; but not a building remains entire.—Smith's Dia. of the Bible, p. 1056.

Cursing the Enemy

Num. 22:6.—Come now, therefore, curse me this people.

PLUTARCH. -When Crassus was going to attack the Parthians, Ateius, one of the Tribunes, wishing to stop him, ran before the gate of the city, and placed there a censer, with fire in it. At the approach of Crassus he sprinkled incense on the fire, offered libations, and uttered the most horrid imprecations, invoking at the same time certain dreadful and strange gods. The Romans say these mysterious and ancient imprecations have such power, that the object of them never escapes the effect, and, they add, that the person who uses them is sure to be unhappy; so that they are seldom employed, and never but upon a great occasion.—Crass., c. 16.

IDEM. —All the priests and priestesses at Athens were commanded to denounce an execration against Alcibiades, which was done by them all except Meno.—Alcib., C. 22.

ROBERTS.—The Orientals, in their wars, have always their magicians with them, to curse their enemies, and to mutter incantations for their destruction. In our late war with the Burmese, the generals had several magicians, who were much engaged in cursing our troops; but, as they did not succeed, a number of witches were brought for the same purpose.—Orient. Illust., p. 112.

Isolation of Israel

Num. 23:9.—Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

THE COMPILER.—It was the purpose of God to keep the seed of Abraham, during their minority, or the period of their training and growth into a nation, a community by themselves; they were to "dwell alone," that they might be preserved as far as possible from imbibing the idolatrous notions, or, following the corrupt practices of the nations about them. Now, it would be difficult to find a country, good and pleasant, on the face of the earth, more secluded from all others, and therefore more suitable for the Divine purpose, than Canaan. This land was literally shut out, on all sides, from the rest of the world. To the east lay the vast Assyrian desert; on the west was the long and almost harbor-less coast of the Mediterranean; along the whole southern frontier stretched " the great and terrible Wilderness of Paran; " while on the north it was protected by the stupendous ramparts of Lebanon and Hermon, which left but a narrow gate-way open, the Valley of Cœle Syria, which lay between them. Thus in this land " the Vine of God's own planting " was " hedged round about," by sea and desert and mountain, that neither " the boar of the wood," nor " the beast of the field " should harm it.—Present Conflict of Science with the Christian Religion, p. 618.

Oblation of Jewels

Num. 31:50.—We have therefore brought an oblation for the Lord, what every man hath gotten, of jewels of gold, chains and bracelets, rings, ear-rings, and tablets, to make an atonement for our souls before the Lord.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—Numerous specimens of Egyptian rings have been discovered, most of them made of gold, very massive, and containing either a scarabæus or an engraved stone. The number of rings worn by the Egyptians was truly remarkable—Anct. Egypts., Vol. II., p. 337.

LAYARD.—The arms of the Assyrian kings were encircled by armlets, and the wrists by bracelets, all equally remarkable for the taste and beauty of the design and workmanship. In the center of the bracelets were stars and rosettes, which were probably inlaid with precious stones.—Nineveh, Vol. II., 323.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Arabians wear lumps of gold about their arms and necks, interlaced with bright sparkling stones—Diod. Sic., III., 45.

ROBERTS.—There is not a man in a thousand among the Hindus who does not wear an ear-ring or a finger-ring; for without such an ornament a person would be classed among the most unfortunate of his race. Some time ago, a large sacrifice was made, for the purpose of removing the cholera morbus, when vast numbers came together with their oblations. The people seemed to take the greatest pleasure in presenting their ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets and other ornaments, because they were dearer to them than money, and consequently were believed to be more efficacious in appeasing the gods. When people are sick they vow to give a valuable jewel to their god on being restored.—Orient Illust., p. 104.

Gilead

Num. 32:1-5.—Now the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, had a very great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead, that, behold, the place was a place for cattle;—wherefore, said they, if we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan.

PROF. HORATIO B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—Gilead (or Galaad) was a mountainous region lying, east of the Jordan; bounded on the north by Bashan, on the east by the Arabian plateau, and on the south by Moab and Ammon. One of the most conspicuous peaks in the mountain range still retains the ancient name, being called, Jebel Jil'ad, or Mount Gilead. It is about seven miles south of the Jabbok, and commands a magnificent view over the whole Jordan Valley, and the mountains of Judah and Ephraim. The rich pasture land of Gilead presents a striking contrast to the nakedness of western Palestine. Except among the hills of Galilee and along the heights of Carmel, there is nothing to be compared with it as "a place for cattle." The abundant pastures of Gilead, with its shady forests, and copious streams, attracted the attention of Reuben and Gad, who had a very great multitude of cattle, and was allotted to them. —Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 924-926.

IDEM.—The Prussian Consul, Dr. John Wetzstein, mentions a striking fact in illustration of the fertility of the country assigned to Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and of its adaptation to the wants of a nomadic and pastoral people such as many of these Hebrews were. He says that the provinces there of Kanetra and Golan are the best watered and richest for pasturage not only of Peræa but of all Syria; so that the wandering tribes of nomads alone feed there more than 300,000 camels six months in the year, while, as ascertained from the bureau of tax registration at Damascus, forty-two other Bedouin tribes range there during the entire year.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 252.

Cities of Refuge

Num. 35:10-12.—When ye be come over Jordan into the land of Canaan, then ye 'shall appoint you cities to be cities of refuge for you; that the slayer may flee thither, which killeth any person at unawares. And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger; that the man slayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment.

REV. HENRY WRIGHT PHILLOTT, M. A.—It was, and even still is, a common practice, among nations, of patriarchal habits, that the nearest of kin should, as a matter of duty, avenge the death of a murdered relative. The early impressions and practice on this subject may be gathered from writings of a different though a very early age, and of different countries. Compensation for murder is allowed by the Koran, and he who transgresses after this by killing the murderer shall suffer a grievous punishment. Among the Bedouins and other Arab tribes, should the offer of blood-money be refused, the Thar, or law of blood, comes into operation, and any person within the fifth degree of blood from the homicide may be legally killed by anyone within the same degree of consanguinity to the victim. The right to blood-revenge is never lost, except as annulled by compensation: it descends to the latest generation. Similar customs, with local distinctions, are found in Persia, Abyssinia, among the Druses and Circassians.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 316.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—One of the most remarkable laws in force among the wandering Arabs, and one probably of the highest antiquity, is the law of blood, called the " Thar," prescribing the degrees of consanguinity within which it is lawful to revenge a homicide. If a man commit a homicide, the cadi endeavors to prevail upon the family of the victim to accept a compensation for the blood in money or in kind, the amount being regulated according to custom in different tribes. Should the offer of “blood-money " be refused, the Thar comes into operation, and any person within the "khomse," or the fifth degree of blood of the homicide, may be legally killed by anyone within the same degree of consanguinity to the victim. This law is enforced between tribes remote from one another, as well as between families, and to the blood-revenge may be attributed many of the bitter feuds which exist among the Arab clans. It affects, in many respects, their social condition, and has a marked influence upon their habits, and even upon their manners. Thus an Arab will never tell his name, especially if it be an uncommon one, to a stranger; nor mention that of his father, or of his tribe, if his own name be ascertained, lest there should be Thar between them. Even children are taught to observe this custom that they may not fall victims to the blood-revenge. In most encampments are found refugees, sometimes whole families, who have left their tribe on account of a homicide for which they are amenable. In case, after a murder, persons within the Thar take to flight, three days and four hours are by immemorial custom allowed to the fugitives before they can be pursued. Frequently they never return to their friends, but remain with those who give them protection, and become incorporated into the tribe by which they are adopted. Frequently, the homicide himself will wander from tent to tent over the Desert, or even rove through the towns and villages on its borders, with a chain round his neck and in rags, begging contributions from the charitable to enable him to pay the apportioned blood-money. I have frequently met such unfortunate persons who have spent years in collecting a small sum.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 260, 261.

PLATO.—If any one kills involuntarily a free-born person—it is requisite for him to withdraw himself from the sufferer through all the seasons of the year, and to cause a void in all his own places through the whole of his native land. —If he is not willing to be an exile, and to complete the stated time, let the nearest relative of the deceased prosecute the murderer on a charge of blood; and let his punishment be doubled if found guilty.—If he return contrary to the law, let the guardians of the law punish him with death.—Plato, De Leg., 1. ix., c. 8.

TACITUS. —The right of asylum was possessed by many Greek and Roman towns, especially Ephesus; this right in process of time became much abused, and was curtailed by order of the Emperor Tiberius.—See Tac. Ann., iii. 60, 63.

IDEM.—The consuls appointed to inquire into the claims of several cities to the privilege of sanctuary reported—That they had found the temple of Esculapius, at Pergamos, to be a genuine sanctuary. The rest claimed upon originals from the darkness of antiquity altogether obscure. —Ann., 1. iii., c. 63.

Deuteronomy

Arnon and Aroer

Deut. 2:36.—From Aroer, which is by the brink of the river Amon, and from the city that is by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one city too strong for us; the Lord our God delivered all unto us.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal., Sydn.—There can be no doubt that the Wady el-Mojeb of the present day is the Arnon. It has been visited and described by Burckhardt, Irby, and Seetzen. The ravine through which it flows is still the “locum vallis in prærupta demersæ satis horribilem et periculosum " which it was in the days of Jerome. The Roman Road from Rabba to Dhiban crosses it at about two hours' distance from the former. On the south edge of the ravine are some ruins called Mehatet el-Haj, and on the north edge, directly opposite, those still bearing the name Arair (Aroer).—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 164.

Edrei

Deut. 3:1.—And Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Soon after leaving Busr, the towers of Edri came in sight, extending along the summit of a projecting ledge of rocks in front, and running some distance into the interior of the Lejah on the right. Crossing a deep ravine, and ascending the rugged ridge of rocks by a winding path like a goat-track, we came suddenly on the ruins of this ancient city. The situation is most remarkable: without a single spring of living water; without river or stream; without access, except over rocks and through defiles all but impassable; without tree or garden. In selecting the site, everything seems to have been sacrificed to security and strength. Shortly after my arrival, I went up to the terraced roof of a house to obtain a general view of the ruins. Their aspect was far from inviting; it was wild and savage in the extreme. The huge masses of shattered masonry could scarcely be distinguished from the rocks that encircle them; and all, ruins and rocks alike, are black, as if scathed by lightning. The houses are low, massive, gloomy, and manifestly of the highest antiquity. Though the ruins are some three miles in circuit, the place does not contain more than five hundred inhabitants. It still bears the name Edr'a. —Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 94, 95.

Cities of Bashan

Deut. 3:3, 4.—So the Lord our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was left to him remaining. And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, three-score cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Often when reading the passage (the above), I used to think that some strange statistical mystery hung over it; for how could a province measuring not more than thirty miles by twenty support such a number of fortified cities, especially when the greater part of it was a wilderness of rocks? But mysterious, incredible as this seemed, on the spot, with my own eyes, I have seen that it is literally true. The cities are there to this day. Some of them retain the ancient names recorded in the Bible. The boundaries of Argob are as clearly defined by the hand of nature as those of our own island home. These ancient cities of Bashan contain probably the very oldest specimens of domestic architecture now existing in the world.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 13.

IDEM.—As we ascended the hills, the rock fields of the Lejah were spread out on the right; and there, too, the ancient cities were thickly planted. Not less than thirty of the three-score cities of Argob were in view at one time on that day; their black houses and ruins half concealed by the black rocks amid which they are built, and their massive towers rising up here and there, like the "keeps" of old Norman fortresses.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 28.

IDEM.—The Bible name of tills province, Argob, "The Stony," is strikingly descriptive of its physical features. Around Nejran, as far as I could see westward and northward, was one vast wilderness of rocks; here piled up in shapeless, jagged masses; there spread out in flat, rugged fields, intersected by yawning fissures and chasms.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 92.

Deut. 3:5.—All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars; beside un-walled towns a great many.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Many people might have thought, and few still believe, that there was a large amount of Eastern exaggeration in the language of Moses when describing the conquest of this country three thousand years ago. No man who has traversed Bashan, or who has climbed the hill of Salcah, will ever again venture to bring such a charge against the sacred historian. The walled cities, with their ponderous gates of stone, are there now as they were when the Israelites invaded the land. The great numbers of un-walled towns are there too, standing testimonies to the truth and accuracy of Moses, and monumental protests against the poetical interpretations of modern rationalists.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 79.

MR. CYRIL GRAHAM.—When we find one after another, great stone cities, walled and un-walled, with stone gates, and so crowded together that it becomes almost a matter of wonder how all the people could have lived in so small a space; when we see houses built of such huge and massive stones that no force which can be brought against them in that country could ever batter them down; when we find rooms in these houses so large and lofty that many of them would be considered fine rooms in a palace in Europe; and, lastly, when we find some of these towns bearing the very names which cities in that very country bore, before the Israelites came out of Egypt, I think we cannot help feeling the strongest conviction that we have before us the cities of the Rephaim of which we read in the book of Deuteronomy.—Quoted in Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 85.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—On one of the southern peaks of the mountain range stands the town of Hebran. Here are many objects of interest. The ruins of a beautiful temple, built in A. D. 155, and of several other public edifices, are strewn over the summit and rugged sides of the hill. But the simple, massive, primeval houses were to us objects of greater attraction. Many of them are perfect, and in them the modern inhabitants find ample and comfortable accommodation. The stone doors appeared even more massive than those of Kerioth; and we found the walls of the houses in some instances more than seven feet thick. Hebran must have been one of the most ancient cities of Bashan.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 88.

IDEM.—The monuments designed by the genius and reared by the wealth of Imperial Rome are fast mouldering to ruin in this land; temples, palaces, tombs, fortresses, are all shattered, or prostrate in the dust; but the simple, massive houses of the Rephaim are in many cases perfect as if only completed yesterday.

It is worthy of note here, as tending to prove the truth of my statements, and to illustrate the words of the sacred writers, that the towns of Bashan were considered ancient even in the days of the Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, who says regarding this country: "Fortresses and strong castles have been erected by the ancient inhabitants among the retired mountains and forests. Here in the midst of numerous towns are some great cities, such as Bostra and Gerasa, encompassed by massive walls."— Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 85.

Deut. 3:13.—And the rest of Gilead, and all of Bashan, being the kingdom of Og, gave I unto the half tribe of Manasseh; all the region of Argob, with all Bashan, Which was called the land of giants.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—Now the houses of Kerioth and other towns in Bashan appear to be just such dwellings as a race of giants would build. The walls, the roofs, but especially the ponderous gates, doors and bars, are in every way characteristic of a period when architecture was, in its infancy, when giants were masons, and when strength and security were the grand requisites. I measured a door in Kerioth: it was nine feet high, and four and a half feet wide, and ten inches thick—one solid slab of stone. I saw the folding gates of another town in the mountains still larger and heavier. Time produces little effect on such buildings as these. The heavy stone slabs of the roofs resting on the massive walls make the structure as firm as if built of solid masonry; and the black basalt used is almost hard as iron. There can scarcely be a doubt, therefore, that these are the very cities erected and inhabited by the Rephaim, the aboriginal occupants of Bashan; and the language of Ritter appears to be true: “These buildings remain as eternal witnesses of the conquest of Bashan by Jehovah."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 84.

Fish Idols

Deut. 4:18.—The likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The worship of fish was prevalent among many nations of antiquity, and such idolatry is expressly prohibited in Deuteronomy. Among the Hindus, Vishnu is the fish pilot; and nations wide apart, as the Tartars and the ancient Britons, had their fish gods—the one the Nataghi, the other the Brithyll of the Kelts and Belgae. In Egypt many species of fishes were objects of veneration, as we are told by Herodotus. Cuvier has noticed no less than ten distinct species depicted on the walls of the sepulchral caves of Thebes, and the mummies of several kinds are found in great numbers stored up in the temples of Egypt.—Nat. Hist. of the. Bible, p. 293.

Moral Law

Deut. 5:5.—Thou shalt have none other gods before me.

SOPHOCLES.—There is in truth one only God, who made the heaven and the wide earth, and the blue depths of the sea, and the winds—Frag. spud Grot.

MENANDER.—The Lord and Father of all things; by whom all things were made, is alone to be worshipped as the inventor and creator of such excellent works—Apud Justin. de Monarch Dei.

CLEANTHES.—Most glorious of the immortals, by whatever name thou art ad dressed, everlasting and Almighty Jove, the author of all nature, ruling all things by thy law.—H. in Jov.

CICERO.—That same Jupiter, who is by the poets styled the father of the gods and men, is by our ancestors called the Best, the Greatest.—De N. D., ii., 25.

Deut. 5:8.—Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, etc.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Moses set up no image; for he taught that God was not like any human being. —Fragm., 1. 40.

STRABO. —Moses, the Egyptian priest, declared and taught that the Egyptians and Africans entertained erroneous sentiments in representing the Deity under the likeness of wild beasts and cattle of the field; and that the Greeks also were in error in making images of their gods after the human form. For God, said he, may be this one thing which encompasses us all, land and sea, which we call Heaven, or the Universe, or the Nature of things. Who, then, of any understanding would venture to form an image of this Deity, resembling anything with which we are conversant? On the contrary we ought not to carve any images, but to set apart some sacred ground, and a shrine worthy of the Deity, and to worship Him without any similitude. —Strab., lib. xvi., c. 2.

PLUTARCH.—Numa forbade the Romans to represent the Deity in the form either of man or beast. Nor was there among them, formerly, any image or statue of the Divine Being. During the first 170 years they built temples, indeed, and other sacred domes, but placed in them no figure of any kind, being persuaded that it is impossible to represent things divine by that which is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding—Numa.. c. 8.

TACITUS.—The Egyptians offer divine worship to several brute animals, to images and works of art. The Jews know but one deity, to be conceived and adored by the mind alone. They hold as profane and unhallowed those who are accustomed to fashion their gods after the likeness of men, out of perishable materials—Hist., lib. v., c. 5.

Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

THEOGNIS.—O that it might please the gods, that the fathers' infatuation should not in after time be a woe to the children; and that the children should not pay the transgression of their sires—Theog., v. 732.

EPICTETUS.—Not only my children, but my children's children will bear the punishment of this disobedience—Epict., lib. iii., c. 34.

STATIUS.—The weeping sons of Thebes atone For royal crimes and mischief not their own—Theb., iii., 206.

Deut. 5:12.—Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as, etc.

HESIOD.—The seventh day is sacred—Apud Euseb. prœp. evan., 1. 13.

PLATO.—The gods pitying the laborious race of man, have ordained for it remissions from labor, the return of feast days, in honor of the gods.—De Leg., II., I.

PLUTARCH.—The Hebrews solemnize the Sabbath with mutual feasting. —Sympos., lib. iv., qu. 5.

OVID.—The seventh day, held sacred by the Jew.—De art. amand., i., 76.

TACITUS.—It is said that the Jews chose to rest every seventh day, because on that day their wanderings ended—Hist., lib. v., c. 4.

JUVENAL.—Some whose lot it is to have a father who reveres Sabbaths, worshipping nothing but clouds, the divinity of heaven: their father is to blame for this, to whom each seventh day was a day of sloth, and kept aloof from all share of life's daily duties.—Sat., xiv., v. 96.

Deut. 5:16.—Honor thy father and thy mother, etc.

PYTHAGORAS.—HONOR your parents and kinsmen—Aur. Carm., V. 4.

PLATO.—It is just for a person who owes the first and greatest of debts, to pay those that are of the longest standing, and to think that the things that he has acquired and holds, belong all to those who begot him and brought him up, for supplying what is required for their service to the utmost of his power; beginning from his substance; and in the second place from his body; and thirdly, from his soul; by paying off the debts due for their care of him, and in favor of those who gave the pangs of labor as a loan to the young, and by returning what has been due a long time to those who, in their old age, are in want. It is requisite, likewise, through the whole period of life, for a person to hold pre-eminently a kind language towards his parents.—De Leg., lib. iv., c. 8.

ARISTOTLE.—Children ought to assist their parents, most of all in nourishing them, being, as it were, in their debt. They should also give honor to their parents as to the gods.—Eth., ix., 2.

DEMOSTHENES.—To nothing are we more inviolably bound than to a just and cheerful discharge of that debt in which both nature and the laws engage as to our parents.—Philip. 4.

MENANDER.—It is right to honor parents even as the gods—Ap. Stob., 79.

Deut. 5:17.—Thou shalt not kill.

PLATO.—Whosoever shall` designedly and unjustly kill with his hand any one soever of his tribes-men, let him in the first place be debarred from legal rites; let him be amenable to anyone who is willing to avenge the dead. Let him who is convicted pay the penalty of death, and let him not be buried in the country of the murdered person.—De Leg., IX., II.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—He who willfully killed a freeman, or even a bondslave, was condemned by the laws of Egypt to suffer death—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 77.

Deut. 5:18.—Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

ARISTOTLE.—The law enjoins that the duties of a temperate man should be done, such as not to commit adultery.—Eth., V., I.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—By the laws of Egypt, a man guilty of adultery was to have a thousand lashes, and the woman her nose cut off—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 6.

QUINTILIAN.—The law justifies a man in killing an adulterer with the adulteress.—Quint., VII., I.

Deut. 5:19.—Neither shalt thou steal.

EURIPIDES.—The deity hates violence, and orders all men to obtain what may be acquired, not through plunder. For the heaven is common to all mortals, and the earth; in which it behooves us, dwelling in our houses, not to have other men's goods, nor to seize them by force.—Helen., v. 903.

LEX XII. TAB.—The law made a thief to be the slave of him from whom he stole, but condemned a nocturnal thief to death.—Apud Gell., lib. XX., c. I.

Deut. 5:20.—Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor.

DEMOSTHENES.—A false accuser, my countrymen! is a monster, a dangerous monster, querulous, and industrious in seeking pretense of complaint.—De Corona.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—In Egypt, false accusers were to suffer the same punishment which those whom they accused would have undergone, if they had been convicted.—Diod. Sic., I., 77.

PLAUTUS.—Those who commence villainous suits at law upon false testimony, and those who in court upon false oath deny a debt, their names, written down, are returned to Jove. Each day does he learn who here is calling for vengeance. —Rud. Prolog.

Deut. 5:21.—Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his servant, or his maid-servant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's.

HERODOTUS.—Glaucus, wishing to appropriate to his own use a sum of money which had been entrusted to his care, consulted the oracle whether he could be absolved from returning it. The priestess answered in the negative, upon which Glaucus entreated the deity to forgive him; but the priestess told him that the intention and the action were alike criminal.—Herod., lib. vi., c. 86.

PHILEMON.—He is not a just man who does injury to no one, but he who having the power to do injury does it not; nor, he who refrains from little thefts, but he who, when he might seize and retain great things without risk, perseveres in his integrity; nor he who merely observes this conduct, but who, being endued with an honest and pure mind, desires not to appear just only, but to be just.—Frag. apud Stob.

EPICTETUS.—No man's wife or child, or silver or gold, is to have any charms for you, but your own.—Epict., lib. iii., c. 7.

JUVENAL.—He who meditates within his breast a crime that finds not vent in words, has all the guilt of the act. —Sat., XIII., v. 209.

MENANDER.—

Covet not, Pamphilus,

Even a needleful of thread, for God,

Who's always near thee, always sees thy deeds.

Apud Clem. Alex. Strom.

(See Ex. 20:1-17.)

Door Inscriptions

Deut. 6:9.—And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—According to the monuments, the name of the owner of a house among the Egyptians was not infrequently written upon the lintels of the doors. Besides the owner's name they sometimes wrote a lucky sentence over the entrance of the house for a favorable omen, and the lintels and imposts of the doors in the royal mansions were often covered with hieroglyphics, containing the ovals and titles of the monarch.—Ancient Egyptians.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It is at this day customary in Mohammedan Asia for extracts from the Koran, and moral sentences, to be wrought in stucco over doors and gates, and as ornamental scrolls to the interior of apartments.—Pict. Bible.

Hebrew Exclusiveness

Deut. 7:3.—Neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take to thy son.

TACITUS.—The Jews are inflexible in their faith and adherence one to another, but towards the whole human race besides they retain deadly and implacable hatred. With all others they refuse to eat, with all others to lodge. —Hist., 1. V., c. 5.

Egyptian Diseases

Deut. 7:15.—And the Lord will take from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee.

DR. MASON Goon, F. R. S., F. R. S. L.—The Egyptian and Syrian climates, but especially the rainless atmosphere of the former, are very prolific in skin diseases, including in an exaggerated form, some which are common in the cooler regions of Western Europe. The heat and drought acting for long periods upon the skin, and the exposure of a large surface of the latter to their influence, combine to predispose it to such affections.—Study of Medicine, Vol. IV., p. 445.

ROSENMUELLER.—Pliny calls Egypt the mother of such diseases as lichenes, elephantiasis, the plague, etc. To these diseases seem to be referred the various kinds of ulcers, which were said to be sent by their angry goddess. Isis. Even now Egypt has various peculiar diseases.—Note In loco.

Hornets

Deut. 7:20.—Moreover the Lord thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed.

JOSEPH ROBERTS, M. R. A. S.—The people in England may deem this a puny way of punishing men; but they should recollect that the natives of the East wear scarcely any clothes, having, generally speaking, only a piece of cloth round their loins. They are, therefore, much more exposed than we are to the stings of insects. The sting of the hornet and wasp of those regions is much more poisonous than in Europe, and the insect is larger in size. I have heard of several who have died from receiving a single sting; and not many days ago, as a woman was going to the well to draw water, a hornet stung her in the cheek, and she died the next day. The Hindus often curse each other by saying,—"May all around thee be stung by the hornet! "—meaning the person and his relations. The god Siva is described as having destroyed many giants by hornets. Oriental Illustrations, p. 108.

The Promised Land

Deut. 8:7.—For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Strange that while springs are so scarce in the west, and fed only by winter torrents, here, even where wood is absent, on these highlands of Moab it is still " a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills."—Land of Israel, p. 545.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—Along the banks of the Sea of Galilee, as we have already seen, the depth of its situation produced a tropical vegetation unknown in the hills above; and this vegetation was increased by the beautiful springs, which, characteristic of the whole Valley of the Jordan, are unusually numerous and copious along the western shore of this lake, scattering verdure and fertility along their short course.—No less than four springs pour forth their almost full-grown rivers through the plain of Gennesareth.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 366.

IDEM.—Palestine is well distinguished not merely as a land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates. of oil-olive and honey, but emphatically, as "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of plains and mountains."—Sinai and Palestine, p. 123.

Deut. 8:8.—A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil-olive, and honey.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The return of wheat varies exceedingly, and from the slovenly agriculture, the neglect of rotation of crops, and the almost entire absence of manure, is much less than it might be, or than it was in former times. Thirty-fold the seed is considered a good return. Our Lord speaks, in the Parable of the sower, of wheat in good ground producing a hundred-fold. We have often counted sixty grains in an ear, and even a hundred is sometimes reached; and when we remember that several ears may spring from a single seed, we may see that a hundred-fold under favorable circumstances would be no excessive produce.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 488.

IDEM.—The Land of Promise was beyond all others renowned for its Vines, for their number, productiveness, and the quality of their wine. There is scarcely any region in the world more admirably adapted for wine culture than Palestine, with the exception only of its maritime plains and the Jordan Valley. It is the true climate of the Vine. The rocky hill-sides, with their light gravelly soil and sunny exposures, the heat of summer, and the rapid drainage of the winter rains, all combine to render it peculiarly a land of Vines.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 403.

IDEM.—The Fig is one of the native fruit-trees of the Promised Land, and is found wild or cultivated in every part of it.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 350.

IDEM.—The Olive Tree is abundant, not only in the heritage of Asher, but in every part of the Holy Land it is at this day the one characteristic tree of the country. In fact, a cursory observer has remarked, that it was the only tree he saw there. The most extensive olive yards are on the borders of the Phenician plain. But they are scarcely less important in the country of Ephraim: and all the valleys from the plain of Esdraelon to Benjamin, the patrimony of Manasseh and Ephraim, are clad with olives to this day. The vale of Shechem is one noble Olive Grove. The plain of Moreh beyond it is studded with them. They form the riches of Bethlehem, and cover the lower slopes of the valleys around Hebron. The plains of Gilead, and all the lower slopes, as well as the more fertile portions of Bashan, form a long series of Olive groves, neglected, indeed, but still ready to yield their fatness in return for the most trifling culture: and they are the wealth of the towns of Philistia and Sharon.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 374.

Deut. 8:9.—A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Long belts of sandstone run along the western slopes of Lebanon, which is in places largely impregnated with iron. Some strata towards the southern end are said to yield as much as ninety per cent. of pure iron.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1623.

REV. GEORGE E. POST, M. D., Tripoli, Syria.—Iron of a superior quality is mined and worked at the present day near the village of Duma, in Mount Lebanon. It is especially valuable for shoeing beasts of burden, and is greatly sought for throughout Northern Syria. It is probable that the merchants of Dan, who had possessions in the extreme north of Palestine in the neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi, derived from this source the " bright iron," mentioned by Ezekiel.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1144.

The Wilderness

Deut. 8:15.—Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were 'fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This description answers, to this day, with remarkable precision to these desert regions, and particularly to that part, about the head of the Gulf of Akaba, where the Israelites now were. Scorpions abound in all the desert, and are particularly common here, and they inflict a wound scarcely less burning than the serpents of the same region.—Pict. Bible, Non. 21:6.

HERODOTUS.—I went once to a certain place in Arabia, almost exactly opposite the city of Buto, to make inquiries concerning the winged serpents. On my arrival I saw the back-bones and ribs of serpents in such numbers as it is impossible to describe: of the ribs there were a multitude of heaps, some great, some small, some middle-sized. The place where the bones lie is at the entrance of a narrow gorge between steep mountains, which there open upon a spacious plain, communicating with the great plain of Egypt.—Euterpe, c. 75.

IDEM.—The Arabians say that the whole world would swarm with these serpents, if they were not kept in check.... Now with respect to the vipers and the winged snakes of Arabia, if they increased as fast as their nature would allow, impossible were it for man to maintain himself upon the earth.—Thal., c. 108-9.

Breeding Horses

Deut. 17:16.—But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—In illustration of the extensive possession of horses by the early kings of Egypt, it will be sufficient to adduce a passage from Diodorus, who says that " the monarchs before Sesostris maintained, along the banks of the Nile, between Memphis and Thebes, two hundred stables, in each of which were kept a hundred horses." Herodotus also notices that, prior to the reign of Sesostris, horses and carriages were very abundant in Egypt, but that subsequently they became comparatively uncommon, since the intersection of the whole country by canals rendered it unsuitable for their (employment. They were still, no doubt, bred and employed, and even exported to a certain extent.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 79.

Landmarks

Deut. 19:14.—Thou shalt not remove thy neighbors' landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee.

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSEUS.—Numa commanded everyone to place stones at the boundaries of his property, and every year, on a day appointed, to perform sacred rites in honor of the tutelary deities who preside over boundaries. Anyone who might dare to destroy or remove these landmarks was counted guilty of sacrilege, and might be slain with impunity.—Dion. Halic., 1. ii

HORACE.—

The sacred landmark strives in vain

Your impious avarice to restrain;

You break into your neighbor's grounds,

And overleap your client's bounds.

—Hor.; 1. ii., carm. 18.

W. R. COOPER, ESQR., Sec. of Soci. of Bib. Archœology.—Among the interesting Assyrian inscriptions lately discovered are those which, dating from 1200 B. C. to 600 B. C., are called " boundary stones." These were set up to mark the angles which circumscribe the limits of fields of various land-owners. Upon them were generally inscribed the names of the parties, the value and limits of their properties, and dedications to different deities, whose emblems were inscribed upon the summit of the stone. Thus, as in many instances in the Bible, the same pillar partook of the nature of altar, deed, and milestone, and was accordingly.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 241.

False Witnesses

Deut. 19:18, 19.—And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—False accusers were, by the laws of Egypt, to suffer the same punishment as those whom they falsely accused would have undergone, if they had been convicted of the offense.— Diod. Sic., 1. i., c. 77.

Destruction of Fruit-Trees

Deut. 20:19.—When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an ax against them, for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—There are laws in India which conduce much to the prevention of famine. Amongst other people, through devastations in time of war, the land lies untilled; but amongst the Indians husbandmen are never touched, though armies meet and engage under their very eyes. The husbandman is regarded as a servant of the common good, and is on that account sacred. Neither do they burn their enemies' country, or cut down their trees or plants.—Diod. Sic., 1. ii., c. 36.

Birds on the Nest

Deut. 22:6.—If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young.

PHOCYLIDES. —Let no one take a bird's nest with all its occupants, but let the mother go free, that she may again produce young.—Phocyl., carm. v., 79.

Abominable Offerings

Deut. 23:18.—Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God.

HERODOTUS.—The Babylonians have one custom in the highest degree abominable. Every woman is obliged, once in her life, to attend at the Temple of Venus. The money given to them is applied to sacred uses, and must not be refused, however small it may be.—Herod., 1. i., c. 199.

STRABO.—The temple of Venus at Corinth was so rich, that it had more than a thousand women consecrated to the service of the goddess, courtesans, whom both men and women had dedicated as offerings.—Strabo, I. viii., c. 6.

LUCIAN. —Such of the ladies as refuse to consecrate their hair (at the annual orgies in honor of Adonis), undergo the penalty of being obliged to offer themselves for hire in public for one day. Of the profits, an oblation is made to Venus.—Lucian, De Dea Syr., c. 6.

Restoration of Pledges

Deut. 24:12,13.—And if the man be poor thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: in any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the Lord thy God.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—During the day, the poor, while at work, can and do dispense with their ' aba, or outside garment, but at night it is greatly needed, even in the summer. The people in this country never sleep without being covered, even in the daytime; and in this experience has made them wise, for it is dangerous to health. This furnishes a good reason why this sort of pledge should be restored before night; and I could wish that this Law of Moses were still in force.—The Land and the Book, I., p. 500.

Punishment by Stripes

Deut. 25:2.—And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—Men and boys were laid flat upon the ground, and frequently held by the hands and feet while the chastisement was administered.—Ancient Egyptians, II., 40-42.

Deut. 25:3.—Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed.

DR. JOHN. KITTO.—The importance of this restriction will be felt when it is known that in the East an offender is sometimes beaten to death, or so severely as to be lamed for life. Even the Romans sometimes lashed criminals to death, there being no limitation to the number of blows. Moses more wisely fixed the maximum at a moderate point, and left the rest to be determined by the circumstances of the case and the discretion of the judges. This is exactly the plan followed in the modern criminal code of Europe with respect to most crimes not capital.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Treading Out the Corn

Deut. 25:4.—Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.

ROSELLINI.—As represented on the monuments, they make a great heap of ears in the midst of the threshing-floor, and cause them to be trodden out by six oxen, which are kept in constant motion by a man who goes behind with a whip.—In Pict. Bib.

CHAMPOLLION.—In the subterranean apartment at Elkab (Eilethyas), which belongs to the reign of Rameses Meiamum, among other things, I saw there the treading out, or the threshing of the sheaves of grain by oxen, and over the engraving may be read, in almost entirely phonetic characters, the song which the overseer sings while threshing:

Tread ye out for yourselves,

O oxen!

Tread ye out for yourselves,

The straws;

For men, who are your masters,

The grain.

—In Pict. Bib.

False Weights

Deut. 25:13.—Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—As in former times, so now, much of the business in the East is transacted by traveling merchants. The peddler comes to your door, and vociferates the names of his wares; and as soon as he catches your eye, begins to exhibit his very cheap but valuable articles. Have you agreed as to the price? he then produces the BAG of " divers weights;" and after fumbling some time in it, he draws forth the weight by which he has to sell. But, should he have to purchase anything of you, he will select a heavier weight. The man who is not cheated by this trader, and his “bag of divers weights," must be blessed with more keenness than most of his fellows.—Oriental Illust., p. 120.

The Curse of Removing the Landmark

Deut. 27:17.—Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark: and all the people shall say, Amen.

INSCRIPTION OF MERODACH BALADAN III. (B. C. 1340).—This land, for good have I given it like the treasure of heaven; as a land of acquisition have I settled it, as the result of his labors.... If a leader, or a citizen shall injure. or destroy the boundary stone here placed... may the gods Anu, Bel, Hea, Ninip and Gula, the Lords of this land, and all the gods whose memorials are made known on this tablet, violently make his name desolate; with unspeakable curse may they curse him; with utter desolation may they desolate him; may they gather his posterity together for evil and not for good; until the day of the departure of his life may he come to ruin, while the gods Shamas and Marduk rend him asunder; and may his name be trodden down.—Records of the Fast, Vol. IX., p. 31-36.

The Calamities That Would Follow Disobedience

Deut. 28:23, 24.—And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

PROP. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—On emerging from the Olive Groves of Gaza, the desert was before us—bare, white, and monotonous, without a solitary tree, or " the shadow of a great rock," or a single patch of verdure. As we rode on we had overhead the bright sky and blazing sun; and beneath, the flinty soil, reflecting burning rays that scorched the weeds and stunted camel-thorn, and made them crackle like charred sticks under our horses' feet. As the day advanced, the sirocco came upon us, blowing across the great “Wilderness of Wandering." At first it was but a faint breath, hot and parching, as if coming from a furnace. It increased slowly and steadily. Then a thick haze, of a dull yellow or brass color, spreading along the southern horizon, and advanced, rising and expanding, until it covered the whole face of the sky, leaving the sun, a red globe of fire, in the midst. We now knew and felt that it was the fierce Simoon. In a few moments, fine impalpable sand began to drift in our faces, entering every pore. Nothing could exclude it. It blew in our eyes, mouths, and nostrils, and penetrated our very clothes, causing the skin to contract, the lips to crack, and the eyes to burn. Respiration became difficult. We sometimes gasped for breath; and then the hot wind and hotter sand rushed into our mouths like a stream of liquid fire. We tried to urge on our horses; but though chafing against curb and rein only an hour before, they were now almost insensible to whip and spur. We look and longed for shelter from that pitiless storm, and for water to slake our burning thirst; but there was none. The plain extended on every side, smooth as a lake, to the circle of yellow haze that bounded it. No friendly house was there; no rock or bank; no murmuring stream or solitary well. It seemed to us as if the prophetic curse pronounced by the Almighty on a sinful and apostate nation was now being fulfilled. We could see, at least, in the whole face of nature, in earth and sky and storm, how terrible and how graphic that curse was:—" Thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain of the land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 210.

PROF. E. Loomis, LL. D.—On the deserts of Africa and Arabia there sometimes prevails a wind extremely dry and intensely hot, which raises clouds of sand, and transports it to a great distance. These winds are known by the name of Simoon, Harmattan, etc., according to their locality. Plants are withered by this wind; men and animals suffer intensely from the heat and dryness of the air; and entire caravans have been buried in the drifting sand. This dust is sometimes transported across the Mediterranean into Spain, Sicily and Italy, where the wind which brings it is known by the name of Sirocco. In Sicily, during its continuance, the thermometer sometimes rises to a hundred and ten degrees in the shade. Treatise on Meteorology, p. 88.

Deut. 28:28.—The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT—In the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans this was the case, as it appears from history: but in that by Titus and the Romans, and in the subsequent conduct of the miserable relics of the Jews, their infatuation was so evident, that everyone who reads of their conduct must be convinced, they were given up to judicial blindness and madness, or they never could have been so bent upon their own destruction. While, by their obstinate resistance to the Roman power, without the least prospect of escaping, they ensured their own miseries; by their intestine rage, they became the executioners of the wrath of God upon themselves, almost saved their enemies the trouble of destroying them, and absolutely put it out of their power to preserve them.—Note In loco.

Deut. 28:29.—And thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—The unjust and cruel exactions and oppressions, accompanied by every token of contempt and abhorrence, with which the Jews have been treated, in almost every nation, and during every age, since the times of Christ, can scarcely be conceived, except by those who are conversant in their history; but it is impossible, within the limits of this exposition, fully to elucidate so compendious a prophecy; and it must suffice to say, that no people on earth have been so long and so generally insulted, oppressed, and crushed, as they have been, according to the "testimony both of their own writers and of others.—Note In loco.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—Only oppressed and spoiled evermore: and what frequent seizures have been made of their effects in almost all countries? how often have they been fined and fleeced by almost all governments? how often have they been forced to redeem their lives with what is almost as dear as their lives, their treasures? Instances are innumerable.—Dissertations on the Prophecies, p. 93.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.—They were a race which, during these dark ages, was alike detested by the credulous and prejudiced vulgar, and persecuted by the greedy and rapacious nobility. Except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air or the waters, who were the objects of such unremitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretenses, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Briton, however adverse the races were to each other, contended which would look with greatest detestation upon a people whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. —Ivanhoe, Vol. I., p. 83, 120.

Deut. 28:37.—And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee.

BISHOP SIMON PATRICK, D. D.—The name of Jew has long been a proverbial mark of detestation and contempt, among all the nations whither they have been driven, and is so to this day; so that Christians, Mohammedans, and Pagans, join in it. " You use me like a Jew "—" None but a Jew would have done this "—" I would not have done so to a Jew,"—are expressions everywhere encountered.— Note In loco.

AN APPEAL OF THE JEWS TO THE JUSTICE OF KINGS AND NATIONS.—It seems as if our nation were allowed to survive the destruction of their country, only to see the most odious and calumnious imputations laid to their charge, to stand as the constant object of the grossest and most shocking injustice, to be as a mark for the insulting finger of scorn, and as a sport to the most inveterate hatred.—Trans. of Parisian Sanhedrim, p. 64.

Deut. 28:49,50.—The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young.

REV. GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B. D.—Remarkable, though perfectly familiar to every student of history, has been the accomplishment of this prediction also.

With the several languages of their immediate neighbors, the Jews were not unacquainted; for the Hebrews, the Phenician, the Syriac, the Chaldee, and the Arabic, are all dialects of one and the same primitive tongue. But the. Latin which was spoken by the Romans, and the various barbaric western languages which were spoken by their auxiliaries, were utterly unknown to the Jews as a nation. From far distant Italy came this people of a proverbially fierce countenance: and the strong fortifications of Jerusalem, in which the besieged obstinately placed their trust, and which excited even the admiration of Titus himself, were unable to defend them in the day of trouble.—Diffic. of Infidelity, p. 67.

JOSEPHUS.—When Vespasian entered Gadara, he slew all, man by man, the Romans showing mercy to no age, out of hatred to the nation, and remembrance of their former injuries.—The like slaughter was made at Gamala, for nobody escaped besides two women, and they escaped by concealing themselves from the rage of the Romans. For they did not so much as spare young children, but every one at that time snatching up many cast them down from the citadel.—Jewish Wars, B. III., c. 7, § r, and B. IV., c. i, § 10.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—At the capture of Jerusalem, the Roman soldiers put all indiscriminately to death, and ceased not till they became faint and weary and overpowered with the work of destruction.—Evid. from Prophecy, p. 61.

Deut. 28:53, 54.—And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straightness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee. So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children, which he shall leave.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—In the last siege of Jerusalem by the Romans there was a most terrible famine in the city, and Josephus hath given so melancholy an account of it, that we cannot read it without shuddering. He saith particularly that "women snatched the food out of the very mouths of their husbands, and sons of their fathers, and (what is most miserable) mothers of their infants; " and in another place he saith, that " in every house, if there appeared any semblance of food, a battle ensued, and the dearest friends and relations fought with one another, snatching away the miserable provisions of life." So literally were the words of Moses fulfilled,—" the man's eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward his children, because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straightness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates; " and in like manner " the woman's eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter." —Dissertations on the Prophecies, p. 88.

Deut. 28:56, 57.—The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not have adventured to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straightness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—This prediction was fulfilled in the last siege of Jerusalem by Titus; and we read in Josephus (J. W., B. VI., c. 3, § 4) particularly of a noble woman's killing and eating her own sucking child. Moses saith, “the tender and delicate woman among you, who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground, for delicateness and tenderness; " and there cannot be a more natural and lively description of a woman, who was, according to Josephus, illustrious for her family and riches. Moses saith, “She shall eat them for want of all things; " and according to Josephus, she had been plundered of all her substance and provisions by the tyrants and soldiers. Moses saith, that she should do it “secretly," and according to Josephus, when she had boiled and eaten half, she covered up the rest, and kept it for another time. So clearly and minutely hath this prophecy been fulfilled; and one would have thought that such distress and horror had almost transcended imagination, and much less that any person could certainly have foreseen and foretold it.-Dissertations on the Prophecies, p. 89.

Deut. 28:62.—And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—Now not to mention any other of the calamities and slaughters which the Jews have undergone, there was in the last siege of Jerusalem by Titus an infinite multitude, saith Josephus, who perished by famine; and he computes that during the whole siege the number of those who were destroyed by that, and by the war, amounted to 1,100,000, the people being assembled from all parts to celebrate the Passover; and the same author has given us an account of 1,240,490 destroyed in Jerusalem and other parts of Judea, besides 99,200 made prisoners, as Basnage has reckoned them up from that historian's account. Indeed, there is not a nation upon earth that hath been exposed to so many massacres and persecutions. Their history abounds with them.—Disserts. on Prophs., p. 90.

Deut. 28:63.—And ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.

REV. GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B. D.—Instead of being merely conquered and subjugated, the general fate of other nations attacked by the Romans, it was the harder lot of the Jews to be torn from their native country, and, on pain of death, to be prohibited from setting foot upon its soil.—Difficulties of Infidelity, p. 69.

TERTULLIAN.—A public edict of the emperor Adrian rendered it a capital crime for a Jew to set foot in Jerusalem, and prohibited them from viewing it even at a distance. Tert. Ap., C. 21.

Deut. 28:64.—And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other.

REV. GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B. D.-Where is the region in which the dispersed children of Israel are not to be found? Plucked violently from their own land, they meet us alike in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.—Difficulties of Infidelity, p. 69.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—There is not a country on the face of the earth where the Jews are unknown. They are found alike in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. They are citizens of the world, without a country. Neither mountains, nor rivers, nor deserts, nor oceans—which are the boundaries of other nations—have terminated their wanderings.' They abound in Poland, in Holland, in Russia, and in Turkey. In Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Britain, they are more thinly scattered. In Persia, China, and India—on the east and on the west of the Ganges—" they are few in number among the heathen. "They have trod the snows of Siberia, and the sands of the burning desert; and the European traveler hears of their existence in the regions which he cannot reach, even in the very interior of Africa, south of Timbuktu. From Moscow to Lisbon, from Japan to Britain, from Borneo to Archangel, from Hindustan to Honduras, no inhabitant of any nation upon the earth would be known in all the intervening regions but a Jew alone.—Evidence from Prophecy, p. 69.

Deut. 28:65-67.—And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.

REV. GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B. D.—For the exact accomplishment of this prediction we may confidently appeal to simple matter of fact. The description could not have been more vivid (or more accurate) had it been written in the present day, instead of many ages before the predicted dispersion of the house of Israel.—Difficulties of Infidelity, p. 69.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—The history of the Jews throughout the whole world, and in every age since their dispersion, verifies the most minute predictions concerning them, and to a recital of facts too well authenticated to admit of dispute, or too notorious for contradiction, may be added a description of them all in the very terms of the prophecy. In the words of Basnage, the elaborate historian of the Jews, “Kings have often employed the severity of their edicts and the hands of the executioner to destroy them—the seditious multitude has performed massacres and executions infinitely more tragical than the princes. Both kings and people, heathens, Christians, and Mohammedans, who are opposite in so many things, have united in the design of ruining this nation, and have not been able to effect it. The Bush of Moses, surrounded with flames, has always burnt without consuming. The Jews have been driven from all places of the world, which has only served to disperse them in all parts of the universe. They have, from age to age, run through misery and persecution, and torrents of their own blood." (B. VI., c. I.) Their banishment from Judea was only the prelude to their expulsion from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom. Their dispersion over the globe is an irrefragable evidence of this, and many records remain that amply corroborate the fact. Not only did the first and second centuries of the Christian era see them twice rooted out of their own land, but each succeeding century has teemed with new calamities to that once chosen but now long-rejected race. The history of their sufferings is a continued tale of horror.

Revolt is natural, to the oppressed; and their frequent seditious were productive of renewed privations and distresses. Emperors, kings, and caliphs all united in subjecting them to the same “iron yoke." Constantine, after having suppressed a revolt which they had raised, and having commanded their ears to be cut off, dispersed them as fugitives and vagabonds into different countries, whither they carried, in terror to their kindred, the mark of their suffering and infamy. In the fifth century they were expelled from Alexandria, which had long been one of their safest places of resort. Justinian, from whose principles of legislation a wiser and more humane policy ought to have emanated, yielded to none of his predecessors in hostility and severity against them. He abolished their synagogues—prohibited them, even from entering into caves for the exercise of their worship—rendered their testimony inadmissible, and deprived them of the natural right of bequeathing their property; and when such oppressive enactments led to insurrectionary movements among the Jews, their property was confiscated, many of them were beheaded, and so bloody an execution of them prevailed, that, as is expressly related, " all the Jews of that country trembled: " a trembling heart was given them. (Basnage, B. VI., c. 21.)

In the reign of the tyrant Phocas, a general sedition broke out among the Jews in Syria. They and their enemies fought with equal desperation. They obtained the mastery in Antioch; but a momentary victory only led to a deeper humiliation, and to the infliction of more aggravated cruelties than before. They were soon subdued and taken captive; many of them were maimed, others executed, and all the survivors were banished from the city.

Gregory the Great afforded them a temporary respite from oppression, which only rendered their spoliation more complete, and their suffering more acute, under the cruel persecutions of Heraclius. That emperor, unable to satiate his hatred against them by inflicting a variety of punishments on those who resided within his own dominions, and by finally expelling them from the empire, exerted so effectually against them his influence in other countries, that they Suffered under a general and simultaneous persecution from Asia to the farthest extremities of Europe. (Bas., B. VI., c. 21, sec. 17.) In Spain, conversion, imprisonment, or banishment were their only alternatives. In France, a similar fate awaited them. They fled from country to country, seeking in vain any rest for the sole of their foot. Even the wide-extended plains of Asia afforded them no resting-place, but have often been spotted with their blood, as well as the hills and valleys of Europe.

Mahomet, whose imposture has been the law and the faith of such countless millions, has, from the precepts of the Koran, infused into the minds of his followers a spirit of rancor and enmity towards the despised and misbelieving Jews. He set an early example of persecution against them, which the Mohammedans have not yet ceased to imitate. In the third year of the Hegira, he besieged the castles which they possessed in the Hegiasa, compelled those who had fled to them for refuge and defense to an unconditional surrender, banished them the country, and parted their property among his Mussulmans. He dissipated a second time their recombined strength, massacred many of them, and imposed upon the remnant a permanent tribute.

The Church of Rome ever ranked and treated the Jews as heretics. The canons of different councils pronounced excommunication against those who should favor or uphold them against Christians— enjoined all Christians neither to eat nor to hold any commerce with them—prohibited them from bearing public offices or having Christian slaves—appointed them to be distinguished by a mark—decreed that their children should be taken from them, and brought up in monasteries; and, what is equally descriptive of the low estimation in which they were held, and of the miseries to which they were subjected, there was often a necessity, even for those who otherwise oppressed them, to ordain that it was not lawful to take the life of a Jew without any cause. (Dupin's Ecc. Hist.)

Hallam's account of the Jews during the middle ages is short, but significant. “They were everywhere the objects of popular insult and oppression, frequently of a general massacre. A time of festivity to others was often the season of mockery and persecution to them. It was the custom at Toulouse to smite them on the face every Easter. At Beziers they were attacked with stones from Palm Sunday to Easter, an anniversary of insult and cruelty generally productive of bloodshed, and to which the populace were regularly instigated by a sermon from the Bishop." (Hallam's History of the Middle Ages, Vol. I., 2, 33.)

It was the policy of the kings of France to employ them as a sponge to suck their subjects' money, which they might afterward express with less odium than direct taxation would incur. It is almost incredible to what a length extortion of money from the Jews was carried. Philip Augustus released all Christians in his dominions from their debts to the Jews, reserving a fifth part to himself. He afterward expelled the whole nation from France. St. Louis twice banished and twice recalled them; and Charles VI. finally expelled them from France. From that country, according to Mezeray, they were seven times banished. They were expelled from Spain; and, by the lowest computation, 170,(Doo families departed from that kingdom. (Bas., B. VII., c. 21.) "At Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of them were pillaged and massacred. A remnant was saved by a feigned and transient conversion; but the greater part of them barricaded their houses, and precipitated themselves, their families, and their wealth into the rivers or the flames. These massacres and depredations on the Jews were renewed at each crusade." (Gibbon's Hist., Vol. VI., p. 97.)

In England, also, they suffered great cruelty and oppression at the same period. During the crusades, the whole nation united in the persecution of them. In a single instance, at York, fifteen hundred Jews, including women and children, were refused all quarter—could not purchase their lives at any price— and, frantic with despair, perished by a mutual slaughter. Each master was the murderer of his family, when death became their only deliverance. So despised and hated were they, that the barons, when contending with Henry III., to ingratiate themselves with the populace, ordered seven hundred Jews to be slaughtered at once, their houses to be plundered, and their synagogue to be burned. Richard, John, and Henry III often extorted money from them; and the last, by most unscrupulous and unsparing measures, usually defrayed his extraordinary expenses with their spoils, and impoverished some of the richest among them. His extortions at last became so enormous, and his oppressions so grievous, that, in the words of the historian, he reduced the miserable wretches to desire leave to depart the kingdom; but even self-banishment was denied them. Edward I. completed their misery, seized on all their property, and banished them the kingdom. Above 15,000 Jews were rendered destitute of any residence, were despoiled to the utmost, and reduced to ruin. Nearly four centuries elapsed before the return to Britain of this abused race.—Evidence from Prophecy, p. 70-74.

Deut. 28:68.—And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bond women, and no man shall buy you.

JOSEPHUS.—Titus appointed Fronto to decide the fate of those taken alive... and of the young men he chose out the tallest and most beautiful, and reserved them for the triumph; and as for the rest of the multitude that were above seventeen years old, he put them into bonds, and sent them to the Egyptian mines.—Jewish Wars, B. VI., c. 9, § 2.

ST. JEROME. —After their last overthrow by Adrian many thousands of the Jews were sold; and those who could not be sold, were transported into Egypt, and perished by shipwreck or famine, or were massacred by the inhabitants.—Hieron. in Zachariam, c.

Deut. 29:22, 24.—So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it;... even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?

REV. GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B. D.—It is universally taught and believed, that the Jews labor under the special curse of God. Their troubles are not viewed as a matter of ordinary occurrence, which may reasonably deserve and attract a little attention: but they are considered as something out of the common course of nature; and they are contemplated, as an awful indication of the Divine displeasure. According to the prophecy, as a simple fact, this opinion always has been entertained.—Diff of Infid., p. 67.

VOLNEY.—I wandered over the country—I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This Syria, said I to my. self, now almost depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages and hamlets. What are become of so many productions of the hand of man? What are become of these ages of abundance and of life?—Great God! from whence proceed such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these countries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed? Why is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated?—Ruins of Empires, p. 7, 8.

DR. ALEX. KEITH.—Such are the prophecies, and such are the facts respecting the Jews;—and from premises like these the feeblest logician may draw a MORAL, DEMONSTRATION.—Evi. from Prophecy, P. 79.

BISHOP THOS. NEWTON, D. D.—Here are instances of prophecies, prophecies delivered above three thousand years ago, and yet as we see fulfilling in the world at this very time: and what stronger proof can we desire of the Divine Legation of Moses? How these instances may affect others I know not; but for myself I must acknowledge, they not only convince, but amaze and astonish me beyond expression.—Disserts. on Prophs., p. 96.

The Parent Eagle

Deut. 32:11, 12.—As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him. SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.—I once saw a very interesting sight above one of the crags of Ben Nevis, as I was going on the 20th of August in the pursuit of black game. Two parent eagles were teaching their offspring, two young birds, the maneuvers of flight. They began by rising from the top of the mountain in the eye of the sun; it was about midday, and bright for this climate. They at first made small circles, and the young birds imitated them; they paused on their wings, waiting till they had made their first flight, and then took a second and larger gyration, always rising towards the sun, and enlarging their circle of flight so as to make a gradually extending spiral. The young ones still slowly followed, apparently flying better as they mounted; and they continued this kind of sublime exercise, always rising, till they became mere points in the air, and the young ones were lost and afterward their parents to our aching sight. —Salmonia, 99.

Honey Out of the Rock

Deut. 32:13.—And he made him to suck honey out of the rock.

DR. W. M. THOMSON. —In a gigantic cliff of Wady Kurn immense swarms of bees have made their home. The people of M'alia, several year ago, let a man down the face of the rock by ropes. He was entirely protected from the assaults of the bees, and extracted a large amount of honey; but he was so terrified 'by the prodigious swarms of Bees that he could not be induced to repeat the exploit.—The Land and the Book, I., p. 460.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The innumerable fissures and clefts of the limestone rocks, which everywhere flank the valleys, afford in their recesses secure shelter for any number of swarms, and many of the Bedouin, particularly in the wilderness of Judea, obtain their subsistence by Bee-hunting,' bringing into Jerusalem jars of that wild honey on which John the Baptist fed in the wilderness, and which Jonathan long before had unwittingly tasted, when the comb had dropped on the ground from the hollow of the tree in which, it was suspended. The visitor to the Wady Kurn, when he sees the busy multitudes of bees about its clefts, cannot but recall to mind the promise: “With honey out of the strong rock would I have satisfied thee." There is no epithet of the Land of Promise more true to the letter, even to the present day, than this, that it was “a land flowing with milk and honey.".—The Land of Israel, p. 88.

The View from Pisgah

Deut. 34:1-4.—And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho: and the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm-trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—On these brows overlooking the mouth of the Jordan, over against Jericho, every condition is met both for the Pisgah of Balaam and of Moses. Here we halted and gazed upon a prospect on which it has been permitted to few European eyes to feast. The day was clear, and revealed to us (whether or not we were standing on the exact spot) at least the very same landscape as that on which “Moses, the servant of the Lord," closed his mortal eye. The altitude of this brow cannot be less than 4,500 feet, so completely does it overlook the heights of Hebron and of central Judea. To the eastward, as we turned round, the ridge seemed gently to slope for two or three miles, when a few small, ruin-clad tells, or hillocks, broke the monotony of the outline; and then, sweeping forth, rolled in one vast unbroken expanse, the goodly Belka—one boundless plain, stretching far into Arabia, till lost in the horizon—one waving ocean of corn and grass, of which the Arabs may well boast.

As the eye turned southwards towards the line of the ridge on which we were clustered, the peak of Jebel Shihân just stood out behind Jebel Attarus, which opened to reveal to us the situation of Kerak, though not its walls. Beyond and behind these sharply rose Mount Hor and Seir, and the rosy granite peaks of Arabia faded away into the distance towards Akabah. Still turning westwards, in front of us, two or three lines of terraces reduced the height of the plateau as it descended to the Dead Sea, the western outline of which we could trace, in its full extent, from Usdum to Feshkhah. It lay like a long strip of molten metal, with. the sun mirrored on its surface, waving and undulating in its further edge, unseen in its eastern limits, as though poured from some deep cavern beneath our feet. There, almost in the center of the line, a break in the ridge, and a green spot below, marked Engedi, the nest once of the Kenite, now of the wild goat.—The fortress of Masada and jagged Shukif rose above the mountain-line, but still as far below us, and lower, too, than the ridge of Hebron, which we could trace, as it lifted gradually from the southwest, as far as Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The buildings of Jerusalem we could not see, though all the familiar points in the neighborhood were at once identified. There was the mount of Olives, with the church at its top, the gap in the hills leading up from Jericho, and the rounded heights of Benjamin on its other side. Still turning northward, the eye was riveted by the deep Ghor, with the rich green islets of Ain Sultan and Ain Duk—twin oases, nestling, as it were, under the wall of Quarantania. There, closer still, beneath us, had Israel's last camp extended, in front of the green fringe which peeped forth from under the terraces in our foreground. The dark sinuous bed of the Jordan, clearly defined near its mouth, was soon lost in dim haze. Then looking over it, the eye rested on Gerizim's rounded top; and, further still, opened the plain of Esdraelon, the shoulder of Carmel, or some other intervening height, just showing to the right of Gerizim, while the faint and distant bluish haze beyond it told us that there was the sea, " the utmost sea." It seemed as if but a whiff were needed to brush off the haze and reveal it clearly. Northwards, again, rose the distinct outline of unmistakable Tabor, aided by which we could identify Gilboa mid Jebel. Duhy. Snowy Hermon's top was mantled with cloud, and Lebanon's highest range must have been exactly shut behind it; but in front, due north of us, stretched in long line the dark forests of Man, bold and undulating, with the steep sides of mountains here and there whitened by cliffs, terminating in Mount Gilead, behind Es Salt. To the northeast, the vast Hauran stretched beyond, filling in the horizon line to the Belka, between which and the Hauran (or Bashan) there seems to be no natural line of separation. The tall range of Jebel Hauran, behind Bozrah, was distinctly visible.

We did indeed congratulate each other on the privilege of having gazed on this superb panorama, which will live in memory's eye. "And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm-trees, unto Zoar. "—Land of Israel, 540-543.

Joshua

The Overflow of Jordan

Josh. 3:15.-Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—I visited the scene of this miracle (Israel's dry-shod march across Jordan) on the 1St of April, and found barley harvest about Jericho already ended. I also found the river full to the brim, and saw evidence in abundance that it had overflowed its banks very recently. Harvest in the vale of the Lower Jordan comes on about the middle of March. The Jordan does not depend upon tributaries for ifs steady supply of water, but is almost wholly formed and fed by certain great fountains, which arise far north, around the base of snowy Hermon, and in this fact we find an explanation of the overflow of the river so late in the season as March. These immense fountains do not feel the effects of the early winter rains at all. It requires the heavy and long-continued storms of mid-winter before they are moved in the least; and it is not until toward the close of winter, when the melting snows of Hermon and Lebanon, with the heavy rains of the season, have penetrated through the mighty masses of these mountains, and filled to overflowing their hidden chambers and vast reservoirs, that the streams gush forth in their full volume. The Hûleh—marsh and lake—is filled, and then Gennesaret rises, and pours its accumulated waters into the swelling Jordan about the first of March. Thus it comes to pass that it does actually” overflow all its banks during all the time of harvest; " nor does it soon subside, as other short rivers do, when the rains cease.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 453-455.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, A. M.-It was in the month of April I visited this "holy place" on the Jordan (the Pilgrims' bathing-place). It was already the time of harvest, for the people of Jericho were reaping their little fields upon the plain. And we are told that "Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest." The fact is still true, though Palestine is changed. The heavy rains of early spring falling on the northern mountains, and the winter snows melting on the sides of Hermon, send a thousand tributaries to the sacred river. It rises to the top of the lower banks, and when I was there, the ruddy, swollen waters had flowed over and covered portions of the verdant meadows on each side.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 112.

Stone Knives

Josh. 5:2.—At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives (knives of flints), and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time.

REV. HENRY WRIGHT PHILLOTT, M. A.—The knives of the Egyptians, and of other nations in early times, were probably only of hard stone, and the use of the stone or "flint knife” was sometimes retained for sacred purposes after the introduction of iron and steel.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1572.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—It is well known that in the Sinaitic Peninsula stone or flint knives have often been discovered on opening ancient places of sepulture. The Abyssinian tribes at the present day use flint knives in performing circumcision.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 5573.

The Curse of Jericho

Josh. 6:26.—And Joshua adjured them, at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

ROSENMULLER. —This curse, according to 1 Kings 16:34, was fulfilled in one Hiel, who lost his eldest son, Abiram, when he laid the foundation, and his youngest son, Segub, when he built the gate.—Note In loco.

DR. JOHN KITTO.-In the ancient history of other nations, we meet with many instances of prohibitions to rebuild a city destroyed in war, with imprecations against those who should attempt it. Strabo states that it was believed that Troy had not been rebuilt on its former site from the dread of a curse which Agamemnon was supposed to have pronounced against him that should do so. This, he adds, was an ancient custom; and, as a further instance, mentions that Croesus, after he had destroyed Sidene, uttered a curse against him who should rebuild its walls. The Romans, also, after the destruction of Carthage, by Scipio Africanus, pronounced a curse upon him who should presume to rebuild that city.

—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Gerizim and Ebal

Josh. 8:33-35.—And all Israel, and their elders, and officers, and their judges, stood on this side the ark and on that side before the priests the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, as well the stranger as he that was born among them; half of them over against Mount Gerizim, and half of them over against Mount Ebal; as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel. And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them.

LIEUT. S. ANDERSON, R. E.—This spot, the site of the ancient Shechem, the city of refuge, is unrivaled in Palestine for beauty and luxuriance. There are two mountains parallel to each other, almost meeting at their bases, but one mile and a half apart at their summits. They enclose a beautiful little valley between them, not more than Too yards wide at the narrowest part, and widening out in both directions. The town of Nablus is situated at the narrowest part of the vAle. The mountain on the north is Ebal, that on the south Gerizim, and the vale lies east and west. An excursion was made to the summit of Mount Ebal, 1,200 feet above the vAle. Just below the summit, there is a break in the regular slope of the hill, and a small but steep valley comes up from the vale below almost to the summit, forming a vast natural amphitheater, in height equal to that of the mountain. Immediately opposite to this the steep slope of Mount Gerizim is similarly broken by a valley forming a second natural amphitheater of equal beauty and grandeur. In these two lateral valleys were assembled the twelve tribes of Israel, under Joshua, six tribes on Gerizim and six tribes on Ebal. The Levites and the ark were in the strip of the vale, and the blessings and cursings were read before the whole congregation. Nothing is wanting in the natural beauty of the site to add to the solemnity and impressiveness of such a scene.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 361.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The acoustic properties of this valley (Shechem) are interesting, the more so that several times they are incidentally brought to our notice in Holy Writ, as on the occasion, when Jonathan "went and stood in the top of Mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem; "and when at a far more eventful period, we read that all Israel were gathered together there, " half of them over against Mount Gerizim, and half of them over against Mount Ebal," when Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law... before all the congregation of Israel, with the women and the little ones and the strangers that were conversant among them." This very statement has been made the ground for a recent objection against the veracity of the narrative. Yet it is impossible to conceive a spot more admirably adapted for the purpose than this one, in the very center of the newly acquired land, nor one which could more exactly fulfill all the required conditions. Let us imagine the chiefs and the priests gathered in the center of the valley, the tribes stretching out as they stood in compact masses, the men of war and heads of families, half on the north and half on the south, crowding the slopes on either side, the mixed multitude, the women and the children, extending along in front till they spread into the plain beyond, but still in sight: and there is no difficulty, much less impossibility, in the problem. A single voice might be heard by many thousands, shut in and conveyed up and down by the enclosing hills. In the early morning we could not only see from Gerizim a man driving his ass down a path on Mount Ebal, but could hear every word he uttered as he urged it on; and in order to test the matter more certainly, on a subsequent occasion two of our party stationed themselves on opposite sides of the valley, and with perfect ease recited the commandments antiphonally.—The Land of Israel, p. 151.

Gibeon

Josh. 10:2.—They feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty men.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Crystal Palace.—The traveler who pursues the northern camel-road from Jerusalem, turning off to the left at Tuleil el-Ful (Gibeah) on that branch of it which leads westward to Jaffa, finds himself, after crossing one or two stony and barren ridges, in a district of a more open character. This is the central plateau of the country, the “land of Benjamin," and these round hills are the Gibeahs, Gebas, Gibeons, and Ramahs, whose names occur so frequently in the records of this district. Retaining its ancient name almost intact, El-Jib (Gibeon) stands on the northernmost of a couple of these mamelons, just at the place where the road to the sea parts into two branches, the one by the lower level of the Wady Suleiman, the other by the heights of the Bethhorons to Lydda and Joppa.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 916.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—The village of El-Jib, both by its name and situation, is incontestably identified with the ancient Gibeon.—Sinai and Palestine, P. 212.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—El-Jib, the Gibeon of the Bible, is situated on an isolated and rocky hill of moderate elevation, with plains, valleys, and higher mountains all around it. Remains of ancient buildings, tombs, and quarries indicate a large and important city, though it is now a miserable hamlet.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 545.

Battle of Beth-Horon

Josh. 10:10, 11.—And the Lord discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Beth-horon, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah. And it came to pass, as they fled before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Crystal Palace.—There is no room for doubt that the two Beth-horons still survive in the modern villages of Beit'ur et-Tahta and Beit'ur el-Tôka, which were first noticed by Dr. Clarke, and have been since visited by Dr. Robinson, Mr. Stanley, and others. Besides the similarity of the name, and the fact that the two places are still designated as "upper" and "lower," all the requirements of the narrative are fulfilled in this identification. The road is still the direct one from the site which must have been Gibeon (El-Jib), and from Michmash (Mukhmas) to the Philistine Plain on the one hand, and Antipatris on the other. On the mountain which lies to the southward of the nether village is still preserved the name (Yalo) and the site of Ajalon, so closely connected with the proudest memories of Beth-horon; and the long descent between the two remains unaltered from what it was on that great day, "which was like no day before or after it." From Gibeon to the Upper Beth-horon is a distance of about four miles of broken ascent and descent. The ascent, however, predominates, and this, therefore, appears to be the "going up" to Beth-horon, which formed the first stage of Joshua's pursuit. With the upper village the descent commences; the road rough and difficult even for the mountain paths of Palestine. This rough descent from the upper to the lower Beit'ur is the “going down" to Beth-horon of the Bible narrative. Standing on the high ground of the upper village, and overlooking the wild scene, we may feel assured that it was over this rough path that the Canaanites fled to their native lowlands.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 292.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—The fugitives had outstripped the pursuers, they had crossed the high ridge of Beth-horon the Upper; they were in full flight down the descent to Beth-horon the Nether; when, as afterward in the fight of Barak, against Sisera, one of the fearful tempests which from time to time sweep over the hills of Palestine, burst upon the disordered army, and " they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."—Sinai and Palestine, p. 206.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—When the Persians were on their way to Delphi to spoil the temple, there arose a sudden and incredible tempest of wind and hail, with dreadful thunder and lightning, by which great rocks were rent to pieces and cast upon the heads of the Persians, destroying them by heaps. Those who survived took to flight, terrified by this portent from the immortal gods.—Diod. Sic., 1. xi., c. 1.

DR. HALLEY.—Two remarkable falls of hail happened in April and May, 1697. The latter was the most extraordinary. It occurred in Hertfordshire (England) after a storm of thunder and lightning. Several persons were killed by the hail, their bodies being beaten black and blue. Vast oaks were split by it, and fields of rye cut down as with a scythe. The stones measured from ten to fourteen inches in circumference. Their figures were various, some angular, some oval, some flat. -Philosophical Transactions, No. 229.

DR. NEIL. —A remarkable hail-fall occurred during a thunder-storm in the Orkneys, July 24th, 1818. Mingled with ordinary hail were enormous masses of ice, some as large as the egg of a goose, whereby animals were killed, and several persons wounded. —Edin. Philos. Trans., Vol. IX.

COMMODORE PORTER.—It was in the summer of 1831, at Constantinople.—We had got perhaps a mile and a half on our way down the Bosphorus, when a cloud rising in the west gave indications of an approaching rain. In a few minutes we discovered something falling from the heavens with a heavy splash, and of a whitish appearance. I could not conceive what it was, but observing some gulls near, I supposed it to be them darting for fish; but soon after discovered that they were large balls of ice falling. Immediately we heard a sound like rumbling thunder, or ten thousand carriages rolling furiously over the pavement. The whole Bosphorus was in a foam, as though heaven's artillery had been discharged upon us and our frail machine. Our fate seemed inevitable; our umbrellas were raised to protect us, the lumps of ice stripped them into ribbands. We fortunately had a bullock's hide in the boat, under which we crawled and saved ourselves from further injury. One of the three oarsmen had his hand literally smashed; another much injured in the shoulder; and all more or less injured. A smaller kaick accompanied, with my two servants. They were both disabled, and are now in bed with their wounds; the kaick was terribly bruised. It was the most awful and terrific scene that I ever witnessed, and God forbid that I should ever be exposed to such another. Balls of ice as large as my two fists fell into the boat; and some of them came with such violence as certainly to have broken an arm or leg, had they struck us in those parts. One of them struck the blade of an oar and split it. The scene lasted may be five minutes, but it was five minutes of the most awful feeling that I ever experienced. When it passed over, we found the surrounding hills covered with masses of ice, I cannot call it hail; the trees stripped of their leaves and limbs, and everything looking desolate. Two boatmen were killed in the upper part of the village of Buyukaere; and I have heard of broken Nimes in abundance. Many of the thick brick tiles with which my roof is covered are smashed to atoms, and my house was inundated by the rain that succeeded this visitation. It is impossible to convey an idea of what it was.—Quoted in Pict. Bib.

PLUTARCH.—When the business (between Timoleon and the Carthagenians) came to a decision by the sword, where art is no less requisite than strength, all of a sudden there broke out dreadful thunders from the mountains, mingled with long trails of lightning; after which the black clouds, descending from the tops of the hills, fell upon the two armies in a storm of wind, rain, and hail. The tempest was on the backs of the Greeks, but beat upon the faces of the Barbarians, and almost blinded them with the stormy showers and the fire continually streaming from the clouds.—Plut., Timol., c. 28.

LIVY.—We are told that the Gauls, when plundering Delphi, were destroyed by a storm. A like storm now discomfited the Thracians when they were approaching the summit of the mountain Donuca. They were not only overwhelmed by a deluge of rain, followed by prodigious thick showers of hail, and accompanied with tremendous noises in the sky, peals of thunder, and flashes, of lightning which dazzled their sight; but the thunderbolts also fell so thick on all sides that they seemed to be aimed at their bodies, and not only the soldiers, but their officers also were struck by them and fell. They fled therefore precipitately.—Livy, 1. xl., c. 58.

PROF. E. Loomis, LL. D.—The size of hailstones varies from one-tenth of an inch or less in diameter to more than four inches. On the 13th of August, 1851, about 1 P. M., hailstones fell in New Hampshire weighing eighteen ounces. The stones were somewhat porous and of irregular shape, and their largest circumference exceeded fifteen inches. A few years since, hailstones weighing sixteen ounces fell in the city of Pittsburgh, and hailstones weighing over half a pound have fallen in several places of the United States. On the 7th of May, 1822, there fell at Bonn, in Germany, hailstones weighing from twelve to thirteen ounces, and stones weighing half a pound have repeatedly fallen in France and Italy. On the 22nd of May, 1851, in the southern part of India, many hailstones fell about the size of oranges.—Treatise on Meteorology, p. 129, 530.

Trampling on the Vanquished

Josh 10:24.—Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—This was anciently a common form of expressing triumph over a fallen adversary. When the Persian king Sapor took captive the Roman emperor Valerian, he, for some time, used to put his feet upon his neck when he mounted his horse; and after long captivity, caused him to be flayed. The custom is indeed recorded even on the rocks of the East. One very striking instance appears at Besitoon, in the ancient Media, where the sculptured face of the rock represents a conquering monarch standing with one foot upon the body of a conquered king, whose hands are uplifted in supplication. Another sculptured rock in the same neighborhood represents a crowned figure with one foot upon the head and the other between the shoulders of a prostrate king. The same custom is frequently indicated in the sculptures of Egypt.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Dioxippus, having thrown his enemy Horratas to the ground, drew his sword, and standing over him, placed his foot upon his neck. —Q. Curt., lib. ix., c. 7.

GIBBON.—We are told that Valerian, in chains, but invested with the imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude, a constant spectacle of fallen greatness; and that whenever the Persian monarch mounted on horseback, he placed his foot on the neck of the Roman emperor.—Decline and Fall, chap. x.

ROBERTS.—This, in the East, is a favorite way of triumphing over a fallen foe. In the history of the battles of the gods or giants, particular mention is made of the closing scene-how the conquerors went and trampled on their enemies. Orient. Illust., p. 135.

Eglon and Lachish

Josh. 10:34.-And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it: and they took it on that day.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—" From Lachish Joshua passed on to Eglon," and so did we. We were now in the track of the great conqueror, treading the very soil which he trod more than thirty centuries ago, and visiting the sites of those royal cities which he wrested from the Canaanite kings. As we read the brief narrative of his marches and his victories, we are struck with the minute accuracy of his topography. The distance from Lachish to Eglon is just about two miles; and it was thus easy for the Israelites, after the capture of the former, to march on the latter, and “take it the same day."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 213.

Chariots of War

Josh. 11:4.—And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people even as the sand that is upon the seashore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The military power of the northern races, the Hittites and their allies, is represented in Joshua as consisting especially in the multitude of their chariots. This agrees with the Egyptian accounts, which similarly make the chariots of the Sheta their main force.—Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament, p. 101.

Taanach and Megiddo

Josh. 17:11.—And Manasseh had... Taanach and her towns, and the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—Taanach is almost always named in company with Megiddo, and they were evidently the chief towns of that fine rich district which forms the western portion of the great plain of Esdraelon. There they art still to be found. The identification of Ta' annuk with Taanach may be taken as one of the surest in the whole Sacred Topography. It was known to Eusebius, who mentions it twice in the Onomasticon, as " a very' large village," standing between three and four Roman miles from Legio—the ancient Megiddo.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3130.

The Hornet

Josh. 24:12.—And I sent the hornet before you, which drave them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; but not with thy sword nor with thy bow.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Instances are on record in profane history where hornets have multiplied to such a degree as to become a pest to the inhabitants. The furious attack of a swarm of hornets drives cattle or horses to madness, and has even caused, the death of the animals. From the terror they inspire, their attacks may be spoken of in a metaphorical sense, like the Greek and Latin Æstrus, or Gadfly, to signify the panic and alarm with' which the approach of the hosts of Israel would inspire the Canaanites. In the Holy Land we found four species, all very common, but none of them identical with our hornet. When any of our horses had accidentally trodden on a nest, it was necessary to retreat with all speed, for the attack of the enraged insects at once caused a stampede throughout the camp.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 322.

Judges

Captives Disabled

Judg. 1:6, 7.—But Adoni-bezek fled, and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and great toes. And Adoni-bezek said, Three-score and ten kings, having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table; as I have done, so God hath requited me.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—This form of mutilation was not arbitrary, but chosen in order to render those who suffered it unfit for warlike service; henceforth they could neither wield the bow, nor stand firm in battle, nor escape by flight.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 32.

ÆLIAN.—The Athenians, at the instigation of Cleon, son of Cleænetus, made a decree that all the inhabitants of the island of Egina should have the thumb cut off from the right hand, so that ever after, they might be disabled from holding a spear, yet might handle an oar.—Var. Hist., 1. ii., c. 9.

SUETONIUS.-A Roman nobleman, who had cut off the thumbs of his two sons, to prevent them from being called to a military life, was, by order of Augustus, publicly sold, both he and his property.—Vita August., c. 24.

ATHENÆUS.—It is said of some of the Parthian kings that at table they threw food to their famished vassals, who would catch it up like dogs, and like dogs were beaten till blood flowed from them.— Deipnosophistœ, lib. iv., p. 152.

Ashtaroth

Judg. 2:12.—And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The worship of Ashtoreth by the Canaanitish nations generally (Judg. 2:11-13,) accords with a hieroglyphic inscription of Rameses II., which mentions Asterte as a Hittite divinity.—Hist. of O. T., p. 101.

Ox-Goad

Judg. 3:31.—And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad: and he also delivered Israel.

HOMER. —Lycurgus put to flight Bacchus and his votaries, driving them from the sacred grove of Nyssa with an ox-goad. Iliad, l. vi., v. 135.

REV. JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—"The husbandman," says Mr. Buckingham (in his Travels), "was holding the plow with one hand, by a handle like that of a walking crutch, while he bore in the other a goad of seven or eight feet in length, armed with a sharp point of iron at one end, and at the other with a plate of the same metal, shaped like a caulking-chisel, for cleaning the earth from the plowshare." And Maundrel, who gives nearly 'the same description, says, "May we not conjecture that it was with such a goad as one of these that Shamgar made that prodigious slaughter related of him? I am confident that whoever should see one of these instruments would judge it to be a weapon no less fit, perhaps fitter, than a sword for such execution."—Pictorial Bible, note In loco.

Barak's Victory over Sisera

Judg. 4:13-15.—And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him, from Harosheth of the Gentiles unto the river of Kishon. And Deborah said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the Lord gone out before thee? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him. And the Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—The 'means we have at present for illustrating the local scene of Barak's victory over Sisera impart a new interest to the narrative, and furnish a remarkable testimony to its accuracy. Though the song of Deborah and Barak was written thousands of years ago, so many of the places mentioned in it have survived to our time and been identified, that this battle-field lies now mapped out before us on the face of the country almost as distinctly as if we were reading the account of a contemporary event. Dr. Thomson, who has had his home for a quarter of a century almost in sight of Tabor, at the foot of which the battle was fought, has given a living picture of the movements of the hostile armies, and of the localities referred to, showing that nearly all these still exist and bear their ancient names, and occur precisely in the order that the events of the narrative presuppose. The passage is too long for citation (Land and the Book, Vol. II., 141-144), but will be found to illustrate strikingly the topographical accuracy of Scripture. Stanley has given a similar description (Sin. and Pal., p. 331).—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 245.

White Asses

Judg. 5:21.—Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment, and walk by the way.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—White asses were an especial mark of rank and dignity. Thus Deborah addresses the Judges as “ye that ride on white asses; " and white asses are still in high esteem. Bagdad is celebrated for its breed of white asses, which are considered more fleet than others; and they are to be seen also in Damascus, where they command fancy prices, but are tender, and do not flourish near the coast.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 39.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—The higher estimation in which white asses are held is indicated by the superior style of their furniture and decorations; and in passing through the streets, the traveler will not fail to notice the conspicuous appearance which they make in the line of asses which stand waiting to be hired.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

River Kishon

Judg. 5:21.—The river Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—The modern name of Kishion is Nahr Mukutta, and drains the waters of the plain of Esdraelon. Its course is in a direction nearly due northwest along the lower part of the plain nearest the foot of the Samarian hills, and close beneath the very cliffs of Carmel, breaking through the hills which separate the plain of Esdraelon from the maritime plain of Acre, by a very narrow pass beneath the eminence of Horothieh, which is believed still to retain a trace of the name "Harosheth of the Gentiles." Of the identity of the Kishion with the present Nahr Mukutta, there can be no question. The existence of the sites of Taanach and Megiddo along its course, and the complete agreement of the circumstances noticed with the requirements of the story of Elijah, are sufficient to satisfy us that the two are one and the same.—Smith's Dict.,

Embroidered Garments

Judg. 5:30.—Have they not sped? Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colors, a prey of divers colors of needlework, of divers colors of needlework on both sides, meet for the neck of them that take the spoil?

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—Garments embroidered with the needle were worn, not by females only, but by men, for whom they were often wrought by the hands of their wives.—Testimony of the Heathen, p. 157.

ÆSCHYLUS.—

This tissue, view it;

The texture is thine own, the rich embroidery;

Thine are these figures, by thy curious hand

Imaged in gold.

—Choeph., V., 229.

THEOCRITUS.—

Hercules... arrayed

In no rich vest, whose floating folds displayed

The needle's art,—in plain unprincely robe,

He ranged the wide inhospitable globe.

—Idyl, XXIV.

The Midianites

Judg. 6:2.—And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strongholds.

REV. JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—When Baldwin I. presented himself with some troops before Askelon, the citizens were afraid to come out to give him battle. On this, finding it would be no advantage to remain there, he ranged about the plains between the mountains and the sea, and found villages whose inhabitants, having left their houses, had retired with their wives and children, their flocks and herds into subterraneous caves.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

Judg. 6:3, 4.—And so it was when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them: and they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—In the days of the Hebrew Judges, B. C. 1256, the Midianites, and the Children of the East, came up and destroyed the increase of the earth. The same is now done every year by the Bedawy Arabs, under the impotent government of Constantinople; and the remnants of the people are compelled, as of old, to live in dens which are in the mountains, and in caves, and in strongholds.—Bible Lands, p. 239.

DR. JOHN Kam, F. S. A.—The Bedouin Arabs come up from their deserts in the spring, and perhaps remain through the summer in the territories of those cultivators, who are so unfortunate as to lie at their mercy. If there is not an established understanding between the nomads and the cultivators, as to the proportion which the latter are to pay for exemption, the Bedouins encamp and pasture their cattle in the cultivated grounds, after securing such corn and other vegetable products as they may happen to require for their own use during the remainder of the year. The Bedouins also, when thus oppressing the cultivator, seize all the cattle that are brought abroad, and add them to their own flocks ' and herds; and as it is impossible and useless to keep them continually in confinement, the inhabitants soon become deprived of all their cattle, like the Israelites.—Pictorial Bible, p. 34.

Judg. 6:5.—They and their camels were without number.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—The present inhabitants of the same regions appear to value the camel quite as highly as their ancestors, for its numbers are not diminished. To give one illustration out of many. Thevenot speaks of a man by the name of Ali Bey, who, when he died, owned no less than "fourscore thousand camels, and about as many asses."—Bible Lands, p. 240.

Men Lapping

Judg. 7:6.—And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water.

REV. J. KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—These men, instead of kneeling down to take a long draft, or successive drafts, from the water, employed their hand as the dog employs its tongue-that is, forming it into a hollow spoon, and dipping water with it from the stream. We have often seen it done, and the comparison to the lapping of a dog spontaneously occurred to our mind. When traveling with small caravans, we have had opportunities of seeing both processes. On coming to water a person who wishes to drink cannot stop the whole party to wait for him; and therefore, if on foot, any delay would oblige him to unusual exertion in order to overtake his party; therefore he drinks in the manner we have described.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

The Spy

Judg. 7:9, 10.—And it came to pass the same night, that the Lord said unto him, Arise, get thee down unto the host; for I have delivered it into thy hand, But if thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah thy servant down to the host.

HOMER.—

Is there, said he, a chief so greatly brave,

His life to hazard and his country save?

Lives there a man who singly dares to go

To yonder camp, or seize some straggling foe?

Or, favored by the night, approach so near

Their speech, their counsels, and designs to hear?

I, Nestor, feel such courage; and myself

Will enter Ilium's host, encamped so nigh:

But shall adventure with a livelier hope,

And be embolden'd much, some valiant friend

Advent ‘ring with me; for a friend may spy

Advantage ere myself, and may advise

Its happiest uses overseen by me.—

He ceased, and willing to partake his toils

Arose no few.

—Iliad, lib. x.

The Pass-Word

Judg. 7:18.—The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus, before engaging the army of the Assyrians, gave out the word, which was this—Jove our helper and leader.—Cyropœdia, lib. iii., c. 3.

IDEM.—Having addressed the soldiers, the word was then given—Jupiter the preserver, and Hercules the conductor.—Anabasis, lib. vi., c. 5.

Heads of the Conquered

Jud: 7:25.—And they brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon on the other side Jordan.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—It was almost an universal custom to take off the heads of opposing chiefs and bring them to the victorious general. Such was the custom among the Romans: thus Pompey's head was brought to Caesar, and that of Cicero to Mark Anthony, not to mention other instances. Barbarous oriental conquerors have built monuments with the heads of their conquered enemies; and at present, the heads of conquered chiefs and commanders are transmitted to Constantinople from the most distant parts of the Turkish empire, to be laid at the feet of the Sultan, and then to decorate his palace gates.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

Camel Ornaments

Judg. 8:21.—And Gideon arose and slew Zebah and Zalmunna, and took away the ornaments that were on their camels' necks.

REV. HENRY J. VAN—LENNEP, D. D.—In the antique sculptures camels are often represented with bells. Collars and bands of dyed wool, adorned with tassels and embroidered with shells and beads, often hang about the neck and head of favorite animals, while a showy ornament, with a looking-glass for a center-piece, covers the entire forehead. They are also decked with long strings of little brass bells suspended from the saddle, or fastened to the head, legs, and even the tail. This is their holiday attire, and thus are they represented on the slabs of the palaces of Nineveh, when brought as articles of tribute to the Assyrian kings. The favorite camels of Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian, who were slain by the hand of Gideon, were ornamented in a similar but much more costly manner.—Bible Lands, p. 241.

Personal Ornaments

Judg. 8:26.—And the weight of the golden ear-rings that he requested was a thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold; besides ornaments, and collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and besides the chains that were about their camels' necks.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus commanded some of the most considerable Persians to assist in hastening on the carriages. Throwing off their purple robes, they ran, as if it had been for a prize, down a very steep hill in their costly vests and embroidered drawers; some even with chains about their necks, and bracelets round their wrists, and, leaping into the dirt with these, they lifted up the carriages and brought them out.—Anabasis. l. i., c. 5.

STRABO.—The Gauls wear golden collars round` their necks, and bracelets on their arms and wrists, and those who are of any dignity have garments dyed and worked with gold. —Strab, 1. iv., c. 4.

Death by the Hand of a Woman

Judg. 9:53, 54.—And a certain woman cast a piece of a mill-stone upon Abimelech's head, and all to break his skull. Then he called hastily unto the young man his armor-bearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died.

SENECA. —O dishonorable fate! A woman is reported to have caused the death of Hercules.—Herc. Œtaeus., V., 1177.

SOPHOCLES.—

At last I fall,

Like a poor coward, by a woman's hand,

Unarmed and unassisted.

—Trachin., V., 1064.

STRABO.—The Argives did not admit Pyrrhus within the city; he fell before the walls, an old woman having let a tile drop from a house upon his head.—Strab, 1. viii., c. 6.

Ashtaroth, or Astarte

Judg. 10:6.—And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, etc.

LUCIAN.—In Phœnicia there is an ancient temple, now in the possession of the Sidonians. By their report it belonged to Astarte, which Astarte, I believe, was the same as with the Greeks is Silene, or the Moon.—.De Dea Syr., C. 4.

CICERO.—The fourth Venus was a Syrian, born of Tyro, who is called Astarte.—De Nat. Deor., 1. iii., c. 23.

Jephtha's Vow

Judg. 11:30, 31.—And Jephtha vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of the door of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It was usual amongst most ancient nations, at the commencement of a war or battle, to vow to some particular god that, if the undertaking were successful, large sacrifices should burn upon his altar, or temples be erected in his honor. We have instances of this as well in the histories of Greece and Rome, as in those of oriental nations.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

PLUTARCH. —Hecale vowed, when Theseus went to battle, to offer sacrifices to Jupiter if he returned safe. Thes., c. 14.

LIVY.—O Pythian Apollo, under thy guidance, and inspired by thy divinity, I am now proceeding to destroy the city of Veii, and I devote to thee a tenth part of the spoils thereof.—Liv., 1. v., C. 21.

Jud. 11:13-35.—Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. And Jephtha came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: For I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go hack.

CICERO.—Agamemnon, when he had vowed to Diana the loveliest thing that should be born that year in his kingdom, sacrificed Iphegenia, than whom, indeed, nothing lovelier was born that year. Better that the promise should not be performed than that a horrible crime should be committed.—Cic. de c. off.,

l. iii., c. 25.

The Kid Prepared

Judg. 13:15.—And Manoah said unto the angel of the Lord, I pray thee let us detain thee, until we shall have made ready a kid for thee.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Whenever, in the wilder parts of Palestine, the traveler halts at an Arab camp, or pays his visit to a village sheikh, he is pressed to stay until the kid can be killed and made ready, and he has an opportunity of seeing in front of the tent the kid caught and prepared for the cooking, which is carried on by the women out of sight in the inner compartment.—.Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 91.

Samson's Exploits

Judg. 14:5, 6.—Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and, behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—Timnath still exists on the plain, and to reach it from Zorah you must descend through wild rocky gorges, just where one would expect to find a lion in those days, when wild beasts were far more common than at present. Nor is it more remarkable that lions should be met with in such places than that fierce leopards should now maintain their position in the thickly-settled parts of Lebanon, and even in these very mountains, within a few hundred rods of large villages. Yet such I know is the fact.—There were then vineyards belonging to Timnath, as there now are in all these hamlets along the base of the hills and upon the mountain sides. These vineyards are very often far out from the villages, climbing up rough wadies and wild cliffs, in one of which Samson encountered the young lion.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., 361.

Judg. 14:8.—And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—We must not suppose that the carcass was a putrid and corrupt mass, for in the dry season the heat will speedily render a carcass in that climate a mere mummy, without any offensive smell until it is moistened, and the ants speedily clear away all the softer parts of the body, if any are left by the vultures, so that merely the skeleton and hide would remain. Even in this country (England), wrens and sparrows have been known to make their nest in the body of an exposed crow or hawk.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 324.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The word fork bees is the Arabic for hornets, and these we know are very fond of flesh, and devour it with the greatest avidity. I have myself seen a swarm of hornets build their Tomb in the skull of a dead camel.—The Land and the Rook, Vol. II., p. 362.

HERODOTUS.—The Amathusians took the head of Onesilus, and carrying it back in triumph, fixed it over their gates. Some time afterward, when the inside of the head was decayed, a swarm of bees settling in it, filled it with honey.—Herod., 1. v., c.

Judg. 14:12.—And Samson said unto them, I will now put forth a riddle unto you.

REV. FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—We know that all ancient nations, and especially Orientals, have been fond of riddles. We find traces of the custom among the Arabs, and indeed several Arabic books of riddles exist. Riddles were generally proposed in verse, like the celebrated riddle of Samson. Other ancient riddles in verse are that of the Sphinx, and that which is said to have caused the death of Homer by his mortification at being unable to solve it.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, 2732.

Judg. 14:13, 14.—And they said unto him, Put forth thy riddle that we may hear it. And he said unto them: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

DAMÆTAS.—

Say, where the round of Heav'n, which all contains,

To three short ells on earth our sight restrains?

Tell that, and rise a Phoebus for thy pains:

MENALCAS.—

Nay, tell me first, in what new region springs

A flower that bears inscribed the names of kings?

And thou shalt gain a present as divine

As Phoebus' self; for Phyllis shall be thine.

—Virg., Ec. iii. V. 104.

Judg. 15:4,5.—And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.

OVID.—I must teach the reason why the she-foxes were let loose, having their tails burning with firebrands fastened to them. A boy having once caught a fox, wrapped her in stubble and hay, and set fire to her: she escaped from his hands as he was applying the fire; wherever she flew she set the fields in a blaze, at that time covered with the harvests: the breeze gave strength to the all-consuming flames. The occurrence has long passed away, but the recollection of it remains. —Fasti, 1. iv., v. 681.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—It is probable that (in the sacred history) by " foxes "jackals are intended, and these are even now extremely numerous. I have had more than one race after them, and over the very theater of Samson's exploit. When encamped out on the plain, with a part of Ibrahim Pasha's army, in 1834, we were serenaded all night long by troops of these hideous howlers. But if we must limit Samson to the ordinary meaning of fox, even these are to be found here. I started up and chased one when I passed over that part of the plain where Timnah is believed to have been situated. It must be admitted, however, that the number seems not only large in view of the difficulty of capturing them, but also far too great for the purpose intended. The object was to set fire to the dry corn which covered the plains of the Philistines. Now a spark would seem sufficient to accomplish this. During the summer months the whole country is one sea of dead-ripe grain, dry as tinder. There is neither break, nor hedge, nor fence, nor any cause of interruption. Once in a blaze, it would create a wind for itself, even if it were calm to begin with; and it would seem that a less number could have answered all the purposes of Samson; but to this it is obvious to remark that he meditated no limited revenge.—As to the difficulty of capturing so many foxes, we must remember that Samson was judge or governor of Israel at that time. He no more caught these creatures himself than Solomon built the Temple with his own hands; and if we take two or three other facts into account, it will not appear incredible that the governor of a nation could gather such a number of foxes when he had occasion for them. The first is, that in those days this country was infested with all sorts of wild animals to an extent which seems to us almost incredible. This is evident from almost numberless incidental allusions in the Bible. The second fact is, that, not having firearms, the ancients were much more skilful than the moderns in the use of snares, nets, and pits for capturing wild animals. —The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 340, 341.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—We had around us at Beth-shemesh the native country of Samson, and from its ruins we could see the scenes of some of the leading events of his strange life.—We lingered long amid the ruins of Beth-shemesh, reading and pondering these and other incidents of sacred history, which the places round us naturally suggested. The sun went down into the waters of the Mediterranean in a halo of glory. The purple shadows of the wild glens gradually waxed deeper and darker; and the jagged outlines of hills and mountains were drawn in bold relief upon the blue sky. The bright stars came out one by one. Still we lingered, reluctant to turn away forever from a spot so strangely interesting. A long, low, plaintive wail suddenly broke the deep silence of the mountains over us. Another, like an echo, answered it from the valley. Then another, and another, louder, and clearer, and nearer, until mountain, glen, and distant plain resounded with a ceaseless bowl of jackals. They seem to be as numerous yet as they were in Samson's days.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 220, 221.

Judg. 16:1, 3.—Then went Samson to Gaza: And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of a hill that is before Hebron.

REV. JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—Gaza was the capital of the most southern of the Philistine principalities, and is situated about thirteen miles west southwest of Ascalon forty-five miles southwest by west from Jerusalem, and between two and three miles from the sea. It is always mentioned as an important place in the Old Testament. Alexander the Great, after destroying Tyre, laid siege to Gaza, which was at that time occupied by a Persian garrison, and took it after a siege of two months. It was afterward destroyed (B. c. 98) by Alexander Jannæus, the king of the Jews. Jerome says, that the town existing in his day was nearer to the sea than the old town.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The city of Gaza is built partly on an oblong hill, partly in the valleys north and south of it. There are now neither walls nor forts, but the places of certain gates belonging to ancient walls are pointed out. The only one that interests me is that which bears the name of Samson, from the tradition that it was from that place he carried off the gate, bars and all. It is on the east side of the hill-part of the city, looking toward Hebron; and near it is a mazar, or willy, to his honor.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., P 334.

MR. WILLIAM HUTTON.—Thomas Topham, a man whose feats of strength might have figured beside those of Homer's heroes, was born in London, about A. D. 1710. Though his stature was not remarkable, being a trifle under six feet in height, yet he was endowed by nature with muscular powers so extraordinary as to exceed anything of the kind on record. On the 28th of May, 1741, in Bath Street, London, he lifted a weight of 1,836 pounds, in the presence of thousands of spectators assembled to witness his feats. Coming up to a toll gate, on a journey, he alighted from his horse, and heaved the animal over the gate, and set him down on the other side. On another occasion, he broke a rope fastened to the floor, that would sustain twenty hundred weight. He took Mr. Chambers, Vicar of All-Saints, who weighed twenty-seven stone, and raised him with one hand. One night, perceiving a watchman asleep in his box, he raised them both from the ground, and carrying the load with the greatest ease, at length dropped the wooden tenement with its inhabitant over the wall of Tindall's burying-ground: the consternation of the watchman, on awaking from his nap, may be more easily conceived than described. On board of a West Indiaman, lying in the river, he was presented with a cocoanut, which, to the no small astonishment of the crew, he cracked between his fingers and thumb close to the ear of one of the sailors, with the same ease as an ordinary person would crush an egg-shell. Topham, however, was not endued with fortitude of mind equal to his strength of body. A faithless woman embittered the concluding portion of his life, as it did that of his prototype of old. Unable to endure the reflections occasioned by his wife's inconstancy, Topham at length embraced the desperate resolution of putting an end to his life, in the flower of his age.—Biographical Sketches of Eccentric Characters, p. 344-352.

Judg. 16:21.—And Samson did grind in the prison-house.

TERENCE. —

I'll have you beat to mummy, and then thrown

In prison, Sirrah! upon this condition,

That when I take you out again, I swear

To grind there in your stead.

—Andria, Act I., sc. 2.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—I saw the operation of grinding at the mill going on in several places during our ramble about Gaza, and we heard its ringing sound until a late hour last night. This city has no mill-stream near it; there are no wind nor steam mills, and hence the primitive apparatus is found in every house. Nor can it be mere fancy that these modern Philistines bear a close resemblance to their proud, vindictive and licentious ancestors.—The Land and the Book, Vol. IL, 338, 339.

Judg. 16:23.—Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice; for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.

BEROSUS.—Dagon, the fish-god, rose from the waters of the Red Sea, as one of the great benefactors of men.—Cory's Fragments, p. 22, 23.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Dagon had the head of a woman, but all the rest of the body resembled a fish.—Syncel. Chron., 28; and Euseb. Chron., 58.

JOSEPH BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—Among a great variety of marine animals (on the walls of Khorsabad) the Assyrian combination of the man, bull, and eagle, is seen walking with stately gait; and on the same slab the divinity of the Philistines, half man, half fish, the Dagon of Scripture, is accompanying the expedition and encouraging the men in their arduous task.—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 149.

Judg. 16:29, 30.—And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines; and he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.

PLUTARCH.—Cleomenes, a man of gigantic strength and size, entered a school-room at Rome, where he struck the pillar that supported the roof with his fist, and broke it asunder, so that the roof fell in, and destroyed the children. Phil. Rom., C. 38.

TACITUS.—One Atilius had undertaken to erect an amphitheater at Fidenæ, there to exhibit a combat of gladiators. It fell, and the spectators were crushed and buried under the ruins. Fifty thousand persons were destroyed or maimed by the fall of this building.—Tac. Ann., 1. iv., c. 62.

Slingers

20:16.—Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at a hair breadth, and not miss.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—The invention of fire-arms has not superseded the old weapons of antiquity, and it is almost as common now to see a shepherd armed with a sling as it was in David's time. This is particularly true of the Bedawin or Arabs of the desert. Young lads wile away their time by throwing pebbles with their slings at marks which they set up, and we can, from personal observation, testify to the extreme accuracy of their aim.—Bible Lands. p. 188.

Rimmon

Judg. 20:45.—And they turned and fled toward the wilderness unto the rock of Rimmon.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—Rimmon is described as in the “wilderness," that is, the uncultivated country which lies on the east of the central highlands of Benjamin, on which Gibeah was situated-between them and the Jordan valley. Here the name is still found attached to a village perched on the summit of a conical chalky hill, visible in all directions, and commanding the whole country. The hill is steep and naked, the white limestone everywhere protruding, and the houses clinging to its sides, and forming as it were huge steps. On the south side it rises to a height of several hundred feet from the great ravine of the Wady Mutyah; while on the west side it is almost equally isolated by a cross valley of great depth. In position it is three miles east of Bethel, and seven northeast of Gibeah. Thus in every particular of name, character, and situation it agrees with the requirements of the Rock Rimmon.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, 2733.

Ruth

Salutations

Ruth 2:4—And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers, The Lord be with you. And they answered him, The Lord bless thee.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—The plain was all astir with bands of reapers, men and women; and close behind them the gleaners, mostly young girls, reminding one of the faithful Ruth. The great proprietors were there too, moving about, like Boaz, from field to field among their laborers, clad in their scarlet cloaks. As we passed each group Selim saluted them with an Ulla makum—" The Lord be with you;" and they returned the invariable response, The Lord bless thee." Not only are the manners and customs unchanged in this land, but the very words of salutation are what they were three thousand years ago.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 197.

The Overseer

Ruth 2:5.—Then said Boaz unto his servant, that was set over the reapers, Whose damsel is this?

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—This officer, "the servant," was well known in the ancient harvest. In the Egyptian sculptures he is often seen, as he is described by Homer, “leaning upon his staff, and enjoying mute the order of the field."—Pict. Bib. In loco.

The Threshing-Floor

Ruth 3:2, 7. —And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wart? Behold, he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing-floor. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn.

DR. ROBINSON. —The fine grassy slope on which we were encamped (in the neighborhood of Hebron), besides the cemetery on the north, was occupied on the south by threshing-floors, where the various processes of threshing, or rather treading out the grain, were continually going on. The wheat harvest, here in the mountains, had not yet arrived; but they were threshing barley, 'Adas or lentils, and also vetches, called by the Arabs Kersenna, which are raised chiefly for camels. The various parcels had apparently lain here for several days; the people would come with their cattle and work for three or four hours, and then go away. Some had three animals, some four, and once I saw two young cattle and a donkey driven round together. In several of the floors they were now winnowing the grain, by tossing it up against the wind. Here we needed no guard around our tent. The owners of the crops came every night and slept upon their threshing-floors; and this we found to be universal in all the regions of Gaza. We were in the midst of scenes precisely like those of the Book of Ruth, where Boaz winnowed barley in his threshing-floor, and laid himself down at night to guard the heap of corn.—Journal, May 24.

Ruth 3:7.—And she came softly, and uncovered his feet, and laid her down.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—Servants in the East often sleep in this manner, as to position. They frequently sleep in the same apartment or tent with their master; and when they do so, invariably lie at his feet, in the position described; and if on a journey, or otherwise, when the weather is cold, the servant has not sufficient covering of his own, usage allows him to avail himself of the covering at the foot of his master's bed. The writer has himself known servants take this liberty, during a journey, as a matter of course.—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

First Book of Samuel

God the Sovereign Disposer

1 Sam. 2:6, 7.—The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and lifteth up.

HESIOD.—

With ease the will of Jove, who wills the right,

Confounds the mighty, gives the feeble might;

With ease draws forth th' obscure to open day,

With ease bids envied grandeur waste away.

—Opera et Dies, v. 5.

1 Sam. 3:13.—For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.

HOMER.—

Ye fathers, hear! from you alone proceed

The ills ye mourn; your own the guilty deed.

Ye gave your sons, your lawless sons, the rein,

Oft warned by Mentor and myself in vain.

—Odyss., 1. xxiv., V. 455

Tokens of Grief

1 Sam. 4:12.—And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent and with earth upon his head.

VIRGIL.—

Latinus tears his garments as he goes,

Both for his public and his private woes:

With filth his venerable beard besmears,

And sordid dust deforms his silver hairs.

Æneid, 1. xii., v. 609.

HOMER.—

A sudden horror shot through all the chief,

And wrapp'd his senses in a cloud of grief.

Cast on the ground, with furious, hands he spread

The scorching ashes o'er his graceful head:

His purple garments, and his golden hairs,

Those he deforms with dust, and these with tears.

—Odyss., 1. xviii., V. 22.

Ashdod

1 Sam. 5:1—And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod.

REV. WILLIAM LATHAM BEVAN, M. A.—Ashdod, one of the five confederate cities of the Philistines, was situated about thirty miles from the southern frontier of Palestine, three from the Mediterranean Sea, and nearly midway between Gaza and Joppa. It stood on an elevation overlooking the plain, and the natural advantages of its position were improved by fortifications of great strength. For this reason it was probably selected as one of the seats of the national worship of Dagon. It is now an insignificant village, with no memorials of its ancient importance, but is still called Esdud.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 171.

Dagon, the Fish-God

1 Sam. 5:4.—And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump (margin, the fishy part) of Dagon was left to him.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—In common history, Dagon, the Philistine idol, is spoken of under the names Derceto, or Derketo, or Dercetis. —Pictorial Bible, In loco.

LUCIAN.— Of Derketo I saw in Phenicia a drawing, in which she is represented in a curious form, for in the upper half she is a woman, but from the waist to the lower extremities runs into the tail of a fish. A fish is held sacred in Hierapolis, and is never eaten-a custom which seems to have been introduced in honor of Derketo.—De Dea Syria, c. 14.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—At Ascalon, in Syria, is a deep lake abounding with fish, near to which is a temple dedicated to a famous goddess, who by the Syrians is called Dercetis. She has the face of a woman, but the rest of the image is the figure of a fish.—Diod Sic., 1. ii., c. I.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Dagon, i. e., the fish, had many temples, the most famous of which were those of Gaza and Ashdod. He was represented with the face and hands of a man and the body of a fish. Thus we read, that when the ark of the Lord had been brought as a trophy into the temple of Dagon at Ashdod, " In the morning the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump (Hebrew, only the fishy part) of Dagon was left to him." We find from 1 Mac. x. 84, that the worship of Dagon remained in Philistia even down to the epoch of the Hasmoneans, who destroyed the temple of Ashdod. —Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 293.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—On the northern side of the chamber were two doorways leading into separate apartments. Each entrance was formed by two colossal bas-reliefs of Dagon, or the fish-god. Unfortunately the upper part of all these figures had been destroyed, but as the lower remained from above the waist we can have no difficulty in restoring the whole, especially as the same image is seen entire on a fine Assyrian cylinder of agate in my possession. It combined the human shape with that of the fish. The head of the fish formed a miter above that of the man, whilst its scaly back and fan-like tail fell as a cloak behind, leaving the human limbs and feet exposed. The figure wore a fringed tunic, and bore the two sacred emblems, the basket and the cone. His worship appears to have extended over Syria, as well as Mesopotamia and Chaldea.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 292, 295.

Emerods

1 Sam. 5:6.—But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.

HERODOTUS.—On the Scythian, who plundered the temple of Venus, and indeed on all their posterity, the deity entailed a fatal punishment, namely, hemorrhoids. Their condition may be seen by those who visit Scythia, where they are called Enaræ.—Herod, 1. i., c. 105.

Mice

1 Sam. 6:5.—Your mice that mar the land.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—The short-tailed field-mouse, as he is called by naturalists, abounds throughout Western Asia. A perfectly trustworthy friend has informed us that in 1863, being on the farm (chiflik) of an acquaintance in Western Asia Minor, he saw about noon the depredations committed by an immense number of these mice, which passed over the ground like an army of young locusts. Fields of standing corn and barley disappeared in an incredibly short space of time; and as for vines and mulberry trees, they were gnawed at the roots and speedily prostrated. The annual produce of a farm of one hundred and fifty acres, which promised to be unusually large, was thus utterly consumed; and the neighboring farms suffered equally. Such, in all probability, were the mice that marred the land of the Philistines.—Bible Lands, p. 287.

Carts

1 Sam. 6:7.—Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart.

REV. HENRY WRIGHT PHILLOTT, M. A.—In the monuments of ancient Egypt representations are found of carts with two wheels, having four or six spokes, used for carrying produce, and of one for religious purposes having four wheels with eight spokes. A bas-relief of Nineveh represents a cart having two wheels with eight spokes, drawn by oxen.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 392.

Presents

1 Sam. 9:7.—Then said Saul unto his servant, But, behold, if we go, what shall we bring the man? for the bread is spent in our vessels, and there is not a present to bring the man of God.

MAUNDREL. —It is counted uncivil to visit in this country (the East) without an offering in hand. All great men expect it as a kind of tribute due to Mei, character and authority, and look upon themselves as affronted, and even defrauded, when this compliment is omitted. Even in familiar visits among inferior people, you shall seldom have them come without bringing a flower, an orange, or some other such token of their respect to the person visited.—In Pict. Bib. In loco.

Kingly Stature

1 Sam. 10:23, 24.—And when Saul stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upward. And Samuel said to all the people, See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people. And all the people shouted and said, God save the king.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON, B. A.—In early times, when the welfare of a people depended much upon the military prowess of their king, and when physical strength and courage were more prized than other accomplishments, it was an essential qualification of a king that he should be of a handsome and commanding appearance; possessing, as Euripides says, " a beauty worthy of his royal state."—Test. of Heath., p. 178.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —Antiquity is replete with exhibitions of this feeling. In the sculptures of Egypt and Persia, the king is usually distinguished by his size and stature from the persons with whom he is associated-not, of course: that the kings were always, or even generally, thus actually distinguished from their subjects; but they were so represented, in conformity with the ideas of dignity as associated with colossal proportions.—. Bib. In loco.

HOMER.—

What chief is that, with giant strength endued,

Whose brawny shoulders, and whose swelling chest,

And lofty stature, far exceed the rest?

Ajax the great, (the beauteous queen replied),

Himself a host: the Grecian strength and pride.

—Iliad, 1. iii., v. 166. etc.

HERODOTUS. —Among the Ethiopians the supreme authority is given to him who excels all his fellow-citizens in size and proportionate strength.—Herod., 1. iii., c. 20.

PLUTARCH.—Theophrastus tells us the Ephori fined Archidamus for marrying a little woman; “She will bring us," said they, "a race of kinglings instead of kings."—Agesil., C. 2.

Destruction of the Right Eye

1 Sam. 11:2.—And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.

JOSEPHUS. —Nahash also reduced their cities into slavery; and that not only by subduing them for the present, which he did by force and violence; but weakened them by subtlety and cunning, that they might not be able afterward to get clear of the slavery they were under to him; for he put out the right eyes of those that either delivered themselves to him upon terms, or were taken by him in war: and this he did that when their left eyes were covered by their shields, they might be wholly useless in war.—Antiquities, B. II., c. 5, § a.

Gibeah and Michmash

1 Sam. 13:2.—Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel: whereof two thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in mount Beth-el, and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Jonathan.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—Gibeah still bears its ancient title—Jeba, and is situated on the south side of the Wady Suweinit; and Michmash is still called Mukhmas.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 915.

1 Sam. 13:5, 6.—And the Philistines came up and pitched in Michmash, eastward from Belhaven. And when the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait (for the people were distressed), then the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places and in pits.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Just across another wady, with many old caves and tombs, rises the indisputable Michmash, preserving its identity of name in the Arabic Mukhmas, once a fortress, now a squalid village. We did not visit it this time, but on a subsequent occasion explored its neighborhood, with the caves in which Saul's army hid themselves after the Philistines had driven them out of the citadel, and the ravine up which the king returned from Gilgal to Gibeah (1 Sam. 13:6). The ruins are, if possible, more desolate, but more massive, than those of Ai or of Beth-el, and the city seems, by the fragments of columns, as well as by two large rock-hewn cisterns, to have continued to a later date.—Land of Israel, p. 169.

Sacrifice on the Eve of Battle

1 Sam. 13:12.—Therefore said I, the Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord: I forced myself, therefore, and offered a burnt-offering.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON, B. A.—Sacrifices in the prospect of a battle were common among all nations.—Testim. of Heath., p. 180.

XENOPHON. —Cyrus being about to carry war into the territory of the Armenians, presently made a sacrifice for his intended march. It happened that the sacrifice for his design against the Armenians turned out happily, so he immediately set forward as if for a hunt.—Cyrop., 1. ii., c. 4.

IDEM.—Xenophon, being in danger from the governor of Byzantium, sacrificed, in order to know whether the gods would allow him to carry the army over to Seuthes.—Anabasis, 1. vii., c. 2.

Pomegranate Tree

1 Sam. 14:2.—And Saul tarried in the uttermost part of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree which is in Migron.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—There are some pomegranate bushes in this neighborhood (Hebron) which may even be called trees by way of courtesy; but LI reality these large and delicious " apples " grow on a stout thorny bush. There are several kinds of them in this country.—Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 392.

The Passage of Michmash

1 Sam. 14:4, 5.—And between the passages by which Jonathan sought to go over unto the Philistines' garrison, there was a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side: and the name of the one was Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh. The fore front of the one was situated northward over against Michmash, and the other southward over against Gibeah.

DR. ROBINSON.—We left Jeba (Gibeah) for Mukhmas. The descent into the valley was steeper and longer than any of the preceding. The path led down obliquely, and we reached the bottom in half an hour. It is called Wady es-Suweinit. It begins in the neighborhood of Beitin and el-Beireh; and as it breaks through the ridge below these places, its sides form precipitous walls. On the right, about a quarter of an acre below where we crossed, it again breaks off, and passes between high perpendicular precipices, which (our guide said) continue a great way down and increase in grandeur. This steep precipitous valley is probably “the passage of Michmash " mentioned in Scripture (1 Sam. 13:23). In the valley, just at the left of where we crossed, were two hills, of a conical, or rather spherical form, having steep rocky sides, with small Wadys running up between each, so as almost to isolate them. One of them is on the side towards Jeba, and the other towards Mukhmas. These would seem to be the two rocks mentioned in connection with Jonathan's adventure. They are not indeed so “sharp" as the language of Scripture would seem to imply; but they are the only rocks of the kind in this vicinity. The northern one is connected towards the west with an eminence still more distinctly isolated. This valley appears to have been, at a later time, the dividing line between Benjamin and Ephraim.—Biblical Researches in Palestine, Vol. II., p. 116.

Panic

1 Sam. 14:15, 16.—And there was trembling in the host, in the field, and among all the people: the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked; so it was a very great trembling. And the watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked, and behold, the multitude melted away, and they went on beating down one another.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—There are numerous instances in the ancient historians and poets of armies seized with sudden terror, without any assignable cause. These panic fears were attributed to the influence of an unfriendly deity. Homer makes Phoebus the cause of such perturbations; and he also represents Jove as striking terror into the Grecian hosts by thunderings and prodigies.—Test. of Heath., p. 181.

PINDAR.—By heaven-sent terrors, even the sons of the gods are put to flight. Nemean, IX., v. 64.

HERODOTUS.—The most conspicuous things are those which are singled out as objects of divine displeasure. From the same principle it is that a mighty army is sometimes overthrown by one that is contemptible, for the Deity in his anger sends his terrors among them, and makes them perish in a manner unworthy of their former glory.—Herodt., 1. vii., c. 10.

HOMER.—

Thus joyful Troy maintain'd the watch of night,

While fear, pale comrade of inglorious flight,

And heaven-bred horror, on the Grecian part,

Sat on each face, and sadden'd every heart.

—Iliad, 1. ix., v. I.

Dropping Honey

1 Sam. 14:26.—And when the people were come into the wood, behold, the honey dropped: but no man put his hand to his mouth; for the people feared the oath.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS, M. R. A. S.—Bees in the East are not, as in England, kept in hives; they are all in a wild state. The forests literally flow with honey; large combs may be seen hanging on the trees as you pass along, full of honey. Hence this article is cheap and plentiful, and is much used by the Vedahs to preserve the flesh of animals which they catch in the chase.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 163.

Paternal Sterness

1 Sam. 14:43, 44.—Then Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what thou hast done. And Jonathan told him and said, I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo I must die. And Saul answered, God do so and more also: for thou shalt surely die, Jonathan.

LIVY.—Titus Manlius, having accepted the challenge of Geminius, in disobedience to the commands of his father, who had ordered that no person should fight with any of the enemy, except at his post, slew his antagonist, and brought the spoils, and laid them at his father's feet. The consul, turning from him, ordered an assembly to be called, and having reproved him for his insubordination, passed sentence of death upon him.—See Livy, lib. viii., c. 7.

PLUTARCH.—Brutus suffered not pity in the least to smooth his stern and angry countenance, regarding his sons as they suffered with a threatening aspect, till they were extended on the ground and their heads cut off with the axe—. Publicola, c. 6.

Obedience Better Than Sacrifice

1 Sam. 15:22.—And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in sacrifices and burnt offerings, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

PLAUTUS. —Those wicked wretches, who take it into their heads that they can pacify Jove with gifts and sacrifices, lose both their cost and labor, nothing of this kind being acceptable to him from the perjured and false-hearted.—Rudens, Prolog.

Hewing Agag

1 Sam. 15:33. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.

KHORSABAD SCULPTURE.—One of Botta's plates of these sculptures offers both a proof and an illustration of the terrible deed recorded in this verse. In it, three individuals, each armed with a hatchet, are busy hacking at the limbs of a figure, from which they have already separated th€ arms of their devoted victim.—Bot., plate 140.

The Influence of Music

1 Sam. 16:23.—And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

AULUS GELLIUS. —It has been credited by many, and has been handed down to memory, that when the pains of sciatica are most severe, they will be assuaged by the soft notes of a flute-player. Democritus says that the melody of flutes is a remedy for many human complaints. So great is the sympathy betwixt the minds and bodies of men, and betwixt the maladies and remedies of mind and body.—Noctes Attica, II., 13.

QUINTILIAN. —Music of that kind, which is founded on rational principles, i of the greatest efficacy in raising or soothing the passions.—Quintil., 1. i. c. 10.

REV. HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—Music., which soothed Saul for a time, ha entered largely into the milder modern treatment of lunacy.—Smith's Dict. 4 the Bible, p. 1866.

David's Combat with Goliath

1 Sam. 17:1-3.—Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle, and were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and pitched between Shochoh and Azekeh in Ephesdammim. And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the Philistines. And the Philistine stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side; an there was a valley between them.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, A. M.—The morning sun had already bathed in ruddy light the mountain tops round Beit Nettif, and thrown their shadows far out across Philistia's plain, when mounting our horses we began the steep descent, through terraced vineyards and olive groves, to "the Valley of Elah.” a long reach of the valley lay at our feet. It is about a quarter of a mile wide with rich, alluvial bottom, and sides rising steeply, but not precipitously, to the height of five hundred feet or more. Through the center winds a torrent bed, now dry, but thickly covered with smooth, white stones, and fringed with shrubs. On reaching the valley we turned to the right and rode about a mile down it through corn fields. Then we saw on the left bank above us the gray ruins of Shochoh, and we knew that we now stood on the battle-field of David and Goliath. We saw the position of the two armies at a single glance. The Philistines, were ranged along the side of the ridge at Shochoh, and Israel occupied the declivity opposite. Between them lay the valley,—then called Elah from its terebinth trees; and now Sumps, from its acacias. Down that left bank came Goliath, his brazen armor glittering in the sun-beams; down the opposite bank came David with his sling and staff. Reaching the torrent bed, he selected “five smooth stones," and put them in his scrip.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 222.

1 Sam. 17:4.—And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

HERODOTUS.—Near this place (Tegea), as I was sinking a well, I found a coffin seven cubits long. I never believed that men were formerly of larger dimensions than at present; but when I opened it, I discovered a body equal in length to the coffin. I correctly measured it, and placed it again where I had found it.—Herodt., lib. i., c. 68.

IDEM.—Artachæes, who was the tallest of the Persians, wanted but four finger, of five royal cubits, and was also remarkable for his great strength of voice.—Herodt., lib. vii., c. 117.

PLINY.—The tallest man that has been seen in our time was one Gabbaras by name, who was brought from Arabia by the Emperor Claudius; his height was nine feet and as many inches.—Nat. Hut., lib. vii., c. 16.

JOSEPHUS.—Artabanus also, not long afterward, sent (to Tiberius Cæsar) his son Darius as an hostage with many presents, among which there was a man seven cubits tall, a Jew he was by birth, and his name was Eleazar, who for his tallness was called a giant.—Antiguities, B. XVIII., c. 4, § 4.

PLOTT.—A man named John Middleton was born at Hale, near Warrington, Lancashire, England, in the reign of James 1, whose hand, from the carpus to the end of the middle finger, was 17 inches, his palm 8½ inches broad, and his whole height 9 feet 3 inches.-In Comp. Comt.

1 Sam. 17:5-7.—And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass. And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron, and one bearing a shield went before him.

HOMER gives the following description of his heroes:

With generous ardor press'd,

In arms terrific their huge limbs they dress'd;

A two-edged falchion, Thrasymed the brave,

And ample buckler, to Tydides gave;

Then in a leathern helm he cased his head,

Short of its crest, and with no plume o'erspread.

—Iliad 1. x., v. 254.

Stern Telamon behind his ample shield,

As from a brazen tower, o'erlooked the field.

Huge was its orb, with seven thick folds o'ercast,

Of tough bull hides, of solid brass the last

—Iliad, 1. vii., v. 219.

Far o'er the plains, in dreadful order bright,

The brazen arms reflect a beamy light:

Full in the blazing van great Hector shined,

Like man commissioned to confound mankind.

Before him flaming, his enormous shield,

Like the broad sun, illumined all the field.

—Iliad, 1. xiii., v. 800.

A train of heroes follow'd through the field,.

Who bore by turns great Ajax' seven-fold shield,

Whene'er he breathed, remissive of his might,

Tired with th' incessant slaughters of the fight.

—Iliad, 1. xiii., v. 709.

A spear the Hero bore of wondrous strength,

Eleven cubits was the lance's length;

The steely point with golden ringlets join'd,

Before him brandished, at each motion shined.

—Iliad, 1. vi., v. 319.

1 Sam. 17: 8-10.—And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a than for you, and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants; but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us. And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man that we may fight together.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON, B. A.—Numerous instances of similar contests, in which the fate of an army or nation was made to depend upon the issue of a single combat, are recorded in ancient history. It may be sufficient to refer to that of Paris and Hector.—Test. of Heath., p. 186.

LIVY.—Let us, in the name of the gods (said the Albans to Tullus Hostilius), pursue some method whereby, without great loss, without much blood of either nation, it may be decided which shall have dominion over the other. The Horatii and Curiatii were accordingly appointed to fight in the presence of both armies, and the Curiatii being vanquished the Albans submitted to the Romans, —Livy, 1. i., c. 23.

IDEM. —A Gaul of a stature remarkably large advanced on the bridge then unoccupied, and with a loud voice cried out, Let the bravest man that Rome cat produce come forth here to battle that the event of a combat between us two may determine which of the nations is to be held superior in war.—Livy, lib. vii., c. 10.

1 Sam. 17:11, 32, 42.—When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. And David said unto Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine. And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.

STATI US.—

Argolic Capaneus uprose,

Fierce to descry, more fierce to be descried;

And, while upon his arm the gloves he tied,

Cut out of new bull hides, and cased with lead,

As hard as they, exultingly he said:

Stands there a man amongst your num'rous crew,

Here let him issue forth in public view!

He said, and ceased. Fear held them mute, they gaze

In stupid wonder, and in wild amaze.

At length, Alcidamas, from 'midst the train

Of naked Spartans, springs forth on the plain.

Him Capaneus derides with threat'ning hands,

And, pitying, a more equal foe demands:

E'en forc'd to combat, his proud soul rebels,

And his late languid neck with fury swells.

Such space of limbs the chief of Argos shows,

And staring bones as Tityos might disclose.

The Spartan (for his strength exceeds his years),

In look a boy, in act a man appears.

—Thebais, 1. vi., v. 731.

1 Sam. 17:44.—And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto, the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.

LIVY.—The Prætor Martius said,—To fishes, and birds, and beasts of prey inhabiting the earth, to these thy flesh be food.—Livy, lib. 25., c. 12.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—The rodomontade of Goliath is still (in the East) the favorite way of terrifying an enemy. "Begone, or I will give thy flesh to the jackals!” "The crows shall soon have thy carcass." "Yes, the teeth of the dogs shall soon have hold of thee." "The eagles are ready."—Oriental Illustrations, p. 165.

1 Sam. 17:48, 49.—And it came to pass that when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.

STRABO.—When the forces of the Epeii and the Ætolians were drawn up in array against each other, there advanced in front, and engaged in single combat, according to the ancient custom of the Greeks, Pyræchmes, Ætolian, and Degmenus, an Epeian: the latter was armed with a bow, and thought to vanquish easily from a distance a heavy-armed soldier; the former, when he perceived the stratagem of his adversary, provided himself with a sling, and a scrip filled with stones. This kind of sling happened also to have been lately invented by the Ætolians. As a sling reaches its object at a greater distance than a bow, Degmenus fell, and the Ætolian took possession of the country, and ejected the Epeii.—Strabo, 1. Viii., c. 3.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The people of the Balearic islands throw stones with their slings with as much violence as if they were shot out of an engine: with these they break in pieces their enemies' shields, helmets, and all their defensive armor. They are such exact marksmen that they never miss their aim. This skill they attain by habitual practice from their childhood.—Diod. Sic., 1. v., c. 1.

IDEM.—The people of Ægium, Patræ, and Dymæ were exercised from their childhood in throwing with a sling into the sea the round pebbles which generally cover the shores; and by this means they acquire such a degree of dexterity, as to cast weapons of that sort to a greater distance, with surer aim, and more powerful effect than even the Balearian clingers. Being accustomed to drive their bullets through circular marks of small circumference, placed at a great distance, they not only hit the enemy's head, but any part of the face that they aim at.—Diod. Sic., 1. xxxviii., c. 29.

LUCAN. —

Sure aiming, from his Balearic thong,

Bold Ligdamus a ponderous bullet slung;

Through liquid air the ball shrill whistling flies,

And cuts its way through hapless Tyrrhen's eyes.

Th' astonished youth stands struck with sudden night,

While bursting start the bleeding orbs of sight.

—Pharsalia, I. iii., v. 709.

1 Sam. 17:54.—And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armor in his tent.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON, B. A.—Heads were always regarded as the best trophies of victory, not only in the East, but among the rude nations of the North and the West. Sometimes the skulls were preserved as the tokens of a warrior's prowess, as scalps are now by the Indians; they were even made into drinking-cups and other vessels, and used by the victors at their feasts.—Test. of Heath., p. 189.

LIVY.—Cornelius Cossus, having slain Tolummius, cut off his head, and carried it about on the point of his spear, as a trophy of the victory.—Livy, l. iv., c. 19.

IDEM.—The Gallic horsemen came in sight, carrying the heads of the slain, some hanging before their horses' breasts, others on the points of their spears, and expressing their triumph in songs according to their custom.—Livy, l. x., C. 26.

1 Sam. 18:6, 7.—And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music. And the women answered one another as they played, and said, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—On both these slabs were represented the Assyrian army returning from its victorious campaign, and bringing to the king the captives and the spoil.... The Assyrian generals were welcomed by bands of men and women, dancing, singing, and playing on instruments of music. We find from various passages in the Scriptures, that the instruments of music chiefly used on such triumphant occasions were the harp, the tabor, and the pipe, precisely those represented in the bas-reliefs.... The musicians were accompanied by six women, and nine boys and girls of different ages, singing and clapping their hands to the measure.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 388.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—When a great man is expected, the people of the village always send the tabrets and pipes to meet him.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 166.

Consecrated Arms

1 Sam. 21:9.—And the priests said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod: if thou wilt take that take it: for there is no other save that here. And David said, There is none like that, give it me.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It was a custom among the ancients to dedicate to the gods some conspicuous part of the enemy's spoils; a relic of which is preserved in the European custom of depositing in churches standards captured in war.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

HOMER.—

If mine the glory to despoil the foe,

On Phoebus' temple I'll his arms bestow.

—Iliad, VII., 8I.

QUINTILIAN.—It is a question whether the man who makes use of weapons that are consecrated in the temple, in order to oppose the invaders of his country, is to be considered guilty of sacrilege. —Quintil., 1. v., c. 10.

Feigned Madness

1 Sam. 21:13.—And David changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.

PLUTARCH.—Solon that he might escape the penalty denounced against those who should incite the Athenians to war, feigned himself mad.—Solon, c. 8.

CICERO.—The tragedians accuse Ulysses of wishing to escape from military service by the affectation of insanity.—De Officiis, 1. Iii., c. 26.

Cave of Adullam

1 Sam. 22:1.—David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adullam.

REV. A. BONAR.—The cave of Adullam was not very far from Engedi, and was very near the birth-place of David. Though not quite certainly, yet with very great probability, this cave has of late years been identified with one near Bethlehem; and if this be correct, David, from his earliest years, would know it as a place of resort. This caverned spot is near the village called Khureitum. The cave is reached only by climbing a precipitous ascent, the full height of which is a thousand feet. Half way up you find a slope that leads off to a ledge of rocks; along this ledge you must walk for half a mile, sometimes creeping under projecting crags, sometimes over them; at one time stepping over a gap, at another pressing through a fissure, all the while conscious that you have nearly six hundred feet of perpendicular rock below you! When you reach the entrance at the end of this ledge, you find it guarded by two masses of rock, over which you make your way into the cavern, and are soon lost in an innumerable succession of chambers. Each of these chambers is a sort of hall, in which you might imagine the rocks to be gothic pillars, they are so arranged. The whole of this mountain of rock seems to be honey-combed: it is all natural excavation. No one has explored more than five hundred yards of it, though the natives believe that the cave reaches as far south as Hebron. Some of the chambers are only a few feet high, others are like the inside of a church. It was here, we believe, that David found a safe retreat from Saul.—Palestine for the Young.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Having passed eastward of Tekoa, we descended a shallow wady for about a mile to some curious old buildings which overhang the tremendous gorge of Wady Urtas, there called Khureitum, which is also the name of the ruins. Leaving our horses in charge of wild Arabs, arid taking one for a guide, we started for the cave, having a fearful gorge below, gigantic cliffs above, and the path winding along a shelf of the rock, narrow enough to make the nervous among us shudder. At length from a great rock hanging on the edge of this shelf, we sprang by a long leap into a low window which opened into the perpendicular face of the cliff. We were then within the hold of David, and, creeping half doubled through a narrow crevice for a few rods, we stood beneath the dark vault of the first grand chamber of this mysterious and oppressive cavern. Our whole collection of lights did but little more than make the damp darkness visible. After groping about as long as we had time to spare, we returned to the light of day, fully convinced that, with David and his lionhearted followers inside, all the strength of Israel under Saul could not have forced an entrance-would not have even attempted it. I see no reason to disturb the tradition which makes this “the hold" into which David retired with his father's house, and his faithful followers, when he fled from Gath. The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 424.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—No one who has seen the cave of Khureitun can have any doubt of its fitness to be such a place of refuge as the cave of Adullam evidently was to David and his followers.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 35.

En-Gedi

1 Sam. 24:1-3.—It was told Saul, saying, Behold David is in the wilderness of En-gedi. Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats. And he came by the sheep-cotes by the way, where was a cave: and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—On the western shore of the Dead Sea is 'Ain Jidy—the " En-gedi " of the Bible. It is situated in a wild ravine, and the cliffs on either side are full of natural and artificial caves and sepulchers. In the account of Saul's pursuit of David to En-gedi, two circumstances are mentioned which are worthy of passing remark. The first is, that there were sheep-cotes there in connection with the cave into which Saul retired. I have seen hundreds of them around the mouth of caverns, and, indeed, there is scarcely a cave in the land, whose location will admit of being thus occupied, but has such a " cote" in front of it, generally made by piling up loose stones into a circular wall, which is covered with thorns as a further protection against robbers and wild beasts. During cold storms, and in the night, the flocks retreat into the cave, but at other times they remain in this enclosed cote. The cavern may have been full of them when the king entered, nor would his presence disturb them-as I have found on many occasions-while their constant tramping about the sleeping Saul would have rendered the approach of David wholly unnoticed. I have had them step over me when resting in such caves, and have seen them actually tramp on their sleeping shepherd without disturbing his slumbers. Moreover, these caverns are as dark as midnight, and the keenest eye cannot see five paces inward; but one who has been long within, and is looking outward toward the entrance, can observe with perfect distinctness all that takes place in that direction. David, therefore, could watch Saul as he came in, and notice the exact place where he "covered his feet," while he could see nothing but impenetrable darkness. The other fact is, that the cliffs about En-gedi were then called " the rocks of the wild goats," and from them, doubtless, the place received its name, En-gedi, i. e., The Fountain of the Goats. Now it is a remarkable and pleasing circumstance that these bold and hardy dwellers upon the rocks are still found in the wild ravines about 'Ain Jidy. I have seen the skin and powerful horns of one that was shot there by an Arab hunter.—The Land and the Book, II., 419-421.

1 Sam. 24:5, 6.—And it came to pass afterward that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul's skirt. And he said unto his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.

PLUTARCH—The majesty of the kings of Sparta was held in such veneration, even by their enemies, that they scrupled to strike them, even when they had an opportunity of doing so in battle. —Agesilaus, C. 21.

PLINY.—The king of Taprobane, if he is found guilty of any offense, is condemned to death; but no one slays him; all turn their backs upon him, and refuse to hold any communication with him.—Hist. Nat., 1. vi., c. 24.

Nabal

1 Sam. 25:2.—And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Cannel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.

DR. ROBINSON.—The ruins of Carmel, now called Kurmul, still remain at ten miles below Hebron, close to those of Maon, now called Main, and Ziph, now known as ZIA and other places named in Scripture.—See Researches, Vol. I., 494, etc.

Sam. 25: 4-9.—And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep. And David sent out ten young men, and David said to the young men, Get you up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name: and thus shall ye say, etc.

DR. ROBINSON.—We were here in the midst of scenes memorable of old for the adventures of David during his wanderings in order to escape from the jealousy of Saul; and we did not fail to peruse here, and with the deepest interest, the chapters of Scripture which record those wanderings and adventures. Ziph and Maon gave their name to the desert on the east, as did Engedi; and twice did the inhabitants of Ziph endeavor to betray the youthful outlaw to the vengeance of his persecutor. At that time David and his men appear to have been very much in the condition of similar outlaws at the present day. They lurked in these deserts, associating with the shepherds and herds men of Nabal and others, and doing them good offices, probably in return for information and supplies obtained through them. Hence when Nabal held his annual sheep-shearing in Carmel, David felt himself entitled to share in the festival, and sent a message recounting his own services, and asking for a present. “Wherefore let the young men find favor in thine eyes; for we come in a good day; give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy servants, and to thy son David." In all these particulars we were deeply struck with the truth and strength of the Biblical descriptions of manners and customs, almost identically the same as they exist at the present day. On such a festive occasion near a town or village, even in our own time, an Arab sheikh of the neighboring desert would hardly fail to put in a word, either in person or by message; and his message, both in form and substance, would be only a transcript of that of David.—Researches, as quoted in Pictorial Bible.

Saul Asleep in Camp

1 Sam. 26:6, 7, 12.—Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with thee. So David and Abishai came to the people by night: arid, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster; but Abner and the people lay round about him.... So David took the spear and the cruse of water from Saul's bolster; and they gat them away, and no man saw it, nor knew it, neither awaked: for they were all asleep.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—I noticed at all the encampments which we passed that the sheikh's tent was distinguished from the rest by a tall spear stuck upright in the ground in front of it; and it is the custom, when a party is out on an excursion for robbery or for war, that when they halt to rest, the spot where the chief reclines or sleeps is thus designated. So Saul, when he lay sleeping, had his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster, and Abner and the people lay round about him. The whole of that scene is eminently oriental and perfectly natural, even to the deep sleep into which all had fallen, so that David and Abishai could walk among them in safety. The Arabs sleep heavily, especially when fatigued. Often when traveling, my muleteers and servants have resolved to watch by turns in places thought to be dangerous, but in every instance I soon found them fast asleep, and generally their slumbers were so profound that I could not only walk among them without their waking, but might have stolen the very aba with which they were covered. Then the cruse of water at Saul's head is in exact accordance with the customs of the people at this day. No one ventures to travel over these deserts without his cruse of water, and it is very common to place one at the “bolster," so that the owner can reach it during the night. The Arabs eat their dinner in the evening, and it is generally of such a nature as to create thirst, and the quantity of water which they drink is enormous. The cruse is, therefore, in perpetual demand. Saul and his party lay, in a shady valley, steeped in heavy sleep, after the fatigues of a hot day. The camp-ground of Sheikh Fareij, in. Wady Shukaiyif, is adapted in all respects to be the scene of the adventure.—The Land and the Book, 'Vol. II., p. 20.

1 Sam. 26:13, 14—Then David went over to the other side, and stood on the top of a hill afar off; a great space being between them: and David cried to the people, and to Abner the son of Ner, saying, Answerest thou not, Abner? Then Abner answered and said, Who art thou that criest to the king? And David said, etc.

REV. JOHN KITTO D. D., F. S. A.—In this and other instances, persons are described as addressing the people "afar off," and from the top of hills, so that we are sometimes surprised to think how it was possible for them to be heard. We do not remember ever to have met with any attempt to explain this, save in the following interesting passage from Hough's Letters on the Nielgherries: " The great extent to which the sound of the voice is conveyed has been thought by some persons to be a proof of the extreme rarity of the atmosphere. A similar observation is made by Captain Parry in his Voyage of Discovery to the Polar Regions 1819-20, where he states, that in the depth of winter the sound of the men's voices was heard at a much greater distance than usual. This phenomenon is constantly observed on the Nielgherries, or Blue Mountains of Coimbatore, in South India. I have heard the natives, especially in the morning and evening, when the air was still, carry on conversations from one hill to another, and that apparently without any extraordinary effort. They do not shout in the manner that strangers think necessary, in order to be heard at so great a distance; but utter every syllable as distinctly as if they were conversing face to face. When listening to them, I have often been reminded of those passages of Holy Writ where it is recorded that Jotham addressed the ungrateful people of Shechem from Mount Gerizim. In the dense atmosphere of England, and even in the purer air of the plains of India, it is not easy to imagine how a discourse could be carried on at so great a distance and from such an eminence; but on the Nielgherries the portions of sacred history to which I have referred receive a striking illustration."—Pictorial Bible, In loco.

Battle of Gilboa

1 Sam. 28:4.—And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—This Sulam (the ancient Shunem) affords an admirable camp-ground for a large army; Jebel ed Dilly rising abruptly behind, and the top of it commanding a perfect view of the great plain in every direction, so that there could be no surprise, nor could their march be impeded or their retreat cut off. The Land and the Book, II., p. 168.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Of the identity of Gilboa with the ridge that stretches eastward from the ruins, of Jezreel, no doubt can be entertained. At the northern base, half a mile from the ruins, is a large fountain, called in Scripture the fountain of Jezreel. The village is now called Jelbon, and its position answers to the description of Eusebius; it is situated on the top of the mountain. The range of Gilboa extends in length some ten miles from east to west.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 923.

1 Sam. 28:7, 8.—Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her. And his servants said unto him, Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. And Saul disguised himself and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—The rock of the mountain, on the slope of which Endur stands, is hollowed into caves, one of which may well have been the scene of the incantation of the witch. The distance from the slopes of Gilboa to Endor is seven or eight miles.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 734.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—As we approached Endor we could fancy the very walk Saul took over the eastern shoulder of the hill to reach the witch's abode, skirting Little Hermon, on the front slopes of which the Philistines were encamped, in order to reach the village behind them, a long and weary distance from his own army, by the Fountain of Jezreel, on the side of Gilboa. It might be fancy, but the place has a strange, weird-like aspect—a miserable village on the north side of the hill, without a tree or a shrub to relieve the squalor of its decaying heaps. It is full of caves, and the mud-built hovels are stuck on to the sides of the rocks in clusters and are, for the most part, a mere continuation and enlargement of the cavern behind, and which forms the larger portion of this human den.—The Land of Israel, p. 228.

LIEUT. S. ANDERSON, R. E.—We can trace exactly the adventurous journey Saul had the night before his death, from Jezreel, across the vale, in the greatest peril of capture by the Philistines, whose camp he was stealthily avoiding, and round the shoulder of the opposite hill to the village of Endor, at the back of the hill, six and a half miles distant from his palace. Here, in one of the numerous caves which are still inhabited, the witch of Endor lived.—Survey of Palestine, in Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 357.

1 Sam. 28:11.—Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—When he who came to consult the oracle had offered prayers and performed sacrifices and libations, he called upon the shade of any one he pleased, whether of his ancestors or Of his friends; which being done, an indistinct form, scarcely to be seen or recognized, appeared, which nevertheless possessed the power of speech and the gift of divination.—Dissertations, 26.

STRABO.—The magicians were supposed to communicate ordinances and precepts from the gods, both during their life-time and after their death; as, for example, Teiresias, to whom alone, according to Homer, Proserpine gave wisdom and understanding after death. The others flit about like shadows.— Strabo, 1. xvi., c. 2.

PLINY.—According to what Osthanes tells us, there are numerous sorts of magic. It is practiced with water, for instance, with balls, by the aid of the air, of the stars, of lamps, basins, hatchets and numerous other appliances—means by which it engages to grant a foreknowledge of things to come, as well as converse with ghosts and. spirits of the dead. Apion asserts that he himself had raised the spirits of the dead in order to make inquiry of Homer in reference to his native country and his parents; but he dares not, he tells us, disclose the answer he received.—Hist. Nat., 1. xxx., c. 5.

1 Sam. 31:1.—Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—The account of the battle, which was so disastrous to the Hebrew king, designates not merely the general scene of the action, but various places connected with the movements of the armies, and introduced in such a way as to be in some measure strategetically related to each other. It is worthy of notice, as a corroboration of the Scripture narrative, that all these places, except possibly one of them, are still found to exist under their ancient names and to occupy precisely the situation with reference to each other which the requirements of the history imply... All these places, so interwoven in the network of the story, and clearly identified after the lapse of so many centuries, lie almost within sight of each other. A person may start from any one of them and make the circuit of them all in a few hours. The date assigned to this battle is B. C. 2055, later but a little than the traditionary age of the siege of Troy. It is seldom that a record of remote events can be subjected to so severe a scrutiny as this.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 923, 924.

1 Sam. 31:4.—Then said Saul unto his armor-bearer, Draw thy sword and thrust me through therewith, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.

PLUTARCH.—Young Crassus, after his defeat by the Parthians, offered his side to his armor-bearer, and ordered him to strike the blow. Censorinus is said to have died in the same manner.—.M. Crassus, c. 25.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Having commanded Bubaces to be called, “Go," said Darius, "consult your own safety, having continued faithful to your king to the last, as it became you. I will await here the decree of my fate: Perhaps you wonder that I do not put an end to my existence? I choose to die by another man's crime rather than by my own."—Q. Curt., 1. v., c. 22.

1 Sam. 31:10.—And they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Crystal Palace.—This place is still called by its old Semitic name, Beisan. It lies in the Ghor, or Jordan Valley, about twelve miles south of the Sea of Galilee, and four miles west of the Jordan. The site of the town is on the brow of the descent by which the great plain of Esdraelon drops down into the level of the GHor. A few miles to the southwest are the mountains of Gilboa, and close beside the town runs the water of the Fountain of Jezreel.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 298.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Gauls, as the chief of their spoils, fasten those that they have killed over the doors of their houses, as if they were so many wild beasts taken in hunting.—Lib. v., c. 2.

TACITUS.—The head of Galba, miserably mangled and stuck upon a pole by a rabble of the vile scullions and attendants of the camp, was by them erected over the tomb of Patrobius, a slave of Nero's, whom Galba had executed.— Histor., 1. i., c. 49.

1 Sam. 31:11, 12.—And when the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and came to Jabesh, and burnt them there.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Beitsan is naturally one of the strongest places even in this country of strongholds. The Tell, or its Acropolis, rises about two hundred feet high, with the sides nearly perpendicular. A strong wall was carried round the summit, and the gateway was high up the steep declivity at the northwest angle. In the huge buttresses of this gateway are built fragments of columns, and handsome Corinthian capitals. It was on the wall of this Tell, I suppose, that the bodies of Saul and his sons were fastened by the Philistines after the battle on Gilboa; and this supposition enables us to understand how the men of Jabesh-Gilead could execute their daring exploit of carrying them away. Jabesh-Gilead was on the mountain east of the Jordan, in full view of Bethshan, and these brave men could creep up to the Tell, along Wady Jalûd, without being seen, while the deafening roar of the brook would render it impossible for them to be heard. I have often been delighted with this achievement. —The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 174.

Second Book of Samuel

2 Sam. 1:18.—He bade them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—The bow is among the most ancient of offensive arms. We read of no corps of archers in the Hebrew army till after David's time; but very large bodies of archers are subsequently mentioned. The Benjamites became remarkable for their use of this weapon. The frequent reference to archery in the Psalms would alone suffice to show the interest which David took in the subject.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Mutilation

2 Sam. 4:12.—And David commanded his young men, and they slew them, and cut off their hands and their feet, and hanged them up, over the pool in Hebron.

'ANNALS OF ASSUR-NASIR-PAL., B. C. 883.—Many soldiers I "captured alive; of some I chopped off the hands and feet; of others the noses and ears I cut off; of many, soldiers I destroyed the eyes; one pile of bodies while yet alive, and one of heads I reared up on the heights within their town.—Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 50.

DR. RICHARDSON.—The south and part of the east wall of the great temple at Medinet Habou is covered with a battle-scene, and the cruel punishment of the vanquished, by cutting off their hands and maiming their bodies, which is performed in the Presence of the chief, who has seated himself for repose in the back part of his chariot to witness the execution of his horrid sentence. Three heaps of amputated hands are counted over before him, and an equal number of scribes with scrolls in their hands are minuting down the account. As many rows of prisoners stand behind, to undergo a similar mutilation in their turn.—In Pict. Bible, Vol. II., p. 6.

Capture of Jerusalem

2 Sam. 5:6, 7, 9.—And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land.... And David took the stronghold of Zion.... So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—It has seemed hitherto almost incredible that the Jebusites could have kept this acropolis for so Tong a time, while the Hebrews dwelt almost under its shadow. Recent excavations have thrown light on this singular fact. Jebus was a place of extraordinary strength; for though Zion appears at present on a level with some parts of the city, it is now proved beyond a question that it was originally an isolated summit, precisely as implied in the account of its capture by David. It was protected not only by the deep ravine of Hinnom on the south and west, and the Tyropæon on the east, but by a valley which ran from the Jaffa gate to the Tyropæon on the north side of the mount. This last valley has been laid bare, showing at different points a depth of twenty-six and thirty-three feet below the present surface, and in one instance a depth of nearly eighty feet below the brow of Zion. At one spot a fragment of the ancient northern rampart of Zion was brought to light.

It was built close against the cliff, and though only rising to the top of the rock behind, it was yet thirty-nine feet high toward the ravine in front. It is not surprising, therefore, that the subjugation of this stronghold should be reserved for the prowess of David, and be recorded as one of his greatest exploits.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1220.

2 Sam. 6:4.—And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.

STRABO.—Music, accompanied with the dance, rhythm, and song, brings us near the deity by the pleasure which it excites, and by the charm of art.—Strab., 1. x., c. 3.

HORACE.—

Like Salian priests the dance we'll lead,

And many a mazy measure tread.

—Hor., 1. i., car. 36.

TACITUS.—The priests of the Jews used to chant to the sound of pipes and drums, binding their brows with ivy; whence some have inferred that they worshipped Bacchus, the conqueror of the east.— Historia, 1. v., c. 5.

Defeat of Hadadezer and the Syrians

2 Sam. 8:3.—David smote also Hadadezer, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah, as he went to recover his border at the river Euphrates.

NICOLAS OF DAMASCUS.—After this, there was a certain Hadad, a native Syrian, who had great power: he ruled over Damascus, and all Syria, excepting Phœnicia. He likewise undertook a war with David, the king of Judaea, and contended against him in a number of battles; in the last of them all, which was by the river Euphrates, and in which he suffered defeat, showing himself a prince of the greatest courage and prowess.—Nic. Dam., Frag. 31.

2 Sam. 8:4.—And David houghed all the chariot horses.

LIVY.—At the battle of Cannæ, a body of Numidians fell on the rear of the Romans, cutting their hams, etc. After the battle many were found lying on the ground alive, with their thighs and hams cut.—Liv., 1. xxii., c. 48.

2 Sam. 8:5, 6.—And when the Syrians of Damascus came to succor Hadadezer king of Zobah, David slew of the Syrians two and twenty thousand men. Then David put garrisons it Syria of Damascus: and the Syrians became servants to David, and brought gifts.

EUPOLEMON.—David reduced the Syrians, who dwelt by the river Euphrates, and Commagene, and the Assyrians and, Pbœnicians who dwelt in the land of Gilead; and he made war on the Edomites, and the Ammonites, and Moabites, and Ituræans and Nabatæans and Nabdæans; moreover, he also made an expedition against Suron (Huram or Hiram), king of Tyre and Phœnicia, and compelled all these people to pay tribute to the Jews.—Quoted in Eusebius, see also Frags. of Polyh. in Fr. Hist. Gr., Vol. III., p. 225.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The narrative of Eupolemon, which seems clearly to be derived from non-Jewish sources, is an important testimony to the truth of the history related in 2 Sam. 8 and ix. It confirms that his: tory, by a distinct mention of the chief conquests of David recorded in the Bible, while it adds to them several others, which, though not recorded in Scripture; are intrinsically not improbable.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 97.

Insulted Messengers

2 Sam. 10:4.—Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, and shaved off the one-half of theft beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away.

ARISTOPHANES.—You drive away the embassies from the city, slapping them on the buttocks who make proposals of peace.—Equites, V., 795

D'ARVIEUX.—It is a greater mark of infamy in Arabia to cut a man's beard off than it is with us to whip a fellow at the carts' tail, or to burn him in the hand. Many people in that country would rather die than incur that punishment.—In. Pict. Bib., In loco.

Treachery

2 Sam. 11:14, 15.—And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die.

HOMER.—Prætus, unwilling to slay his guest, sent him into Lycia, and gave him fatal letters, which he was to show to his father-in-law, who was to cause him to be put to death.—Iliad, 1. vi., v. 167.

THUCYDIDES.—Pausanias gave to an Argyllian, an old servant of his, letters to convey to Arlabazus. This man alarmed by the recollection that no person sent on these errands before him had ever returned, having previously counterfeited the seal, to the end that if he were deceived in his suspicions, or if Pausanias should demand them again to make any alteration, he might escape detection, broke open the letters. He found by them that he was going on the errand which he foreboded, and that his own murder was especially enjoined.—Thucyd., 1. i., c. 132.

The Convicting Parable

2 Sam. 12:1-4.—And Nathan came unto David and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter, etc.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—It is customary among Christians to purchase a young lamb to be eaten at Easter, and the same thing is done by Muslims at the feast of Corban-Bairam. These customs are evidently relics of the Jewish Passover. It is a great event for the children of a family, who may be seen leading the little pet about, and vying with each other who shall give it the nicest handful of grass. The fathers must have quite a struggle to bring about the slaughter of these favorites of the little ones; for many of them are spared, and become installed as members of the family; and for this reason two lambs are sometimes bought, only one of which is killed for the Easter festival. Thenceforward the lamb is the children's inseparable companion. It follows the little girls to a pasture close by, or runs behind a donkey the boys are riding to the vineyard, and at night the little ones dispute who shall have it for his bedfellow. It goes to sleep with their little arms about its neck, or lying in its master's bosom, and being unto him as a daughter." So it was with the poor man's " one little ewe lamb " in the parable of the prophet Nathan; and many a time since that day has the rich and powerful sheikh or aga, when desirous to entertain a passing traveler, "spared to take of his own flock," but has taken " the poor man's lamb and dressed it."—Bible Lands, p. 194.

2 Sam. 12:7.—And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.

HORACE.—Change but the name, of thee the tale is told.—Sat., I., v. 69.

2 Sam. 12:14.—Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.

CICERO.—Great men of a vicious life are doubly pernicious to the state, as being not only guilty of immoral practices themselves, but likewise of spreading them far and wide among their fellow-citizens. Nor are they mischievous to iv only, inasmuch as they cherish vice themselves, but also because they corrupt others; and they do more harm by their example than by the crimes which they commit.—De Legibus, l. iii., c. 13.

JUVENAL.—Every act of moral turpitude incurs more glaring reprobation in exact proportion to the rank of him who commits it.—Satires, VIII., v. 140.

Death

2 Sam. 12:16, 17.—David therefore besought God for the child: and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth. And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise him up from the earth; but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them.

ARRIANUS.—Alexander, on the death of Hephæstion, neither tasted food nor changed his apparel for three whole days; but lay all that time, either uttering lamentations or grieving silently.—Exped. Alex., 1. vii., c. 14.

2 Sam. 12:17.—And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—God will not give you what ought not to be given, though you lament and implore ever so much, or pour ever so much dust upon your head.—Dissertations, 30.

2 Sam. 12:23.—But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

EURIPIDES.—Thou thinkest thy son will return from below the earth; but who of the dead has ever returned from Hades?—Herc. Fur., v. 296.

CICERO.—O glorious day! when I shall depart to that divine company and assemblage of spirits and quit this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have spoken before, but also to my friend Cato, than whom never was better man born, nor more distinguished for pious affection; whose body was buried by me, whereas, on the contrary, it was fitting that mine should be buried by him. But his soul not deserting me, but often looking back, no doubt departed to those regions whither it saw that I myself was destined to come. Which, though a distress to me, I seemed patiently to endure; not that I bore it with indifference, but I comforted myself with the recollection that the separation and distance between us would not continue long.—De Senect., c. 23.

The Honor of Name

2 Sam. 12:28.—Now, therefore, gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city, and take it; lest I take the city, and it be called after my name.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Alexander now returned to Craterus, who was besieging Artacacua, and who, having all things in readiness, only waited for the king's coming, that he might give his name to the captured city.—Q. Curt., 1. vi., c. 6.

TACITUS.—Agricola never boasted of his exploits to blazon his own fame. To his general, as the author of all, he, as his instrument and inferior, always ascribed his good fortune.—Agric., c. 8.

Crown

2 Sam. 12:30.—And he took their king's crown from off his head, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones; and it was set on David's head.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Athenians made a decree that golden statues of Antigonus and Demetrius should be set up upon a chariot next to Harmodius and Aristogilon, and that they should both be adorned with crowns of the weight of two hundred talents each.—Diod. Sic., 1. xx., c. 3.

PLINY.—An Etruscan crown of gold was supported from behind, over the head of the victor.—Hist. Nat., 1. xxxiii., c. 4.

LIVY.—The ambassadors from King Philip deposited in the temple of Jupiter, supremely great and good, a golden crown of one hundred pounds weight. Livy, 1. xxxvi., c. 35.

Geshur

2 Sam. 13:38.—So Absalom fled, and went to Geshur, and was there three years.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—It is a remarkable fact-and it shows how little change three thousand years have produced in this Eastern land-that Bashan is still the refuge for all offenders. ' If a man can only reach it, no matter what may have been his crimes or his failings, he is safe; the officers of government dare not follow him, and the avenger of blood even turns away in despair. During a short tour in Bashan I met more than a dozen refugees, who, like Absalom in Geshur, awaited in security some favorable turn of events.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 14.

Tekoah

2 Sam. 14:2.—And Joab sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman.

PROF. HORATIO B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—Tekoah is known still as Tek'ua, And, though it lies somewhat aside from the ordinary route, has been visited and described by several recent travelers. The writer was there on the 21St of April, 1852, during an excursion from Jerusalem by the way of Bethlehem and Urtas. Its distance from Belt Tahm (Bethlehem) agrees precisely with that assigned by the early writers as the distance between Tekoah and Bethlehem.... The scene was eminently a pastoral one, and gave back, no doubt, a faithful image of the olden times. Flocks were at pasture near the tents and on the remoter hillsides in every direction. There were horses and camels and cattle also, though these were not so numerous as the sheep and goats. A well of living water, on the outskirts of the village, was a center of great interest and activity; women were coming and going with their pitchers, and men were filling the troughs to water the animals which they had driven thither for that purpose.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3189.

David's Resignation

2 Sam. 15:25, 26.—And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city if it shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it, and his habitation. But if he thus say, I have no delight in thee, behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him.

EPICTETUS.—Dare to lift up thine eyes to God, and say, Use me hereafter to whatsoever thou wilt. I agree and am of the same mind with thee, indifferent to all things. I refuse nothing that shall seem good to thee. Lead me whither thou wilt; let me act what part thou choosest, whether of a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.—Epict., 1. ii., c. 16.

CLEANTHES.—Conduct me Jove; and thou O destiny.

Covering the Head

2 Sam. 15:30.—And David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.

PLUTARCH.—Anaxagoras, being neglected and destitute, covered his head and resolved to starve himself.—Pericl., c. 16.

LIVY.—Appius, bereft of courage and dreading for his life, covered his head, and, unobserved by his adversaries, made his escape into a house near the Forum.—Liv., 1. iii., c. 49.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Darius being informed by the eunuch Tyriotes that his queen had died in her captivity, but that she had been respectfully treated by the conqueror, covered his head and wept for a long time.—Quint. Curt., 1. iv., c. 8.

Wood of Ephraim

2 Sam. 18:6-9.—So the people went out into the field against Israel: and the battle was in the wood of Ephraim; where the people of Israel were slain before the servants of David, and there was there a great slaughter that day of twenty thousand men. For the battle was there scattered over the face of ail the country: and the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—I have had a delightful ramble this morning in these grand old forests, and now understand perfectly how Absalom could be caught by the thick branches of an oak. The strong arms of these trees spread out so near the ground that one cannot walk erect beneath them; and on a frightened mule, such a head of hair as that vain but wicked son “polled every year " would certainly become inextricably entangled. No doubt; and it is interesting to know that the region where that battle was fought is still covered with such forests—that " wood of Ephraim," with thick oaks and tangled bushes, and thorny creepers growing over ragged rocks, and ruinous precipices down which the rebel army plunged in wild dismay, horses and men crushing each other to death in remediless ruin. Thus 20,000 men perished in that fatal wood, which devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 234.

Tender Grief

2 Sam. 18:33.—And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would God that I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

BION.—I wail Adonis! perished the fair Adonis! lust, lost, Adonis.—Idyl I.

VIRGIL.—We will raise your Daphnis to the-stars. We will raise Daphnis to the stars! Me too Daphnis loved!—Eclog., 1. v., v. 51.

Greeting by the Beard

2 Sam. 20:9, 10.—And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab’s hand: so he smote him therewith in the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels to the ground, and struck him not again: and he died.

HOMER.—

Sternly he spake, and as the wretch prepar'd

With humble blandishments to stroke his beard,

Like lightning swift the wrathful falchion flew,

Divides the neck, and cuts the nerves in two.

—Iliad, l. x., v. 454.

EURIPIDES.—I implore thee, old man, falling before thy knees, for it is not possible for me to touch thy beard, deliver me by the gods.—Androm, v. 572.

Six-Fingered Giant

2 Sam. 21:20.—And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number, and he also was born to the giant.

PLINY.—Some persons have six fingers on the hands. We read that C. Horatius, a man of patrician rank, had two daughters, who, for this reason, had the name of "Sedigitæ; " and we find mention made of Volcatius Sedigitus, as a famous poet.—Hist. Nat., 1. xi., c. 99.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—I saw once a young girl in the county of Londonderry, in Ireland, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot; but her stature had nothing gigantic in it.—Note, In loco.

REAUMUR.—A Maltese couple, named Kelleia, whose hands and feet were constructed upon the ordinary human model, had born to them a son, Gratio, who possessed six perfectly movable fingers on each hand, and six toes, not quite so well formed, on each foot. Gratio Kelleia married a woman with the ordinary pentadactyle extremities, and had by her four children, Salvator, George, Andre and Marie. Of these children Salvator, the eldest boy, had six fingers and six toes, like his father.—In Huxley's Lay Sermons, p. 265, 266.

Time of Snow

2 Sam. 23:20.—And Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow.

DR. ROBINSON.—At Jerusalem snow often falls to the depth of a foot or more, in January and February, but it seldom lies.—Researches, Vol. I., p. 429.

DR. KITTO.—At Nazareth snow falls more frequently and deeply; and it has been observed to fall even in the maritime plain of Joppa, and about Carmel. —Phys. Hist. of Pal., p. 210.

JOSEPHUS.—The ambient air here (in the plain of Jericho) is of so good a temperature, that the people of the country are clothed in linen only, even when snow covers the rest of Judea.—Jewish Wars, B. IV., c. viii., § 3.

Numbering the People

2 Sam. 24:15, 17.—So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.... And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house.

HESIOD.—

States rue the wrongs a sinful man has done,

And all atone the wickedness or one.

The god sends down his angry plagues from high.

Famine and pestilence; in heaps they die.

He smites with barrenness the marriage bed,

And generations moulder with the dead:

Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls

On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;

Ponder ye kings! within your inmost thought,

The retribution of his judgments wrought.

—Op. et dies, v. 240.

HORACE.—When doting monarchs urge Unsound resolves, their subjects feel the scourge.—Lib. i., ep. 2.

STATIUS.—But now the weeping sons of Thebes atone For royal crimes, and mischiefs not their own. —Theb., 1. iii., v. 206.

David's Peace-Offerings

2 Sam. 24:25.—And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. So the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.

HOMER.—

The gods (the only great and only wise)

Are moved by offerings, vows, and sacrifice;

Offending man their high compassion wins,

And daily prayers atone for daily sins.

—Iliad', 1. ix., v. 493.

First Book of Kings

David in His Old Age

1 Kings 1:1, 2.—Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—This is by no means so uncommon a thing as people in England suppose. Men of seventy years of age and upwards often take a young virgin for the same purpose as did David, and for no other. It is believed to be exceedingly healthful for an aged person thus to sleep.— Oriental Illustrations, p. 188

The Altar a Refuge

Kings i: Adonijah feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.

ÆSCHYLUS.—

When Mars to slaughter gives the reins,

And rages o'er the ensanguined plains,

To each that flies, the Altar gives

A refuge, and the suppliant lives.

—Suppl., v. 82.

PLUTARCH.—There is the Altar to which the slave may flee for refuge; there are many sacred and inviolable places also for thieves; those even who are routed and pursued by their enemies, if they can take hold of some image or gain some sacred temple, are safe.—De Superst., c. 4.

LUCIAN.—The people ran together, and were going to cover Peregrinus with a volley of stones, had he not, to save his life, taken refuge with Jupiter.—De Mort. Peregy., c. 19.

1 Kings 2:29.—And it was told King Solomon that Joab was fled unto the tabernacle of the Lord; and, behold, he is by the altar. Then Solomon sent Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, saying, Go, fall upon him.

THUCYDIDES.—The altars are a refuge to involuntary offenses; and transgression is only imputed to those who are bad without compulsion, and not to such as urgent necessity may render daring. —Thucyd., 1. iv., c. 98.

EURIPIDES.—If an unrighteous man, availing himself of the law, should claim the protection of the Altar, I would drag him to justice, nor fear the wrath of the gods; for it is necessary that every wicked man should suffer for his crimes.—Eurip.., Frag. 42.

Solomon's Request

Kings 3:7.—And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father; and I am but a little child; I know not how to go out or come in.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS,—Such was the humble confession of Solomon when he came to the kingdom of his father: and such frequently is the form of speech used by men here, though they be advanced in years, when they wish to speak of their incapacity for any performance. “What can I do in this affair? I am but a boy of yesterday's birth." When a man pleads for forgiveness, he says, “I am but a child; it was my ignorance." “Forgive him, Sir; he is but an infant of yesterday."—Orient. Iliust., p. 190.

1 Kings 3:9.—Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?

SENECA.—Cease not to pray to the gods; and ask particularly for wisdom, a sound mind, and health of body.—Epist., 10

JUVENAL—We ought to pray that we may have a sound mind in a sound body.—Sal. 10., v. 356.

MENANDER.—Nothing is more excellent in man than sense and reason. He who possesses this has all things.

Solomon's Judgment

1 Kings 3:25.—And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Ariophames, king of Thrace, being appointed to decide between three young men, who each professed to be the son of the deceased king of the Cimmerians, and claimed the crown in consequence, found out the real son by commanding each to shoot an arrow into the body of the dead king: two of them did this without hesitation; the third refused, and was therefore judged by Ariophames to be the real son of the deceased.—As quoted by Grotius, In loco.

SUETONIUS.—A woman refusing to acknowledge her own son, and there being no clear proof on either side, Claudius obliged her to confess the truth by ordering her to marry the young man, the horror of such a connection constraining her to acknowledge that he was her child.—Claud., c. 15.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—A woman who was going to bathe left her child to play on the banks of the tank, when a female demon who was passing that way carried it off. They both appeared before the deity, and each declared the child was her own. The command was therefore given, that each claimant was to seize the infant by a leg and an arm, and pull with all their might in opposite directions. No sooner had they commenced than the child began to scream, when the real mother, from pity, left off pulling, and resigned her claim to the other. The judge therefore decided, that as she only had shown true affection, the child must be hers.—From Panseya-panas-jatike.

Solomon's Provisions

1 Kings iv: 22, 23.—And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and three-score measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and a hundred sheep, besides harts and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl.

POLYÆNUS.—The daily consumption of provisions in the royal establishment of Cyrus was great, and consisted of one thousand bushels of wheat, one thousand bushels of barley-meal, two hundred and twenty bushels of oat-meal, eleven bushels of paste mixed for pastry; four hundred sheep, three hundred lambs, one hundred oxen, thirty horses, thirty deer, four hundred fat geese, one hundred goslings, three hundred doves, six hundred small birds, eleven bushels of salt, three thousand seven hundred and fifty gallons of wine, seventy-five gallons of milk, etc.—Stratagematum, iii., 3.

TAVERNIER.—There enters no beef into the kitchens of the Grand Seignior's seraglio; but the ordinary consumption of every day, including all, as well those who eat within as without, may amount to five hundred sheep, in which number must be comprehended lambs and kids. According to the proportion of mutton maybe computed the quantity of pullets, chickens, and young pigeons, the number of which is limited according to the season; as also what may be consumed in rice and butter for the pillau.—In Pict. Bib., Vol. II., p. 262.

Shade of the Vine and Fig-Tree

1 Kings 4:25.—And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every than under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.

DR. WILLIAM JENKS.—The land was in such profound peace, that the people disregarded the protection of walled cities.—Comp. Com., Note, In loco.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—There is no protection against the rays of an eastern sun more complete than the dense foliage of the fig-tree. The cottages of Cyprus, where law and security reign to a degree unknown in Syria, have still their clump of Fig-trees round each door; and we have enjoyed both rest and food beneath the shade of the Cyprian Fig-tree, cool even in the hottest autumnal weather.—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 351.

Wisdom of Solomon

1 Kings 4:30.—And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Egypt was deemed by the Gentiles the fountain of the arts and sciences, and their philosophers were wont to go thither to fructify their minds by the outpourings of Egyptian wisdom.—Pict. Bib., Vol. II., p. 263.

HERODOTUS.—The king Rhampsinitus considered the Egyptians superior in subtlety to all the world.—Herodt., 1. ii., c. 122.

PLATO.—Solon said that on his arrival at Sais, in Egypt, he was very honorably received; and especially on his inquiry about ancient affairs of those priests who possessed superior knowledge in such matters, he perceived that neither himself nor any of the Greeks, as compared with them, had any antiquarian knowledge at all.—Timœus, c. 3.

Building of the Temple

1 Kings 5:1-5.—And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was ever a lover of David. And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying... Behold I purpose to build a house unto the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spake unto David my father. etc.

JOSEPHUS.—I will now pass from these records, and come to those that belong to the Phenicians, and concern our nation, and shall produce attestations to what I have said out of them. There are then records among the Tyrians that take in the history of many years, and these are public writings, and are kept with great exactness, and include accounts of the facts done among them, and such as concern their transactions with other nations also, those I mean which are worth remembering. Therein it was recorded, that the Temple was built by king Solomon at Jerusalem, one hundred and forty-three years and eight months before the Tyrians built Carthage; and in their annals the building of our Temple is related; for Hirom the king of Tyre, was the friend of Solomon our king, and had such friendship transmitted down to him from his forefathers. He thereupon was ambitious to contribute to the splendor of this edifice of Solomon's, and made him a present of one hundred and twenty talents of gold. He also cut down the most excellent timber out of that mountain which is called Libanus, and sent it to him for adorning its roof. Solomon also not only made him many other presents, by way of requital, but gave him a country in Galilee also that was called Chabulon. But there was another passion, a philosophic inclination of theirs, which cemented the friendship that was betwixt them; for they sent mutual problems to one another, with a desire to have them un-riddled by each other; wherein Solomon was superior to Hirom, as he was wiser than he in other respects; and many of the epistles that passed between them are still preserved among the Tyrians.—Contra Alien., Book I., § 17.

1 Kings v: 6.—Now therefore, command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The ceiling, roof and beams of the Temple were of cedar wood. The discoveries in the ruins at Nimroud show that the same precious wood was used in the Assyrian edifices; and the King of Nineveh, as we learn from the inscriptions, employed men, precisely as Solomon had done, to cut it in Mount Lebanon.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 550.

MENANDER.—Upon the death of Abibolas, his son Hirom took the kingdom; he lived fifty-three years, and reigned thirty-four. He raised a bank on that called the Broad Place, and dedicated that golden pillar which is in Jupiter's temple. He also went and cut down timber from the mountain called Libanus, and got timber of cedar for the roofs of the temples. He also pulled down the old temples and built new ones.—In Josph. Contr. Apn., B. I., § 18.

1 Kings 5:6.—For thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Phenician civilization is represented as consisting especially in the possession of nautical skill, of extensive commerce, and of excellence in the mechanical and ornamental arts and employments.

Their skill to hew timber, even at this remote period, was attested by their own historians.—Hist. Illust. of the Old Test., p. 114.

1 Kings 5:9.—My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea; and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Material for building towers and rafts was brought down from Mount Lebanon.—Q. Curt., 1. iv., c. 2.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—In Solomon's day the servants of King Hiram cut the cedars of Lebanon, and, making them into rafts, floated them to Joppa, the port appointed by the Jewish King. In the same manner, the timber, which grows abundantly on the Northern coast of Asia Minor, is cut down by the Sultan's servants, made into rafts at Sinope and other ports on the Black Sea, and conveyed to the capital for the supply of the imperial navy yard, and for house-building.—Bible Lands, p. 64.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.-Exactly in this way is timber conveyed in all parts of the East.—Oriental Illust., p. 192.

1 Kings 5:17, 18.—And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stone-squarers.

DR. JOHN KITTO.-AS to the largeness of the stones for the temple, we may remark that stones of astonishingly large size were certainly employed in the ancient structures of Syria. Thus in the sub-basement of the great temple of Baalbek Irby and Mangles measured a stone sixty-six feet in length, by twelve in breadth and thickness. And Wood, in his account of the same ruins, confirms this observation; and takes notice of stones which he found cut and shaped for use in a neighboring quarry, one of which measured seventy feet in length, by fourteen in breadth, and fourteen feet five inches in depth, containing 14,128 cubic feet; and which would, if of Portland stone, weigh 1,135 tons. We might also refer to the frequently enormous size of the stones employed in the erection of the ecclesiastical and sepulchral structures of Egypt.—Pitt. Bible, In loco.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—A striking confirmation of the amity between Hiram and the Hebrew kings has lately been brought to light. Certain writings or marks have been found on the bottom rows of the wall at the southeast angle of the Haram area, near where the ancient temple must have stood, at the depth of about ninety feet, where the foundations lie on the lime-rock itself. Mr. E. Deutsch, of the British Museum, who has examined these stones on the ground, decides that these signs were cut or painted on the stones when they were laid in their present places, and that they are Phenician marks; this is beyond question, because they agree with those found on primitive substructions in the harbor of Sidon. It is certainly remarkable that Phenician letters or etchings should be found on these stones at Jerusalem, thus suddenly brought to light; and the best explanation of the fact is that they were placed there by the Tyrian architects; whom Hiram sent to Jerusalem, to assist in the erection of the Temple. The precise value of the characters is not yet determined, but no doubt they were designed to guide the workmen in placing the stones in their proper positions.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, P. 3340

1 Kings 6:1—An d it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel Were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The Tyrian histories witnessed to the construction of the temple by Solomon, an event which they placed in the 144th year before the foundation of Carthage, or B. C. 1007 (a date that almost exactly agrees with the Bible Chronology, which puts it at B.C. 1012).— Hist. Illust., p. 110

1 Kings 6:14-22.—So Solomon built the house, and finished it. And he built the walls of the house within with boards of cedar, both the floor of the house, and the walls of the ceiling: and he covered them on the inside with wood, and covered the floor of the house with planks of fir, etc.

To see that, this whole description of Solomon's temple is both natural and credible—that it is in perfect accord with the architectural taste and mechanical skill and royal munificence of those early days-one need but read the following record of the Temple of Merodach erected at Babylon at a somewhat later date:

INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.—The fanes of Babylon I built, I adorned. Of the house, the foundation of the heaven and earth, I reared the summit with blocks of noble lapis lazuli: to the construction of Bit-Saggatu my heart lifted me up; in abundance I wrought the best of my pine trees, which from Lebanon, together with tall Babil-wood, I brought for the portico of the Temple of Merodach: the shrine of his Lordship I made good, and interior walls with pine and tall cedar woods: the portico of the Temple of Merodach, with brilliant gold I caused to cover, the lower thresholds, the cedar awnings, with gold and precious stones I embellished: in the erection of Bit-Saggatu I proceeded: I supplicated the King of gods, the Lord of lords: in Borsippa, the city of his loftiness, I raised Bit-Zida: a durable house in the midst thereof I caused to be made. With silver, gold, precious stones, bronze, unmakana and pine woods, those thresholds I completed: the pine wood portico of the shrine of Nebo with gold I caused to cover, the pine wood portico of the gate of the Temple of Merodach I caused to overlay with bright silver, etc.—See Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 119.

1 Kings 16:18.—And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS. —The people of the East are exceedingly profuse in their carved work. Look at a temple; it is, almost from its foundation to its summit, a complete mass of sculpture and carved work. Look at the sacred car in which their gods are drawn out in procession, and you are astonished at the labor, taste and execution displayed by the workmen in carved work. Nay, the roof and doors of private dwellings are all indebted to the chisel of the “cunning workman." The pillars that support the verandahs, their chests, their couches (as were those of Solomon), the handles of different instruments, their plows, their vessels, however rude in other respects, must be adorned by the skill of the carver. —Oriental Illustrations, p. 193.

1 Kings 5:38.—So was he seven years in building it.

JOSEPHUS. —Herod, in the eighteenth year of his reign, undertook a very great work, that is, to build of himself the temple of God, and to make it larger of compass, and to raise it to a most magnificent altitude, as esteeming it to be the most glorious of all his actions. The cloisters and outer enclosures he built in eight years. But the temple itself was built by the priests in a year and six months, upon which the people were full of joy.—Antiquities, B. XV., C. II.

House of Lebanon

1 Kings 7:2.—He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon; the length thereof was a hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof fifty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits, upon four rows of cedar pillars, with cedar beams upon the pillars.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—As a builder of great works Esar-haddon is particularly distinguished. Besides his palace at Babylon, he built at least three others in different parts of his dominions, either for himself or for his son. The southwest palace at Nimroud is the best preserved of his constructions.

This building, which was excavated by Mr. Layard, is remarkable from the peculiarity of its plan as well as from the scale upon which it is constructed. It corresponds in its general design almost exactly with the palace of Solomon (1 Kings 7:1-2), but is of larger dimensions, the great hall being 220 feet long, by 100 broad, and the porch or ante-chamber 160 feet by 60 feet.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 761.

1 Kings 7:10, 12.—And the foundation was of costly stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits and stones of eight cubits.... And the great court round about was with three rows of hewed stones.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Many of the stones in the existing walls of. Jerusalem are fifteen or sixteen feet long, by four high and four deep; and it is remarkable that these dimensions, as to length, correspond to those given in the Scripture. —Pict. Bible In loco.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, A. M. —Some forty feet from the angle, on the western side, are three courses of colossal masonry projecting from the wall, and forming the springing stones of a large arch. These stones have within the last few years attracted no little attention. And this is not strange, for they are unquestionably a remnant of the bridge that once connected Moriah and Zion. Calculating by the curve of the part which remains, we find that the span of the arch must have been about forty feet, and five such arches would be required to cross the Tyropean. That the bridge existed in our Lord's time we learn from Josephus. It is also mentioned during the siege by Pompey twenty years before Herod was made king. The exact date of the fragment still remaining cannot, of course, be precisely fixed. One thing, however, is certain, that it is coeval with the massive foundations of the southern angles of the Haram. One of the three courses is five feet four inches high, the others are a little less. One of the stones is twenty-four feet long, another twenty, and the rest in proportion.

The Cyclopean dimensions, and peculiar character of the masonry, indicate a far higher antiquity than Herod the Great, and would seem to point back to the earliest age of the Jewish monarchy. We read that the foundations of Solomon's temple were formed of “costly stones, even great stones; stones of ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits. And the great court round about was of three rows of hewed stones."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 126.

The Two Pillars

1 Kings 7:13, 14.—And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre.... And he was filled with wisdom and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The embossed and engraved vessels from Nimroud afford many interesting illustrations of the progress made by the ancients in metallurgy. The Sidonians, and other inhabitants of the Phenician coast, were the most renowned workers in metal of the ancient world. In the Homeric poems they are frequently mentioned as the artificers who fashioned and embossed metal cups and bowls. It will be remembered that Phenician characters occur on one of the plates (discovered at Nimroud). The discovery in Cyprus of twelve silver bowls very closely resembling those found at Nimroud, tend further to confirm the idea that many of these relics were the works of Phenician artists. -Nineveh and Babylon, p. 162, 163.

1 Kings 7:15, 21.—He cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece; and a line of twelve cubits did compass either of them about.... And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—In several of the Egyptian temple's, obelisks are placed immediately in front of them, at each side of, and at equal distances from the door of entrance.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

HERODOTUS.—Among the various offerings which adorned and enriched the temple of Hercules, I saw two pillars; the one was of purest gold, the other of emerald, which in the night diffused an extraordinary splendor.—Herod., 1. ii., c. 44.

MENANDER.—Upon the death of Abibalus, his son Hirom took the kingdom. He raised a bank on that called the “Broad Place," and dedicated that golden pillar which is in Jupiter's temple.—In Josephus Contr. Ap., B. I., § 18.

1 Kings 7:18.—And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the chapters that were upon the top, with pomegranates.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The pomegranate was adopted as one of the favorite devices in the decoration of Solomon's temple, being carved on the capitals of the pillars. Whether the design was taken from the fruit or the flower, it would form a graceful ornament. We have frequently noticed the Pomegranate sculptured on fragments of columns among the ruins of Oriental temples.—Nat. Hid. of the Bible, p. 389.

Attitude in Prayer

1 Kings 8:22.—And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—This was a usual custom in all nations: in prayer the hands were stretched out to heaven as if to invite and receive assistance from thence.—Note In loco.

VIRGIL.—

Ye lamps of heaven, he said, and lifted high

His hands, now free; thou venerable sky,

Inviolable powers!

Æn., lib. ii., v. 153.

DR. WILLIAM JENKS.—The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic for prayer was the figure of two uplifted hands.—Note In loco.

1 Kings 8:30.—And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This refers to a very ancient custom, for the worshippers, under different systems of religion, to direct their faces, when at prayer, towards some particular point where the presence of their deity was supposed to be more particularly manifested, or which was, otherwise, the holiest place which the religion recognized. This point is called the kebla among the eastern nations. Jerusalem and its temple was the kebla of the Jews—the point to which they directed their prayers wherever they might be.... We discover the continuance of the custom of worshipping toward Jerusalem and its temple in the order issued by Adrian, by which the Jews were forbidden not only to enter Jerusalem, but to look towards it. The custom is not yet relinquished. The Jews still, in all their wide dispersions, turn their faces in prayer towards their lost Canaan, and for this reason it is that, in all Hebrew Synagogues, we observe the door (or the principal door, if there be more than one) is placed at or near the opposite of the compass. The kebla of the Mohammedans is at Mecca.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Queen of Sheba

1 Kings 10:1.—And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions.

Dius.—They say further, that Solomon, when he was king of Jerusalem, sent problems to Hirom to be solved, and desired that he would send others back for him to solve; and that he who could not solve the problems proposed to him should pay money to him that solved them. And when Hirom had agreed to the proposals, but was not able to solve the problems, he was obliged to pay a great deal of money, as a penalty for the same. As also they relate that one Abdemon, a man of Tyre, did solve the problems, and propose others which Solomon could not solve, upon which he was obliged to repay a great deal of money to Hirom.—In Josephus Contr. Ap., B. I., § 17.

PLUTARCH.—Aristippus, having heard from Ischomachus of the wisdom of Socrates, could have no rest till, having sailed to Athens, with wonderful thirst and ardor he had drunk from the fountain, and had heard the man himself, and his language and philosophy.—De Curiosit., C. 2.

IDEM.—In the course of his expedition into India, Alexander took ten of the Gymnosophists. As these ten were reckoned the most acute and concise in their answers, he put the most difficult questions to them that could be thought of, and at the same time declared that he would put the first person that answered wrong to death, and after him all the rest. The oldest man among 'hem was to be judge.

He demanded of the first, "Which were the most numerous, the living or the dead?" He answered, “The living, for the dead no longer exist."

The second was asked, "Whether the earth or the sea produce the largest animals?" He answered, "The earth, for the sea is part of it."

The third, "Which was the craftiest of all animals?” “That," said he,, " with which man is not yet acquainted "—meaning himself.

The fourth, “What was his reason for persuading Sabbas to revolt? " “Because," said he, " I wished him either to live with honor, or to die as a coward deserves."

The fifth had this question put to him, " Which do you think oldest, the day or the night?" He answered, “The day, by one day." As the king appeared surprised at this solution, the philosopher told him, "Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers."

Then addressing himself to the sixth, he demanded, “What are the best means for a man to make himself loved?” He answered, “If possessed of great power, do not make yourself feared."

The seventh was asked, “How a man might become a god?” He answered, “By doing what is impossible for man to do."

The eighth, “Which is the strongest, life or death?" “Life," said he, " because it bears so many evils."

The last question he put was, “How long is it good for a man to live?” "As long," said the philosopher, “as he does not prefer death to life."

Then turning to the judge, he ordered him to give sentence. The old man said, “In my opinion, they have all answered one worse than the other." "If this is thy judgment," said Alexander, "thou shalt die first." “No," replied the philosopher, “unless you choose to break your word; for you declared that the man who answered worst should first suffer."—The king loaded them with presents, and dismissed them.—Alexand., c. 64.

1 Kings 10:10.—And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Sabæans not only excel all the neighboring barbarians in wealth, but all other people whatsoever, for plenty of everything which is counted precious. They swim, as it were, in streams of gold and silver, especially at Sabas, the seat of their, kings. The doors and roofs of their apartments are adorned with numberless golden bowls, set with precious stones. —Diod. Sic., 1. iii., c. 3.

PLINY.—The Sabæi are the richest of all in the great abundance of their spice-bearing groves, their mines of gold, etc.—Hist.' Nat., 1. vi., c. 32.

VIRGIL.—The Sabæans alone possess the tree which produces frankincense.—Georg., 1. ii., v. 117.

Solomon's Throne

1 Kings 10:18.—Moreover, the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Among the Greeks ivory was in use at a very early period, as it is repeatedly mentioned by Homer and Hesiod.

In after times the use of ivory became more general among the luxurious. The galleys of the Phœnicians had their benches or hatches ornamented with ivory inlaid work. Many specimens of ivory ornaments have been found both in Nineveh, especially a scepter and inlaid tablets, and also in the earliest monuments of Egypt. The art of inlaying ivory is still practiced by the inhabitants of Sidon.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 82.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—Gilding appears to have been extensively used among the Assyrians in decoration; and some of the great sphinxes may have been overlaid with gold, like the cherubim in Solomon's temple.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 555.

IDEM.—In one of the tombs at Kouyunjik was a thin golden mask, still preserved, which perfectly retained the figure of the corpse. A similar mask of thin gold was discovered in a tomb opened by the officers of the Euphrates expedition on the banks of that river.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 503.

1 Kings 10:19, 20.—The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays. And twelve lions stood there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps: there was not the like made in any kingdom.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—In the further corner of the chamber (at Nimroud), to the left hand, stood the royal throne. Although it was utterly impossible, from the complete state of decay of the materials, to preserve any part of it entire, I was able, by carefully removing the earth, to ascertain that it resembled in shape the chair of state of the king, as seen in the sculptures of Konyunjik and Khorsabad, and particularly that represented in the bas-reliefs already described, of Sennacherib receiving the captives and spoil, after the conquest of the city of Lachish. With the exception of the legs, which appear to have been partly of ivory, it was of wood, cased or overlaid with bronze, as the throne of Solomon was of ivory, overlaid with gold. The metal was most elaborately engraved and embossed with symbolical figures and ornaments, like those embroidered on the robes of the early Nimroud king, such as winged deities struggling with griffins, mythic animals, men before the sacred tree, and the winged lion and the bull. As the wood-work, over which the bronze was fastened by means of small nails of the same material, had rotted away, the throne fell to pieces, but the metal casing was partly preserved. Numerous fragments of it are now in the British Museum, including the joints of the arms and legs; the rams' or bulls' heads, which adorned the ends of the arms (some still retaining the clay and bitumen with the impression of the carving, showing the substance upon which the embossing had been hammered out), and the ornamental scroll-work of the cross bars, in the form of the Ionic volute. The legs were adorned with lions' paws resting on a pine-shaped ornament, like the thrones of the later Assyrian sculptures, and stood on a bronze base. A rod with loose rings, to which was hung embroidered drapery, or some rich stuff, appears to have belonged to the back of the chair, or to a frame-work raised above or behind it. In front of the throne was the footstool, also of wood overlaid with embossed metal, and adorned with the heads of rams or bulls. The feet ended in lions' paws and pine cones, like those of the throne.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 167-169.

Imports of Solomon

1 Kings 10:22.—The king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—In a tomb at Thebes, Blacks and people of red color bring to the king of Egypt, from the country of Pount, ivory, apes, leopards, skins, and dried fruits. Ethiopians bring gold rings, and bags of precious stones, hides, apes, leopards, ebony, ivory, ostrich eggs and plumes, a camelopard, hounds with handsome collars, and a drove of long-horned oxen. Another group of light red race, the Gentiles of Kufa, bring vases of elegant forms ornamented with flowers, necklaces, and other costly gifts. Still another group of white men, wearing close sleeves, bring long gloves, vases, a chariot and horses, a bear, elephant, and ivory.—In Comp. Comment., In loco.

Solomon's Wives and Concubines

1 Kings 11:3.—And he had seven hundred wives, princesses; and three hundred concubines. DR. JOHN KITTO.—Among Oriental monarchs an extensive female establishment is regarded as a piece of royal state, which sometimes gives occasion to one as large or larger than that of Solomon. And this is often the case when the prince himself, as frequently happens, distinguishes only three or four of the number, and sometimes only one, with his personal attention and favor. China, India, Persia and Turkey afford, or have afforded, instances similar to that of the king of Israel. The Chinese emperor has a vast number of females in his establishment, many of whom he never saw in his life. Magalhaeus computes their number at three thousand. Those of the great Mogul were stated at one thousand by the travelers of the seventeenth century—exactly Solomon's number.—Pict. Bib., note In loco.

SIR JOHN MALCOLM.—While his generals were subduing the Roman Empire, Khoosroo was wholly devoted to the enjoyment of unheard-of luxury and magnificence. His noble palaces, of which he built one for every season-his thrones, which were invaluable, particularly that called Takh-dis, which was formed to represent the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the hours of the day—his treasures—his LADIES, of whom there were twelve thousand, each, if we believe the gravest of Persian writers, equal to the moon in splendor and beauty—his horses, etc.—History of Persia, in Pict. Bib.

1 Kings 11:40.—And Jeroboam arose, and fled into Egypt, unto Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon.

CHAMPOLLION. —The name of this king, Shishak or Shishork, is graven on one of the columns in the palace of Karnak, and is represented as dragging to the feet of his gods the chiefs of thirty conquered nations, among whom has been found a representative of the Jews, under the name of fouda-hamelek, or the kingdom of Judah, which offers a striking corroboration of what is narrated in 1 Kings 14:25-28. —Precis., p. 205; and Letters, p. 99.

Royal Associates

1 Kings 12:8.—But Rehoboam forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him, and which stood before him.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It was an ancient custom, particularly in the East, for young princes to UP trained up with young men, who, from the rank or influence of their families, might be expected to become the leading men of the nation. Sesostris in Egypt, Cyrus in Persia, and Alexander in Macedon, were brought up in this manner: and we find that the companions and fellow-pupils of their early days were their devoted friends and military commanders in more advanced life.—Pict. Bib., Vol. II., 293.

The Altar at Bethel

1 Kings 13:1-4.—And behold there came a man of God Out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee. And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken: Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out. And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —This clear, distinct, and remarkable prophecy, concerning what should be done by a man who was not born till 360 years later, and whose very name is mentioned, may be advantageously contrasted with the obscure, indeterminate, guarded, and equivocal predictions of the idle oracles of ancient paganism. —Pict. Bib., In loco.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—This man of God, as it were, gave this warning to idolatry, that it might be on its guard, and defend itself against this Josiah, whenever a person of that name should be found sitting on the throne of David: and, no doubt, it was on the alert, and took all prudent measures for its own defense; but all in vain; for Josiah, in the eighteenth year of his reign, literally accomplished this prophecy, as we may read in 2 Kings 23:15-20.—Note In loco.

Shishak

1 Kings 14:25.—And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. And he took away the treasures of the house, etc.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, Brit. Mus.—Shishak has left a record of this expedition, sculptured on the wall of the great temple of El Karnak.—Smith's Bib. Dict. p. 3013.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Doubts were thrown a few years since, by an able writer, on the expeditions of Shishak against Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and of Zerah, the Ethiopian, against Asa, Rehoboam's grandson; which, it was suggested, might be mere embellishments of history, otherwise tame and uninteresting. The careful analysis which the inscription of Shishak, at Karnak, has undergone at the hands of Mr. Stuart Poole, and Dr. Brugsch, not to mention other scholars, and the evidence thus furnished of the reality and the importance of his expedition into Palestine, render the continuance of incredulity, as to the former of these attacks, impossible. The analysis has thrown a flood of light on what was previously obscure in the scriptural narrative.—Modern Skepticism, p. 284.

Omri

1 Kings 16:23, 24.—In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah. And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill Samaria.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—At length a certain Omri attained to power, and succeeded in introducing greater stability into the Israelite state. Removing the capital to a new site, Samaria, and establishing a new system of laws, which were thenceforth observed, he so firmly fixed his dynasty upon the throne, that it continued during three generations and four reigns before it was succeeded by another. A monarch of this capacity might be expected to get himself a name among his neighbors; and accordingly we find in the Assyrian inscriptions of the time that his name is the Israelite name with which they are most familiar. Samaria is known to the Assyrians for some centuries merely as Beth-Omri, “the house " or " city of Omri; " and even when they come into contact with Israelite monarch of the house which succeeded Omri's upon the throne, they still regarded them as descendants of the great chief whom they viewed perhaps as the founder of the kingdom. Thus the Assyrian records agree generally with the Hebrew in the importance which they assign to this monarch; and specially confirm the fact that he was the founder of the later Israelite metropolis, Samaria.—Historical Illustrations of the O. T., p. 121.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL.D.—The most skeptical writers recognize the significance of this agreement of Assyrian and Jewish history.—Hist. Iliust. of O. T., p. 121, note.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.-Omri's name appears also on another very recently discovered monument. The stele of Mesha, king of Moab, erected at Dibon in the Moabite country about B. C. 900, twenty or thirty years after Omri's death, records that he reduced the Moabites to subjection, and began an oppression under which they groaned, till Mesha re-established their independence. This notice agrees well with the Hebrew date for Omri, and with the mention that is made of his might in 1 Kings 16:27.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 122.

THE MOABITE STONE. —I Mesha am son of Chemoshgad King of Moab, the Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I erected this stone to Chemosh at Karcha, a stone of salvation, for he saved me from all despoilers, and let me see my desire upon all mine enemies. And Omri, king of Israel, who oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him, and he also said, I will oppress Moab. In my days he said, Let us go, and I will see my desire on him and his house; and Israel said, I shall destroy it forever. Now Omri took the land Medeba, and occupied it, he and his son, and his son's son, forty years. And Chemosh had mercy on it in my days.—Dr. Ginsburg's Translation, lines 1 to 9.

Ahab

1 Kings 16:29.—And Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Omri's son and successor, Ahab, is mentioned by name in an Assyrian contemporary inscription, which, agreeably to the account given in the First Book of Kings with respect to the place of his ordinary residence, calls him, "Ahab of Jezreel." The inscription tells us that Ahab on a certain occasion joined in a league of kings against the Assyrians, and furnished to the confederate army, that was brought into the field, a force of 10,000 footmen and 2,000 chariots. The allies suffered defeat, and Ahab appears thenceforth to have abstained from offering any opposition to Assyria. Among the confederate monarchs with whom he leagued himself was the Damascene king, Benhadad, whom Scripture also makes Ahab's contemporary. —Hist. Illust., p. 122.

THE BLACK OBELISK. —This Assyrian monument contains a notice of the next Israelite monarch, Ahab, and another of the Syrian king who succeeded Benhadad, Hazael. Hazael appears the chief antagonist of the Assyrian invaders of Syria, in immediate succession to Benhadad. And Ahab, the son of Omri, is declared to have sent ambassadors to the Assyrian capital with presents or tribute. The facts here recorded are not mentioned in Scripture; and the “testimony " consists simply in the mention at an appropriate time, under appropriate circumstances, and in proper sequence, of persons who play an important part in the sacred history.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 127.; see also Ancient Monarchies, Vol. IV., p. 576.

1 Kings 16:31.—He took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—This “Ethbaal " appeared as Eithobalus in Dius and Menander, who made him the sixth king of Tyre after Hiram, reckoning the interval between the two at fifty years, and giving Eithobalus a reign of thirty-two years, whereby he would be exactly contemporary with Ahab. Moreover, the Tyrian histories related that Eithobalus was high-priest of Astarte (or Ashtoreth), which accounts in a measure for the religious fanaticism of his daughter.—Hist. Illust., is.p. 125.

1 Kings 16:32.—And Ahab reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—The Phenician Baal was Melkart, who from the earliest foundation of Tyre was the tutelar god of that city, and whose worship extended with tire extension of her state. Many representations of the Phenician Baal or Melkart are extant on coins. Annexed is one.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Elijah

1 Kings 17:2, 3.—And the word of the Lord came unto Elijah, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT.—Dr. Robinson, in his Physical Geography, and Wilson, in his Lands of the Bible, hold “Cherith" to be the Wady Kelt. And it must be owned that a brook or ravine better suited to have been the asylum of the prophet could hardly be found anywhere.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 419.

1 Kings 17:4.—And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—And now (in going down from Jerusalem to Jericho) the scenery changed rapidly to the grand and savage. Instead of limping among the gravels and boulders of winter torrents, with an occasional zizyphus-bush overhanging them, we skirted the tremendous gorge of the Wady Kelt, which we could occasionally see by peering down the giddy height, with its banks fringed by strips of cane and oleander, the “willows by the water-courses." Here Robinson is inclined to place “the brook Cherith."... The gorge opens suddenly at a turn of the path about two miles before reaching the plain, where the traveler finds himself in front of a precipice perhaps 500 feet 'high, pierced by many inaccessible anchorite caverns, and with a steep, rugged hill above. We gaze down into the steep ravine, and see the ravens, eagles, and griffon-vultures sailing beneath us. These are now the sole inhabitants of these caves, the monarchs of the waste.—Land of Israel, p. 202.

1 Kings 18:1, 2.—And it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth. And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.

JOSEPHUS. —Now Menander mentions this drought in his account of the acts of Ethbaal, king of the Tyrians, where he says thus: "Under him there was a want of rain from the month of Hyperberetæus till the month of Hyperberetæus in the year following; but when he made supplications, there came great thunders." By these words he designed this want of rain that was in the days of Ahab, for at that time it was that Ethbaal also reigned over the Tyrians, as Menander informs us.—Antiquities, B. VIII., c. 73, § 2.

1 Kings 18:4.—For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—Like all limestone formations, the hills of Palestine abound in caves.... In these innumerable rents and cavities and holes, we see the origin of the sepulchers, which still perforate the rocky walls of the Judæan valleys; the hiding-places of robbers, and insurgents; and the refuge of those “of whom the world was not worthy."—Sinai and Pal., p. 749.

Kings 18:5.—And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks; peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—In droughts in the East, which have lasted from six to ten months, how often have we seen men, like Obadiah, going along in marshy places, or by the sides of tanks, in search of grass for their cattle. See the poor fellow with a basket on his back, and a little instrument in his hand.

He strolls from fountain to brook; and no Sooner does he see a green patch of verdure, than he runs with eagerness to the spot. Perhaps he meets another in search of the same thing, when each declares he had the first view. They set to work snarling at each other, and dealing out all kinds of abuses, till they have completely cleared the place of every green blade.—Oriental Illust., p. 202.

1 Kings 18:79.—Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the grove four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.

TACITUS. —Between Judaea and Syria stands Mount Carmel, the place, and the deity of the place, bearing the same name. Nor is the god distinguished by any statue or any temple, but only by an altar reared, and worship offered. Hist., 1. ii., c. 78.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—Mount Carmel forms one of the most striking and characteristic features of the country of Palestine. It stands as a wall between the maritime plain of Sharon on the south, and the more inland expanse of Esdraelon on the north. In form it is a tolerably continuous ridge, at the west end about 600 feet, and at the east end about 1,600 feet above the level of the sea. Of the identity of Carmel there never has been a doubt.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 388.

1 Kings 18:27.—And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

HOMER.—Jove went yesterday across the ocean to banquet with the Ethiopians.—Iliad, 1. i., v. 409.

IDEM.—Jove on his couch reclined his awful head, And Juno slumbered on the golden bed.—Iliad, 1. i., v. 423.

PLUTARCH.—It is no wonder said Hegesias that the temple of Diana was burned; since she was absent at the time, employed in bringing Alexander into the world.—Alexander, c. iii.

LUCIAN.—'Tis plain that the gods are not at home, and probably have taken a voyage to attend " the feasts of Ethiopia's blameless race; " for they are in the habit of inviting themselves as guests to those honest folks.-De Jov. Trag., c. 37.

1 Kings 18:28.—And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.

HERODOTUS.—The Carians of Egypt treat themselves at this solemnity (the rites of Isis) with unparalleled severity: they cut themselves in the face with swords, and by this distinguish themselves from the Egyptian natives.—Herodt., 1. ii., c. 61.

LUCIAN.—It is the universal custom with the worshippers of Hierapolis to make punctures in honor of the gods, some in their hands, others in their necks; and hence it is that all the Assyrians are marked in that manner.—De dea Syr., c. 59.

IDEM.—The worshippers of the Syrian goddess spun round and round, dashed themselves in the arm with their swords, lolled out their tongues, and pierced them through in such a manner that frequently they were all over blood. —Asin., c. 37.

LUCAN.—

Belona's priests, a barb'rous frantic train,

Whose mangled arms a thousand wounds disdain,

Toss their wild locks, and with a dismal yell,

The wrathful gods and coming woes foretell.

—Phars., 1. i., v. 565.

1 Kings 18:30-32.—And Elijah repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.... And he took twelve stones, according to the number of the twelve tribes of the sons of Jacob and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, A. M.—Carmel is chiefly celebrated as the scene of Elijah's sacrifice. The exact spot is marked by local tradition, by the agreement of its physical features with the Scripture narrative, and by its name, el Muhrakah, "The Sacrifice." It is about six hours' ride from the convent, over the crest of the ridge. I visited it from the Plain of Esdraelon, on the opposite or eastern side. It is on the brow of the mountain, and commands the whole plain of Jezreel and Tabor. Close to the base of the range, below the spot, flows the river Kishon, where the prophets of Baal were slain; and just above the spot is a projecting peak, from which Elijah's servant saw the “little cloud, like a man's hand, rising out of the sea." Sitting on that commanding height, on a bright spring evening, I felt persuaded I was upon the scene of Elijah's great sacrifice. Beside and under me were probably the very stones of which God's altar was built, and over which played the heavenly flame. A few paces beneath me was the well from which the water was drawn, that the prophet's servants poured upon the altar. Around me were the thickets from which the wood was cut. Away at the foot of the mountain flowed the Kishon in its deep bed, which on that day ran red with the blood of Jehovah's enemies. There, stretching out before me, was the plain across which Ahab dashed in his chariot; and yonder, on its eastern border, I saw the little villages which mark the sites and still bear the names of Jezreel and Shunem. —Giant Cities of Bashan, 241, 242.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—Carmel is not so much a mountain as a ridge, an upland park, extending for many miles into the interior of the country. At the eastern extremity, which is also the highest point of the whole ridge, is a spot marked out alike by tradition and by natural features as one of the most authentic localities of the Old Testament history. The tradition is unusually trustworthy. It is one of the very few, perhaps the only case in which the recollection of an alleged event has been actually retained in the native Arabic nomenclature. Many names of towns have been so preserved, but here is no town, only a shapeless ruin, yet the spot has a name, El-Maharakah, or "The Sacrifice." But, be the tradition good or bad, the localities adapt themselves to the event in almost every particular. The summit thus marked out is the extreme eastern point of the range, commanding the last view of the sea behind, and the first view of the great plain in front; just where the glades of forest, " the excellency of Carmel," sink into the usual barrenness of the hills and vales of Palestine. There, on the highest point of the mountain, may well have stood, on its sacred “high place," the altar of the Lord which Jezebel had cast down. Close beneath, on a wide upland sweep, under the shade of ancient olives, and round a well of water, said to be perennial, and which may therefore have escaped the general drought, and have been able to furnish water for the trenches round the altar—must have been ranged, on one side, the king and people, with the eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and Astarte, and on the other the solitary and commanding figure of the Prophet of the Lord. Full before them opened the whole plain of Esdraelon, with Tabor and its kindred ranges in the distance; on the rising ground, at the opening of its valley, the city of Jezreel, with Ahab's palace and Jezebel's temple distinctly visible; in the nearer foreground, immediately under the base of the mountain, was clearly seen the winding stream of the Kishon, working its way through the narrow pass of the hills into the Bay of Acre. Such a scene, with such recollections of the past, with such sights of the present, was indeed a fitting theater for a conflict more momentous than any which their ancestors had fought in the plain below.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 345-347.

Kings 18:33-35.—And Elijah said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about the altar. And he filled the trench also with water.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—No place could be conceived more adapted by nature to be that wondrous battle-field of Truth. In front of the principal actors in the scene, with the king and his courtiers by their side, the thousands of Israel might have been gathered on the lower slopes, witnesses of the whole struggle to its stupendous result. In the upper part of the amphitheater, to the left, is an ancient fountain, overhung by a few magnificent trees, among them a noble specimen of Turkey oak. The reservoir of the spring is stone-built and square, about eight feet deep, and the old steps which once descended to it may yet be traced. The roof partially remains. The water is of some depth, and is perennial. This was corroborated by the existence of mollusks (Neritina michonii) attached to the stones within the cistern. In that three years' drought, when all the wells were dry, and the Kishon had first sunk to a string of pools, and then finally was lost altogether, this deep and shaded spring, fed from the roots of Carmel, remained. After we had drunk of this fountain, whence Elijah drew for the trench round his altar, while Ahab sat under the rock, probably just where the oak tree now grows, we toiled up again to our horses, alarming the jays, and many a flight of wood-pigeons rarely here disturbed.—Land of Israel, p. 119.

1 Kings 18:40.—And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Immediately below, on the banks of the Kishon, was a small flat-topped green knoll, Tell Cassis," the mound of the priests," marking in its name the very spot where Elijah slew the prophets of Baal, when he had brought them down to the brook Kishon.—Land of Israel, p. 118.

1 Kings 18:42.—And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—Who in the East has not seen the natives thus ?sitting on the earth, with their faces between their knees? Those who are engaged in deep meditation, in a long train of reasoning, who are revolving the past or anticipating the future, or who are in great sorrow or fatigue, may be seen seated on the ground with the face between the knees. “This morning as I passed the garden of Chinnan, I saw him on the ground with his face between his knees. I wonder what plans he was forming." "Kandan is sick or in trouble; for he has got his face between his knees."—Oriental Illust., p. 205.

1 Kings 18:43.—And he said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—From the place where Elijah must have worshipped, the view of the sea is just intercepted by an adjacent height. That height, however, may be ascended in a few minutes, and a full view of the sea obtained from the top.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 348, note.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—We were standing on the edge of a cliff, and looked down on a map of central Palestine. The hewn stones among which we stood mark the site of the altar of the Lord which Jezebel overthrew and Elijah repaired. To this spot came Elijah's servant to look for the little cloud, which at length rose to the prophet's prayer, and portended the coming rain, exactly as it does now. No site in Palestine is more indisputable than that of the little hollow in the knoll 300 feet below us, where the Lord God of Elijah manifested his Divinity before Ahab and assembled Israel. —The Land of Israel, p. 117.

1 Kings 18:44.—And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.

PLINY.—An isolated cloud, however small, though seen in a clear sky, announces wind and storm.—Nat. Hist., 1. xviii., c. 82.

SOPHOCLES.—Forth from a little cloud, Soon as the storm shall burst, it will o'erwhelm thee, And stop thy clamors.—Ajax, v. 1148.

ARATUS.—

If before him mount a little cloud,

Veiling his rising beams in murky shroud,

By this forewarned, within the house remain,

Charged is the air with stores of pelting rain.

—Diosem., v. 845.

EMERSON.—The following morning rose fine and beautiful; again all sail was set, and we hoped ere noon to reach the open sea to the south of Syra, where Stephanopoulo expected to encounter -the squadron of the commodore. As we were seated at breakfast, a sailor put his head within the door, and saying briefly, “that it looked squally to windward," hurried again upon deck. We all followed, and on coming up, saw a little black cloud on the verge of the horizon towards the south, which was every instant spreading over the sky and drawing nearer to us. The captain altered his course instantly, preparing to scud before it; and in the meantime ordered all hands aloft to take in sail. But scarcely an instant had elapsed ere the squall was upon us, and all grew black around: the wind came rushing and crisping over the water, and in a moment the ship was running almost gunwale down, whilst the rain was dashing in torrents on the decks.-This instance, and others I have witnessed, are thoroughly explanatory of the passage in Kings, where the servant of Elijah descries from the top of Carmel the little cloud ascending from the sea. In the Mediterranean such scenes are frequent.—Letters from the Ægean, ii., 149.

1 Kings 18:46.—And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah; and he girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—The Egyptian monuments show this custom, and their nobles had even sometimes six or seven servants to run before them; and when going to an entertainment these carried the stool to assist them in alighting from their chariot, an inkstand, or whatever they might want, on the road, or at their friend's house.—Ancient Egypt.

SUETONIUS.—Sergius Sulpicius Galba (afterward emperor) distinguished himself by leading an escort, with a shield in his hand, and running by the side of the emperor Caligula's chariot twenty miles together.—Galba, c. 6.

1 Kings 19:4.—But Elijah himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came, and sat down, under a juniper tree.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The rothem or retem, here translated “juniper tree," is a species of Broom, very common in the ravines of the desert, and often on the open ground. It is especially frequent near Sinai and Petra, occasional in the wilderness of Judæa, and abundant round the Dead Sea, and in the ravines leading down the Jordan Valley. Thus it is strictly a 'desert shrub, never occurring in the richer or higher ground. In February, when it puts forth its sheet of delicate white and purplish-pink blossom, which precedes its tiny foliage, few shrubs can surpass it in grace and beauty. It grows to the height of ten or twelve feet, and affords a thick and grateful shade. It was under a Rothem bush that Elijah lay down when he fled into the wilderness. Dean Stanley incidentally mentions that in the only storm of rain he ever encountered in his travels in the desert, he took shelter under a Rothem bush.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 359.

Kings 19:6.—And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baked on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—AS most Orientals like an occasional draft of water during the night, a cruse is usually placed so near the bed spread upon the floor that the sleeper can reach it by merely raising his head from the pillow and stretching out his hand. This habit evidently prevailed among the Hebrews, for we find distinct references to it in the Scriptures.—Bible Lands, p. 44

1 Kings 19:18.—Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

CICERO. —The mouth was often applied to the images of Hercules in worship. 1, —Verr., iv., 43

ROBERTS.—Things which have been sent to the temples to be presented to idols, are, when returned, kissed by the people. When a devotee has touched the feet of a priest, he kisses his hands.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 206.

DR. WILLIAM JENKS. —The text probably alludes to the little images of Baal handed round at their religious assemblies to be kissed, or to the ancient superstition of kissing sometimes the obscene image of this god, afterward practiced in heathen Italy, and handed down to us in the venerable custom of kissing the Pope's toe.—Comp. Comm., note In loco.

Benhadad

1 Kings 20:10.—And Benhadad sent unto him, and said, The gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—" The gods do so unto me, and more also."—This form of imprecation or prayer is very common in the East: "If I do not ruin that fellow, then the gods do so to me: " “If I kill not that wretch, then may the gods kill me." And it is an interesting fact, that this other figure of speech, in reference to the dust not being sufficient to fill the hands of the numerous hosts of Benhadad, is in common use at this day.—" We had better at once give up our possessions: why attempt to resist such hosts? The dust of the country will not be sufficient to furnish a handful for each of the soldiers."—" Why do the inhabitants of Batticotta hate and despise us? If we all go against them, will their country afford a handful of earth for each of us?"—Oriental Illustrations, p. 207.

Kings 20:23.—And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.

VIRGIL. —Gods of every kind.—.Æneid, 1. viii., v. 698.

CICERO. —What a multitude of gods there is.—De Nat. Deor., III., 16.

ROBERTS.—The Hindus have their gods of the hills, and also those of the lower places. Thus Siva, Vishnoo, and Murraga-Murte are those of the high places; but Vyravar, Urruttera, and many demons, are the deities of the lower regions.— Oriental Illustrations, p. 207.

1 Kings 20:30.—But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left. And Benhadad fled.

DR. W M. THOMSON. —East of us about two miles is Fîk, a considerable village on the top of the mountain, occupying the site of ancient Aphek, the city to which Benhadad fled after one hundred thousand of his soldiers had been slain in battle by Ahab. The city however proved almost as destructive as the army of Israel, for a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left. This tremendous destruction was caused, as I suppose, by an earthquake; and after having seen the effects of the earthquake in Safed and Tiberias, I can easily understand and readily credit this narrative.... Those ramparts were very lofty and massive. An open space was always left along their base, and this would be packed full, from end to end, by the remnants of Benhadad's mighty host, and escape from the falling towers would be impossible. The peculiar character of the site would render the destruction only the more extensive and inevitable.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 53.

1 Kings 20:31.—And his servants said unto him, Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings; let us, I pray thee, put sack-cloth on our loins, and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel; peradventure he will save thy life.

DR. WILLIAM JENKS. —Figures of captives with ropes about their necks are common on Egyptian monuments (and also on those of Assyria). They are sometimes seen thus tied together in rows, and led captive by one who holds the end of the string in his hand. In some instances they appear thus tied together on their knees, while the executioner cuts off their heads. Thevenot states, that at the taking of Bagdad by the Turks, in 1638, when the besieged entreated quarter, the principal officer went to the Grand Vizier with a scarf about his neck, and his sword wreathed in it, and begged mercy.—Comp. Comm., note In loco.

Ahab and Naboth

1 Kings 21:4.—And Ahab laid himself down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.

ROBERTS.—How often (in the East) do we see full-grown men acting in a similar way, when disappointed in their wishes. Approach them and they avert their faces; offer them food, and they will not eat, and generally speaking, their friends are so weak as to gratify their wishes at any expense.—Orient. Illust., p. 209.

1 Kings 21:10.—And set two men, sons of Bella], before him, to bear witness against him, saying; Thou didst blaspheme God and the king.

ROBERTS.—Ask any judge, any gentleman in the civil service of India, whether men may not be had, in any village, to swear anything for the fraction of a shilling; and he will soon adduce sad proofs of the widespread subornation of evidence among the natives.—Orient. Illust., 210.

1 Kings 21:19.—Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Every oriental city and village abounds with troops of hungry and half-savage dogs, which own allegiance rather to the place than to persons, and which wander about the streets and fields, howling dismally at night, and devouring even the dead bodies of men when they can reach them.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 79.

Ahab and the False Prophets

1 Kings 22:8.—I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.

SOPHOCLES.—None ever loved the messenger of ill. —Antig., v. 277.

1 Kings 22:22.—And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.

HERODOTUS.—The Oracle consulted by Crœsus assured him that if he prosecuted a war against the Persians he should overthrow a mighty empire. Depending upon this answer he commenced the war and was overthrown by Cyrus. In answer to the complaints of Crœsus, the Oracle declared that he ought to have inquired whether his own empire were intended, or that of the Persians. Herodt., 1. i., C. 53, 91.

Ivory Palace

1 Kings 22:39.—Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house which he made, etc.

HOMER.—

Above, beneath, around the palace, shines

The sunless treasure of exhausted mines:

The spoils of elephants the roofs inlay,

And studded amber darts a golden ray.

—Odys., IV., 73.

EURIPIDES.—The ivory-decked palaces.—Iphig. in Aul., v. 582.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—Chests inlaid with ivory are still used in Damascus, and I have seen a chamber in the house of a wealthy Damascene paneled with alternate veneers of ivory and ebony to the height of three or four feet from the floor, thus illustrating the ivory houses of Ahab, and of the prophecy of Amos. —Nat. Hist. of Bible, 82.

Second Book of Kings

Revolt of Moab

2 Kings 1:1.—Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The rebellion of Moab has recently had much light thrown upon it by the discovery of the monument (the " Moabite Stone ") erected to commemorate the occurrence. The "Mesha, king of Moab," who threw off the Israelite yoke, inscribed upon a pillar which he set up in his own land, the series of events whereby he had restored his country to independence; and the inscription upon this pillar has recently, by the combined labor of various Semitic scholars, been recovered, deciphered, and translated into the languages of modern Europe. (See under v. 5 of chap. iii.) Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 126.

Elisha

2 Kings 2:21, 22.—And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters.... So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha, which he spake.

MAUNDRELL.—Turning down into the plain, we passed by a ruined aqueduct, and a convent in the same condition, and in about a mile's riding came to the fountain of Elisha, so called because miraculously purged from its brackishness by that prophet, at the request of the men of Jericho. Its waters are at present received in a basin about nine or ten paces long, and five or six broad: and from thence issuing out in great plenty, divide themselves into several small streams, dispersing their refreshment between this and Jericho, and rendering it exceeding fruitful. Close by the fountain grows a large tree, spreading into boughs over the water.—Journey, p. 80.

2 Kings 2:23.—And he went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; Go up, thou bald head.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—In Leviticus (13:29) very careful directions are given to distinguish Bohak, “a plague upon the head and beard," from mere natural baldness, which is pronounced to be clean. But this shows that even natural baldness subjected men to an unpleasant suspicion. Baldness was despised both among Greeks and Romans.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 230.

OVID.—Disgraceful (turpis) is the shrub without leaves, the meadow without grass, and the head without hair.—De Art. Amd., iii., 250.

TACITUS.—When Tiberius retired to Campania it was said by some that he did so because he was ashamed in his old age of his deformities, his head being bald, etc.—Annals, iv., 57.

SUETONIUS.—His baldness gave Julius Cæsar much uneasiness, having often found himself on that account exposed to the jibes of his enemies.—Jul., c. 45.

ROBERTS.—I was not a little astonished in the East, when I first heard a man, who had a large quantity of hair on his head, called " a bald head; " and I found upon inquiry it was an epithet of contempt—" What can those bald heads do?" etc. Hence the epithet has often been applied to Christian missionaries.— Oriental Illustrations, p. 214.

2 Kings 2:24.—And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The narrative in 2 Kings 2:23, 24, has sometimes been objected to by persons, who, we apprehend, have been misled by a defective translation, or have failed to attend to the circumstances of the case. The path of the prophet Elisha lay through the district of Beth-el, the stronghold of idolatry in Israel, where, as in Dan, stood one of the golden calves set up by Jeroboam. There was a crowd of idle young men on the outskirts of the town, lawless, rude, and amusing themselves-perhaps throwing stones with their slings—for the word translated “little children," in our version, is the same in Hebrew as that used in 1 Kings 12:8, 10, 14, where it is applied to young men of the same age as king Rehoboam—41. In all the languages of the East, moreover, the words “child " and " children " often denote simply a social relation, and are constantly applied to full-grown persons, as in the New Testament.

No one who has traveled in the East can have failed to notice the extreme lawlessness of a certain class of boys and young men living on the outskirts of a town, especially toward a Jew, a Christian, or a European, who should happen to he passing by alone or unprotected. Let him go, for instance, to the castle-hill of Smyrna; and if it be a holiday, and the boys (oghlans) are out, he will perceive stones whizzing past him, and will hear the shouts of " Frank," " Hat-wearer," "Giaoor," rallying the rowdies of the vicinity, and warning him to beat a hasty retreat.

Elisha, as he slowly ascended the path leading past Beth-el alone and weary, was recognized as the servant of the obnoxious Elijah; he was soon surrounded by a crowd of bitterly hostile and lawless young men, presently increased to a mob by the accession of others " coming out of the city." They abused the prophet's person, pelted him with stones, knocked off his turban, and, seeing his shaved head, hooted after him, saying, " Go up, go along, bald head," throwing stones after him. In imminent danger of his life, he stood at bay-as we have done in similar circumstances—and looking upon his fierce assailants, he invoked the help of the God whom he served, and whom they had exchanged for a molten calf; and He instantly sent forth " two she-bears out of the wood " of Ephraim, which killed forty-two of them, and scattered the rest. This was the last blow that needed to be struck at idolatry in Israel for the re-establishment of the worship of the true God.

We have repeatedly known the bear to fall upon and devour children who had strayed out but a short distance from the mountain villages; and we particularly remember a Turkish girl about thirteen years of age, who thus lost her life on the Akdagh, near Amasia.—Bible Lands, p. 262-264.

Mesha, King of Moab

2 Kings 3:4.—And Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheep-master, and rendered unto the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams, with the wool. PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—Here again the Bible receives fresh confirmation from geographical facts; Moab, with its extensive grass-covered uplands, is even now an essentially sheep-breeding country, although the “fenced cities and folds for sheep," of which mention is made in the book of Numbers, are all in ruins. But in its palmier days, when those rich pastures were covered with flocks, no more appropriate title could have been given to the king of such a country than that he was "a sheep-master. "—Des. of the Exod., 411.

2 Kings 3:5.—But it came to pass when Ahab was dead that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

THE MOABITE STONE.—And Chemosh had mercy on the land in my days; and I (Mesha) built Baal Meon, and made therein the ditch, and I built Kirjathaim, for the men of Gad dwelt in the land Ataroth from of old; and the king of Israel fortified Ataroth, and I assaulted the wall and captured it, and killed all the warriors of the wall, for the well pleasing of Chemosh and Moab; and I removed from it all the spoil, and offered it before Chemosh in Kirjath; and I placed therein the men of Siran and the men of Zereth Shachar. And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel. And I went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn till noon, and took it, and slew in all seven thousand men; but I did not kill the women and maidens, for I devoted them to Ashtar-Chemosh; and I took from it the vessels of Jehovah and offered them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel fortified Jahaz, and occupied it, when he made war against me; and Chemosh drove him out before me, and I took from Moab two hundred men, all chiefs, and fought against Jahaz, and took it in addition to Dibon. I built Karcha, the wall of the forest, and the wall of the city; and I built the gates thereof, and I built the towers thereof, and I built the palace, and I made the prisons for the men of.... within the wall.—Ginsburg's Translation, lines 8-23.

2 Kings 3:27.—Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall.

ARRIANUS.—When Alexander approached the city Pellion, he offered three boys, three maidens, and three black rams in sacrifice.—Exped. Alex., 1. c. 5.

CÆSAR.—The Gauls in time of war or danger either sacrifice human victims, or make vows that they will do so; for they think that it is impossible for their gods to be appeased, unless one man's life is given for another's.—De Bell. Gal., l vi., c. 16.

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSUS.—The ancients are said to have offered human victims to Saturn. The Carthaginians did so while their city stood; and the Gauls and other western nations have the same custom in these days.—Dion. Halie., 1. i.

The Creditor's Claim

2 Kings 4:1.—The creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.

PLUTARCH. —So greatly were the poor of Athens in debt to the rich, that some parents were forced to sell their own children, for no law forbade it, and to quit the city to avoid the severe treatment of the usurers.—Solon, c. 13.

Invisible Beings

2 Kings 6:17.—And Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw; and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

PROF. JOSIAH P. COOKE. —When we remember that our organs of vision and hearing are capable of receiving impressions either of light or sound only when the rapidity of the undulations which cause them is comprised within certain Very narrow limits, and when we recall the facts stated in a previous lecture, that there are waves of light and sound of which our dull senses take no cognizance, that there is a great difference even in human perceptivity, and that some men, more gifted than others, can see colors or hear sounds which are invisible or inaudible to the great bulk of mankind, you will appreciate how possible it is that there may be a world of spiritual existence around us-inhabiting this same globe, enjoying this same nature-of which we have no perception; that in fact the wonders of the New Jerusalem may be in our midst, and the songs of the angelic hosts filling the air with their celestial harmony, although unheard and unseen by us. Let me not be understood as implying that science has in any sense revealed to us a spiritual world', or that it gives the slightest shadow of support to those products of imposture, credulity and superstition, which, under the name of witchcraft, mesmerism, or spiritualism, have in every age of the world deceived so many. The only revelation man has received of a spiritual existence is contained in the Bible; but modern science has rendered the conception of such an existence possible, and in this way has removed a source of doubt. The materialist can no longer say that the spiritual world is inconceivable; for these discoveries show that it may be included in the very scheme of nature in which we live, and thus, although science may not remove the veil, it at least answers this cavil of materialism.—Religion and Chemistry, p. 107.

Captives Spared

2 Kings 6:22.—And Elisha answered, Thou shalt not smite them: wouldest thou smite those whom thou halt taken captive with thy sword and thy bow? set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master.

SENECA.—Pyrrhus. There is no law which spares the captive, or forbids that he should suffer.—Agamemnon. Though the law forbids it not, it cannot, for very shame, be done.—Troad., v. 337.

Siege of Samaria

2 Kings 6:25.—And there was a great famine in Samaria: and behold they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for four-score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.

PLUTARCH. —In the war with the Caducii, the troops of Artaxerxes were forced to kill their beasts of burden, and eat them; and those became so scarce that an ass's head was sold for sixty drachmas.— Artax., c. 24.

IDEM.—When Sylla was besieging Athens, a bushel of wheat was sold for one thousand drachmas. The people ate not only the herbs and weeds that grew about the citadel, but sodden leather and oil bags.—Sylla, c. 13.

DR. W. M. THOMSON—I believe that the Hebrew Chiriyonim, or Khir yonim, was a name for a coarse and cheap sort of food, a kind of bean, as some think, to which this whimsical title was given on account of some fancied resemblance between the two. Nor am I at all surprised at it, for the Arabs give the most quaint, obscure, and ridiculous names to their extraordinary edible mixtures.—The Land and the Book, II., p. 200.

2 Kings 6:29.—So we boiled my son, and did eat him.; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son.

POLYBIUS.—When the camp of Spendius and Matho was besieged by Amilcar, the rebels were reduced to so great extremity by famine, that they were forced to feed upon each other. When they had impiously devoured all their prisoners and slaves, and no succors were arrived, the multitude grew impatient of their misery, and began to threaten their chiefs. —Polyb., 1. i., c. 6.

2 Kings 7:2.—Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—At the present day in Western Asia, when a king walks any short distance, or remains standing, it is usual for him to support himself by resting his hand upon the arm of the highest officer of state who happens to be present.—Pict. Bib., note In loco.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—It is amusing to see full grown men here (India), as they walk along the road, leaning on each other's hands, like school-boys in England. Those who are weak or sick lean on another's shoulder. It is also a mark of friendship to lean on the shoulder of a companion.—Orient. Iliust p. 218.

2 Kings 7:6, 7.—For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.

SOPHOCLES.—When the gods oppose us, valor bends To cowardice, and strength to weakness yields.—Ajax, v. 455.

XENOPHON.—When the Persian king besieged Mespila, he could not make himself master of it, either by length of time or force; but Jupiter having struck the inhabitants with a panic fear, it was taken.—Cyrop., 1. iii., c. 4.

PLUTARCH.—The vast army of Tigranes was put to flight by Lucullus without any conflict; instead of standing to receive the Romans they set up a cry of fear, and most despicably fled without striking a stroke; insomuch that all those myriads were routed without waiting to receive one wound, or spilling one drop of blood.—Lucullus, c. 28.

2 Kings 7:8.—And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it.

HERODOTUS.—After the battle of Platæa, the helots, as they dispersed themselves over the camp, found tents decorated with gold and silver, couches of the same, goblets, cups, and drinking-vessels of gold, besides sacks of gold and silver cauldrons, placed on carriages. The dead bodies they stripped of bracelets, chains, and cimeters of gold; to their habits of various colors they paid no attention.—Many things of value the helots secreted.—Herodt., 1. ix., C. 60.

2 Kings 7:12.—And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I will now show you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we be hungry, therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive, and get into the city.

HARMER.—The pasha of Damascus found his enemy, the sheikh Daher, encamped near the sea of Tiberias. The engagement was deferred to the next day, but during the night the sheikh divided his forces into three troops, and silently moved from his camp, leaving the fires burning, with all the tents and stores as they were, including plenty of provisions and strong liquors. At midnight the pasha thinking to surprise the sheikh, marched in silence to his camp, and, to his great astonishment, found it completely abandoned, and that too in such haste that the baggage and stores had been left behind. Rejoicing in his bloodless success, the pasha determined to stay there and refresh his soldiers. They soon fell to plunder, and drank so freely of the liquors, that, overcome by the fatigue of the day's march and the fumes of the spirits, it was not long before they were all in a sound sleep. Then the supposed fugitives, who were well informed of these proceedings, marched back silently to the camp, and rushing suddenly from all sides upon the confused and sleeping enemy, obtained an easy victory over them.—They slew 8,000 of their number, and the remainder, with the pasha at their head, escaped with great difficulty to Damascus, leaving all their own baggage behind them.—This was what the king of Israel feared.—In Pict. Bib., In loco.

2 Kings 8:9.—So Hazael went to meet Elisha, and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels' burden, and came and stood before him, and said, Thy son Benhadad, king of Syria, hath sent me to thee saying, Shall I recover of this disease?

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The Assyrian monument known as “the Black Obelisk " contains a notice of Ahab, king of Israel, and of the Syrian king who succeeded Benhadad, Hazael. Hazael appears as the chief antagonist of the Assyrian invaders of Syria in immediate succession to Benhadad.—See Ancient Monarchies, Vol. II., p. 364, and Vol. IV., p. 576.

2 Kings 8:17.—So Benhadad died; and Hazael reigned in his stead. Hazael is mentioned twice as reigning in Damascus on

THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANEZER.—In my eighteenth year, for the 16th time the Euphrates I crossed. HAZAEL of Damascus to battle came: 1221 of his chariots, 470 of his war-carriages with his camp I took from him.... In my 21St campaign, for the 21St time the Euphrates I crossed. To the cities of HAZAEL of Damascus I went. Four of his fortresses I took.—Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 34 and 35

2 Kings 9:13.—Then they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king.

The name of Jehu is found on the BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANEZER.—The tribute of Jehu, the son of Omri silver, gold, bowls of gold, etc.—Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 41.

Jezebel

2 Kings 9:30.—And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face and tired her head, and looked out at a window.

XENOPHON.—The wife of Ischomachus had painted her face with a certain cosmetic in order to make her skin fairer than it was; and with another mixture had endeavored to increase the natural bloom of her cheeks; and also had put on higher shoes than ordinary, to make her look taller than she really was. —Œconomics, c. 10.

IDEM.—Cyrus observed Astyages to be adorned, with his eyes and complexion painted, and with false hair, things that are allowed among the Medes; for the purple coat, the rich habit called candys, collars about the neck, and bracelets about the arms, all belong to the Medes.—Cyropœdia, 1. i., c. 3.

JUVENAL.—One with needle held obliquely, adds to his eyebrows, touched with moistened soot; and raising the lids, paints his quivering eyes.—Satire, II., v. 93.

PLINY.—Such is their affectation of ornament, that they paint their eyes also. —Nat. Hist., lib. xi., c. 37.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Eyes thus adorned are depicted in the mural tablets of Egypt, and pots containing the coloring material and the instruments for its application have been found.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

2 Kings 9:35.—And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP. —Should a belated traveler enter a town in the East his progress through the streets can be certainly known by the furious barking that salutes him as he proceeds. Drunken strangers, reeling homeward late in the night, have been overpowered by them, and devoured before morning; and when the town has been invaded by an enemy, these same hungry brutes first feed upon the dead bodies in the street, and then enter the very houses to search for more.—Bible Lands, p. 276.

EAST INDIA LETTER-WRITER. March last, as I was repairing to the native village of Bustom to survey a bridge which was thrown across the road, on my route from the station of Jellasore, on crossing the Sonbunreeka river, my attention was attracted to a number of human skeletons which lay scattered in various directions upon the white sands adjacent to the course of the stream. Upon inquiry I learned that these unfortunate relics were the remains of pilgrims, who were on their road to the great Pagoda at Juggernaut, and had been drowned two evenings before by means of a ferry-boat sinking with them during a violent northwester. On my approaching several of these sad vestiges of mortality, I perceived that the flesh had been completely devoured from the bones by Pariah dogs, vultures, and other obscene animals. The only portion of the several corpses I noticed that remained entire and untouched were the bottoms., of the feet and the insides of the hands; and this extraordinary circumstance immediately brought to my mind that remarkable passage recorded in the Second Book of Kings, relating to the death and ultimate fate of Jezebel, what was, as to her body, eaten of dogs, and nothing remained of her but " the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet."—London Times, Aug. 12, 1841.

Sons of Ahab

2 Kings 10:6.—Now the king's sons, being seventy persons, were with the great men of the city, which brought them up.

DR. WILLIAM JENKS. —From polygamy numerous sons are still common in the East Artaxerxes Mnemon, king of Persia, had by his 360 concubines, 115 sons, and three by his queen.—Comp. Com., note In loco.

2 Kings 10:7.—And it came to pass, when the letter came to them, that they took the king's sons, and slew seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent him them to Jezreel.

PLUTARCH. —In the families of kings nothing is more common than the murder of sons, wives and mothers: as for the killing of brothers, like a postulate in geometry, it was considered as indisputably necessary to the safety of the reigning prince. —Demetr., c. 3.

2 Kings 10:8.—And he said, Lay them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate until the morning.

ANNALS OF ASSUR-NASIR-PAL. —Eight hundred of their soldiers by my arms I destroyed; their heads I cut off; many soldiers I captured in hand alive; their populace in the flames I burned; their spoil I carried off in abundance; a trophy of the living and of their heads about his great gate I built (B. C. 879). —Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 61.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—These horrid usages prevail throughout Asia, but are more revoltingly displayed, we believe, in Persia than elsewhere. It has there, not seldom, been known that the king has expressed his anger at some town or village, by demanding from it a pyramid of heads of given dimensions; and Sir John Malcolm states that the executioners are so indifferent to the distresses of others, that they will select a head of peculiar appearance and long beard to grace the summit of the pyramid.—Piet. Bible, note In loco.

Buying Peace

2 Kings 12:18.—And Jehoash king of Judah took all the hallowed things that Jehoshaphat, and Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own hallowed things, and all the gold that was found in the treasures of the house of the Lord, and in the king's house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria: and he went away from Jerusalem.

HOME...—Paris offers to Greece the spoils and treasures he to Ilion bore, with large increase of added Trojan wealth, to buy the peace.—Iliad, lib. vii., v. 389.

PLUTARCH. —Darius offered Alexander ten thousand talents and half of Asia, if he would withdraw his army.—Reg. et Imp. Apophth. Alex., c.

The Signal of War

2 Kings 13:17.—Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them.

VIRGIL.—Who first, he cried, with me the foe will dare? Then hurl'd a dart, the signal of the war. —Æn., 1. ix., v. 51.

JUSTIN.—As soon as Alexander the Great had arrived on the coasts of Ionia, he threw a dart into the country of the Persians.—Just., lib. ii.

Valley of Salt

2 King, 14:7 HE slew of Edom, in the valley of Salt, ten thousand, and took Selah by was, and called the name of it Joktheel.

CAPTAINS IRBY AND MANGLES.—The “Valley of Salt “was the salt and sandy plain to the south of the Dead Sea. On crossing this plain we found, exclusive of the saline appearance left by the retiring of the waters, several large fragments of clear rock salt lying on the ground; and, on examining the hill, we found it composed partly of salt and partly of hardened sand. In many instances the salt was hanging from cliffs in clear perpendicular points like icicles; and we observed numerous strata of that material of considerable thickness, having very little sand mixed with it.—Travels, as quoted in the Pictorial Bible.

Bethshemesh

2 Kings 14:11.—Beth-shemesh, which belongeth to Judah.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—Bethshemesh is now Ain-Shems. It was visited by Dr. Robinson, who found it to be in a position exactly according with the indications of Scripture, on the northwest slopes of the mountains of Judah—a low plateau at the junction of two fine plains—about two miles from the great Philistine plain, and seven from Ekron.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 299.

General Picture of Syria

2 Kings 14:28.—Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel?

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—A more interesting point of agreement than the bare mention in the same chronological order of the same historic names, is to be found in the accord between the general picture of Syria at this time (B. C. 900-800), as presented to us in our Sacred Books, and the representation of it given by the Assyrian Records. In both we find the country between the middle Euphrates and Egypt parceled out among a large number of tribes or nations, of whom the most powerful are, in the north, the Hittites, the Hamathites, the Phœnicians, and the Syrians of Damascus; in the south, the Philistines and the Idumeans. In both there is a similar portrait of Syria of Damascus as a considerable state, the strongest in these parts, ruled from a single center by a single monarch. The same general character, and the same secondary position, is in both assigned to Hamath, which, like Damascus, has its single king, but is evidently a kingdom of less strength. In contrast with these two centralized monarchies stand the nations of the Hittites and the Phœnicians, each of which has several independent kings or chiefs, the number in the case of the, Hittites being, apparently, very great, The military strength of the northern nations consists especially, according to both authorities, in their chariots, besides which they have a numerous infantry, but few Or no horsemen. Both authorities show that, in this divided state of Syria, the kings of the various countries were in the habit of forming leagues, uniting their forces, and making conjoint expeditions against foreign countries. Lastly, in both pictures we see in the background the two great powers of Egypt and Assyria, not yet in conflict with one another, nor yet able, either of them, to grasp the dominion of Syria, or crush the spirit of its brave and freedom-loving peoples, but both feeling their way towards a conquest, and tending to come into a collision which will establish the complete preponderance of the one or the other in the region lying between the Nile and the Euphrates. —Historical Illustrations of the O. T., p. 128.

2 Kings 14:21. —And all the people of Judah took Azariah, which was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah.

INSCRIPTION OF TIGLATH-PILESER IL—This inscription has been much injured; but in it are found the names of Azariah and Jehoahaz, kings of Judah; and also those of Menahem, Pekah and Hoshea, kings of Israel. Imperfect as time and violence have rendered this inscription, yet it confirms in a striking manner the accuracy of this and the following chapters.—See Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 43.

Menahem

2 Kings 15:27, 29.—And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land: and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.-In an inscription on a bas-relief representing part of a line of war chariots, Dr. Hincks has detected the name of Mena-hem, the king of Israel, amongst those of other monarchs paying tribute to the king of Assyria in the eighth year of his reign.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 526.

Tiglath-Pileser

2 Kings 15:27, 29.—In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned twenty years... In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-bethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—With the reign of Tiglath-pileser in Assyria, and those of Azariah and Ahaz in Judah, and of Menahem and Pekah in Israel, points of contact between Assyrian and Hebrew records become abundant. Tiglath-pileser relates that, about his fifth year (B. C. 741), being engaged in wars in Southern Syria, he met and defeated a vast army under the command of Azariah, king of Judah, the great monarch whose host is reckoned in Chronicles at 307,500 men, and whose military measures are described at considerable length in 2 Chr. 26:6-15.—Historical Illust. of O. T., p. 134.

TABLET OF THE TEMPLE OF NEBO.—Palace of Tiglath-pileser, the great king, the powerful king of nations, king of Assyria, king of Babylon, king of Sumir and Akkad, king of the four regions. The powerful warrior who, in the service of Assur his Lord, the whole of his haters has trampled in like clay, swept like a flood, and reduced to shadows. The king who, in the might of Nebo and Merodach, the great gods, has marched, and from the sea of Bit-yakin to the land of Bikni by the rising sun, and from the sea of the setting sun to Egypt; from the west to the east all countries possesses, and rules their kingdoms.—Smith's Assyrian Discoveries, p. 256.

2 Kings 16:5-10.—Then Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath and dwelt there unto this day. So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me out of he hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present for the king of Assyria. And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin. And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Again, Tiglath-pileser relates (in the inscriptions) that from his twelfth to his fourteenth year (B. C. 734-732) he carried on a war in southern Syria with the two kings, Pekah of Samaria, and Rezin of Damascus, who were confederate together, and that he besieged Rezin in his capital for two years, at the end of which time he captured him and put him to death, while he punished Pekah, by mulcting him of a large portion of his dominions, and carrying off vast numbers of his subjects into captivity. It is scarcely necessary to point out how completely this account harmonizes with the Scriptural narrative, according to which Pekah and Rezin, having formed an alliance against Ahaz, and having attacked him, Ahaz called in the aid of Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, who " hearkened to him, and went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people captive to Kir, and slew Resin; " and who likewise punished Pekah by invading his territory, and carrying away the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh, and settling them in Gozan in the Khabour. Further, Tiglath-pileser relates that, before quitting Syria, he held his court at Damascus, and there received submission and tribute from the neighboring sovereigns, among whom he expressly mentions, not only Pekah of Samaria, but Ahaz king of Judah. This passage of the Assyrian annals very remarkably illustrates the account given in 2 Kings 16:10-6, of the visit of Ahaz to Damascus "to meet king Tiglath-pileser."—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 134.

Hoshea

2 Kings 17:3.—Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A. The annals of Tiglath-pileser contain some mention of the two Israelite monarchs, Menahem and Hoshea. Menahem appears as tributary to Assyria in the early part of Tiglath-pileser's reign (about B. C. 743); and Hoshea makes submission to the Assyrian monarch, probably in his last year, B. C. 728. Of Hoshea, the last Israelite king, there is no further mention in the Assyrian inscriptions.—Hist. Iliust., p. 135.

2 Kings 17:4.—And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year, therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—Whenever an expedition against the kings of Judah or Israel is mentioned in the Assyrian Records, it is stated to have been undertaken on the ground that they had not paid their customary tribute.—Nineveh and Babylon. p. 541.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Hoshea's league with “So, `king of Egypt," admits of some illustration from the Egyptian records. So may reasonably be identified with the Sabaco of Manetho and Herodotus, and the Shebek I. of the hieroglyphical inscriptions. This prince, who contended with Sargon in southern Palestine a little later, may well have attracted the regard of Hoshea, when, about B. C. 724 or 723, he was looking out for some powerful ally who might help him to throw off the yoke of Assyria. The league formed between the two neighbors is natural and has many analogies.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 137.

HERODOTUS.—Sabacôs continued master of Egypt for the space of fifty years. —Herodt., lib. ii., c. 137.

2 Kings 17:6.—In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The capture of Samaria, and the deportation of its people by the Assyrians, which terminated the reign of. Hoshea, and at the same time brought the kingdom of Israel to an end, is noticed in the annals of Sargon, who was Shalmaneser's successor, and assigned by him to his first year, which was B. C, 722-721. Here, it will be observed, there is an exact accord between the Assyrian and the Hebrew dates, the Hebrew chronology placing the fall of Samaria in the 135th year before the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which was in the 18th year of that king, or B. C. 586 (and B. C. 586+135 producing B. C. 721).—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 138.

2 Kings 17:23.—So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Again, Sargon relates (in the Assyrian inscriptions) that he carried away captive from Samaria 27,280 families.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 138.

2 Kings 17:24.—And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—And Sargon subsequently states (in his inscriptions) that he transported numerous prisoners from Babylonia to a place "in the land of the Hittites," which is probably Samaria, though the inscription is not at this point quite legible.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 138.

2 Kings 17:29.—Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The conquerors, as we learn from the inscriptions, established the worship of their own gods in the conquered cities, raising altars and temples, and appointing priests for their service.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 524

Hezekiah

2 Kings 18:13-15.—Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I hear: And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house.

INSCRIPTIONS OF KOUYUNJIK. —Because Hezekiah, king of Judah, would not submit to my yoke, I (Sennacherib) came up against him, and by force of arms, and by the might of my power, I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities, and of the smaller towns which were scattered about 1 took and plundered a countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates to prevent escape... Then, upon this Hezekiah there fell the fear of the power of my arms, and he sent out to me the chiefs and the elders of Jerusalem with thirty talents of gold, and eight hundred talents of silver, and diverse treasures, a rich and immense booty.

All these things were brought to me at Nineveh, the seat of my government, Hezekiah having sent them by way of tribute, and as a token of submission to my power.—In Ancient Monarchies, Vol. III., p. 160, 161.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The close agreement of these two accounts (that of Scripture and this of the Inscriptions) is admitted on all hands, and is indeed so palpable that it is needless to enlarge upon it here. The Assyrian monarch, with pardonable pride, brings out fully all the details at which the Hebrew annalist, in his patriotic reticence, only hints—as the ravage far and wide of the whole territory, the vast numbers of the captives and the spoil, the actual siege and blockade of the capital, the alarm of the Jewish monarch, and his eagerness to propitiate his offended lord,—but his main facts are exactly those which the Jewish historian puts on record, the only apparent discrepancy being in the number of the talents of silver, where he probably counts the whole of the treasure carried off, while the Hebrew writer intends to give the amount of the permanent tribute which was agreed upon. It may be added, that the details, which the author of Kings suppresses, are abundantly noticed in the writings of the contemporary prophet, Isaiah, who describes the ravage of the territory (Isa. 24), the siege of Jerusalem (29:1-8), and the distress and terror of the inhabitants (22:2-14), even more graphically and more fully than the historiographer of Sennacherib.—Hist. Illust. of O. T. 71, p. 143.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—It is surely very interesting to meet with so close an agreement between records kept in different languages and by people in bitter hostility to each other. The Assyrian record calls Hezekiah, Khazakiah-hoo; Jerusalem, Urselimma; and Judah, Yehoodah, names which come closer to the original Hebrew than our rendering of them.—Bible Lands, 357.

Tirhakah

2 Kings 19:9.—And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold he is come out to fight against thee, he sent messengers again unto Hezekiah.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—With Tirhakah we are acquainted both from sacred and profane records, and his successful opposition to the power of Assyria is noticed in the Bible, may be traced in Herodotus, and is recorded on the walls of a Theban temple. At Medinet Abou are the figure and name of Tirhakah, and of the captives taken by him.—In Pict. Bib., Vol. II., p. 375.

INSCRIPTIONS OF KOUYUNJIK.—The nobles and people of Ekron attached themselves to Hezekiah of Judea, and paid their adorations to his God. The kings of Egypt also sent horsemen and footmen, belonging to the army of the king of Ethiopia, of which the numbers could not be counted. In the neighborhood of the city of Lachish I joined battle with them.—Colonel Rawlinson's Outlines.

Sennacherib

2 Kings 19:28.—I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou earnest.

HERODOTUS.—After the taking of Memphis by Cambyses two thousand Egyptians were made to walk in procession with ropes round their necks, and bridles in their mouths. —Herodt., lib. 3, c. 14.

2 Kings 19:7, 35.—Behold I will send a blast upon him.... And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred four-score and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—His sentence was that God would send upon him a "blast," ruach, a wind. The connection of this sentence with its execution is given by the Psalmist, who says, “He maketh his angels ruchoth," winds; or maketh the winds his angels, or messengers, for the performance of his will. Prof. Michaelis has these words, "The wind Zelgaphoth is a pestilent east wind, well known to the Asiatics, which suddenly kills those who are exposed to it." And Thevenot mentioned such a wind in 1658, that in one night suffocated 20,000 men!—Comment., on 1 Kings 20: 30.

2 Kings 19:37.—And it came to pass as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adramelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esar haddon his son reigned in his stead.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The murder of Sennacherib by two of his sons, though not distinctly related in the Assyrian Records, is illustrated by the condition wherein Assyria is found at the commencement of the reign of Esarhaddon. This monarch's inscriptions show that soon after his accession he was engaged for some months in a war with his half-brothers, who would naturally, after murdering their father, endeavor to seat themselves upon his throne. The Greek historian, Abydenus, alludes to the same struggle; and the Armenian records declare that the two assassins, having made their escape from the scene of conflict, obtained a refuge in Armenia, where the reigning monarch gave them lands, which long continued the possession of their posterity.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 146.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—After a few days' labor, the workmen came to the walls of a chamber. They were paneled with inscribed, but un-sculpted, alabaster slabs. The inscriptions contained the name, titles, and genealogy of Esar-haddon, such as were found on the bulls and sphinxes of the southwest palace at Nimroud. Several bricks and fragments of stone were also obtained from the ruins, which all bore the same inscription. The annals of this monarch are inscribed on a large hexagonal cylinder presented by me to the British Museum. Like his father, he was a great warrior, and he styles himself in his inscriptions, "King of Egypt, conqueror of Ethiopia."—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 296, 508, 529.

Hezekiah's Sickness

2 Kings 20:7.—And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took it, and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.

PLINY. —With the leaves of figs still green, an application is made for scrofulous and other sores. Figs are applied in all cases where sores are required to be brought to a head or dispersed. A decoction of figs is applied to boils, inflamed tumors, and imposthumes of the parotid glands. Green figs applied raw, with the addition of niter and meal, remove warts and wens.—Natural History, 1. xxiii., c. 63.

2 Kings 20:11.—And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord.; and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.

HERODOTUS.—As to the pole, the gnomon and the division of the day into twelve parts, the Greeks received them from the Babylonians.—Herodt., 1. ii., c. 109.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS. —A sun-dial, the work of Pherecydes, the astronomer (B. C. 600), is still preserved in the island of Syra.—Pherec. Vit.

PLUTARCH.—At the fort of the citadel at Syracuse, under the Pentapylæ, was a lofty sun-dial, which had been placed there by Dionysius.—Dion., c. 29.

Josiah

2 Kings 23:5.—Them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

PLATO.—Addressing the gods in prayers and supplications, both at the rising of the sun and moon, rolling upon the ground and offering adorations, both by the Greeks and Barbarians.—De Leg., 1. x., c. 3.

COL. RAWLINSON. —The commemorative cylinders of the Birs Nimroud designate the building by the name of "The Temple of the Planets of the Seven Spheres."—Pict. Bib., Vol. II., p. 702.

2 Kings 23:7.—Where the women wove hangings for the grove.

LUCIAN. —Mankind have consecrated to their gods groves and mountains, and assigned to every deity a particular bird, or tree, or plant.—De Sacrif., c. 10.

OVID. —I saw myself the garlands on their boughs, And tablets hung for gifts of granted vows. —MetAmor., 1. viii., v. 722.

2 Kings 23:11—And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamber lain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The ancient Persians, who were sun-worshippers, dedicated to that luminary white horses and chariots, which were paraded in their sacred processions; and it is thought that other nations borrowed the practice from them. Whether so or not, we find the same idea of associating a chariot and horses with the sun, to denote the rapidity of his apparent progress, common in the poetry and sculpture of classical antiquity. The sun was supposed to be drawn daily, in a chariot, by four wondrous coursers, through the firmament: and we all recollect the fate of the ambitious Phaeton, who aspired to guide the swift chariot and control the strong coursers of the sun.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

XENOPHON. —Next to the bull there were horses led for a sacrifice to the sun. After these proceeded a white chariot, with its perch of gold adorned with a crown or wreath around it, and sacred to Jove. After this a white chariot, sacred to the sun, and adorned with a crown as that before.—Cycrop., 1. viii., c. 3.

OVID. —Persia propitiates Hyperion begirt with rays of light, by the sacrifice of a horse, that no sluggish victim may be offered to the swift god.—Fast., lib. i., v. 385.

2 Kings 23:12.—The altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made.

STRAW. —The Nabatæans worship the sun, and construct their altar on the top of a house, pouring out libations, and burning frankincense upon it every day.—Strab., 1. xvi., c. 4.

2 Kings 23:16.—And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchers that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchers, and burned them upon the altar and polluted it.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—It is interesting to be reminded that sepulchers are found at the present day in the rocky heights around Bethel. It was from such recesses, no doubt, that King Josiah, in his zeal for the worship of Jehovah, dug up the bones of the old idolaters who had lived at Bethel, which he burned on the altar of the golden calf in order by this act of pollution to mark his abhorrence of such idolatry, and to render the place infamous forever.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 290.

2 Kings 23:29.—In his days Pharaoh-necho king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates: and King Josiah went against him; and he slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, Brit. Mus.—The name of this monarch, in hieroglyphics, is written NEKU. Herodotus calls him Nekôs and assigns to him d reign of sixteen years, which is confirmed by the monuments. Herodotus also mentions the battle in which Josiah was slain, relating that Necho made war against the Syrians, and defeated them at Magdolus (Megiddo), after which he took Cadytis, a large city of Syria.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2467.

2 Kings 24:1.—In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, etc.

That there was a king bearing this name, and ruling at this time, in Babylon, is abundantly attested by his own records, which have recently been exhumed from the ruins of that city.

INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.—Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, glorious Prince, worshipper of Marduk, adorer of the lofty one, etc.—See Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 113.

Jerusalem Taken by Nebuchadnezzar

2 Kings 24:10-16.—And at that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged, etc.

BEROSUS.—The king of Babylon sent his son Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt, and against the land of the Jews, with a great army, upon his being informed that they had revolted from him, and by that means he subdued them all, and set the temple that was at Jerusalem on fire; and he removed the people of the Jews entirely out of their own country, and transferred them to Babylon; when it so happened that their city was desolate during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus, king of Persia.—Josephs. Cont. Ap., I., 19.

Zedekiah

2 Kings 25:7.—And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried him to Babylon.

REV. HENRY WRIGHT PHILLOTT, M. A.—Putting out the eyes of captives, and other cruelties, as flaying alive, burning, tearing out the tongue, etc., were practiced by the Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors; and parallel instances of despotic cruelty are found in abundance in both ancient and modern times in Persian and other histories.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2643.

ANNALS OF ASSUR-NASIR-PAL.—Many soldiers I captured alive; of some I chopped off the hands and feet; of others the noses and ears I cut off; of many soldiers I destroyed the eyes; one pile of bodies while yet alive, and one of heads I reared up on the heights within their town (B. C. 882).— Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 50.

First Chronicles

Names Significant

1 Chronicles 4:9.—Jabez was more honorable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.

HOMER.—

The afflicted pair, their sorrows to proclaim,

From Cleopatra changed their daughter's name,

And call'd Alcyone; a name to show

The father's grief, the mourning mother's woe.

—Iliad, lib. lix., v. 557.

Pastoral Wealth

1 Chron. 5:21.—And they took away their cattle; of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of men a hundred thousand.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The powerful tribe of the Beni Sakk'r, who now inhabit that same region, boast of one hundred thousand camels.—Nor does the number of the sheep seem to have diminished at the present day on that east side of Jordan, in spite of the impoverishment of the land. No country could be conceived more adapted by nature for flocks than the rich plateaux whence the feeders of the Jabbok rise in the ancient Ammon. The land is almost treeless, well watered everywhere. Never did I see such a display of pastoral wealth as met our eyes in the neighborhood of desolate Rabbah. It was the early spring, when the grass was shooting forth in its freshness. The sheep of the great tribes of the Adwân and the Beni Sakk'r had gathered here from far and near; and mile after mile we rode through flocks countless as the sand, while winding up the gently sloping valley, at the head of which stand the magnificent but lonely ruins of the great city. To the open spaces among the temples the sheep and goats were driven at night, and there the bleating was almost deafening.—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 59, 135.

Death of Saul

1 Chron. 10:9.—They sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry tidings to their idols and to the people.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—When the heathen of the present day gain a victory over their enemies, they always take the tidings to their idols. There is the king, and there are his general and troops, with the priests and people, all marching in triumph to the temple. Then they relate to the gods all their proceedings; how they conquered the foe, and have now come to them to give the glory.—Orient. Illust., p. 229.

1 Chron. 10:10.—And they put his armor in the house of their gods, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.

ARRIANUS.—Alexander sent to Athens three hundred suits of Persian armor, to be hung up in the temple of Pallas there, by way of acknowledgment of his victories, and ordered an inscription to be fixed over them to this effect, "Alexander, the son of Philip, and all the Greeks, except the Lacedemonians, have devoted the spoils taken from the barbarians inhabiting Asia."—Eped. Alexand., 1. i., c. 16.

VIRGIL.—

Hung on the pillars, all around appears

A row of trophies, helmets, shields and spears,

And solid bars, and axes keenly bright,

And naval beaks, and chariots seiz'd in fight.

—Æneid, VII., 183.

See 1 Sam. 31:1-12.

Chron. 11:4-9.-And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, which is Jebus; where the Jebusites were, etc.

See 2 Sam. 5:6-9.

1 Chron. 11:22.—Benaiah... went down and slew a lion in a pit in a snowy clay.

See 2 Sam. 23:20.

1 Chron. 15:29.—Michal the daughter of Saul looking out at a window saw king David dancing, etc.

See 2 Sam. 6:14.

1 Chron. 18:3-8.—And David smote Hadarezer, etc.

See 2 Sam. 8:3-6.

1 Chron. 19:4.—Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, shaved them, and cut off their garments, etc.

See 2 Sam. 10:4.

Chron. 20:2.—And David took the crown of their king from off his head, and found it to weigh a talent of gold, etc.

See 2 Sam. 12:30.

1 Chron. 20:6.—And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty; six on each hand, and six on each foot.

See 2 Sam. 21:20.

Population of Palestine

Chron. 21:5.—And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand men that drew the sword: and Judah was four hundred three-score and ten thousand men that drew the sword.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—Some have doubted whether Palestine could support a population of three millions even in David's time, when its limit, were the broadest, and it had become the entrepot of the commerce of India. Computing the surface of the land at 11,200 geographical square miles, we have an average of 267 souls to the square mile; whereas prosperous Great Britain has but 246. It should, however, be remembered that England possesses large tracts of unproductive soil belonging to a favored class. German Bohemia, though hilly, supports a population of 254 to the square mile; while the fertile alluvial plains of Belgium feed no less than 438. Modern China supports 288. There are no data by which we can estimate the present population of Palestine, but we are safe in saying that every country of Western Asia has greatly deteriorated in fertility during the last twelve centuries. Egypt, according to Herodotus, anciently contained seven millions of inhabitants; yet its present population is but two and a half millions. Babylonia was once the most fertile spot upon the face of the earth. According to Strabo, barley produced three hundred fold; and Pliny states that there were two crops of wheat in the year But now this whole region is little more than a desert.—Bible Lands, p. 22.

1 Chron. 21:7.—And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. See 2 Sam. 24:15-17.

Bloodstained Hands

1 Chron. 22:8.—But the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build a house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight.

HOMER.—

Let chiefs abstain, and spare the sacred juice

To sprinkle to the gods, its better use.

By me that holy office were profaned;

Ill fits it men with human gore distain'd,

To the pure skies their horrid hands to raise,

Or offer Heaven's great sire polluted praise.

—Iliad, 1. vi., v. 264.

VIRGIL.—

In me 'tis impious holy things to bear,

Red as I am with slaughter new from war,

Till in some living stream I cleanse the guilt

Of dire debate, and blood in battle spilt.

—Æneid ii., v. 718.

The Great Giver of All

Chron. 29:14.—All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.

SENECA.—A man may be taught how to behave himself at sacrifices and in public worship, without any curious and troublesome superstition; but he will never be perfect in religious duty till he has conceived in his mind a right notion of God, as the possessor and giver of all things, and who freely and graciously bestows inestimable benefits upon us.—Epist., 95.

CICERO.—We must needs acknowledge that the benefits of this life, the light which we enjoy, and the spirit which we breathe, are imparted to us from him, i. e., Jupiter optimus maximus.—Orat. pro Sext. Rosc., c. 45.

EURIPIDES.—Men do not enjoy riches as their own; but having the property of the gods we cherish it; and when they choose they take them away again. —Phœn., v. 554.

EPICTETUS.—There is but one way to tranquility of mind and happiness—to account no external things thine own, but to refer all these to God and fortune.—Epict., 1. iv., c. 4.

Second Chronicles

Solomon's Request

2 Chron. 1:10.—Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?

See 1 Kings 3:9.

Tyrian Arts

2 Chron. 2:7.—Send me now therefore a cunning man to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron, and in purple, and crimson and blue, and that can skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Homer speaks especially of the Tyrians, beautifully embroidered robes and their bowls of silver. Their skill to hew timber, even at this remote time, was attested by their own historians, as also was their practice of making large metal pillars. Such remains of their art as have come down to us are of the character indicated. They consist of engraved gems and. cylinders, and of metal bowls, plain or embossed with figures.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 114.

The Temple Enriched With Gold

2 Chron. 3:6, 7.—And he garnished the house with precious stones for beauty... He overlaid also the house, the beams, the posts, and the walls thereof with gold.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Society of Bib. Archœ.—One of the most curious of the Assyrian Inscriptions lately discovered is that which has been translated by M. Charles Lenormant, and relates to the construction by Vulnarari of a golden temple to the great god Bel. Erected in seven stages, analogous to the present ruins of Bin Nimrud, the walls, the roof, the columns, and the sanctuary, the vessels, and the statues of the gods, were all alike plated, or composed of solid gold. It was founded, so runs the inscription, “To the glory of the great god Bel, my lord and master, whose servant I am, who has placed me on the throne of this people." That such an edifice could be erected of materials so costly and so rare, at a period very near to that of king Solomon, removes at once all dispute as to the credibility of the Biblical narrative concerning his temple, and affords a justification of the means employed by the wisest of kings for storing up a metal not then used as an article of currency.—Faith and Free Thought, p. 240.

The Molten Sea

2 Chron. 4:2, 3.—Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof.... And under it was the similitude of oxen. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.-With the cauldrons were discovered at Nimrud two circular flat vessels, nearly six feet in diameter, and about two feet deep, which I can only compare with the brazen sea that stood in the temple of Solomon. The dimensions, however, of that vessel were far greater. It is singular that in some of the bas-reliefs large metal cauldrons supported on brazen oxen are represented.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 152.

Tadmor

2 Chron. 8:4.—And he built Tadmor in the wilderness.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—In the Syrian desert there are the magnificent ruins of an ancient city, which made a conspicuous figure in ancient times under the name of Palmyra. This is not doubted to occupy the site of the “Tadmor " built by Solomon. The names Tadmor and Palmyra equally refer to the palm-trees which grew there; and the former is at this day the only name by which the spot is known to the natives, although the palms have now disappeared.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

2 Chron. 9-12.—And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to prove Solomon, etc.

See 1 Kings 10:1-10.

2 Chron. 9:17.—Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with pure gold.

See 1 Kings 10:18-20.

2 Chron. 12:2.—And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, etc.

See 1 Kings 14:25.

Shishak's Invasion of Judea

2 Chron. 12:2, 4.—And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem... And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Of the divided kingdom which followed on the death of Solomon, the Assyrian records furnish numerous, and the Egyptian a few illustrations. The most important Egyptian notice is contained in an inscription erected by Shishak (Sheshonk) at Karnak, which has been most carefully studied by modern scholars, and may be regarded as having completely yielded up its contents. This document is a list of the countries, cities, and tribes, conquered in his great expedition by Shishak, and regarded by him as tributaries. It contains, not only a distinct mention of " Judah" as a "kingdom" which Shishak had subjugated, but also a long list of Palestinian towns, from which an important light is thrown on the character of the expedition commemorated, and the relations subsisting between Judah and Israel in the early part of Solomon's reign.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 117.

CHAMPOLLION.—In the marvelous palace of Karnak I have contemplated the portraits of most of the ancient Pharaohs, known for their great acts, and they are veritable portraits, each possessing its peculiar physiognomy... Here is Shishak dragging to the feet of the Theban Triad, the chiefs of more than thirty conquered nations, among whom I have discovered, letter for letter, Ioudah-amalek, “the kingdom of Judah."... According to the Bible, Shishak attacked and took Jerusalem, in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam. It is this victory which the bas-relief of Karnak refers to. The kingdom of Judah is here personified, and doubtless with that fidelity to physiognomy remarked in all the ancient works of art of the Egyptians, in reference to the foreign nations which they have represented upon their monuments: in the bas-relief there is found the physiognomy of the Jewish people, in the tenth century before the Christian era, according to the Egyptians. Indeed Rehoboam himself, perhaps, sat for the original of this picture.— In Comp. Comment., note In loco.

2 Chron. 18:7.—There is yet one man, by whom we may inquire of the Lord; but I hate him; for he never prophesieth good unto me, but always evil.

See 1 Kings 22:8, 22.

Palms of Engedi

Chron. 22:2.—Behold they be in Hazazon-tamar, which is En-gedi.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Engedi has been unmistakably identified with the modern Ain Jidy, on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Its name signifies “the felling of the palm trees;" it was the contemporary of Sodom and Gomorrah-an existing city when Hebron first arose. Through its groves of palm trees passed the Assyrian hordes of Chedarlaomer, on the first great organized expedition recorded in history. Now not a palm remains in these lonely recesses; but they have left the evidence of their former abundance in the deep glens which open on the little plain. Copious springs of fresh water percolate through the cliffs on all sides, and perform the functions of a dropping well, rapidly petrifying the vegetation which clings to the rocks, and lining the valleys with a thick crust of carbonate of lime. On breaking this soft incrustation, we found masses of palm leaves quite perfect, and even whole trees petrified where they stood, grown as it were to the rock, entire from the root of the stem to the last point of the frond.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 380.

2 Chron. 25:11.—And Amaziah strengthened himself, and led forth his people, and went to the valley of salt, etc.

See 2 Kings 14:7.

Sennacherib before Lachish

2 Chron. 32:9.—After this did Sennacherib king of Assyria send his servants to Jerusalem, (but he himself laid siege against Lachish, and all his power with him,) unto Hezekiah king of Judah and unto all Judah that were at Jerusalem, saying, etc.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—During the latter part of my residence at Mosul a chamber was discovered in which the sculptures were in better preservation than any before found at Kouyunjik. Some of the slabs, indeed, were almost entire, though cracked, and otherwise injured by fire; and the epigraph, which fortunately explained the event portrayed, was complete. These bas-reliefs represented the siege and capture by the Assyrians, of a city evidently of great extent and importance. It appears to have been defended by double walls, with battlements and towers, and by fortified outworks. The country around it was hilly and wooded, producing the fig and the vine. The whole power of the great king seems to have been called forth to take this stronghold. In no other sculptures were so many armed warriors seen drawn up in array before a besieged city. In the first rank were the kneeling archers, those in the second were bending forward, whilst those in the third discharged their arrows standing upright, and were mingled with spearmen and slingers; the whole forming a compact and organized phalanx. The reserve consisted of large bodies of horsemen and charioteers. Against the fortifications had been thrown up as many as ten banks or mounts, compactly built of stones, bricks, earth, and branches of trees; and seven battering rams had already been rolled up to the walls. The besieged defended themselves with great determination. Spearmen, slingers and archers thronged the battlements and towers, showering javelins, arrows, stones, and blazing torches upon the assailants. On the battering rams were bowmen discharging their arrows, and men, with large ladles pouring water upon the flaming brands, which, hurled from above, threatened to destroy the engines.

Ladders, probably used for escalade, were falling from the walls upon the soldiers who mounted the inclined ways to the assault. Part of the city had, however, been taken. Beneath its walls were seen Assyrian warriors impaling their prisoners, and from the gateway of an advanced tower, or fort, issued a procession of captives, reaching to the presence of the king, who, gorgeously arrayed, received them seated on his throne, which was richly carved or encased in embossed metal, and standing on an elevated platform. Several prisoners were already in the hands of the torturers. Two were stretched naked on the ground to be flayed alive, others were being slain by the sword before the throne of the king. The haughty monarch was receiving the chiefs of the conquered nation, who crouched and knelt humbly before him. Above the head of the king was this inscription:

"Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of
Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before the
city of Lachish: I give permission for its slaughter."

Here therefore was the actual picture of the taking of Lachish, the city, as we know from the Bible, besieged by Sennacherib, when he sent his generals to demand tribute of Hezekiah, and which he had captured before their return; evidence of the most remarkable character to confirm the interpretation of the inscriptions, and to identify the king who caused them to be engraved with the Sennacherib of Scripture. This highly interesting series of bas-reliefs contained, moreover, an undoubted representation of a king, a city, and a people, with whose names we are acquainted, and of an event described in Holy Writ. They furnish us, therefore, with illustrations of the Bible of very great importance.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 125-128.

Manasseh

2 Chron. 33:11.—The captains of the host of the king of Assyria took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.

INSCRIPTIONS OF ESAR-HADDON.—I count among the prisoners of my reign twelve kings of the Hittites, who dwell beyond the mountains,—Bahlon, king of Tyre; Manasseh, king of Judah, together with the kings of the isles of the Mediterranean Sea.—Revue Archeologique, 1864.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—We have in the annals of Esar-haddon a curious illustration of what is at first sight most surprising in the Sacred Narrative, namely, the statement that "the captains of the host of the king of Assyria," when they took Manasseh prisoner, carried him with them, not to Nineveh, but to Babylon. It appears by the inscriptions, that Esar-haddon not only, like his grandfather, Sargon, took the title of the "king of. Babylon," but that he actually built himself a palace there, in which he must undoubtedly have occasionally resided. Thus there is nothing strange in an important prisoner being brought to him at the southern capital, though such a thing could scarcely have happened to any other Assyrian sovereign.—.Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 149.

Pharaoh Necho

2 Chron. 35:20.—After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Necho king of Egypt came up to fight, etc.

See 2 Kings 23:29.

2 Chron. 35:22.—And Josiah hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo.

DR. JOHN SAUL HAWSON.—Megiddo was the modern el Lejjun, the Legio of Eusebius and Jerome, an important and well-known place in their day. Van de Velde visited the spot in 1852. About a month later in the same year, Dr. Robinson was there, and convinced himself of the correctness of his former opinion. Both writers mention a copious stream flowing down this gorge, and turning some mills before joining the Kishon—here are probably" the waters of Megiddo."—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1873.

HERODOTUS.—Pharaoh Necho made war by land upon the Syrians, and defeated them in a pitched battle at Magdolus (Megiddo). —Herodt., II., 159.

General Testimony to the Foregoing Historic Books

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The direct historical illustrations which profane sources furnish of Jewish history, include notices of almost every foreign monarch mentioned in the course of the narrative—of Shishak, Zera, Benhadad, Hazael, Mesha, Rezin, Pul, Tiglathpileser, Shalmaneser, So, Sargon, Sennacherib, Tirhaka, Merodach-Baladan, Esar-haddon, Necho, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach, and Apries—and of the Jewish or Israelite kings, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Ahaziah, Menahem, Pekah, Ahaz, Hoshea, Hezekiah, and Manasseh. All these monarchs occur in profane history in the order, and at or near the time which the sacred narrative assigns to them. The synchronisms, which that narrative supplies, are borne out wherever there is any further evidence on the subject. The general condition of the powers which come into contact with the Jews is rightly described; and the fluctuations which they experience, their alternations of glory and depression, are correctly given. No discrepancy occurs between the sacred and the profane throughout the entire period, excepting here and there a chronological one. And these chronological discrepancies are in no case serious.

The later narrative of the Books of Chronicles and Kings receives a further illustration, of an indirect character, from a consideration of the incidental notices which are dropped with respect to the manners and customs of the foreign nations, with which the Jews are in this part of their history represented as coming into contact. Though the sacred narrative is far from giving us in this place such a complete portraiture of the Assyrians or Babylonians as it furnishes in the Pentateuch of the Egyptians, yet, if we add to the picture drawn in Chronicles and Kings the further touches furnished by the contemporary prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, we shall find that we possess, altogether, a description of these peoples, which is capable of comparison with the account of them that has reached us from profane sources. And this comparison, though it cannot be carried to the extent which was found possible in the case of Egypt, will be found to embrace so many and such minute points as to constitute it an important head of evidence, and one perhaps to many minds more convincing than the direct illustrations adduced hitherto.—The (scripture) picture thus presented to us is in striking accord also with the character of the Assyrians, of their monarchy, of their mode of warfare, of their favorite habits and practices, as they may be gathered from the sculptured monuments and inscriptions.—Hist. Illust. of the O. T., p. 154-160.

Ezra

Cyrus

Ezra 1:2.—Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus' empire was the noblest and most extensive in Asia. He ruled over the Medes and Hyrcanians, Syrians, Assyrians, Arabians, Cappadocians, both Phrygias, the Carians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Bactrians, Indians, Cilicians, Scythians, Paphlagonians, Megadinians, and many other nations, the Greeks inhabiting Asia, and the Cyprians and Egyptians; the borders of his kingdom were to the East of the Red Sea, to the North the Euxine Pontus, to the West Cyprus and Egypt, and to the South Ethiopia; and though of such an extent, was governed by the single will of Cyrus.—Cyropœdia, 1. viii., c. 8.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—The character of Cyrus, and his actions, as indicated by Ezra (and Daniel), are in remarkable agreement with the notices which we possess of him in profane authors. Of all the Persian monarchs, he was the most distinguished for mildness and clemency; the one to whom the sufferings of a captive nation, torn violently from its home and subjected to seventy years of oppression, would most forcibly have appealed. Again, he was an earnest Zoroastrian, a worshipper of the “Great God, Ormazd," the special, if not the sole, object of adoration among the ancient Persians; he was a hater of idolatry, and of the shameless rites which accompanied it, and he would naturally sympathize with such a people as the Jews-a people whose religious views bore so great a resemblance to his own. Thus the restoration of the Jews by Cyrus, though an act almost without a parallel in the history of the world, was only natural under the circumstances; and the narrative of it, which Ezra gives us, is in harmony at once with the other Scriptural notices of the monarch, and with profane accounts of him. The edicts which he issued on the occasion (Ezra 1:2-4, and 6:3-5) are alike suitable to his religious belief and to the generosity of his character. His acknowledgment of one "Lord rod of Heaven " (1, 2); his identification of this God with the Jehovah of the Jews; and his pious confession that he has received all the kingdoms over which he rules from this source, breathe the spirit of the Old Persian religion, of which Cyrus was a sincere votary; while the delivery of the golden vessels from out of the treasury (1:7-It, and 6:5); the allowance of the whole expense of rebuilding the Temple out of the royal revenue (6:4); and the general directions to all Persian subjects to " help with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts " (1: 4), accord well with the munificence which is said to have been one of his leading characteristics.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 193.

The Cedars of Lebanon

Ezra 3:7.—They gave... meat and drink and oil unto them of Zidon, and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, according to the grant they had of Cyrus king of Persia.

REV. GEORGE E. POST, M. D.—For a long time it was contended that the cedar was not found in any part of Lebanon except the famous grove near Besherreh, and that any trees resembling it in other localities were only cognate species, but not the true Larix Cedrus. I have, however, settled this point by a laborious search and botanical examination. There are certainly in existence the following groves: 5. An extensive one near el-Hadet, consisting of many thousand small trees. 2. A small grove east of 'Ain Zehalta. 3. A large grove of very young trees east of 'Ain Zehalta, in the valleys and on the western slopes of Lebanon; I estimated the number at 50,000 trees. 4. A grove above Barak, and stretching southward two or three miles, terminating in a cluster of noble trees overhanging the village el-Measir; this may number from 20,000 to 30,000 in all, both small and large trees. The southernmost portion is a grand collection of about 250 trees. One measures 27 feet in circumference, another 23, and many from 15 to 20. Some of them spread widely their horizontal branches, and bear numerous cones. The grandeur of their situation on the declivity of a deep gorge enhances the interest which always attends the sight of this venerable tree.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1624.

House of the Rolls

Ezra 6:1, 2.—Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon. And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written: In the first year of Cyrus the king, etc.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—I shall call these chambers " the chambers of records," for, like " the house of the rolls," or records, which Darius ordered to be searched for the decrees of Cyrus, concerning the building of the temple of Jerusalem, they appear to have contained the decrees of the Assyrian kings as well as the archives of the empire. I have mentioned elsewhere that the historical records and public documents of the Assyrians were kept on tablets and cylinders of baked clay. Many specimens have been brought to England,... These chambers I am describing appear to have been a depository in the palace of Nineveh for such documents. To the height of a foot or more from the floor they were entirely filled with them; some entire, but the greater part broken into many fragments, probably by the falling in of the upper part of the building. They were of different sizes; the largest tablets were flat, and measured nine inches by six and a half inches; the smaller were slightly convex, and some were not more than an inch long, with hut one or two lines of writing. The cuneiform characters on most of them were singularly sharp and well defined, but so minute in some instances as to be almost illegible without a magnifying glass. These documents appear to be of various kinds. Many are historical records of wars, and distant expeditions undertaken by the Assyrians; some seem to be royal decrees, and are stamped with the name of the king, the son of Esar-haddon; others again, divided into parallel columns by horizontal lines, contain lists of gods, and probably a register of offerings made in their temples.

Many are sealed with seals, and many prove to be legal documents, contracts, or conveyances of land. Others bear rolled impressions of those engraved cylinders so frequently found in Babylonia and Assyria.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 295-298.

Ezra 6:2.—And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was recorded, etc.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The discovery of the original decree of Cyrus, early in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, at Achmetha (Ecbatana), is one of those little points of agreement between sacred and profane history which are important because their minuteness is an indication that they are purely casual and unintentional. When Ezra wrote, the Persian kings resided usually at Susa or Babylon; these cities, as the ordinary stations of the court, were, therefore, the places at which the archives were laid up. But Cyrus (one hundred years before) seems to have held his court permanently at Ecbatana (Herod. I., 153), and consequently it was there that he kept his archives, and there that his decree was found.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 196.

PROF. G. RAWLINSON, M. A.—This Darius died B. C. 486. He had prepared his tomb in the neighborhood of Persepolis, where it may still be seen. It is placed in a recess 'of the rock, sculptured as in the annexed figure, bearing an inscription which is yet legible.—Rawlinson's Herodotus. iv. 4, 395.

Decreed Penalty

Ezra vi have made a decree, that whosoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled down from his house, and being set up, let him be hanged, thereon; and let hi., house be made a dunghill for this.

HERODOTUS.—Leutychides being brought to public trial for having received a bribe, was driven from Sparta, and his house rased.—Herodt., 1. vi., c. 72.

LIVY.—Spurius Cassius being prosecuted for treason by the Quæstors, Cæso Fabius and Lucius Valerius, was found guilty on a trial before the people, and his house was rased by public decree.—Livy, 1. ii., c. 41.

QUINTILIAN.—Ignominy follows some men, even after death. Thus the house of Mælius, when he was dead, was demolished; and none of the posterity of Marcus Manlius was suffered to carry their family's name.—Quintilian, lib. iii., cap. 7.

Expressions of Grief

Ezra 9:3.—And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—In great disappointment, fury, or distress, the people of the East tear out their long hair. They also bite their lips and arms.—Orient. Illust., p. 242.

Cold and Rain

Ezra 10:9.—It was the ninth month, and the twentieth day of the month: and all the people sat in the street of the house of God, trembling because of this matter, and' for the great rain.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The “ninth month" answered to our December; this is the coldest and most rainy part of the year in Palestine.—Note, In loco.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—On court days in Hindustan, during a wet Monsoon, the half-naked people sit huddled together under the nearest tree shivering for the great rain.—Orient. Illust., p. 243.

Nehemiah

Palace of Susa

Nehemiah 1:1.—And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace.

HERODOTUS.—Not far remote from the river Choaspes, in the district of Cissia, is Susa, where the Persian monarch occasionally resides, and where his treasures are deposited.—Herodt., 1. v., c. 49.

STRABO.—The palace of Susa was embellished more than all the rest, but the palaces at Persepolis and Passargadæ were held in equal honor and veneration with it.—Strab 1. xv., c. 3.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—These bas-reliefs (at Kouyunjik) record the conquest of the country of Susiana... In the same inscription a king of Armenia is also mentioned; and it would appear that the great men of that country were sent to the Assyrian monarch whilst in Susiana. Above the royal chariot was a row of trees, and beneath a procession of mace-bearers, and led horses richly caparisoned. A lower compartment contained a curious ground-plan of a city. It is seen from another inscription (in this bas-relief) that Su t or Shushan actually stood in a district of this name; and it is highly probable that we have here a representation of that city. Its position between two rivers well agrees with that of existing ruins generally believed to mark its site.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 386.

Cup-Bearer

Nhm. 1:11—And prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. For I was the king's cup-bearer.

HERODOTUS.—Cambyses professed the greatest regard for Prexaspes, who received all petitions to the king, and whose son enjoyed the honorable office of royal cup-bearer.—Herodt., 1. iii., c. 34.

XENOPHON.—Astyages said to Cyrus—Do you give nothing to this Sacian, your cup-bearer, whom I favor above all? This Sacian was a very beautiful person, and had the honor to introduce to Astyages any that had business with him, and was to hinder those whom he did not think it seasonable to introduce. —Cyropœdia, 1. i., c. 3.

JOSEPH BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—The Chamber of audience, at Khorsabad.—Upon the wall between the second corner and the passage of communication we have sixteen figures: near the opening the king attended by his cup-bearer and Selikdar, and before him seven officers of his court.... On the length of wall between the corner and the central entrance of the Divining Chamber there are twelve figures; the king, his right hand elevated and his left carrying a full-blown lotus and bud, is followed by his cup-bearer and Selikdar; in front are two persons, etc.—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 184, 185.

IDEM.—The next slab (Nimroud) represents the return of the king from the chase. It is a perfect tableau de genre de haut ton, portraying the manners of the Assyrian court more than 2,500 years ago; resembling in so many points the present customs of the East, that it is truly remarkable how little change the lapse of time has effected.... Fully armed, the king stands in the center of the composition; his bow being still in his left hand, while with his right he raises to his lips the cup which he has just received from the hand of the cup-bearer. At his feet lies the subdued lion. He is followed by two beardless attendants, who have accompanied him in the chase.... Behind these are the king's bearded attendants.... All these we may fairly presume have accompanied the king in the chase, and have arrived with him at the entrance of his palace, where he is met by the officers of his household. In advance of these latter stands the royal cup-bearer, the sharbetgee of modern times. This functionary, having presented his lord with the prepared beverage, is occupied in dispersing the flies, which, in hot climates, assail with uncommon avidity all cool and sweetened fluids.—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 253.

Beth-Zur

Nhm. 3:16.—The ruler of the half part of Beth-zur.

MR. GEORGE GROVE. —The recovery of the site of Beth-zur, under the almost identical name of Bea-Stir, by Wolcott and Robinson, explains its impregnability, and also the reason for the choice of its position, since it commands the road from Beersheba and Hebron, which has always been the main approach to Jerusalem from the south.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 300.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—It shows how wonderfully the oldest names of the Bible have been preserved and transmitted to us that we find Halhul, Beth-zur, and Gedor grouped together in Josh. 15:58, and the same places represented on the modern map as Halhul, Beitsûr, and Jedûr, in the immediate vicinity of each other.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. Sot.

Derisive Expression

Nhm. 4:3.—Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—When men (in the East) deride the workmanship of a mason, they say, "Che.! why, if a dog or a jackal run against that wall, it will fall."—"A wall! why it will not keep out the jackals."—Orient. Illust., p. 245.

Building under Arms

Nhm. 4:17, 18.—They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon. For the builders every one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. And he that sounded the trumpet was by me.

REV. JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—We have often had to notice circumstances in different parts of Asia of a similar description to those recorded by Nehemiah. In countries or districts liable to the visits of, or partly occupied by, Bedouins or Tartars; or where a settled population is divided into adverse clans or tribes; or where the principle of blood-revenge is in strong and extensive operation—under all these and other circumstances, the cultivators dare not pursue the labors of the field unarMed. We have seen men following the plow with guns slung to their backs and swords by their sides; or else these and other weapons were placed within reach, while they pursued such labors as kept them stationary. Sometimes also, but less frequently, we have observed men, armed with guns, swords, spears, clubs, and bucklers, keeping a watchful guard while their fellows pursued their important labors.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Rapid Fortification

Nhm. 6:15.—So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—I see no difficulty in supposing that several thousand workmen, each of whom was working as for God, should be able to complete this wall in fifty-two days.... The work mentioned here was little when compared with what Caesar did in Gaul and other places; and to what Titus did at Jerusalem, who built a wall round that city of 5,000 paces in three days, besides thirteen towers of ten stadia in circuit. And Quintus Curtius and Arrian inform us that Alexander the Great built the walls of Alexandria, on the Tanais, which were nearly eight miles in compass, in the space of between twenty and thirty days.—Note, In loco.

God the Creator and Ruler of All

Nhm. 9:6.—Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things that are therein, the seas and all that is therein; and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.

CLEANTHES.—Without thee nothing is done upon the earth, or in heaven; or in the depths of the sea, except alone those evil deeds of which an impious people are guilty.—Cleath. H. in Jovem.

PLUTARCH.—The glory of Plato enlightened the world, and his doctrine was generally received, both on account of his life and his subjecting the necessity of natural causes to a more powerful and Divine principle.—Plut. Nic., c. 23.

CICERO.—The gods are the supreme lords and governors of all things; all events are directed by their influence, and wisdom, and divine power.—De Leg., 1. ii., c. 7.

Return to Evil

Nhm. 9:28.—After they had rest they did evil again before thee.

JUVENAL.—Now we are suffering all the evils of long-continued peace. Luxury, more ruthless than war, broods over Rome, and exacts vengeance for a conquered world.—Sat. vi., v. 291.

CATULLUS.—Ease and idleness have destroyed both cities and citizens formerly prosperous.— Catull., 1. i.,. carm 51.

Sealed Documents

Nhm. 9:38.—And because of all this we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes,. Levites, and priests, seat unto it.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—In a chamber, or passage in the southwest corner of the palace of Kouyunjik, were found a large number of pieces of fine clay bearing the impressions of seals, which there is no doubt, had been affixed, like modern official seals of wax, to documents written on leather, papyrus or parchment. Such documents, with seals in clay still attached, have been discovered in Egypt and specimens are preserved in the British Museum. The writings themselves had been consumed by the fire which destroyed the building or had perished from decay. In the stamped clay, however, may still be seen the holes for the string or strips of skin, by which the seal was fastened; in some instances the ashes of the string remain, with the marks of the finger and thumb. The greater part of these seals are Assyrian, but with them are others bearing Egyptian, Phoenician, and doubtful symbols and characters.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 130.

Ether

Ahasuerus

Esther 1:1.—Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—The name Ahasuerus is, in one of its Greek forms, Xerxes, which is explained by Herodotus (lib. vi., c. 98) to mean a warrior.—Test. of Heath., p. 245.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—It, is now generally allowed by critics, that Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, is the monarch at whose court is laid the scene of the Book of. Esther. The character of this monarch, so graphically placed before us by the sacred historian, bears the closest possible resemblance to that which is ascribed by the classical writers to the celebrated son of Darius. Proud, self-willed, amorous, careless of contravening Persian customs; reckless of human life, yet not actually blood-thirsty; impetuous, facile, changeable—the Ahasuerus of Esther corresponds in all respects to the Greek portraiture of Xerxes; which is not (be it observed) the mere picture of an oriental despot, but has various marked peculiarities that distinctly individualize it. And so with respect to his actions.—Hist. Illust., p. 200.

Esth. 1:1— This is Ahasuerus which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia over a hundred and seven and twenty provinces.

HERODOTUS.—Sir, (said Mardonius to Xerxes,) you are not only the most illustrious of all the Persians, who have hitherto appeared, but you may securely defy the competition of all posterity. You have reduced to our power the Sacæ, the Indians, the Ethiopians, and the Assyrians, with many other great and illustrious nations.—Herodt., 1. vii., c. 9.

Shushan

Esth. 1:2.—In those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—That Susa (or Shushan) was the ordinary seat of the Persian Court is apparent from Herodotus, Ctesias, and the Greek writers generally, while it was fixed during part of the year at Babylon, is declared by Xenophon, Plutarch, and others.—Hist. Illust. of O. T., p. 209.

HERODOTUS.—In this province, Cissia, you see the river Choaspes marked, and likewise the town Susa upon its banks, where the Great King holds his court, and where the treasuries are in which his wealth is stored.—Herodt., lib. v., c. 49.

Royal Feast and Palace

Esth. is 5-7.—And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan both unto great and small, seven days, in the court of the garden of the king's palace; where were white, green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue and white and black marble. And they gave them drink in vessels of gold, (the vessels being diverse one from another,) and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Susa, the royal city, and the most beautiful palace in the universe.—Diod. Sic., 1. xvii., c. 7.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The magnificence of the Susian Palace is evidenced, not merely by the accounts of ancient authors, but by the existing iv remains, which exhibit four groups of " marble pillars" exquisitely carved, springing from a pavement composed chiefly of blue limestone, and constructed (in the opinion of the excavators) with a view to the employment of curtains or hangings between the columns, an arrangement thoroughly suitable to the site and climate. Greek writers describe at length the splendor of the palace furniture, whereon the precious metals were prodigally lavished.— Hist. Illust., p. 210.

IDEM.—The magnificent palace which had so great a fame in antiquity, and of which the best account is to be found in the Book of Esther, occupied the northern portion of the great mound, an irregular rectangle, two sides of which measure 1,200 feet, while the remaining two fall somewhat short of 1,000. It has been recently exhumed in a great measure by Sir W. Williams and Mr. Loftus, and is found to have consisted of a great hall of stone pillars, of the same size and on the same plan as that of Persepolis, and of a number of inferior buildings behind the hall, the material of which is brick. The pillars are arranged into a central group of thirty-six, standing in six rows of six each, so as to form an exact square, one hundred and forty-five feet (nearly) each way; and into three outlying groups or porticoes, flanking the central group on three sides, the east, the north, and the west. These porticoes, which are exactly paralled to the sides of the inner square, are formed of two rows of six pillars each, in line with the pillars of the central group, the distance between the outermost pillars of the central group and the inner pillars of the porticoes being sixty-four feet. The pillars are of two kinds—those of the central group or phalanx have square bases, while those of the porticoes have round or bell-shaped bases. Both sorts appear, however, to have been surmounted by the same capital. The central group is supposed to have been covered with a roof, but the space between that group and the porticoes was probably only shaded by curtains, answering to the description given in the Book of Esther. It appears by a trilingual inscription upon four of the pillars, that the palace was commenced by Darius and finished by Artaxerxes Mnemon.—Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. III., p. 208.

HERODOTUS.—Xerxes (Ahasuerus), when he fled away out of Greece, left his war-tent with Mardonius; when Pausanias, therefore, saw the tent with its adornments of gold and silver, and its hangings of diverse colors, he gave commandment to the bakers and the cooks to make him ready a banquet in such a fashion as was their wont for Mardonius. Then they made ready as they were bidden, and Pausanias, beholding the couches of gold and silver daintily decked out with their rich covertures, and the tables of gold and silver laid, and the feast itself prepared with all magnificence, was astonished at the good things set before him. —Herodt, I. ix., c. 82.

Esther 1:8.—And the drinking was according to the law; none did compel: for so the king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man's pleasure.

CICERO.—The custom which is common among the Grecians at their banquets should, in my opinion, be observed in life. "Drink," say they, " or leave the company."—Tusc. Disp., 1. v., c. 40.

PLUTARCH.—Cleomenes used, after supper, to have a three-legged stand brought in, on which were placed a brass bowl full of wine, two silver pots, that held about a pint and a half each, and a few cups of the same metal. Such of the guests as were inclined to drink made use of these vessels, for the cup was not pressed upon any man against his will.—Cleomen., c. 13.

LUCIAN.—Let none refuse to drink a health when he is challenged, and let everybody drink whenever he pleases. On the other hand, let no man be forced to drink more than he can.—Chronosol., c. 18.

Esth. 1:9.—Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to king Ahasuerus.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Greek writers describe at length the seclusion of the women among the Persians.—Hist. Illust., p. 210.

PLUTARCH.—The barbarians in general, especially the Persians, are jealous of the women even to madness, not only of their wives, but of their slaves and concubines; for besides the care they take that they shall be seen by none but their own family, they keep them like prisoners in their houses.—Themist., c. 26.

DR. JOHN Kam, D. D., F. S. A.—Existing oriental usages oblige women to feast separately from the men, even on the same occasions of rejoicing.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Esth. 1:12.—But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment by his chamberlains.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Vashti's refusal to comply with the king's order was natural, for, according to oriental notions, a woman of reputation would consider it an ignominy worse than death to appear thus before a society of men with her face uncovered. None but courtesans do, or ever did, appear at the entertainments of men in Persia.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

The Wife's Turn

Esth. 2:12.—Now when every maid's turn was come to go in to king Ahasuerus.

HERODOTUS.—Phædima, therefore, Otane's daughter, bent on accomplishing what she had promised her father, when her turn came, and she was taken to the bed of the Magus (in Persia a man's wives sleep with him in their turns), waited till he was sound asleep, and then felt for his ears.—Lib. iii., c. 69.

Sitting at the Gate

Esth. 2:19.—Then Mordecai sat in the king's gate.

XENOPHON.—It was determined that the men of note and quality should always attend at Cyrus's doors, and yield themselves to his service in whatever he thought fit, till he himself dismissed them; and according as it was then determined, so do those in Asia, that are under the king, even to this day; they attend at the doors of their princes.—Cyrop., 1. viii., c. 1.

HERODOTUS.—Orestes sitting at the gate of the palace with another Persian, whose name was Mitrobales.—Herodt., 1. iii., c, 120.

The Highest Seat

Esth. 3:1.—After these things did king Ahasuerus promote Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that were with him.

XENOPHON.—Let the best men with you be honored with the principal seats, as they are with me. Cyrop., 1. viii., c. 6.

IDEM.—Hystaspes, after asserting his readiness to do service to Cyrus, which the latter readily acknowledged, exclaimed, In the name of all the gods, then, Cyrus, by what means is it that Chrysantas has prevailed on you to place him before me in the more honorable seat?—Cyrop., 1. viii., c. 5.

The Scattered Jews

Esther 3:8.—And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them.

CICERO.—While Jerusalem was flourishing, and while the Jews were in a peaceful state, still the religious ceremonies and observances of that people were very much at variance with the splendor of this empire and the dignity of our name and the institutions of our ancestors. And they are the more odious to us now, because that people has shown by arms what were its feelings towards our supremacy. Orat. Pro Flac., c. 28.

JUVENAL.—Trained to look with scorn upon the laws of Rome, they study and observe and reverence all those Jewish statutes that Moses in his mystic volume handed down.—Sat. XIV v. 101.

Royal Signet

Esther 3:10.—And the king took his ring from his hand and gave it unto Haman.... In the name of king Ahasuerus was it written, and sealed with the king's ring.

HERODOTUS.—Then Bagæus caused many letters to be written on diverse matters, and sealed them all with the king's signet; after which he took the letters with him, and departed for Sardis.—Herodt., 1. iii., c. 128.

Persian Posts

Esth. 3:13, 15.—And the letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day... The posts went out, being hastened by the king's commandment.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus originally established couriers, places for post-horses on all the high roads, and offices where they might deliver their packets to each other. This they did night and day, faster than cranes can fly.—Cyrop., VIII., 6, § 1-6.

HERODOTUS. —Nothing mortal travels so fast as these Persian messengers. The entire plan is a Persian invention, and this is the method of it. Along the whole line of road there are men stationed with horses, in number equal to the number of days which the journey takes, allowing a man and a horse to each day; and these men will not be hindered from accomplishing at their best speed the distance which they have to go, either by rain, or snow, or heat, or by the darkness of night. The first rider delivers his dispatch to the second, and the second passes it to the third; and so it is borne from hand to hand along the whole line, like the light in the torch race, which the Greeks celebrate to Vulcan. —Herodt., I. viii., c. 98.

Golden Scepter

Esther 4:11.—All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of him to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these thirty days.

HERODOTUS.—Deioces was the first who instituted that kind of pomp which forbids access to the royal person, and only admits communication to him by intermediate agents, the king himself being never publicly seen.—Herodt., 1. i., c. 99.

IDEM.—The seven Persian princes who killed the Magian, before electing one of themselves to be king, mutually agreed that access to the royal palace should be permitted to each of them without the ceremony of a previous messenger, except when the king should happen to be in bed.—Herodt., 1. iii., c. 84.

XENOPHON.—Know, Cambyses, that it is not the golden scepter which can preserve your kingdom; but faithful friends are a prince's truest and securest scepter.—Cyrop., 1. viii., c. 7.

Obeisance

Esther 5:9.—But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king's gate, that he stood not up, nor moved for him, he was full of indignation against Mordecai.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—This is, indeed, a graphic sketch of Eastern manners. The colors are so lively and so fresh, that they might have been but the work of yesterday. See the native gentleman at the head of his courtly train: he moves along in pompous guise, and all who see him arise from their seats, take off their sandals, and humbly move in reverence to him. To some he gives a graceful wave of the hand; to others not a word or a look. Should there be one who neither stands up nor moves to him, his name and place of abode will be inquired after, and the first opportunity eagerly embraced to gratify the proud man's splenitic feeling.... The proud Modeliar was one day passing along the road, where was seated on his carpet the Reuter of the pearl-fishery. He arose not, moved not to him, when passing by; and the proud Modeliar's soul was fired with indignation. He forthwith resolved upon his ruin; and, by deeply-formed intrigues, too well succeeded—his money and his estate were taken from him, and himself sold as a bondman.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 247.

Court Chronicles

Esther 6:1.—On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles: and they were read before the king.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The Royal Chronicles of Persia seem to have consisted not only of grand public inscriptions upon pillars, rocks, tombs, and palaces, but also of more private and more copious documents, preserved in the treasuries of the empire, and written upon skins or parchments, which contained a variety of details concerning the court and empire, such as all decrees made by the king, all signal services of any subject, etc. The royal scribes seem to have been in constant attendance upon the king, ready to record any remarkable occurrence.—Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I., p. 46.

Esther 6:2.—And it was found written, that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king's chamberlains, the keepers of the door, who sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus.

HERODOTUS. —Xerxes conceived a wish to go himself throughout the forces, and with his own eyes behold everything. Accordingly he traversed the ranks seated in his chariot, and going from nation to nation, made manifold inquiries, while his scribes wrote down the answers; till at last he had passed from end to end of the whole land army, both the horsemen and likewise the foot. This done, he exchanged his chariot for a Sidonian galley, and, seated beneath a golden awning, sailed along the prows of all his vessels, while he made inquiries again, as he had done when he reviewed the land forces, and caused the answers to be recorded by his scribes.—Herodt., lib. vii., c. 100.

IDEM —During the whole time of the battle, Xerxes sate at the base of the hill called Ægaleôs, over against Salamis; and whenever he air any of his own captains perform any worthy exploit he inquired concerning him; and the man's name was taken down by his scribes, together with the names of his father and his city.—Herodt., 1. viii., c. 90.

The King's Benefactors

Esther 6:3.—And the king said, What honor and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this? Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, There is nothing done for him.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The recognition of a distinct class of “royal benefactors " appears to have been a special Persian institution. The names of such persons were entered upon a formal list; and it was regarded as the bounden duty of the monarch to see that they were adequately rewarded.— Histor. Illust., p. 209.

HERODOTUS.—Phylacus was enrolled among the king's benefactors, and presented with a large estate in land.—Herodt., lib. viii., c. 85.

Esth.: 7-11.—For the man whom the king delighteth to honor, let `the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head; etc.

XENOPHON. —To one whom Cyrus wished to honor he gave one of the horses that followed in his train, and ordered one of the staff officers to conduct the horse for him wherever he should command. This appeared to those who saw it to be a very great honor; and after this many more people made their court to this man.—Cyrop., 1. viii., c. 3.

IDEM. —Demaratus, the Lacedemonian, who was at court, being ordered to ask a favor, desired that he might be carried through Sardis in royal state, with a diadem upon, his head.—Themist., c. 29.

The Fatal Covering

Esther 7:8.—Then the king returned from the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As, the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT.—Do you not understand how much more fortunate you are in your government than the Persians? For them to sit in the seat of their king would be death; for you it has been life.—Q. Curt., 1. viii., c. 4.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Philotas having conspired against Alexander, was brought before him with his hands tied behind him, and his head covered with an old veil. It was evident that they who had but a short time before envied him were now touched with pity at his miserable appearance. They had seen him the day before the leader of the horse, and knew that he had supped with the king, and now suddenly they beheld him not only accused, but condemned and bound. Q. Curt., 1. vi., c. 9.

Royal Apparel

Esther 9:28.—And Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold, and with a garment of fine linen and purple.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus appeared without the gates wearing a turban raised high above his head, with a vest of a purple color half-mixed with white; and this mixture of white no one else is allowed to wear. —Cyrop., 1. viii., c. 3.

Feast of Purim

Esther 9:28.—And that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed.

PROF. MOSES STUART.—The fact that the feast of Purim has come down to us from time almost immemorial proves as certainly that the main events of the book of Esther happened, as the Declaration of Independence and the celebration of the Fourth of July prove that we separated from Great Britain and became an independent nation. The book of Esther is an essential document to explain the feast of Purim.—As quoted in Rawlinson's Hist. Illust., 218.

Book of Job

Oriental Wealth

Job 1:3.—Job's substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very great household.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The inhabitants of the Hauran, beyond Jordan, in or near which was the very country of Job, still estimate the wealth of a person by the number of his oxen, sheep, etc.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The rich country of Gilead, Ammon and Moab was pre-eminently the land of sheep pasture, as it is to this day.... I have sat under the tent of a Beni Sakk'r sheikh, who pastures his sheep in the ancient plains of Moab, and boasts of counting 30,000 in his flocks.

—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 134.

ARISTOTLE.—Now some men in upper Asia possess as many as three thousand camels.—Hist. Animal, ix., 37, § 5

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—We have seen in the north of Palestine herds of several hundred she-asses kept together for breeding.—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 41.

Divine Hedge

Job 1:10.—Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.-In the East, it is said of a man who cannot be injured, " Why attempt to hurt him? is there not a hedge about him? " " Yes, yes; the Modeliar has become his hedge. "Orient. Illust., p. 254

Job's Calamities

Job 1:14,15.—And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses were feeding beside them: and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, and they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—And, by the way, this Jaulan was Job's country. His flocks and herds roamed over these same wild " walks," and were exposed to the very same dangers that now task the courage of these Arab shepherds. In these inaccessible ravines were the lion's den, the tiger's lair, and pits for bears and wolves; and across these vast plateaus the flying bands of Sabean robbers roved in search of plunder. The country, the people, the manners and customs, temain unchanged from remote antiquity. Job was a great emir of the Hauran; and if he were there now, he might find the same kind of enemies to plunder and kill, and even natural phenomena very similar to the great fire that burnt up the sheep, and the mighty wind from the wilderness that overturned the houses of his children. Destructive fires often sweep over the desert, and angry hurricanes hurl to the ground the habitations of man.—The Land and the Book, II., 16.

Job 1:16.—While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—Danger sometimes comes from another source: when one of those sudden storms of rain arises which characterize the autumnal season in Western Asia, the helpless flock of sheep, frightened by the voice of thunder, huddle together under the nearest tree, and are not infrequently killed by the lightning. We have repeatedly known a large number of them to be thus destroyed; and the shepherd has himself sometimes met the same fate.—Bible Lands, p. 184.

Job 1:17.—While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

XENOPHON.—CYRUS asked Tigranes which were the mountains from whence the Chaldeans made their incursions to plunder the country. Tigranes showed them to him. Cyrus looking around, observed a great part of the Armenian territory to be desert and uncultivated by reason of the war. One of the Chaldeans said to Cyrus that there were some of the Chaldeans who lived by plunder, and who neither knew how to apply themselves to work nor were able to do it.— Cyropœdia, lib. iii., c. 2.

Job 1:20.—Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—To "shave the head " in token of distress or grief, is a custom in all parts of the East at this day. A son on the death of his father, or a woman on the decease of her husband, has the head shaved in token of sorrow.-Orient. Ill., p. 118.

Job 1:21.—The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. EPICTETUS.—Why do I wish to retain what is granted only for a time? He who gave, takes away: why then do I resist?—Epictet., 1. iv., c. I.

IDEM.—Receive back again the things which thou hast given me, and assign them to whatever place thou wilt; for they were all thine, and thou gavest them me.—Ibid., c. 10.

IDEM.—Never say of anything, " I have lost it," but "I have restored it." " Is your child dead? It is restored. Is your wife dead? She is restored. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise restored?"—Enchir., c. II.

Job's Wife

Job 2:9,10.—Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?

HOMER.—From God's own hand descend our joys and woes, These he decrees, and he but suffers those.—Odyss., 1. xiv., v. 444.

PYTHAGORAS.—Whatever misfortunes may afflict you by the will of the gods, bear your fate patiently, and submit without anger.—Aur. Car., v. 18.

Job's Friends

Job 22:11—Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him... they came to mourn with him, and to comfort him.

ARISTOTLE.—The presence of friends is agreeable both in prosperity and adversity; for those who are in pain feel lightened when their friends grieve with them.—Eth., 1. ix., c. II.

Job 2:13.—So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—In the East, those who go to sympathize with the afflicted, are often silent for hours together. As there were seven days for mourning in the Scriptures, so is it here; and the seventh day is always the most sorrowful. The chief mourner, during the whole of these days, will never speak, except when it is absolutely necessary: when a visitor comes in, he simply looks up, and then bows down his head.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 256.

Job Cursing the Day of His Birth

Job 3:3, 4.—Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, 'There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

OVID.—Behold my birth-day comes round at its appointed time; but to no purpose, for of what use was it to me to be born? Why didst thou come, cruelly bringing with thee an additional year of misery to the exile? If thou hadst any care of me, in that place where first I was born an infant, thou wouldst have tried to be my last day as well as my first.—Trist., lib. iii., Eleg. 13.

PLUTARCH.—The Athenians having invented a foolish story about a quarrel between Neptune and Minerva, joined with it another fable, as if to correct the inconsistency of it. For they blotted out of the calendar the second day of the third Attic month, on which this quarrel took place. Why should not we, if we have any difference with our kinsfolks, condemn that day to oblivion, and reckon it among the inauspicious days never to be mentioned?—De. Frat. Am., c. 18.

Job 3:11. —Why died I not from the womb?

HOMER.—

Would heaven, ere all these dreadful deeds were done,

The day that showed me to the golden sun

Had seen my death! Why did not whirlwinds bear

The fatal infant to the fowls of air?

—Iliad, VI., 345.

Job 3:17.—There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

HERODOTUS. —Death is the most delightful refuge of the unfortunate.— Herodt., 1. vii., 46.

SOPHOCLES. —To those who die, there is no more toil.—Track., v. 1175.

EURIPIDES. —The tearless dead forget their troubles.—Troad., v. 602.

PLINY.—So numerous are the evils of life that death is given to man as his. chief good.—Hist. Nat., l. ii., c. 5.

HORACE.—But death the unhappy wretch receives, And from the toils of life relieves.—Hor., 1. ii., c. 18.

Evil Passions

Joh. 5: 2.—For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one.

THOMAS WATSON, M. D.—Very many diseases have a mental origin: and perhaps there is no cause of corporeal disease more clearly made out, or more certainly effective, than protracted anxiety and distress of mind.—Our passions and emotions also, nay, even some of our better impulses, when strained or perverted, tend to our physical destruction.—Principles and Practice of Physic, p. 59.

GEORGE MOOR E, M. D.—Our passions are the grand conservators as well as disturbers of the healthy action of our bodies. Indeed, they often act with no less power than the most heroic medicines, and are as rapid, and sometimes as fatal in their operation, as prussic acid, or any other deadly poison.—Power of the Soul over the Body, p. 224.

Heir of Trouble

Job 5:7.—Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

HOMER. —

But all, what is there of inferior birth

That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth;

What wretched creature, of what wretched kind,

Than man more weak, calamitous and blind?

A miserable race.—

Iliad, lib. xvii., v. 446.

MENANDER.—Thou art a man—reason enough for being miserable.—Stob., 98.

ANACREON.—What avails heart-rending care, Since mortal man is sorrow's heir.—Carmen, 41.

God's Works

Job 5:9.—Who doeth great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number!

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—HOW soon does man get to the extent of his faculties; and what vast oceans of knowledge lie now unexplored, as in the time of Newton? —On what points, outside of the small circle of the mathematical demonstrations, is Science certain? What is light? What is matter? What is galvanism? What is gravitation? What is attraction? What is heat? What is life? How many are the original elements of matter? In what proportions do they combine? and by what power are they held in combination? How many are the Worlds that roll above us? What is the duration of our globe? When and how was it formed and molded? And what exact changes has it undergone? Is there any one of these and numberless kindred points on which the views of scientific men are settled and certain? Is there any one on which there are not many and shadowy opinions?—Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century, p. 88, 89.

GOLDWIN SMITH.—The sum of Physical Science-compared with the comprehensible universe and with conceivable time, not to speak of infinity and eternity, it is the observation of a mere point, the experience of an instant.—Lectures on the Study of History, p. 86.

HERBERT SPENCER.—After no matter how great a progress in the colligation of facts, and the establishment of generalizations ever wider and wider-after the merging of limited and derivative truth's) in truths that are larger and deeper, has been carried on no matter how far; the fundamental truth remains as much beyond reach as ever. The explanation of that which is explicable, does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains behind.

Alike in the, external and the internal worlds, the man of science sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes of which he can discover neither the beginning nor the end. In all directions his investigations eventually bring him face to face with an insoluble enigma; and he evermore clearly perceives it to be an insoluble enigma.—First Principles, I., 3, § 21.

PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.—If you ask me whether Science has solved, or is likely to solve, the problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt. We have been talking of matter and force; but whence came matter, and whence came force? Who made all these starry orbs? -Science makes no attempt to answer. As far as I can see, there is no quality in the human intellect which is fit to be applied to the solution of the problem. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our inquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mysteries of this universe remain unsolved: and here the true philosopher will bow his head in humility, and admit that all he can do in this direction is no more than what is within the compass of an ordinary child.—Lecture to Working Men, at Dundee, 1867.

Job 5:10.—Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields,

PROF. J. R. COOKE.—From the whole surface of the globe water is constantly evaporating into the aqueous atmosphere which surrounds it. The heated air from the tropics, heavily charged with moisture, is continually moving towards the colder regions, both of the north and of the south; and as the current thus becomes, chilled, the vapor is slowly condensed, and the water showered down in fertilizing rains on the land. Thus it is that those beautiful provisions, which we see in the rain, all depend on the presence of the air, and result from a careful adjustment of the properties of aqueous vapor to the exact density of our atmosphere. "Hath the rain a father? " Science, by discovering these evidences of skilful adaptation, has most conclusively answered this question, and the answer is the same now as in the days of Job. " Behold, God is great.. He maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof." —Religion and Chemistry, p. 131.

Poisoned Arrows

Job 6:4.—For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit.

WM. ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—Here reference seems to be made to the custom of anointing arrows with the venom of a snake, a practice the origin of which is of very remote antiquity, (as appears from Homer and others.) The Soanes, a Caucasian race mentioned by Strabo, were especially skilled in the art. Pliny mentions a tribe of Arab pirates who infested the Red Sea, and were armed with poisoned arrows like the Malays of the coast of Borneo. For this purpose the berries of the yew-tree were employed. The Gauls used a poisonous herb; and the Scythians dipped their arrow points in vipers' venom mixed with human blood. These were so deadly that a slight scratch inflicted by them was fatal.-Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 2561.

Deceitful Friends

Job 6:15-20.—My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away, etc.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The phenomena of streams in this country aptly illustrate the character of false friends. In winter, when there is no need of them, they are full, and strong, and loud in their bustling professions and promises; but in the heat of summer, when they are wanted, they disappoint your hope. You think your fields will be irrigated, and yourself and your flocks refreshed by them, when lo! they deal deceitfully and pass away. Nearly all the streams of this country, "what time they wax warm," thus, vanish, go to nothing, and perish. Such were Job's friends. There is another illustration equally pertinent. You meet a clear, sparkling brook, and, so long as you follow it among the cool mountains, it holds cheerful converse with yet by its merry gambols over the rocks; but, as soon as you reach the plain, "where it is hot," it begins to dwindle, grow sad and discouraged, and finally fails altogether. Those which suggested the comparison of Job probably flower down from the high lands of Gilead and Bashan, and came to nothing in the neighboring desert; for it is added that " the troops of Teman looked, the companies of Sheba waited for them, and were confounded because they had hoped." It was in those high mountains only that Job would become familiar with the winter phenomena, where the streams are "blackish by reason of ice; " for not only are Lebanon and Hermon covered with snow in winter and the brooks there frozen, but the same is true also of the higher parts of tilt Hauran, and of the mountains to the south of it, where Job is supposed to have resided.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 231.

Watching the Shadow

Job 7:2.—As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as a hireling looketh for the reward of his work; etc.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—The people in the East measure time by the length of their shadow. Hence, if you ask a man what time it is, he immediately goes into the sunshine, stands erect, then locking where his shadow terminates, he measures the length with his feet, and tells you the time with tolerable exactness. Thus they 'earnestly desire the shadow, which indicates the time for leaving their work. A person wishing to leave his toil, often cries out, '` How long my shadow is coming." When asked, “Why did you not come sooner? " his answer is, " Because I waited for my shadow."—Orient. Illust., p. 261.

The Dead Return Not

Job 7:10.—He shall return no more to his house; neither shall his place know him any more. EGYPTIAN PAPYRUS.—NO man comes from thence who tells of their sayings, who tells of their affairs, who encourages our hearts. Ye go to the place whence they return not.—Festal Dirge; See Records of the Past, Vol. IV., p.

ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTIONS.—To the house men enter—but cannot depart from: to the road men go—but cannot return.—Legend of Ishtar; See Records of the Past, Vol. I., p. 143.

Man's Frailty and Corruption

Job 9:25, 26.—My days are swifter than a post; they flee away, they see no good. They are passed away as the swift ships; as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.

ANACREON.—

Ah, with what unwearied pace

The ceaseless wheel of life runs on!

Just like the chariot's rapid race,

How swift the course, how quickly run!

Yet thus, alas, our moments fly,

Thus pass our fleeting years away;

And soon shall we neglected lie,

A little dust, a lump of clay.

—Carmen, 4.

PLUTARCH.—All our life is but a moment of time.—De Lib. Ed., c. 17.

IDEM.—The whole course of man's life is as nothing.—De Ser. Num. vind., c. 9.

Job 9:30, 31.—If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch; and mine own clothes shall abhor me.

ÆSCHYLUS.—

Were all the mighty streams that wind

Their mazy progress to the main,

To cleanse this odious spot, in one combined,

The streams combined would flow in vain.

—Choeph., v. 7 G.

God Unsearchable

Job 11:7, 8.—Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty mitt perfection? It is as high as heaven; what cant thou do? deeper than hell; what cant thou know?

PHILEMON.—Believe in God and worship; but do not investigate, for you will then have nothing but investigation for your pains.—Philem. apud Stob.

CICERO. —If you should ask me what God is, or what his character and nature are, I should follow the example of Simonides, who, when Hiero, the tyrant, proposed the same question to him, desired a day to consider it. When he required his answer the next day, Simonides begged two days more; and as he kept constantly desiring double the number which he had required before, instead of giving his answer, Hiero with surprise asked him his meaning in doing so. ''Because," says he, "the longer I meditate on it the more obscure it appears to me."—De Nat. Deor., lib. i., cap. 22.

PROF. CHARLES HODGE, D. D., LL. D.—As the human mind is finite, and conceives by defining the limits of its thought, and as God is known to us to be infinite, it is evident that the human mind can never be capable of conceiving God adequately as he is, or of defining his being.—Syst. of Theol.

BISHOP R. WATSON, D. D., F. R. S.—What think you of an uncaused cause of everything? of a Being who has no relation to time, not being older to-day than he was yesterday, nor younger to-day than he will be to-morrow? who has no relation to space, not being a part here, and a part there, or a whole anywhere? What think you of an omniscient Being who cannot know the future actions of a man? Or, if his omniscience enables him to know them, what think you of the contingency of human actions? And if human actions are not contingent, what think you of the morality of actions, of the distinction between vice and virtue, crime and innocence, sin and duty? What think you of the infinite goodness of a Being who existed through eternity without any emanation of his goodness manifested in the creation of sensitive beings? Or, if you contend that there has been an eternal creation, what think you of an effect coeval with its cause, of matter not posterior to its Maker? What think you of the existence of evil, moral and natural, in the work of an Infinite Being, powerful, wise and good? What think you of the gift of freedom of will, when the abuse of freedom becomes the cause of general misery? I could propose to your consideration a great many other questions of a similar tendency.—Reply to Thomas Paine, Letter X.

Job 12:7-50.—But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? in whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

DR. JOHN MASON Goon, F. R. S., F. R. S. L.—Everything in nature—the beasts of the field, the fowls of heaven, every inhabitant of the earth and sea, and everything that befalls them, are the work of his hands; and everything feels and acknowledges Him to be the universal Creator and Controller. This is the common doctrine of all nature.—Note, In loco.

DR. WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, M. A. S.—God is the efficient cause alike for the simplest and most minute, and of the most complicated and most majestic phenomena of the universe.— General and Comparative Physiology, p. 1080.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, F. R. S.—The agency of the Divine Being pervades every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change.—IVth Bridg. Treat., p. 185.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. —We would no way be understood to deny the constant exercise of God's direct power in maintaining the system of nature, or the ultimate emanation, of every energy which material agents exert, from his immediate will, acting in conformity with his own laws.—Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 37.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.—The various portions of the world, organic and inorganic, can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living Agent, who being in all places, is more able by his will to move the bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of our own body.-Optics, in fine.

Man's Mortality

Job 14:7-10.—For there is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

PLUTARCH.—Pericles wishing to restrain his soldiers from an attack which seemed to him too hazardous, endeavored to bring them to reason by observing that trees when lopped will soon grow again, but when men are cut off, the loss cannot be repaired.—Pericles, c. 33.

MOSCHUS.—

Though fade crisp Anise and Parsley's green

And vivid Mallows, from the garden scene,

The balmy breath of spring their life renews,

And bids them flourish in their former hues:

But we, the great, the valiant, and the wise,

When once the seal of death bath closed our eyes,

Lost in the hollow tomb, obscure and deep,

Slumber, to wake no more, one long unbroken sleep.

—IDYL., iii., v. 106.

Human Depravity

Job 15:14 What is man that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?

XENOPHON— cannot see any mortal alive who goeth through life without committing some offense.—Hist. Grœc., 1. vi., c. 3.

PLATO —I am led to wonder whether there are any men really good; and if there are, what can be the manner of producing good men?—Meno., c. 37.

Job 15:20, 21.—The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days... A dreadful sound is in his ears.

PLATO.—Socrates And is not he who does ill miserable?

Alcibiades. Yes, very.—Alcib, i., c: 29.

ISOCRATES.—Never imagine that you can conceal a bad action, for though you hide it from others, your conscience will remind you of it.—Orat., i.

Job 15:33.—He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast off his flower as the olive.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The olive is the most prodigal of all fruit-bearing trees in flowers. It literally bends under the load of them. But then not one in a hundred comes to maturity. The tree casts them off by millions, as if they were of no more value than flakes of snow, which they closely resemble. So it will be with those who put their trust in vanity. Cast off, they melt away, and no one takes the trouble to ask after such empty useless things.—The Land' and the Book, i., 72.

The Counsel of One at Ease

Job 16:4.—I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.

TERENCE.—

How readily do men at ease prescribe

To those who're sick at heart! distressed like me,

You would not talk thus.

—Andr., Act II., sc. 1.

Inscriptions in Rock and Lead

Job 19:23, 24.—Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!

DR. JOHN KITTO.—All our existing information points to stone, as the substance on which the art of writing was first employed; and men continued to engrave important documents on stone in times long subsequent to that in which writing was made subservient to the intercourse of life and the service of literature. Ancient inscriptions on the surface of perpendicular rocks are still found in different parts of Asia, many of them of such early date, that the knowledge of the characters in which they were written is lost.—Pict. Bib., Vol. I., p. 272.

M. GOGUET.—There was nothing in all antiquity more famous than the columns erected by Osiris, Bacchus, Sesostris, and Hercules, to perpetuate the remembrance of their respective expeditions. Still more renowned were the pillars or tables of stone on which Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, is said to have written his theology and the history of the first ages. In Crete there existed very ancient columns, charged with inscriptions detailing the ceremonies practiced in the sacrifices of the Corybantes. In the time of Demosthenes (B. C. 350) there still existed at Athens a law of Theseus inscribed on a stone pillar.— Origine des Lois, Vol. I., p. 204.

IBN MOKRI.—The inhabitants of southern Arabia were accustomed, in' the remotest ages, to inscribe laws and wise sayings on tables and pillars of stone: And, " more durable than what is engraven on stone," became at length a common proverb among them.—Burder's Oriental Literature, Vol. I., p. 198.

W. ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—Job seems to allude to the ancient practice of carving inscriptions upon stone, and pouring molten lead into the cavities of the letters, to Tender them legible, and at the same time preserve them from the action of the air. Frequent references to the use of leaden tablets for inscriptions are found in ancient writers. Pausanias saw Hesiod's “Works and Days” graven on lead, but almost illegible with age. Public proclamations, according to Pliny, were written on lead; and the name of Germanicus was carved on leaden tablets. Eutychius relates that the history of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus was engraved on lead by the Cadi.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1619.

Man Cannot Profit God

Job 22:2, 3.—Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous? or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect?

PLATO.—Tell me what advantage the gods derive from the gifts which they receive from us? The advantage arising from what they give is clear to every one; for we have no good at all which they do not impart. But how are they benefited by what they receive from us?—Euthyph., c. 18.

Height of the Stars

Job 22:12.—Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!

DR. JOHN HENRY KURTZ.—The human mind is filled with wonder in contemplating the grand scale on which magnitude, motion, and distance are displayed even in the planetary heavens. Jupiter lies at the distance of 495,000,000 miles, Saturn at 906,000,000 miles, Uranus 1822,000,000 miles, and Neptune at 3000,000,000 miles... But mounting up to higher spheres... Struve chose for observation the brilliant star Vega, and found its distance to be no less than 75,000,000,000,000 of miles. Bessel calculated the star 61 Cygni to lie at the distance of 56, 000,000,000,000 of miles. And Peters has estimated the distance of the Pole star to be more than 280,000,000,000,000 of miles—a distance which light cannot traverse in less than forty-three years. And Midler has computed that it would require 2,934 years for light to pass from the nearest point in the Milky Way to the earth, and from its most distant point no less than 3,836 years!—The Bible and Astronomy, chap. v., § 2, 6.

House-Breaking

Job 24:16.—In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime.

ARISTOPHANES. —Some wall-digger has crept into the house. —Plut., v. 204.

MENANDER.—You dig through your neighbor's walls. —Apud. Eurip.

STRABO.—Autolycus, who lived on Parnassus, was in the habit of digging through the houses of his neighbors, which is the common practice of every house-breaker.—Strab., 1. ix., c. 5.

The Earth's Position

Job 26:7, 8.—He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—Sir Isaac Newton could not have more succinctly stated the position of the earth, nor could any of our meteorologists give fitter outline of our cloud system than this and similar descriptions given in this book. —Blending Lights, p. 80.

Treasures of the Earth

Job 28:1-12.—Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone. He setteth, etc.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S., etc.—This passage brings before is the repositories of the valuable metals and gems, and the wonderful structure of the earth itself; green and productive at the surface, rich in precious minerals beneath, and deeper still the abode of intense subterranean fires... How true is all this! A poet of to-day could scarcely say more of subterranean wonders or say it more truthfully and beautifully; nor could he arrive at a conclusion most pregnant with the highest philosophy than the closing words:

The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;

And to depart from evil is understanding.

—Nature and the Bible, p. 103

The Wind and Rain and Lightning

Job 28:24-26.—For he looked' to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, and searched it out.

THE COMPILER. —In these verses, modern investigations are, to a remarkable degree, anticipated by the pen of Inspiration. Here are clearly recognized the grand principles upon which are built our whole science of Meteorology: 1. The pressure of the "wind" or atmosphere. 2. The "weight and measure" of water. 3. The "decree," or law, according to which rain is formed and distributed. 4. The “way" followed by the currents of the lightning of thunder.

The weight for the winds.—People, in general, are not aware, because they are not conscious, of any weight resting upon them from the atmosphere, yet reliable experiments prove that at the sea-level it presses with a force equal to 41.3/5 pounds on every square inch, or 2,100 pounds on every square foot, or more than 29,060,000 of tons on every square mile; or, on the whole surface of the earth, with a weight equal to that of a solid globe of lead 60 miles in diameter. —See my work entitled Work Days of God, p. 208.

He weigheth the waters by measure.-Water, in its natural state, is 800 times heavier than atmosphere.—Ibid., p. 222.

He made a decree for the rain.—Exact and beautiful, indeed, is the "decree," or law, according to which rain is formed and distributed over the face of the earth. That such a weighty element as water should rise and float in thin air, but for our experience, would appear to us as unlikely and impossible as that the gravel at the bottom of a lake should rise and swim on its surface. Yet God contrived a method, “yea, He searched it out and prepared it," by which this is effected with infinite ease every day. In what way, then, does water climb into the firmament, and float at the rarefied altitudes of three or four miles, and even six miles, where cloudlets are sometimes seen? The atmosphere is so constituted as to be capable of absorbing moisture and retaining it in an invisible state; the warmer the air, the greater is its capacity for this. The air in a room measuring sixty feet each way, and at a temperature of 68° Fhr., is capable of taking up and holding no less than 25.2 pounds of water. Now, by the action of heat, water is converted into steam or vapor; and in this state, it occupies a space 1,600 times greater than in its liquid state, and is, therefore, much lighter than the atmosphere: consequently it readily floats and ascends into its higher regions. In this way vast quantities of water, in the form of invisible vapor, are continually ascending from sea and land, and even from the regions of perpetual ice and snow. This vapor having reached the higher and cooler altitudes of the firmament, gradually condenses into visible clouds, which are sometimes thousands of feet in thickness, and tens of thousands of acres in extent, and suspend in their dark folds immense quantities of water, ever ready to return to the earth from whence it arose.— Ibid., p. 223.

And now let us look at the working of the divine “decree " in releasing and bringing down this water from the clouds. As water is converted into vapor by heat, so by the loss of heat vapor is reconverted into water. Hence, when a cloud of vapor, either by entering a chillier stratum of air, or by coming in contact with colder currents, loses any portion of its former heat, a corresponding proportion of its aqueous contents is condensed into what may be called water-dust. And these dust-like particles, by coming into contact, unite; and these again, in a similar manner, coalesce with others still, till visible globules or drops are forMed. And all this process is conducted with the exactness of “weight” and " measure." A cloud, for example, floats in a current of air of 80° temperature; if that current loses 9° of its heat, the cloud must cast overboard, in the form of a shower, one-quarter of its load; and if it loses 21° of its heat, then it must part with one-half its tonnage. Thus as the heat gradually decreases, the condensation of the vapor gradually increases, forming, as just stated, the drops and the showers which refresh and renew the face of the earth. —Ibid., p. 224.

And he made a way for the lightning of the thunder.-The subtle and mysterious element of Electricity may be generated and collected by artificial means; for example, by rubbing a revolving plate of glass with a piece of silk. After a manner similar to this Nature herself is constantly carrying on the same process on a grand scAle. The currents of air are ever generating electricity as they sweep or rub over the surface of the globe; and the fluid thus evolved passes partly into the earth and partly into the atmosphere. When very dry, the portion passing into the air may accumulate in excess. And it is pleasing to contemplate the "way" provided, the provisions made to prevent danger and destruction from an undue accumulation of electricity in the atmosphere. The Creator has so constituted every tree, every bush, and every blade of grass, as to be a conductor of electricity from the atmosphere into the earth. A leaf pointed with nature's exquisite workmanship is three times as effectual as the finest needle; and a single living twig far more efficient than the metallic points of the best constructed rod. What then must be the agency of an extended forest in disarming the thunder-storm of its power for destruction? The raindrops and the snow-flakes also have been made good conductors; so that during the storms a bridge for the lightning is thrown across from the clouds to the earth. Hence we see with what care Providence has guarded us by making "a way" for this destructive element to pass harmlessly into the bowels of the globe under our feet.—It occasionally occurs, however, that electricity is developed more rapidly than it can be dissipated through all these channels; the atmosphere becomes surcharged with it; but even this excess is a specific arrangement to turn it another " way" to accomplish important ends. Fierce flashes now dart from cloud to cloud, or from cloud to the ground below; and it is when the volleys of these bursting clouds cleave the firmament, and the thunders of the discharge are pealing their dreadful notes above our heads, that the chemical combinations of the noxious exhalations arising from decaying animal and vegetable substances are effected, and the elements, fitted for the purposes of animal health and vegetable growth, are formed and brought to the ground in the heavy rains which usually attend these storms. It is by these convulsions that the atmosphere regains its balance, and renews its salubrity. Thus Science unites with Revelation in teaching us, that our Father in heaven is no less loving and kind in launching forth the " winged bolt," than in sending down the gentle sunbeam.—Such are some of the "ways" which the Great God " has made for the lightning of the thunder."—Bid., p. 239.

Job in His Prosperity

Job 29:6.—When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—These are figurative expressions, constantly employed in the East, to denote great prosperity. “The man is so rich, he washes himself with ney; “i. e., “clarified butter." “O the charitable man! milk and honey accompany his feet."—Oriental Illustrations, p. 293.

PLINY. —We have known the very soles even of their feet to be sprinkled with perfumes. —Hist. Nat., 1. xiii., c. 4.

PLAUTUS.—In the houses of the nobles are balsam-shoemakers, or makers of unguents for the feet. —Aulul., Act III., sc. to.

Job 29:7-9.—When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street, the young men saw me, and hid themselves; and the aged arose and stood up; the princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—What a graphic scene is this! When a man of rank passes a crowd, the young people and children conceal themselves behind their seniors, and the aged always arise from their seats. See the respectable man in a court of justice, who is listening to the address of the judge: his hand is placed on his mouth. Oriental Illustrations, p. 293.

Job 29:15.—I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—The man who bestows great charities is said to be “the eyes of the blind," and " the feet of the cripples." “True, my lord, I am blind; but you are my eyes." “O king, are you not my staff! "—Oriental Illustrations, 294.

PLUTARCH. —Soon after Cyrus expired, an officer, who was called "the king's eye," passed that way. —Artax., c. 52.

Job 29:23.—And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—" The former rain " rarely failed; but " the latter rain " was more uncertain, and has ever been looked for with anxiety by the inhabitants of the country, for on its copiousness depend the hopes of the harvest, since it falls at the time when the corn is just pushing into ear, and without it the crop is either deficient or fails altogether: "They waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain." —Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p.

Job's Uprightness

Job 31:13, 14.—If I despised the cause of my man-servant, or of my maid-servant, when they contended with me, what then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?

EPICTETUS.—If you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set up yourself for a tyrant? Will you not remember what you are, and over whom you bear rule? That they are by nature your relations, your brothers; that they are the offspring of God?—Epict., 1. i., c. 13.

HESIOD.—

The man of sin is he confessed,

Who spurns the suppliant and who wrongs he guest.

—Op. et Dies, V. 325.

Job 31:15.—Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the wombs?

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.—We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Job 31:26-28.—If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity.

PROF. CHARLES ROLLIN, M. R. A. I.—The most ancient and general idolatry in the world was that wherein the sun and moon were the objects of divine worship. In all ages mankind have been sensibly convinced of the necessity of an intercourse between God and man: and adoration supposes God to be both attentive to man's desires and capable of fulfilling them. But the distance of the sun and the moon is an obstacle to this intercourse. Therefore foolish men endeavored to remedy this inconvenience, by laying their hands upon their mouths, and then lifting them up to those false gods, in order to testify that they would be glad to unite themselves to them, but that they could not. This was that impious custom so prevalent throughout all the East, from which Job esteemed himself happy to have been preserved.— Ancient History, Vol. I., p. 160. (Harper's Ed.)

PLINY.—When paying adoration we kiss the right hand.—Hist. Nat., 1. 28, c. 5.

LUCIAN.—A poor man perhaps comes off for a hand-kiss to the god.—De Sacrif., c. 12.

IDEM.—Seeing him put his hand to his mouth, I concluded that he was praying.—Demosth., Encom., c. 49.

The Reasoning Soul of Man

Job 32:8.—There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.

ST. GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S.—The soul of man was created in a very different way from his body—not by any pre-existing means, external to God himself-but by the direct action of the Almighty, symbolized by the term "breathing:" the very form adopted by Christ, when conferring the supernatural powers and graces of the Christian Dispensation. Genesis of Species, p. 300.

M. LOUIS FIGUIER.—Intelligence and speech, these are really the attributes which constitute man; these are the qualities which make him the most complete being in creation, and the most privileged of God's creatures.—L' Homme Primitif, p. 30.

REV. JOSEPH P. THOMSON, D. D., LL. D.—Man has been defined as " an Intelligence served by organs; " and his reasoning intelligence is a characteristic that separates him from the brute creation by a chasm that they can never cross. Whence then came this intelligence? What shall we say of this MIND of man? its power of reasoning, which grasps the facts of the external world, and the truths of the inner world of consciousness, and weaves them into consecutive chains of ideas, and builds up fabrics of thought that will stand though the physical universe shall fall? What shall we say of this mind that, from a few arbitrary characters and a few articulate sounds, constructs a language that expresses thought, that stirs emotion, that kindles passions or allays them—language that makes the printed page glow with the fire and beauty of poetry, that makes the air pulsate with the throbs of eloquence? this mind that from a few arbitrary figures, that you may count upon your fingers, constructs the abstract science of mathematics, by which it weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance; by which it measures the velocity of light, and the distances and magnitudes of the stars? this mind of man that with unfaltering confidence, determines by mathematical law that the equilibrium of our solar system demands the existence of another planet yet unseen, then points the telescope and finds it where it ought to be? this 'mind that takes the wings of the morning and out-travels light; that flies backward to the beginning and forward to the unknown; that counts all time and space its home, and dares look forth upon the Infinite? From a few letters of the alphabet Homer made a poem whose rhythm still beats upon the shores of Time, while the sea washes a desolate beach Where Troy once stood; Plato gave shape to thoughts that live, while Athens is falling to decay; the creations of mind survive, though temples and pyramids perish; and though the heavens should pass away, and the stars be seen no more, the System of mathematical order and beauty, that Newton formed from a few abstract lines and numbers, would remain for the admiring contemplation of the mind, overarching it with a firmament of its own. This mind of man, with its powers of reason, imagination, memory, will,—with its hopes and fears, joys and loves,—this mind that knows itself, and that dominates all matter and all life without itself, can it be less than the immediate offspring of God? or any other than the inspiration of the Almighty?—Man in Genesis and Geology, p. 68-70.

Dreams

Job 33:15-18—In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth; the, ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He-keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—To decry all dreams, or visions of the night, because there are many vain dreams, would be nearly as much wisdom as to deny the Bible, because there are many foolish books.... Many warnings in this way have come from God: and the impression they made and the good effect produced were the proofs of their Divine origin. To deny this would be to call into doubt the testimony of the best, wisest, and holiest men in all ages of the church..... By taking the warning thus given, some have been prevented from perishing by the fit, some sudden accident; and others from the sword of the assassin, or nocturnal murderer. It would be easy to give examples, numerous examples in all these kinds.—Note, In loco.

DR. ABERCROMBIE.—A Scotch lady dreamed that a company of young people had made arrangements to go out sailing on the Frith of Forth, that her nephew had engaged to accompany them, and that they went out and were all drowned. Impressed by her dream, in the morning she sent for her nephew, and with great difficulty prevailed on him to give up the engagement. All the rest went out, and were all drowned just according to the dream. This occurrence, however it is to be accounted for, is authentic and reliable.—Intellectual Philosophy.

REV. HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D.—Captain Yount, of California, in a midwinter's night, had a dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what appeared to be tree-tops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he distinguished the very features of the persons, and the look of their particular distress. He woke, profoundly impressed with the distinctness and apparent reality of his dream. At length he fell asleep and dreamed exactly the same dream again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in, shortly, with an old hunter comrade, he told him the story, and was only the more deeply impressed by his recognizing, without hesitation, the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra by the Carson Valley Pass (in California), and declared that a spot in the Pass answered exactly to his description. By this the unsophisticated patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company of men with mules and blankets, and all necessary provisions. The neighbors were laughing, meantime, at his credulity. “No matter," said he, " I am able to do this, and I will; for I verily believe that the fact is according to my dream." The men were sent into the mountains 150 miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass; and there they found the company in exactly the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive. A gentleman present, when the Captain told me, said: “You need not doubt this, for we Californians all know the facts, and the names of the families brought in, who look upon our venerable friend as a kind, of savior." Their names he gave, and the places where they resided; and I found, afterward, that the California people were ready everywhere to second his testimony.—The Natural and Supernatural.

PROF. THOMAS UPHAM.—Benjamin Franklin has made the remark, that the bearings and results of political events, which had caused him much trouble while awake, were not infrequently unfolded to him in dreaming.—Mental Philos., p. 108 (abridgment).

Man's Superiority

Job 25:11.—God teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven.

PROF. THOMAS HUXLEY.—A great gulf intervenes between the lowest man and the highest ape in intellectual power.—Man's Place in Nature, p. 120.

IDEM.—The immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the Human from the Simian Stirps.—.Man' s Place in Nature, p. 122.

IDEM.—No one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes.—Man's Place in Nature, p. 129

CHARLES DARWIN, M. A., F. R. S.—No doubt the difference in respect to man's mental power is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections, with that of the most highly organized ape.—Descent of Man, Vol. I., p. 33.

Formation of Rain

Job 36:27, 28.—For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof: which the clouds do drop and distil upon man abundantly.

THE COMPILER.—As water is converted into vapor by heat, so by the loss of heat vapor is reconverted into water. Hence when a cloud of vapor, either by entering a chillier stratum of air, or by coming in contact with colder currents, loses any portion of its former heat, a corresponding proportion of its aqueous contents is condensed into what may be called water dust. And these dust-like particles, by coming in contact, unite; and these again in a similar manner coalesce with others still, till visible globules or drops are forMed. And all this process is conducted with the exactness of number, weight and measure. A cloud, for example, floats in a current of air of 80° temperature; if that current loses 9° of its heat, the cloud must cast overboard, in the form of a shower, one-quarter of its load; and if it loses 21° of its heat, then it must part with one-half its tonnage. Thus, as the heat gradually decreases, the condensation of the vapor gradually increases, forming, as just stated, the drops and the showers, which refresh and renew the face of the earth.

And how admirable the way in which the clouds of vapor discharge their contents, viz., in soft and gentle showers. If, instead of this, they poured out their prodigious contents at once, in streams and floods, the consequences, frequently, would be destructive and lamentable in the extreme, as is evident from instances of this kind, which, at distant intervals, have taken place. Vegetation would be destroyed, crops would be beaten into the ground, the trees stripped of their leaves and fruits, the fields plowed into trenches, and the soil washed away, the streams suddenly swelled into impetuous and destructive torrents; so that presently every gathering or passing cloud would become, like an avalanche, an object of terror to all who beheld it. Viewed in contrast with all this, how beautiful, how beneficent is the existing arrangement! Instead of descending like this, in ruinous cascades, we see the water trickling down in gentle and fertilizing drops, as if the nether side of the clouds were finely perforated into a sieve, and these drops alighting upon the earth, without bruising a flower, or destroying a blade of grass. Softly the work begins, and softly it is carried on as the cloudy cisterns sail slowly over field and forest, hill and dale, leaving no district unvisited, no spot un-watered. Who that intelligently contemplates all this, but must be rapt into admiration and gratitude, in view of the designing wisdom and diffusive goodness of God, as seen in every passing shower! How true to Nature, and to Nature's God and Governor are the words of Scripture, " He maketh small the drops of water; they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof: which the cloud do drop and distil upon man abundantly.—"See Work Days of God, p. 225, 226.

Universal Agency of God

Job 37:2-24.—Hear attentively the noise of his voice, and the sound that goeth out of his mouth. He directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of the earth: etc.

THE COMPILER.—The various meteoric phenomena so graphically described in this chapter—the spread of lightning, the roar of thunder, the fall of rain, the formation of snow, the breath of frost, the progress of whirlwinds, the balancing of the clouds, the cold of the North, and the heat of the South-these phenomena which human science regards as simply the workings of the "Laws of Nature," are here ascribed immediately to GOD HIMSELF; He is represented as the DOER of all that takes place under the whole heaven. And this is true-the scriptural representation is absolutely correct. The laws of nature do nothing, and can do nothing. Laws are not agents, but rules for agents. Power, all power resides in the Divine Law-Giver. His active omnipotence, each moment, floods all Nature. The whole order and activity of the universe are simply the effects of His infinite power and wisdom. See this subject amply illustrated in my work, entitled Present Conflict of Science with the Christian Religion, p.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A., F. R. S.—Wherever the laws of material nature appear, we have a manifestation of the Intelligence by which they were established. But a law supposes an agent, and a power; for it is the mode according to which the agent proceeds, the order according to which the power acts. Without the presence of such an agent, of such a power, conscious of the relations on which the law depends, producing the effects which the law prescribes, the law can have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we infer that the Intelligence by which the law is ordained, the Power by which it is put in action, must be present at all times and in all places where the effects of the law occur; and thus the knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change. The laws of nature are the laws which He, in his wisdom, prescribes to his own acts; his universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events, his universal agency the only origin of any efficient force.—Astronomy and Physics, Book III., c. 8.

DR. WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, M. B. A.—All our science is but an investigation of the mode in which the Creator acts; its highest laws are but expressions of the mode in which He manifests his agency to us. He is the efficient cause alike for the simplest and most minute, and of the most complicated and most majestic phenomena of the universe.—General and Comparative Physiology, p. 1080.

Antiquity of the Earth, and Recency of Man

Job 38:4-7.—Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner-stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

PRESIDENT JOHN HARRIS, D. D.—Turning to the inspired record to ascertain the origin of things as they now are, we learn, of our earth, that it assumed its present state a few thousand years ago, in consequence of a creative process, or of a series of creative acts concluding with the creation of man. Possessed of this fact respecting the date of man's introduction on the earth, we proceed to examine the globe itself. And here we find that the mere shell of the earth takes us back through an unknown series of ages, in which creation appears to have followed creation at the distance of vast intervals between. By means of these the geologist can demonstrate that the crust of the earth has a natural history. Let us descend with him, and traverse an ideal section of a portion of the earth's crust. Quitting the living surface of the green earth, and entering on our downward path, our first step may take us below the dust of Adam, and beyond the limits of recorded time. From the moment we leave the surface-soil, and touch even the nearest of the Tertiary beds, all traces of human remains disappear, so that let our grave be as shallow as it may in even the latest stratified bed, we have to make it in the dust of a departed world. Formation now follows formation, composed chiefly of sand, and clay, and lime, and presenting a thickness of more than a thousand feet each. As we descend through these, one of the most sublime fictions of mythology becomes sober truth, for at our every step an age flies past. We find ourselves on a road where the lapse of duration is marked—not by the succession of seasons and years,—but by the slow excavation, by water, of deep valleys in rock marble; by the return of a continent to the bosom of an ocean in which ages before it had been slowly formed; or by the departure of one world and the formation of another.

Advancing into the Secondary Rocks, we enter upon a new series of worlds.

Taking the chalk formation as tile first member of this series, we find a stratification upwards of a thousand feet thick. Who shall compute the tracts of time necessary for its slow sedimentary deposition! So vast was it, and so widely different were its physical conditions from those which followed, that scarcely a trace of animal species still living is to be found in it. Types of organic life, before unknown, arrest our attention, and prepare us for still more surprising forms. Descending into the-system next in order—the politic—with its many subdivisions, and its thickness of about half a mile, we recognize new proofs of the dateless antiquity of the earth. For, enormous as this bed is, it was obviously formed by the deposition from sea and river water. And so gradual and tranquil was the operation, that, in some places, the organic remains of the successive strata are arranged with a shelf-like regularity, reminding us of the well-ordered cabinet of the naturalist. Here, too, the last trace of animal species still living has vanished. Even this link is gone. We have reached a point when the earth was in the possession of the gigantic forms of Saurian Reptiles,—monsters more appalling than the poet's fancy ever feigned; and these are their catacombs. Descending through the later Red Sandstone, and saliferous marls of two thousand feet in thickness, and which exhibit, in their very variegated strata, a succession of numerous physical changes, our subterranean path brings us to the Carboniferous System, or coal formations. These coal strata, many thousands of feet thick, consist entirely of the spoils of successive ancient vegetable worlds. But in the rank jungles and luxuriant wildernesses which are here accumulated and compressed, we recognize no plant of any existing species. Nor is there a single convincing indication that these primeval forests ever echoed to the voice of birds. But between these strata, beds of limestone of enormous thickness are interposed; each proclaiming the prolonged existence and final extinction of a creation. For these limestone beds are not so much the charnel-houses of fossil organisms as the remains of the organisms themselves.

These mountain masses of stone which now surround us, extending for miles in length and breadth, were once sentient existences—testaceous and coraline,—living at the bottom of ancient seas and lakes. How countless the ages necessary for their accumulation; when the formation of only a few inches of the strata required the life and death of many generations. Here, the mind is not only carried back through immeasurable periods, but while standing amidst the petrified remains of this succession of primeval forests and extinct races of animals piled up into sepulchral mountains, we seem to be encompassed by the thickest shadow of the valley of death.

On quitting these stupendous monuments of death, we leave behind us the last vestige of land-plants, and pass down to the Old Red Sandstone. Here, too, we have passed below the last trace of reptile life. The speaking foot-prints impressed on the carboniferous strata are absent 'here. The geological character of this vast formation, again, tells of ages innumerable. For, though many a thousand feet in depth, it is obviously derived from the materials of more ancient rocks, fractured, decomposed, and slowly deposited in water. The gradual and quiet nature of the process, and therefore its immense duration, are evident from the numerous "platforms of death," which mark this formation, and crowded with organic structures which lived and died where they now are seen.

Immeasurably far behind us as we have already left the fair face of the extant creation, while traveling into the night of ancient time, we yet feel, as we stand on the threshold of the next, or Silurian System, and look down towards " the foundations of the earth," that we are not half way on our course. Here, on surveying the fossil structures, we are first struck with the total change in the petrified inhabitants of the sea, as compared with what we found in the mountain limestone; implying the lapse of long periods of time, during the formation of the intervening Old Red Sandstone which we have just left. But still more are we impressed with the lapse of duration, while descending the long succession of strata, of which this Primary fossiliferous formation is composed, when we think of their slow derivation from the more ancient rocks; of their oft repeated elevation and depression; of the long periods of repose, during which hundreds of animal species ran through the cycle of their generations, and became extinct; and of the continuance of this stratifying process, until these thin beds had acquired, by union, the immense thickness of a mile and a half. Net below this, we reach the Cambrian System, of almost equal thickness and formed by the same slow process. Here the gradual decrease of animal remains admonishes us that even the vast and dreary empire of death has its limits, and that we are now in its outskirts. But there is a solitude greater than that of the boundless desert, and a dreariness more impressive than that which reigns in a world entombed. On leaving the slate-rocks of the Cambrian and Cumbrian formations, we find that the worlds of organic remains are past, and that we have reached a region older than death, because older than life itself. Here, at least, if life ever existed, all trace of it is obliterated by the fusing power of the heat below. But we have not even yet reached a resting-place. Passing down through the beds of mica schist, many thousand feet in depth, to the great gneiss formation, we find that we have reached the limits of stratification itself. The granitic masses below, of a depth which man can never explore, are not only crystallized themselves, but the igneous power acting through them, has partially crystallized the rocks above. Not only life, but the conditions of life, are here at an end.

Now, looking from our ideal position, backwards and upwards to the ten miles height of stratifications from which we have descended, who but must feel that we have reached a point of immeasurable remoteness in terrestrial antiquity! Who but must exclaim, "How dreadful is this place!" And yet this, even this is not the beginning—that lies still far back in the dark abyss of unmarked and unmeasured departed time I (From such a standpoint as this, how unutterably impressive the demand of the Almighty, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare if thou halt understanding. Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened; or who laid the corner-stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?")—Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 66-71.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A.—The scale of man's insignificance is of the same order in reference to time, as to space. There is nothing which at all goes beyond the magnitude which observation and reasoning suggest for geological periods, in supposing that the Tertiary strata occupied, in their deposition and elevation, a period as much greater than the period of human history, as the solar system is larger than the earth:—that the Secondary strata were as much longer than these in their formation as the nearest fixed star is more distant than the sun:—that the still earlier masses, call them Primary, or Protozoic, or what we will, did, in their production, extend through a period of time as vast, compared with the Secondary period, as the most distant nebula is remoter than the nearest star. If the earth, as the habitation of man, is a speck in the midst of infinite space, the earth, as the habitation of man, is also a speck at the end of an infinity of time. If we are as nothing in the surrounding universe, we are as nothing in the elapsed eternity; or rather, in the elapsed organic antiquity, during which the earth has existed and been the abode of life. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"—Plurality of Worlds, p. 122.

Job 38:5.—Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

THE COMPILER.—The globe of the earth is not the product of chance, but of power guided by unerring intelligence. It may be said with literal truth that its dimensions were laid out by scale, its materials weighed in a balance, and its distances measured by a line. Its oblate sphericity, its parallel zones, its great circles and its small, have been described according to the principles of strict geometry. The ratio of its polar to its equatorial diameter was so fixed as to ensure for it, what was an absolute necessity, namely, an axial rotation perfectly smooth and undeviating. Its mass and its magnitude were so estimated and determined as to adapt the force of its gravitation to the structure of the vegetation and to the strength of the living creatures that should occupy its surface. The angle of its axis with the plane of its orbit, and the speed of its rotation upon that axis, were so measured as to produce the pleasing alternation of day and night, and all the wonderful variations of the seasons. Its distance from the sun w so calculated, and the orbit it should pursue around him so described, that it should not be exposed to destructive cold on the one hand, nor to consuming heat on the other. These and a hundred other applications of the principles of mathematics, and of the laws of gravitation and motion, light and heat, were made in the construction' of our world, ages and eons untold, ere the first of human kind had been quickened into consciousness. So that the Almighty's demand of Job was a question based upon actual fact: “Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? "—See Work Days of God, p. 408-410.

Bounds of the Sea

Job 38:9-11.—When I brake up for the sea my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?

PROF. ARNOLD GUYOT. —The forms, the arrangement, and the distribution, of the terrestrial masses on the surface of the globe, accidental in appearance, yet reveal a plan. The continents are made for human societies, as the body is made for the soul. The Supreme Intelligence and Goodness has arranged all for the great purpose of the education of man, and the realization of the plans of mercy for his sake.—Earth and Man, p. 34.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A.—One of the quantities which enters into the constitution of the terrestrial system of things is the bulk of the waters of the ocean. The, sources which water the earth, both clouds, rains, and rivers, are mainly fed by the aqueous vapor raised from the sea; and therefore if the sea were much diminished, and the land increased, the mean quantity of moisture distributed upon the land must be diminished, and the character of climates, as to wet and dry, must be materially affected. Similar but opposite changes would result from the increase of the surface of the ocean. It appears, then, that the magnitude of the ocean is one of the conditions to which the structure of all organized beings which are dependent upon climate must be adapted.—Astronomy and General Physics, p. 38.

Light and Darkness

Job 38:19.—Where is the way where light dwelleth and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?

ROBERT HUNT.—Newton's theory of light was—that luminous particles dart from the surfaces of bodies in all directions—Huyghens, on the contrary, supposes light to be caused by the waves or vibrations of an elastic medium diffused through all space, which waves are propagated in every direction from the luminous body. In the one case, a luminous particle is supposed actually to come from the sun to the earth; in the other, the sun only occasions a disturbance of the ether, which extends with great rapidity, in the same manner as a wave spreads itself over the surface of a lake.... But what is light?.... We know much of the mysterious influences of this great agent, but we know nothing of the principle itself. The solar beam has been tortured through prismatic glasses and natural crystals. Every chemical agent has been tried upon it, every electrical force in the most excited state brought to bear upon its operations, with a view to the discovery of the most refined of ethereal agencies; but it has passed through every trial without revealing its secrets, and even the effects which it produces in its path are unexplained problems still, to tax the intellect of man.... Science, with her Ithuriel wand, has, however, shown that light is itself an effect of a yet more exalted cause, which we can only refer to the Source of every good and every perfect gift.—Poetry of Science, p. 94, 124, 125.

The Snow

Job 38:22.—Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?

CAPTAIN SCORESBY, R. N.—The extreme beauty and endless variety of the microscopic objects perceived in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, are perhaps fully equaled if not surpassed, in both particulars of beauty and variety, by the crystals of snow. The principal configurations are the stelliform and hexagonal; though almost every variety of shape of which the generating angle of 60° and 120° are susceptible, may, in the course of a few years' observation, be discovered. Some of the general varieties in the figures of the crystals may be referred to the temperature of the air; but the particular and endless modification of similar classes of crystals can only be referred to the will and pleasure of the First Great Cause, whose works, even the most minute and evanescent, and in regions the most remote from human observation, are altogether admirable.—In Pict. Bible.

Pleiades and Orion

Job 38:31.—Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?

HOMER.—The Pleiads, Hyads, with the northern team, And great Orion's more refulgent beam.— Iliad, lxviii., v. 486.

ARATUS. —

The Pleiads next are roll'd,

Like seven pure brilliants set in ring of gold;

Though each one small, their splendor all combine

To form one gem, and gloriously they shine..

Their number seven, though some men fondly say,

And poets feign, that one has pass'd away.

—Phenom., v. 254.

THOMAS DICK, LL. D.—The constellation of Orion forms one of the most striking and beautiful clusters of stars in the heavens, and is generally recognized even by common observers. It is distinguished by four brilliant stars in the form of an oblong, or parallelogram; and particularly by three bright stars in a straight line near the middle of the square or parallelogram, which are termed the Belt of Orion, and in the book of Job the "Bands of Orion." The line passing through these three stars points to the Pleiades. This cluster was described by the ancients as consisting of seven stars, but at present only six can be distinguished by the naked eye.—Sidereal Heavens, p. 18.

REV. HUGH MACMILLAN. —Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades? If we examine this text in the original, we find that the Chaldaic word translated in our version “Pleiades " is Chimah, meaning literally a Hinge, or Pivot. Now, strange to say, M. Mädler, of Dorpat, by a series of elaborate observations and most ingenious calculations, has found that Alcyone, the brightest star of the Pleiades, is the center of gravity to our vast Solar System—the luminous HINGE in the heavens round which our sun and his attendant planets are moving through space. The very complexity and isolation of the system of the Pleiades, exhibiting seven distinct orbs closely compressed to the naked eye, but nine or ten times, that number when seen through a telescope—forming a grand cluster, whose individuals are united to each other more closely than the general mass of stars—indicate the amazing attractive energy that must be concentrated in that spot. Vast as is the distance which separates our sun from this central group—a distance thirty-four millions of times greater than the distance between the sun and our earth—yet so tremendous is the force exerted by Alcyone, that it draws our system irresistibly around it at the rate of 422,000 miles a day, in an orbit which it will take many thousands of years to complete. With this new explanation, how remarkably striking and appropriate does the original word for Pleiades appear! What a lofty significance does the question of the Almighty receive from this interpretation! “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" Canst thou arrest, or in any degree modify, that attractive influence which it exerts upon our sun and all its planetary worlds, whirling them round this pivot in an orbit of such inconceivable' dimensions, and with a velocity so utterly bewildering? Silence the most profound can be the only answer to such a question.—In accordance with this higher interpretation, the influence of the Pleiades may be called "sweet," as indicating the harmonious operation of those great laws by which our system revolves around them. In this vast and complex arrangement, not one wheel jars or creaks—not a single discordant sound disturbs the deep, solemn quietude of the midnight sky. Smoothly and silently each star performs its sublime revolutions; and all with a rhythm so perfect, that we might almost believe in the old poetic fable of “The Music of the Spheres."—Bible Teachings in Nature, p.

IDEM.—Or loose the bands of Orion? In the country of Job, Orion occupies a position near the zenith, and therefore is the more brilliant and striking in its appearance. Night after night it sheds down its rays with mystical splendor over the lonely solitudes through which the Euphrates flows, and where the tents of the patriarch of Uz once stood. Orion is not only the most striking and splendid constellation in the heavens; it is also one of the very few clusters that are visible in all parts of the habitable world. The equator passes through the middle of it; the glittering stars of its belt being strung, like diamonds, on its invisible line. The Bible reader of every clime and country can go out, in the appropriate season, and find in his own sky the very constellation, and direct his gaze to the very peculiarity in it, to which the Creator alluded in His mysterious converse with Job. The three bright stars which constitute the girdle or bands of Orion never change their form; they preserve the same relative position to each other, and to the rest of the constellation, from year to year, and age to age. They present precisely the same appearance to us which they did to Job. They afford to us one of the highest types of immutability in the midst of ceaseless changes. Mysterious triplet of stars! What answer could Job give to the question of the Almighty—" Canst thou loose the bands of Orion? “Can man, whose breath is in his nostrils, and who is crushed before the moth, unclasp that brilliant starry bracelet which God's own hand has fastened on the dusky arm of night? Can man separate these stars, or alter their relative positions in the smallest degree?—Bible Teachings in Nature, p. 13-16.

Ordinances of Nature

Job 38:33-35.—Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set up the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A.—Man, in all his contrivances and combinations, only takes advantage of laws of nature which already exist; in his most exquisite, machines he simply applies to his use qualities which matter already possesses. Nor can he by any effort do more. He can establish no new law of nature which is not a result of the existing ones. He can invest matter with no new properties which are not modifications of its present attributes. He navigates the ocean by the assistance of the winds which he cannot raise or still. He cannot give the minutest portion of the atmosphere new relations, a new course of expansion, new laws of motion. He can set up the dominion of no new ordinance in the earth.— Astronomy and General Physics, p. 184.

The Wild Ass

Job 39:5-8.—Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.

XENOPHON.—They (the forces of Cyrus) then proceeded through Arabia; still keeping the Euphrates on their right hand; and, in five days, made, through a desert, a distance of, thirty-five parasangs. This country appeared to the eye a complete flat, and as smooth as the sea. It abounded in absinthium; and whatever herb or shrub grew there had an aromatic scent: but no trees whatever appeared. Of wild creatures, the most numerous were wild asses, with plenty of ostriches, besides bustards and roe-deer, which afforded sport to our horsemen. The wild ass, however, being swifter of foot than our horses, would, on gaining ground upon them, stand still and look around; and when their pursuers got nearly up to them, they would start off, and repeat the same trick; so that there remained to the hunters no other method of taking them, but by dividing themselves into dispersed parties which succeeded each other in the chase.—Anabasis, l. i. c. 5.

MORIER.—We gave chase to two wild asses, but which had so much the speed of our horses, that when they had got at some distance, they stood still and looked behind at us, snorting with their noses in the air, as if in contempt of our endeavors to catch them.—Journey Through Persia.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Though well known by name, the wild ass is rarely now found west of the Hauran. I have seen it in the deserts of North Africa, in small troops of four or five. They allowed us to approach near enough to make them out more clearly, when, snuffing up the wind, they dashed off at a speed which the best of our horses could not have approached. The Syrian wild ass in no way differs from the African in habits.—Natural Hist. of the Bible, p. 43

The Ostrich

Job 39:13.—Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich?

DR. THOMAS DICK.—The parts of which the feathers of birds are composed, afford a beautiful variety of the most exquisite workmanship. There is scarcely a feather but contains a million of distinct parts, every one of them regularly shaped. In a small fiber of a goose quill, more than 1,200 downy branches or small leaves have been counted on each side, and each appeared divided into sixteen or eighteen small joints. A small part of the feather of a peacock, one-thirtieth of an inch in length, appears no less beautiful than the whole feather does to the naked eye, exhibiting a multitude of bright shining parts, reflecting first one color and then another in the most vivid manner.—Improvement of Society, Sec. VI.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The plumage of the male Ostrich is a brilliant contrast of black and white, the precious plumes of the wings and tail being spotless white.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 239.

Job 39:14.—Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The ostrich is polygamous, and several hens deposit their eggs in one place: a hole scraped in the sand. The eggs are then covered over, and left during the heat of the day, but sat upon through the night, and until the sun has full power, the male also incubating. I never but once found an ostrich nest, and then the complement of eggs was not completed. Tracing the foot-prints we came to the spot where we had (from a distance) seen two birds standing, and which we identified by the sand being much trodden. Two Arabs dismounting, began to dig with their hands, and presently brought up four fine fresh eggs, from the depth of about a foot under the warm sand—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 237.

Job 39:16.—She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labor is in vain without fear.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Though I did not myself see the eggs scattered on the surface, yet all my Arab friends have assured me that it is the invariable habit of the bird so to place many of them, and that far more are laid than are ever incubated. It is from this habit most probably that the want of parental instinct is laid to the charge of the Ostrich; at the same time, when surprised by man with the young before they are able to run, the parent bird scuds off alone, and leaves its offspring to their fate. To do otherwise would be a self-sacrifice on the open desert. Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 238.

Job 39:17.—Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—Stupidity is universally ascribed to the ostrich by the Arabs. In some respects this is accurate, for, when surprised, it will often take the very course that ensures its capture. The Arabs also consider it stupid, from the readiness with which it will swallow stones, nails, bullets, or any other hard and indigestible substance; and, in short, they give five particular proofs of its stupidity.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 238.

Job 39:18.—What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.

XENOPHON.—None could take an ostrich; the horsemen who pursued them soon gave up the attempt; for they flew far away, making use both of their feet to run and of their wings when expanded, as a sail to waft them along.— Anab., 1. 1., c. 5.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The ostrich of Arabia runs upon the ground as swiftly as if she flew in the air.—Diod. Sic., 1. ii., c. 4.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The capture of the ostrich is the greatest feat of hunting to which the Arab sportsman aspires. I have myself, in the Sahara, measured its strides, and found them, when bounding at full speed, to be from twenty-two to twenty-eight feet.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 236, 237.

The War Horse

Job 39:19-25.—Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?.... He goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield, etc.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON, B. A.—The Arabians are now, as in the days of Job, passionately fond of their horses, whose beauties and merits they describe in most glowing and enthusiastic language. Nothing can equal the poetic force and beauty of that in the book of Job.—Test. of Heath. ,p. 271.

VIRGIL.—But at the clash of arms, his ear afar Drinks the deep sound and vibrates to the war: Flames from each nostril roll in gathered stream;

His quivering lips with restless motion gleam;

O'er his right shoulder floating full and fair,

Sweeps his thick mane and spreads his pomp of hair;

Swift works his double spine; and earth around

Rings to the solid hoof that wears the ground.

—Georg., lib. iii., v. 83.

The Eagle

Job 39:27, 28.—Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place.

ARISTOTLE.—Eagles build their nests in lofty places, especially among steep and precipitous rocks.— Hist. Anim., 1. ix., c. 32.

PLINY.—The melanætos, or black eagle, is an inhabitant of the mountains. Eagles build among rocks and trees.—Hist. Nat., X., 3. '

Job 39:29.—From thence she seeth the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.

HOMER.—

The field exploring, with an eye

Keen as the eagle's, keenest-eyed of all

That wing the air, whom, though he soar aloft,

The lev'ret 'stapes not in thickest shades,

But down he swoops, and at a stroke she dies.

—Iliad, b. xvii., v. 674.

D. W. M. THOMSON. —The power of vision in the eagle is amazing, almost incredible. No sooner does a kid fall in the wilderness among the thick bushes, than some of these keen-sighted hunters after prey notice it from their pathway in mid-heaven, and, circling round and round, they pounce down upon and bear it away to their nest. This appears to be done purely by sight.—The Land and the Book, Vol. I., 257.

Book of Psalms

The Chief Good

Psa. 4:6.—There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.

PHILEMON.—Philosophers inquire, and lose much time in the inquiry, What is good? None of them can discover what it is.—Apud. Stob., LV.

CLEANTHES.—Alas for those who perpetually desire and seek some good things for themselves, but neither regard nor hearken to the universal laws of God. —Hymn in joy.

God Supremely Excellent

Psa. 8:1.—O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

CICERO.—Nothing is more excellent than God.—De Nat. Deor., II., 30.

ÆSCHYLUS.—Great is the glory of the most high God.—Apud. Euseb.

Divine Condescension

Psa. 8:3-5—When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—O, Jove and all ye gods, makers of the earth and the sea and all things in them, what is this animal to whom thou hast given this life and this abode? How bold, how rash, how boastful! He regards not that which is good, leaves undone that which he should do, and gives himself entirely to pleasure.—Diss., 34.

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.

CICERO.—This animal—prescient, sagacious, complex, acute, full of memory, reason and counsel, which we call Man, has been generated by the supreme God in a most transcendent condition. For he is the only creature among all the races and descriptions of animated beings who is endowed with superior reason and thought, in which the rest are deficient. And what is there, I do not say in man alone, but in all heaven and earth, more divine than reason, which, when it becomes right and perfect, is justly termed wisdom.—De Leg., 1. 1., c. 7.

Vain Confidence

Psa. 10:6.—He hath said in his heart, I shall not he moved: for I shall never be in adversity.

HOMER.—

Man, while the gods

Grant him prosperity and health, no fear

Hath, or thought that he shall ever mourn.

—Odys., xviii., 32.

ÆSCHYLUS.—

When the fav'ring gale

Of fortune smooths the current, th' heart expands

With unsuspecting confidence, and deems

That gale shall always breathe.

—Pers., V., 597.

The Godly Ceasing

Psa. 12:1.—Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.

THEOGNIS.—Gone is faith, a mighty goddess; gone from men temperance; the graces too, my friend, have quitted earth, and just oaths are no more to be relied on among men; neither does any one reverence the immortal gods.—Theogn, v. 1137.

STATIUS.—

Justice and piety are now no more,

And slighted faith has fled the Theban shore!

—Theb., 1. iii., v. 350.

The Fool's Atheism

Psa. 14:1.—The fool path said in his heart, There is no God.

LORD BACON. —I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without Mind; and, therefore, God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convict it... They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature; for take the example of a dog, and mark what a. generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God, or melior natura—such courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a "better nature" than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favor, gathereth a force and faith which human nature in itself could not obtain; therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty.—Essay on Atheism.

Drink-Offerings of Blood

Psa. 16:4.—Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer.

ROSENMULLER.—It was a custom with many heathen people, to drink the wine of the sacrifice mixed with blood, particularly when they bound themselves by dreadful oaths, and to the performance of fearful deeds. In this manner, as Sal-lust relates, Catiline took the oaths with his accomplices. "It was said at the time that Catiline, after making a speech, calling on the accomplices of his crime to take an oath, presented them with human blood mixed with wine, in cups; and when everyone had drunk of it, after pronouncing an imprecation, as is customary in solemn sacrifices, explained his plan." In a similar manner, Silius Italicus makes the Carthaginian Hannibal swear, an instance of which is particularly suitable to illustrate the above passage, because the Carthaginians were of Phenician or Canaanite origin.—Note, In loco.

The Path of Life

Psa. 16:11—Thou lilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

CICERO.—Somehow or other there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages; and this exists most firmly, and appears most clearly in men of the loftiest genius and greatest souls.—Tusc. l. i. c. 15.

The Works of God Glorious

Psa. 19:1, 2.—The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.

XENOPHON.—He who raised this whole universe and still upholds the mighty frame, who perfected every part of it in beauty and goodness, suffering none of those parts to decay through age, but renewing them daily with unfailing vigor, even he the Supreme God, who performeth all these wonders, still holds himself invisible, and it is only in his works that we are capable of admiring Him. Mem. Soc, l. iv., c. 3.

PLATO.—The earth and sun and all the stars, and the arrangements so beautiful of the seasons, divided into months and years, prove that there are gods:. And, moreover, all men, both Greeks and Barbarians, believe it.—De Leg., 1. x., c. 1.

ARISTOTLE.—Though God is invisible to every mortal nature, yet he is to be known by his works.—De Mundo, c. 6.

LUCIAN.—The order that is observable in all nature; the sun and the moon which always keep their regular course; the seasons of the year, always returning in like succession; the vegetation of plants and the propagation of living beings, and the fact that they are so artificially organized for feeding, moving, thinking, building themselves dwellings, clothing themselves—all this appears to me as the work of a providence superintending the world.—De Joy. Fig., c. 38.

CICERO.—Can anyone in his senses imagine that this disposition of the stars, and this heaven so beautifully adorned, could ever have been formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms? The beauty of the world and the order of all celestial things compel us to confess that there is an excellent and eternal Nature which deserves to be worshipped and admired by all mankind.—De Nature Deorum, l. ii., C. 44, 72.

Verses 3, 4.—No speech—no language: yet their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

ADDISON.—

What though in solemn silence all

Move round this dark terrestrial ball;

What though nor real voice nor sound

Amid their radiant orbs be found—

In reason's ear they all rejoice,

And utter forth a glorious voice;

Forever singing as they shine,

"The Hand that made us is Divine."

Verses 4-6.—In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The sun makes his appearance above the horizon with splendor and majesty; every creature seems to rejoice at his approach; and during the whole of his course through his whole circuit, his apparent revolution from east to west, and from one tropic to the same again, no part of the earth 15 deprived of its proper proportion of light and heat.—Note, In loco.

THE. COMPILER.—In days not long since past, infidels were wont to ridicule the. Scriptures because they taught that the sun had a path of its own in the heavens,—whereas both its diurnal and annual progress are only apparent motions. But the advancement of science has deprived skepticism even of this wrested foothold. It is now proved that the sun has his own proper orbit and motion,—that he is on a long journey around a far-off center; And thus the ridicule has been brought to an end, and the weapon which the infidel drew from the Nineteenth Psalm has fallen from his hand, to be seized and wielded by the believer, not only in defense, but in vigorous assault.—See Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, § 858.

MADLER.—The star Alcyone, in the Pleiades, is removed from us about thirty-two million times the distance of the sun—a distance requiring 498 years for light to traverse. Our sun in its course about Alcyone, the center of its vast orbit, moves at the rate of eight geographical miles in a second, and requires over eighteen millions of years to complete one revolution.—Pop. Astr., p. 427.

The Divine Law Perfect

Psa. 19:7-11.—The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple: the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes: the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honey-comb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.

THOMAS DICK, LL. D.—The Moral Law, or Ten Commandments, are briefly comprehended in these two precepts, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." It could easily be shown, that these principles are sufficient to form the basis of a moral code for the whole intelligent creation, that they are calculated to unite the creature to the Creator, and all rational beings with one another wherever they may exist through the boundless empire of the Almighty; and that peace, order and happiness would be the invariable and necessary results wherever their influence extended. If the love of God reigned supreme in every heart, there would be no superstition or idolatry in the universe, nor any of the crimes and abominations with which they have been accompanied in our world,—no blasphemy or profanation of the name of Jehovah,—no perjury, hypocrisy, arrogance, pride, ingratitude, nor murmurings under the allotments of Divine Providence. And, if every moral intelligence loved his fellow-creatures as himself, there would be no rivalries and antipathies between nations, and, consequently, no wars, devastation, nor carnage,—no tyranny, haughtiness, or oppression among the great, nor envy, discontent, or insubordination among the lower classes of society,—no systems of slavery, no persecutions on account of religious opinions,—no murders, thefts, robberies, or assassinations,—no treacherous friendships, no fraud and deceit in commercial transactions,—no implacable resentments among friends and relatives, and no ingratitude or disobedience among children or servants. On the other hand, meekness, long-suffering, gentleness, humility, temperance, fidelity, brotherly-kindness, and sacred joy, would pervade every heart and transform our world from a scene of contention and misery to a moral paradise. The comprehensive nature of these laws or principles, and their tendency to produce universal order and happiness among all intelligences, prove that they "are more precious than gold, yea, than much fine gold, and that in keeping of them there is great reward."—Improv. of Soci., 119.

Who Shall Dwell With God

Psa. 26:3-5.—Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who path riot lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

LUCIAN.—The inscription on the tablets in the temples of the Greeks sets forth that nobody must dare to come within the enclosure of the lustral water-vessels who has not clean hands.—De Sacrif, c. 13.

CALLIMACHUS.—Being pure, may I also be dear to the pure and holy.—H. in Delon., v. 98.

OVID.—

The good are God's peculiar care,

And such as honor heaven shall heavenly honor share.

—Metam., 1. viii., v. 724.

Purity and Innocence

Psa. 26:6.—I will wash my hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O Lord.

CICERO—One of the legal maxims I have mentioned states that we should approach the gods with purity—that is to say, with purity of mind, for this is everything. Not that the law dispenses with purity of body; but this must be understood, inasmuch as the mind is far superior to the body; and it may be observed, that if we are attentive to the purity of our persons, we ought to be still more so to the purity of our souls. For the pollution of the body may indeed be removed by a few ablutions of water, or in a few days; but the stains upon the conscience cannot be obliterated by any lapse of time, and all the rivers in the world cannot wash them out.—De Leg., 1. ii., c. 10.

Bit and Bridle

Psa. 32:9.—Be ye not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose, mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Assyrian sculptures exhibit riding-horses with bells round their necks, and the bridles were profusely adorned with tassels, as they are still by the Arabs. The bit and bridle were of the same form as those in use to this day.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 107.

The Divine Command Omnipotent

Psa. 33:9.—For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood Fast. CLEANTHES.-Thee alone this vast universe obeys; to thee it willingly submits itself.—Clean. H., in Jov.

Verse 10:—The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to naught he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.

HOMER.—But mighty Jove cuts off with just disdain. The long, long views of poor designing man.

Iliad, 1. xviii., v. 328.

Unceasing Praise

Psa. 34:7 I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth:

EPICTETUS.—Since I am a reasonable creature, it is my duty to praise God, This is my business; I do it; nor will I ever desert this post as long as it is vouchsafed to me; and I exhort you to join in the same song. —Epict., 1. i., c. 16.

Waters of Affliction

Psa. 42:7.—Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts.

PROF. ELIAS LOOMIS, LL. D.—When a whirlwind is formed over water, considerable spray is raised from the surface of the water, and this spray is carried up in the center of the whirl, presenting the appearance of a dense solid column, This phenomenon is called a water-spout. Water—spouts are of variable dimensions, but sometimes they attain a diameter of several rods, and a height of half a mile. When the spout is complete, there is heard a roaring noise like that of a great waterfall. Treatise on Meteorology, p. 154, 155.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—There is no part of the Mediterranean in which water-spouts are of such frequent occurrence as on the coast of Syria. The Jews were, therefore, familiar with the phenomenon; and it is by no means unlikely that David had actually seen water-spouts himself; or if not, it is certain that they must have been well known, by the report of those who had seen' them, to David and to the people generally. A water-spout at sea is a splendid sight; in shape it resembles a funnel, with the tube pointed to the water. After a time it bursts, and the noise occasioned by the fall of a large body of water into the sea is very great. Their bursting, near a vessel would involve it in great danger of being submerged.—Note, In loco.

Verse 7.—All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

ÆSCHYLUS.—

Wide o'er misfortune's surging tide

Billows succeeding billows spread;

Should one, its fury spent, subside,

Another lifts its boisterous head.

—Sept. c. Theb., v. 758.

EURIPIDES.—I, unhappy wretch, perceive a sea of troubles so great that never again can I emerge from it, nor escape beyond the flood of this calamity.— Hippol., v. 822.

Psa. 44:20.—If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—The stretching out of the hand towards the object of devotion seems to have been an ancient custom of both the Jews and heathen. It is still an attitude of devout supplication in the East. —Pict., Bible, In loco.

Tyrian Embroidery

Psa. 45:12-14.—And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall entreat thy favor. The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needle-work: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.

HOMER.—

There lay the vestures of no vulgar art,

Sidonian maids embroidered every part,

Whom from soft Sidon youthful Paris bore,

With Helen, touching on the Tyrian shore.

—Iliad, VI., 289.

LUCAN.—Cleopatra wears treasures, and pants under the weight of her ornaments. Her white breasts shine through the Sidonian fabric, which, wrought in close texture by the Seres, the needle of the workman of the Nile, has separated, and has loosened the warp by stretching out the web. —Phars., 1. x.. v. 140.

God Rules Supreme

Psa. 46:9.—He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth: he breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sander; he burneth the chariot in the fire.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—A medal, struck under Vespasian, to commemorate the termination of his wars, represents Peace holding an olive-branch with one hand, and in the other a lighted torch, with which she sets fire to a heap of armor. As a symbolical action, representing the conclusion of wars, this is very expressive.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

VIRGIL.—A conqueror, I burnt vast heaps of shields.—Æn., 1. viii., v. 560.

Violence of the East Wind

Psa. 48:7.—Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.

PROF. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—In proof of the accuracy of this allusion, it may be observed that from October, 1863, to June, 1864, there were but six days in which the wind blew from the East, and on each occasion it blew almost a gAle.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 34.

Riches Cannot Save

Psa. 49:6, 7.—They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches; none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him,

HOMER.—

Fixt is the term to all the race of earth;

And such the hard condition of our birth:

No force can them resist, no flight can save;

All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.

Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold.

Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold,

Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,

Can bribe the poor possession of a day.

—Iliad, VI., 488, and IX., 401.

Verse 11.—Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue forever, and their dwelling-places to all generations, they call their lands after their own names.

EURIPIDES.—Alas! alas! how do the evil vaunt, when the deity grants them good, as though they were ever to be prosperous!—Suppl., v. 463.

Verses 16, 17.—Be not afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dieth he shall carry nothing away his glory shall not descend after him.

LUCIAN.—Cease from toiling and moiling! you will not live always; nothing of that you treasure up here below is everlasting; none of you can take anything with him in death; he must go hence as naked as he came hither; your houses, your estates, your gold, all these must perpetually devolve from one to the other, and continually change masters.—Charon, c. 20

THEOGNIS.—No one goes to Hades with his wealth.—Theog., v. 725.

The Prosperous Praised

Psa. 49:18.—Men will praise thee, when thou doest well to thyself.

EURIPIDES.—Prosperous men are renowned and conspicuous among all mortals.—Iph. in Aul., v 427.

HORACE. —

Virtue, glory, beauty, all divine

And human powers, Immortal Gold! are thine;

And he who piles the shining heap, shall rise

Noble, brave, just—

You will not call him wise?

Yes; anything; a monarch, if he please.

—Hor., 1. ii., Sat. 3.

The Guilty Fearful

Psa. 53:5.—There were they in great fear, where no fear was.

JUVENAL.—

In every fearful shape

Guilt still alarms, and conscience, ne'er asleep,

Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud but deep,

While the vexed mind, her own tormentor, plies

A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes!

Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign,

Can match the fierce, unutterable pain

He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,

Carries his own accuser in his breast.

—Sat. xiii, v. 192.

Man Would Fly From Trouble

Psa. 55:6.—And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.

EURIPIDES.—O that the God would make me like a winged bird among the swift flocks.—Hippol., v. 733

IDEM.—O that I could be wafted through the yielding air Far, very far from Hellas, To the inhabitants of the Hesperian region: So great is my load of grief.—Ion., v. 796

Lachrymatories

Psa. 6:8.—Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—In the Roman tombs are found small bottles (lachrymatories) of glass or pottery, which are supposed to have contained tears shed by the surviving friends of the deceased, and to have been &posited in the sepulchers as memorials of affection and distress.... There are still some traces of such a usage in the East. Thus, in the annual lamentations of the Persians for the slaughtered sons of Ali, their tears are copiously excited by passionate discourses and tragical recitations. When at the height of their grief, a priest sometimes goes round to each person and collects the tears with a piece of cotton, from which he presses them into a bottle, preserving them with the greatest care.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

The Deaf Adder

Psa. 58:4,5.—They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.

LORD ARTHUR C. HERVEY.—There can be no question at all of the remarkable power which, from time immemorial, has been exercised by certain people in the East over poisonous serpents. The usual species operated upon both in Africa and India are the Hooded Snakes and the horned Cerastes. The skill of the Italian. Marsi and the Libyan Psylli in taming serpents was celebrated throughout the world; and to this day, as we are told by Sir G. Wilkinson, the snake-players of the coast of Barbary are worthy successors of the Psylli.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2932.

VIRGIL.—Umbro, the priest of the Marrubian nation, was able, by his voice and his touch, to put to sleep vipers, to soothe their anger, and to cure by his art the poison of their bite.—Æneid, lib. vii., v. 753.

The Melting Snail

Psa. 58:8.—As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Few snails can remain long in an active state without moisture. In order to prevent the evaporation of the moisture of the body all those molluscs which have a thin or a semi-transparent shell secrete themselves in dry weather under stones, like the shell-less snails or slugs, or else among moss and under leaves, and many species also in the earth. But, notwithstanding the care they take to secrete themselves, the heat often does dry them up, either by a long-continued drought, or by the sun's rays penetrating to their holes. Thus we find in all parts of the Holy Land myriads of snail-shells in fissures, still adhering by the calcareous exudation round their orifice to the surface of the rock, but the animal of which is utterly shriveled and wasted—" melted away," according to the expression of the Psalmist. Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 296.

Silvery Wings

Psa. 68:13.—Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—David here refers to a kind of dove found at Damascus still, whose feathers, all except the wings, are literally as yellow as gold.; they are very small, and kept in cages. I have often had them in my house, but their note is so very sad that I could not endure it; besides, they keep it up by night as well as by day. Nothing can exceed the plaintiveness of their midnight lamentation.—The Land and the Book, I., 417.

Hill of Bashan

Psa. 68:15.—The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; a high hill as the hill of Bashan. REV. WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—The " poet prophets" of Israel have fully described the country of Bashan, the stateliness of its oaks, the magnificence of its scenery, the luxuriance of its pastures, the fertility of its plains, and the qualities of its flocks and herds;—and modern travelers have confirmed to the letter the accuracy of their glowing delineations.—Blending Lights, p. 271.

Prosperity of the Wicked

Psa. 73:2-5, and 16, 17.—As for me my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued as other men.... When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me. Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.

PLATO.—The good fortune of evil and unjust men, both in private and public life, who although not truly happy, yet are deemed to be very much so in common opinion, and are improperly hymned by the muses, lead you, not very sensibly, to impiety. Or, perhaps, on seeing that impious old men, after arriving at their end, have left behind them grandchildren in the greatest honors, you are disturbed for the present, in all these matters: you conceived that you beheld in their doings, as in a mirror, the disregard of all things on the part of the gods, not knowing in what way they pay up the full amount of their contributions to every one.—De. Leg., lib. x., c. 12.

Verse 19.—How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors.

LIVY.—The punishments which attend pride and cruelty, though they may come late, are not light. —Liv, I. iii., c. 56.

The Sea Divided

Psa. 74: 13, 14.—Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou breakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat for the people inhabiting the wilderness.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Ichthyophagi (Fish-eaters) occupy the coasts of the Red Sea, and the southern parts of Ethiopia. When the tide ebbs, women and children collect the little fish near the sea-shore, while the men employ themselves in securing the great and strong fish; for the sea not only casts up great lobsters, lampreys, and dog-fish, but also sea-calves, and many other monsters. —Diod. Sic., 1. iii. c. 1.

The Turtle-Dove

Psa. 74:19.—O deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the multitude of the wicked.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—While other songsters are heard chiefly in the morning, or only at intervals, the Turtle immediately on its arrival pours forth, from every garden, grove, and wooded hill, its melancholy yet soothing ditty, unceasingly from early dawn till sunset. It is from its plaintive and continuous note, doubtless, that David, pouring forth his heart's sorrow to God, compares himself to a turtle-dove.—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 219.

God the Disposer of Man's Lot

Psa. 75:6, 7.—For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: He putteth down one, and setteth up another.

XENOPHON.—God, it must be owned, often takes delight in making the little great, and the great little.—Hist. Grœc., 1. vi., c. 4.

HOMER.—

Jove's high will is ever uncontroll'd,

The strong he withers, and confounds the bold;

Now crowns with fame the mighty man, and now

Strikes the fresh garland from the victor's brow.

—Iliad, XVII., 176.

Verse 8.—For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.

HOMER.—

Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,

The source of evil one, and one of good;

From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,

Blessings to these, to those distributes ill.

—Iliad, XXIV., 527.

The Wild Boar

Psa. 80:13.—The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The wild boar is still very common, the dread and the abomination of the careful husbandman, whose fields it ravages without remorse; but it seldom visits the neighborhood of towns on the coast.—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 36.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The wild boars come forth to feed at night, plowing up the ground with their powerful tusks in quest of tender roots, bulbs, and grubs, preferring the loose soil of cultivated fields; they break through the hedges of the vineyards, and devour and trample down quantities of fruit in a single night.—Bible Lands, p. 257.

Potters of Egypt

Psa. 81:6.—I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots.

Rev. HENRY WRIGHT PHILLOTT, M. A.—The Hebrews had been concerned in the potters' trade in Egypt; and the wall-paintings minutely illustrate the Egyptian process, which agrees with such notices of the Jewish practice as are found in the prophets, and also in many respects with the process as pursued in the present day.—Smith's Bible Dict., p. 2568.

The Sparrow and the Swallow

Psa. 84:3.—Yea, the sparrow hash found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God.

ROSENMULLER.—These words probably refer to the custom of several nations of antiquity, that birds which build their nests on the temples, or within the limits of them, were not suffered to be driven away, much less killed, but found a secure and uninterrupted dwelling. Hence, when Aristodikus disturbed the birds' nests of the temple of Kumæ, and took the young from them, a voice, according to a tradition preserved by Herodotus, is said to have spoken these words from the interior of the temple: " Most villainous of men, how darest thou do such a thing, to drive away such as seek refuge in my temple? " The Athenians were so enraged at Atarbes, who had killed a sparrow which built on the temple of Æsculapius, that they killed him. Among the Arabs, who are more closely allied to the Hebrews, birds which have built their nests on the temple of Mecca were inviolable from the earliest times.—Note In loco.

PAXTON.—Some of these sparrows and swallows the Psalmist had probably seen constructing their nests, and propagating their kind, in the buildings near the altar, or in the courts of the temple; and piously longs to revisit the scene so dear to his heart.—Note In loco.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The swallow uses the same nest year after year, only repairing it; and it is worthy of note that both the swallow and the sparrow may still be seen fluttering and rearing their broods about the so-called Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, as well as the buildings which occupy the site of Solomon's temple.... They are busy all summer long rearing their two successive broods, flitting and darting in all directions, collecting materials for their nests, or food for their progeny.—Bible Lands, p. 287.

Pleasure of God's House

Psa. 84:10.—For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

ARISTOTLE.—TO live one year honorably is better than to live many years in the ordinary manner; and to perform one honorable and great act, better than to perform many small ones.—Eth., 1. ix., c. 8.

CICERO.—Philosophy, thou guide of life! one day spent well, and agreeably to thy precepts, is preferable to an eternity of error.—Tusc. v., c. 2.

Tabor and Hermon

Psa. 89:12.—Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Approaching Nain, the foreground was singularly uninteresting, but the distant landscape on the way was of striking beauty. Hermon, clad in spotless snow, was now clear of Tabor, and the two thus stood forth side by side; Tabor with its bright green foreground, dotted all over with gray trees, contrasted finely with the dazzling white of the former. Somewhere near this spot the sacred poet may have passed when he exclaimed, "Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name." They are eminently the two mountain features of Galilee.—Land of Isr., p. 129.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, LL. D.—Tabor lies about six or eight miles almost due east from Nazareth. The. Savior must have passed often at the foot of this mount in the course of his journeys in different parts of Galilee. It is not surprising that the Hebrews looked up with so much admiration to this glorious work of the Creator's hand. The same beauty rests upon its brow today, the same richness of verdure refreshes the eye, in contrast with the bleaker aspect of so many of the adjacent mountains. The Christian traveler yields spontaneously to the impression of wonder and devotion, and appropriates as his own language that of the Psalmist, " The north and the south thou halt created them; Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name."—Smith's Dict. of Bib., p. 3164.

Life Frail and Fleeting

Psa. 90:5, 6.—In the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.

HOMER.—

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

Now green in youth, now withered on the ground;

Another race the following spring supplies;

They fall successive, and successive rise:

So generations in their course decay;

So flourish these, when those are pass'd

Iliad, VI., 146.

Verse 10.—The days of our years are three-score years and ten.

SOLON.—I will suppose the term of human life to extend to seventy years.—Herodt., 1. i., c. 32.

Divine Protection

Psa. 91:4, 5.—He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day.

HOMER.—

Some guardian of the skies

Involved in clouds, protects him in the fray,

And turns unseen, the frustrate dart away.

—Iliad, V., v. 185.

The Palm-Tree

Psa. 92:12.—The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The life of a righteous man may be compared to the palm-tree for many reasons. It flourishes in a barren soil; it requires constant moisture; it is a lofty tree, a straight tree;. it is always growing so long as it lives, and is always green, and always bears fruit, as far as possible from earth, and as near as possible to heaven.—Nat.. Hist. of Bible, p. 384.

PAXTON.—The palm is one of the most beautiful trees in the vegetable kingdom; it is upright, lofty, verdant, and embowering. It grows by the brook or well of living water; and resisting every attempt to press or bend it downward, shoots directly towards heaven. For this reason, perhaps, it was regarded by the ancients as peculiarly sacred, and therefore most frequently used in adorning their temples. The chosen symbol of constancy, fruitfulness, patience, and victory; the more it is oppressed, the more it flourishes, the higher it grows, and the stronger and broader the top expands. To this majestic and useful tree the child of God is compared in the holy Scriptures with singular elegance and propriety.-In Bush's latest., p. 405.

Formation of the Ear

Psa. 94:9.—He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?

PROF. P. M. ROGET, F. R. C. P., etc.—The concha, or external ear, is formed of an elastic plate of cartilage, covered by integument, and presenting various elevations and depressions, which form a series of parabolic curves, apparently for the purpose of collecting the sonorous undulations of the air and of directing them into a funnel-shaped canal, termed the meatus auditorius, which leads to the internal ear. This canal is composed partly of cartilage, and partly of bone; and the integument lining it is furnished with numerous small glands, which supply a thick oily fluid, of an acrid quality, apparently designed to prevent the intrusion of insects: the passage is also guarded by hairs, which appear intended for a similar purpose.

The meatus is closed at the bottom by a membrane, which is stretched across it like the skin of a drum, and has been termed, from this resemblance, the membrane of the tympanum, or the ear-drum. It performs, indeed, an office corresponding to its name; for the sonorous undulations of the air, which have been collected, and directed inwards by the grooves of the concha, strike upon the ear-drum, and throw it into a similar state of vibration. The ear-drum is composed of an external membrane, derived from the cuticle which lines the meatus; an internal layer, which is continuous with that of the cavity beyond it; and a middle layer, which consists of radiating muscular fibers, proceeding from the circumference toward the center, where they are inserted into the extremity of a minute bony process, presently to be described. This muscular structure appears designed to vary the degree of tension of the ear-drum, and thus adapt the rate of its vibrations to those communicated to it by the air. There is, also, a slender muscle, situated internally, which by acting on this delicate process of bone, as on a lever, puts the whole membrane on the stretch, and enables its radiating fibers to effect the nicer adjustments required for tuning, as it may be called, this part of the organ.

Immediately behind the membrane of the ear-drum there is a hollow space, called the cavity of the tympanum, of an irregular shape, scooped out of the most solid part of the temporal bone, which is here of great density and hardness. This cavity is always filled with air; but it would obviously defeat the purpose of the organ if the air were confined in this space; because unless it were allowed occasionally to expand or contract, it could not long remain in equilibrium with the pressure exerted by the atmosphere on the external surface of the eardrum; a pressure which, as is well known, is subject to great variations, indicated by the rise and fall of the barometer. These variations would expose the membrane of the ear-drum to great inequalities of pressure at its outer and inner surfaces, and endanger its being forced, according to the state of the weather, either outwards or inwards, which would completely interfere with the delicacy of its vibrations. Nature has guarded against these evils by establishing a passage of communication between the tympanum and the external air, by means of a tube, termed the Eustachian Tube, which begins by a small orifice from the inner side of the cavity of the tympanum, and opens by a wide mouth at the back of the nostrils. This tube performs the same office in the ear, as the hole which it is found necessary to make in the side of a drum, for the purpose of opening a communication with the external air; a communication which is as necessary for the functions of the ear, as it is for the proper sounding of the drum. We find accordingly that a degree of deafness is induced whenever the Eustachian tube is obstructed, which may happen either from the swelling of the membrane lining, during a cold, or from the accumulation of secretion in the passage.

On the side of the cavity of the tympanum, which is opposite to the opening of the Eustachian tube, is situated the beginning of another passage, leading into numerous cells, contained in the mastoid process of the temporal bone, and therefore termed the mastoid cells; these cells are likewise filled with air. The innermost side of the same cavity, that is, the side opposite to the ear-drum, is occupied by a rounded eminence, of a triangular shape, termed the promontory; on each side of which there is an opening in the bone, closed, however, by the membrane lining the whole internal surface of the cavity. The opening situated at the upper edge of the promontory is called the fenestra ovalis, or oval window; and that near the under edge is the fenestra rotunda, or round window.

Connected with the membrane of the ear-drum, at one end, and with the fenestra ovalis at the other, there extends a chain of very minute movable bones, four in number, which may be called the tympanic ossicula. The names these bones have received are more descriptive of their shape than of their office. The first is the malleus, or hammer; and its long handle is affixed to the center of the ear-drum; the second is the incus, or anvil; the third, which is the smallest in the body, being about the size of a millet seed, is the orbicular bone; and the last is the stapes, or stirrup, the base of which 'is applied to the membrane of the fenestra ovalis. These bones are regularly articulated together, with all the ordinary apparatus of joints, and are moved by small muscles provided for that purpose. Their office is apparently to transmit the vibrations of the ear-drum to the membrane of the fenestra ovalis, and probably, at the same time, to increase their force.

The more internal parts of the ear compose what is designated, from the intricacy of its winding passages, the labyrinth. This consists of a middle portion, termed the vestibule, from which, on its upper and posterior side, proceed three tubes, called, from their shape, semicircular canals; while to the lower anterior side of the vestibule there is attached a spiral canal, resembling in appearance the shell of a snail, and on that account denominated the cochlea. All these bony cavities are lined with a very delicate membrane, or periosteum, and are filled with a transparent watery or thin gelatinous fluid, which is termed by Breschet the perilymph.

Within the cavity of the osseous labyrinth, now described, are contained membranes having nearly the shape of the vestibule and semicircular canals, but not extending to the cochlea. These membranes, which compose what has been, termed, for the sake of distinction, the membranous labyrinth, form one continuous but closed sac containing a fluid, perfectly similar in appearance to the perilymph, which surrounds it on the outer side, and intervenes between it and the sides of the osseous labyrinth, preventing any contact with those sides.

The Cochlea, again, is an exceedingly curious structure, being formed of the spiral convolutions of a double tube, or rather of one tube, separated into two compartments by a partition, called the lamina spiralis, which extends its whole length, except at the very apex of the cone, where it suddenly terminates in a curved point, or hook, leaving an aperture by which the two portions of the tube communicate together. The central pillar, round which these tubes take two and a half circular turns, is termed the modiolus. The trunk of the auditory nerve occupies a hollow space immediately behind the ventricle, and its branches pass through minute holes in the bony plate which forms the wall of that cavity, and being finally expanded on the different parts of the membranous labyrinth. Such are the principal parts of the complex apparatus which constitutes the organ of hearing.—Animal and Vegetable Physiology, Vol. II., p. 298-306.

PROF. T. H. HUXLEY, LL. D., F. R. S.—The vibrations or aerial waves, which enter the meatus all impinge upon the membrane of the drum and set it vibrating. The vibrations thus set up in the membrane of the tympanum are communicated, in part, to the air contained in the drum of the ear, and, in part, to the malleus, and thence to the other auditory ossicles. The disposition of these bones, and the mode of their articulation, are extremely favorable to vibration en masse. The long processes of the malleus and incus swing, like a pendulum, upon the axis furnished by the short processes of these bones; while the mode of connection of the incus with the stapes, and the latter with the edges of the fenestra ovalis, allows that bone free play, inwards and outwards. Every pull and push thus given imparts a corresponding set of shakes to the perilymph, which fills the bony labyrinth and cochlea, external to the membranous labyrinth and scala media. These shakes are communicated to the endolymph and fluid of the scala media, and, by the help of the otolithes and the fibers of 'the Corti, are finally converted into impulses, which act as irritants of the ends of the vestibular and cochlear divisions of the auditory nerve. The membranous labyrinth may be regarded as an apparatus whereby sounds are appreciated and distinguished according to their intensity or quantity: the cochlea, on the other hand, it is supposed, enables the mind to discriminate the quality rather than the quantity or intensity of sound.—Elementary Physiology, p. 209-212.

CHARLES BROOKE, M. A., F. R. S.—The Cochlea in form resembles a snail-shell, the spiral chamber being divided into two parts by a membrane stretched across it, the transverse fibers of which are capable of being rendered more or less tense by a muscle extending throughout the length of the chamber. As the diameter of this spiral chamber decreases gradually from the base to the apex, it is obvious that the transverse fibers of the spiral lamina must also gradually decrease in length. On this membrane rest the free ends of a series of remarkable organs called the "Rods of Corti" placed parallel to each other like the keys of a manual, and their attached ends are embedded in nerve cells. There is little room for doubt that sounds of a given pitch, or frequency of vibration, specially affect a corresponding fiber of this membrane (just as the shorter strings of, a harp or piano correspond respectively to higher tones), and that the nerve-tissue adjacent to the rod resting on this fiber feels the sonorous vibration, and transmits to the brain its perception of it: and thus that the special function of the cochlea is to appreciate the frequency of the vibrations; that is to say, the pitch of musical sounds, and also probably their timbre, or quality.

The three Semicircular Canals are chiefly remarkable for their invariable relative position: they are, without exception, found to lie in three planes, each of which is perpendicular to the other two; or in the language of geometry, in three rectangular co-ordinate planes. By means of these canals, positioned thus in relation to one another, the ear can appreciate the direction from which sound proceeds—a most important power.

But the evidence of design in the structure of the ear does not end here. It is an obvious necessity that the ear should possess some means of adaptation to the intensity of the vibrations reaching it, in order that while the feeblest sounds may be appreciated, its delicate mechanism may not be deranged by the most powerful ones; just as the eye is adapted to the intensity of incident light by the contraction and dilation of the iris. For this purpose there is a little muscle by which the tympanic membrane can be tightened; a second by which is regulated the tension of the membrane which connects the base of the stapes, the innermost of the ossicles, with the margin of the oval aperture in the wall of the vestibule; and a third muscle, or rather a series of muscles, by which the tension of the spiral lamina of the cochlea is regulated. But how is this exquisite mechanism brought into play? how, in fact, is the ear itself informed of the adjustment required? The foremost member of the chain of ossicles is firmly attached to the tympanum, and is carried to and fro by its vibrations: proceeding laterally from this bone, and in a direction nearly parallel to the plane of the adjacent portion of the tympanum, is a slender and taper bony filament, in its relative proportions resembling a lady's riding-whip; and immediately behind this slender process lies the tympanic nerve, a branch of the ganglionic system, which pursues a very tortuous course, for no other assignable reason than that of coming into relation with the filament of bone just mentioned. What happens then? The very first sound-wave that strikes on the tympanum makes, by means of this tiny bone, an impression of corresponding intensity on the nerve, which is flashed to an adjacent center of nerve power, and the mandate to "make taut" or "let go," as the case may be, is returned and acted on, ere a second wave can impinge upon the tympanum.—The train of actions just described is altogether removed from the domain of the will; it is, moreover, so far from being obvious, that it is believed to have escaped the notice of every writer on physiology. If, then, the mere explanation so far taxes the powers of the human mind., what shall be said of the infinite wisdom by which the whole was designed? Well, indeed, may we be prompted to declare with the sacred Psalmist: " He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? "—Faith and Free Thought, p. 78.

Formation of the Eye.

Psa. 94:9.—He that formed the eye, shall He not see?

THE COMPILER.—The eye is the choicest and most enchanting of all our corporeal endowments, and offers in its wondrous structure the clearest demonstration that it is the work of an Almighty and Omniscient Being. To be convinced of this it will be sufficient to glance at a few of its prominent and remarkable features.

1. The eye is constructed with evident and distinct reference to an element without itself, and an element the most ethereal and sublime in all nature—Light.

2. Its form is that of an ellipsoid, just that shape, out of ten thousand possible shapes, which mathematicians have, demonstrated to be the only one that can refract all the rays of light to a single surface, and thus afford distinct vision.

3. It consists of a great number of parts, differing in their material and their forms and their offices, yet so related and so skillfully combined as to compose an instrument of exactness and efficiency which no human effort can hope to approach, far less to attain.

4. To qualify it for its important function, the eye is encompassed with three membranes or coats; the outermost (sclerotic) is exceedingly firm and dense, and gives to it the mechanical support necessary for the preservation of its form; within this is another coat (choroid) whose main office is to supply it with nourishment, and by its black interior to absorb any scattered rays that might interfere with clear sight; within this again is spread the retina, the only part of the whole nervous system susceptible of impression from luminous rays.

5. The interior of the eye is occupied with three transparent media, called the aqueous, the crystalline, and vitreous humors; these form lenses of different character for the convergence of the rays of light, so as to meet and form pictures of external objects on the retina.

6. The retina is an exceedingly thin and delicate layer of nervous matter supported by a fine membrane, and is spread in the form of just such a concave and just at such a distance behind the lenses as are indispensable to distinct vision-any change, even the slightest, in the amount of this distance, or in the character of this concave, would infallibly result in a defective sight.

7. The lenses are formed of substances having different refractive powers, so as to prevent the light from being resolved into prismatic colors, and so give, to objects a tinge which does not belong to them; for this purpose the crystalline lens is constructed of an infinite number of concentric layers, which increase in their density as they succeed one another from the surface to the center; by this means an optical difficulty is overcome in a way quite inimitable to human art.

8. The perforation of the Iris, or the pupil, by which the light is admitted into the eye, is a very remarkable arrangement: the Iris is composed of two layers of contractile fibers, the one forming concentric circles; the other, disposed like radii between the outer and inner margin; when the former act, the pupil is contracted; when the latter act, the breadth of the Iris is diminished, and the pupil is, of course, dilated. By this refinement of ingenuity, acting spontaneously, the quantity of light admitted into the interior of the eye is regulated, and accommodated to the extreme sensibility of the retina. What structure can be more artificial, what machinery can be more exquisite, in its operation, than this?

9. The eye is furnished with a complete system of muscles, six in number, by which it can be rapidly turned at will in any direction, so as to vary the field of vision, as necessity, pleasure or fancy may dictate. Four of these act by direct contraction, turning the eye up or down, to the right or the left; the other two serve to give it an oblique direction-one of these is remarkable for the artificial manner in which its tendon passes through a cartilaginous pulley in the margin of the orbit, and then turns back again to be inserted into the eye-ball, to give it a degree of rotation on its axis; in no other way could the tendon pull in the required direction.

10. In the hollow of the orbit, above the eye, is planted the lachrymal gland, a self-acting fountain of tears, which gently spread and flow over its pellucid surface, to lubricate its motions, and to wash away any particle of dust, or other irritating substance that may happen to be introduced.

11. Each eye is furnished with a well-contrived conduit to carry off the superfluous moisture into the nostril, to be evaporated with the warm breath.

12. Each eye is furnished with lids, like curtains, to close over it in sleep, to wipe it, to cut off the outer rays of light that would confuse vision, and to protect it against blows, or dust, or any other means of injury; and the rapidity with which these lids open and close is past all admiration.

13. The eye is furnished with a most delicate yet most efficient system of pulleys and ligaments, that without a moment's delay alter its convexity and relative position of parts, so as to adapt it to perceive objects at different distances—an operation slowly and with some difficulty effected by man in his telescope by lengthening or shortening the tube.

14. The eye is endued with a refinement and acuteness of perceptivity that is utterly beyond the reach of human imagination. This will plainly appear from a moment's reflection upon the manner in which different colors are produced. According to the present and generally accepted theory, light consists in vibrations excited by the sun in a medium called luminiferous ether, and impressions of different colors are produced in the eye by the different rates and lengths of these vibrations, as reflected by various bodies or substances. Thus, to produce red color, the ray of light must give 37,640 undulations in an inch, and 458,000,000,000,000 in a second; yellow requires 44,000 in an inch, and 535,000,000,000,000 in a second; blue, 51,110 to in an inch, and 622,000,000,000,000 in a second. Such facts at once astonish and overwhelm the mind. The minuteness and velocity expressed by these high numbers immeasurably transcend the sublimest efforts of the imagination, and yet they do not transcend the power of the eye to distinguish as readily between them as between color and color, for it is the difference in these rates that constitutes color. How supremely exquisite, then, this endowment of the eye!

15. And what is equally, if not more, wonderful than the preceding fact, the eye is provided in some inscrutable manner with the means of expressing the indwelling mind itself, so that one may look into its crystal depths, and see love and hatred, intellect and stupidity, scorn and wrath, horror and shame, and almost every other spiritual state and action.

Such, in brief, is the human eye—an organ scarce an inch in diameter, yet embracing all these wonderful parts, these marvels of optical laws, and these contrivances of inimitable skill! If anything could deepen our impression or enhance our admiration of its structure, it would be to contemplate this living mechanism in the very act of taking its enchanting pictures—for pictures perfect and complete of all objects and scenes that stand out before it, it does continually form on the canvas of its retina.

For illustration of this, let us suppose a man to stand on the summit of Bunker Hill Monument. Here a landscape ten miles square, embracing a large city with its harbor and shipping, streets and parks, thronged roads and converging railways, are brought into the chamber of his eye, and on the interior of its further wall, within a space not exceeding half an inch in diameter, is a perfect picture of the whole prospect to its minutest details. The multitude of objects which the scene contains are all preserved, are all discriminated in their magnitudes, positions, figures, colors, and even motions. The clouds drifting along the blue heavens, the departing ships with their whitened sails, the green waves curling and breaking upon the shore, the approaching trains enveloped in dust, the trees bending before the breeze, and the vanes trembling on the spires, vehicles hurrying along the streets and men darting across to escape them—these, all these are as really and distinctly in motion in our fairy picture on the retina as they are on the face of nature itself. How small the space, yet how correct the representation—how subtle the touches—how fine the lines—how ethereal the coloring—how instinct the whole with life!

And now, let the shades of night gather around our supposed spectator of this earthly scene—and lo, presently every one of those countless and stupendous orbs of fire in the heavens, whose light, after traversing immeasurable regions of space, at length reaches his eye, is collected on its narrow curtain into a luminous focus of inconceivable minuteness; and yet this almost infinitesimal point shall be sufficient to convey to his mind, through the medium of the optic nerve and the brain, a knowledge of the existence and position of the far distant luminary, from which that light emanated years, perhaps ages, before.

Who can contemplate such a marvelous organ but must be convinced that it is the product of an Omniscient Being, familiar with all the laws and principles which sustain and regulate the, universe? Or who can doubt that He who can thus endow His creatures of every grade with the power of vision must possess that power Himself, in infinite and transcendent perfection? Who can impart what he does not possess? "He that formed the eye, shall He not see? "—See my work entitled Present Conflict of Science with Christian Religion, p. 238-247.

The Gift of Intelligence

Psa. 94:10.—He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not He know?

AGASSIZ.—If there is anything which places man above all other beings in Nature, it is precisely the circumstance that he possesses those noble attributes without which, in their most exalted excellence and perfection, not one of these general traits of relationship so characteristic of the great type of the animal and vegetable kingdoms can be understood, or even perceived. How, then, could these relations have been devised without similar powers? If all these relations are almost beyond the reach of the mental powers of man, and if man himself is part and parcel of the whole system, how could this system have been called into existence if there does not exist One Supreme Intelligence as the Author of all things?—Essay on Classification, Sections IL and IV.

God Alone Unchangeable

Psa. 102:25-27.—Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall war old like a garment: as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy ears shall have no end.

REV. WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D.—In the measureless past, in which millions on millions of ages have sunk and been lost, as pebbles in the ocean, there may have been other universes before ours, which have historically run their course, fulfilled their ends, and perished. Brought out of nothing, they may have again been reduced to nothing. The fact is conceivable, though not the process, unless we assume the eternity of matter; or that when God has created a world out of nothing, he has done what he cannot undo. Universes may have come, run their history and gone. Their histories may be Creation seasons.—Blending Lights, p. 36.

The Lesson of Flowers

Psa. 103:15, 16.—As a flower of the field so he flourisheth: for the wind passeth over it, any it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

PLINY.—Nature has produced other plants for our use and nutriment, and to these, accordingly, she has granted years and even ages of duration; but as to flowers and their perfumes, she has given them birth but for a day; a might: lesson to man, to teach him that that which in its career is the most beauteous and most attractive to the eye, is the very first to fade and one.—Hist. Nat., xxi., I.

God's Active Presence Seen in All Nature

Psa. 104:10-13.—He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. lie watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.

G. CHAPIN CHILD, M. D.—Scarcely has the bare rock of the coral island risen above the waves before it begins to possess its well of water. The salt ocean is without, and the salt ocean fills the lagoon within, yet, on the mere rim of coral rock that lies between, fresh water is to be obtained when a hole is bored—a striking example of providential forethought in thus creating wells for the sake, not only of the mariner who casually may touch there, but also for the settlers who in process of time come to occupy the island.

Of the rain that drops from the clouds, a large portion sinks down into the porous earth, and commences by subterraneous routes its return homeward to the sea-creeping among rocks, and caverns, and fissures, and windings in the secret paths of the earth. And thus the rill may journey on until, wearied with subterranean gloom, it regains the light of day as the useful well or gushing spring, nourishing the earth as it flows, and refreshing both man and beast with a constancy of supply which often contrasts with the fitful rainfall.

When it is desired to supply our towns with water we do not rest satisfied with converging upon them the contents of numerous rills by means of an ample conduit. During the hot summer days these sources might dry up, and the people might thus be left in want. So the danger is warded off by storing up water abundantly during the rainy season in a reservoir, from which supplies may be drawn for the town in times of drought. In this manner a liberal allowance of water is securely maintained independently of the vicissitudes of weather. Now in this arrangement we are only imitating the wise example of providence. The town which Nature has to supply is the whole earth. For this purpose the rainfall is undoubtedly her " main," and does the chief part of the work; but rain, though wonderfully regular on the whole, is sometimes capricious in single seasons, and oftener still in the different periods of a season. Something supplementary was, therefore, needed to husband and equalize the supply, and to provide for its regularity independently of the varying rainfall. So Nature formed reservoirs of water in the earth, which, taken on the whole, are subject to very little change. The superficial layers of the crust of the earth are in fact one vast storehouse of water, for moisture pervades them through and through. We habitually speak of " the dry rock; " but even the driest rock contains water lodged in it as in a sponge, of which nothing less potent than the furnace can deprive it. "Some granites," says Professor Ansted, " in their ordinary state contain a pint and a half in every cubic foot." Limestone and marble find room for considerable more. Chalk is also highly absorbent, many of its strata being able to take up half their bulk of water without even appearing to be moist. Ordinary sandstones hold nearly a gallon in a cubic foot; and in the best building-stones belonging to the sandstone group, from four to five pints of water are contained in each cubic foot of the stone." The quantity of water capable of being held by common loose sea-sand amounts to at least two gallons in a cubic foot. But the great tanks of the earth are formed more especially by layers of sand, which everywhere alternate with the harder rocks. Into these the water is constantly soaking and accumulating for the supply of wells and springs all over the world. While rainy seasons fill these reservoirs, the driest season does not exhaust them; and hence the springs in connection with them appear, like the conduits of a well-supplied town, to be independent both of rain and drought.— Benedicite, p. 124-126.

Verse 15.—And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine.

PLINY.—There are two liquids that are particularly grateful to the human body, wine within and oil without, both of them the produce of trees, and most excellent in their respective kinds.—Hist. Nat., lib. xiv., c. 29.

Verses 16, 17.—The trees Of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests: as for the stork the fir trees are her house.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The cedars of Lebanon are not too close, nor are they entirely confined to the grove. Though the patriarchs are of an enormous girth, they are no higher than the younger trees, many of which reach a circumference of eighteen feet. In the topmost boughs, ravens, hooded crows, kestrels, hobbys, and wood-owls were secreted in abundance; yet so lofty are the trees that the birds were out of reach of ordinary shot. But before leaving we added many interesting specimens to our collection. The breeze, as it soughed through the dark boughs, seemed to breathe sounds of solemnity and awe, and to proclaim these to be " the trees of the Lord, the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted."—Land of Israel, p. 630.

Verse 18.—The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The wild goat of Arabia and Palestine is a species of ibex very similar to those of the Alps and Pyrenees. It inhabits exclusively the' more desolate and rocky parts of the country.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 95.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP. —These wild goats are of a fawn color, shading off into dark red. They climb the steepest acclivities with amazing speed, leaping from rock to rock with admirable agility, and balancing themselves most unconcernedly along stupendous precipices.—Bible Lands, p. 201.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The stony rocks are a refuge for the conies, and tolerably secure they are in such rocks as these. No animal ever gave us so much trouble to secure. They are far too wary to be taken in traps, and the only chance of securing one is to be concealed patiently, about sunset or before sunrise, on some overhanging cliff, taking care not to let the shadow be cast below, and there to wait till the little creatures cautiously peep forth from their holes. —Land of Israel, p. 253.

Verse 19.—He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down.

CICERO. —Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow; or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated; could the flux and reflux of the sea and the height of the tides be affected by the increase or wane of the moon; could the different courses of the stars be preserved by the uniform movement of the whole heaven; could these things subsist, I say, in such a harmony of all the parts of the universe without the continued influence of a Divine Spirit? —De Nat. Deor., lib. ii., c. 9.

Verse 20.—Thou makest darkness, and it is night; wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP. —The day had been silent, the voice of the birds even being hushed by the heat, and the " cicada " alone heard in a monotonous concert from every shady grove; even this sound grew gradually silent as the mountain shadows lengthened across the plain, and sunlight died away. The rays of the moon, however, were hardly perceptible before the song of the cricket commenced; the cry of a solitary jackal was heard from the edge of the wood, and was presently answered by one, then by another and another of his companions, until the grand chorus was repeated by the mountain echoes; the fox barked close by, the owl screeched, and the great owl in the wood uttered its mourning cry as it watched for the hare that darted through the shadows. We could hear the footsteps, and occasionally catch a glimpse of a whole troop of wild boars, old and young, as they came hastening down from the woody coverts of the mountains to wallow in the mire, and dig among the roots of the plain. Truly it seemed as though Nature herself was keeping Ramazan—fast asleep all the long day, and waking up at eve to spend the entire night in work, revelry, and fun.—Bible Lands, p. 251.

Verses 24, 25.—O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.

PROF. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D., LL. D.—It is impossible to give an exact estimate of the number of species of animals on the globe that have been actually named, up to the present moment, as new ones are being continually discovered and described. A few years since, however, the numbers were as follows:

Mammalia 2,030

Birds 7,000

Chelonians, or Tortoises, etc. 120

Saurian Lizards 460

Serpents 300

Batrachians, or Frogs, etc. 175

Fishes 8,000

Vermes, or Worms, etc. 770

Crustacea, or Lobsters, etc. 792

Hexapoda, or Insects 500,000

Mollusca, or Shells 11,482

Radiata, or Phytozoa 4,818

Now it is certain that this estimate must be very far below the actual number of species on the globe, especially in respect to the smaller animals. Indeed, judicious naturalists suppose that the species of animals existing on the globe cannot be less than a million—perhaps more.

And as to the number of individuals embraced in each species—these transcend all enumeration. Here the recollection immediately recurs to those vast swarms of locusts that have laid waste entire kingdoms, shutting out the sun as their innumerable armies flew through the air—to the vast shoals of fish which annually migrate southward from the Arctic Seas, moving in columns that are several leagues in width, and many fathoms thick, and so close together that they touch one another, and this living stream continuing to move past any particular spot nearly all summer long-and to the myriads on myriads of the feathery tenants of the air. A single flock of petrels has been estimated to embrace no less than 150,000,000; and a single flock of pigeons has been observed which numbered more than 1,000,000,000,000 individuals. And descending to animalcula, the numbers become more overwhelming still. Among these Ehrenberg has disclosed new worlds of wonders. The smallest of these animals are not more than one forty-thousandth of an inch in diameter; and so thickly are they sometimes crowded together, that a small drop of fluid contains 500,000,000. Formerly it was supposed that these animals were little more than simple particles of matter, endowed with vitality. But Ehrenberg has ascertained that they possess mouths, teeth, stomachs, muscles, nerves, glands, eyes—and in short, all the important organs of the more perfect animals. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all.—The Wonders of Science Compared with the Wonders of Romance.

THOMAS DICK, LL. D.—On the surface of the earth there is not a patch of ground or a portion of water, a single shrub, tree, or herb, and scarcely a single leaf in the forest, but what teems with animated beings. How many hundreds of millions have their dwellings in caves, in the clefts of rocks, in the bark of trees, in ditches, in marshes, in the forests, the mountains and the valleys! What innumerable shoals of fishes inhabit the ocean and sport in the seas and rivers! What millions on millions of birds and flying insects, in endless variety, wing their flight through the atmosphere above and around us! Besides these, there are multitudes of animated beings which no man can number, invisible to the unassisted eye, and dispersed through every region of the earth, air and seas. In a small stagnant pool which in summer appears covered with 'a green scum, there are more microscopic animalcules than would outnumber all the inhabitants of the earth. How immense then must be the collective number of these creatures throughout every region of the earth and atmosphere! It surpasses all our conceptions "How manifold are his works." Improvement of Society, Sec. VI

Verses 27, 28.—These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest give them their meat in clue season. That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good.

THOMAS DICK, LL. D.—Now, it is a fact that, from the elephant to the mite, from the whale to the oyster, and from the eagle to the gnat, or the microscopic animalcula, no animal can subsist without nourishment. Every species, too, requires a different kind of food. Some live on grass, some on shrubs, some on flowers, and some on trees. Some feed only on the roots of vegetables, some on the stalk, some on the leaves, some on the fruit, some on the seed, some on the whole plant; some prefer one species of plants or grass, and some another. Yet such is the unbounded munificence of the Creator, that all these countless myriads of sentient beings are amply provided for and nourished by his bounty! " The eyes of all these look unto Him, and He openeth His hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing." He has so arranged the world, that every place affords the proper food for all the living creatures with which it abounds. He has furnished them with every organ and apparatus of instruments for the gathering, preparing and digesting of their food, and has endowed them with admirable sagacity in finding out and providing their nourishment, and in enabling them to distinguish between what is salutary and what is pernicious. " That thou givest them they gather."—Improvement of Society, Sec. VI.

Verse 30.—Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the earth.

SENECA.—Let us admire the universal forms of things flying on high, and God in the midst of them, disposing all things as it seemeth best to him. For all things remain, not because they are eternal, but because they are made the care and protection of an Almighty Governor: things immortal in their own nature stand not in need of a guardian; but mortal things are preserved by the hand that made them, surmounting the frailty of the materials by his almighty power.—Senec. Epist., 58.

Gratitude

Psa. 116:12.—What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? XENOPHON.—I shall never be wanting in my acknowledgments to the gods; and it even troubleth me that I cannot make a suitable return for the benefits they have conferred upon us.—Mem. Soc., lib. iv., c. 3.

Stability of Creation

Psa. 119:89-91.—Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants.

DR. JOHN HENRY KURTZ.—Supported by the experience and observation of thousands of years, science may boldly maintain that in spite of all antagonistic forces which are at work, in spite of a wonderfully involved whirl of movements, yea, in spite of all perturbations and disturbances which may here and there occur (themselves controlled by unchangeable laws.), the present order of our solar system bears the character of a stability the most unshaken and abiding. Ever since all fear that the world might be destroyed by coming in contact with some revolving comet has been got rid of, through a knowledge of the light physical properties of these bodies, no agency or discoverable accident within the whole compass of our system has been known to astronomy, by which the order of this system might be destroyed, or even materially changed.—Bible and Astronomy, p. 345.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A.—Chang,, indeed, are taking place in the motions of the heavenly bodies, which have gone on progressively from the first dawn of Science. The eccentricity of the earth's orbit has been diminishing from the earliest observations to our times. The moon has been moving quicker and quicker from the time of the first recorded eclipses, and is now in advance, by about four times her own breadth, of what her place would have been if it had not been affected by this acceleration. The obliquity of the ecliptic also is in a state of diminution, and is now about two-fifths of a degree less than it was in the time of Aristotle. Yet for all this, the arrangements of the solar system, as has been demonstrated, are stable: in the long run the orbits and motions remain unchanged; and the changes in the orbits, which take place in shorter periods, never transgress certain very moderate limits. Each orbit undergoes deviations on this side and on that of its average state; but these deviations are never very great, and it finally recovers from 'them, so that the average is preserved. The planets, by their mutual gravitation, produce perpetual perturbations in each other's motions, but these perturbations are not indefinitely progressive, they are periodical: they reach a maximum value and then diminish. The periods which this restoration requires are, for the most part, enormous; not less than thousands, and, in some instances, millions of years; and hence it is that some of these apparent derangements have been going on in the same direction since the beginning of the history of the world. But the restoration is in the sequel as complete as the derangement; and in the meantime the disturbance never attains a sufficient amount seriously to alter the adaptations of the system.—Astronomy and General Physics, p. 90.

The Juniper Tree

Psa. 120:4.—Coals of juniper.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The juniper tree, or rothem, is ruthlessly uprooted by the Arabs, who collect it wherever it is tolerably abundant, for the manufacture of charcoal, which is considered of the finest quality, and fetches a higher price in Cairo than any other kind. The roots are far thicker and more massy than the stems. This explains the allusion of the Psalmist, "Sharp arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper."—Natural History of the Bale, p. 360.

Sunbeams and Moonlight

Psa. 121:6.—The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

REV. JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—The effect of the powerful sunbeams of the East is frequently manifested in what is called a sun-stroke. Those on whom this visitation falls sometimes perish instantly, others die soon from its effects, some live on in a state of idiocy—and there are comparatively few who survive and perfectly recover.—Note, In loco.

REV. VERE MONRO.—My kind host (at Aleppo) allowed me to occupy a flat upon his house-top during my stay, in preference to being confined in a room; but the influence of the moon upon my head was so powerful, that whenever its beams reached me I was compelled to get up and move my mattress to some part of the hypæthral chamber, which was in the shade: and it was easy to comprehend the full force of the Psalmist's prophetic promise—" The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night."— Summer Rambles in Syria, II., 222.

CARNE.—The effect of the moonlight on the eyes in this country (Egypt) is singularly injurious. The natives tell you, as I found afterward they also did in Arabia, always to cover your eyes when you sleep in the open air. It is rather strange that the above passage in the Psalms should not have been thus illustrated, as the allusion seems direct. The moon here really strikes and affects the sight when you sleep exposed to it, much more than the sun: a fact of which I had a very unpleasant proof one night, and took care to guard against it afterward. Indeed, the sight of a person who should sleep with his face exposed at night, would soon be utterly impaired or destroyed.—Letters from the East, I., 88.

Dew of Hermon

Psa. 133:3.—As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended on the mountains of Zion.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—We could here (at Rasheiya) but recall the Psalmist's expression, "As the dew of Hermon," etc.; for more copious dew we never experienced. Everything was drenched with it, and the tents were small protection. The under sides of our macintosh sheets were in water, our guns were rusted, dew-drops were hanging everywhere. The copiousness of the dew is easily accounted for by the geographical configuration. The hot air in the day-time comes streaming up the Ghor from the Huleh, while Hermon arrests all the moisture and deposits it congealed at nights. —Land of Israel, p. 208.

Process of Evaporation

Psa. 135:6, 7.—Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas and all deep places. He causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the winds out of his treasuries.

PROF. JAMES F. JOHNSTON, M. A., F. R. S., F. G. S.—As soon as the cleat' sky permits the sun's rays once more to warm the surface of the earth, vapors begin to rise anew, and the sweeping winds dry up the rains and dews from its moistened surface. There are regions of the globe, also, where unending summer plays on the surface of. the wide seas, and causes a perpetual evaporation to lift up unceasing supplies of water into the air. These supplies the wind wafts to other regions; and thus the water which descends in rain or dew in one spot, is replaced by that which mounts up in vapor from another. And all this to maintain unbroken that nice adjustment which fits the constitution of the atmosphere to the wants of living things.

How beautiful is the arrangement by which the water is thus constantly evaporated or distilled, as it were, into the atmosphere-more largely from some, more sparingly from other spots—then diffused equally through the wide and restless air, and afterward precipitated again in refreshing showers which cleanse the tainted air, or in long-mysterious dews. But how much more beautiful the contrivance—I might almost say, the instinctive tendency—by which the dew selects the objects on which it delights to fall; descending first on every living plant, copiously ministering to the wants of each, and expending its superfluity only on the unproductive waste!

And equally kind and beautiful, when understood, nature is seen to be in all her operations. Neither skill nor materials are ever wasted; and yet she ungrudgingly dispenses her favors apparently without measure, and has subjected dead matter to laws which compel it to minister, and yet with a most ready willingness, to the wants and comforts of every living thing.—Chemistry of Common Life, Vol. I., p. 17.

The Captives of Babylon

Psa. 137:1-3.—By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

REV. DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—It seems like the first strain of the captive Hebrews' song of exile which has been sounding through the world for seventy generations when we see upon the walls of the palace of Sennacherib the representation of a company of captives led by a military officer and compelled to play upon harps for the entertainment of their conquerors. This tablet, which is preserved in the British Museum, is as old as the memorable Psalm, in which the Hebrew captives poured forth the sorrows of exile in the strange land.—Research and Travel in Bible Lands, in "Wood's Animals of the Bible," p. 705.

God's Omnipresence and Omniscience

Psa. 139:1-4.—O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

HESIOD.—Jove's all-seeing, and all-knowing eye Discerns at pleasure things that hidden lie.

—Oper, et Dies, v. 265.

PLAUTUS.—There is undoubtedly a god who both hears and sees the things which we do.—Capt., Act II., sc. 2.

CICERO.—The gods know what passes in our minds, without the aid of eyes, ears, or tongues; on which divine omniscience is founded the feeling of men that, when they wish in silence, or offer up a prayer for anything, the gods hear them.—De Divin., I., 57.

IDEM.—The gods know what sort of person every one really is; they observe his actions, whether good or bad; they take notice with what feelings and with what piety he attends to his religious duties, and are sure to make a difference between the wicked and the good.—De Leg., II., 7.

Verses 7-11.—Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

HOMER.—It is not possible to flee from God.—Odyss., XVI., 447.

XENOPHON.—Whoever becomes the object of divine wrath, I know no swiftness can save him, no darkness hide him, no strong place defend him; since in all places, all things are subject to the power of the gods, and everywhere they are equally lords of all.—Anab., lib. ii., c. 5.

PLATO.—You will never be neglected by the deity, though you were so small as to sink into the depths of the earth, or so lofty as to fly up to heaven; but you will suffer from the gods the punishment due to you, whether you abide here, or depart to Hades, or are carried to a place still more wild than these.—De Leg., X., 12.

PRESIDENT T. DWIGHT, S. T. D., LL. D.—In every part of the Universe, to which we turn our eyes, we discern in the inanimate, animated, and intelligent worlds, most evident proofs of an agency, which it is impossible rationally to attribute to any other being but God. In the motions and powers of the elements; in the growth, structure, and qualities of vegetables and animals; and in the thoughts, volitions and actions of minds, we perceive a causal influence and efficiency totally distinguished from every other; as distinct from that of man, as the agency of man from the movements of an atom. This agency is conspicuous in all places, at all times, and in all things; and is seen in the earth, the ocean, the air, and the heavens, alike. Equally evident is it in the splendor and life-giving influences of the sun; in the motions, order and harmony of the planetary system; and in the light and beauty of the stars; as in the preservation, direction and control of terrestrial things. No agent can act where he is not. As, therefore, God acts everywhere, he is everywhere present. In this agency, contrivance and skill, to which no limits can be set, are everywhere manifested; it is, of course, equally and unanswerably a proof of the omniscience of God. As God exists everywhere, so he is in all places the same God, all eye, all ear, all intellect. Hence it is impossible that he should not know everything, in every place, and at every time.—System of Theology, Vol. I., p. 141.

DR. WILLIAM PALEY.—In every part and place of the universe, with which we are acquainted, we perceive the exertion of a power, which we believe, mediately or immediately, to proceed from the Deity. For instance: In what part or point of space, that has ever been explored, do we not discover attraction? In what regions do we not find light? In what accessible portion of our globe do we not meet with gravity, magnetism, electricity,; together with the properties also and powers of organized substances, of vegetable, or of animated nature? Nay, further, we may ask, What kingdom is there. of nature, what corner of space, in which there is anything that can be examined by us, where we do not fall upon contrivance and design? The only reflection, perhaps, which arises in our minds from this view of the world around us, is that the laws of nature everywhere prevail; that they are uniform and universal. But what do we mean by the laws of nature, or by any law? Effects are produced by power, not by laws. A law cannot execute itself. A law refers us to an agent. Now, an agency so general, as that we cannot discover its absence, or assign the place in which some effect of its continued energy is not found, may be called universal, and the person or being, in whom that power resides, or from whom it is derived, may be taken to be omnipresent. He who upholds all things by his power may be said to be everywhere present.—Nat. Theol., chap. XXIV.

Formation of Man's Body

Psa. 139:14-16.—I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth., Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—As an illustration of the numerous parts and functions which enter into the construction of our frames, it may be stated, that, in the human body there are 445 bones, each of them having forty distinct scopes or intentions; and over 400 muscles, each having ten several intentions;, so that the system of bones and muscles alone include above 20,000 varieties, or different intentions and adaptations. But besides the bones and muscles, there are hundreds of tendons and ligaments for the purpose of connecting-them together; hundreds of nerves ramified over the whole body to convey sensation to all its parts; ' thousands of arteries to convey the blood to the remotest extremities, and thousands of veins to bring it back to the heart; thousands of lacteal and. lymphatic vessels to absorb nutriment from the food; thousands of glands to secrete humors from the blood, and of emunctories to throw them off from the system, and besides many other parts of this variegated system and functions with which we are unacquainted, there are more than sixteen hundred millions of membranous cells or vesicles connected with the lungs, more than two hundred thousand millions of pores in the skin, through which the perspiration is incessantly flowing, and above a thousand millions of scales, which, according to Leeuwenhoek, Baker and others, compose the cuticle or outward covering of the body. We have also to take into the account the compound organs of life, the numerous parts of which they consist, and the diversified functions they perform—such as the brain, with its infinite number of fibers and numerous functions; the heart, with its auricles and ventricles; the stomach, with its juices and muscular coats; the liver, with its lobes and glands; the spleen, with its infinity of cells and membranes; the pancreas, with its juice and numerous glands; the kidneys, with their fine capillary tubes; the intestines, with all their turnings and convolutions; the organs of sense, with their multifarious connections; the mesentery, the gall-bladder, the ureters, the pylorus, the duodenum, the blood, the bile, the lymph, the saliva, the chyle, the hairs, the nails, and numerous other parts and substances, every one of which has diversified functions to perform. We have also to take into consideration the number of ideas included in the arrangement and connection of all these parts, and in the manner in which they are compacted into one system of small dimensions, so as to afford free scope for all the intended functions. Well might the Psalmist have exclaimed, " How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand."—Improvement of Society, Sec. VI.

JOHN MURRAY, F. S. A., F. L. S., F. G. S.—What a miracle of creation is man!-truly " fearfully and wonderfully made! "—a monument reared by infinite wisdom—a prodigy of parts. Could the unrivaled mechanism of man be unveiled, or its thousand movements be seen through a transparent medium, what a scene for contemplation, wonder and astonishment! and what a medium for adoration of " the Ancient of Days," who made and adjusted the mechanism, and put all its parts and powers in motion! What a vision would it be to see the ganglia shooting their electric influences along the lines of the nerves—the pneumatic machinery of the lungs discharging the envenomed air, and receiving in exchange a fresh supply of pure medium. The pause and interval in respirations to divide the gases agreeable to their relative specific gravities. The hydraulic engine of the heart propelling the vital fluid of the blood, its contractions and dilations; the flapping of the mitral, semi-lunar and tricuspid valves, acting like the valves of the steam-engine; the vibrations of the muscles; the pulling of the cordage of the tendons; the synovial or lubricating secretions of the joints, and their balls, and their sockets; the chronometry of the pulse, and the calorimeter which measures out heat to the system, and apportion; its quantity according to circumstances—a principle of compensation to equalize the temperature, and preserve an equilibrium under all changes and every variability. The absorbing vessels sucking up the several assimilated materials with a skilful selection, and with rare discrimination appropriating all; the functions of the skin cooling the surface when required, and the orifices acting as the waste pipes also of the system. The optical wonders of that perfect achromatic instrument, the eye; its window, and its curious curtain and its lens, and the media in contact with it; its reticular canvass in the back-ground of a camera-obscura, with all its microscopic and telescopic furniture. The acoustic paraphernalia of the ear, with its hammer, its stirrup, and its drum, and its chambers and beautifully convoluted recesses. The movements of the brain and its membranes, the secreting and assimilating organs engaged in recruiting the waste and rearing the goodly structure; the sensitive, irritable, and jealous epiglottis, guarding like a faithful sentinel the viaduct of the trachea; the refined sensibility of the papillae and fibrillæ of the tongue, and the delicate functions of the sneiderian membrane. These and myriads more of secreting and assimilating organs, with the secretions of the kidneys, mammæ, gall-bladder, salivary glands, pancreas, conglobated glands and lacteals, may well demand our wonder and admiration. What a miracle of skill and complication, and Yet how calm and unobtrusive their harmony! All that is beautiful in design and wonderful in the reciprocal adaptation of parts, with their mutual aptitudes, are here concentrated in one luminous focus of almighty wisdom.—Truth of Revel. Demonst., p. 32.

The Evil Tongue

Psa. 140:3.—They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips.

PLINY.—Is it not a fact, that there are many men, the very existence of whom is a baneful poison, as it were? They dart their livid tongue like the tongue of a serpent; and the venom of their disposition corrodes every object upon which it concentrates itself; ever vilifying and maligning, like the ill-omened bird of night.—Hist. Nat., lib. xviii., c. 1.

True Friendship

Psa. 141:5.—Let the righteous smite me; and it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head.

PLUTARCH.—I have no need of a friend who changes as I do, and follows me in everything; for my shadow can do that much better; but of one who will' follow the truth and judge according to it.—De Adul. et Amic., c. 8.

Divine Goodness

Psa. 9.—The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works.

POPE.—

For man kind Nature wakes her genial power,

Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;

Annual for him, the grape, the rose renew,

The juice nectareous and the balmy dew;

For him the mine a thousand treasures brings;

For him health gushes from a thousand springs;

Seas roll to waft him, suns to light him, rise;

His footstool Earth, his canopy the Skies.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—God has endowed all the creatures his hands have made with the power and with the means of enjoyment after their kind. In the exercise of their faculties, and in all their movements, they appear to experience a happiness suitable to their nature. The young of all animals in the exercise of their newly acquired faculties, the, fishes sporting in the waters, the birds skimming beneath the sky and warbling in the thickets, the gamesome cattle browsing in the pastures, the wild deer bounding through the forests, the insects gliding through the air and along the ground, and even the earth-worms wriggling in the dust,—proclaim by the vivacity of their movements and the various tones and gesticulations, that the exercise of their powers is connected with enjoyment. In this boundless scene of beneficence, we behold a striking illustration of the declarations of the Inspired Writers, that "the Lord is good to all "— that "the earth is full of his riches,"—and that "His tender mercies are over all his works."—Improvement of Society, p. 92.

Verse 10.—All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord.

DR. JOHN HARRIS.—Whatever excellence, natural or moral, the created universe may ever contain, was contained previously in the Divine Nature. The manifestation of his glory, by which we mean his all-sufficiency, is the great purpose or ultimate end of creation. There is not a particle of being or of excellence in existence now more than existed potentially from eternity, since the whole objective universe is the manifestation of the Divine being and excellence. This is the right key to the volume of the universe. Properly understood, every material particle is impressed with His seal. Every atom is a letter, and every work a word. Every element lectures on his attributes, and each globe is a messenger ever moving in his service. Man himself was made in his image. The stars come forth nightly on their solemn embassy to "proclaim the glory of God." And the earth daily affirms with voices innumerable the eternal power and Godhead.—Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 18, 20, 24, 33.

The Number of the Stars

Psa. 147:4, 5.—He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names. Grea is our Lord, and of great power: His understanding is infinite.

THE COMPILER.—Vast and wonderful, indeed, is that family of planetary worlds embraced in the Solar System; yet when we have reached the orbit of the remotest of all the planets, 3,000 millions of miles from the center, we have scarcely set foot on the threshold of the Temple of Creation. While we remain among the planetary worlds, we are among our near neighbors; and while we continue within the limits of the solar system, we are comparatively at home in the boundless universe of God. If now we would advance to the study of the " fixed stars," those myriads of lights which nightly sparkle in our firmament, we must leave far behind the utmost bound of our own system, pass through dark and pathless regions, and pierce into depths of space, the very thought of which awes and overwhelms the mind.

The distance of the nearest of the fixed stars, Alpha Centauri, has been calculated to be no less than 20,000,000,000,000 of miles, a space which it would occupy fight, traveling at the rate of twelve millions of miles a minute, more than three years and a half to pass over! Sirius, though appearing as the brightest of all the stars, is still at a distance six times greater. Yet these are among the nearest of the stars; " the hosts of heaven " lie still immeasurably further in the depths of space.

Distant as the stars are, astronomers have contrived to detect a number of interesting phenomena connected with them. Some stars are observed to increase and decrease in brightness within fixed and definite periods. Others seem to vary fitfully in their magnitude and brilliancy. But the most wonderful revelations of sidereal astronomy are what have been called double, triple and multiple stars. When a telescope of considerable power is directed to certain' stars, which appear single to the naked eye, they are found double, one star being quite adjacent to the other. Others, again, are found triple; etc. These are found to revolve around each other; that is, two, three, or four suns, together with their respective systems, revolve round one another, or around their common center of gravity. This assuredly is a most sublime conception! What can be more august and overwhelming than the idea of resplendent suns revolving around other equally resplendent suns; of suns encircled with numerous retinues of planetary bodies, all in rapid motion, around other similar suns, over immeasurable circumferences, and with a velocity surpassing all human comprehension, and carrying all their planets with them in swift career. Yet nearly 6,000 such systems of double stars have been discovered. A most curious and interesting fact connected with these multiple systems is, that one sun differs in color from the other suns in the same system. In some instances, one sun is yellow and another blue; in other cases, one is of a crimson hue, while another is of vivid green. What a variety of illumination two, three, or four such suns must afford to the planetary worlds circling around them; what charming contrasts and grateful vicissitudes—a red, a green, and a yellow day alternating with a white one, and with darkness!

The immense distances of the stars prove their dimensions to be immense likewise, otherwise they would be altogether invisible from our world. Experiments and calculations go to prove that were the star Sirius and our Sun placed at equal distances, that star would impart an amount of light 14 times greater than that of the sun. The diameter of the star Vega has been calculated to be 38 times that of the sun; consequently its bulk must be 55,000 times that of the sun. What a stupendous orb must such a star be! The earth we call a large globe; other of the planets are hundreds of times larger; and the sun is 500 times larger than all the planets and satellites put together—what then must that body be which is 55,000 times larger than the sum of the whole solar system!

The number of the stars is equally astonishing. Ordinarily, indeed, there are not more than 1,000 visible to the naked eye at one time; and not more than 6,000 in both hemispheres under the most favorable circumstances. But these are only the beginnings of the glories of the heavens. When the telescope is turned toward the sky, stars before unseen come forth by myriads from the dark depths of space; and as the power of that instrument is increased, other myriads still come to view. The whole Milky Way is but a cluster of stars. "This remarkable belt," says the Elder Herschel, "when examined through a powerful telescope, is found to consist entirely of stars scattered by millions, like glittering dust, on the black ground of the general heavens." The number of stars that can be distinctly counted in the Milky Way exceeds 5,500,000. But this Belt is only one of those clusters of stars, called nebulœ, of which there have been observed and examined no less than 3,000. Each of these appears to be composed of stars as thickly crowded as the Milky Way. Of one of them, Sir John Herschel says: "Ten or twenty thousand stars appear to be compacted or wedged together in a space not larger than a tenth part of that covered by the moon, and presenting in its center one blaze of light." What, then, must be the number in the whole of that nebula? And if to all the foregoing we add the stars of 3,000 other nebulae, or Milky Ways, what a boundless scene is presented to the mind!

It has been calculated that there are within the reach of the best telescopes more than two billions of worlds—a number so vast that, counting a hundred per minute, it would take no less than 40,000 years to enumerate them! Yet men of sober minds and profound intellects have advanced the supposition, that were even all these to be swept away into nothingness and oblivion, the universe of God would be still left in its greatness, and that its glory would suffer no more by the event, tremendous as it seems to us, than would the forest by the dropping of a single leaf.—How significant, then, and how appropriate and true the adoring language of the Psalmist: " HE telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power: His understanding is infinite."—See Work Days of God, p. 466-483.

Proverbs

Prov. 1:24-27.—Because I have called, and ye refused: I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded: but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as a desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

ÆSCHYLUS.—

He, that to virtue's heavenly power

Unforced his willing soul shall bow,

Nor ruin's tyrant rage shall know,

Nor keen affliction's torturing hour.

But he that dares her sacred laws despise,

Trampling on justice to amass his prey,

Appall'd shall hear the rushing whirlwinds rise,

And tremble at the storms that swell the sea,

Wild with despair

He pours his prayer,

Whirled in the giddy tempest round;

His blasted pride

The gods deride

And all his daring hopes confound;

Smile as they view him rack'd with pain

Bound in misfortune's iron chain;

As on the pointed rock they see him thrown,

To perish there unpitied and alone.

—Eumen., v. 550.

Prov. 1:32.—The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

THEOGNIS. —Excess has ruined many a foolish man; for it is difficult to keep the mean when good things abound.— rheas., v. 693.

DEMOSTHENES. —Great and unexpected success is apt to hurry weak minds into extravagances.— Olynth., III., 9.

QUINTUS CURTIUS. —Your prosperity begins to make you mad.—Quint. Curt., x., 2.

Prov. 3:13, 14.—Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

PLATO. —Righteousness—a matter far more valuable than gold.—De Rep., lib. i. c. 10.

Prov. 3:16.—Length of days is in her right hand.

MARTIAL.—A good man lengthens his term of existence. To be able to enjoy the recollection of our past life is to live twice.—Mart., lib. x., epigr. 23.

Prov. 3:16.—And in her left hand riches and honor.

PLAUTUS.—A man's reputation is his way to money. Let me but maintain a good character, and I shall be rich enough.—Mostell, Act I., sc. 3.

Prov. 3:17.—Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

PINDAR. —

Those who seek with high emprise,

The steep where virtue's guerdon lies,

The brightest walks of life await.

—Olymp., vi. 122

JUVENAL. —The only path that surely leads to a life of peace, lies through virtue.—Sat. x., v. 363.

Prov. 3:28.—Say not unto thy neighbor, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee.

LUCIAN. —

Swift favors charm; but when too long they stay,

They lose the name of kindness by delay.

—Epigr.

Prov. 3:32.—His secret is with the righteous.

CALLIMACHUS. —Not to everyone doth Apollo manifest himself; but to the good only.—H. in Apoll., v. 9.

Prov. 4:14, 15.—Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away.

PLATO. —Flee without turning back, from the society of the wicked.—De Leg., lib. ix., c. 1.

Prov. 4:18, 19.—The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness, they know not at what they stumble.

HESIOD.—

But thou to justice cleave, from wrong forbear.

Wrong, if he yield to its abhorr'd control,

Shall pierce like iron into the poor man's soul:

Wrong weighs the rich man's conscience to the dust,

When his foot stumbles on the way unjust.

Far different is the path, a path of light,

That guides the feet to equitable right:

The end of righteousness enduring long,

Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.

—Oper. et Dies, v. 211.

Prov. 5:3-5.—For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honey-comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell.

PLAUTUS. —Your tongues and talk are steeped in honey; your doings and dispositions in gall, and sour vinegar. From your tongues you utter sweet words; you make your lovers to have bitter hearts, if they fail to give you presents.— Trucul., Act I., sc. 2.

PINDAR. —A bitter end remains to forbidden pleasures.—Apud Plut. de audiend. poet., c. 3.

Prov. 6:6-8.—Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The natural interpretation of this passage is, that the ant proves her industry and wisdom by storing up in summer' a supply for winter use. Many difficulties have been raised respecting this, from the fact that the ant tribe are, excepting in hot climates, for the most part dormant in winter, and that their food is not corn, but flesh, insects, and saccharine matter from trees, which cannot be stored. They do, however, fill their nests with all kinds of substances, chiefly for the purpose of lining them and keeping them free from damp; and I have not only seen them in the Holy Land busily engaged in carrying quantities of barley to hoard, but have found the nests full of corn, mingled with chaff, grass, seeds, and all sorts of dried vegetable husks. Elsewhere they have been observed, not only to carry seeds to their nests, but, after the rains, when the moisture has penetrated their dwellings, to bring them up again to the surface to dry. The ancients unanimously believed that the ant stored up food for winter consumption; and who that has watched the incessant activity of these little creatures, issuing in long files from their subterranean labyrinths by a broad beaten track., and gradually dispersing in all directions by pathways that become narrower and fainter as they are subdivided and diverge, while a busy throng is uninterruptedly conveying back by the same paths every movable object which they are able to drag with their powerful forceps, would not at once arrive at the same conclusion?—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 320.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—It has been asserted by some that ants do not gather grains of wheat and barley, and lay them up in store; but that is nonsense. Tell it to these farmers, and they will laugh in your face. Ants not pilfer from the floor and the granary! They are the greatest robbers in the land. Leave a bushel of wheat in the vicinity of one of their subterranean cities, and in a surprisingly short time the whole commonwealth will be summoned to plunder. A broad black column stretches from the wheat to their hole, and you are startled by the result. As if by magic, every grain seems to be accommodated with legs, and walks off in a hurry along the moving column. The farmers remorselessly set fire to every ant city they find in the neighborhood of their threshing-floors.—Land and the Book, II., 262.

Prov. 6:13.—He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS. should be remembered, that in the East, when people are in their houses, they do not wear sandals; consequently their feet and toes are exposed. When guests wish to speak with each other, so as not to be observed by the host, they convey their meaning by their feet and toes. Does a person wish to leave a room in company with another, he lifts one of his feet; and should the other refuse, he also lifts a foot, and then suddenly puts it down on the ground. " He teacheth with his fingers: "when merchants wish to make a bargain in the presence of others, without making known their terms, they sit on the ground, have a piece of cloth thrown over the lap, and then put each a hand under, and thus speak with the fingers. When the Brahmins convey religious mysteries to their disciples, they teach with their fingers, having the hands concealed in the folds of their robes.—Orient. Illust., p. 355.

Prov. 6:16-19.—These things doth the Lord hate: a proud look, a lying tongue, a false witness that speaketh lies.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS. —Diseases of the body God relieves; diseases of the mind he hates.—Dissert., 41.

PHOCYLIDES.—The immortal God hates every false swearer.—Phocyl, v. 15.

Prov. 7:27.—Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.

HESIOD. —

Let no strange woman e'er seduce thy mind

With robe up-gathered in a knot behind:

She prattling her soft things, asks, sly, thy home;

But trust a woman, and a thief is come.

—Oper. et Dies, v. 371.

CICERO.—Many men, because they are enfeebled and subdued the moment pleasure comes in sight, give themselves up to be bound hand and foot by their lust, and do not foresee what will happen to them. —De Fin., lib. i., c. 14.

PLAUTUS. —Lydas (at the door of a harlot's house)—Open and throw back this gate of hell, I do entreat; for really I deem it nothing else; inasmuch as no one comes here but he who has lost all hope that he may yet become a decent person.—Bacch., Act III., sc. 1.

Prov. 9:17.—Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

AMATORIUS.—Sweet is the fruit which is gathered when the keeper is absent. c. 5.

Pro. 12:10.—A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

PLUTARCH.—Kindness and beneficence should be extended to creatures of every species; and these still flow from the breast of a well-natured man, as streams that issue from the living fountain. A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only when they are young, but when they are old and past service. We certainly ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household goods, which when worn out with use, we throw away: and were it only to teach benevolence to human kind, we should be merciful to other creatures.— Cat. Maj., c. 5.

Prov. 13:12.—Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.

STATIUS. —There is no heavier grief to a man than hope that is long in coming.—Theb., II., 320.

Prov. 13:20.—He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

THEOGNIS. —Consort not with bad men, but ever cleave to the good: with them eat and drink; sit with them, and please them; of whom there is a large force. For from the good thou shalt learn good, but with the bad, if thou shouldst mix, thou wilt lose even the mind thou hast.—Theog., v. 31.

EPICTETUS. —It is impossible to touch a chimney-sweep without being partaker of his soot.—Epic., lib. iii., c. 16.

Prov. 14:14.—A good man shall be satisfied from himself.

ARISTOTLE.—The life of a good man is not at all in want of pleasure, as a certain appendage, but contains pleasure in itself; for he is not a good man who does not rejoice in beautiful actions; and actions according to virtue will be in themselves delectable.—Nicomachean Ethics, lib. i., c. 8.

Prov. 14:17.—He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly.

EURIPIDES. —Medea. I know indeed the ills that I am about to dare; but my rage is master of my councils, which is indeed the cause of the greatest calamities to men.—Med., v. 1078.

Prov. 14:20.—The poor is hated even of his own neighbor; but the rich man hath many friends.

THEOGNIS.—Everyone honors a rich man, but dishonors a poor; yet in all men there is the same mind.—Theog., v. 621.

Prov. 14:30—A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.

MENANDER. —Things are consumed and corrupted, each by its own particular evil; and the destroyer of everything is contained within itself; as for instance, rust in iron, if you reflect; the worm or dry-rot in wood; the moth in garments. Thus envy, which is the worst of all evils, has caused, does cause, and will cause, atrophy and consumption; for it is the impious associate of an evil mind.

PROF. THOMAS WATSON, M. D.—Very many diseases have a mental origin; and perhaps there is no cause of corporeal disease more clearly made out, or more certainly effective, than protracted anxiety and distress of mind. Our passions and emotions also, nay, even some of our better impulses, when strained or perverted, tend to our physical destruction.—Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic, fi. 59.

DR. GEORGE MOORE, M. R. C. P.—There is but one cause of misery, disease and death to man. Let us shun that, and we need not be very nice about the choice of our diet, or our doctor, for, after all, the grand secret of health is to be happy at heart.—Health, Disease and Remedy, p. 140.

Prov. 14:34.—Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.

PLAUTUS.—If the inhabitants have good morals, I think the city is properly fortified; but if vices prevail there, a hundred walls would be of no avail for preserving its interests.—Pers., Act IV., sc. 4.

REV. THOMAS SCOTT, D. D.—" Righteousness "—genuine piety—is inseparably connected with industry, sobriety, equity, mercy and frugality; and these conduce to health, population, union and competency. The prevalence of vice and impiety is a national reproach, conduces to disunion, weakness and disgrace. Note, In loco.

Prov. 15:1.—A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

PLUTARCH.—One of the maxims of the Pythagoreans was not to stir the fire with a sword, the meaning of which was not to irritate an angry man.— Num., c. 14.

Prov. 15:8.—The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is his delight.

PLATO.—The divine nature is not such as to be seduced by presents, like a knavish judge. It would be a dreadful thing indeed if the gods looked to gifts and sacrifices, and not to the soul, whether a person be holy or just. Nay, they look much more to this than to expensive processions and sacrifices, which there is nothing to prevent them from having the power to pay, each year, who have sinned greatly against the gods, and greatly too against men. But they, as not receiving bribes, disdain all such things as these, as says the god and the prophet of the gods.—Alcib., lib. ii., c. 13.

CICERO.—Let not the wicked dare to think of appeasing the anger of the gods by gifts. —De Leg., lib. ii., c. 9.

Prov. 15:16.—Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble therewith.

THEOGNIS.—Choose rather to live religiously with small means, than to be rich, having gotten riches unjustly.—Theog., v. 545.

Prov. 16:9.—A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.

HOMER.—

Mighty Jove cuts short, with just disdain,

The long, long views of poor designing man.

—Iliad, XVII., 328.

XENOPHON.—Human wisdom knows no more how to choose the best than one who should determine to act as chance and the lot shall decide. The gods, who are eternal, know all things that have been all things that are, and all that shall happen in consequence of everything; and when men consult them, they signify to those to whom they are propitious, what they ought to do, and what to leave undone.—Cyrop., lib. i., c. 6.

Prov. 16:18.—Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

MENANDER. —When you see any one highly elated, glorying in his birth and riches, and exalting himself above measure, you may expect a sudden retribution. The higher he soars, the greater will be his fall.—Apud. Stroh., xxii.

Prov. 16:29.—A violent man enticeth his neighbor, and leadeth him in the way that is not good.

ARISTOTLE.—The wicked man injures both himself and his neighbors by following evil passions.— Eth., IX., 8.

CICERO.—Men of vicious life are doubly pernicious to the state, as being not only guilty of immoral practices themselves, but likewise of spreading them far and wide among their fellow-citizens. Nor are they mischievous to it inasmuch as they cherish vices themselves, but also because they compel others; and they do more harm by their example than by the crimes which they commit.—De Leg., lib. iii., c.

Prov. 16:31.—The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.

PHILO.—

A hoary head with sense combined,

Claims veneration from mankind:

But if with folly join'd, it bears

The badge of ignominious years.

—Apud. Anthol. Grœc.

Prov. 16:32.—He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

CICERO. —You (Caesar) have subdued nations, savage in their barbarism, boundless if we regard the extent of country peopled by them, and rich in every kind of resource; but still you were only conquering things, the nature and condition of which were such that they could be overcome by force. But to subdue one's inclinations, to master one's angry feelings, to be moderate in the hour of victory, to not merely raise from the ground a prostrate adversary, eminent for noble birth, for genius and for virtue, but even to increase his previous dignity,—these are actions of such a nature that the man who does them I do not compare to the most illustrious man, but I consider him equal to a god.—Pro. Marcel., c. 3.

MARTIAL.—To Domitian. Conqueror of many leaders; conqueror also of thyself.—Mart., lib. viii., epigr. 54.

Prov. 17:17.—A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

ISOCRATES.—Judge of your friends in the misfortunes of life, and their voluntary sharing of danger; for we prove gold by fire; but we know best our real friends in affliction and distress.—Orat. 1.

CICERO.—Friends are loosened, as it were, by happy events, and drawn together in distress.—De Amic., c. 13.

Prov. 18:14.—The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?

CICERO.—In proportion as the vigor of the mind exceeds that of the body, so also are the sufferings which rack the mind more terrible than those which are endured by the body. He, therefore, who commits a wicked action is more wretched than he who is compelled to endure the wickedness of another.— Philip., XI., c. 4.

Prov. 18:24.—There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

EURIPIDES.—A man who is congenial in manners, though a stranger in blood, is a better friend for a man to have than ten thousand relatives.—Orest., v. 805.

Prov. 19:6.—Every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts.

EURIPIDES.—Gifts, they say, persuade even the gods; and gold is more powerful with men than a thousand arguments.— Med., v. 964.

Prov., 19:7.—All the brethren of the poor do hate him: bow much more do his friends go far from him? He pursueth them with words, yet they are wanting to him.

MENANDER.—It is difficult to find the kinsman of a poor man; no one will confess relationship with him who is in need; for he fears to be asked for something.—Ap. Stob., X.

Prov. 19:11.—The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.

PLUTARCH.—Plato, having lifted his staff against a servant who had provoked him, stood in that posture for a long time, in order, as he said, to restrain his anger.—De Ser. Num. vind., c. 5.

OVID.—The greater any one is, the more placable is he in his anger; and a noble disposition is easily affected.— Trist., 1. iii., eleg. 5.

Prov. 19:14.—A prudent wife is from the Lord.

HESIOD.—No better lot hath providence assigned. Than a fair woman with a virtuous mind.—Op. et Dies., v. 700.

SIMONIDES.—A man can obtain nothing better than a good wife, and nothing more horrible than a bad one.—In Brunck, p. 99.

Prov. 19:17.—He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.

MARTIAL.—The riches you give away are the only riches you will possess forever.—Mart., lib. v., epigr. 42.

Prov. 20:1—Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

HOMER.—Inflaming wine, pernicious to mankind, Unnerves the limbs, and dulls the noble mind.—Iliad, V., 263.

ISOCRATES.—When the understanding is disordered by wine, it is like a chariot which has flung off its driver; for a chariot wanting a directing hand is hurried without order; and the soul is full of error and deception when the mind is darkened by strong liquor.—Oration 1.

Prov. 22:6.—Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

EURIPIDES.—SUCH things as a boy learns, these he is wont to remember till old age. Do ye then educate your children well.—Suppl., v. 916.

PLATO.—The instruction given in earliest age is wonderfully lasting and impressive.— Timœus, c. 4.

QUINTILIAN.—Train but the tender age, you form the man.—Lib. i., c. 3.

Prov. 24:9.—The thought of foolishness is sin.

JUVENAL.—He who meditates within his breast a crime that finds not vent even in words, has all the guilt of the act.—Sat. xiii., v. 209.

Prov. 24:30, 31.—I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and lo it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Yes, that is true to nature, and to actual life in all its details. The stone terraces and garden walls soon tumble down when neglected, and this, beyond any country I have seen, is prolific in thorns and thistles. All your vineyards in this region are covered with them, and so thousands of your valuable olive-trees are completely choked up with briers and thorns, and their owners are too shiftless and indolent to clear them away.—The Land and the Book, Vol. I., p. 522.

Prov. 25:2.—It is the glory of God to conceal a thing.

SOLON.—The mind of the immortals is always hidden from men.—In Brunck, p. 73.

Prov. 25:17.—Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbor's house, lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee.

ARABIC PROVERB.—Rare visits increase love.—Erpen's. Arab. Gram.

Prov. 26:14.—As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honor is not seemly for a fool.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The occurrence of rain (in Palestine) after the corn is ripe is scarcely known, and thus we find it suggested as an image of what is most incongruous: "As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honor is not seemly for a fool."—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 31.

Prov. 26:14.—As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed.

REV. H. W. PHILLOTT, M. A.—In Syria, and especially the Haurân, there are many ancient doors consisting of stone slabs with pivots carved out of the same piece, inserted in sockets above and below, and fixed during the building of the house. The allusion in Proverbs is thus clearly explained.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1077.

Prov. 27:1.—Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

THEOGNIS.—Never speak boastingly in public; for no man knows what a night and a day may bring about for a man.—Theog, v. 159.

DEMOSTHENES.—He whose condition is most prosperous, whose fortune seems most favorable, knows not whether it is to remain unchanged, even for a day.—De Corona.

THEOCRITUS.—We are mortals, and cannot look forward to the morrow.—Carm., XIII., v. 4.

Prov. 27:6.—The kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

SOPHOCLES.—True is the adage—From the hands of foes Gifts are not gifts, but injuries most fatal.—Ajax, v. 664.

Prov. 27:17.—Iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—In the sepulchers at Thebes butchers are represented as sharpening their knives on a round bar of metal attached to their aprons, which from its blue color is presumed to be steel.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1143.

Prov. 27:22.—Though thou shouldest, bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—Corn may be separated from its husk and all its good properties preserved by such an operation, but the fool's fully is so essential a part of himself, that no analogous process can remove it from him.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2015.

PLUTARCH.—Nicocreon caused Anaxarchus to be pounded and brayed to pieces with iron pestles.—De Virt. Mural., c. 10.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—Large mortars are used in the East for the purpose of separating the rice from the husk. When a considerable quantity has to be prepared, the mortar is placed outside the door; and two women, each with a pestle of five feet long, begin the work. They strike in rotation, as blacksmiths do on the anvil.—Cruel as it is, this is a punishment of the state: the poor victim is thrust into the mortar and beaten with the pestle. The late king of Kandy compelled one of the wives of his rebellious chief thus to beat her own infant to death.—Orient. Illust., p. 368.

Prov. 27:27.—And thou shalt have goats milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—In all the districts of Palestine where goats are kept, their milk is an important 'item of food, and is used both fresh and curdled, or manufactured into butter and cheese. In the mountainous regions no other milk is used, and the goats are the sole wealth of many villages. Here they are profitable enough to maintain the farmer's family.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 91.

Prov. 28:1.—The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.

CICERO.—The power of conscience is very great, O judges, and is of great weight on both sides: so that they fear nothing who have done no wrong: and they on the other hand, who have done wrong, think that punishment is always hanging over them.—Pro Milon, c. 23.

STATIUS.—O wickedness, ever cowardly!—Theb., 1. ii., v. 490.

Prov. 28:10.—Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit.

HESIOD.—He harms himself that plans another's ill, And evil counsels plague their authors still.— Op. et Dies, v. 263.

Prov. 28:20.—He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.

HORACE.—He who is always in a hurry to be wealthy, and immersed in the study of augmenting his fortune, has lost the art of reason and deserted the post of virtue.—Epist.. XVI., v. 67.

JUVENAL.—He who covets riches would also grow rich speedily. But what re. spect for laws, what fear or shame is ever found in the breast of the miser hasting to be rich.—Sat. XIV., v. 176.

Prov. 30:8.—Remove fir from me vanity and lies give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.

THEOGNIS.—I neither wish nor pray to be rich; but be it mine to live on my little store, and find no hurt. —Theog., v. 1153.

PLATO.—May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.—Phœdrus, c. 64.

ALEXIS.—Enough, and just enough, how good is it!

Prov. 30:24, 25.—There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise. The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Modern research has proved the wisdom and instinct of these little creatures to be far in advance of any other known insect, not even excepting the Bee. Their skill in architecture is wonderful and varied. Some species build their labyrinths of pellets of kneaded clay, arched and fitted like the most solid masonry; others employ rafters and beams for their roofs; others excavate the trunks of trees. They fortify their passages against rain and enemies, closing them every night, and opening them in the morning. Like the bees and wasps, their communities are composed of males, females and neuters, the latter being both the workers and the rulers. These receive the eggs, watch over them with unceasing care, bring the larva to enjoy the heat of the sun, and then carry them back to their chambers as the day declines. They gather food for them, and supply them incessantly; they tear away the cases from the cocoons when the perfect insect is, ready to emerge; they spread and dry the wings, which the males and females alone possess, and that only in the perfect state; they afterward tend the females, feed them, wash them, and keep continual guard. They rear myriads of aphides, or small plant parasites, from the egg, to supply food for the young, and keep them like cows. Some species, as the Amazon Ants, organize regular marauding expeditions, attack the colonies of other ants; and carry off the larvae to be their slaves. In fact, had not the habits of the ants been verified by the observations of the most careful and truthful naturalists, they would have been incredible. Truly, indeed, did Agur pronounce them to be “exceeding wise."—Natural History of the Bible, p. 321.

DR. LINCECUM. —The species named "Agricultural" is a large brownish Ant. When it has selected a situation for its habitation, if on ordinary dry ground, it bores a hole, around which it raises the surface three and sometimes six inches, forming a low circular mound having a very gentle inclination from the center to the outer border, which on an average is three or four feet from the entrance. But if the location is chosen on low, flat, wet land, liable to inundation, though the ground may be perfectly dry at the time the ant sets to work, it nevertheless elevates the mound, in the form of a pretty sharp cone, to the height of fifteen or twenty inches, and makes the entrance near the summit. Around the mound in either case the ant clears the ground of all obstructions, levels and smooths the surface to the distance of three or four feet from the gate of the city, giving the space a handsome appearance. Within this area not a blade of any green thing is allowed to grow, except a single species of grain-bearing grass. Having planted this crop in a circle around, and two or three feet from, the center of the mound, the insect tends and cultivates it with constant care, cutting away all other grasses and weeds that may spring up amongst it and all around outside of the farm-circle to the extent of one or two feet more.

The cultivated grass grows luxuriantly, and produces a heavy crop of small, white, flinty seeds, which under the microscope very closely resemble ordinary rice. When ripe, it is carefully harvested and carried by the workers, chaff and all, into the granary cells, where it is divested of the chaff and packed away. The chaff is taken out and thrown beyond the limits of the area. During protracted wet weather, it sometimes happens that the provision stores become damp, and are liable to sprout and spoil. In this case, on the first fine day the ants bring out the damp and damaged grain, and expose it to the sun till it is dry, when they carry it back and pack away all the sound seeds, leaving those that had sprouted to waste.

Now, there can be no doubt of the fact, that the particular species of grain-bearing grass, mentioned above, is intentionally planted. In farmer-like manner the ground upon which it stands is carefully divested of all other grasses and weeds during the time it is growing. When it is ripe, the grain is taken care of, the dry stubble cut away and carried off, the area being left unencumbered until the ensuing autumn, when the same " ant-rice " reappears within the same circle, and receives the same agricultural attention as was bestowed upon the previous crop; and so on year after year, as I know to be the case, in all situations where the ants' settlements are protected from graminivorous animals. My conclusions have not been arrived at from hasty or careless observation, nor from seeing the ants do something that looked a little like it, and then guessing at the results. I have at all seasons watched the same ant-cities during the last twelve years, and I know that what I have stated is true. I visited the same cities yesterday, and found the crop of ant-rice growing finely, and exhibiting also the signs of high cultivation, and not a blade of any other kind of grass or weed was to be seen within twelve inches of the circular row of ant-rice. —Journal of the Linnœan Society, Vol. VI., No. 21, p. 29.

REV. J. G. WOOD, M. A., F. L. S.—The economical habits of this wonderful insect far surpasses anything that Solomon has written of the ant, and it is not too much to say that if any of the Scriptural writers had ventured to speak of an ant that not only laid up stores of grain, but actually prepared the soil for the crop, planted the seed, kept the ground free from weeds, and finally reaped the harvest, the statement would have been utterly disbelieved, and the credibility not only of that particular writer, but of the rest of Scripture severely endangered. We all know that Solomon's statement concerning the ant has afforded one of the stock of arguments against the truth of Scripture; and here we have his statements not only corroborated to the very letter by those who have visited Palestine for the express purpose of investigating its zoology, but far surpassed by the observations of a scientific man who had watched the insects for a series of years.—Bible Animals, p. 620.

Prov. 30:26.—The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The coney does not, like the rabbit, scoop out a burrow for itself, but lives in holes in the rocks, where it makes its nest and conceals its young, and to which it retires at the least alarm. They are a feeble folk, and though they will attempt to bite when seized in their holes, yet their efforts are not very formidable. But their wariness is great. “They are exceeding wise." Being in some degree gregarious, they never feed without having sentries on the look-out, and, on the approach of danger, a short squeak from the look-out sends the whole party instantly to their retreat.— Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 76.

REV. J. G. Wool), M. A., F. L. S.—The coney is so crafty that no trap or snare ever set has induced it to enter, and so wary that it is with difficulty that one can be killed even with firearms.—Bible Animals, p. 317.

Prov. 30:27.—The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—Nothing in the habits of locusts is more striking than the pertinacity with which they all pursue the same line of march, like a disciplined army. As they have no king, they must be influenced by some common instinct.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 107.

Prov. 30:23.—The spider taketh hold with her hands and is in kings' palaces.

PROF. H. 13. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The word semamith, here translated "spider," is by some supposed to represent the Gecko, a species of lizard, which has the power of walking on an inverted surface. It may, however, stand for the spider, which uses its feet so nimbly to run up its web, and to cling to any surface, that they may well be termed “hands," while no recess, even in a palace, is secure from its intrusion.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 304.

THE COMPILER.—The ingenuity, cunning and stratagems of the spider, have been subjects of observation and interest from remote antiquity. Solomon might well mention it among “the small things that are wise upon the earth." For, truly, what the spider does with her hands, and her spinning organs, is very wonderful. The garden spider is a most skilful aeronaut, and practiced his art with consummate success, long ages before its discovery by man; it constructs its balloon with silk of its own manufacture, and wafts along, or ascends on high, with ease and rapidity, in its airy chariot. The water spider, from time immemorial, has been familiar with all the triumphs of the diving-bell; it fabricates for itself a covering in which it can safely dive, remain at the bottom of pools and streams, there build for itself a dry and comfortable habitation; from this it daily ascends in quest of prey, and, having secured it, carries it down to its sub-aquatic mansion, to be devoured at its pleasure. Another species, called the builder, is eminently gifted with architectural talents; but its structures are always underground. There it excavates rooms, bores galleries, forms vaults, constructs bridges, and carves out entrances. Its habitation, when completed and garnished, is always remarkable for the extreme neatness which reigns within it. Whatever the humidity of the soil in which it is built, water never penetrates it; the walls are nicely covered with tapestry of silk, having usually the luster of satin, and are almost always of dazzling whiteness. But the most remarkably ingenious of all the contrivances about its habitation is the door at its entrance, which lacks nothing but a lock, for it is nicely fitted to a frame, and actually works upon a hinge. This door, upon close examination, is found to be a complicated fabric, being formed of no less than thirty layers of earth and web, emboxed in each other. On the outside it is coated with soil similar to the surrounding earth, so that the existence of an entrance would hardly be suspected. And what is very striking, the door is so hinged that, whether the spider enters or goes out, it is sure to shut of itself. The advantage of this adjustment is great and obvious; for, whether it darts out upon its prey, or retreats before an enemy, no time need be lost in shutting the door. In these operations of spiders, we discover designs so wise, contrivances so happy, and adaptations so successful, as plainly prove that the benevolent Creator has taught each the lessons of its life-duties, and made these little creatures, small though they be, “wise upon the earth."—See my work entitled Work Days of God, p. 596.

Prov. 30:30.—A lion, which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for any.

J. G. WOOD, M. A., F. L. S.—Size for size, the lion is one of the strongest of beasts. A full-grown lion can, not only knock down and kill, but carry away in its mouth an ordinary ox; and one of these terrible animals has been known to pick up a heifer in its mouth, and to leap over a wide ditch still carrying its burden. Another lion carried a two-year old heifer, and was chased for five hours by mounted farmers, so that it must have traversed a very considerable distance. Yet, in the whole of this journey, the legs of the heifer had only two or three times touched the ground. It kills a man, and comparatively small animals, such as deer and antelopes, with a blow of its terrible paw—a second blow is seldom necessary to cause the death of such a victim. The lion seems to be a very incarnation of strength, and, even when dead, gives as vivid an idea of concentrated power as when it was living. And when the skin is stripped from the body, the tremendous muscular development never fails to create a sensation of awe. The muscles of the limbs, themselves so hard as to blunt the keen-edged knives employed by a dissector, are enveloped in their glittering sheaths, playing upon each other like well-oiled machinery, and terminating in tendons seemingly strong as steel, and nearly as impervious to the knife. Not until the skin is removed can any one form a conception of the enormously powerful muscles of the neck, which enable the lion to lift the weighty prey which it kills and to convey it to a place of security. It is, moreover, one of the most courageous animals in existence when it is driven to fight; and if its anger is excited, it cares little for the number of its foes, or the weapons with which they are arMed. “He turneth not away for any."—Bible Animals, p. 20-22.

Prov. 31:13, 14.—She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant's ships; she bringeth her food from far.

LIVY.—Several of the Roman nobles disputing about the relative merits of their wives, agreed to visit them unexpectedly, in order to observe their several occupations. Lucretia was found busily employed with her wool, though at a late hour, and sitting in the midst of her house, with her maids at work around her.—Liv., lib. i., cap. 57.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—In Sidon, at this day, a majority of the women are thus working in raw silk and cotton, instead of wool and flax. Many of them actually support the family in this way, and by selling their produce to the merchants, bring their food from far. A leading Moslem told me that 'nearly every family in Sidon was thus carried through the past scarce lid very dear winter. —The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 573.

Prov. 31:13.—She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The industrious of this country are very early risers. Long before day they are up and about their work; but what is especially remarked, they never allow their lamp to go out by night.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 573.

Prov. 31:17.—She girdeth her loins with strength.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The use of the girdle is universal, under the impression that it greatly contributes to the strength of the loins, around which it is twisted tightly in many a circling fold. The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 573.

Prov. 31 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.

VIRGIL.—

They ply the distaff by the winking light,

And to their daily labor add the night:

Thus frugally they earn their children's bread,

And uncorrupted keep their nuptial bed.

—Æn., 1. viii., v. 407.

HOMER—Hasten to thy task at home, There guide the distaff and direct the loom.—Iliad, VI., 491.

Prov. 31:22.—She maketh her coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.

PLUTARCH.—When the bride is led home, she is made to sit upon a fleece of wool; she then takes the distaff and spindle, and adorns her husband's house with hangings.—Quœst. Rom., c. 31.

XENOPHON.—Leontiades, one of the Theban generals, had thrown himself upon a couch after supper, and his wife was sitting by him, employed at the spinning wheel.—Hist. Grœc., V., 4.

SUETONIUS.—The Emperor Caesar Augustus seldom wore any garment but those that were made by the hand of his wife, sister, daughter and granddaughter.—Cœs. Aug., c. 73.

Prov. 31:23.—Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The husband of such a faithful and industrious wife is known in the gates, where he sitteth among the elders of the land. What the Bourse is in Paris, and the Exchange in London, the open spaces about the gates of the city were to the Orientals, and still are in many parts of the East. There the elders congregate to talk over the news of the day, the state of the market, and the affairs of their particular community. The husband of such a wife is distinguished among his compeers by a costume clean, whole and handsome, and a countenance contented and happy.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 573.

Ecclesiastes

Eccl. 1:2.—Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

PERSIUS.—Alas, for man; how vain are all his cares! And, oh! what bubbles his most grave affairs.—Sat., V., 1.

Circularity of Nature

Eccl. 5-7.—The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; etc.

PRESIDENT JAMES M'COSH, LL. D.—Physical science, at its present advanced stage, seems to at one with the Word of God, in representing all nature as in a state of constant change, but with principles of order instituted in order to secure its stability. There seems to be no such thing as absolute rest in nature. Every object in creation seems to have a work to do, and it lingers not, as it moves on, in the execution of its office. It exists in one state and in one place this instant, but it is changing meanwhile, and next instant it is found in another state or in another place. But there is an equilibrium established among these ever moving forces, and the processes of nature are made like the wind, to return according to their circuits.—typ. Forms, p. 31.

Eccl. 1:6.—The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—In Judea, as well as in many other parts of the world, the wind is by no means so variable as with us. They are nearly, if not altogether, periodical, and are observed to return with some constancy, at particular seasons of the year. This seems to be what is here meant by the “circuits " of the wind.—Note In loco.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—In his very interesting and instructive work, The Physical Geography of the Sea, Lieutenant Maury has vividly described the currents in the atmosphere from the equator to the poles, and from the poles to the equator—the ore current ranging along a lower level, the other on a higher, and both exchanging their heights at the equator and the tropics—like overlapping belts on higher and lower wheels in a factory—while at the north and south poles they move from right to left and left to right respectively, around a circular mass of air, and are steady in their course as the Gulf Stream. Unlike the Trade Winds, they know no rest. Their circuit is ceaseless; and no one can examine the facts which have been ascertained and the principles which they represent, without delighting in the new meaning which lights up that Scripture sentence, so long unintelligible: "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits." This is truly an accurate generalization, and may well arrest the attention of those who believe that every line of the Bible has been long since exhausted of all its truth.—Blending Lights, p. 72.

Eccl. 1:7.—All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

PROF. J. P. COOKE, Harv. Univer.—We all know that the drops of rain percolate through the soil, and collect in natural reservoirs formed between the layers of rock, and that these reservoirs supply the springs. The rills from numerous adjacent springs unite to form a brook, which increases as it flows, until it finally becomes the majestic river, rolling silently on its course. Every drop of that water has been an incessant wanderer since the dawn of creation, and it will soon be merged again in the vast ocean, only to begin anew its familiar journey, by a repetition of the process of evaporation. If we would gain an idea of the magnitude and extent of this wonderful circulation, we must bring together in imagination all the rivers of the world, the Amazon and the Orinoco, the Nile and the Ganges, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, and, adding to these the ten thousands of lesser streams, endeavor to form a conception of the incalculable amount of water which during twenty-four hours they pour into the vast basin of the world, and then remember that during the same period at least four times as much water must have been raised in vapor, and scattered in rain over the surface of the earth.—Religion and Chemistry, p. 132.

Earthly Things Unsatisfactory

Eccl. 1:8.—The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—There is no human being who feels full satisfaction in his present enjoyments. The mind is forever on the wing in the pursuit of new acquirements, of new objects, and, if possible, of higher degrees of felicity than the present moment can afford.... These restless and unbounded desires are to be found agitating the breasts of men of all nations, of all ranks and conditions in life. If we ascend the thrones of princes, if we enter the palaces of the great, if we walk through the mansions of courtiers and statesmen, if we pry into the abodes of poverty and indigence, if we mingle with poets or philosophers, with manufacturers, merchants, mechanics, peasants or beggars; if we survey the busy, bustling scene of a large city, the sequestered village, or the cot which stands in the lonely desert—we shall find, in every situation, and among every class, beings animated with desires of happiness, which no present enjoyment can gratify, and which no object within the limits of time can fully satiate. Whether we choose to indulge in ignorance, or to prosecute the path of knowledge; to loiter in indolence, or to exert our active powers with unremitting energy; to mingle with social beings, or to flee to the haunts of solitude—we feel a vacuum in the mind, which nothing around us can fill up; a longing after new objects and enjoyments, which nothing earthly can fully satisfy. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing."—The Philosophy of a Future State, p. 17

Eccl. 2:4-6.—I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees; in them of all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.

REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—There was the wide scenery, the vineyards, too, with their towers reaching down on every side of the valley of Eschol, whence came the famous cluster; and the red anemones, and white roses on their briar-bushes. Next in one of those gray and green valleys—for these are the predominant colors—appeared, one below the other, the three pools of Solomon—I must again say "venerable," for I know no other word to describe that simple, massive architecture in ruin, yet not in ruin—the "pools of water that he made to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees," and there are the very gardens, not now, indeed, beautiful as when he came out in state as Josephus describes, with his gold-powdered servants, to see them, but marked by the long winding defile of Urtas—green, and fresh and winding as a river—which leads toward Jerusalem. And along the mountain side runs the water through the channel begun by him, but—strange conjunction—restored by Pontius Pilate.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 104.

REV. J. P. NEWMAN, D. D.—Fifteen miles to the north from Hebron, the valley of Urtas crosses the road at right angles, and to the right of the highway are the celebrated pools of Solomon. But Time, that inexorable destroyer of human works, has effaced every trace of his wonderful genius save the pools that bear his name. Both history and tradition point with unmistakable accuracy to the imperial founder of these great fountains. These pools consist of three immense reservoirs, situated in a straight line one below the other, and so constructed that the bottom of the first is higher than the top of the second, and the second than that of the third. They are in part excavated in the rocky bed of the valley, and in part built of square hewn stones covered with cement, and are entered by stone steps excavated in the rock. Measuring 380 feet in length, 236 in breadth, and 25 in depth, the upper pool is the smallest of the three. A hundred and sixty feet to the east is the middle pool, which is 423 feet long 39 feet deep, and varies from 160 to 250 wide. Two hundred and forty-eight feet farther east is the lower and largest reservoir, being 582 feet in length, from 148 to 207 in width, and 50 feet in depth, and, when full, capable of floating one of our largest men-of-war. Forty rods to the northwest, in an open field, are the perennial sources of these great fountains. I know not which to admire more—the genius of the architect that conceived such a complicated work, or the public spirit of the king who supplied the means for its execution. —From Dens to Beersheba, p. 248.

Common Destiny

Eccl. 3:20.—All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

HORACE.—

Earth, impartial, entertains

Her various sons, and in her breast

Princes and beggars equal rest.

—Hor., 1. ii., carm. 18.

Folly of Avarice

Eccl. 4:8.—There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labor; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labor, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.

JUVENAL.—

While the streams of affluence rail,

They nurse the eternal dropsy of the soul,

For thirst of wealth still grows with wealth increased,

And they desire it less who have it least.

—Sat., XIV., v. 138.

Reverence toward God

Eccl. 5:2.—Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God; for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.

PLUTARCH.—In all public ceremonies and processions of the priests, a herald went before who gave notice to the people to keep holiday. For, as they tell us, the Pythagoreans would not suffer their disciples to pay any homage or worship to the gods in a cursory manner, but required them to come prepared for it by meditation at home: so Numa was of opinion that his citizens should neither see nor hear any religious service in a slight or careless way, but disengaged from other affairs, bring with them that attention which an object of such importance required.—Num., c. 14.

Vows to Be Paid

Eccl. 5:4.—When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it: for he hath no pleasure in fools; pay that which thou hast vowed.

LIVY—When the Carthagenian camp was seen from the walls of the city, what vows were then offered up by each particular person, and by the whole body of the people! How often in their assemblies were their hands stretched out towards heaven, and exclamations heard,—O! will that day ever arrive when we shall see Italy cleared of the enemy, and blessed once more with the enjoyment of peace? That, now, at length, in the sixteenth year, the gods had granted their wish, and yet not the slightest proposal had been made of returning thanks to the gods. So deficient are men in gratitude, even at the time when a favor is received; and much less are they apt to retain a proper sense of it afterward.—Liv., XXX., 21.

CICERO.—Let vows be carefully perforMed.—De Leg., lib. ii., c. 9.

Earthly Goods

Eccl. 5:11.—When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?

HORACE.—

What though you thrash a thousand sacks of grain,

No more than mine thy stomach can contain.

The slave who bears the load of bread, shall eat

No more than he who never felt the weight.

Or say what difference, if we live confined

Within the bounds of Nature's law assign'd,

Whether a thousand acres of demesne,

Or one poor hundred, yield sufficient grain?

—Sat. I., lib. i., v. 45.

Eccl. 5:15.—As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.

EGYPTIAN PAPYRUS.—Feast in tranquility, seeing that there is no one who carries away his goods with him. Yea, behold, none who goes thither comes back again.—Festal Dirge; See Records of the Past, Vol. IV., p. 118

Anger

Eccl. 7:9.—Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools. SENECA.—Immoderate anger turns to madness, and, therefore, anger is to be avoided, not only for moderation's sake, but for the health.—Senec., ep. 118.

Moderation

Eccl. 7:14.—In the day of prosperity be joyful; but in the day of adversity consider. ISOCRATES.—Take a just pleasure in prosperity, and grieve not immoderately in adversity. Orat., 1.

Eccl. 7:16.—Be not righteous over-much; neither make thyself over-wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?

CICERO.—Behold, behold, O priests! this religious man, and if it seems good to you (and it is only the duty of virtuous priests), warn him that there are some fixed limits to religion; that man ought not to be too superstitious.—Pro. Domo., c. 40.

MARTIAL.—Whoever is wise, without being too wise, is truly wise.—Mart., lib. xiv., ep. 210.

All Are Sinners

Eccl. 7:20.—For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.

PLATO.—I shall never, searching for that which cannot be, throw away a portion of my life on an empty impracticable hope,—searching for an all-blameless man among us, who feed on the fruits of the wide earth. When I have found one I will inform you.—Protag., c. 31.

PLUTARCH.—It is very difficult, or rather impossible, to find any life whatever without its spots and errors. Human nature produces no specimen of virtue absolutely pure and perfect.—Cimon, c. 2.

THEOGNIS.—The sun looks down on no man now living, who is entirely good and temperate.—In Brunck.

SOLON.—No one is altogether faultless or harmless.—In Brunck.

Death Inevitable

Eccl. 8:8.—There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.

PINDAR.—All the common path must tread, That leads each mortal to the dead.—Olymp., I., 131. HORACE.—Age and youth promiscuous crowd the tomb; No mortal head can shun the impending doom. —Hor., I., 28.

Divine Forbearance Abused

Eccl. 8:11.—Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

JUVENAL—

This writer introduces a wicked man, reasoning thus:

But it grant the wrath of heaven be great; 'tis slow,

And days, and months, and years, precede the blow.

If, then, to punish all, the gods decree,

When in their vengeance, will they come to me?

And I, perhaps, their anger may appease—

For they are wont to pardon faults like these:

At worst, there's hope.

—Sat., XIII., v. 100.

Success from God

Eccl. 9:11—I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

THEOGNIS.—Often while the wise man fails of obtaining distinction, the wicked and the foolish have arrived at honor.—Theog., v. 665.

HERODOTUS.—Fortune commands men, and not men fortune.—Lib. vii., c. 49.

SOPHOCLES.—Not always the huge size of weighty limbs insures the victory.—Ajax, v. 1250.

The Wise Poor Forgotten

Eccl. 9:14, 15.—There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that poor man.

VALERIUS MAXIMUS.—When Alexander the Great was about to destroy. Lampsacus, his old master, Anaximenes, came out to meet him. Alexander, perceiving that he would endeavor to persuade him to be merciful, swore that he would not do anything he would ask him. "Then," said Anaximenes, "I entreat you to destroy Lampsacus." This readiness of sagacity saved a city renowned for its ancient grandeur from the destruction to which it had been dooMed.—Val. Max., lib. vii., c. 3.

Eccl. 9:16.—Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—This passage receives a fine illustration from the case of Archimedes, saving the city of Syracuse from all the Roman forces besieging it by sea and land. He destroyed their ships by his burning-glasses, lifted tip their galleys out of the water by his machines, dashing some to pieces and drowning others. One man's wisdom here prevailed for a long time against the most powerful exertions of a mighty nation. In this case wisdom far exceeded strength. —Note In loco.

Dead Flies

Eccl. 10:1.—Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The swarms of flies in the East very soon corrupt and destroy any moist unguent or mixture which is not carefully covered from them, and pollute a dish of food in a few minutes.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 327.

Light Pleasant

Eccl. 11:7.—Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.

G. CHAPIN CHILD, M. D.—Those who enjoy the blessing of alternate day and night every twenty-four hours, can hardly realize the intense thankfulness with which the dawn and the sun are welcomed by men who have just passed through the depressing influences of the dreary polar night. We can sympathize with Dr. Kane, in his brig among the Greenland ice, as he records his eager watchings for the sun, and the calculations which, by revealing its daily progress toward him, permitted him to anticipate with certainty the day of its reappearance. We understand the thankfulness with which he must have watched the dawn growing brighter and brighter, and the delight with which at length he scrambled up a neighboring height to catch a glimpse of the orb still hidden at the level of the deck. " I saw him once more, and from a projecting crag nestled in the sunshine. It was like bathing in perfumed water."

When wintering in the far north, Captain Sherard Osborn thus describes the return of the sun after an absence of 66 days. On February 7th, " the stentorian lungs of the Resolute's boatswain hailed to say the sun was in sight from the masthead; and in all the vessels the rigging was soon manned to get the first glimpse of the returning god of day. Slowly it rose; and loud and hearty cheers greeted the return of an orb which those without the frozen zone do not half appreciate, because he is always with them. For a whole hour we feasted ourselves admiring the sphere of fire." Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.—Benedicite, p. 96.

The End of Man

Eccl. 12:7.—Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.

PHOCYLIDES. —We have our body from the earth, and the body being restored into the earth again is dust; but the air receives the spirit. —Phocyl., v. 101.

PLATO.—Is death anything else but the separation of the soul from the body? And is not this to die, for the body to be apart by itself, separated from the soul, and for the soul to subsist apart by itself, separated from the body? death anything else but this?—Phœdo, c. 9.

EURIPIDES.—

Permit, then, that the dead

Be in the earth entombed. Each various part

That constitutes the. frame of man returns

Whence it was taken;-to the ethereal sky

The soul; the body to its earth: of all

Naught save this breathing space of life our own;

The earth, then, which sustained it when alive,

Ought to receive it dead.

—Eurip. Suppl., v. 531.

SENECA. —When the day comes that will separate this composition, human and divine, I will leave this body here where I found it, and return to the gods. —Epist., 102.

HORACE. —Alone the mouldering body lies, And souls immortal from our ashes rise.—Lib. i., car. 28.

ASSYRIAN TABLET.—The dying man... Like a bird may his soul fly to a lofty place! To the holy hands of its God may it return!—Oriental Records (Historical), p. 230.

IDEM.—The departed man, may he be in glory I May his soul shine radiant as brass! To that man may the Sun give life! And Marduk, eldest son of heaven, grant him an abode of happiness!—Ibid.

Song of Solomon

The Flock at Noon

Song. 1:7.—Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—Before noon, the shepherds and their flocks may be seen slowly moving towards some shady banyan, or other tree, where they recline during the heat of the day. The sheep sleep, or lazily chew the cud; and the shepherds plait pouches, mats, or baskets, or in dreamy musings while away their time.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 375.

Jewels and Perfumes

Song. 1:10.—Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.

D'ARVIEUX.—The Arabian ladies wear a great many pearls about their necks. and caps. They have gold chains about their necks, which hang down upon their bosoms with strings of colored, gauze; the gauze itself bordered with zechins and other pieces of gold coin, which hang upon their foreheads and both cheeks. The ordinary women wear small silver coins with which they cover their forehead-piece like fish-scales, as this is one of the principal ornaments of their faces. Pearls, beads, etc., are also often to be seen.—In Dr. A. Clarke's Comment.

Song. 1:13.—A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The blossoms of the henna are white and grow in clusters. Their sweet perfume makes them special favorites with the women, who are fond of placing bunches of them in their bosoms.—Bible Lands, p. 143.

Song. 1:14.—My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Lawsonia Alba of botanists, here rendered " camphire," is a small shrub, eight or ten feet high, with dark bark, pale green foliage, and clusters of white and yellow blossoms of a powerful fragrance. Not only is the perfume of the flower highly prized, but a paste is made of the dried and pounded leaves, which is used by the women of all ranks, and by men of the wealthier classes, to dye the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the nails. The continued existence of the camphire plant at Engedi alone of the Holy Land, from the time of Solomon to the present day, is a most interesting illustration of the Biblical reference.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 339.

Song. 2:3.—As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The whole area occupied by ancient Askelon is now planted over with orchards of the various kinds of fruit which flourish on this coast. It is especially celebrated for its apples, which are the largest and best I have ever seen in this country. When I was here in June quite a caravan started for Jerusalem loaded with them, and they would not have disgraced even an American orchard.... As to the size and shade of the tree, the smell and color of the fruit, all the demands of the Biblical allusions are fully met by these apples of Askelon, and no doubt, in ancient times and in royal gardens, their cultivation was far superior to what it is now, and the fruit larger and more fragrant.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 328.

The Roe

SONG. 2:9.—My beloved is like a roe or young hart.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—There is no doubt that the "roe” or "roebuck" of our version is the ghazal of the Arabs, the gazelle of modern writers and poets. The gazelle is by far the most abundant of all the large game in Palestine. It appears to be at home everywhere. It shares the rocks of Engedi with the wild goats; it dashes over the wide expanse of the desert beyond Beersheba; it canters in single file under the monastery of Marsaba. We found it in the glades of Carmel, and it often springs from its leafy covert on the back of Tabor, and screens itself under the thorn bushes of Gennesaret. Among the gray hills of Galilee it is still “the roe upon the mountains of Bether;" and I have seen a little troop of gazelle feeding on the Mount of Olives, close to Jerusalem itself.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 127-130.

The Fox

Song. 2:15.—Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.

THEOCRITUS.—

A boy, to watch the vineyard, sits below!

Two foxes round him skulk: this slyly gapes,

To catch a luscious morsel of the grapes.

—Idyl., I., v. 48.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The fox is common in Syria, especially about ruins. The fondness of the fox for grapes is well known in the East; but not less so that of the jackal, which, going in packs, often commits great devastation in the vineyards.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 85.

Pomegranate

Song. 4:3.—Thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The average size of a pomegranate is about that of the orange, but some of those from Jaffa are as large as the egg of an ostrich. Within, the " grains" are arranged in longitudinal compartments as compactly as corn on the cob, and they closely resemble those of pale red corn, except that they are nearly transparent and very beautiful. A dish filled with these " grains" shelled out is a very handsome ornament on any table, and the fruit is very sweet to the taste.—The Land and the Book, II., 392.

Odor of Lebanon

Song. 4:11—The smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.

REV. GEORGE E. POST, M. D.—The fresh mountain breezes on Lebanon, filled in early summer with the fragrance of the budding vines, and throughout the year with the rich odors of numerous aromatic shrubs, call to mind the words of Solomon, "The smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon." —Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1622.

Pools of Heshbon

Song. 7:4.—Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—At Heshbon, just below the hill on which the city stands, flows a little stream, which winds round the base of Nebo. There are in it, to the southeast of the ruins, some interesting remains, which illustrate the expression in Canticles: " Thine eyes, like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim." A large tank, now dilapidated, once collected, for summer use, the scanty waters of the brook, and was doubtless utilized at the same time for the conservation of the fish which still abound in the stream.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 286.

Spiced Wine

Song. 8 :2—I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.

REV. WILLIAM HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—Mention is made in Canticles of “spiced wine of the juice of the pomegranate; "with this may be compared the pomegranate-wine of which Dioscorides speaks, and which is still used in the East. Chardin says that great quantities of it were made in Persia, both for home consumption, and for exportation, in his time.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2562.

Seal of Love

Song. 8:6.—Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; and jealousy is cruel as the grave.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—When a husband is going to a distant country, the wife says to him, "place me as a seal upon thy heart; " that is, Let me be impressed on thy affections, as the seal leaves its impression upon the wax. " Let not your arms embrace another; let me only be sealed there! " “For love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."—Orient. Illust., p. 378.

Isaiah

Judah's Defection and Ingratitude

Isa. 1:3.—The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—At Tiberias, as the droves of cattle and donkeys came down from the hills at night, I hurried after them, and no sooner had we got within the walls than the droves began to disperse. Every ox knew perfectly well his owner, his house, and the way to it, nor did he get bewildered for a moment in the mazes of these narrow and crooked alleys. As for the asses, they walked straight to the door, and up to their master's crib. I followed one company clear into their habitation, and saw each take its appropriate manger, and begin his evening meal of dry tibn. Isaiah says in all this they were wiser than their owners, who neither knew nor considered, but forsook the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 97,

Isa. 1:8. —And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The "lodge in the garden of cucumbers" may still be seen in many of these fields, erected to protect them chiefly from the wild animals, as the jackals, which are very destructive. It is a very rude affair. Four poles are stuck in the ground, rafters are bound across their top, and in these are entwined boughs, cut from the oleanders by the water-courses, as a sort of open thatch, while larger branches, and sometimes scraps of matting, are placed in a sloping direction against them to shelter the occupant. As soon as the crop is gathered and the lodge forsaken, as Dr. Thomson observes, the poles will fall down or lean every way, and the green boughs with which it is shaded will be scattered by the winds, leaving only a ragged, sprawling wreck—a most affecting type of utter desolation.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 442.

Isa. 1:11.—To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts: and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.

XENOPHON. —How in the name of the gods shall we offer sacrifice with cheerfulness, if we are guilty of impiety?—.Anab., V., 7.

PLAUTUS. —These wicked persons entertain a notion that they are able to appease Jupiter with gifts and sacrifices: they lose both their labor and their money; for no petition of the perjured is acceptable to him.—Rudens,. Prolog., v. 22.

CICERO.—Let not the impious man attempt to appease the gods by gifts and offerings.—Let impious criminals listen to Plato, that they may not dare to attempt to propitiate the gods with gifts; for he forbids us to doubt what feelings God must entertain towards such, when even a good man is not willing to receive presents from a wicked one.—De Leg., lib. ii., c. 9, 16.

PERSEUS.—

No; let me bring the immortals, what the race

Of great Messala, now depraved and base,

On their huge charger, cannot;—bring a mind

Where legal and where moral sense are joined,

With the pure essence; holy thoughts that dwell

In the soul's most retired and sacred cell;

A bosom dyed in Honor's noblest grain,

Deep dyed;—with these let me approach the fane,

And Heaven will hear the humble prayer I make,

Though all my offering be a barley cake.

—Sat. II., y. 29-69.

Oaks of Bashan

Isa. 2:12,13.—For the day of the Lord of hosts shall he.... upon all the oaks of Bashan.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Those who have traveled through Gilead and Basilan are familiar with magnificent forests of all the three species of oak in the districts where man is rare.... There are splendid forests of this oak (Q. pseudo-coccifera) in Gilead, and more open park-like woods of it in Bashan. In Mount Gilead and Ajlun, north of the Jabbok, we rode for many miles through a dense forest of this tree, which yields on the mountain tops to the pine, and lower down to the deciduous oak.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 369.

Bats and Moles

Isa. 20.—In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each man for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats.

PROF. J. G. Wool), M. A., F. L. S.—The Bats, mentioned in Scripture, are exceedingly unpleasant creatures. They absolutely swarm with parasitic insects. They are in the habit of resorting to caverns, clefts in the rocks, deserted ruins, and similar dark places, wherein they pass the hours of daylight, and will frequent the same spots for a long series of years. In consequence of this habit, the spots which they select for their resting-place become inconceivably noisome, and can scarcely be entered by human beings, so powerful is the odor with which they are imbued. Bearing this fact in mind we shall better understand the force of the prophecy that the idols shall be cast to the Bats and the Moles.—Bible Animals, p. 12, 13.

IDEM.—The Mole of Palestine is the Mole-rat of zoologists. The Mole-rat is fond of frequenting deserted ruins and burial-places, so that the Moles and the Bats are really companions, and as such are associated together in the sacred narrative. Here, as in many other instances, we find that closer study of the Scriptures united to more extended knowledge are by no means the enemies of religion, as some well-meaning but narrow-minded persons think. On the contrary, the Scriptures were never so well understood, and their truth and force so well recognized, as at the present day; and science has proved to be, not the destroyer of the Bible, but its interpreter. We shall soon cease to hear of "Science versus the Bible," and shall substitute " Science and the Bible versus Ignorance and Prejudice."—Bible Animals, p. 89.

The Righteous and the Wicked

Isa. 3:10, 11.—Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked 1 it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.

PLATO.—I say that an honest and good man or woman is happy; but an unjust and wicked one is miserable.—Gorgias, c. 26.

IDEM.—It is absolutely necessary that he who does well should be blessed and happy; but that the wicked, and he who does ill, should be wretched.—Gorgias, c. 62.

LIVY.—How detestable such proceedings were in the sight of the gods, Perseus would feel in the issue of his affairs; for the gods always favored righteous and honorable dealings.—Liv., XLIV., c. 1.

Personal Ornaments

Isa. 18-23:—In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tiers like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings, the rings, and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hood; and the veils.

PLAUTUS—(Speaking of the extravagances of the females of his day.) There stands the scourer, the embroiderer, the goldsmith, the woolen manufacturer, retail dealers in figured skirts, dealers in women's under-clothing, dyers in flame-color, dyers in violet, dyers in wax-color, or else sleeve-makers, or 'perfumers; there stand the wholesale linen drapers, shoemakers, and slipper makers; there are the sandal-makers, and stainers in mallow color; hair-dressers and botchers make their demands; bodice-makers stand there, makers of kirtles here, etc.—Aulul., Act III., sc. 10.

PLINY.—Silver has succeeded to gold in the luxury of the females who form bracelets for their feet of that, since an ancient custom forbids them to wear gold.—Nat. Hist., XXIII., 12.

ASSYRIAN' TABLETS AND RELICS.—The magnificence of the Assyrians is very apparent in the sculptures and other remains. The remains comprise terracotta and alabaster vases of elegant forms, gold ear-rings, glass bottles, carved ornaments in ivory and mother-of-pearl, engraved gems, bells, etc.; necklaces, combs, mirrors, etc.; while the sculptures represent to us embroidered garments of the richest kind, splendid head-dresses, armlets and bracelets, parasols, fans, musical instruments, etc.—Layard's Nin. and Bab., chap. 8, 25.

PAXTON. —Besides ornamental rings in the nose and ears Oriental females wore others round the legs, which made a tinkling as they went. This custom has also descended to the present times; for Rauwolf met with a number of Arabian women, on the Euphrates, whose ankles and wrists were adorned with rings, sometimes a good many together, which moving up and down as they, walked, made a great noise. Chardin attests the existence of the same custom in Persia, in Arabia, and in very hot countries, where they commonly go without stockings, but ascribes the tinkling sound 'to little bells fastened to those rings. In the East Indies, golden bells adorned the feet and ankles of the ladies from the earliest times; they placed them in the flowing tresses of the they suspended them round their necks, and to the golden rings which they wore on their' fingers, to announce their superior rank, and exact the homage they had a right to expect from the lower orders; and from the banks of the Indus, it is probable the custom was introduced into other countries of Asia. The Arabian females in Palestine and Syria delight in the same ornaments; their bodies are covered with a long blue shift; upon their heads they wear two handkerchiefs, one as a hood, and the other bound over it, as a fillet across the temples. Just above the right nostril, they place a small button, sometimes studded with pearl, a piece of glass, or any other glittering substance; this is fastened by a plug, thrust through the cartilage of the nose. Sometimes they have the cartilaginous separation between the nostrils bored for a ring, as large as those ordinarily used in Europe for hanging curtains; and this pendant in the upper lip covers the mouth, so that, in order to eat, it is necessary to raise it. Very ponderous rings are also placed in their ears.—Bible Illustrations, In loco.

SIR JOHN CHARDIN. —"And nose-jewels."—It is the custom in almost all the East for the women to wear rings in their noses, in the left nostril, which is bored low down in the middle. These rings are of gold, and have commonly two pearls and one ruby between, placed in the ring. I never saw a girl or young woman in Arabia, or in all Persia, who did not wear a ring in this manner in her nostrils.—In Harmer's Observations, IV., p. 318.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—" The changeable suits of apparel."—The Eastern ladies take great pride in having many changes of apparel, because their fashions never change. Thus the net brocades worn by their grandmothers are equally fashionable for themselves.—Orient. Illust., In loco.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—The Hebrew women on coming out of Egypt probably brought with them mirrors like those which were used by the Egyptians, which were made of mixed metal, wrought with such admirable skill, says Sir G. Wilkinson, that they were susceptible of a luster, which has even been partially revived at the present day, in some of those discovered at Thebes, though buried in the earth for many centuries. The mirror itself was nearly round, inserted into a handle of wood, stone, or metal, whose form varied according to the taste of the owner. Some presented the figure of a female, a flower, a column, or a rod ornamented with the head of Athor, a bird, or a fancy device. Such mirrors are mentioned by Chrysostom among the extravagances of fashion for which he rebuked the ladies of his time; and Seneca long before was loud in his denunciation of similar follies. Mirrors were used by the Roman women in the worship of Juno. And in the Egyptian temples it was the custom for the women to worship in linen garments, holding a mirror in the left hand and a sistrum in the right; and the Israelites, having fallen into the idolatries of the country, had brought with them the mirrors which they used in their worship.—Smith's Dict. of Bible 4. 1969.

Judea Capta

Isa. 3:26.—She being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.-It is a remarkable coincidence that in the medals which were made by the Romans to commemorate the captivity of Judea and Jerusalem, Judea is represented under the figure of a female sitting in a posture of grief under a palm tree, with this inscription,—Judea capta—a tender and affecting image of desolation.—Note, In loco.

The Upper Pool

Isa. 7:3.—Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller's field.

REV. J. P. NEWMAN, D. D.—Seven hundred yards above the Yâffa Gate is the "upper pool” of Gihon. It is situated at what may be properly called the head of the valley, which spreads out into an almost level plain. Around it is the oldest Moslem cemetery in the environs of Jerusalem. Like its companion (the Lower Pool), it is a large tank, 300 feet long, zoo feet wide, and twenty feet deep, formed of hewn stones laid in cement, and coated with the same. The bottom is reached by two flights of stone steps. Near the top a stone spout projects from the northern wall, through which the waters that come down the inclined plains around it flow into the pool.... Ahaz was standing here when the intelligence reached him that Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, were approaching Jerusalem to war against him; and in that critical moment the Lord said unto Isaiah, " Go forth now to Ahaz, "etc.—Dan to Beersheba, p. 102.

Messiah

Isa. 7:14.—Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

LUKE.—Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing, which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.—Luke 1:34, 35.

MATTHEW.—Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is, God with us.—Matt. 1:22, 23.

Isa, 9:6.—For unto us a child is horn, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

LUKE.—Unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.— Luke 2:11

JOHN.—The Word was with God, and the Word was God: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.—John 1:1

Isa. 10:8.—Are not my princes altogether as kings?

ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTIONS.—We learn from the Inscriptions that when a city or kingdom was subdued, however near it might have been to Nineveh, when not actually forming a part of the imperial district, a new ruler was appointed to it with the title of " King," written in the same cuneiform characters on the monuments as when applied to the head of the empire. This fact illustrates the passage in Isaiah, "Are not my princes altogether kings? "—Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 541.

Isa. 11:2, 3.—And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears.

LUKE.—All that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. —Luke 2:47.

MATTHEW.—No man was able to answer him a word; neither durst any man ask him any more questions.—Matt. 22:46.

MARK.—This poor widow hath cast in more than all they which have cast into the treasury.—Mark 12:43.

JOHN.—He knew what was in man. —John 6:25.

Isa. 11:6-9.—The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fading together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cocatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—In this passage the prophet describes the effect of Messiah's reign in producing peace and tranquility on the earth. The description is highly poetical, and is one that is common in ancient writings in describing a golden age. The two leading ideas are those of peace and security. The figure is taken from the condition of animals of all descriptions living in a state of harmony, where those which are by nature defenseless, and which are usually made the prey of the strong, are suffered to live in security.... This prophecy has been in part fulfilled. Wherever the gospel has spread, its effect has been just that which is predicted here. It has calmed and subdued the angry passions of men; changed their feelings and their conduct; disposed them to peace; and tended to mitigate national ferocity, to produce kindness to captives, and to those who had been oppressed. It has mitigated laws that were cruel and bloody; and has abolished customs, games, sports and pastimes that were ferocious and savage. It has often changed the bitter persecutor, as it did Saul of Tarsus, to the mildness and gentleness of a lamb; and it has spread an influence over nations tending to produce humanity and benevolence. It has produced mildness, gentleness and love in the domestic circle; changed the cruel and lordly husband to a companion and friend; and the character of the stern and inexorable father to one of paternal kindness and peace. Wherever it has spread in truth, and not in form merely, it has shed a mild, calming and subduing influence over the passions, laws and customs of men. But its effects have been but partially felt; and we are led, therefore, to look forward to future times, when the prophecy shall be entirely fulfilled, and the power of the gospel shall be felt in all nations.—Note, in loco

The Red Sea

Isa. 11:15.—And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea.

EDWARD STANLEY POOLE, M. R. A. S.—The most important change in the Red Sea has been the drying up of its northern extremity. The land about the head of the gulf has risen, and that near the Mediterranean become depressed. The head of the gulf has consequently retired gradually since the Christian era. Thus the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled, "And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian Sea." This tongue of the Red Sea has dried up for a distance of at least fifty miles from its ancient head; and a cultivated and well-peopled province has been changed into a desolate wilderness. An ancient canal conveyed the waters of the Nile to the Red Sea, flowing through the Wadi-t-Tumeylat and irrigating with its system of water-channels a large extent of country; it also provided a means for conveying all the commerce of the Red Sea, once so important, by water to the Nile, avoiding the risks of the desert journey, and securing water-carriage from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The drying up of the head of the gulf appears to have been one of the chief causes of the neglect and ruin of this canal. The country, for the distance above indicated, is now a desert of gravelly sand, with wide patches about the old sea-bottom, of rank marsh land, now called the "Bitter Lakes" (not those of Strabo). At the northern extremity of this salt waste is a small lake, formerly called the "Lake of Heroöpolis," but now the " Lake of the Crocodile," and is supposed to mark the ancient head of the gulf.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2685.

Babylon

Isa. 13:1,6, 7.—The burden of Babylon.... Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The destruction of Babylon took place in the night. It came suddenly upon the city while Belshazzar was at his impious feast; and the alarm was so unexpected and produced such consternation, that no defense was attempted.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 13:17.—Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This is one of the places in which the prophet specified by name the instrument of the wrath of God. Cyrus himself is subsequently mentioned (Isa. 44:28) as the agent by which God would accomplish his purposes. It is remarkable also that the " Medes" are here mentioned many years before they became a separate and independent nation. For more than five centuries the Medes were subject to the Assyrians; but in the time of Tiglathpileser and Shalmanezer, they revolted, and by the destruction of the army of Sennacherib before Jerusalem—an event which was itself subsequent to the delivery of this prophecy respecting Babylon—they were enabled to achieve their independence. But Cyrus, under whom the prediction of Isaiah respecting Babylon was fulfilled, did not become king until about the year 556 B. C.... In looking at this prophecy, therefore, we are to bear in mind (1) the fact that when it was uttered, Media was a dependent province of the kingdom of Assyria; (2) that a long time was yet to elapse before it would become an independent kingdom; (3) that it was yet to secure its independence by the aid of that very Babylon which it would finally destroy; (4) that no human foresight could predict these revolutions, and that every circumstance conspired to render this event improbable. The great strength and resources of Babylon; the fact that Media was a dependent province, and that such great revolutions' must occur before this prophecy could be fulfilled, render this one of the most striking and remarkable predictions in the Sacred Volume.—Note, In loco.

BISHOP LOWTH.—Which shall not regard silver; and as for gold they shall not delight in it. It is remarkable that Xenophon makes Cyrus open a speech to his army, and in particular to the Medes, who made the principal part of it, with praising them for their disregard of riches:—" Ye Medes and others who now hear me, I well know, that you have not accompanied me in this expedition with a view of acquiring wealth."—Note, In loco.

DR. A. KEITH.—Cyrus reckoned that his riches belonged not any more to himself than to his friends (Cyro., VIII., 516). And he made, as well as pronounced, it his object to use and not to hoard his wealth, and to apply it to the reward of his servants, and in relief of their wants. So little did he regard silver, or delight in gold, that Crœsus told him that by his liberality he would make himself poor, instead of storing up vast treasures to himself (Cyro., VIII., 482). The Medes possessed, in this respect, the spirit of their chief, of which an instance recorded by Xenophon is too striking and appropriate to be passed over. When Cobryas, an Assyrian governor, whose son the king of Babylon had slain, hospitably entertained him and his army, Cyrus appealed to the chiefs of the Medes and Hyrcanians, and to the noblest and most honorable of the Persians, whether, giving first what was due unto the gods, and leaving to the rest of the army their portion, they would not overmatch his generosity by ceding to him their whole share of the first and plentiful booty, which they had won from the land of Babylon. Loudly applauding the proposal, they immediately and unanimously consented, and one of them said: "Cobryas may have thought us poor, because we came not loaded with coins; and drink not out of golden cups; but by this he will know, that men can be generous even without gold " (Cyro., V., 289).—Evidence from Prophecy, p. 198.

Isa. 13:19.—And Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

HERODOTUS.—The city of Babylon stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width, and two hundred in height. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts. The city is divided into two portions by the broad and deep and swift stream of the Euphrates, which runs through the midst of it. The center of each division of the city was occupied by a fortress. In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size; in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus, a square enclosure two furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass. In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. The Chaldees declare that the god comes down in person into this chamber, and sleeps upon the couch. Below, in the same precinct, there is a second temple, in which is a sitting figure of Jupiter, all of gold. Before the figure stands a large golden table, and the throne whereon it sits, and the base on which the throne is placed, are likewise of gold. The Chaldeans told me that all the gold together was 800 talents' weight. Outside the temple are two altars, one of solid gold; the other a common altar, but of great size, on which they burn frankincense to the amount of a thousand talents' weight, every year, at the festival of the god.—Book I., c. 178-183.

PLINY.—Babylon, the capital of all the nations of Chaldea, long enjoyed the greatest celebrity of all cities throughout the whole world: and it is from this place that the remaining parts of Mesopotamia and Assyria received the name of Babylonia. The circuit of its walls, which were zoo feet in height, was 60 miles. These walls were also 50 feet in breadth; reckoning to every foot three fingers' breadth beyond the ordinary measure of our foot. The river Euphrates flowed through the city, with quays of marvelous workmanship erected on either side. The temple there, of Jupiter Belus, is still in existence. In all other respects it has been reduced to a desert.—Nat. Hist., VI., 30.

PROF: GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—With the conquest of Cyrus commenced the decay and ruin of Babylon. The "broad walls" were then to some extent broken down, and the high gates burned with fire. Twice in the reign of Darius, and once in that of Xerxes, it had risen against the Persians, and made an effort to regain its independence. After each rebellion its defenses were weakened, and during the long period of profound peace which the Persian Empire enjoyed from the reign of Xerxes to that of Darius Codomannus they were allowed to go completely to decay. Its public buildings also suffered grievously from neglect. Alexander found the great temple of Belus in so ruined a condition that it would have required the labor of 10,000 men for two months even to clear away the rubbish with which it was encumbered. The removal of the seat of empire to Antioch under the Seleucidæ gave the finishing blow to the prosperity of the place. The great city of Seleucia, which soon after arose in its neighborhood, not only drew away its population but was actually constructed of materials derived from its buildings. Since then Babylon has been a quarry from which all the tribes in the vicinity have perpetually derived the bricks with which they have built their cities. Thus " the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency was overthrown as had been Sodom and Gomorrah."—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 219.

Isa. 13:20.—It shall never he inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—About the beginning of the Christian era, a small portion of the site of Babylon was inhabited, but the far greater part was cultivated. In the second century nothing but the walls remained. It became gradually a desert place; and, in the fourth century, its walls, repaired for that purpose, formed an enclosure for wild beasts, and Babylon was converted into a field for the chase—a hunting—place for the pastime of Persian monarchs. The name and the remnant were cut off from Babylon; and there is a blank, during the interval of many ages, in the history of its mutilated remains and of its mouldering decay.—Evidence from Prophecy, p. 216.

MAJOR KEPPEL. —The eye wanders over a barren desert in which the ruins are nearly the only indication that it had ever been inhabited. It is impossible to behold this scene and not be reminded how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed to present, that " she should never be inhabited."—Narrative, p. 234.

Isa. 13:21, 22.—But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

SIR ROBERT K. PORTER.—There are many dens of wild beasts in various part (of these ruinous mounds.) In most of the cavities are numberless bats and owls. These caverns, over which the chambers of majesty may have been spread, are now the refuge of jackals and other savage animals. The mouths of their entrances are strewed with the bones of sheep and goats; and the loathsome smell that issues from most of them is sufficient warning not to proceed into the den.—Travels, Vol. II., p. 342.

MAJOR KEPPEL. —The mound was full of large holes; we entered some of them, and found them strewed with the carcasses and skeletons of animals recently killed. The ordure of wild beasts was so strong that prudence got the better of curiosity, for we had no doubt as to the savage nature of the inhabitants. Our guides, indeed, told us " that all the ruins abounded with wild beasts: so literally has the divine prediction been fulfilled, that wild beasts of the deserts should lie there."—Narrative, Vol. I., p. 179, 180.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The mound of Babel is the first great ruin seen on approaching ancient Babylon from the north. Beyond it long lines of palms hem in the Euphrates, which now winds through the midst of the ancient city. To the vast mound of Babel succeed long undulating heaps of earth, bricks, and pottery. A solitary mass of brick-work, rising from the summit of the largest mound, marks the remains known to the Arabs as the Mujelibe, or the " Overturned." Other shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land. The lofty banks of ancient canals fret the country like natural ridges of hills. Some have long been choked with sand; others still carry the waters of the river to distant villages and palm groves. On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the sight of Babylon a naked and hideous waste. Owls start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows. Truly, " the glory of kingdoms, and the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency is as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Wild beasts of the desert lie there; and their houses are full of doleful creatures; and owls dwell there, and satyrs dance there. And the wild beasts of the island cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces, for her day has come. "—Nineveh and Babylon; p. 453.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—On this whole prophecy we may observe, (1.) That it was uttered at least an hundred and seventy years before it was fulfilled. Of this there is all the proof that can be found in regard to any ancient writings. (2.) When uttered, there was the strongest improbability that it would be fulfilled. The great strength and security of Babylon rendered it improbable. It was the capital of the heathen world; and if there was any city that seemed impregnable it was this. It was improbable that it would be overthrown by the Medes. Media, at the time the prophecy was uttered, was a dependent province of Assyria, and it was wholly improbable that the Medes would revolt, and subdue their masters. It was improbable that Babylon would become uninhabitable. It was in the midst of a most fertile country; and by no human sagacity could it have been seen that the capital would be removed to Susa, or that Seleucia would be founded, thus draining it of its inhabitants. How could mere human sagacity have foreseen that there would not be a house left in it? Can any man now tell what London, or Paris, or New York, or Philadelphia will be two thousand years hence? Yet a prediction that those cities shall be the residence of " the wild beasts of the desert," of " satyrs," and " dragons," would be as probable now as was the prediction respecting Babylon at the time when Isaiah delivered these remarkable prophecies. (3.) The prophecy is not vague conjecture. It is not a general statement. It is minute, and definite, and particular; and it has been as definitely, and minutely,, and particularly fulfilled. (4.) This is one of the evidences of the Divine Origin of the Bible. How will the infidel account for this prophecy and its fulfillment? It will not do to say that it is accident: it is too minute, and too particular. It is not human sagacity: no human sagacity could have foretold it. It is not fancied fulfillment: it is real, in the most minute particulars. And if so, then Isaiah was commissioned by JEHOVAH, as he claimed to be—for none but the Omniscient JEHOVAH can foresee and describe future events as the destruction of Babylon was foreseen and described. And if this prophecy was inspired by God, by the same train of reasoning it can be proved that the whole Bible is a Revelation from heaven.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 14:12.—O Lucifer, son of the morning!

HESIOD.— Last, Lucifer sprang radiant from the dawn-appearing morn, And all the glittering stars that girt the heaven.—Theog., v. 381.

Isa. 14:19.—But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—Several deep excavations have been made in different places into the sides of the Mujelibe; some probably by the wearing of the seasons; but many others have been dug by the rapacity of the Turks, tearing up its bowels in search of hidden treasure,—as if the palace of Babylon were cast out of its grave. Several penetrate very far into the body of the structure, till it has become as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword. And some, it is likely, have never yet been explored, the wild beasts of the desert literally keeping guard over them. The mound was full of large holes—thrust through. Near to the Mujelibe, on the supposed site of the hanging gardens which were situated within the walls of the palace, the ruins are so perforated in consequence of the digging for bricks, that the original design is entirely lost. All that could favor any conjecture of gardens built on terraces are two subterranean passages. There can be no doubt that both passages are of vast extent; they are lined with bricks laid in with bitumen, and covered over with large masses of stone. This is nearly the only place where stone is observable. Arches built upon arches raised the hanging gardens from terrace to terrace, till the highest was on a level with the top of the city walls. Now they are cast out like an abominable branch—and subterranean passages are disclosed,—down to the stones of the pit.—Evidence from Prophecy, p. 230.

Isa. 14:23.—I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This was fulfilled—pools of water were actually formed—by Cyrus' diverting the waters of the Euphrates from their channel when the pity was taken, and by the fact that the waters never returned again to their natural bed, so that the region was overflowed with water.—Note, In loco.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Now since Babylon has fallen, and Chaldea has become a desolation, the inundation, left to its own course, has formed at Babylon and elsewhere—on the Euphrates and Tigris—pools and marshes on spots once populated. We have ourselves seen mounds and hills of ruin rising like islets above the waters, and forming the chosen resort of pelicans and numerous water-fowl of every wing.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

PROF. J. G. WOOD, M. A., F. L. S.—Extensive and dingy pools are the chosen habitation of the Bittern. It is a bird of rude nature, where the land knows no character save that which the untrained working of the elements impresses upon it; so that when any locality is in the course of being won to usefulness, the bittern is the first to depart, and when any one is abandoned, it is the last to return. "The bittern shall dwell there" is the final curse, and implies that the place is to become uninhabited and uninhabitable. It bears not the whistle of the plowman, nor the sound of the mattock; and the tinkle of the sheep-bell, or the lowing of the ox, is a signal for it to be gone. By day this bird is silent, but after the sun has gone down it utters its strange wild cry, a sound which exactly suits the localities in which it loves to make its habitation. No more powerful figure could be imagined for the desolation of Babylon than the prophecy, "I will make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water." —Bible Animals, p. 463-466.

Moab

Isa. 16:8-10.—The fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah: the lords of the heathen have broken down the principal Plants thereof, they are come even unto Jazer, they wandered through the wilderness; her branches are stretched out (Heh. plucked tip), they are gone over the sea. Therefore I will bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen. And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field, and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall there be shouting: the treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses: I have made their vintage shouting to cease.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The places mentioned in this passage were all towns in the heritage of Reuben, stretching from Heshbon in a line towards Rabbah. Jazer is marked by the ruins of Szir, twelve miles from Amman (Rabbah); Sibmah has not been rediscovered, while the extensive ruins of Heshbon and Elal (Elealeh), surmounting hills, are well known. From all of them the vine and the summer fruits have utterly perished; no human habitation remains in the wide district; not a tree or a shrub varies the scenery except some terebinths near Szir; and it was with difficulty that we could trace here and there the undulating grass-grown ridges that mark the old vine terraces of this desolate region. The only vineyards now remaining east of Jordan are a few round Es Salt.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 405.

Isa. 17:2.—The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall he for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

REV. JOHN KITTO, D. D., F. S. A.—This verse of course refers to Moab, to which it applies most exactly, as the country may be said to be abandoned, except by the Bedouins, who pasture their flocks on the wild herbage of the once-cultivated plains, where the traces of ancient cultivation may be still discovered. As fine pastures, and peculiar advantages with regard to water, are often found in the neighborhood of the ruined towns, these ancient seats of a busy population have literally become places where flocks lie down. (See Burckhardt's Syria, p. 364, etc.) The reader will not fail to notice the marked distinction that the desolation of Moab is denoted by the circumstance that flocks should lie down in its once cultivated and populated sites; while that of Babylon is expressed by " neither shall the shepherds make their folds there." The cause of this we have explained, the desolation of Babylon having extended to its soil, which affords no pasture. At a time when Babylon and Moab were both in a flourishing condition, who but God himself could thus nicely have discriminated the character of their future desolation? Here are no vague generalities. Scripture does not say merely that this or that place shall at a future time be desolate; but it says how it shall be desolate, and how its desolation shall be distinguished from the desolations of other places. This is evidence strong and beautiful, and we cannot understand the conditions of that man's mind who can rise from it doubtful or unsatisfied.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, A. M.—We observed in wandering through Hebrân, as we had done previously at Kerioth and other cities, that the large buildings,—temples, palaces, churches, and mosques,—are now universally used as folds for sheep and cattle. We saw hundreds of animals in the palaces of Kerioth, and the large buildings of Hebran were so filled with their dung that we could scarcely walk through them. This also was foreseen and foretold by the Hebrew prophets: of Moab Isaiah saith, " The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 89.

Egypt

Isa. 18:1, 2.—The land... that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of but rushes upon the waters.

THEOPHRASTUS.—The papyrus (here translated bulrushes) is useful for many things. For from this they make vessels, or ships.—History of Plants, 4, 9.

PLINY.—The papyrus grows either in the marshes of Egypt, or in the sluggish waters of the Nile. The Egyptians construct boats of it, and of the outer coat they make sails and masts and ropes. A papyrus grows also in the river Euphrates.—Nat. Hist., XIII., 22.

IDEM.—The navigation from the continent of India to Taprobane (probably Ceylon) was formerly confined to vessels constructed of papyrus, with the tackle peculiar to the Nile.—Ib., VI., 24.

Isa. 19:2.—And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—After the abdication of Sabacon, there was anarchy in Egypt for two years; but the people falling into broils and tumults and slaughter of one another, twelve of the chief nobility took upon them the regal power and authority. Psammeticus, one of the kings, whose province was upon the seacoast, being envied by the others on account of the wealth which he derived from commerce, made war upon him; but he, having hired soldiers from Arabia, gained a victory over them. Some of the kings were slain, and the rest fled into Africa; and Psammeticus gained possession of the whole kingdom. —Diod. Sic., I., 5.

Sargon

Isa. 20:1—In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him, and fought against Ashdod, and took it.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—A difficulty used to be felt with respect to "Sargon, king of Assyria," who is said to have taken Ashdod, by the hand of one of his captains. Sargon's name is not contained in the historical books of Scripture, nor is he mentioned by any of the classical writers, who speak of Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. The occurrence of his name in Isaiah was thought to indicate an irreconcilable difference between the historical data possessed by that prophet and those of the writer of Kings. Even his existence was doubted, and different writers proposed to regard his name as a mere variant for those of each of the three princes just mentioned. The Assyrian Inscriptions have completely cleared up all this obscurity. Sargon is found to have been the successor of Shalmaneser; the predecessor and father of Sennacherib. He speaks of having captured Ashdod. All that Isaiah says of him is confirmed; and it appears to have been quite accidental that the writer of Kings, who more than once alludes to him, does not mention his name.— Modern Skepticism, p. 287.

CYLINDER OF SARGON, found at Nineveh.—In my ninth expedition to the land beside the great sea, I went to Philistia and Ashdod. Azuri, king of Ashdod. hardened his heart not to bring tribute, and sent enemies of Assyria to the kings round him, and did evil. I broke his dominion over the people round him, and carried off.... From that time Ahimiti son of.... his brother, I raised before his face, and appointed him over his kingdom. I appointed over him taxes and tribute to Assyria like that of the kings round him.—Smith's Assyrian Discoveries, p. 289.

Desert of the Sea

Isa. 21:1.—The burden of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it cometh from the desert, from a terrible land.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—Our tents were pitched at the northern corner of Kouyunjik, near some earthern banks and embrasures. It was the season of the Sherghis, or burning winds from the south, which occasionally swept over the face of the country, driving in their short-lived fury everything before them. Their coming was foretold by a sudden fall in the barometer, which rose again as soon as they had passed. It required the united exertions of my workmen to hold the flapping canvas of the large tent, whilst the smaller were generally carried far away, and their contents hurled in every direction over the mound or the plain.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 315.

IDEM. —The greater part of the country below ancient Babylon has now been for centuries one great swamp. It is, indeed, what the prophet foretold it should be, " a desert of the sea." The embankments of the rivers, utterly neglected, have broken away, and the waters have spread over the face of the land.— Ibid., p. 480.

Capture of Babylon

Isa. 21:4, 5.—The night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me.—Prepare the table, watch in the watch-tower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and anoint the shield.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—There can be no doubt that the prophet here refers to the night of revelry and riot in which Babylon was taken.... Herodotus (I., 91), Xenophon (Cyro., 7, 5), and Daniel (v.) all agree in the account that Babylon was taken in the night in which the king and his nobles were engaged in feasting and revelry. The words of Xenophon are, " But Cyrus, when he heard that there was to be such a feast in Babylon, in which alp the Babylonians would drink and revel through the whole night, on that night, as soon as it began to grow dark, taking many men, opened the dams into the river; " that is, he opened the dykes which had been made by Semiramis and her successors to confine the waters of the Euphrates to one channel, and suffered the waters of the Euphrates again to flow over the country so that he could enter Babylon beneath its walls in the channel of the river. Xenophon has also given the address of Cyrus to the soldiers. " Now," says he, " let us go against them. Many of them are asleep; many of them are intoxicated; and all of them are unfit for battle." Herodotus says (I., 191), " It was a day of festivity among them, and while the citizens were engaged in dance and merriment, Babylon was, for the first time, thus taken."... Knowing that the city was given up to revelry on that night, they had agreed to imitate the sound of the revelers until they should assemble around the royal palace in the center of the city. They did so. When the king heard the noise, supposing it was the sound of a drunken mob, he ordered the gates of the palace to be opened to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. When they were thus opened the army of Cyrus rushed in, and made an immediate attack on all who were within. (And thus were fulfilled in the king of Babylon the words of the prophet, " The night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. —Notes, In loco.

Key of the Gate

Isa. 22:22.—And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder.

JOSEPH BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—At the end of the chamber, just behind the first bulls, was formerly a strong gate, of one leaf, which was fastened by a huge wooden lock, like those still used in the East, of which the key is as much as a man can conveniently carry, and by a bar which moved into a square hole in the wall. It is to a key of this description that the prophet probably alludes, "And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder;” and it is remarkable that the word for "key" in this passage of Scripture, muftah, is the same in use all over the East at the present time. The key of an ordinary street door is commonly thirteen or fourteen inches long, and the key of the gate of a public building, or of a street, or quarter of a town, is two feet and more in length.—.Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 150.

Tyre

Isa. 23:1.—The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in.

PROF. CHARLES ROLLIN.—Nabuchodonosor laid siege to Tyre, at the time Ithobalus was king of that city; but did not take it till thirteen years after, or B. C. 572. But before it was conquered, the inhabitants had retired, with most of their effects, into a neighboring island, where they built a new city. The old one was razed to the very foundation, and has since been no more than a village, known by the name of Palœ-Tyrus, or Ancient Tyre.—Ancient History, Vol. I., p. 526 (Harper's Ed.)

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" No entering in,"—No harbor, no port; where ships could remain, and with which they could continue to trade. Tyre was once better situated for commerce, and had greater natural advantages, than any port in the Mediterranean. Those advantages have, however, to a great extent passed away, and natural causes combine to confirm the truth of the Divine predictions that it should cease to be a place of commerce.—Note, In loco.

DR. ROBINSON.—The inner port or basin of Tyre, on the north, was formerly enclosed by a wall, running from the north end of the island in a curve towards the main land. Various pieces and fragments of this wall yet remain, sufficient to mark its course; but the port itself is continually filling up more and more with sand, and now-a-days boats only can enter it.—Biblical Researches, Vol. III., p. 397.

Isa. 23:2.—Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished.

REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—"A mournful and solitary silence now prevails along this shore which once resounded with the world's debate." This sentence with which Gibbon solemnly closes his chapter on the Crusades, well sums up the general impression still left by the six days' ride from Beyrout to Ascalon; and in this impression travelers have felt a response to the strains in which Isaiah and Ezekiel foretold the desolation of Tyre and Sidon. The Phenician power which the prophets denounced has entirely perished.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 266.

Thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished.

HOMER.—

Freighted with precious toys of every sort,

A ship of Zidon anchor'd in our port.

—Odyss., XV., 415.

Isa. 23:6.—Pass ye over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This is an address to Tyre in view of her approaching destruction; and is designed to signify that when the city was destroyed its inhabitants would flee to its colonies, and seek refuge and safety there. As Tarshish was one of its principal colonies, and as the ships employed by Tyre would naturally sail to Tarshish, the inhabitants are represented as fleeing there on the attack of Nebuchadnezzar. That the inhabitants of Tyre did flee in this manner is expressly asserted by Jerome upon the authority of Assyrian histories which are now lost. "We have read," says he, "in the histories of the Assyrians, that when the Tyrians were besieged, after they saw no hope of escaping, they went on board their ships, and fled to Carthage, or to some islands of the Ionian and Ægean Sea" (Jerome, in loco). And again he says, " When the Tyrians saw that the works for carrying on the siege were perfected, and the foundations of the walls were shaken by the battering rams, whatever precious things in gold, silver, clothes, and various kinds of furniture the nobility had, they put them on board their ships, and carried to the islands. So that the city being taken, Nebuchadnezzar found nothing worthy of his labor." Diodorus (xvii., 41) relates the same thing of the Tyrians during the siege of Alexander the Great, where he says that they took their wives and children to Carthage.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 23:7.—Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days?

STRABO.—After Sidon the greatest and most ancient city of the Phenicians is Tyre, which is a rival to Sidon in greatness, and luster, and antiquity.—Strab., lib. xvi., c. 2.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Tyre is a city remarkable to posterity both for the antiquity of its origin, and for its frequent change of fortune.—Quint. Curt, lib. iv., c. 4.

ARRIAN.—The temple of Hercules at Tyre was the most ancient of those which the memory of men have preserved.—Arr., lib. ii., c, 16.

Isa. 23:12.—Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Justin, the epitomizer of Trogus, hath expressly informed us, that the Sidonians being besieged by the king of Ascalon, went in ships and built Tyre. But though Tyre was the "daughter " of Sidon, yet the daughter soon, equaled, and in time excelled the mother, and became the most celebrated place in the world for its trade and navigation, the seat of commerce and the center of riches.—Disserts. on Prophs., p. 548.

Isa. 23:13.—Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not... he brought it to ruin.

VITRINGA'S TRANSLATION.—Behold the land of the Chaldeans; a people that was of no account... yet this people hath reduced her (Tyre) to ruin.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Nebuchadnezzar (the Chaldean), having called in the aid of Cyaxares, king of Media, led in person the vast army—composed of the contingents of the two nations—which marched to chastise the rebels. He immediately invested Tyre, the chief of the Phoenician cities, but finding it too strong to be taken by assault, he left there a sufficient force to continue the siege, and marched against Jerusalem.... Tyre meanwhile continued to resist all the efforts that were made to reduce it, and it was not until the thirteenth year from the first investment of the place that the city of merchants fell. Tyre seems to have capitulated in the year 585 B. C.—Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I., Essay VIII., c. 14.

Isa. 23:15.—And it shall come to pass in that clay, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The duration of the Babylonian monarchy was properly but seventy years. Nebuchadnezzar began his conquest in the first year of his reign, and from thence to the taking of Babylon by Cyrus was seventy years. And at that time the nations that had been conquered and subdued by the Babylonians would be restored to liberty. Tyre was, indeed, taken towards the middle of that period, and its subjugation referred to here was only for the remaining part of it. "All these nations," says Jeremiah, "shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years." Some of them were conquered sooner and some later; but the end of this period was the common time of deliverance to them all.—Note, In loco.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Tyre was taken by Nebuchadnezzar in the thirty-second year of his reign, and in the year 573 B. C. Seventy years from thence will bring us down to the year 503 B. C., and the nineteenth year of Darius Hystaspes. At that time it appears from history that the Ionians had rebelled against Darius, and the Phoenicians assisted him with their fleets: and consequently it is reasonable to conclude that they were now restored to their former privileges. Disserts. on Prophs., p. 154.

Isa. 23:57, 58.—And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the Lord shall visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, etc.... And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—After the seventy years of desolation, the city should arise from its ruins, and resume her commerce and her gains. And at a future period in its history—not immediately—the true religion would prevail there, and her wealth would be devoted to the service of the Lord. That the true religion did prevail at Tyre subsequently to its restoration and rebuilding there can be no doubt. The Christian religion was early established at Tyre. It was visited by the Savior and by Paul. Paul found several disciples of Christ there when on his way to Jerusalem. It suffered much under the Dioclesian persecution.—Notes, In loco.

EUSEBIUS.—When the church of God was founded in Tyre, and in other places, much of its wealth was consecrated to God, and was brought as an offering to the church, and was presented for the support of the ministry agreeable to the commandments of the Lord.—Hist., lib. x., c. 4.

JEROME.—We have seen churches built to the Lord in Tyre; we have beheld the wealth of all, which was not treasured up nor hid, but which was given to those who dwelt before the Lord. For the Lord hath appointed, that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel. And how liberally and munificently the bishops and clergy were at that time maintained, how plentifully they were furnished with everything, no man can want to be informed, who is ever so little conversant in ecclesiastical history.—Hieron., in Is., c. 23.

Affliction

Isa. 26:9.—When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

ÆSCHYLUS.— Such as owned No god till now, awestruck, with many a prayer, Adored the earth and sky.—Pers., v. 497.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—Admonished by their calamities, the Syracusans became more moderate in their pleasures.—Diss., 31.

Isa. 26:19.—Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

EGYPTIAN PAPYRUS.—Hail to the Osiris N! Thine individuality is permanent. Thy body is durable. Thy mummy doth germinate. Thou art not repulsed from heaven, or earth. Thy face is illumined near the sun. Thy soul liveth near to Ammon. Thy body is rejuvenated near to Osiris. Thou dost breathe forever and ever.... Thy soul doth breathe forever and ever. Thou dost renew thy form on earth, among the living.—Book of the Breaths of Life; See Records of the Past, Vol. IV., p. 122.

Jerusalem Besieged

Isa. 29:3.—And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.

ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTIONS.—And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem shim in, and raising banks of earth against the gates to prevent escape.—Annals of Sennacherib, in Rawlinson's Historical Illustrations, p. 142.

Idumea

Isa. 34:6.—The Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.

MR. GEORGE GROVE.—Bozrah was known to Eusebius, who speaks of it in the Onomasticon as a city of Esau in the mountains of Idumea. There is no reason to doubt that the modern representative of Bozrah is el-Busaireh, which was first visited by Burckhardt, and lies on the mountain district to the south-east of the Dead Sea, between Tûfîleh and Petra, about half-way between the latter and the Dead Sea.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 322.

BURCKHARDT.—Bozrah (Busaireh) is situated in the open plain, and is at present the last inhabited place in the southeast extremity of the Houran; it was formerly the capital of the Arabia Prouincia, and is now, including its ruins, the largest town in the Houran. It is of an oval shape, its greatest length being from east to west; its circumference is three-quarters of an hour. It was anciently encompassed with a thick wall, which gave it the reputation of great strength; many parts of this wall still remain. The south, and southeast quarters, are covered with ruins of private dwellings, the walls of many of which are yet standing, but the roofs are fallen in. On the west side are springs of fresh water, of which I counted five beyond the precincts of the town, and six within the walls.—Travels in Syria, p. 226.

Isa. 34:10.—From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—In the seventh century, the Mohammedan conquest gave a death-blow to the commerce and prosperity of Edom. Under the withering influence of Mohammedan rule the great cities fell to ruin, and the country became a desert. The followers of the false prophet were here, as elsewhere, the instruments in God's hands for the execution of his judgments.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 663.

VOLNEY.—From the reports of the Arabs of Bakir, and the inhabitants of Gaza, who frequently go to Maan and Karak, on the road of the pilgrims, there are to the southeast of the Dead Sea, within three days' journey, upwards of thirty ruined towns absolutely deserted. Several of them have large edifices, with columns that may have belonged to the ancient temples, or at least to Greek churches. The Arabs sometimes make use of them to fold cattle in; but in general avoid them on account of the enormous scorpions with which they swarm. —Travels, Vol. II., p. 344.

SCETZEN.—I was told that at the distance of two days and a half from Hebron I would find considerable ruins of the ancient city of Abde, and that for all the rest of the journey I would see no place of habitation; I would meet only with a few tribes of wandering Arabs.—Travels, p. 46.

BURCKHARDT.—Eastern Edom may with great propriety be called a stony desert, although susceptible of culture; in many places it is grown over with wild herbs, and must once have been thickly inhabited, for the traces of many towns and villages are met with on both sides of the Hadj road between Maan and Akaba, as well as between Maan and the plains of Houran, in which direction also are many springs. At present all this country is a desert, and Maan is the only inhabited place in it.—Travels, p. 436.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—" None shall pass through it forever and ever "Volney, Burckhardt, Joliffe, Henniker, and Captains Irby and Mangles, not only give their personal testimony to the truth of the fact which corroborates this prediction, but also adduce a, variety of circumstances, which all conspire in giving superfluity of proof that Idumea, which was long resorted to from every quarter, is so beset on every side with dangers to the traveler, that none pass through it.—Evidence from Prophecy, is. 147.

Isa. 34:12.—They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—Of all the ruins of Petra, “the city of Edom," the mausoleums and sepulchers are among the most remarkable, and they give the clearest indication of ancient and long-continued royalty, and of courtly grandeur.—" Great," says Burckhardt, "must have been the opulence of a city which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers."—But the long line of the kings and of the nobles of Idumea has for ages been cut off; they are without any representative now, without any memorial but the multitude and the magnificence of their unvisited sepulchers.— Evidence from Prophecy, p. 154.

Isa. 34 :11, 13, 14, 15.—But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it.... And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beast of the desert also shall meet with the wild beasts of the island; and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.

BURCKHARDT.—The bird Katta (cormorant) is met with in immense numbers; they fly in such large flocks, that the Arab boys often kill two or three of them at a time, merely by throwing a stick among them.—Travels, p. 406.

IRBY AND MANGLES.—Eagles, hawks, and owls were soaring in considerable numbers above our heads, seemingly annoyed at any one approaching their lonely habitation.—Travels, p. 415.

BURCKHARDT.—The fields of Tafyle (in the immediate vicinity of Edom) are frequented by an immense number of crows (ravens).—Travels, p. 405.

VOLNEY.—The ruins of Edom swarm with enormous scorpions.—Travels, Vol. II., 344.

SHAW.—The wilderness, of which the land of Edom now forms a part, abounds with a variety of lizards and vipers, which are very dangerous and troublesome. —Travels, Vol. II., p. 105, 338.

Isa. 34:16.—Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This seems to be addressed to the inhabitants of the land, or to any who might doubt, or be disposed to examine. They are invited to compare the prediction with the fulfillment, and see how literally all would be fulfilled-an examination which may be made now, and the prediction will be seen to have been accomplished with most surprising particularity and accuracy.—Note, In loco.

STEPHENS.—I would that the skeptic could stand as I did, among the ruins of this city among the rocks (Petra), and there open the sacred book, and read the words of the inspired penman, written when this desolate place was one of the grandest cities in the world. I see the scoffer arrested, his cheek pale, his lip quivering, and his heart quaking with fear, as the ancient city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful as one risen from the dead; though he would not believe Moses and the prophets, he believes the handwriting of God himself, in the desolation and eternal ruin around him. How terrible is the death of a city.—Incidents of Travel, Vol. II., p. 76.

Times of Messiah

Isa. 35:5, 6.—Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.

MATTHEW.—And Jesus went about all Galilee, healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people.—Chapter 4:5 23.

IDEM.—And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them; insomuch that the multitude wondered when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see; and they glorified the God of Israel.—Chapter 15:30, 31.

Invasion of Sennacherib

Isa. 36:1, etc.—Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria, etc.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The annals of Sennacherib, son and successor of Sargon, contain a full account of the campaign here recorded.—See Hist. Illust., p. 142, and the Testimonies given under 2 Kings 18:13, etc.

Isa. 36:18, 19.—Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hind of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The bas-reliefs (in this chamber) represented the siege and sack of one of the many cities taken by the great king, and the transfer of its captives to some distant province of Assyria. The prisoners were dressed in garments falling to the calves of their legs, and the women wore a kind of turban. Although the country was mountainous, its inhabitants used the camel as a beast of burden, and in the sculptures it was represented laden with the spoil. The Assyrians, as was their custom, carried away in triumph the images of the gods of the conquered nation, which were placed on poles and borne in procession on men's shoulders. “Hath any god of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? " exclaimed the Assyrian general to the Jews. “Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? “They had been carried away with the captives, and the very idols that were represented in this bas-relief may be amongst those to which Rabshakeh made this boasting allusion.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 294.

Isa. 37:29.—Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

HERODOTUS.—In this way passed by the water-carriers. Next to them came Psammenitus' son, and 2,000 Egyptians of the same age with him—all of them having ropes round their necks, and bridles in their mouths—and they too passed by on their way to suffer death for the murder of the Mytilenæans who were destroyed, with their vessel, in Memphis.—Thulia, c. 14.

JOSEPH BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—Passing out of the Hall of Judgment, (at Khorsabad,) and turning to our right, we find other slabs. Before the king, who is attended by his cup-bearer, scepter-bearer, and a third person, are three prisoners, wearing the sheepskin garment, the foremost of whom is kneeling in supplication; they are all fettered, and have the ring in the lower lip, to which is attached a thin cord held by the king.... Further on is a scene containing twelve figures, of whom four are prisoners, two standing, and two kneeling to the king. As in former bas-relievi, they have rings in their lips; and it is not a little remarkable that when Sennacherib, a successor of the founder of this palace, invaded Judea, the prophetic message sent by Isaiah in reply to the prayer of Hezekiah should contain the metaphor here embodied, and probably enacted in these very chambers—" I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest." —.Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 172-174.

Plaster of Figs

Isa. 38:21.—For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaster upon the boil, and he shall recover.

PLINY.—Figs are applied topically in all cases where sores require to be brought to a head or dispersed.—Hist. Nat., XXIII., 63.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The fig still maintains its repute in the East as the best poultice; and its use is familiar among ourselves as efficacious for gum-boils.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 352.

Merodach-Baladan

Isa. 39:21.—At that time Merodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters, and a present to Hezekiah.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The Canon of Ptolemy, as it is called, gives us the succession of Babylonian monarchs, with the exact length of the reign of each, from the year B. C. 747, when Nabonassar mounted the throne, to B. C. 331, when the last Persian king was dethroned by Alexander. This document, which from its close accordance with the statements of Scripture always vindicated to itself a high authority in the eyes of Christian chronologists, has recently been confirmed" in so many points by the Inscriptions that its authentic character is established beyond all possibility of cavil or dispute. In this list, the fifth is Mardocempalus, a monarch to whom great interest attaches, for he is undoubtedly the “Merodach-Baladan " of Scripture. The Assyrian Inscriptions show that after reigning twelve years Merodach-Baladan was deprived of his crown and driven into banishment by Sargon, who appears to have placed Arceanus upon his throne.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 217.

The Harbinger

Isa. 40:3.—The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

MATTHEW.—In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.—Chapter 3:1-3.

Isa. 40:4.—Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—It was the practice of Eastern monarchs, whenever they entered upon a journey or an expedition, especially through a barren or unfrequented and inhospitable country, to send harbingers, or heralds, before them to prepare the way. To do this, it was necessary for them to provide supplies, and make bridges, or find fording places over the streams; to level hills, and construct causeways over valleys, or fill them up; and to make a way through the forest which might lie in their intended line of march.—Note, In loco.

ARRIAN.—Alexander now proceeded to the river Indus, part of the army going before, which made a way for him, for otherwise there would have been no mode of passing through that region.—Hist., 1. iv., c. 30.

OVID.—Wherever she appears, sink down ye swelling mountains, and ye paths through the crooked valleys grow smooth.—Amor., lib. ii., eleg. 16.

Isa. 40:11.—He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.

JOHN.—I am the good shepherd. By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.—Chapter 10:5, 9, 11, 14.

MARK.—Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not. He took them up in his arms, and put his hands upon them, and blessed them.—Chapter 10:14-16.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The Eastern shepherd is often laden with the young lambs which are too tender to follow with the rest. I have often seen a shepherd carrying a lamb under each arm, and two or three more in the hood of his cloak as he led the flock.—Natural History of the Bible, p. 140.

The Almighty Creator

Isa. 40:18.—To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?

ÆSCHYLUS.—Make a distinction between the deity and mortal beings. Do not think him like any other body. He is incomprehensible.—Apud. Euseb., Prœp. Evang., 1. xiii., c. 13.

SENECA.—No one knows God, though many entertain strange and preposterous opinions of him, God, the most high and powerful, upholdeth all things. The likeness of 'God cannot be made of gold, or silver, or any such things.— Epist., 31.

Isa. 40 :22.—It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.

DR. THOMAS DICK—When we take a leisurely survey of the globe on which we dwell, and consider the enormous masses of its continents and islands, the quantity of water in its seas and oceans, the lofty ranges of mountains which rise from its surface, the hundreds of majestic rivers which roll their waters into the ocean, the numerous orders of animated beings with which it is peopled, and the vast quantity of matter enclosed in its bowels from every part of. its circumference to its center, amounting to more than 260,000 millions of cubical miles—we cannot but be astonished at the greatness of that Being who first launched it into existence, who " measures its waters in the hollow of his hand, who weighs its mountains in scales and its hills in a balance;" and who has supported it in its rapid movements, from age to age.—Improvement of Society, Section VI.

Isa. 40:25, 26.—To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? Saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—When we direct our views to the planetary system, we behold three or four globes, which appear only like small studs on the vault of heaven, yet contain a quantity of matter more than 2,400 times greater than that of the earth; besides these there are more than a hundred lesser globes, many of which even are larger than our world; also several hundreds of comets, of various magnitudes, moving in every direction through the depths of space. The Sun is a body of such magnitude as overpowers our feeble conceptions, and fills us with astonishment. Within the wide circumference of this luminary more than a million of worlds, as large as ours, could be contained. His attractive energy extends to several thousands of millions of miles from its surface, retaining in their orbits the most distant planets and comets, and dispensing light and heat, and fructifying influence to more than a hundred worlds. What an astonishing idea, then, does it give us of the power of Omnipotence, when we consider that the universe is replenished with innumerable globes of a similar size and splendor! For every star which the naked eye perceives twinkling on the vault of heaven, and those more distant orbs which the telescope brings to view throughout the depths of immensity, are, doubtless, Suns, no less in magnitude than that which enlightens our day, and surrounded by a retinue of revolving worlds. Some of them have been reckoned by astronomers to be even much larger than our Sun. And the number of such bodies exceeds calculation.

Sir W. Herschel perceived in that portion of the Milky Way which lies near the constellation Orion no less than 50,000 stars, large enough to be distinctly numbered, pass before his telescope in an hour's time; besides twice as many more which could be seen only now and then by faint glimpses. It has been reckoned that nearly a hundred millions of stars lie within the range of our telescopes. And if we suppose, as we justly may, that each of these Suns has a hundred worlds connected with it, there will be found ten thousand millions of worlds in that portion of the universe which comes within the range of human observation; besides those which lie concealed from mortal eyes in the unexplored regions of space, which may as far exceed all that are visible, as the waters in the caverns of the ocean exceed in magnitude a single particle of vapor!

Of such numbers and magnitudes we can form no adequate conception. The mind is bewildered, Confounded, and utterly overwhelmed when it attempts to grasp the magnitude of the universe, or to form an idea of the omnipotent energy which brought it into existence. The amplitude of the scale on which the systems of the universe are constructed tends likewise to elevate our conceptions of the grandeur of the Deity. Between every one of the planetary bodies there intervenes a space of many millions of miles in extent. Between the sun and the nearest star there is an interval, extending in every direction, of more than twenty billions of miles; and it is highly probable that a similar space surrounds every other system. And if we take into consideration the immense forces that are in operation throughout the universe—that one globe, a thousand times larger than the earth, is flying through the regions of immensity at the rate of 30,000 miles an hour; another at the rate of 70,000 miles, and another at 100,000 miles an hour; and that millions of mighty worlds are thus traversing the illimitable spaces of the firmament—can we refrain from exclaiming in the language of inspiration, "Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty! "or fail to perceive the truth and force and fitness of the words. “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? "saith the Holy One. Improv. of Soci., Sec. VI.

Character of Messiah

Isa. 42:1—Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him.

MATTHEW.—And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him; and, lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.—

Chapter 3:16, 17.

JOHN.—For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.—Chapter 3:34.

LUKE.—The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.—Chapter 4:18.

Isa. 42:2.—He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in, the street.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—How well this agrees with the character of the Lord Jesus, it is not necessary to pause to show. He was uniformly unostentatious, modest, and retiring. He did not even desire that his deeds should be blazoned abroad, but sought to be withdrawn from the world, and to pursue his humble path in perfect peace.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 42:3.—A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.

MATTHEW.—I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.—Chapter 9:13.

IDEM.—Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.— Chapter 11:28.

JOHN.—Him that cometh to me I will in nowise cast out.—Chapter 6:37.

Isa. 42:21.—He will magnify the law, and make it honorable.

MATTHEW. —Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.—Chapter 4:17-19.

Divine Challenge

Isa. 43: 9.—Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and show us former (the order of) things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or, let them hear, and say, It is truth.

W. R. COOPER, Sec. of Sod. of Bib. Archœology.—From the monuments of Assyria come to us fresh confirmations of the Old Testament; that mighty empire has witnessed for the truth of the Bible in an unexpected manner, and with no uncertain voice. From the ruins of her palaces has her history been disinterred, and from the mutilated walls of her temples have her theology and poetry been restored. The conquest of Palestine is recorded in the annals of Sennacherib, and the cylinder of Tiglath-pileser describes his invasion of Palestine. The names of Jehu, of Amaziah, of Hezekiah, of Omri, Ahaz and Uzziah, have been made out. The very clay which sealed the treaty between the kings of Judah and Assyria, with the impresses of their joint seals upon it, is preserved in the Nineveh gallery. The library of Assurbanipal, in 20,000 fragments, contains, among other scientific treatises, such as astronomical notices, grammatical essays, tables of verbs, genealogies, etc., an historic geographical account of Babylonia and the surrounding countries. As far as these fragments have been translated, the district and tribal names given in the Bible correspond very closely with them.—Faith and Free Thought, is. 236.

Chaldean Shipping

Isa. 43:14.—And the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships.

HERODOTUS.—The Babylonian district, like Egypt, is intersected by a number of canals, the largest of which, continued with a southeast course from the Euphrates to that part of the Tigris where Nineveh stands, is capable of receiving vessels of burden.... The boats which come down the river to Babylon are circular, and managed by two men who stand upright in them, each plying an oar, one pulling and the other pushing. The boats are of various sizes, some larger, some smaller; the biggest reach as high as 5,000 talents' burden.—Clio, c. 193, 194.

STRABO.—The country of the Babylonians is intersected by many rivers, the largest of which are the Euphrates and the Tigris: the Tigris is navigable upwards from its mouth to Opis, and to the present Seleucia. Opis is a village, and a mart for the surrounding places. The Euphrates is navigable up to Babylon, a distance of more than 3,000 stadia.—Strab., lib. xvi., c. 1.

Vanity of Idols

Isa. 44:14, 15.—He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto.

HORACE.—

In days of yore our godship stood

A very worthless log of wood

The joiner doubting, or to shape us

Into a stool, or a Priapus,

At length resolved, for reasons wise,

Into a god to bid me rise.

—Hor., lib. i., Sat. 8.

PLINY.—We see resplendent with the same ivory, the heads of the divinities and the feet of our tables.—Hist. Nat., XII., 2.

Cyrus and His Capture of Babylon

Isa. 44:27.—That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up the rivers.

HERODOTUS.—Cyrus took Babylon by laying the bed of the Euphrates dry, and leading his army into the city by night, through the empty channel of the river.—See Herod., lib: i., c. 190, 191.

Isa. 44:28.—That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus used to say,—That the business of a good herdsman, and of a good king, were very nearly alike; for a herdsman ought to provide for the welfare and happiness of the herd, and make use of them consistently with the happiness of those creatures; and that a king ought in the same manner, to make men and cities happy, and in the same manner to make use of them. Cyrop., VIII., 2.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—Cyrus governed the Persians as a shepherd governs his sheep.—Dissert., 40.

Isa. 45:1—Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus, finding the nations of Asia sovereign and independent of each other, and setting forward with a little army of Persians, obtained the dominion of the Medes by their own choice, and voluntary submission; of the Hyrcanians the same. He conquered the Syrians and Assyrians, the Arabs, Cappadocians, both Phrygians, the Lydians, Carians, Phenicians, and Babylonians. He ruled the Bactrians, Indians and Cilicians; in like manner the Sacians, Paphlagonians, and Megadinians, and many others whose names one cannot enumerate. He ruled the Greeks that were settled in Asia; and descending to the sea, the Cyprians and Egyptians.—Cyrop, lib. i., c. 1.

Isa. 45:1.—And I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.

HERODOTUS.—In the circumference of the wall of Babylon, at different distances, were a hundred massy gates of brass, whose hinges and springs were of the same metal. The city, which abounds in houses from three to four stories in height, is regularly divided into streets. Through these, which are parallel, there are transverse avenues to the river, opened through the wall and breastwork, and secured by an equal number of little gates of brass. If the besieged had either been aware of the designs of Cyrus, or had discovered the project before its actual accomplishment, they might have effected a total destruction of these troops. They had only to secure the little gates which led to the river, and to have manned the embankment on either side, and they-might have enclosed the Persians in a net, from which they could never have escaped. As it happened, they were taken by surprise.—Clio, c. 179-191.

XENOPHON.—They that attended Gadatas and Gobryas in military order, found the doors of the palace shut, and they that were posted opposite to the guards fell on them and slew them. As soon as the noise and clamor began; they that were within perceiving the disturbance, and the king commanding them to examine into the cause of it, ran out, throwing open the gates. They that were with Gadatas, as soon as they saw the gates loose, broke in, pressing forward on the runaways, and dealing their blows amongst them.—Cyrop., lib. vii., c. 5.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—None but an Omniscient Being could have predicted, a hundred and fifty years before it occurred, that such an event would take place; and this is one of the many prophecies which demonstrate in the most particular manner that Isaiah was inspired.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 45:2, 3.—I will go before thee.... I will break in pieces the gates.... I will give thee the treasures, etc.

HERODOTUS.—(Harpagus to Cyrus.)—Son of Cambyses, Heaven evidently favors you, or you could never have thus risen superior to fortune.—Clio, c. 124.

IDEM.—When Cyrus considered the peculiar circumstances of his birth, he believed himself more than human. He reflected also on the prosperity of his arms, and that wherever he had extended his excursions, he had been followed by success and victory.—Clio, c. 205.

EZRA.—Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem.—Chapter 1:2.

Isa. 45:3.—And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

XENOPHON.—Croesus said to Cyrus, Suffer me to speak to such of the Lydians as I think fit, and to tell them that I have prevailed on you not to plunder nor to suffer our wives and children to be taken from us; but have promised you that, in lieu of these, you shall certainly have from the Lydians of their own accord, whatever there is of worth and value in Sardis. For whenever they hear this, I know they will bring out whatever there is of value here, in the possession of man or woman.—Cyrop., lib. vii., c. 2.

IDEM.—Cyrus then set forward from Sardis, taking Crœsus with him, and a great many wagons loaded with abundance of rich effects of all kinds. And Crœsus came to him with an exact account in writing of what was in each wagon. Cyrus entered the Royal Palace (at Babylon), and they that conveyed the treasures from Sardis delivered them up there.—Cyrop., lib. vii., c. 4, 5.

PLINY.—Cyrus, when he had conquered Asia, found a booty consisting of 24,000 lbs. weight of gold, in addition to vessels and other articles of wrought gold, as well as leaves of trees, a plane-tree and a vine, all made of that metal. It was through this conquest, too, that he carried off 500,000 talents of silver, as well as the vase of Semiramis, the weight of which alone amounted to 15 talents, the Egyptian talent being equal, according to Varro, to eighty of our pounds.—Hist. Nat., lib. xxxiii., c. 15.

Isa. 45:9.—Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!

PINDAR.—It is not good to contend against Heaven.—Pyth., II., 162.

Isa. 45:19.—I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—The oracles of the heathen gave their answers in secret; uttering them from the depths of some dark cavern, and in such doubtful language as very often to deceive those who consulted them. The dark saying of the oracle to Crœsus may very properly be contrasted with the open speech of God's prophets; inasmuch as it has some connection with this part of Isaiah's prophecies. “Crœsus," relates Herodotus (I., 53-86), " sent to inquire of the oracle at Delphi whether he might proceed against the Persians, and whether he should require the help of any allies. The answer was, that if he prosecuted a war with Persia he would overthrow a mighty empire." He did so and was conquered.—" The Persians obtained possession of Sardis, and made Crœsus captive, when he had reigned fourteen years, and after a siege of fourteen days; a mighty empire, according to the prediction of the oracle, being thus destroyed."—Test. of Heath., p. 390.

CICERO.—Apollo, monarch of the sacred center of the great world, full of thy inspiration, the Pythian priestesses proclaim thy prophecies. Chrysippus has filled an entire volume with your oracles, many of which I consider utterly false, and many others only true by accident. Others again are so obscure and involved that their very interpreters have need of other interpreters; and the decision of one lot have to be referred to other lots. Another portion are so ambiguous that they require to be analyzed by the logic of dialecticians.—De Div., lib. ii., c. 56.

Isa. 46:1.—Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth; their idols, etc.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—In the famous denunciation of Isaiah (46:1) against Babylon, Bel and Nebo are spoken of as the two great objects of worship, precisely as Sargon, who was the contemporary of Isaiah, uses the names of Bel and Nebo in the account of his Babylonian sacrifice. —Rawlinson's Herod., Vol. I., p. 512, Note.

COLONEL RAWLINSON.—The discovery which I have now to announce is, that within the last few days the workmen employed in the service of the British Museum have disinterred from the ruins of the southeast palace at Nimroud a perfect statue of the god Nebo, inscribed across the breast with a legend of twelve lines, which states that the figure in question was executed by a certain sculptor of Calah, and dedicated by him to his lord, Phal-luka, king of Assyria, and to his lady, Sammuramit, queen of the palace.—Athenœum, for April 15, 1854.

Isa. 46:11.—Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country.

XENOPHON.—The standard, or ensign, of Cyrus was a golden eagle, held on the top of a long lance.—Cyrop., lib. vii., c. I.

IDEM.—As the army of Cyrus approached the borders of Persia, an eagle appearing to the right led the way before them.—Cyrop., lib. ii., c. i.

Isa. 47:1.—Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: O daughter of the Chaldean: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—How truly this was fulfilled needs not to be told to those who are familiar with the history of Babylon. Its power was broken when Cyrus conquered it; its walls were reduced by Darius; Seleucia rose in its stead, and took away its trade, and a large portion of its inhabitants, until it was completely destroyed, so that it became for a long time a question where it had formerly stood.— Note, In loco.

Isa. 47:2.—Take the millstones, and grind meal.

HERODOTUS.—After its conquest by Cyrus, Babylon alone had to raise subsistence for him and his army for four months in the year-(in other words, had to take the millstones, and grind meal).—

See Herod., lib. i., c. 192.

Isa. 47:8, 9.—Therefore bear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children: But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children and widowhood; they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.

HERODOTUS.—(In the revolt of the Babylonians against. Darius, in order to save provisions that they might not be compelled to submission by famine, they took this measure)—Having first set apart their mothers, each man chose besides out of his whole household one woman, whomsoever he pleased; these alone were allowed to live, while all the rest were brought to one place and strangled. The women chosen were kept to make bread for the men; the others were strangled that they might not consume the stores.... Darius, however, through the stratagem of a Persian named Zopyrus, again took the city. And having become master of the place, he destroyed the wall, and tore down all the gates; for Cyrus had done neither the one nor the other when he took Babylon. He then chose out near 3,000 of the leading citizens, and caused them to be crucified, while he allowed the remainder still to inhabit the city. Further, wishing to prevent the race of the Babylonians from becoming extinct, he provided wives for them in the room of those whom they had strangled to' save their stores. These he levied from the nations bordering on Babylonia, who were each required to send so large a number to Babylon, that in all there were collected no fewer than 50,000. It is from these women that the Babylonians of our times are sprung.—Herod, lib. iii., c. 150-159.

Isa. 47:13.—Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

CICERO.—Among the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, a tribe who had this name, not from any art which they professed, but from the district which they inhabited, by a very long course of observation of the stars, are considered to have established a complete science, so that it became possible to predict what would happen to each individual, and with what destiny each separate person was born.

De Divin., lib. i., c. I.

Messiah

Isa. 1:4.—The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.

MATTHEW. —And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.—Chapter 7:28, 29.

IDEM.—And it came to pass that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence: and when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?—Chapter 13:54.

JOHN.—The officers answered, Never man spake like this man.—Chapter 7:46.

Isa. 1:6.—I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

JOHN.—Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head. And they smote him with their hands.—Chapter 19:1, 3.

MARK.—And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face.—Chapter 14:65.

MATTHEW.—They bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.—Chapter 27:29, 30.

Isa. 1:8, 9.—He is near that justifieth me.... Behold the Lord God will help me.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This was done by all the testimonials of God in Messiah's favor—by the voice which spake from heaven at his baptism—by the miracles which he wrought, showing that he was commissioned and approved by God—by the fact that even Pilate was constrained to declare him innocent—by the wonders that attended his crucifixion, showing that " he was a righteous man," even in the view of the Roman centurion—and by the fact that he, was raised from the dead, and was taken to heaven, and placed at the right hand of the Father—thus showing that his whole work was approved by God, and furnishing the most ample vindication of his character from all the accusations of his foes.— Note, In loco.

Retribution

Isa.23.—Behold I will put it (the cup of trembling) into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.

TACITUS.—Whilst the empire of the East was possessed by the Assyrians, next by the Medes and Persians, the Jews were held the most despicable of all the enslaved nations.—Hist., lib. v., c. 8.

Messiah's Sufferings

Isa. 53: 2.—For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The idea in this passage is plain. It is that the Messiah would spring up as from an ancient and decayed stock like a tender shoot. He would be humble and unpretending in his origin, and would be such that they, who had expected a splendid prince, would be led to overlook and despise him,—" as a root out of a dry ground "—unattractive in appearance. " He hath no form nor comeliness,"—no robes of royalty; no diadem sparkling on his brow; no splendid retinue; no gorgeous array. "And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him,"—he does not appear in the form which we had anticipated; he does not come with the regal pomp and splendor which it was supposed the Messiah would assume; he is apparently of humble rank, has few attendants, and has disappointed wholly the expectation of the nation. Can anything be more strikingly expressive of the actual appearance of the Redeemer as compared with the expectation of the Jews? Can there be found anywhere a more striking fulfillment of a prophecy than this? And how will the infidel answer the argument thus furnished for the fact that Isaiah was inspired, and that his record was true?—Notes, In loco.

Isa. 53:3.—He is despised, and rejected of men.

MARK. —Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? And they were offended at him.— Chapter 6:3.

JOHN.—Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?—Chapter 8:48.

IDEM.—He came to his own, and his own received him not.—Chapter 1:11

IDEM.—When the chief priests, therefore, and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Away with him, away with him.—Chapter 19:6-15.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" He is despised and rejected of men."—This phrase is full of meaning, and in few words states the whole history of man in regard to his treatment of the Redeemer. The name, THE REJECTED OF MEN, will express all the melancholy history: rejected by the Jews; by the rich; the great and the learned; by the mass of men of every grade, and age, and rank. No prophecy was ever more strikingly fulfilled; none could condense more significance into few words.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 53:3.—A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

MATTHEW.—Jesus began to show unto his disciples how he must suffer many things and be killed.—Chapter 16:21.

MARK.—Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.—Chap. 3:5.

LUKE. —He beheld the city, and wept over it.—Chapter 19:41.

IDEM.—Being in an agony, his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground.—Chapter 22:44

JOHN.—He groaned in spirit, and was troubled.... Jesus wept.—Chapter 11:33, 35

Isa. 53:4.—We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

MATTHEW.—He hath spoken blasphemy.... He is guilty of death.—Chapter 26:65, 66.

JOHN.—We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.—Chapter 19:7.

Isa. 53:5.—But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" But he was wounded "—perforated, or pierced: applied to the actual sufferings of the Messiah, this refers undoubtedly to the piercing of his hands, and his feet, and his side. " He was bruised for our iniquities "—broken down, or crushed: the meaning is, that he was under such a weight of sorrows on account of our sins, that he was, as it were, crushed to the earth. How true this was of the Lord Jesus it is not necessary here to pause to show.—Notes, In loco.

LUKE.—I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!— Chapter 12:50.

MATTHEW.—Then said he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.—Chapter 26:38.

Isa. 53:5.—And with his stripes we are healed.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" His stripes "—weals, the marks or prints of blows on the skin: the obvious and natural idea conveyed by the word here is, that the individual referred to would be subjected to some treatment that would cause such weals or stripes; that is, that he would be beaten or scourged. How literally this was applicable to the Lord Jesus it is unnecessary to attempt to prove.—Notes, In loco.

MATTHEW.—Then released he Barabbas unto them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.... And they took the reed and smote him on the head.—Chapter 27:26, 30.

Isa. 53: 6.—All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—So it was, and is, with man. The bond which should have united him to the Great Shepherd, the Creator, has been broken, We have become lonely wanderers, where each one pursues his own interest; forms his own plans; and seeks to gratify his own pleasures, regardless of the interest of the whole. If we had not sinned, there would have been a common bond to unite us to God and to each other. But now we, as a race, have become dissocial, selfish, following our own pleasures, and each one living to gratify his own passions. What a true and graphic description of man! How has it been illustrated in all the selfish schemes and purposes of the race! And how is it still illustrated every day in the plans and actions of mortals!—Notes, In loco.

Isa. 53:7.—He was oppressed, and he was afflicted; yet he opened not his mouth.

MATTHEW.—When he was accused he answered nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him to never a word.— Chapter 27:12-14.

MARK.—He held his peace, and answered nothing.—Chapter 14:61.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" He opened not his mouth "—This means that he was perfectly quiet, meek, submissive, patient. He did not open his mouth to complain of God on account of the great sorrows which he had appointed to him; nor to God on account of his being ill-treated of man. He did not use the language of reviling when he was reviled, nor return on men evils which they were inflicting on him. How strikingly and literally was this fulfilled in the life of the Lord Jesus! It would seem almost as if it had been written after he Eyed, and was history rather than prophecy. In no other instance was there ever so striking an example of perfect patience; no other person ever so entirely accorded with the description of the prophet.—Note, In loco.

Isa. 53: 7.—He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—As a lamb which is led to be killed is patient and silent, so was he. He made no resistance. He uttered no complaint. He suffered himself to be led quietly along to be put to death. What a striking and beautiful description! How tender and how true! We can almost see here the meek and patient Redeemer led along without resistance; and amidst the clamor of the multitude that were assembled with various feelings to conduct him to death, himself perfectly silent and composed. With all power at his disposal, yet as quiet and gentle as though he had no power; and with a perfect consciousness that he was going to die, as calm and as gentle as though he were ignorant of the design for which they were leading him forth.—Notes, In loco.

Isa. 53:8.—He was taken from prison and from judgment... he was cut off out of the land of the living.

REV. THOMAS SCOTT, D. D.—The chief priests and scribes did not cast our Lord into prison, and then after a time give him a fair trial, according to law and custom (from him were taken both); but, without delay, they delivered him to Pilate, and urged his immediate execution.—Note, In loco.

JOHN.—And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified him.... When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.—Chapter 19:17-30.

Isa. 53:9.—And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.

HENGSTENBERG'S TRANSLATION: They appointed him his grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man after his death.

BISHOP LOWTH'S TRANSLATION: And his grave was appointed with the wicked, but with the rich man was his tomb.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—How remarkably was this fulfilled! As a matter of course, since Jesus Christ was put to death with wicked men, he would naturally have been buried with them, unless there had been some special interposition in his case. He was given up to be treated as a criminal; he was made to take the vacated place of a murderer—Barabbas—on the cross; he was subjected to the same indignity and cruelty to which the two malefactors were; and it was evidently designed also that he should be buried in the same manner, and probably in the same grave.—Note, In loco.

MAIMONIDES.—Those who are condemned to death by a judicial tribunal are not interred in the sepulchers of their ancestors, but two places of burial are appointed by the court—one for those stoned and burned, and another for those beheaded and strangled.—In Brown's Sufferings and Glories of the Messiah, p. 287.

JOSEPHUS.—Let him who blasphemes God be stoned, and then hanged for a day, and let him have a disgraceful and obscure burial.—Antiq., IV., c. 8, § 6.

DR. JOHN BROWN.—It is indeed highly probable that as the bodies could not, without a violation of the Mosaic law, hang on the cross all night, the common grave was already dug. His grave was prepared for him with the malefactors. But our Lord died sooner than was usual in such cases-died before the time fixed for taking the bodies down and burying them; and this gave opportunity for an application being made and granted, while it fulfilled the 'latter part of the prediction,—" But he was with a rich man in his dead state." —Sufferings and Glories of the Messiah, p. 287.

MARK. —And now when the even was come (because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counselor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. And Pilate marveled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. And when he knew it of the centurion he gave the body to Joseph. And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulcher, which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulcher.—Chapter 15:42-47.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—How different this from the interment of malefactors! How different from the way in which he would have been buried if he had been interred with them as it had been designed (and as had been the legal custom)! And how very striking and minutely accurate this prophecy in circumstances which could not possibly have been the result of conjecture! How could a pretended prophet, 700 years before the event occurred, conjecture of one who was to be executed as a malefactor, and with malefactors, and who would in the ordinary course of events be buried with malefactors, conjecture that he would be rescued from such an ignominious burial by the interposition of a rich man, and buried in a grave designed for a man of affluence, and in the manner in which the wealthy are buried?—Note, In loco.

Isa. 53:9.—Because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

PILATE.—Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man, touching those things whereof ye accuse him; no, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him.— Luke 23:13-15.

IDEM.—I find in him no fault at all. —John 18:38.

PETER.—Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.—1 Pet. 2: 21, 22.

Isa. 53:10.—When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall, etc.

MATTHEW.—My Soul, is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.—Chapter 26:38.

JOHN.—Now is my Soul, troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.—Chapter 12:27.

IDEM.—He bowed his head and gave up the GHOST.—Chapter 19:30.

Isa. 53:10.—He shall prolong his days.

PAUL.—He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.—1 Cor. 15:4.

LUKE.—He showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs.—Acts 1:3.

MARK.—After the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.—Chapter 16:19.

PAUL.—But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. —Heb. 1:8.

Isa. 53:10.—And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands.

LUKE.—But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them, etc.... And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.—Acts 2:14, 41.

IDEM.—And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.—Acts 5:14.

PAUL.—The Gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven.—Col. 1:23.

JOHN.—After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. —Rev. 7:9.

Isa. 53:12.—He was numbered with the transgressors.

MATTHEW. —Then were two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another On the left.—Chapter 27:38.

Isa. 53:12.—And he made intercession for the transgressors.

LUKE.—Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.—Chapter 23:34.

PAUL.—He ever liveth to make intercession, etc. —Heb. 7:25.

Additional Remarks on this Chapter.

THE COMPILER.—The predictions of Isaiah, according to the commonly received chronology, were delivered between the years 760 B. C. and 698 B. C. But if any doubt existed concerning these dates, other facts there are, undisputed and indisputable, that prove the long priority of the prophecy to the events it refers to. And so far as the argument with infidelity is concerned, it is immaterial whether it was written 700 years, or loo years before the events took place; is still a prophecy, and no less a proof of inspiration. The Book of Isaiah, in common with the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures, was quoted by various writers, and even translated into different languages, long before the Christian era. It was found both in the Chaldee and the Greek languages thus early. The work of translation into Greek was commenced at Alexandria, 280 B. C.; or more than three centuries before the commencement of the public ministry of Jesus. That this 53rd chapter of Isaiah, embracing so many marked particulars concerning the Messiah, was, therefore, written and delivered to the world centuries before the birth of Christ stands a demonstrated and admitted fact before the world.—See Stromata, lib. v.; Prœp. Evang., lib. xiii.; and Smith's Did., art. "Septuagint."

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—1. The first remark I make is, The minute accuracy of the statements, made in this chapter, as applicable to the Lord Jesus. While it is apparent that there has been no other being on earth, and no “collective body of men," to whom this can be applied, it is evident that the whole statement is applicable to the Redeemer. It is not the general accuracy to which I refer; it is not that there is some resemblance in the outline of the prediction; it is that the statement is minutely accurate. It relates to his appearance, his rejection, the manner of his death, his being pierced, his burial. It describes as minutely as could have been done after the events occurred, the manner of his trial, of his rejection, the fact of his being taken from detention and by a judicial sentence, and the manner in which it was designed that he should be buried, and yet the remarkable fact that this was prevented, and that he was interred in the manner in which the rich were buried.

This coincidence could never have occurred if the Lord Jesus had been an impostor. To say nothing of the difficulty of attempting to fulfill a prediction by imposture and the general failure in the attempt, there are many things here which would have rendered any attempt of this kind utterly hopeless. A very large portion of the things referred to in this chapter were circumstances over which an impostor could have no control, and which he could bring about by no contrivance, no collusion, and no concert. They depended on the arrangements of Providence, and on the voluntary actions of men, in such a way that he could not affect them. How could he so order it as to grow up as a root out of a dry ground; to be despised and rejected of men; to be taken from detention and from a judicial sentence though innocent; to have it designed that he should be buried with malefactors, and to be numbered with transgressors, and yet to be rescued by a rich man and placed in his tomb? This consideration becomes more striking when it is remembered that not a few men claimed to be the Messiah, and succeeded in imposing on many, and though they were at last abandoned or punished, yet between their lives and deaths and the circumstances here detailed there is not the shadow of a coincidence. It is to be remembered also that an impostor would not have aimed at what would have constituted a fulfillment of this prophecy. Notwithstanding the evidence that it refers to the Messiah, yet it is certain also that the Jews expected no such personage as that here referred to. They looked for a magnificent temporal prince and conqueror; and an impostor would not have attempted to evince the character, and to go through the circumstances of poverty, humiliation, shame and sufferings, here described. What impostor ever would have attempted to fulfill a prophecy by subjecting himself to a shameful death? What impostor could have brought it about in this manner if he had attempted it? No. It was only the true Messiah that either would or could have fulfilled this remarkable prophecy. Had an impostor made the effort, he must have failed: and it was not in human nature to attempt it under the circumstances of the case. All the claims to the Messiahship by impostors have been of an entirely different character from that referred to here.

We are then prepared to ask an infidel how he will dispose of this prophecy. That it existed 700 years before Christ is as certain as that the poems of Homer or Hesiod had an existence before the Christian era; as certain as the existence of any ancient document whatever. It will not do to say that it was forged—for this is not only without proof, but would destroy the credibility of all ancient writings. It will not do to say that it was the result of natural sagacity in the prophet—for whatever may be said of conjectures about empires and kingdoms no natural sagacity can tell what will be the character of an individual man, or whether such a man as here referred to would exist at all. It would not do to say that the Lord Jesus was a cunning impostor, and resolved to fulfill this ancient writing, and thus establish his claims—for as we have seen, such an attempt would have belied human nature, and if attempted, could not have been accomplished. It remains then to ask what solution the infidel will give of these remarkable facts. We present him the prophecy—not a rhapsody, not conjecture, not a general statement; but minute, full, clear, unequivocal, relating to points which could not have been the result of conjecture, and over which the individual had no control. And then we present him with the record of the life of Jesus—minutely accurate in all the details of the fulfillment—a coincidence as clear as that between a biography and the original—and ask him to explain it. And we demand a definite and consistent answer to this. To turn away from it does not answer it. To laugh does not answer it—or there is no argument in a sneer or a jibe. To say that it is not worth inquiry is not true, for it pertains to the great question of human redemption. But if he cannot explain it, then he should admit that it is such a prediction as only God could give, and that Christianity is true.—Notes on Isaiah, Vol. II., p. 292.

Isa. 55:4.—Behold I have given him for a witness to the people.

JOHN.—For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear WITNESS unto the truth.—Chapter 18:37.

Isa. 55:4.—For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

ÆSCHYLUS.—God is not like mortals: beware how you deem him to resemble any other body.—Apud. Euseb. Prœp. Evang., XIII., 13.

PLUTARCH.—There is no manner of resemblance between God and a human being, either in his nature, his wisdom, his power, or his operations. If therefore he performs something which we cannot effect, and execute what with us is impossible, there is nothing in this contradictory to reason: since, though he far excels us in everything, yet the dissimilitude and distance between him and us, appears most of all in the works which he hath wrought.—Coriolan., c. 38.

The Wicked

Isa. 57:20, 21.—The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

PLATO.—The man who discovers in his own life much of iniquity is constantly starting in his sleep and full of terrors; and lives with scarcely a hope of the future.—De Re,., lib. i., c. 5.

ARISTOTLE.—The wicked have no stability; for they do not remain consistent ever with themselves.—Eth., lib. viii., c. 8.

CICERO.—Nobody can be happy without virtue.—De Nat. Deer., I., 18.

SENECA.—Conscience will not suffer the wicked to rest. He is punished who only expects punishment, and he who deserves it expects it. Even his dreams disturb him.—Epist., 105.

JUVENAL.—No bad man is ever happy.—Sat., IV., v. 8.

True Fast

Isa. 58:6, 7.—Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

LIVY.—(This ancient writer gives the following description of a national Fast at Rome on the occasion of a famine and pestilence which visited that city);—The doors were thrown open in every part of the city; everything was exposed in public to be used in common: passengers, whether known or unknown, were universally invited to lodgings: and even people who had been at variance, refraining from animosity and ill-language, conversed together with complaisance and kindness. During those days, too, such as were in confinement were set at liberty; and afterward people were deterred by a religious scruple from imprisoning those persons to whom the gods had brought such deliverance.— Liv., lib. v., c. 13.

Jeremiah

The Almond Tree

Jer. 1:11, 12.—Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree. Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Almond is the earliest of all the trees in Palestine to put forth its blossoms, which we gathered at Bethany in January; hence its Hebrew name, snaked, i. e., hasten. This explains the passage in Jer. 1 it, 12: "Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree (snaked). Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten (snaked) my word to perform it; “where there is a play on the word.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 332.

Corruption

Jer. 2:22.—For though thou wash thee with niter, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity marked before me, saith the Lord God.

ANTHOL. GRÆC.—

Enter the pure gods' temple sanctified

In soul, with virgin water purified:

One drop will cleanse the good; the ocean wave

Suffices not the guilty soul to lave.

Dromedary

Jer. 2:23, 24.—Thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways: a wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion who can turn her away?

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Dromedary is a choicer breed of camel, differing from the common camel as the race-horse does from the carthorse. The dromedary is much taller and longer in the leg, is altogether of a more slender shape, and is frequently of a very light color. Eighty miles a day is its speed when pressed, though fabulous stories are told of its accomplishing 250 miles without a halt.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 65.

PROF. J. G. WOOD, M. A., F. L. S.—The Wild Ass is an astonishingly swift animal, so that on the level ground even the best horse has scarcely a chance of overtaking it. It is exceedingly wary; its sight, baring and sense of scent being equally keen, so that to approach it by craft is a most difficult task. And its disposition is intractable.—Bible Animals, p. 280.

Personal Adornments

Jer. 4:30.—And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life.

XENOPHON. —Cyrus allowed his associates to color their eyes, that they might seem to have finer eyes than they really had, and to paint themselves that they might appear to have better complexions.—Cyrop., VIII., I.

IDEM. —The most considerable Persians wore purple robes and costly vests, with chains about their necks, and bracelets round their wrists.—Anab., I., 5.

The Wolf and Leopard

Jer. 5:6.—A wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Wolf is now, as of old, the dread of the shepherds of Palestine. Not so numerous, but much more formidable than the jackal, he lurks about the folds, hunting, not in noisy packs, but secreting himself till dark among the rocks; without arousing the vigilance of the sheep-dogs, he leaps into the, fold, and seizes his victim by stealth. In the hill country of Benjamin, about Bethel and Gibeah, the wolves still ravin. We found them alike in the forests of Bashan and Gilead, in the ravines of Galilee and Lebanon, and in the maritime plains.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 153, 154.

REV. GEORGE E. POST, M. D., Tripoli, Syria.—The Leopard is still found in Syria. I have seen a fine specimen from near Jezzin. One was killed near Abeih in the winter of 1866-67, after it had killed about sixty goats. A young one was taken near Bano in Akkar the same winter. They are not rare in the neighborhood of the castle of esh-Shukeef, opposite Deir Mimas. They work much mischief by their sanguinary attacks on the herds of goats and sheep which pasture in that vicinity.—Smith's Did, of Bible, p. 1630.

Decoys

Jer. 5:27.—As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit.

ARISTOTLE.—Both partridges and quails are so eagerly attracted to their mates, that they will fly to the decoy-bird in the hands of the fowler, and even settle upon his head.—Hist. Anim., IX., 8.

ARISTOPHANES.—He seizes the pigeons and keeps them shut up, and compels them to decoy others.—Aves, v. 1083.

Signals

Jer. 6:1.—O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction.

LIVY.—Philip of Macedon anticipating an attack from the Romans under Publius Sulpicius and king Attalus, sent people to Phocis, and Eubæa, and Peparethus, to choose out elevated situations where fires, being lighted, might \‘, be seen from afar. He fixed a beacon on Tisæum, a mountain whose summit is of immense height, that by means of lights on these eminences, whenever the enemy made any attempt, he might, though at a distance, receive instant intelligence of it. —Liv, XXVIII., 5.

The Old Paths

Jer. 6:16.—Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

SENECA. —What then? Must I not follow the steps of those who have gone before me? Yes, I will walk in the old path; but if I chance to find one nearer and plainer, I shall be inclined to take it, and direct others thereto.—Epist., 33.

The Bellows

Jer. 6:29.—The bellows are burned.

HOMER.—Soon as he bade them blow, the bellows turned Their iron mouths; and where the furnace burned, Resounding, breathed.—Iliad, XVIII., 468.

SIR J. G. WILKINSON.—Bellows were known and used in Egypt in the time of Moses, and perhaps still earlier. Of these the pictures still remain. They consisted of a leather, secured and fitted into a frame, from which a long pipe extended for carrying the wind to the fire. They were worked by the feet, the opErator standing upon them, with one under each foot, and pressing them alternately, while he pulled up each exhausted skin with a string he held in his hand. In one instance we observe from the painting, that when the man left the bellows, they were raised as if inflated with air; and this could imply a knowledge of the valve. The pipes even in the time of Thothmes III., supposed Ito be the contemporary of Moses, appear to have been simply of reed, tipped with a metal point to resist the action of the fire. — Anct. Egypt, III., 338.

Cake Offering

Jer. 7:18.—The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to, make cakes to the queen of heaven.

HERODOTUS. —Those who are poor make the figures of swine with meal, which having first baked, they offer on the altar to Luna.—Herod., lib. ii., c. 47.

HORACE.—

A graceful cake, when on the hallow'd shrine

Offer'd by hands that know no guilty stain,

Shall reconcile the offended powers divine,

When bleeds the pompous hecatomb in vain.

—Lib. iii., C. 23.

Cutting off the Hair

Jer. 7:29.—Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places; for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.

HOMER.—Tears flowed from every eye, and o'er the dead Each clipped the curling honors of his head.—Odyss., XIV., 46.

EURIPIDES.—Let the Cyclopean land howl, applying the steel to their head, cropped of hair, over the calamities of our house.—Orest., v. 965.

IDEM.—During this night having gone to the tomb of my Sire, I both shed tears and made offerings of my hair.—Electr., v. 90.

Migration of Birds

Jer. 8:7.—Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The periodical return of the stork is noticed by Jeremiah. There is peculiar force in the words, “the stork in the heaven," for unlike most other emigrants, the stork voyages by day at a treat height in the air, and the vast flocks cannot but attract the notice of the least observant. The multitudes which arrive, and the suddenness with which these huge birds distribute themselves over the whole face of the land, is in Palestine truly startling. In winter not one is to be seen.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 246.

IDEM.—Search the glades and valleys even by sultry Jordan, at the end of March, and not a turtle-dove is to be seen. Return in the second week in April, and clouds of doves are feeding on the clovers of the plain. They stock every tree and thicket. At every step they flutter up from the herbage in front -they perch on every tree and bush-they overspread the whole face of the land. So universal, so simultaneous, so conspicuous their migration, that the prophet might well place the turtle-dove at the head of those birds which “observe the time of their coming."—Ibid., p. 219.

IDEM.—The crane is well known in the Holy Land, and is, next to the ostrich, the largest bird in the country. It only visits the cultivated region at the time of its spring migration, when a few pairs remain in the marshy plains, as by the waters of Merom, but the greater number pass onwards to the north.— Ibid., p. 240.

Balm of Gilead

Jer. 8:22.—Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The most precious balm, that of Gilead, was the produce of the Opobalsamum, which is now cultivated about Mecca. Formerly it was cultivated with great care in the plains of Jericho. Its value was very great. It was and still is used as an internal medicine for stomachic complaints, and also externally for wounds. To this precious unguent the prophet probably refers, when he exclaims, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? “Many Gentile writers, as Tacitus, Strabo and Pliny, speak of the balm of Gilead as a precious commodity peculiar to Palestine.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 337.

Hired Mourners

Jer. 9:17.—Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and for cunning women, that they may come.

LUCIAN.—The foolish people howl and lament, and even send for a howler by trade, who has a great store of dismal stories always ready to keep their unmeaning grief in breath. When they are going to leave off the fellow begins, and the whole family presently sets up a howl to the same tune after him.— De Luau, c. 20.

LUCILIUS.—Those hired female mourners who weep at a stranger's funeral and bawl louder.—Sat. XXII., v. I.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—The Jewish Doctors acknowledge the custom of hiring professed mourners to lament over the dead, and inform us that it was so common that the poorest man in Israel, when his wife died, never had less than two pipes and one mourning woman.—Note, In loco.

Glory in God Alone

Jer. 9:23, 24.—Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.

PHOCYLIDES.—

If wisdom, strength, or riches, be thy lot,

Boast not; but rather think thou hast them not.

One God alone, from whom those gifts proceed,

Is wise, is mighty, and is rich indeed.

—Phocy., v. 48.

Natural Omens

Jer. 10:2.—Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

PLINY.—Our knowledge has been so far useful to us in the interpretation of thunder, that it enables us to predict what is to happen on a certain day, and we learn either that our fortune is to be entirely changed, or it discloses events which are concealed from us.—Hist. Nat., lib. ii., c. 54.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Jeremiah refers to those unusual natural phenomena, such as eclipses, which in the ancient superstitions certainly did “dismay the heathen," being regarded by them as harbingers and tokens of great public calamities. Many instances of the dismay which eclipses inspired might be cited. We may quote two of them. Nicias, the Athenian general, had determined to quit Sicily with his army; but an eclipse of the moon happening at that juncture, filled him with such alarm that he lost the favorable moment. This was the occasion of his own death and the ruin of his army; and this was so unhappy a loss to the Athenians that the decline of their state may perhaps be dated from that event. Even the army of Alexander, before the battle of Arbela, was so frightened at an eclipse of the moon, that the soldiers, deeming it a sign that the gods were displeased at the enterprise of their leader, refused to proceed on their march from the Tigris till assured by the Egyptian soothsayers that an eclipse of the moon was an omen of peculiar evil to their enemies, the Persians. R. Jarchi expressly refers the above text to the terror which eclipses occasioned.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—Should a supposed malignant planet begin to rule in any given month, multitudes are in a state of terrible agitation, and, with the priests at their head, are devising a thousand plans to avert its direful potency. Though their astronomers can calculate, with tolerable accuracy, the time when an eclipse will occur, yet this will not serve in the least to pacify the vast tribes of the East. During its continuance, they are all in a state of complete consternation; they abstain from their food and usual occupations, and yield themselves up to all the foolish impositions and absurd fantasies of their wily priest. —Orient. Illust., p. 468.

Idols

Jer. 10:5.—They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not; they must needs be borne, because they cannot go.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Here is an allusion to the form which the ancient idols bore, before the art of statuary was carried to perfection, when images were little better than an erect block of equal thickness throughout, but being surmounted by some resemblance of a human head or bust. This form of representing the gods was preserved, with improvements suggested by advanced taste, in the terminal statues of Hermes and of Pan long after the art of sculpture had progressed far beyond the circumstances in which such forms originated. A step beyond this original contrivance is exhibited in the Egyptian statues which meet our eyes in every exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, or in books containing representations of them, in which the statues stand bolt upright, resting equally upon both legs, which are close to each other, with the arms straight down by the sides. To all such figures, which doubtless typify the forms of idols which prevailed in the time of the prophet, the comparison, " upright as the palm-tree," is singularly appropriate, and is no doubt intended to characterize the stiffness, lifelessness, and want of natural action which belonged to such representations.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Jer. 10:9.—Blue and purple is their clothing.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This of course alludes to the idol-statues, and to the custom of clothing them with real dresses of rich stuffs. Pausanias mentions numerous statues thus attired in the various cities of Greece which he visited; and there is much other testimony to the same effect. Tertullian says that the gods and goddesses, like opulent females, had ministers particularly entrusted with the duty of arraying their images. It is related that the people, in their haste, to invest Saturninus with the ensigns of imperial rank, divested a statue of Venus of its purple robe, and covered with it the new emperor. Baruch mentions certain priests who took off the idols' garments to clothe their wives and children.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Need of Divine Direction

Jer. 10:23.—O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

HERODOTUS.—Remember the ancient proverb, When we commence a thing we cannot always tell where it will end.—Polym., c. 51.

EURIPIDES —I say that no man is happy or miserable but through the gods.—Heracl., v, 608.

Cities of the South

Jer. 13:19.—The cities of the South shall be shut up, and none shall open them.

PROF. E. H. PALMER, M. A.—Strange and solemn are the thoughts inspired by such a journey as that which we had just taken. Long ages ago, the Word of God had declared that the land of the Canaanites, and the Amalekites, and the Amorites should become a desolate waste; that “The cities of the South Country, or the Negeb, shall be shut up, and none shall open them "—and here around us we saw the literal fulfillment of the dreadful curse. Wells of solid masonry, fields and gardens compassed round about with goodly walls, every sign of human industry, was there; but only the empty names and stony skeleton of civilization remained to tell of what the country once had been. There stood the ancient towns, still called by their ancient names, but not a living thing was to be seen, save when a lizard glided over the crumbling walls, or screech-owls flitted through the lonely streets.—Desert of the Exodus, p. 332.

Force of Habit

Jer. 13:23.—Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

ARISTOTLE.—It is not possible, certainly not easy, to change that which has been for a long time impressed upon the character.—Eth., lib. x., c. 9.

LUCIAN. —Why do you fruitlessly wash the body of an Indian? Forbear your art; you cannot bring the sun upon a dark night. —Epigr.

Northern Iron

Jer. 15:12.—Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—The Chalybes of the Pontus were celebrated as workers in iron in very ancient times. They were identified by Strabo with the Chaldæi of his day, and the mines which they worked were in the mountains skirting the seacoast. The produce of their labor is supposed to be alluded to in Jer. 15:12, as being of superior quality. Iron mines are still in existence on the same coast, and ore is found in small nodular masses in a dark yellow clay which overlies a limestone rock.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1143.

The Heart Deceitful

Jer. 17:9.—The heart is deceitful above all things; and desperately wicked: who can know it? ARISTOPHANES.—Man is naturally deceitful ever, in every way.—Aves, v. 450.

Manufacture of Pottery

Jer. 18:3, 4.—Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—I have been out on the shore again, examining a native manufactory of pottery, and was delighted to find the whole Biblical apparatus complete, and in full operation. There was the potter sitting at his “frame," and turning the “wheel " with his foot. He had a heap of the prepared clay near him, and a pan of water by his side. Taking a lump in his hand, he placed it on the top of the wheel (which revolves horizontally), and smoothed it into a low cone, like the upper end of a sugar-loaf; then thrusting his thumb into the top of it, he opened a hole down through the center, and this he constantly widened by pressing the edges of the revolving cone between his hands. As it enlarged and became thinner, he gave it whatever shape he pleased with the utmost ease and expedition. This, I suppose, is the exact point of those Biblical comparisons between the human and the Divine Potter: "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, saith the Lord." When Jeremiah was watching the potter, the vessel was marred in his hand, and so he made it again another vessel as seemed good to the potter to make it. I had to wait a long time for that, but it happened at last. From some defect in the clay, or because he had taken too little, the potter suddenly changed his mind, crushed his growing jar instantly into a shapeless mass of mud, and beginning anew, fashioned it into a totally different vessel.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 281-283.

Snow of Lebanon

Jer. 18:14.—Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock of the field? or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forgotten?

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—When the plains of Palestine are burned up with the scorching sun, and when the air in them is like the breath of a furnace, the snowy tops and ice-cold streams of Lebanon temper the breezes, and make the mountain range a pleasant and luxurious retreat:—" Shall a man leave the snow of Lebanon? or shall its cold flowing waters be forsaken? "—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1622.

Burial of an Ass

Jer. 22:18, 19.—Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah: They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory! He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—To be deprived of the rites of sepulture was to the ancients the greatest of all calamities, worse even than death itself.—Test. of Heath., p. 410.

PLUTARCH.—After Demosthenes and Nicias had been stoned to death by the Syracusans, their bodies were thrown without the gates, and lay there exposed to the view of all who wished to enjoy the spectacle.—Nic., c. 28.

GHOST OF ELPENOR, to Ulysses—

In pity on my cold remains attend,

And call to mind thy dear departed friend.

The tribute of a tear is all I crave,

And the possession of a peaceful grave.

—Hom. Odyss., XI., 51.

Messiah

Jer. 23:5.—Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

PAUL.—Of this man's seed hath God, according to his promise, raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus. —Acts 13:23.

Omnipresence

Jer. 23:24.—Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.

PINDAR.—Hope not, mortal, e'er to shun The penetrating eye of Heaven.—Olymp., I., 102.

ARATUS.—Jove fills the heaven—the earth—the sea—the air: We feel his spirit moving here, and everywhere.—Phen., v. 3.

Naughty Figs

Jer. 24:2.—And the other basket had very naughty figs, which rid not be eaten, they were so bad.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Tasteless and woody, these sycamore figs must surely have been those in the prophet's vision, when he pronounced the figs in the second basket to be " very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad," and which were an apt emblem of the rejected Zedekiah and his people. Figs, however, they are, and the tree is a congener of the celebrated banyan-tree of India.—Land of Israel, p. 35.

Dispersion of the Jews

Jer. 24:9—And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—There is not a country on the face of the earth where the Jews are unknown. They are found alike in Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. They are citizens of the world, without a country. Neither mountains nor rivers, nor deserts, nor oceans,—which are the boundaries of other nations,—have terminated their wanderings.—Evid. from Proph., p. 69.

BISHOP PATRICK.—The name of Jew has long been a proverbial mark of detestation and contempt, among all the nations whither they have been driven, and is so to this day; so that Christians, Mohammedans and Pagans join in it. —Note, on Deut. 28:37.

Babylonian Captivity

Jer. 25:10.—Moreover I will take from them... the sound of the mill-stones, and the light of the candle.

MAJOR SKINNER.—While resting at night in the Arab encampment, the women in the neighboring tents were grinding corn, and the dull sound of the stones was neither disagreeable nor unsuited to the scene. They accompanied the labor with the most plaintive song I ever heard it was almost a moan; and it seemed as if they sang in concert, they kept so admirably together.—Journey Overland, Vol. II., p. 153.

Jer. 25:12.—And it shall come to pass when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This is a very remarkable prophecy, fixing, as it does, a date for the restoration of the Hebrews to their own land, and for the overthrow of the Babylonian monarchy.... The subjection of the Jews to the Babylonians occurred in the same year with the delivery of the present prophecy, when Jerusalem surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar after a short siege, and when that monarch took away part of the ornaments of the temple, and also the sons of some of the principal nobles to answer as hostages, and to be employed in the service of his court; among these were Daniel and his three friends. Now this took place in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, or B. C. 605. And Cyrus issued his decree for the restoration of the Jews in the first year of his reign, or B. C. 536; which was, as the prophet had foretold, in the seventieth year from their subjugation by Nebuchadnezzar.—Note In loco.

Jer. 25:53.—And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations.

MAJOR KEPPEL.—It was impossible to behold this scene, and not to be reminded of how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed to present; that she should never be inhabited; that the Arabian should not pitch his tent there; that she should become heaps; that her cities should be desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness.—Narrative, p. 197.

Shout of the Wine-Press

Jer. 25:30.—He shall give a shout as they that tread the grapes.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The wine was expressed, as it still is, by the simple inartificial process of treading. This was effected by several men, according to the size of the vat, who encouraged each other after the invariable Oriental fashion of “shouting."—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 409.

MR. J. G. FRANCIS, B. A.—The fumes which rose from the trodden grapes were so strong that all the treaders soon became inebriated. From a modest silence they passed to singing, and from singing to vociferous shouting. The scene brought forcibly to my mind divers passages of Holy Writ. Notes from a Journal, 1844-46.

Zion Ploughed

Jer. 26:18.—Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.

GIBBON.—After the final destruction of the temple, by the arms of Titus and Hadrian, a ploughshare was drawn over the consecrated ground, as a sign of perpetual interdiction. Sion was deserted. The holy places were polluted with monuments of idolatry. —Decline and Fall of R. E., chap. xxiii.

RICHARDSON.—At the time when I visited this sacred spot (Mount Zion) one part of it supported a crop of barley, another was 'undergoing the labor of the plow,—Travels.

Return From Babylon

Jer. 29.10.—Thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

BISHOP NEWTON.—This prophecy was first delivered (25:11) in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. And this same year it began to be put in execution. Seventy years from this time will bring us down to the first year of Cyrus, when he made his proclamation for the restoration of the Jews, and for the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem.— Dissertations on the Prophecies, No. VIII.

EZRA.—Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven, etc.—Chapter I., v. 1-4.

Preservation of the Jews

Jer. 30:10, 11—Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee; but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—God has made a "full end" of the Egyptians, Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, and Persians, and Macedonians, and of the pagan Roman Empire, which successively scattered or oppressed Israel; so that each of them has been inseparably united with the conquering nations: yet the Jews, by an unprecedented interposition of Providence, after all their oppressions and dispersions, are preserved a distinct people to this present day. How wonderfully do undeniable facts demonstrate the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures! —Note, In loco.

Smiting the Thigh

Jer. 31:19.—And after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh.

PLUTARCH.—Pompey, on hearing of his promotion over Lucullus, knit his brows, smote his thigh, and expressed himself as already overburdened with the weight of power.—Pomp., c. 30.

QUINTILIAN.—An orator who wants to express indignation, or to rouse hit audience, may with a very becoming grace, strike his thigh.—Quintil., lib. xi., c. 3.

Purchase' of Real Estate

Jer. 32:9-12.—And I bought the field of Hanameel, my uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and took witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances. So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was sealed according to the law and cus tom, and that which was open. And I gave the evidence of the purchase unto Baruch the son of Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, in the sight of Hanameel mine uncle's son, and in the presence of the witnesses that subscribed the book of the purchase, before all the Jews that sat in the court of the prison.

EGYPTIAN PAPYRI.—The Egyptian Papyri can be rolled and unrolled, after the lapse of so many centuries, without any detriment. But this complete preservation of so many specimens is he doubt to be attributed to their being kept from the air, under mummy-coverings, or in earthen vessels. Sometimes the two ends of a roll have been found sealed with cloth and resin. The ink, Pliny says, was made of soot, in various ways, by mixing it with burnt pitch and reisins. Lees of wine, boiled and strained, also made a kind of ink. On some the ink has a yellowish, tint, such as soot ink would change to; on others it is still very black. The strokes are like those made with a goose quill, and such were used: but Jomard thinks with a fine reed, very obliquely cut, such as now in the East is called qualam, whence the Greek and Latin calamus, possibly derived from Egypt.

A papyrus, in Egyptian, in the Vatican, Champollion dates at 640 B. C.; he dates many others centuries earlier. One, in Greek, from Thebes, Dr. Young dates at 106 B. C. This relates to the sale of some land, near Thebes, by two brothers and two sisters. It commences with reciting that the sale took place in the reign of Cleopatra, and Ptolemy her son, surnamed Alexander. It then goes on thus:—

"Pamonthes, about forty-five years of age, of middle stature, dark complexion, handsome person, bald, round-faced, and straight-nosed; and Snachomneus, about twenty years of age, and middle size, also round-faced and straight-nosed; and Semonthis Persinei, about twenty-two years of age, and middle size, yellow complexion, round-faced, flat-nosed, and of quiet demeanor; and Tathlut Persinei, about thirty, of middle size, yellow complexion, round-faced, straight-nosed; together with their principal, or master, Pamonthes, who joined in the conveyance,—all four being the children of Petepsais, one of the leather-cutters of the Memnoneia,—sold out of the piece of ground belonging to them on the southern side of the Memnoneia, this being vacant ground, eight thousand cubits, one-fourth of the whole. The land is bounded on the south by the royal street; on the north and east, by the possessions of Pamonthes and Bokonsiemis his brother, and the public wall of the city; on the west, by the house of Tages, the son of Chalome. A canal leading from the river runs through the middle of the property: such are the boundaries on all sides. The purchaser was Nechutes, the less, the son of Asos, about forty years of age, of a yellow complexion, happy countenance, long face, straight nose, with a scar in the middle of his forehead, who gave six hundred pieces of copper coin. The salesman and warranties for the legality of the sale were the sellers. Nechutes the purchaser received. (Signed) APOLLONIUS."

'This sale and purchase were registered, the registration being subjoined to the deed of sale; and a government duty of five percent was paid on the proceeds of the sAle.

Another similar deed of conveyance, of the date of 130 B. C., has been discovered and translated; the original, now in Paris, according to custom being written in the Egyptian language, and the enchorial characters. In this, after the date, parties, and descriptions, these phrases occur: “The Tombs (sold) are thine, and I have the price of them from thee; and I make no demand on thee concerning them from this day. And if any person come upon thee (disturb thee) in this property, I will remove him, and if I do not remove him, I will remove him by force. Written by Orus, the son of Phabis, who belongs to the sacred rites of Amonrasonther and the Syennæan deities, as sole writer.

"Witnesses, Erieus, son of Phanrees, Panas, the son of Petosiris, etc.,—in all sixteen witnesses.

"Registry.—In the year 36, Choiach 9th, at the table in Diospolis, at which Lysimachus presides, the loth part, the usual tax... according to the... of Aschpiades and Zminis, farmers of the revenue, at which table Ptolemæus signed the copy. Orus, the son of Orus, libation-power, who belongs to the collections, on account of the dead bodies in Thybanum in the Memnoneia of Lybia, of the part about Thebes, the tombs, for which they perform services, which he bought of Onnrophris, the son of Orus, for... pieces of brass.

—LYSIMACHUS." (Subscribed.)

(The above transaction of Jeremiah receives much light and corroboration from these curious discoveries, for which see)—Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Vol. XXX.

ASSYRIAN CONTRACT.—The nail-mark of Sarru-ludari, the nail-mark of Atar-'suru, and the nail-mark of the woman, Amat-'Suhala, the wife of Bel-duru, the..., the owner of the house which is given up. (Here follow four nail-marks, in lieu of seal-impressions.) The whole house with its woodwork, and its doors, situated in the city of Nineveh, adjoining the houses of Mannuci-akhi and Ilu-ciya, and the property of 'Sukaki he has sold, and Tsillu-Assur the astronomer, an Egyptian, for one maneh of silver, according to the royal' Standard, in the presence of Sarru-ludari, Atar-'suru; and Amat-'Suhala, the wife of its owner, has received it. The full sum thou hast given. This house has been taken possession of. The exchange and the contract are concluded. There is no withdrawal. Whosoever shall act feloniously among any of these men who have sworn to the contract and the agreement, which is before our prince Assur, ten manehs of silver shall he pay. The witnesses are: Su'san-kukhadnanis, Murmaza, the ... . Ra'sua, the pilot, Nebo-dur-sanin, the partitioner of the enemy, Murmaza, the pilot, Sinnis-nacarat and Zedekiah. The 16th day of the month Sivan, the eponymy of Zaza of the city of Arpad (B. c. 692), before Samas-itsbat-nacara, Latturn and Nebo-sum-yutsur.—Records of the Past, Vol. I.. Tablet V., p. 139.

Nothing Too Hard for God

Jer. 32:17.—Ah, Lord God, behold thou halt made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.

OVID.—Heaven's power is infinite: earth, air, and sea, The manufactured mass, the Making Power obey.—Meta., VIII., 618.

CALLIMACHUS.—If God thou knowest, know also that to the Deity all things are possible.—Ap. Plut. De Placit. Philos., lib. i., c. 7.

Putting Out the Eyes

Jer. 39:7.—Moreover he put out Zedekiah's eyes, and bound him with chains to carry him to Babylon.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Putting out the eyes has been in all ages a common Oriental punishment. The earliest instance on record is that of Zedekiah, whose eyes were put out by Nebuchadnezzar. The frequency of the punishment in the time of the younger Cyrus is indicated by a passage in Xenophon, where it is said that men deprived of sight for their crimes were a common spectacle along the highways within his government. Its continuance in later times is marked by such writers as Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius. Rawlinson's Herod., IV., p. 16.

Jer. 39:8.—And the Chaldeans burned the king's house, and the houses of the people, with fire, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem.

BEROSUS.—Nebuchadnezzar, having conquered the Jews, burnt the temple at Jerusalem, and removing the entire people from their homes, transported them to Babylon.—In Josephus c. Ap. I: 19.

Hidden Treasures

Jer.41:8.—But ten men were found among them that said unto Ishmael, Slay us not, for we have treasures in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey. So he forbare, and slew them not among their brethren.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—A few yards below this was a circular opening in the ground, about a yard in diameter, like the mouth of a well, but really the mouth of an ancient granary or " silo," for keeping and concealing corn. It swelled into a round chamber below, about eight feet deep and more than nine in diameter, carefully plastered wherever it was not hewn out of the native rock, and having very much the shape of a large flask or demijohn. Such “silos" are universally used by the nomad Bedouin for storing their grain, and exist in great numbers in and around their favorite camping grounds. More than once I have had a fall, through my horse, when galloping over a plain, setting his foot on the treacherous roof of one of these empty granaries. It was to such hidden stores as these that the ten men referred, who appealed to the treacherous Ishmael, “Slay us not, for we have treasures in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey."—Land of Israel, p. 108.

Queen of Heaven

Jer. 44:17.—But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her.

STRABO.—The gods worshipped by the Albanians are the sun, Jupiter, and the noon; but the moon above the rest. She has a temple near Iberia, and human victims are offered to her in sacrifice.—Strab., lib. xi., c. 4.

ASSYRIAN RELICS.—Mr. Layard discovered a bas-relief at Nimroud, which represented four idols, one of which he identifies with the " queen of heaven," who appears on the rock-tablets Pterium, standing erect on a lion, and crowned with a tower, or mural coronet, as in the Syrian temple of Hierapolis.— Nineveh, II., 451, 456.

SIR JOHN CHARDIN.—Still in Georgia and other parts of the East, before feasting, it is customary to go out and raise the eyes to the naked heaven, and pour out a cup of wine on the ground.—In Comp. Com., In loco.

DR. MORRISON.—In China, from the 1St to the 15th of the month, persons make cakes like the moon, of various sizes, and paint figures upon them; these are called “Moon cakes." At full moon they spread out oblations, and make prostrations to the moon.—Ibid.

Pharaoh-Hophra

Jer. 44:30.—I will give Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—The Pharaoh-hophra of Jeremiah is the Pharaoh-Apries of Herodotus. His name occurs on a few of the monuments.—Rawlinson's Herod., Vol. II., p. 209, note.

HERODOTUS.—Of the permanence of his authority Apries is said to have entertained so high an opinion that he conceived it not to be in the power even of a deity to overthrow him. He was however conquered and taken prisoner: after his captivity he was conducted to Sais, to what was formerly his own, but was then the palace of Amasis. He was here confined for some time, and afterward delivered up to the Egyptians, who strangled him.—Euterp., c. 169.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Apries reigned 22 years. After many great victories, he was routed in a battle near to a town called Marinus, and being taken prisoner there by Amasis, was afterward strangled.

—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 5.

Pharaoh-Necho

Jer. 46:1, 2.—The word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah the prophet against the Gentiles; against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh-necho king of Egypt.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, Brit. Mus.—Herodotus calls this monarch Nekos, 'and assigns to him a reign of sixteen years, which is confirmed by the monuments.... At the commencement of his reign, B. C. 610, he made war against the king of Assyria, and, being encountered on his way by Josiah, defeated and slew the king of Judah at Megiddo.... He was marching against Charchemish on the Euphrates, a place already of importance in the annals of the Egyptian wars of the XIXth dynasty.... Necho seems to have soon returned to Egypt, leaving the army posted probably at Charchemish, where it was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar in the fourth year of Necho, or B. C. 607. This battle led to the loss of all the Asiatic dominions of Egypt, and " the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land."—Smith's Dict., of Bible, p. 2467.

The Shield

Jer. 46:9.—The Lybians that handle the shield.

HERODOTUS.—From the Lybians the Greeks borrowed the vest, and the ægis or shield, with which they decorate the shrine of Minerva.—Melpomene, c. 189.

Healing Balm

Jer. 46:11.—Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines, for thou shalt not be cured.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The balm of Gilead is an exudation of a yellow color, very tenacious, and has a fragrant resinous scent. It is used as an internal medicine for stomachic complaints, and also externally for wounds.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 338.

HERODOTUS.—Medicine is practiced among the Egyptians on a plan of separation: each physician treats a single disorder, and no more; thus the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some those which are not local.—Euterpe, c. 84.

Noph

Jer. 46:19.—For Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, Brit. Mus.—We recognize in the singular disappearance of the city of Memphis and its temples in a country where several primeval towns yet stand, and scarce any ancient site is unmarked by temples, the fulfillment of the words of Jeremiah: " Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant; " And those of Ezekiel, " I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph."—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 686.

No-Amon

Jer. 46:25.—The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saith, I will punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods and their kings.

REGINALD STUART POOLE, Brit. Mus.—No—No-Amon—Populous No—a chief city of ancient Egypt, long the capital of the upper country, and the seat of the Diospolitan dynasties, that ruled over all Egypt at the era of its highest splendor.... Its fame as a great capital had crossed the sea when Greece was yet in its infancy as a nation.... Ezekiel proclaims its destruction by the arms of Babylon, and Jeremiah predicting the same overthrow, says, "The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saith, Behold I will punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods and their kings." The Persian invader completed the destruction that the Babylonian had begun; the hammer of Cambyses leveled the proud statue of Rameses, and his torch consumed the temples and palaces of the city of the hundred gates. No-Amon, the shrine of the Egyptian Jupiter, "that was situate among the rivers, and whose rampart was the sea," sank from its metropolitan splendor to the position of a mere provincial town; and, notwithstanding the spasmodic efforts of the Ptolemies to revive its ancient glory, became at last only the desolate and ruined sepulcher of the empire it had once embodied. It lies today a nest of Arab hovels amid crumbling columns and drifting sands.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3216-20.

Preservation of the Jews and Destruction of Their Enemies

Jer. 46:28.—Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the Lord: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The preservation of the Jews through so many ages, and the total destruction of their enemies, are wonderful events; and are made still more wonderful by being signified beforehand by the spirit of prophecy, as we find particularly in the prophet Jeremiah: "I will make a full end of the nations whither I have driven thee, but I will not make a full end of thee."

The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of Divine Providence. They are dispersed among all nations, and yet they are not confounded with any. The drops of rain which fall, nay, the great rivers which flow into the ocean, are soon mingled and lost in that immense body of waters; and the same in all human probability would have been the fate of the Jews, they would have been mingled and lost in the common mass of mankind; but on the contrary they flow into all parts of the world, mix with all nations, and yet keep separate from all. They still live as a distinct people, and yet they nowhere live according to their own laws, nowhere elect their own magistrates, nowhere enjoy the full exercise of their religion. Their solemn feasts and sacrifices are limited to one certain place, and that hath been now for many ages in the hands of strangers and aliens, who will not suffer them to come thither. No people have continued unmixed so long as they have done, not only of those who have sent forth colonies into foreign countries, but even of those who have abided in their own country. The northern nations have come in swarms into the more southern parts of Europe; but where are they now to be discerned and distinguished? The Gauls went forth in great bodies to seek their fortune in foreign parts; but what traces or footsteps of them are now remaining anywhere? In France who can separate the race of the ancient Gauls from the various other people, who from time to time have settled there? In Spain who can distinguish exactly between the first possessors, the Spaniards, and the Goths, and the Moors, who conquered and kept possession of the country for some ages? In England who can pretend to say with certainty which families are derived from the ancient Britons, and which from the Romans, or Saxons, or Danes, or Normans? The most ancient and honorable pedigrees can be traced up only a certain period, and beyond that there is nothing but conjecture and uncertainty, obscurity and ignorance: but the Jews can go up higher than any nation, they can even deduce their pedigree from the beginning of the world. They may not know from what particular tribe or family they are descended, but they know certainly that they all sprang from the stock of Abraham. And yet the contempt with which they have been treated, and the hardships they have undergone in almost all countries, should, one would think, have made them desirous to forget or renounce their original; but they profess it, they glory in it: and after so many wars, massacres, and persecutions, they still subsist, they are still very numerous: and what but a supernatural' power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved?

Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation. For from the beginning who have been the great enemies and oppressors of the Jewish nation, removed them from their own land, and compelled them into captivity and slavery? The Egyptians afflicted them much, and detained them in bondage several years. The Assyrians carried away captive the ten tribes of Israel, and the Babylonians afterward the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The Syro-Macedonians, especially Antiochus Epiphanes, cruelly persecuted them: and the Romans utterly dissolved the Jewish state, and dispersed the people so that they have never been able to recover their city and country again. But where are now these great and famous monarchies, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God? Are they not vanished as a dream, and not only their power, but their very names lost in the earth? The Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians were overthrown, and entirely subjugated by the Persians: and the Persians (it is remarkable) were the restorers of the Jews, as well as the destroyers of their enemies. The Syro-Macedonians were swallowed up by the Romans: and the Roman Empire, great and powerful as it was, was broken into pieces by the incursions of the northern nations; while the Jews are subsisting as a distinct people at this day. And what a wonder of providence is it, that the vanquished should so many ages survive the victors, and the former be spread all over the world, while the latter are no more? (And have we not herein a demonstration of the Divine Inspiration of the prophets?)—Dissert., VIII., sec. 2.

Moab

Jer. 48:1, etc.—Against Moab thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; We unto Nebo! for it is spoiled: etc.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, A. M.—The best, the fullest, the most instructive commentary on the 48th chapter of Jeremiah, I ever saw, was that inscribed by the finger of God on the Panorama spread out around me as I stood on the battlements of the castle of Salcah.... The harmony between the predictions of the Bible and the state of the country is complete. No traveler can possibly fail o see it; and no conscientious man can fail to acknowledge it.—Giant Cities of Bashan, ft. 81.

Jer. 48:8.—And the spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shall escape: the valley also shall perish, and the plain shall be destroyed.

CAPTAINS IRBY AND MANGLES.—The whole of the plains (of Moab) are covered with the sites of towns, on every eminence or spot convenient for the construction of one. And as the land is capable of rich cultivation, there can be no doubt that the country, now so deserted, once presented a continued picture of plenty and fertility.—Travels, p. 370.

BURCKHARDT.—The ruins of Eleale, Heshbon, Meon, Medaba, Dibon, Aroer, still subsist to illustrate the history of the Beni Israel.—Travels in Nubia, Introd., p. 38.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—The view from the top of Salcah is wide and wonderfully interesting.... For more than an hour I sat gazing on that vast panorama. Wherever I turned my eyes towns and villages were seen. Bozrah was there on its plain, twelve miles distant. The towers of Beth-Gamul were faintly visible far away on the horizon. In the vale immediately to the south of Salcah are several deserted towns, whose names I could not ascertain. Three miles off, in the same direction, is a hill called Abd el-Maaz, with a large deserted town on its eastern side. To the southeast an ancient road runs straight across the plain as far as the eye can see. About six miles along it, on the top of a hill, is the deserted town of Maleh. On the section of the plain between south and east I counted fourteen towns, all of them, so far as I could see with my telescope, habitable like Salcah, but entirely deserted! From this one spot I saw upwards of thirty deserted towns! Well might I exclaim with the prophet, as I looked over that mournful scene of utter desolation: “Moab is spoiled, and judgment is come upon the plain country... and upon all the cities of the land of Moab, far and near!"—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 77.

Jer. 48:9.—The cities thereof shall be desolate, without any to dwell therein.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—The people of Bozrah had told us, and we had known ourselves, that though the country on our proposed route is thickly studded with towns and villages, yet not a single human being dwells in them.... After leaving Burd, we did not see a living creature, except a flock of partridges and a herd of gazelles. The desert of Arabia is not more desolate than this rich and once populous plain of Moab.... On approaching Salcah, we rode through an old cemetery, and then, passing the ruins of an ancient gate, entered the streets of the deserted city. The open doors, the empty houses, the rank grass and weeds, the long straggling brambles in the door-ways and windows, 'formed a strange, impressive picture, which can never leave my memory. Street after street we traversed, the tread of our horses awakening mournful echoes, and starting the foxes from their dens in the palaces of Salcah.— Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 74, 75, 76.

MR. CYRIL GRAHAM.—On reaching Beth-Gamul, I left my Arabs at one particular spot, and wandered about quite alone in the old streets of the town, entered one by one the old houses, went up-stairs, visited the rooms, and, in short, made a careful examination of the whole place; but so perfect was every street, every house, every room, that I almost fancied I was in a dream, wandering alone in this city of the dead, seeing all perfect, yet not hearing a sound. I don't wish to moralize too much, but one cannot help reflecting on a people once so great and so powerful, who, living in these houses of stone within their walled cities, must have thought themselves invincible; who had their palaces and their sculptures, and who, no doubt, claimed to be the great nation, as all eastern nations have done; and that this people should have so passed away, that for so many centuries the country they inhabited has been reckoned as a desert, until some traveler from a distant land, curious to explore these regions, finds these old towns standing alone, and telling of a race gone by, whose history is unknown, and whose very name is matter of dispute. Yet this very state of things is predicted by Jeremiah. Concerning this very country he says these very words: For the cities thereof shall be desolate, without any to dwell therein; and Moab shall be destroyed from being a people. Here I think there can be no ambiguity. Visit these ancient cities, and turn to that ancient Book, no further comment is necessary.—In Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 80.

Jer. 48:12.—Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send unto him wanderers, that shall cause him to wander.

BURCKHARDT.—The oppressions of the government on the one side, and those of the Bedouins on the other, have reduced the Fellah of the Hauran to a state little better than that of the wandering Arab. Few individuals, either among the Druses or Christians, die in the same village where they were born. Families are continually moving from one place to another.—Travels in Syria, p. 299.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—will send unto him wanderers, that shall cause him to wander. What could be more graphic than this? The wandering Bedawin are now the scourge of Moab; they cause the few inhabitants that remain in it to settle down amid the fastnesses of the rocks and mountains, and often to wander from city to city, in the vain hope of finding rest and security. Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 86.

Jer. 48:13.—And Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh.

THE MOABITE STONE.—(That Chemosh was the national deity of the Moabites, to whom they ascribed their blessings in time of peace and their successes in time of war, and to whom they looked for deliverance in the day of peril, is sufficiently evident from the inscription on this stone, in which the following expressions occur:) I erected this stone to Chemosh at Karcha, a stone of salvation, for he saved me from all despoilers, and let me see my desire upon all my enemies... Chemosh had mercy on the land in my days... Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel... And I took from it the vessels of Jehovah, and offered them before Chemosh... And Chemosh drove him out before me, etc.—See Ginsburg' s Translation.

Jer. 48:32.—O vine of Sibmah, I will weep for thee, with the weeping of Jazer.... the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits and upon thy vintage.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—Another feature of the landscape impressed me still more deeply. Not only is the country, plain and hill-side alike, checkered with fenced fields, but groves of fig-trees are here and there seen, and terraced vineyards still clothe the sides of some of the hills. These are neglected and wild, but not fruitless. Mahmood told us that they produce great quantities of figs and grapes, which are rifled year after year by the Bedawin in their periodical raids. How literal and how true have the words of Jeremiah become! "O, vine of Sibmah, I will weep for thee: the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits, and upon thy vintage." —Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 78.

Jer. 48:33.—And joy and gladness is taken from the plentiful field, and from the land of Moab.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—Nowhere on earth is there such a melancholy example of tyranny, rapacity and misrule, as here. Fields, pastures, vineyards, houses, villages, cities-all alike deserted and waste. Even the few inhabitants that have hid themselves among the rocky fastnesses and mountain defiles, drag out a miserable existence, oppressed by robbers of the desert on the one hand, and robbers of the government on the other. “Joy and gladness is taken from the plentiful field, and from the land of Moab."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 78.

Jer. 48:41.—Kerioth is taken, and the strongholds are surprised.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—Among the cities in the plain of Moab upon which judgment is pronounced by Jeremiah, Kerioth occurs in connection with Beth-Gamul and Bozrah; and here, on the side of the plain, only five miles distant from Bozrah, stands " Kureiyeh," manifestly an Arabic form of the He brew Kerioth. Kerioth was reckoned one of the strongholds of the plain of Moab. Standing in the midst of widespread rock-fields, the passes through which could easily be defended; and encircled by massive ramparts, the remains of which are still there, I saw, and every traveler can see, how applicable is Jeremiah's reference, and how strong this city must once have been.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 83.

Ammon

Jer. 49:2.—Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Rabbah of the Ammonites, and it shall be a desolate heap.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal., Lond.—Rabbah was the thief city of the Ammonites, a very ancient place, being mentioned even by Joshua. In the period between the Old and New Testament, it appears to have been a city of much importance, and the scene of many contests. The denunciations of the prophets may have been fulfilled, either at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, or five years afterward, when the Assyrian armies overran the country 'east of Jordan on their road to Egypt.—Smith's Dict. of the, Bible, p. 2655.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Before noon we had lunched and set out to examine the ruins of Rabbah'. In number, in beauty of situation, and in isolation, they were by far the most striking and interesting I had yet seen in Syria. Yet it was not old Rabbah, but Philadelphia, the Roman city, among whose prostrate marbles we groped our way. All is Greco-Roman, and all probably, except the citadel, subsequent to the Christian era.... Nowhere else had we seen the vestiges of public magnificence and wealth in such marked contrast with the relapse into savage desolation: "Rabbah shall be a desolate heap."—Land of Israel, p. 550.

Edom

Jer. 49:7.—Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord of hosts: Is wisdom no more in Teman? Is counsel perished from the prudent? Is their wisdom vanished?

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—Fallen and despised as now it is, Edom, did not the prescription of many ages abrogate its right, might lay claim to the title of having been the first seat of learning, as well as the center of commerce. Sir Isaac Newton considers Edom to have been the nursery of the arts and sciences, and adduces evidence to that effect from profane as well as from sacred history. “The Egyptians," he remarks, " having learned the skill of the Edomites, began now to observe the position of the stars, and the length of the solar year, for enabling them to know the position of the stars at any time, and to sail by them at all times without sight of the shore, and this gave a beginning to astronomy and navigation. It seems that letters, and astronomy, and the trade of carpenters were invented by the merchants of the Red Sea, and that they were propagated from Arabia Petra into Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Asia Minor and Europe." While the philosopher may thus think of Edom with respect, neither the admirer of genius, the man of feeling, nor the child of devotion will, even to this day, seek from any land a richer treasure of plaintive poetry, of impassioned eloquence, and of fervid piety, than Edom has bequeathed to the world in the Book of Job. It exhibits to us, in language the most pathetic and sublime, all that a man could feel, in the outward pangs of his body and the inner writhings of his mind, of the frailties of his frame, and of the dissolution of his earthly comforts and endearments; all that mortal can discern, by 'meditating on the ways and contemplating the works of God, of the inscrutable dispensations of his providence; all that knowledge which could first tell, in written word, of Arcturus, and Orion, and the Pleiades; and all that devotedness of soul, and immortality of hope, which, with patience that faltered not even when the heart was bruised and almost broken, and the body covered over with distress, could say, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.

But if the question now be asked, Is understanding perished out of Edom? the answer, like every response of the prophetic word, may be briefly given: It is. The minds of the Bedouins Ore as uncultivated as the deserts they traverse. Practical wisdom is, in general, the first that man learns, and the last that he retains. And the simple but significant fact, already alluded to, that the clearing away of a little rubbish, merely “to allow the water to flow "into an ancient cistern in order to render it useful to themselves, " is an undertaking far beyond the views of the wandering Arabs," shows that understanding is, indeed, perished from among them! They view the indestructible works of former ages, not only with wonder but with superstitious regard, and consider them as the work of genii. They look upon a European traveler as a magician, and believe that, having seen any spot where they imagine that treasures are deposited, “he can afterward command the guardian of the treasure to set the whole before him." In Teman, which yet maintains a precarious existence, the inhabitants possess the desire without the means of knowledge. 'The Koran is their only study, and contains the sum of their wisdom. And, although he was but a “miserable comforter," and was overmastered in argument by a kinsman stricken with affliction, yet no Temanite can now discourse with either the wisdom or the pathos of Eliphaz of old. Wisdom is no more in Teman, and understanding has perished out of the Mount of Esau.—Evi a'. from Proph., p. 157.

Jer. 49:16.—Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the ROCK, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord.

DR. VINCENT.—The name of the capital of Edom, in all the various languages in which it occurs, as Sela, Petra, etc., implies a rock, and as such it is described in the Scriptures, in Strabo, and Al Edrissi. —Cominerce of the Ancients, Vol. II., p. 264.

PLINY.—The Nabatæi (Edomites) have a city called Petra, which lies in a deep valley, somewhat less than two miles in length, and surrounded by inaccessible mountains, between which a river flows.—Hist. Nat., lib. vi., c. 32.

IRBY AND MANGLES.—The ruins of the city (of Petra, or the Rock, the capital of Edom) burst on the view in their full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices, from which numerous ravines and valleys branch out in all directions; the sides of the mountains covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs and private dwellings presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld.... The high land (in the near neighborhood of Petra) was covered upon both its sides, and on its summits, with lines and solid masses of dry wall. The former appeared to be traces of ancient cultivation, the solid ruins seemed to be only the remains of towers for watching in harvest and vintage times. The whole neighborhood of the spot bears similar traces of former industry, all which seem to indicate the vicinity of a great metropolis. —Travels, p. 422, 402.

BURCKHARDT.—Some of them (the excavated chambers and dwellings) are so high, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular, that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost. ( Though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord).... The ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets, all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here. On the left bank of the river is a rising ground; extending westward for nearly three-quarters of a mile, entirely covered with similar remains.

On the right bank, where the ground is more elevated, ruins of the same description are to be seen. There are also the remains of a palace and of several temples. In the eastern cliff there are upwards of fifty separate sepulchers close to each other. (Eden shall be a desolation.)—Travels in Syria, p. 422-432.

LABORDE.—What a people must they have not been who first opened the mountain to stamp upon it the seal of their energy and genius What a climate, too, which gilds with its light and graceful forms of a great variety Of sculptures, without suffering its winters to crumble their sharp edges, or to reduce in the least their high reliefs! Silence reigns all around, save where the solitary owl now and then utters its plaintive cry. The Arab passes through the scene with perfect indifference, scarcely deigning to look at works executed with so much ability, or to meditate, except with contempt, on an object which he in vain seeks to comprehend.—In Pict. Bib., in loco,

Jer. 49:17, 18.—Also Edom shalt be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished.., As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbor cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it.

BURCKHARDT.—The whole plain presented to the view an expanse of shifting sands, whose surface was broken by innumerable undulations and low hills.... And the Arabs told me that the valleys continue to present the same appearance beyond the latitude of Wady Musa (Petra). In some parts of the valley the sand is very deep, and there is not the slightest appearance of a road, or of any work of human art. A few trees grow among the sand-hills, but the depth of sand precludes all vegetation of herbage. The sand which thus covers the ancient cultivated soil appears to have been brought from the shores of the Red Sea by the south winds.—Travels in Syria, p. 442.

DR. OLIN.—Such was the language uttered, by the Jewish prophets while this doomed region was yet prosperous and powerful. It portrays a state of desolation and ruin the most absolute and irretrievable, such as probably no portion of the globe once fertile and populous now exhibits. These fearful denunciations and their fulfillment furnish an invulnerable argument in favor of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; and the present state of this once rich and beautiful region is a terrible monument of the divine displeasure against wickedness and idolatry,—Travels in the East, Vol. II., p. 15, etc.

Overthrow of Babylon

Jer. 1:1—The word that the Lord spike against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans by Jeremiah the prophet.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This and the following chapter contain most important and instructive predictions concerning Babylon, awry one of which has been fulfilled, as historians and travelers have concurred to demonstrate. The prophecies relate by anticipation the circumstances which should attend, and which did attend, the conquest of Babylon by the Medes and Persians; and they also describe that condition of the city and country which should be the immediate or final effect of that great overthrow, and which has been and is its condition. —,Pict. Bib.

Jer. 1:1—Babylon is taken, Biel is, confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces.

SIR HENRY RAWLINSON.—The great temple of Babylon is consecrated' to Merodach, and that god is the tutelar divinity of the city. In the Assyrian Inscriptions, however, Bel is associated with Babylon. Pul and Tiglath-Pileser both sacrificed to him in that city as the supreme local deity, and 'Sargon expressly calls Babylon "the dwelling-place of Bel."—Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I., p. 247, note.

HON, AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The names of the Thirteen Great Gods of Assyria occur on the upright tablet of the king, which was discovered at Nimroud-among these names are Asshur, Merodach, Nebo, Dagon, Bel.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 537.

IBID.—The "images" of Dagon, Nebo, Nisroch, etc., in a more or less “broken" condition, have been discovered amid the ruins of Babylon.—Nin and Bab., 294, 301, etc.

Jer. 1: 9.—For lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in array against her, from thence she shall be taken.

XENOPHON. —The great army which Cyrus led against Babylon was composed of the united forces of the Medes, Persians, Armenians, Hyrcaneans, Lydians, Phrygians and Cappadocians—" an assembly of great nations."—See Cyrop., II., 408; III., 156; IV., 215, 427.

Jer. 1:10.—And Chaldea shall be a spoil: all that spoil her shalt be satisfied, saith the Lord.

XENOPHON.—On taking Babylon Cyrus became at once the possessor of its immense wealth.... Having assembled his principal officers, he publicly applauded their courage and prudence, their zeal and attachment to his person, and distributed rewards to his whole army.... He ordered the superior officers of the Persians and allies to attend him in a procession, and gave each of them a dress after the Median fashion; that is to say, long robes, which hung down to the feet. These were of various colors, all of the finest and brightest dye, and richly embroidered with gold and silver. Besides those that were for themselves, he gave them others, very splendid also, but less costly, to present to the subaltern officers..., Some days after, at the conclusion of a feast, he made every one a noble present; so that they all went home with hearts overflowing with joy, admiration, and gratitude.—See Cyrop., lib. vii., 197, 200; viii., 206; 220-224.

Jer. 1:10.—ALL that spoil her shall be SATISFIED.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—When Alexander entered Babylon after it had been surrendered to him by Mazæus, Bagophanes, the keeper of the royal purse, strewed the whole of the way which he had to traverse with flowers and crowns: on either side silver altars were erected, which smoked, not with incense alone, but with all kinds of precious spices. Gifts were carried after him, flocks of sheep and of horses, lions also and panthers in cages. On the following day he took an account of the possessions and money of Darius.... And when the treasures of Babylon became his spoil, he gave six minx (about $75) to each Macedonian horseman, to each Macedonian soldier and foreign horseman two minx, and to every other man in his army a donation equal to two months' pay.—Q. Curt., lib. v., c. 1, etc.

PLUTARCH.—Demetrius ordered his soldiers to plunder the land of Babylon for their own use.—Vit. Demet.

GIBBON.—Under Severus, Ctesiphon was taken by assault, and an hundred thousand captives, and a rich booty, rewarded the fatigues of the Roman soldiers.—Decline and Fall of R. E., chap. viii.

IDEM.—The Emperor Julian, having taken Perisabor, reduced it to ashes. The remnant of a flourishing people were permitted to retire: the plentiful magazines of corn, of arms, and of splendid furniture, were partly distributed among the troops, and partly reserved for the public service: the useless stores were destroyed by fire, or thrown into the stream of the Euphrates.—Ibid., c. xxiv.

IDEM.—(Julian to his army). Riches are the objects of your desires; those riches are in the hands of the Persians; and the spoils of this fruitful country are proposed as the prize of your valor and discipline.—Decline and Fall. of R.E., chap. xxiv.

Jer. 1:13.—Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate; every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues.

MIGNAN.—Babylon, the tenantless and desolate metropolis.—Travels, p. 234.

KEPPEL.—The eye wandered over a barren desert, in which the ruins were nearly the only indication that it had been inhabited.—Narrative, p. 196.

IDEM.—A more complete picture of desolation could not well be imagined.— Narrative, p. 196.

MIGNAN. —I cannot portray the overpowering sensation of reverential awe, that possessed my mind while contemplating the extent and magnitude of ruin, and devastation on every side.—Travels, p. 557.

Jer. 1:15.—Her foundations are fallen, her walls are thrown down: for it is the vengeance of the Lord.

BEROSUS.—Hereupon Cyrus took Babylon, and gave order that the outer walls of the city should be demolished, because the city had proved very troublesome to him.—In Josephus, c. Ap. I., 20.

HERODOTUS.—Darius having become master of the place (Babylon,) destroyed the wall, and tore down all the gates; for Cyrus had done neither the one nor the other when he took Babylon. —Herodt., lib. iii., c. 159.

Jer. 1:16.—Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest.

MIGNAN.—Those splendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain two or three hundred-fold, compared with the modern face of the country, afford a remarkable proof of the singular desolation to which it has been subjected. The Canals at present can only be traced by their decayed banks.—Travels, p. 2.

SIR R. K. PORTER.—The abundance of the country has vanished as clean away as if the " besom of desolation " had swept it from north to south; the whole land from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest stretch of sight lying a melancholy waste. Not a habitable spot appears for countless miles.—Travels in Babylonia, Vol. II., p. 285.

Jer. 1:24.—I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found and also caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord.

HERODOTUS.—Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity, as time went on, and he made no progress against the place. In this distress either someone made the suggestion to him, or he bethought himself of a plan, which he proceeded to put in execution. He placed a portion of his army at the point where the river enters the city, and another body at the back of the place where it issues forth, with orders to march into the town by the bed of the stream, as soon as the water became shallow enough: he then himself drew off with the unwarlike portion of his host, and made for the place where Nitocris dug the basin for the river, where he did exactly what she had done formerly: he turned the Euphrates by a canal into the basin, which was then a marsh; on which, the river sank to such an extent that the natural bed of the stream became fordable. Hereupon the Persians who had been left for the purpose at Babylon by the riverside, entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus got into the town. (This occurred in the dead of night.) Had the Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus was about, or had they noticed their danger, they would not have allowed the entrance of the Persians within the city, which was what ruined them utterly, but would have made fast all the street-gates which gave upon the river, and mounting upon the walls along both sides of the stream, would so have caught the enemy as it were in a trap. But, as it was, the Persians came upon them by surprise, and so took the city. Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents of Babylon declare), long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced, but as they were engaged in a festival, continued dancing and reveling until they learned the capture but too certainly. Such were the circumstances of the first taking of Babylon.—Herodt., lib. i., c. 191.

Jer. 1: 26.—Cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be left.

KEPPEL.—Vast heaps constitute all that now remains of ancient Babylon. Narrative, Vol. I., p. 196.

SIR ROBERT K. PORTER.—From the excavations in every possible shape and direction, the regular lines of the original ruins have been so broken that nothing but confusion is seen to exist.—Travels, II., 338.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—Rising in the distance, high above all surrounding objects, is the one square mound, in form and size more like a natural hill than the work of men's hands—this the Arabs name “Babel." The traveler, before reaching this ruin, still four miles distant, follows a beaten track winding amidst low mounds, and crossing the embankments of canals long since dry, or avoiding the heaps of drifted earth which cover the walls and foundations of buildings.... As yet no traces whatever have been discovered of that great wall described by Herodotus, nor of the ditch that encompassed it. The mounds seem to be scattered without order, and to be gradually lost in the vas t plains to the eastward. But southward of Babel, for the distance of nearly three miles, there is almost an uninterrupted line of mounds, the ruins of vast edifices, collected together as in the heart of a great city.... Between its most southern point and Hillah, as between Mohawill and Babel, there can be traced of the ancient city only low heaps and embankments scattered irregularly over the plain.—Nineveh and Babylon, Chapter 22

Jer. 1:30.—Therefore shall her young men fall in the streets, and all her men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the Lord.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus sent a body of horse up and down through the streets, bidding them kill those that they found abroad, and ordering some who understood the Syrian language to proclaim to those who were in the houses to remain within, and that if they were found abroad they should be killed.—Cyrop., VII., 5.

Jer. 1: 38.—A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up.

XENOPHON.—When they were encamped before Babylon, Cyrus summoned the leaders of the army to him. Then Chrysantas said, “Does not this river, which is above two stadia over, run through the midst of the city?” “Yes, by Jove," said Gobryas,” and it is of so great a depth that two men, one standing on the other, would not reach above the water; so that the city is yet stronger by the river than by its walls." Then Cyrus said, " Chrysantas, let us lay aside these things that are above our force; we must dig, as soon as possible, a broad and deep ditch, each party of us measuring out his proportion, that by this means we may want the fewer men to keep watch." When this was done, and the ditches opened, into the river, the water ran off in the night by the ditches, and the passage of the river through the city became passable.— Cyrop., lib. vii., C. 5.

Jer. 1:39.—Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited forever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.

SIR R. K. PORTER.—There are dens of wild beasts in various parts of the ruins. Travels, Vol. II., p. 342.

MIGNAN.—Thousands of bats and owls have filled many of these cavities.—Travels, p. 167.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD.—Besides the great mound, other shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land. The lofty banks of ancient canals fret the country like natural ridges of hills. Some have been long choked with sand; others still carry the waters of the river to distant villages and palm-groves. On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery and inscribed brick, are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and hideous waste. Owls, which are of a large gray kind, and often found in flocks of nearly a hundred, start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows.—Nineveh and Babylon, Chapter 21

Jer. 1: 41, 42.—Behold a people shall come from the north, and a great nation, and many kings shall he raised up from the coasts of the earth. They shall hold the bow and the lance: they are cruel, and will not show mercy: their voice shall roar like the sea, and they shall ride upon horses, every one put in array, like a man to the battle, against thee, O daughter of Babylon.

XENOPHON.—In his march to Babylon Cyrus overthrew the Phrygians of the Greater Phrygia. He overthrew the Cappadocians; and he subjected the Arabians; and out of all these he armed no less than forty thousand Persian horsemen. Abundance of the horses, that belonged to prisoners taken, he distributed amongst all his allies. He came at last to Babylon, bringing with him a mighty multitude of horse, a mighty multitude of archers and javelin men; but gingers innumerable.— Cyrop., VII., 4.

Jer. 51:14—The Lord of hosts hath sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will fill thee with men as with caterpillars; and they shall lift up a shout against thee.

XENOPHON.—(The host which filled Babylon after it was taken was enormous. The first time Cyrus marched in procession out of his palace he made a display of his cavalry in the sight of the Babylonians.) There stood first before the gates 4,000 of the guards drawn up, four in front, 2,000 on each side of the gates; when the chariot of Cyrus advanced 4,000 of the guards led the way before it, and 2,000 attended on each side of it. The staff officers about his person, to the number of about 300, followed. Then were led the horses maintained for Cyrus himself, with their bridles of gold; these were about 200, After these marched 2,000 spearmen: after these the first formed body of horse, 10,000 in number: after these another body of 10,000 Persian horse, led by Hystaspes: after these another body of 10,000, led by Datamas: after these another, led by Gadatas. After these marched the Median horse; then the Armenian; then the Hyrcanian; then the Caducian, then the Sacian. And after the horse went the chariots, ranged four abreast, led by the Persian Arta-bates. A brief period after this, Cyrus reviewed at Babylon the whole of his army, consisting of 120,000 horse, 2,000 chariots armed with scythes, and 600,000 foot.—Cyrop., lib. viii., C. 3 and 233.

Jer. 51:30.—The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight; they have remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as women.

HERODOTUS.—As Cyrus advanced, the Babylonians met him; but were defeated, and chased into the town.—Clio, c. 190.

XENOPHON.—As the Assyrians refused to come out from Babylon, Cyrus commanded Gobrias to ride on before, and to declare that if the king were willing to come out and fight for his territory he would fight him. The answer he brought back was—We are not at leisure to fight now, being still employed in our preparations.—Cyrop., lib. v., c. 3.

IDEM.—There are great numbers of men in the city, said Cyrus, but they will not come out to fight.—Cyrop., llb. vii., c. 5.

Jer. 51:31.-One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end.

HERODOTUS.—Such is the extent of the city, that, as the inhabitants themselves affirm, they who lived in the extremities were made prisoners before any alarm was communicated to the center of the place.—Clio, c. 191.

Jer. 51:39, 57.—In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord.... And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts.

HERODOTUS.—It was a day of festivity in Babylon; and while the citizens were engaged in dance and merriment, Babylon was for the first time taken.—Clio, c. 191. See also Xen. Cyrop., VII., 5, § 15.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—When all was prepared, Cyrus determined to wait for the arrival of a certain festival, during which the whole population were wont to engage in drinking and reveling, and then silently in the dead of night to turn the water of the river and make his attack. All fell out as he hoped and wished. The festival was even held with greater pomp and splendor than usual; for Belshazzar, with the natural insolence of youth, to mark his contempt for the besieging army, abandoned himself wholly to the delights of the season, and himself entertained a thousand lords in his palace. Elsewhere the rest of the population was occupied in feasting and dancing. Drunken riot and mad excitement held possession of the town: the siege was forgotten: ordinary precautions were neglected. Following the example of their king, the Babylonians gave themselves up for the night to orgies in which religious frenzy and drunken excitement formed a strange and revolting medley.

Meanwhile, outside the city, in silence and darkness, the Persians watched at the two points where the Euphrates entered and left the walls. Anxiously they noted the gradual sinking of the water in the riverbed; still more anxiously they watched to see if those within the walls would observe the suspicious circumstances and sound an alarm through the town. Should such an alarm be given, all their labors would be lost. But as they watched no sounds of alarm reached them—only a confused noise of revel and riot, which showed that the unhappy townsmen were quite unconscious of the approach of danger.

At last shadowy forms began to emerge from the obscurity of the deep riverbed, and in the landing places opposite the river-gates scattered clusters of men grew into solid columns, the undefended gate-ways were seized, a war shout was, raised, the alarm was taken and spread, and swift runners started off to show the king of Babylon that his city was taken at one end. In the darkness and confusion of the night a terrible massacre ensued. The drunken revelers could make no resistance. The king, paralyzed with fear at the awful hand-writing on the wall, which too late had warned him of his peril, could do nothing even to check the progress of the assailants, who carried all before them everywhere. Bursting into the palace, a band of Persians made their way to the presence of the monarch, and slew him on the scene of his impious revelry. Other bands carried fire and sword through the town. When morning came, Cyrus found himself undisputed master of the city.—Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, Vol. III., p. 516-518.

Jer. 51:58.—Thus saith the Lord of hosts, The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire.

HERODOTUS.—As soon as Darius became master of the place, he leveled the walls and took away the gates.—Thalia, c. 159.

MAJOR KEPPEL.—In common with other travelers we totally failed in discovering any trace of the city walls. —Narr., I., 175

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—As yet no traces whatever have been discovered of that great wall of earth rising, according to Herodotus, to the height of 200 cubits, and no less than 50 cubits broad, nor of the ditch that encompassed it.—Nin. and Bab., Chapter 22

RECAPITULATION.—According to the most correct chronology we have, the foregoing words of the Lord against Babylon came to Jeremiah sixty years before its capture by Cyrus, and while it was yet in all its strength and magnificence. Babylon in Jeremiah's day was a very great city, a very strong city, and the metropolis of a vast empire. Its defenses, both in magnitude and strength, were unrivaled. Its walls, with its hundred brazen gates, were among the wonders of the world. Its palaces and temples within, and its artificial lakes and canals without, were among the mightiest works mortals had ever accomplished.

She sat as Queen, and as Lady of Kingdoms." In short, it was the most famous city in all the world.

Yet while thus in the plenitude of its power, and at the meridian of its glory, Jeremiah pronounced its doom—that it should be captured, destroyed and wiped out of existence. He plainly predicted that an assembly of great nations from the north should come against it—that it should be encompassed by a great army, embracing a prodigious host of horsemen—that its own forces would be dispirited, become as women, and refuse to fight—that it should be taken by a snare—that its river should be dried up—that it should be captured during the drunkenness and revelry of a feast—that its spacious avenues and arenas should swarm with the forces of the enemy as with caterpillars—that its young men should be cut down and slain in the streets—that its wealth and its hidden treasures should become the spoil of the conquerors—that its temples and 'palaces should become heaps-that its broad and high walls should be broken and utterly demolished—that it should become desolate and without an inhabitant—that it should become the abode of wild beasts and owls and satyrs—that sower and reaper should be cut off from her fertile and extended plains—and that the whole site and its surroundings should become a scene of desolation forever. All this, I say, was clearly and minutely foretold, while Babylon was in the plenitude of its power and wealth and magnificence, and when no human reason or sagacity could have discerned the faintest indication of such a fate. And the reader has now seen that all this, step by step, was brought to pass to the very letter; he has had set before him the united testimony of ancient historians and modern travelers and explorers, that of all that this prophet foretold, not one jot or tittle has failed. Have we not here then a' clear demonstration that Jeremiah spoke by the inspiration of the Omniscient God, who alone sees the end from the beginning?—The Compiler.

Lamentations

The Sabbath

Lam. 1:7.—The adversaries saw her, and did mock at her Sabbaths.

JUVENAL.—The Jews, to whom every seventh, day was a blank, and formed not any part of their life.—Sat., V.

SENECA.—They lost the seventh part of their life in keeping their Sabbaths, and injured themselves by abstaining from the performance of many necessary things in such times.—In A. Clarke's Comment.

The Last Treasure

Lam. 1:11.—All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—The people of the East retain their little valuables, such as jewels and rich robes, to the last extremity. To part with that which has perhaps been a kind of heirloom in the family, is like parting with life. Have they sold the last wreck of their other property? are they on the verge of death? The emaciated members of the family are called together, and someone undertakes the heart-rending task of proposing such a bracelet or armlet, anklet or ear-ring, or the pendant of the forehead, to be sold. For a moment all are silent, till the mother or daughters burst into tears; and then the contending feelings of hunger, and love for their “pleasant things," alternately prevail. In general, the conclusion is to pledge, and not to sell, their much-Loved ornaments.—Orient. Illust., p. 480.

Affliction

Lam. 3:33.—For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

SENECA.—The man is mistaken who thinks the gods afflict any one willingly. They cannot do so.—Epist., 95.

Marine Mammals

Lam. 4:3.—Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones. PROF. H. E. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The prophet here exhibits a knowledge of the habits of the whale tribe, which proves his familiarity with some species, at least, of these marine mammals. It is well known that the whales, grampuses, porpoises, and dolphins, are not fishes, but air-breathing mammals, adapted to an aquatic life, which bring forth their young alive and suckle them.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 152.

Hanging by the Hand

Lam. 5:12.—Princes are hanged up by their hand.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—No punishment is more common than this in the East, especially for slaves and refractory children. Has a master an obstinate slave? has he committed some great offense with his hands? several men are called, who tie the offender's hands, and hoist him to the roof, till he begs fox forgiveness. School-boys, who are in the habit of playing truant, are also thus punished. To tell a man that you will hang him by the hands is extremely provoking. See, then, the lamentable condition of the princes in Babylon: they were “hanged up by their hands," as common slaves.—Orient. Illust., p. 482.

Foxes in Zion

Lam. 5:18.—Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—The jackal and the fox were called it Hebrew by one and the same name, shual; and in many respects they resemble each other. They both burrow in the ground, and alike frequent old ruins. We have started up the jackal amidst the fallen temples of Baalbec and other remains of antiquity, and have repeatedly spied the fox running along the top of an old wall.—Bible Lands, p. 278.

Ezekiel

Chebar

Ezek. 1:1. I was among the captives by the river of Chebar.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This is doubtless the same river that still bears the name of Khabur—being the same Oriental name, differently represented in European orthography. It is the only stream of note that enters the Euphrates, which it does from Mesopotamia.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Inscribed Tiles

Ezek. 4:1.—Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This is a striking reference to the Chaldean usage of writing and portraying by indented figures upon broad and thin bricks (or tiles). Great numbers of such bricks charged with inscriptions in the arrow-headed characters, and with figures of animals and other objects, are found among the ruins of Babylon, and other ancient sites in Chaldea. The bricks applied to this use are of fine clay, much hardened in the fire (after the inscriptions had been formed). They are of different sizes, but very commonly a foot square, by three inches in thickness.-Pict. Bib., in loco; See also Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, passim.

PLINY. —Epigenes, a writer of very great authority, informs us that the Babylonians have a series of observations on the stars for a period of 720,000 years, inscribed on baked bricks.—Hist. Nat., lib. vii., c. 57.

Battering Ram

Ezek. 4:2.—And set battering rams against it round about.

PLINY.—The battering horse, which is at present styled "The Ram," was invented by Epeus, at Troy.—Hist. Nat., lib. vii., c. 57.

Haunts of Idolatry

Ezek. 6:13.—And under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savor to all their idols.

PLINY.—The robur is selected by the Druids to form whole groves; and they perform none of their religious rites without employing branches of it. It is probable the priests themselves receive their name from the Greek name of that tree. —Hist. Nat., lib. xvi., 95.

Idolatrous Figures

Ezek. 8:10.—So I went in and saw: and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Here begins the description of the idolatries which the Hebrews borrowed from their neighbors. This first was unquestionably taken From the Egyptians. How exactly it describes the inner chambers and sanctuaries of the Egyptian temples, the tombs, and mystic cells, must be obvious to anyone who has read the various descriptions, and seen the representations which modern travelers have supplied. The walls were covered with representations, sculptured or painted in vivid colors, of sacred animals, and of gods represented in human forms, and under various circumstances, or in various monstrous combinations of the animal and human forms.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Zedekiah

Ezek. 12:13.-And I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The prophet Jeremiah foretold of Zedekiah that his eyes should behold the eyes of the king of Babylon; and here Ezekiel predicts that, he should not see Babylon though he should die there. We are informed by Josephus, that the king, thinking these prophecies contradicted each other, gave no credit to either. But both proved true; for, being taken captive and carried to Riblah, he there saw Nebuchadnezzar, and then his eyes were put out, and he was sent to Babylon, where he remained for the rest of his life; so that he saw not that city, though he died in it.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

All Souls God ' S

Ezek. 18:4.—Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son is mine.

PLATO.—The gods take care of us, and we men are one of their possessions. It is God who takes care of us, and we are his property.—Phœd., c. 6, 7.

Smiting the Thigh

Ezek. 21:12.—Terrors by reason of the sword shall be upon my people; smite therefore upon thy thigh.

HOMER.—With shame repulsed, with grief and fury driven, He smote his thigh, and thus upbraided heaven.—Il., XII., 162.

XENOPHON.—Cyrus, on learning of the death of Abradatus, smote himself upon his thigh.—Cyrop., VII., 3.

PLUTARCH.—When Fabius Maximus saw the army of the Minucius surrounded and broken by Hannibal, he smote upon his thigh.—Fab. Max., c. 12.

Divination

Ezek. 21:21.—For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Belomancy, or divination by arrows, was a practice widely diffused among the ancients.—Pict. Bib.

D'HERBELOT.—On all occasions the Arabs consulted futurity by arrows.—See under the word Acdah.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, M. A.—Wooden images were consulted as Idols, from which the excited worshippers fancied that they received oracular responses.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 608.

LIVY.—The Roman consuls before they led out their forces to the field, performed sacrifices. We are told that the haruspex showed to Decius that the head of the liver was wounded on the side which respected himself; in other respects the victim was acceptable to the gods.—Liv., lib. viii., c. 9.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Among the Gauls there are prophets who foretell future events by viewing the entrails of the sacrifices; and of these soothsayers all the people generally are very observant. —Diod. Sic., V., 2.

Metallurgy

Ezek. 22:20.—As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you there, and melt you.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—In modern metallurgy lead is employed for the purpose of purifying silver from other mineral products. The alloy is mixed with lead, exposed to fusion upon an, earthen vessel, and submitted to a blast of air. By this means the dross is consuMed. This process is called the cupelling operation, with which the description in Ezekiel (22:20) accurately coincides. —Smith' s Dict. of Bible, p. 1619.

Wall Pictures

Ezek. 23:14.—And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Semiramis built two palaces on the Euphrates. One of these was surrounded by three walls, on the innermost of which were represented the shapes of all sorts of living creatures, drawn with great art, in various colors. —Diod. Sic., II., 1.

VIRGIL.—Great Pan arrived, and we behold him too, His cheeks and temples of vermilion hue.—Ecl., X., 26.

PLINY.—It was the custom upon festivals to color the face of the statue of Jupiter with red lead, as well as the bodies of triumphant generals. It was in this guise that Camillus celebrated his triumph.—Hist. Nat., XXXIII., 36.

PAUSANIAS.—Of the images of Bacchus, at Corinth, the faces were colored with red paint.— Corinth, p. 115.

War Chariots

Ezek. 23:23, 24.—The Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them,... shall come against thee with chariots, wagons, and wheels, and with an assembly of people.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—The Elamites, we find from the bas-reliefs, used even in war, besides chariots, a kind of cart drawn by mules, and consisting of a flat stage raised upon lofty wheels, which had as many as twelve, and even sixteen spokes. The largest of these cars could hold five or six persons, and were adorned with a fringed or embroidered cloth. The smallest, it would appear, contained only two, the warrior and the charioteer, who sat on a kind of raised seat. Such carts are probably alluded to by the prophet Ezekiel, when he speaks of “the chariots, wagons, and wheels," belonging to “the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, and Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians," who should come up against Jerusalem.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 383.

Cutting off the Nose

Ezek. 23:25.—And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy remnant shall fall by the sword.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The cutting off of the nose was a frequent punishment among the Persians and Chaldeans, as ancient authors tell. Adulteries were punished in this way, and to this Martial refers,—" Who has counseled thee, to cut off the adulterer's nose." Women were thus treated in Egypt.— Note, In loco.

STRABO.—Rhinocolura is so called from the colonists whose noses had been mutilated. Some Ethiopians invaded Egypt, and instead of putting the malefactors to death, having cut off their noses, they settled them at Rhinocolura, supposing that they would not venture to return to their own country, on account of the disgraceful state of their faces.—Strab., XVI., 2.

Sacrificing Children

Ezek. 23:39.—For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house.

PLATO.—With us (Athenians) it is not lawful to sacrifice human beings, for it is an unholy act; but the Carthaginians sacrifice them, as being a holy and lawful thing with them; so that some of them sacrifice even their own sons to Kronos.—Min., c. 5.

LUCIAN—Some of the Galli sacrifice their children.—De Dea Syr., c. 58.

SILIUS ITALICUS.—It was the custom in that state which Dido founded to propitiate the gods, and, dreadful to be told, to sacrifice their little children upon the fiery altars.—Sil. Ital., IV., 767.

Ammon

Ezek. 25:4, 5.—Behold, therefore, I will deliver thee to the men of the east for a possession, and they shall set their palaces in thee, and make their dwellings in thee: they shall eat thy fruit, and they shall drink thy milk. And I will make Rabbah a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching place for flocks.

BUCKINGHAM.—Among the ruins of Ammon, we came to an open square court, with arched recesses on each side, the sides nearly facing the cardinal points. The recesses in the northern and southern walls were originally open passages, and had arched door-ways facing each other; but the first of these was found wholly closed up, and the last was partially filled up, leaving only a narrow passage, just sufficient for the entrance of one man, and of the goats, which the Arab keepers drive in here occasionally for shelter during the night.... Close by the ruins of Ammon, I laid me down among flocks of sheep and goats, but was prevented nearly the whole night from sleeping by the bleating of flocks.—Travels Among the Arab Tribes, p. 72, 73.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—As at Heshban, so at Amman, the ruins, magnificent and extensive though they be, reveal, if we except the walls of the citadel, nothing of Rabbah. It is only the Roman Philadelphia that has left its story in its stones, and nowhere else have I seen any sculpture more elaborate or delicate. “Rabbah of the Ammonites shall be a desolate heap." It has been "delivered into the hands of brutish men, and skilful to destroy." At this season the flocks and herds were all on the surrounding wolds, and the spring was too far advanced to drive them to seek shelter at night. When I looked out about midnight, the gaunt ruins were dimly reflected by the glimmering watch-fires which flickered round three sides of the camp, and the starlight just revealed the sleeping forms, grouped under their spears by their picketed horses, or crouching like little heaps of clothing round the embers. All was silent, save the occasional snorting of a horse, the tinkling of the mule-bells, and the ripple of the stream. “I will deliver thee to the men of the East for a possession, and they shall set their palaces in thee, and make their dwellings in thee: they shall eat thy fruit, and they shall drink thy milk. And I will make Rabbah a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching place for flocks." What pen, unguided by the foreknowledge of Omniscience, indicted that? I asked myself, as I closed the book and extinguished the light.—The Land of Israel, p. 555.

Ezek. 25:7.—And I will cut thee off from the people, and I will cause thee to perish out of the countries.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—While the Jews, who were long their hereditary enemies, continue as distinct a people as ever, though dispersed among all nations, no trace of the Ammonites remains; none are now designated by their name, nor do any claim descent from them. “They are not remembered among the nations.”—Evid: from Froth., p. 124.

Tyre

Ezek. 26:3.—Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Palæ-Tyrus, or Old Tyre, was seated on the continent; New Tyre was built in an island almost over against it (half a mile distant). It is commonly said, that when Old Tyre was closely besieged, and was near falling into the hands of the Chaldeans, then the Tyrians fled from thence, and built New Tyre in the island; but the learned Vitringa hath proved at large from good authorities that New Tyre was founded several ages before, and was the station for ships, and considered as part of Old Tyre. The prophecies, therefore, appertain to both, some expressions being applicable only to the former, and others only to the latter.—XIth. Dissert. on Proph.

Ezek. 26:4.—And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. ARRIAN.-The wall of Tyre was nearly one hundred and fifty feet high, and of breadth proportionate; it was built with vast stones strongly cemented together.—Exped. Alex., lib. ii., c. 21.

Ezek. 26:7.—Behold I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king of kings.

JOSEPHUS.—On the seventh year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar he began to besiege Tyre.—Cont. Ap., lib. i., c. 21.

PHŒNICIAN RECORDS.—Nebuchodonosor besieged Tyre for thirteen years, in the days of Ithobal, their king.—Ibid.

Ezek. 26:10.—By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Soon after his departure from Syria, Judæa rebelled, and Phœnicia appears about the same time to have thrown off the yoke. Nebuchadnezzar, having called in the aid of Cyaxares, king of Media, led in person the vast army—which, according to Polyhistor, consisted of 10,000 chariots, 120,000 cavalry, and 180,000 infantry—to chastise the rebels. He immediately invested Tyre, the chief of the Phœnician cities. Rawlinson's Herod., Vol. I., p. 414

Ezek. 26:12.—And they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Alexander, seeing that it would be a difficult thing to carry on the siege of Tyre, because the city was separated from the continent by an arm of the sea, and was well furnished with provisions, and protected by a powerful navy, demolished Old Tyre, as it was then called, and with the stones and fragments of the buildings formed a mole 200 feet in breadth, extending from the main land to the peninsula.—Diod. Sic., XVII., 4.

ARRIAN.—Alexander laying siege to Tyre, endeavored to connect the city with the continent by a huge bank or rampart. The sea is there shallow near the shore, but as you draw nigh the city it is nearly three fathoms deep. But as there was abundance of stone not far off, and a sufficient quantity of timber and rubbish to fill up the vacant spaces, they found no difficulty in laying the foundations of their rampart.—Exped. Alex., II., 18.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The ruins of Old Tyre contributed much to the taking of the New City; for with the stones and timber and rubbish of the old city Alexander built a bank or causeway front the continent to the island, thereby literally fulfilling the words of the prophet Ezekiel,—" they shall lay thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust, in the midst of the water."—XIth. Dissert. on Proph.

Ezek. 26:14.—And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon.

MAUNDRELL.—This city (Tyre) standing in the sea upon a peninsula, promises at a distance something very magnificent. But when you come to it, you find no similitude of that glory, for which it was so renowned in ancient times, and which the prophet Ezekiel describes. On the north side it has an old Turkish un-garrisoned castle; besides which you see nothing here, but a mere Babel of broken walls, pillars, vaults, etc., there being not so much as one entire house left: its present inhabitants are only a few poor wretches harboring themselves in the vaults, and subsisting chiefly upon fishing, who seem to be preserved in this place by Divine Providence, as a visible argument how God has fulfilled his word concerning Tyre, viz., that "it should be as the top of a rock, a place for fishers to dry their nets on."—Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 82.

VOLNEY.—Instead of that ancient commerce, so active and so extensive, Tyre is reduced to a miserable village. They live obscurely on the produce of their little ground and a trifling fishery.— Travels, II., 212, 225.

PROF. H. B. 'TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—In the burden of Tyre, by Ezekiel, it is said, "I will make thee like the top of a rock; thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon "—a prediction which, in the present ruined and degraded condition of Tyre, has been fulfilled to the very letter. The inhabitants of the wretched village subsist principally b' fishing; their boats are the only craft in the harbor of her whose merchants were princes; and the old wharves and the columns-strewn promontory, whence all the palaces have been long since swept away, are covered with nets, spread out to dry over the ruins.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 288.

Ezek. 26:21.—I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —This is literally true: there is not the smallest vestige of the Ancient Tyre, that which was erected on the main land. Even the ground seems to have been washed away.—Note, In loco.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, A. M.—I have pitched my tent on the site of Ancient Tyre, and searched, but searched in vain, for a single trace of its ruins. Then, but not till then, did I realize the full force and truth of the prophetic denunciation upon it: “Thou shalt be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 19.

Ezek. 27:32.—And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and lament over thee, saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?

DIODORUS SICULUS.—In the meantime the rams battered down a great part of the wall in another place; and now the Macedonians entered through the breach on one side, and Alexander, with his party, passed over the wall on the other; so that the city was now taken. Yet the Tyrians behaved valiantly; and encouraging one another, guarded and blocked up all the narrow passes, and fought with desperation; insomuch that above 7,000 of them were cut to pieces on the spot. The king made all the women and children slaves, and hanged all the young men who survived the battle, to the number of 2,000. So great was the number of captives, that though the greatest part of the inhabitants were transported to Carthage, no less than 13,000 remained behind.—Into so great miseries fell the Tyrians, after they had, with more obstinacy than prudence, endured a siege of seven months.—Diod. Sic., lib. xvii., c. 4.

ARRIAN. —The rest of the survivors, to the number of 30,000, including strangers, were sold as slaves. —Exped. Alex., 1. ii., c. 24.

Ezek. 28:18.—Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

QUINTUS CURTIUS. —Alexander, when he besieged Tyre, ordered the city to be burnt.—Q. Curt., lib. iv., c. 4.

Egypt

Ezek. 29:3.—Thus saith the Lord God, Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.

HERODOTUS. —Of the permanence of his authority Apries (Pharaoh-Hophni) is said to have entertained so high an opinion, that he conceived it not to be in the power even of a deity to dethrone him.—Euterpe, c. 169.

Ezek. 29:4.—But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM. —The sucking-fish (Echeneis remora) attaches itself to sharks and other large fish; and the powers of adhesion of which are so great that it is sometimes employed, when secured by a ring, for the purpose of taking turtles, to which it attaches itself, in its endeavors to escape, when both are hauled in together.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 292.

Ezek. 29:12.—And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —The country from Migdol, or Magdolan, which was on the isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, was so completely ruined that it might well be called desert; and it is probable that this desolation continued during the whole of the reign of Amasis, which was just forty years.—(See Herod., lib. iii., c. 10.)—Note, In loco.

Ezek. 29:14, 15.—And they shall be there a base kingdom: it shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —" It shall be a base kingdom,"—that is, it shall continue to be tributary. It is upwards of two thousand years since this prophecy was delivered, and it has been uninterruptedly fulfilling to the present hour. 1. Egypt became tributary to the Babylonians under Amasis. 2. After the ruin of the Babylonish Empire it became subject to the Persians. 3. After the Persians it came into the hands of the Macedonians. 4. After the Macedonians it fell into the hands of the Rom. 5. After the division of the Roman Empire it was subdued by the Saracens. 6. About A. D. 1250, it came into the hands of the Mameluke slaves. 7. Selim, the ninth emperor of the Turks, conquered the Mamelukes, A. D. 1517, and annexed Egypt to the Othman Empire, of which it still continues to be a province, governed by a pacha and twenty-four beys, who are always advanced from servitude to the administration of public affairs. So true is it that Egypt, once so glorious, is “the basest of kingdoms."—Note, In loco.

VOLNEY. —In Egypt the system of oppression is methodical. Everything the traveler sees or hears reminds him he is in the country of slavery and tyranny.... There is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants, landholders. A universal air of misery, manifest in all the traveler meets, points out to him the rapacity of oppression, and the distrust attendant upon slavery. The profound ignorance of the inhabitants equally prevents them from perceiving the causes of their evils, or applying the necessary remedies. Ignorance, diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of moral and physical knowledge. Nothing is talked of but intestine troubles, the public misery, pecuniary extortions, bastinadoes and murders. Justice herself puts to death without formality. ("It shall be the basest of kingdoms. ")—Travels, Vol. I., 190-198.

Ezek. 29:18.—Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus; every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Nebuchadnezzar was thirteen years employed in the siege. (Joseph. Ant., X., ii.) In this siege his soldiers endured great hardships. Being continually on duty, their heads became " bald " by wearing their helmets; and their shoulders bruised and " peeled " by carrying baskets of earth to the fortifications, wood to build towers, etc. " Yet had he no wages, nor his army." The Tyrians, finding it at last impossible to defend the city, put all their wealth aboard their vessels, sailed out of the port, and escaped for Carthage: and thus Nebuchadnezzar lost all the spoil of one of the richest cities in the world.—Note, In loco.

ST. JEROME.—We have read in the histories of the Assyrians, that when the Tyrians saw that the works for carrying on the siege were perfected, and the foundations of the walls were shaken by the battering rams, whatsoever precious things in gold, silver, clothes, and various kinds of furniture the nobility had, they put them on board their ships, and carried to the islands; so that" the city being taken, Nebuchadnezzar found nothing worthy of his labor.—Hieron. in Ezk., c. 29.

Ezek. 29:19.—Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon; and he shall take her multitude, and take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the wages for his army.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—When the siege of Tyre had terminated in such an unprofitable result, Nebuchadnezzar marched his army into Egypt, which was then in a state of such deplorable disorder as promised him an easy conquest, and an ample indemnity for his recent disappointment. What opposition he met with, or what arrangement he made on withdrawing finally from the country, is not certainly known. But it is certain that he ravaged the country from one end to the other, committing much devastation, and slaying great numbers of the people, and that he finally returned with an immense booty, which probably formed no small part of the treasure he expended in his magnificent improvements and great undertakings at Babylon.—(See Univ. Hist., II., 88; Hale' s Anal., II., 454.)—Note in Jerm., c. 43

Ezek. 30:13.—Thus saith the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph.

HERODOTUS.—About the time when Cambyses arrived at Memphis (which is Noph), Apis appeared to the Egyptians. He bade the priests go and fetch the god to him. When the priests returned, bringing Apis with them, Cambyses, like the hare-brained person that he was, drew his dagger and aimed at the belly of the animal, but missed his mark, and stabbed him in the thigh. Then he laughed, and said to the priests: “Oh! blockheads, and think ye that gods become like this, of flesh and blood, and sensible to steel? A fit god indeed for Egyptians, such an one! "... Apis, thus wounded, lay some time pining in the temple. At last he died of his wound, and the priests buried him secretly without the knowledge of Cambyses.

While he still stayed at Memphis, Cambyses, among other wild outrages, opened the ancient sepulchers, and examined the bodies that were buried in them. He likewise went into the temple of Vulcan, and made great sport of the image—for it is a figure resembling that of a pigmy. He went also into the temple of the Cabiri, which it is unlawful for anyone to enter except the priests, and not only made sport of the images, but even burnt them.—Tkalia, c. 29 and 37.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Ochus (another Persian king), having subdued the Egyptians again after they had revolted, plundered their temples, and caused Apis to be slain, and served up in a banquet to him and his friends.—Diod. Sic., XVI., 51; see also Plut. de Isid. et Osir., § 31.

Ezek. 30:13.—And there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt.

GIBBON.—A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four-and-twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants. ("And there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt.")—Decline and Fall of the R. E., Chap. LIX.

VOLNEY.—The Mamelukes, purchased as slaves, and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and elected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary. They are replaced by slaves brought from their original country.—Travels, Vol. I., 103-110.

Careless Hearers

Ezek. 33:32.—And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.

SENECA.—The misfortune is, some come only to hear, not to learn; as they attend the theater for pleasure's sake, to delight the ear with some speech, or a sweet tone of voice, or a diverting story exhibited in comedy. Such you will find great part of an audience, who make the philosophical school but a place of idle resort. They come not thither in order to dispossess themselves of any vice, or to receive any law for the better regulation of manners or better conduct of life; 'but to please the ear with the twang of eloquence.—Epist., 108.

Spoils of the Syrians

Ezek. 39:9, 10.—And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows, and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears; and they shall burn them with fire for seven years: so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forest.

MARIANA. —The Spaniards, after they had given that signal overthrow to the Saracens, A. D. 1212, found such a vast quantity of lances, javelins, and such like, that they served them for four years for fuel.—History of Spain, lib. xi., c. 24.

Daniel

Capture and Plunder of Jerusalem

Daniel 1:1.—In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem and besieged it.

BISHOP USHER.—This event occurred 606 B. C.

Dan. 1:2.—And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his god.

BEROSUS. —Nabonassar, king of 'Babylon, sent his son Nebuchodonosor against Egypt, and against Judea, with a great army, upon his being informed that they had revolted from him; and by that means he subdued them all, and set the temple that was at Jerusalem on fire; nay, and removed the Jews entirely out of their own country, and transferred them to Babylon; when it so happened that Jerusalem was desolate during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus king of Persia.—Ap. Joseph., B. I., c. 19, con. Ap.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The vessels of the temple he carried... to the house of his god—to the temple of Bel at Babylon. This was a temple of great magnificence, and the worship of Bel was celebrated there with great splendor.... As the temples of the gods were sacred, and were regarded as inviolable, it would be natural to make them the repository of valuable spoils and treasures. Many of the spoils of the Romans were suspended around the walls of the temples of their gods, particularly in the temple of victory.—Note, In loco.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS.—In all heathen temples there is a place for the sacred jewels and other treasures. The ornaments of the idols are sometimes of great value.—Orient. Illust., p. 496.

Court Officers

Dan. 1:3, 4.—And the king spoke unto Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes; children in whom there was no blemish, but well-favored, etc.

CURTIUS. —In all barbarous or uncivilized countries, the stateliness of the body is held in great veneration; nor do they think him capable of great, services or action to whom nature has not vouchsafed to give a beautiful form and aspect. It has always been the custom of Eastern nations to choose such for their principal officers, or to wait on princes and great personages.—In Burder's Oriental Customs.

SIR PAUL RICANT. —The youths that are designed for the great offices of the Turkish empire must be of admirable features and looks, well-shaped in their bodies, and without any defects of nature: for it is conceived that a corrupt and sordid soul can scarce inhabit in a serene and ingenuous aspect; and I have observed not only in the seraglio, but also in the courts of great men, their personal attendants have been of comely lusty youths, well habited, deporting themselves with singular modesty and respect in the presence of their masters.—In Burder's Oriental Customs.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

Dan. 2:1, 2.—Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him. Then the king commanded to call the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to show the king his dreams.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The Chaldeans being the most ancient of the Babylonians, hold the same station in the commonwealth as the Egyptian priests do in Egypt; for being appointed to divine offices they spend all their time in the study of philosophy, and are especially famous for their knowledge of astrology. They are much given to divination, and foretell future events; they also endeavor by purifications, sacrifices or other enchantments, to avert evils and to procure good fortune and success. They are skilful also in the art of divination by the flight of birds,.` and profess to interpret dreams and prodigies.—Diod. Sic., II., 3.

CICERO. —Among the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, by a very long course of observations of the stars, are considered to have established a complete science, so that it became possible to predict what would happen to each individual, and with what destiny each separate person was born.—De Div., I., c. I.

HERODOTUS. —Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, succeeded to the throne. He had a daughter whose name was Mandané, concerning whom he had a wonderful dream. He dreamed that from her such a stream of water flowed forth as not only to fill his capital, but to flood all Asia. This vision he laid before such of the Magi as had the gift of interpreting dreams, who expounded its meaning to him in full, whereat he was greatly terrified. On this account, when his daughter was now of ripe age, he would not give her in marriage to any of the Medes who were of suitable rank, lest the dream should be accomplished, but he married her to a Persian, of good family, indeed, but of a quiet temper, whom he looked on as much inferior to a Mede of even middle condition.—Clio, c. 107.

IDEAL —Astyages saw another, vision. He fancied that a vine grew from the womb of his daughter and overshadowed the whole of Asia. After this dream, which he submitted also to the interpreters, he sent to Persia and fetched away Mandane, who was now with child and was not far from her time. On her arrival he set a watch over her, intending to destroy the child to which she should give birth; for the Magian interpreters had expounded the vision to foreshow that the offspring of his daughter would reign over Asia in his stead. Clio, c. 108.

IDEAL—While everything was making ready for his departure, Xerxes saw a third vision. The Magi, to whom it was related, were of opinion that it portended to Xerxes unlimited and universal empire.— Polymnia, c. 19.

Dan. 2:20-22.—Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God forever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: and he changeth the times and the seasons; he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: he revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.

EPICTETUS.—Is not God capable of surveying all things, and being present with all, and receiving a certain communication from all? Is the sun capable of illuminating so great a portion of the universe, and leaving only that small portion of it un-illuminated which is covered by the shadow of the earth: and cannot he who made the sun and causes it to revolve—a small part of himself if compared with the whole—cannot he perceive all things? When you have shut your doors and darkened your room, remember never to say that you are alone; for you are not: but God is within, and your genius is within: and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?—Epict., I., 14.

Dan. 2:31-33.—Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, and his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —In ancient coins and medals, nothing is more common than to see Cities and Nations represented by human figures, male or femAle. According to the ideas which suggested such Symbols, a vast image in the human figure was, therefore, a very fit emblem of sovereign power and dominion, while the materials of which it was composed did most significantly typify the character of the various empires, the succession of which was foreshown by this vision. This last idea, of expressing the condition of things by metallic symbols, was prevalent before the time of Daniel. Hesiod, who lived about two centuries before Daniel, characterizes the succession of ages (four) by the very same metals—the ages of gold, silver, brass and iron.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Dan. 2:37, 38.—Thou, O king, art a king of kings.... Thou art this head of gold.

BISHOP NEWTON.—All the ancient Eastern histories almost are lost; but there are some fragments even of heathen historians, yet preserved, which speak of this mighty conqueror and his extended empire. Berosus, in Josephus, saith that he held in subjection Egypt, Syria, Phenicia, Arabia, and by his exploits surpassed all the Chaldeans and Babylonians who reigned before him. Josephus subjoins, that in the archives of the Phoenicians there are written things consonant to those which are said by Berosus concerning this king of the Babylonians, that he subdued Syria and all Phenicia. With these likewise agrees Philostratus in his history, and Megasthenes in the fourth book of his Indian history, throughout which he attempts to show that the fore mentioned king of the Babylonians exceeded Hercules in fortitude and greatness of exploits; for he affirms that he subdued the greatest part of Lybia and Spain. Strabo likewise, from the same Megasthenes, asserts that this king among the Chaldeans was more celebrated than Hercules, and that he proceeded as far as to the pillars of Hercules, and led his army out of Spain into Thrace and Pontus. But his empire, though of great extent, was yet of no long duration; for it ended in his grandson Belshazzar, not seventy years after the delivery of this prophecy, nor above twenty-three years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 186.

Dan. 2:39.—And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee.

BISHOP NEWTON.—" His breast and his arms of silver "—which Daniel interprets, "And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee." It is very well known that the kingdom which arose after the Babylonians was the Medo-Persian. The two hands and the shoulders, saith Josephus, signify that the empire of the Babylonians should be dissolved by two kings. The two kings were the kings of the Medes and Persians, whose powers were united under Cyrus, who was son of one of the kings and son-in-law of the other, and who besieged and took Babylon, put an end to that empire, and on its ruins erected the Medo-Persian, or the Persian as it is more usually called, the Persians having soon gained the ascendency over the Medes. This empire is said to be "inferior," as being less than the former, and as being worse than it. Dr. Prideaux asserts, and I believe he may assert very truly, that the kings of Persia were “the worst race of men that ever governed an empire." This empire from its first establishment by Cyrus to the death of the last king, Darius Codomannus, lasted not much above 200 years. —Dissert. on Proph., p. 187.

LYMAN.—From the time of Xerxes, B. C. 479, symptoms of decay and corruption were manifest in the Persian empire; the national character gradually degenerated; the citizens were corrupted and enfeebled by luxury; and confided more in mercenary troops than in native valor and fidelity. The kings submitted to the control of their wives, or the creatures whom they raised to posts of distinction; and the satraps, from being civil functionaries, began to usurp military authority. —Historical Chart.

Dan. 2:39.—And another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

BISHOP NEWTON.—" His belly and his thighs of brass "—which Daniel interprets, "And another third kingdom of brass which shall bear rule over all the earth." It is universally known, that Alexander the Great subverted the Persian Empire. The kingdom, therefore, which succeeded to the Persian was the Macedonian; and this kingdom was fitly represented by “brass; “for the Greeks were famous for their brazen armor, their usual epithet being the brazen-coated Greeks. (Iliad, II., 47.) Daniel's interpretation in Josephus is, that another coming from the west, completely armed in brass, shall destroy the empire of the Medes and Persians. This third kingdom is also said to “bear rule over all the earth," by a figure usual in almost all authors. Alexander himself commanded that he should be called The King of all the World; not that he really conquered or near conquered the whole world, but he had considerable dominions in Europe, Asia and Africa, that is, in all the three parts of the world then known; and Diodorus Siculus, and other historians, give an account of ambassadors coming from almost all the world to congratulate him upon his success, or to submit to his empire: and then especially, as Arrian remarks, did Alexander himself appear to himself and to those about him to be master of all the earth and sea. That the' third kingdom, therefore, was the Macedonian (including the Rule of Alexander and his successors), every one allows and must allow.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 188.

Dan. 2:40.—And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The Romans succeeded next to the Macedonians. The Roman Empire was stronger and larger than any of the preceding. The Romans brake in pieces and subdued all the former kingdoms.—Dissert. Proph., p. 191.

GIBBON.—The arms of the Republic—sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war-advanced with rapid strides to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.—Dec. and Fall, p. 642, Lond. Ed., 1830.

IRVING.—The Roman empire did beat down the constitution and establishment of all other kingdoms; abolishing their independence, and bringing them into the most entire subjection; humbling the pride, subjecting the will, using the property, and trampling upon the power and dignity of all other states. For by this was the Roman dominion distinguished from all the rest, that it was the work of almost as many centuries as those were of years; the fruit of a thousand battles, in which millions of men were slain. It made room for itself as Both a battering-ram, by continual successive blows; and it ceased not to beat and bruise all nations, so long as they continued to offer any resistance.—Disc. on Dan. Visions, p. 180.

Dan. 2:41.—And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potter's clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; and there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The Romans were defiled, and weakened, with a mixture of barbarous nations... and in the fourth century after Christ, the empire began to be torn in pieces by the incursions of the barbarous nations.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 191.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Iron and clay cannot be welded; and the idea here clearly is, that in the empire here referred to there would be two main elements which could never be made to blend—there would be the element of great power, there would be also an element of weakness. “There shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay." No one can fail to perceive how this applies to the Roman empire; a mighty power which, through all its long history, was distinguished for the vigor with which it carried forward its plans, and pressed on to universal dominion. As to the element of weakness, symbolized by the clay... there was the intermingling of nations of other languages, laws, and customs which were never truly amalgamated with the original materials, and which constantly tended to weaken and divide the kingdom.... Though the essential element of the empire remained always—the Roman, —yet there was an intermingling of other influences under the same general government, which could be appropriately compared with clay united with iron, and which ultimately contributed to its fall.—Note, In loco.

Dan. 2:42.—And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The Roman empire was at length divided into ten lesser kingdoms, answering to the ten toes of the image, as we shall see hereafter. (7:24.) These kingdoms retained much of the old Roman strength, and manifested it upon several occasions, so that "the kingdom was partly strong, and partly broken."—Dissert. on Proph., p. 191.

Dan. 2:43.—And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The Romans aspired at the dominion of the world; and, in their strides at universal conquest, they brought nations under their subjection, and admitted them to the rights of citizenship, which had no affinity with the original material which composed the Roman power, and which really never amalgamated with it, any more than clay does with iron. This was true, also, in respect to the hordes that poured into the empire from other countries, and particularly from the Scandinavian regions, in the latter periods of the empire, and with which the Romans were compelled to form alliances, while, at the same time, they could not amalgamate with them.... No reader of the Roman history can be ignorant of the invasions of the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals, or of the effects of these invasions on the empire. No one can be ignorant of the manner in which they became intermingled with the ancient Roman people, or of the attempts to form alliances with them, by intermarriages and otherwise, which were always like attempts to unite iron and clay. "Placidia, daughter of Theodosius the Great, was given in marriage to Adolphus, king of the Goths; the two daughters of Stilicho, the Vandal, were successively married to Henorius; and Genseric, another Vandal, gave Eudocia, a captive imperial princess, to his son to wife." They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another.— Note, In loco.

GIBBON.—Millions of servile provincials received the name, without adopting the spirit, of Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country of the Scipios.... To the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigor were fled.—Decl. and Fall, Vol. I., p. tn. Harp. Ed.

Dan. 2:44.—And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—There can be no reasonable doubt as to what kingdom is here intended.... Its distinctly declared Divine Origin; the declaration that it shall never be destroyed; the assurance that it would absorb all, other kingdoms, and that it would stand forever; and the entire accordance of these declarations with the account of the kingdom of the Messiah in the New Testament, show beyond a doubt that the Kingdom of the Redeemer is intended. “Which shall never be destroyed." The others would pass away. The Babylonian would, be succeeded by the Medo-Persian, that by the Macedonian, that by the Roman, and that in its turn by the one which the God of heaven would set up. This would be perpetual. Nothing would have power to overthrow it. It would live in the revolutions of all other kingdoms, and would survive them all.

"It shall never be destroyed "—" it shall stand forever." The efforts which have been made to destroy this kingdom have shown that this cannot be done by any human power. Eighteen hundred years have now passed away—a period sufficiently long to test the question whether it can be destroyed by force and violence, by argument and ridicule. The experiment has been fairly made, and if it were possible that it should be destroyed by external force, it would have been done. It cannot be imagined that more favorable circumstances for such a purpose will ever occur. The Church of Christ has met every form of opposition that we can conceive could be made against it, and has survived them all. Particularly it has survived the trial which has been made in the following respects: (a) The Roman Power, the whole might of the Roman arms, that had subdued and crushed the world, was brought to bear upon the kingdom of Christ to crush and destroy it, but wholly failed. It cannot be supposed that a new power will ever arise that will be more formidable to Christianity than the Roman was. (b) The Power of Persecution. That has been tried in every way, and has failed. The most ingenious forms of torture have been devised to extinguish this religion, and have all failed. It has always been found that persecution has only contributed ultimately to the triumph of the cause which it was hoped to crush. (c) The Power of Philosophy. The ancient philosophers opposed it, and attempted to destroy it by argument. This was early done by Celsus and Porphyry, but it soon became apparent that the ancient philosophy had nothing that could extinguish the rising religion, and not a few of the prominent philosophers themselves were converted, and became the advocates of the faith. (d) The Power of Science. Christianity had its origin in an age when science had comparatively made but little progress, and in a country where it was almost unknown. The sciences since have made vast advances; and each one in its turn has been appealed to by the enemies of religion, to furnish an argument against Christianity. Astronomy, History, the discoveries in Egypt, the asserted antiquity of the Hindus, and Geology, have all been employed to overthrow the claims of the Christian religion, and have all been compelled to abandon the field. (e) The Power of Ridicule. At one time it was held that “Ridicule is the test of Truth," and this has been applied unsparingly to the Christian religion. But the religion still lives, and it cannot be supposed that there will be men endued with the power of sarcasm and wit superior to those who, with these weapons, have made war on Christianity, or that infidelity has any hope from that quarter. It may be inferred, therefore, that there is no external source of corruption and decay which will prevent its being perpetual. Other kingdoms usually have; and after a few centuries at most the internal corruption—the defect of the organization—develops itself, and the kingdom falls. But nothing of this kind occurs in the kingdom of Christ. It has lived now through eighteen hundred years, through periods of the world in which there have been constant changes in the arts, in the sciences, in manners, in philosophy, in forms of government. During that time many a system of philosophy has been superseded, and many a kingdom has fallen, but Christianity is as fresh and vigorous as it meets each coming generation as it ever was; and the past has demonstrated that the enemies of the Gospel have no reason to hope that it will become weak by age, and will fall by its own decrepitude. Christianity has, at this day, an extent of dominion which it never had before; and there are clearer indications that it will spread over all the earth than ever existed at any previous time. “It is a kingdom which shall never be destroyed—it shall stand forever."—Notes on Daniel, p. 155, 160.

Nebuchadnezzar' S Image

Dan. 3:1.—Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was three-score cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Semiramis built a temple to Jupiter, whom the Babylonians call Belus: upon the top she placed three statues of beaten gold, of Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea; that of Jupiter stood erect in the attitude of walking; it was forty feet in height, and weighed one thousand Babylonish talents. The statue of Rhea was of the same weight, sitting on a golden throne, having two lions standing, on either side one, at her knees, and near them two enormous serpents of silver, weighing thirty talents each. The image of Juno stood upright, and weighed eight hundred talents: her right hand grasped a serpent by the head, and in her left was a scepter adorned with precious stones.—Diod. Sic., II., 1.

HERODOTUS. —In the temple of the Theban Jupiter there was formerly an image of solid gold, twelve cubits in height. —Euterpe, C. 183.

REV. ALBERT BARNES. —Nebuchadnezzar had conquered and ravaged Egypt but a few years before this, and had doubtless been struck with the wonders of art which he had seen there. Colossal statues in honor of the gods abounded, and nothing would be more natural than that this monarch should wish to make his capital rival everything which he had seen in Thebes.—Notes on Daniel, In loco.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D. —The Colossus, a celebrated brazen image at Rhodes, passed for one of the seven wonders of the world. It was the workmanship of Chares, who was employed twelve years in making it.

Its height was one hundred and five Grecian feet; there were few persons who could compass the thumb with their arms, and its fingers were larger than most statues. It stood with distended legs upon the two moles which formed the entrance of the harbor. It was erected 300 B. C., and, after having stood about fifty-six years, was broken off below the knees, and thrown down by an earthquake. Many centuries after the metal was sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who therewith loaded no less than nine hundred camels. The city of Rhodes had, according to Pliny, one hundred other colossuses, of inferior size, in its different quarters.—Class. Diet, p. 366.

Dan. 3:1.—He set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—M. Oppert places the plain of Dura to the southeast of Babylon, in the vicinity of the mound of Dowair or Dúair. He has discovered on this site the pedestal of a colossal statue, and regards the modern name as a corruption of the ancient appellation.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 628.

Dan. 3:15.—Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, etc.

QUINTUS CURTIUS. —When Alexander the Great entered Babylon, there were in the procession singing Magi, and artists playing on stringed instruments of a s peculiar kind, accustomed to chant the praises of the king.—Q. Curt., v. 3.

Dan. 3:19, 20.—Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego: therefore he spake, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was wont to be heated. And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and cast them into the burning fiery furnace.

BABYLONIAN RELIC.—Upon a signet, found among the ruins of Babylon, now in the possession of Mr. Burgoyne, an English gentleman, is portrayed a scene that is in striking accord and corroboration of this Scripture record. There are three figures in an enclosure, which seems to represent a furnace; not far off is a gigantic figure or idol; devotees or worshippers are seen on the plain without; while several other minute representations appear among all these. Whether this actually refers to “the three Hebrew worthies," or to some other similar ordeal, certain it is that the Bible scene could hardly be represented more unequivocally and completely on so small a space.—See Murray's Truth of Revelation Demonstrated, p. 24.

ANNALS OF ASSURBANIPAL. —Saulmagina, my rebellious brother, who made war with me, into a burning fiery furnace they threw him, and destroyed his life.... Many of the followers of Saulmagina made their escape, and so with their lord were they not thrown into the fire. The burning fire they escaped from.—Columns IV. and V.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES. —It came to pass also, that seven brethren with their mother were taken, and compelled by the king (Antiochus) against the law to taste swine's flesh, and were tormented with scourges and whips. But one of them that spake first said thus, What wouldest thou learn or ask of us? we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers. Then the king being in a rage commanded pans and caldrons to be made hot: which forthwith being heated, he commanded to cut out the tongue of him that first spake, and to cut off the utmost parts of his body, the rest of his brethren and his mother looking on. Now when he was thus maimed in all his members, he commanded him being yet alive to be brought to the fire, and to be fried in the pan: and as the vapor of the pan was for a good space dispersed, they exhorted one another with the mother to die manfully.—II. Mace. vii: 1-5.

SIR J. CHARDIN. —Besides these more common modes of execution, there are in Persia other modes of inflicting the punishment of death on those who have violated the police laws, especially those who have contributed to produce scarcity of food, or who have used false weights, or who have disregarded the laws respecting taxes. The cooks were fixed on spits and roasted over a gentle fire, and the bakers were cast into a burning oven. In the year 1668, when the famine was raging, I saw in the royal residence in Ispahan one of these ovens burning to terrify the bakers, and to prevent their taking advantage of the scarcity to increase their gains.—Voyage en Perse, IV., 276.

Dan. 3:21.—Then these men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast, etc.

PROF. M. STUART.—According to Herodotus, I., 195, the Babylonian costume consisted of three parts; first, the wide and long pantaloons for the lower part of the person; secondly, a woolen shirt; and thirdly, a large mantle with a girdle around it. On the cylinder rolls found at Babylon, Winter discovered the same costume. In Dan. 3:21, the same three leading and principal articles of dress are particularized. Other parts of clothing are merely referred to, but not specified; but these garments being large and loose, and made of delicate material, are mentioned in order to show how powerless the furnace was, since they were not even singed.—Com. on Daniel, p. 448.

Royal Palace

Dan. 4:29.—At the end of twelve months Nebuchadnezzar walked in (marg. upon) the palace of the kingdom of Babylon.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The new palace built by Nebuchadnezzar was prodigious in size, and superb in embellishments. Its outer wall embraced six miles; within that circumference were two other embattled walls, besides a great tower. Three brazen gates led into the grand area, and every gate of consequence throughout the city was of brass. The palace was beautifully decorated with statues of men and animals, with vessels of gold and silver, and furnished with luxuries of all kinds, brought thither from conquests in Egypt, Palestine, and Tyre. Its greatest boast were the hanging gardens, which acquired, even from the Grecian writers, the appellation of one of the wonders of the world. They are attributed to the gallantry of Nebuchadnezzar, who constructed them in compliance with a wish of his queen Amytis to possess elevated groves, such as she had enjoyed on the hills around her native Ecbatana. Babylon was all flat, and to accomplish so extravagant a desire, an artificial mountain was reared, 400 feet on each side, while terraces one above another rose to a height that overtopped the walls of the city, that is, above 300 feet in elevation. The ascent from terrace to terrace was made-by corresponding flights of steps, while the terraces themselves were reared to their various stages or ranges of regular piers, which forming a kind of vaulting, rose in succession one over the other to the required height of each terrace, the whole being bound together by a' wall twenty-two feet in thickness. The level of each terrace or garden was then formed in the following manner: the tops of the piers were first laid' over with flat stones, sixteen feet in length, and four feet in width; in these stones were spread beds of matting, then a thick layer of bitumen, after which came two courses of brick, which were covered with sheets of solid lead. The earth was heaped on this platform, and in order to admit the roots of large trees, prodigious hollow piers were built and filled with mold. From the Euphrates, which flowed close to the foundation, water was drawn up by machinery. The whole, says Q. Curtius (V., 5), had, to those who saw it at a distance, the appearance of woods overhanging mountains. The remains of this palace are found in the vast mound or hill called by the natives Kasr. It is of irregular form, 800 yards in length, and 600 yards in breadth. Its appearance is constantly undergoing change from the continual digging which takes place in its inexhaustible quarries for brick of the strongest and finest material. Hence the mass is furrowed into deep ravines, crossing and re-crossing each other in every direction. Cyclop. of Bib. Lit., p. 270.

Babylon, Its Grandeur

Dan. 4:30.—The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?

HERODOTUS. —The Assyrians are masters of many capital towns; but their place of greatest strength is Babylon, where, after the destruction of Nineveh, was the royal residence.—Clio, 178.

STRABO. —Babylon is situated in a plain. The wall is 385 stadia in circumference, and 32 feet in thickness. The height of the space between the towers is so cubits, and of the towers 60 cubits. The roadway upon the walls will allow chariots with four horses, when they meet, to pass each other with ease; whence among the seven wonders of the world are reckoned this wall and the hanging garden.— Strabo, lib. xvi., c. 1.

ABYDENUS. —Nebuchadnezzar, having ascended the throne, fortified Babylon with a triple enceinte, which he completed in fifteen days. He made likewise the Armacales, or Royal River, a branch stream from the Euphrates; and he excavated above the city of Sippara a great reservoir, forty farsakhs in circumference, and twenty fathoms deep, and arranged floodgates so that by opening them it was possible to irrigate the entire plain. Moreover, he built quays, etc.—Ap. Euseb., Freq. Ev., IX., 41.

BEROSUS.—Nebuchadnezzar adorned the temple of Belus, and other temples, with the spoils which he had taken in war; and having strongly fortified the city, and beautified the gates exceedingly, he added to his ancestral palace a second palace in the immediate neighborhood, very lofty and costly—it were tedious, perchance, to describe it at length, wherefore I say, no more than this, that, vast as was its size, and magnificent as was its character, the whole was begun and finished in fifteen days. And he reared in this palace a stone erection of great height, to which he gave an appearance as nearly as possible like that of mountains, and planted it with trees of various kinds, thus forming the far-famed Hanging Garden. —Apud Josephus, Cont. Ap., I., 20.

STANDARD INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.—(This inscription begins with the various titles of Nebuchadnezzar, which are followed by certain prayers and invocations to the gods Merodach and Nebo; it then gives an account of the extent of his dominion, and of the wonders and glories of Babylon, his capital, of which the following is a part:) The Ingur-Bel and the Nimiti-Bel—the great double wall of Babylon—I finished. With two long embankments of brick and mortar I built the sides of its ditch. I joined it on with that which my father Nabopolassar had made. I strengthened the city. Across the river to the west I built the wall of Babylon with brick. The Yapur-Shapu—the reservoir of Babylon-by the grace of Merodach, I filled completely full of water. With bricks burnt hard as stones, and with bricks in huge masses like mountains, the Yapur-Shapu, from the gate of Mulct as far as Nana, who is the protectress of her votaries, by the grace of his godship (i. e., Merodach), I strengthened with that which my father had made I joined it. I made the way of Nana the protectress of her votaries. The great gates of the Ingur-Bel and the. Nimiti-Bel, the reservoirs of Babylon at the time of fullness inundated them. These gates I raised. Against the waters their foundations with brick and mortar I built... For the delight of mankind I filled the reservoir. Behold! besides the Ingur-Bel, the impregnable fortification of Babylon, I constructed inside Babylon on the eastern side of the river a fortification such as no king had ever made before me, namely, a long rampart, 4,000 ammas square, as an extra defense. I excavated the ditch: with brick and mortar I bound its bed; a long rampart at its head I strongly built. I adorned its gates. The folding-doors and the pillars I plated with copper. Against presumptuous enemies, who were hostile to the men of Babylon, great waters, like the waters of the ocean, I made use of abundantly. Their depths were like the depths of the vast ocean. I did not allow the waters to overflow, but the fullness of their floods J caused to flow on, restraining them with a brick embankment... Thus I completely made strong the defenses of Babylon. May it last forever!... In Babylon-the city which is the delight of my eyes, and which I have glorified—when the waters were in flood, they inundated the foundations of the great palace called Taprata-nisi, or the " Wonder of Mankind; " a palace with many chambers and lofty towers; the high-place of Royalty, situated in the land of Babylon, and in the middle of Babylon; stretching from the Ingur-bel to the bed of the Shebil, the eastern canal, and from the bank of the Sippara river to the water of the Yapur-Shapu, which Nabopolassar my father built with brick and raised up; when the reservoir of Babylon was full, the gates of this palace were flooded. I raised the mound of brick on which it was built, and made smooth its platform. I cut off the floods of the water, and the foundations of the palace I protected against the water with bricks and mortar, and I finished it completely. Long beams I set up to support it: with pillars and beams plated with copper and strengthened with iron I built up its gates. Silver and gold, and precious stones whose names were almost unknown, I stored up inside, and placed there the treasure-house of my kingdom...—See Rawlinson's Herod., Vol. II., p. 485.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—Nebuchadnezzar contributed so much to the extension and adornment of the city that, naturally, as recorded in Scripture, " He walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon, and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty? "In the clear Standard Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, his account of what he did is in every sense only an amplification of the above brief announcement,—" The double enclosure which Nabopolassar, my father, had made, but not completed, I finished.... The great double wall of Babylon finished. I strengthened the city... Across the river to the west I built the wall of Babylon with brick... The reservoir of Babylon, by the grace of Merodach, I filled completely full of water... I made the way of Nana, the protectress of her votaries... These gates I raised... For the delight of mankind, I filled the reservoir. Behold! besides the Ingur-Bel, the impregnable fortification of Babylon, I constructed inside Babylon, on the eastern side of the river, a fortification such as no king had ever made before me, namely, a long rampart, 4,000 ammas square, as an extra defense. I excavated the ditch; with brick and mortar I bound its bed; a long rampart at its head I strongly built. I adorned its gates. The folding-doors and pillars I plated with copper" —and so on. Can any historical light more vividly reveal the accuracy of the photograph of Nebuchadnezzar as it is set in the Book of Daniel?—Blending Lights, p. 288.

Nebuchadnezzar's Madness

Dan. 4:33—The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The true account in regard to Nebuchadnezzar's caramity undoubtedly is this,—He became a maniac, by a direct Divine judgment on account of his pride. The particular form of the insanity with which he was afflicted, seems to have been that he imagined himself to be a beast: and this idea having taken possession of hi, mind, he acted accordingly: such a fancy is no uncommon thing among maniacs. Numerous instances may be found in works on Insanity—or, indeed, may be seen in any lunatic asylum. One imagines that he is a king, and decks himself out with a scepter and diadem; another that he is glass, and is filled with anxiety lest he should be broken; others have regarded themselves as deprived of their proper nature as human beings; etc., etc. (See Arnold on Insanity, Vol. I., p. 176-195.) In all these cases, when such a fancy takes possession of the mind, there will be an effort on the part of the patient to act in exact conformity to this view of himself, and his whole conduct will be adapted to it. Nothing can convince him that it is not so; and there is no absurdity in supposing that, if the thought had taken possession of the mind of Nebuchadnezzar that he was a beast, he would live and act as a wild beast—that forsaking human society, he roamed through the royal parks and gardens, among the rare animals there kept—devouring green herbs, or vegetables, such as commonly furnish food for man, for such is the import of the original term.—Notes In loco.

DR. MEAD.—All the circumstances of Nebuchadnezzar's case, agree so well with an hypochondriacal madness, that to me it appears evident that he was seized with this distemper, and under its influence ran wild into the fields; and that, fancying himself transformed into an ox, he fed on grass after the manner of cattle. For every sort of madness is the result of a disturbed imagination; which this unhappy man labored under for full seven years. And through neglect of taking proper care of himself, his hair and nails grew to an, uncommon length; whereby the latter, growing thicker and crooked, resembled the claws of birds. Now the ancients call this kind of madness Lychanthropy. The daughters of Prœtus, it is related, fancying themselves cows, ran into the fields, bellowing like those animals. Others fancied themselves to be wolves, and howled and barked, etc.—Medica Sacra, Vol. VII.

VIRGIL.—

The maids of Argos, (though with rage possess'd

Their imitated lowings fill'd the grove),

Yet shunn'd the guilt of fair Europa's love,

Nor sought the youthful husband of the herd,

Though laboring yokes on their own necks they fear'd,

And felt for budding horns on their smooth foreheads rear'd.

Eclog., VI., v. 48.

Belshazzar's Feast

Dan. 5:1-30.—Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.... Now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.... In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—From the narrative of events belonging to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, our author (Daniel) makes a sudden transition to the fatal night when the Babylonian kingdom came to an end, being absorbed into the Medo-Persian. As he is primarily a prophet, and only secondarily a historian, he is no way bound to make his narrative continuous; and thus he does not relate the death of Nebuchadnezzar, nor the accession of his son, nor the troubles that followed thereupon, but, omitting a period of some five and twenty years, proceeds at once from Nebuchadnezzar's recovery of his senses to the closing scene of Babylonian history, the feast of Belshazzar, and the Persian capture of Babylon. Until a few years since, this portion of his narrative presented difficulties to the historical inquirer which seemed quite insoluble. Profane historians of unimpeachable character related that the capture of Babylon by the Medo-Persians, took place in the reign of a Babylonian king, called Nabonnedus (or Labynetus), not of one called Belshazzar; they said that this Nabonnedus was not of the royal stock of Nebuchadnezzar, to which, according to Daniel (5:11), Belshazzar belonged; they stated, moreover, that he was absent from Babylon at the time of its capture; and that, instead of being slain in the sack of the town, as Belshazzar was (Dan. 5:30), he was made prisoner, and kindly treated by the conqueror. Thus the profane and sacred narrative seemed to be contradictory at all points; and rationalists, were never tired of urging that here at least the narrative of Scripture was plainly unhistoric and untrustworthy.

A very simple discovery, made a few years ago in Lower Babylon, has explained in the most satisfactory way all these apparent contradictions. Nabonnedus, the last native king of Babylon, according to Berosus, Herodotus, and Ptolemy, states that his eldest son bore the name of Bel-shar-ezer, and speaks of him in a way which shows that he had associated him in the government. Hence we learn that there were two kings of Babylon at the time of the last siege, Nabonnedus (or Labynetus), the father, and Belsharezer (or Belshazzar), the son. The latter was entrusted with the command within the city, while the former occupied a stronghold in the neighborhood; the latter alone perished, the former escaped. It is the former only of whom trustworthy historians relate that he was not of the royal stock; the latter may have been, if his father took the ordinary precaution of marrying into the deposed house. The fact, that the Babylonian throne was at this time occupied conjointly by two monarchs is indicated in the sacred narrative by a curious casual touch. Belshazzar, anxious to obtain the interpretation of the miraculous “handwriting upon the wall," proclaims that whoever reads it shall be made” the third ruler in the kingdom." In every other similar case, the reward is the elevation of the individual, who does the service, to the second place in the kingdom, the place next the king. The only reason that can be assigned for the variation in this instance is that the first and second places were both filled, and that therefore the highest assignable reward was the third place.—Hist. Illust. of the Old Testament, p. 179-182.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—Is not this (the discovery of the clay cylinders in Ur of the Chaldees, recording the co-regency of Nabonnedus and Belshazzar, and thus reconciling the statement of Daniel with profane history) is not this another striking testimony to the exactness of the sacred record? That which was long a stumbling-block to ignorance, has, in the light of recent discoveries, proved a source of strength to the Bible student, and it carries with it an emphatic warning against hasty conclusions unfavorable to the word of God. The seeming historical inaccuracies in Daniel, of which some German critics have complained so loudly, have been turned into an impregnable defense of its claims to a reliability which, in even minute details, no other ancient history can profess and establish.—Blending Lights, p. 293.

Dan. 5:27.—TEKEL: Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The Egyptians entertained the belief that the actions of the dead were solemnly weighed in balances before Osiris, and that the condition of the departed was determined according to the preponderance of good or evil. Such judgment scenes are very frequently represented in the paintings and papyri of ancient Egypt.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

HOMER.—

Jove lifts the golden balances, that show

The fates of mortal men, and things below:

Here each contending hero's lot he tries,

And weighs with equal hand their destinies;

Low sinks the scale surcharged with Hector's fate;

Heavy with death it sinks, and hell receives the weight.

—Iliad, XXII., 209.

VIRGIL.—

Jove sets the beam: in either scale he lays

The champion's fate, and each exactly weighs:

On this side life and lucky chance ascends;

Loaded with death that other scale descends.

— Æneid, XII., 725.

Dan. 5:30.—In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.

XENOPHON.—They that were with Gobryas, marching on the shortest way they could, got round about the palace. Then they that attended Gadatas and Gobryas, in military order, found the doors of the palace shut; and they that were posted opposite to the guard fell on them, and used them immediately in a hostile manner. As soon as the noise and clamor began, they that were within, perceiving the disturbance, and the king commanding them to examine what the matter was, ran out, throwing open the gates. They that were with Gadatas, as soon as they saw the gates loose, broke in; pressing forward on the runaways, and dealing their blows amongst them, they came to the king, and found him now in a standing posture, with his sword drawn. They that were with Gadatas and Gobryas, being many in number, mastered him; they, likewise, that were with him were killed.... When day came, and they that guarded the castles perceived that the city was taken, and the king dead, they gave up the castles. —Cyrop., VII., 5.

PROF. M. STUART.—Xenophon relates that the party which assailed the palace, who were led on by Gobryas and Gadatas, fell upon the guards, who were carousing at broad daylight. (Cyrop., VII., 5, 27.) In other words, the. Persians did not accomplish their onset upon the palace until the night was far spent, and daylight was dawning. How now are matters presented in the Book of Daniel? First, there is the feast (of course in the evening); then the quaffing of wine; then the handwriting on the wall; then the assembling of all the Magi to interpret it; then the introduction of Daniel, whose interpretation was followed by his being clothed with the insignia of nobility, and being proclaimed the third ruler in the kingdom. All this must of course have taken up much of the night. Here, then, one writer confirms and illustrates the other. —Com. on Dan., p. 438-449.

Darius

Dan. 6:1.—It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom.

XENOPHON.—Satraps were set over all the conquered nations, when Cyrus was in Babylon.— Cyrop., VIII., 6, I seq.

HERODOTUS.—Darius, son of Hystaspes, proceeded to establish twenty governments of the kind which the Persians call satrapies, assigning to each its governor, and fixing the tribute which was to be paid him by the several nations. —Thalia, c. 89.

Dan. 6:7.—Whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions.

ARRIAN.—Alexander deemed himself not unworthy to be worshipped by the Arabians as a third god, his actions being in no respect inferior to those of Bacchus, to whom, as well as to the Firmament, they offered adoration.—Ex. Alex., VII., 20.

ISOCRATES. —The vilest worship and adoration in the palace, adoring a mortal man and calling him a god.—Orat., 4.

Dan. 6:14, 15.—Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he labored to the going down of the sun to deliver him. Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which, the king establisheth may be changed.

SIR JOHN MALCOLM.—The character of the power of the king of Persia has undergone no change. The late king, Aga Mohammed Khan, when encamped near Shiraz, said, He would not move till the snow was of the mountain in the vicinity of his camp. The season proved severe, and the snow remained longer than was expected; the army began to suffer distress and sickness, but the king said, while the snow remained upon the mountain he would not move: and his word was law, and could not be broken. A multitude of laborers were collected and sent to remove the snow: their efforts, and a few fine days, cleared the mountain, and Aga Mohammed Khan marched. This anecdote was related to me by one of his principal chiefs, who told it to me with a desire of impressing my mind with a high opinion of Aga Mohammed Khan, who knew, he observed, the sacred nature of a word spoken by the king of Persia.—Hist. of Persia, Vol. I., p. 268.

Daniel Cast into the Den

Dan. 6:16.—Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This is a new kind of punishment not previously mentioned in scripture; and that it first occurs here at Babylon, is a remarkable fact, showing the accuracy of the sacred writers in their references to the manners and usages of different nations. We are not aware that any ancient writer mentions that the inhabitants of Babylon were in the habit of throwing offenders to be devoured by lions kept in dens for the purpose. But we have the still more conclusive evidence of Monuments brought to light by modern travelers, on the sites not only of Babylon but of Susa also, representing lions destroying and preying upon human beings. The first was found at Babylon, near the great mass of ruin which is supposed to mark the site of the grand western palace. The second was also dug from the ruins of Babylon by Captain Mignan. The third was found near the tomb of Daniel at Susa.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Dan. 6:17.—And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords.

HERODOTUS.—The Babylonians wear turbans on their heads, and anoint their whole body with perfumes. Every one carries a seal, and a walking-stick, etc.—Clio, C. 195.

IDEM.—When the king (Rhampsinitus) next paid a visit to the Treasure-Chamber, he was astonished to see that the money was sunk in some of the vessels wherein it was stored away. Whom to accuse, however, he knew not, as the seals were all perfect, and the fastenings of the room secure.—Euterpe, C. 121.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—Of engraved cylinders or gems, a large collection was brought by me to England, which form an important as well as an interesting class of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities.... The most interesting specimen of this class is the well-known gem of green chalcedony in the British Museum, on which is engraved king Darius in his chariot, with his name and that of his father. This was probably a royal signet.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 514, 517.

Dan. 6:24.—And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.

ANNALS OF ASSURBANIPAL. —The rest of the people alive, among the bulls and lions, as Sennacherib, the father of my father, into the midst used to throw; lo! again, I following in his footsteps, those men into the midst of them I threw.—Column V., lines 6-9.

AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS. —The laws among the Persians are formidable; among which, those which are enacted against the ungrateful and deserters, and similar abominable crimes, surpass others in cruelty, by which, on account of the guilt of one, all the kindred perish.—Rerum Gestarum Lion,. XXIII., 6, 81.

Vision of the Four Beasts

Dan. 7:1.—In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed.

BISHOP NEWTON.—What was exhibited to Nebuchadnezzar in the form of a great image, was represented to Daniel in the shape of great wild beasts. "These beasts, which are four (say, the angel) are four kings," or kingdoms.— Dissert. on Proph., is. 201.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —Daniel is, to a very great extent, his own interpreter; and the reader who compares the visions with each other, and who possesses the slightest acquaintance with history, cannot fail to discover the subjects to which they refer, and the remarkable and literal fulfillment they have all received—with the exception of those concluding ones which are left for the time yet future to reveal. —Pict. Bib., In loco.

Dan. 7:2.—I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This symbol would naturally denote some wild commotion among the nations, as if the winds of heaven should rush together upon the sea... It is certain that all that is here said would find a counterpart in the period which immediately preceded the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, or the kingdom which he founded and adorned. His rapid and extensive conquests; the agitation of the nations in self-defense, and their wars against one another, would be well denoted by the agitation of the ocean as seen in vision by Daniel. —Note, In loco.

Dan. 7:3.—And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—It is not uncommon for the prophets to make use of animals to represent or symbolize kingdoms and nations. Thus the dragon or the crocodile of the Nile is put for Pharaoh. So on ancient coins, animals are often used as emblems of kingdoms, as it may be added, the Lion and the Unicorn represent Great Britain, and the Eagle the United States.—Note, In loco.

Dan. 7:4.—The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand on the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.

REV. ALBERT BARNES. —The lion, the king of beasts, is the symbol of strength and courage, and becomes the proper emblem of a king... Eagles' wings are the emblem of swiftness... Plucking or clipping the wings symbolizes a check on the speed or progress of the conqueror... The lion being made to stand on its feet as a man, and receiving the heart of a man, imply a change as if the lion was changed to a man; that is, as if the ferocity, and the power, and the energy of the lion had given place to the comparative weakness of a man.

Now in regard to the application of this symbol, there can be but little difficulty, and there is, almost no difference of opinion among expositors. All, or nearly all agree that it refers to the kingdom of Babylon, of which Nebuchadnezzar was the head, and to the gradual diminution of the ferocity of conquest under a succession of comparatively weak princes. The wings of the eagle well represent the rapidity with which the arms of the Babylonians were carried into Palestine, Egypt, Assyria, etc. The plucking of these wings as truly denotes the cessation of its conquests. All who are acquainted with history know that, after the conquests of that kingdom under Nebuchadnezzar, it ceased characteristically to be a kingdom distinguished for conquest, but that, though under his successors, it held a re-eminence or headship among the nations, yet that its victories were extended no further. The successors of Nebuchadnezzar were comparatively weak and indolent princes—as if the wings of the monster had been plucked... The change in the character of the empire, until it ceased under the feeble reign of Belshazzar, is well denoted by the symbol here employed.—Note, In loco.

Dan. 7:5.—And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The character of the kingdom symbolized by the bear would be one of ferocity, roughness and fierceness in war; and that, here intended, is evidently the Medo-Persian, which succeeded the Babylonian. Of this, the bear was not an inappropriate symbol. Taking the whole nation together, it was fierce and rough and unpolished, little disposed to friendliness with the nations, and dissatisfied while any around it had peace or prosperity. The symbol here employed is equally appropriate and truthful: the mad projects of Cambyses, and his savage rage against the Ethiopians, are well represented by the ferocity of the bear; the ill-starred expedition to Greece under Xerxes, an expedition in its fierceness and folly is well represented by the bear; and the degeneracy of the national character, after Xerxes, is well represented by the bear as compared with the lion. No one acquainted with the history of that nation can doubt the propriety and applicability of the emblem.... The bear " raising itself on one side," or from a recumbent posture, as if it had been in a state of repose and was now arousing itself for action, is a representation every way applicable to the condition of the Medo-Persian empire, after the conquest by Cyrus, as he overran the kingdom of Lydia, etc., then reposing, and now about arousing to the conquest and subjugation of Babylon. The precise time, therefore, indicated would be about B. c. 544 (Calmet), when having overcome the Medes, and having secured the conquest of Lydia, and the dethronement of Crœsus, he is meditating the destruction of Babylon.... The "three ribs in the mouth of the beast” may refer to the three kingdoms of Persia, Media and Lydia, that were actually under the dominion of Cyrus, when the aggressive movement was made on Babylon.... The command to " arise and devour much flesh: " no one can fail to see the appropriateness of this, considered as addressed to the Medo-Persian power—that power which subdued Babylon; which brought under its dominion a considerable part of the world, and which under Darius and Xerxes poured its millions on Greece. The emblem here used is, therefore, one of the most striking and appropriate that could be employed, and it cannot be doubted that it had reference to this kingdom, and that, in all the particulars, there was a clear fulfillment.—From Notes, In loco.

BISHOP NEWTON.—"Arise, devour much flesh "—this was said to denote the cruelty of the Medes and Persians. Cambyses, Ochus, and others of their princes, were indeed more like bears than men. Instances of their cruelty abound in almost all the historians who have written of their affairs, from Herodotus down to Ammianus Marcellinus.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 203.

Dan. 7:6.—After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The leopard is a well-known beast of prey, distinguished for blood-thirstiness and cruelty, for lying in wait and springing unexpectedly upon its victim.... By “the four wings upon its back," celerity of movement is undoubtedly intended.... “Having four heads," being divided into so many powers or sovereignties.... We naturally look for the fulfillment of this symbol in the kingdom or dynasty that followed directly that of Medo-Persia, namely the Macedonian dynasty or kingdom, founded by Alexander the Great, extending over the same countries before occupied by Babylon and the Medo-Persian empire, and continuing till it was swallowed up in the conquests of Rome. We shall find that all the circumstances agree with this supposition. The animal, "a leopard;" the comparative nobleness of the animal; a beast of prey; the celerity of its movements; the spring or bound with which it leaps upon its prey—all agree well with the kingdom of which Alexander was the founder. Indeed there was no other kingdom among the ancients to which it could be better applied; and it will be admitted that—on the supposition that it was the design of Daniel to choose a symbol that would represent the Macedonian empire—he could not have selected one that was better adapted to it than the leopard. All the characteristics of the animal agree with the characteristics of Alexander, and his movements among the nations, and with the kingdom that was founded by him in the East. The four wings-these represent well the rapidity of the conquests of Alexander, for no more rapid conquests were ever made than were his. The four heads united to one body: it is well known that when Alexander died his empire was left to four of his generals, and that they came to be at the head of as many distinct dominions, yet all springing from the same source, and all, in fact, but the Macedonian empire. Thrace and Bythinia fell under Lysimachus; Syria and the East under Seleucus; Egypt under Ptolemy Soter; and Macedonia under Cassander. It was these four powers, thus springing out of the one empire founded by Alexander, that was clearly represented by the four heads. The dominion given to it—the dominion of the world was practically conceded to the Macedonian dynasty.—From Notes, In loco.

BOCHART.—The leopard is of small stature, but of great courage, so as not to be afraid to engage with the lion and the largest beasts; and so Alexander, a little king in comparison, of small stature too, and with a small army, dared to attack the king of kings, that is, Darius, whose kingdom was extended from the Ægean sea to the Indies.—Hieros., lib. iii., c. 7.

JEROME.—Nothing was swifter than the victories of Alexander, who ran through all the countries from Illyricum and the Adriatic Sea to the Indian Ocean and the river Ganges, not so much fighting as conquering, and in twelve years, subjugated part of Europe, and all Asia to himself.—Hieron., Com. In loco.

PRIDEAUX.—After the death of Alexander, his empire was divided among his four captains; Cassander reigning over Macedon and Greece, Lysimachus over Thrace and Bythinia, Ptolemy over Egypt, and Seleucus over Syria.—Connect., Part I., lib. 8.

BISHOP NEWTON.—And dominion was given to it—which showeth that this was not owing to the fortitude of Alexander, but proceeded from the will of the Lord. And, indeed, unless he had been directed, preserved, and assisted by the mighty power of God, how could Alexander with 30,000 men have overcome Darius with 600,000, and in so short a time have brought all the countries from Greece as far as to India into subjection?—Disserts. on Proph., p. 205.

Dan. 7:7, 8.—After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful, and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and behold in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—A beast dreadful, and terrible, and strong exceedingly —As a symbol, this would denote some power much more fearful, and much more to be dreaded; having a wider dominion; and more stern, more oppressive in its character, more severe in its exactions, and more entirely destroying the liberty of others; advancing more by power and terror, and less by art and cunning, than either of those that went before.... It had great iron teeth—this would denote a nation signally fierce and formidable to all others....

Brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet-expressive of a determination to crush all in its way to universal dominion.... And it had ten horns—. The horn is a symbol of power; “and the ten horns, out of this kingdom, (said the angel,) are ten kings that shall arise; “out of that one kingdom there would spring up ten.... There came up among them another little horn—little at first, but subsequently grew, and crowded and pressed on the others, so that three of them were uprooted by it.... In this horn were eyes—eyes denote intelligence, as we see objects by their aid.... And a mouth speaking great things— indicative of pride and arrogance.... The fourth beast, so mighty, so terrific, so powerful, so unlike all the others—armed with iron teeth, and claws of brass—trampling down and stamping on all the earth—well represents the Roman Dominion. The symbol is such an one as we would now use appropriately to represent that power, and in every respect that empire was well represented by the symbol.... In the prophecy, the entire Roman dominion seems to be contemplated as one—one mighty and formidable power trampling down the liberties of the world; oppressing and persecuting the people of God—the true church; and maintaining an absolute and arbitrary dominion over the souls of men—as a mighty domination standing in the way of the progress of truth, and keeping back the reign of the saints on the earth.—From Notes, In loco.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The Roman Empire was " dreadful, and terrible, and strong exceedingly," beyond any of the former kingdoms. It was diverse from all kingdoms, not only in its republican form of government, but likewise in strength, and power, and greatness, and length of duration, and extent of dominion. " It devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it; " it reduced Macedon into a Roman province about 168 years, the kingdom of Pergamus about 133 years, Syria about sixty-five years, and Egypt about thirty years before Christ. And besides the remains of the Macedonian empire, it subdued many other provinces and kingdoms, so that it might by a very usual figure be said to devour the whole earth, and to tread it down, and brake it in pieces; and became in a manner, what the Roman writers delighted to call it, "Terrarum orbis Imperium," the empire of the whole world.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 207.

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSUS.—The city of Rome ruleth over all the earth, as far as it is inhabited; and commands all the sea, not only that within the pillars of Hercules, but also the ocean, as far as it is navigable, having first and alone, of all the most celebrated kingdoms, made the East and the West the bounds of its empire: and its dominion hath continued not a short time, but longer than that of any other city or kingdom.—Antq. Rome, 1, 2, 3.

Dan. 7:7, 24.—And the beast had ten horns.—And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—One has only to look into any historical work, to see how in fact the Roman power became distributed and broken up in this way into a large number of kingdoms, or comparatively petty sovereignties, occupying the portions of the world once governed by Rome. In the decline of the empire, and as the new power, represented by the " little horn," arose, there was a complete breaking up of she one power that was formerly wielded, and a large number of states and kingdoms sprang out of it. (See Lyman's Historical Chart.)—Note, In loco.

BISHOP LLOYD.—Within the bounds and out of the territory of the great empire of Rome, there arose, successively, the kingdoms following; to wit—First, the Huns, about A. D. 356: second, Ostrogoths, A. D. 377: third, Visigoths, A. D. 378: fourth, Franks, A. D. 407: fifth, Vandals, A. D. 407: sixth, Sueves and Alans, A. D. 407: seventh, Burgundians, A. D. 407: eighth, Herules and Reigians, A. D. 476: ninth, Saxons, A. D. 476: tenth, Longobards, A. D. 526.—Lowth's Corn., in Adden.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The principal states and governments into which the Roman Empire was divided, in the eighth century, stood as follows:

1. The senate of Rome, revolted from the Greek emperors.

2. The Greeks in Ravenna.

3. The Lombardy in Lombardy.

4. The Huns in Hungary.

5. The Alemanes in Germany.

6. The Franks in France.

7. The Burgundians in Burgundy.

8. The Goths in Spain.

9. The Britons.

10. The Saxons in Britain.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 210.

Dan. 7:8, 24.—I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whorl' there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.—And another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The “little horn " finds a proper fulfillment in the Papacy. The slightest acquaintance with the history and claims of the Papal Power will show that there was a striking appropriateness in this symbol—such an appropriateness, that if we desired now to find a symbol that would represent this, we could find no one better adapted to it than that employed by Daniel. (a.) The little horn would spring up among the others, and stand among them—as dividing the power with them, or sharing or wielding that power. That is, (on the supposition that it refers to the Papacy,) the Papal Power would spring out of the Roman Empire; would be one of the sovereignties among which that vast power would be divided, and share with the other ten in wielding authority. It would be an eleventh power added to the ten. And who can be ignorant that the Papal Power at the beginning, when it first asserted civil authority, sustained just such a relation to the crumbled and divided Roman Empire as this? It was just one of the powers into which that vast sovereignty passed. (b.) It would not spring up contemporaneously with them, but would arise in their midst, when they already existed. They are seen in vision as actually existing together, and this new power starts up among them. What could be more strikingly descriptive of the Papacy—as a power arising when the great Roman authority was broken to fragments, and distributed into a large number of sovereignties? Then this new power was seen to rise—small at first, but gradually gaining strength, until it surpassed any one of them in strength, and assumed a position in the world which no one of them had. The representation is exact. It is not a foreign power that invaded them; it starts up in the midst of them—springing out of the head of the same beast, and constituting a part of the same mighty domination that ruled the world. (c.) It would be small at first, but would soon become so powerful as to pluck up and displace three of the others. And could any symbol have been better chosen to describe the Papal Power than this? Could we find any now that would better describe it? Anyone needs to have but the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Papal Power, to know that it was small at its beginnings, and that its ascendency over the world was the consequence of slow but steady growth. Indeed, so feeble was it at its commencement, so undefined was its first appearance and form, that one of the most difficult things in history is to know exactly when it did begin, or to determine the exact date of its origin as a distinct power. (d.) It would grow to be mighty, for the “little horn “thus grew to be so powerful as to pluck up three of the horns of the beast. Of the growth of the power of the Papacy, no one can be ignorant who has any acquaintance with history. It held nations in subjection, and claimed and exercised the right of displacing or distributing crowns as it pleased. (e.) It would subdue, “three kings; “that is, three of the ten represented by the ten horns. The prophet saw this at some point in its progress when three fell before it, or were overthrown by it.—Notes, In loco.

MACHIAVEL.—(This writer, himself a Roman Catholic, having shown how the Roman empire was broken and divided by the incursions of the northern nations, says,)-About this time the bishops of Rome began to take upon them, and to exercise greater authority than they had formerly done. At first, the successors of St. Peter were venerable and eminent for their miracles, and the holiness of their lives; and their examples added daily such numbers to the Christian Church, that to obviate or remove the confusions which were then in the world, many princes turned Christians, and the emperor of Rome being converted among the rest, and quitting Rome, to hold his residence at Constantinople; the Roman empire (as we have said before) began to decline, but the church of Rome increased as fast, and continued to do so under the Goths, then under the Lombards; and afterward by the calling in of the Franks.—Hist. of Florence, lib. i., p: 6.

Dan. 7:8, 24.—Before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.—And he shall subdue three kings.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.—" Kings" are put for kingdoms; and therefore the “little horn “is a little kingdom. It was a horn of the fourth beast, and rooted up three of his first horns; and therefore we are to look for it among the nations of the Latin empire, after the rise of the ten horns.... In the eighth century, by rooting up and subduing the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Kingdom of the Lombards, and the Senate and Dukedom of Rome, he acquired Peter's patrimony out of their dominions.... It was certainly by the victory of the See of Rome over the Greek emperor, the king of Lombardy, and the senate of Rome, that she acquired Peter's patrimony, and rose up to her greatness.—Obs. on Dan., chap. vii., p. 74-76.

BISHOP NEWTON. —First, the Exarchate of Ravenna, which of right belonged to the Greek emperors, and which was the capital of their dominions in Italy, having revolted at the instigation of the Pope, was, unjustly seized by Aistulphus, king of the Lombards, who thereupon thought of making himself master of Italy. The Pope in this exigency applied for help to Pepin, king of France, who marched into Italy, besieged the Lombards in Pavia, and forced them to surrender the Exarchate and other territories, which were not restored to the Greek emperor, as in justice they ought to have been, but at the solicitation of the Pope were given to St. Peter and his successors for a perpetual succession. This was effected in the year 755. Secondly, the Kingdom of the Lombards was often troublesome to the Popes: and now again king Desiderius invaded the territories of Pope Adrian I. So that the Pope was obliged to have recourse again to the king of France, and earnestly invited Charles the Great, the son and successor of Pepin, to come into Italy to his assistance. He came accordingly with a great army, being ambitious also himself of enlarging his dominions in Italy, and conquered the Lombards, and put an end to their kingdom, and gave great part of their dominions to the Pope. He not only confirmed the former donations of his father, Pepin, but also made an addition of other countries to them, as Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, the Sabine territory, the whole tract between Luca and Parma, and that part of Tuscany which belonged to the Lombards: and the tables of these donations he signed himself, and caused them to be signed by the bishops, abbots, and other great men then present, and laid them so signed upon the altar of St. Peter. And this was the end of the kingdom of the Lombards, in the year of Christ 774. Thirdly, after Charles the Great had overthrown the kingdom of the Lombards, he came again to Rome, was chosen Roman patrician, and then settled the affairs of Italy, and permitted the Pope to hold under him the Duchy of Rome, with other territories. After the death of Charles, his son and successor, Lewis the Pious, at the request of Pope Paschal, confirmed the donations which his father and grandfather had made to the See of Rome. These, as we conceive, were the “three horns," which fell before the little horn: and the Pope hath in a manner pointed himself out for the person by wearing the Triple Crown.—Disserts on the Profit., p. 218-220.

GIBBON.—The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these obligations, and their names are consecrated as the saviors and benefactors of the Roman Church. Her ancient patrimony of farms and houses was transformed by their bounty into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces, and the donation of the Exarchate was the first fruits of the conquests of Pepin... The Exarchate comprised the territories of Ravenna, Bologna and Ferrara; its inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis, which stretched along the Adriatic.... The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute dominion, and the world beheld for the first time a Christian Bishop invested with the prerogatives of a Temporal Prince, the choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard kingdom, the inhabitants of the Duchy of Spoleti sought a refuge from the storm, shaved their heads after the Ravenna fashion, declared themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by this voluntary surrender, the present circle of the Ecclesiastical State.—Decline and Fall, Chapter 49

He shall be diverse from the first.

BISHOP NEWTON.—His kingdom shall be of a different nature and constitution. And the power of the Pope differs greatly from that of all other princes, being an ecclesiastical and spiritual, as well as a civil and temporal authority. Dissert. on Proph., p. 220.

And behold in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man.

BISHOP NEWTON. —This denotes his cunning and foresight, his looking out and watching all opportunities to promote his own interests. And the policy of the Roman hierarchy hath almost passed into a proverb.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 220.

And he had a mouth that spake very great things.

BISHOP NEWTON.—And who hath been more noisy and blustering than the Pope, especially in former ages, boasting of his supremacy, thundering out his bulls and anathemas, excommunicating princes, and absolving subjects from their allegiance.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 220.

His look was more stout than his fellows.

BISHOP NEWTON.—And the Pope assumes a superiority, not only over his fellow-bishops, but even over crowned heads, and requires his foot to be kissed, and greater honors to be paid to him than to kings and emperors themselves. Dissert. on Proph., p. 220.

And he shall speak great words against the Most High.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Setting up himself above all laws divine and human; arrogating to himself godlike attributes and titles of holiness and infallibility; exacting obedience to his ordinances and decrees, in preference to, and open violation of reason and scripture, insulting men and blaspheming God.— Dissert. on Proph., p. 221.

And he shall wear out the saints of the Most High.

BISHOP NEWTON.—By wars and massacres, and inquisitions, persecuting and destroying the faithful servants of Jesus, and the true worshippers of God, who protest against his innovations, and refuse to comply with the idolatry practiced in the church of Rome.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 221.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" Making war with the saints "—" wearing out the saints of the Most High.!' Can anyone doubt that this is true of the Papacy? The Inquisition; the persecutions of the Waldenses; the ravages of the Duke of Alva; the fires of Smithfield; the tortures of God,-indeed, the whole history of the Papacy may be appealed to in proof that this is applicable to that power. If anything could have “worn out the saints of the Most High"—could have cut them off from the earth so that evangelical religion would have become extinct, it would have been the persecutions of the Papal power. In the year 1208, a crusade was proclaimed by Pope Innocent III against the Waldenses and Albigenses, in which a million of men perished. From the beginning of the order of the Jesuits in the year 1540 to 1580 nine hundred thousand were destroyed. One hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in thirty years. In the Low Countries fifty thousand persons were hanged, headed, burned, and buried alive for the crime of heresy within the space of thirty-eight years from the edict of Charles V., against the Protestants, to the peace of Chateau Cambreses in 1559. Eighteen thousand suffered by the hand of the executioner, in the space of five years and a half, during the administration of the Duke of Alva. Indeed, the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Papacy will convince anyone that what is here said of " making war with the saints," and " wearing out the saints of the Most High,'' is strictly applicable to that power, and will accurately describe its history. —Note, In loco.

And he shall think to change times and laws.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Appointing fasts and feasts, canonizing saints, granting pardons and indulgences of sins, instituting new modes of worship, imposing new articles of faith, enjoining new rules of practice, and reversing at pleasure the taws both of God and man. Who knoweth not that the Pope doeth all these things?—So then, if exquisite fitness of application may assure us of the true sense of the prophecy, we can no longer doubt concerning the person represented by the " little horn."—Dissert. on Proph., p. 220, 221.

Vision of the Ram and He-Goat

Dan. 8:2.—And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was at Shusan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Shusan or Susa was originally the capital of the country, in Scripture called Elam, but by the classical writers sometimes Susiana.... Mention of the town has been found in the Inscriptions of Asshur-bani-pal, the son and successor of Esar-Haddon, who states that he took the place, and exhibits a ground-plan of it upon his sculptures. The date of this monument is about B. c. 660. The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus transferred Susa to the Persian dominion, and, in the course of time, became the capital of that country.—Smith's Dict. of Bible.

STRABO. —The palace at Susa was embellished more than the rest: Alexander transferred everything that was precious in Persia to Susa, which was itself full of treasures and costly materials; he did not, however, consider this place, but Babylon, as the royal residence, and intended to embellish it.—Strab., lib. xv., c. 13.

SIR JOHN MALCOLM.—The site of ancient Shusan is generally believed to be marked by the present village of Shus. Here are extensive ruins, consisting, like other ruins in that country, of hillocks of earth, and rubbish, covered with broken pieces of brick and colored tile. At the foot of these mounds is the so-called tomb of Daniel, a small building erected on the spot where the remains of Daniel are believed in that region to rest—and nothing but the belief that this was the site of the prophet's sepulcher could have led to its being built in the place where it stands. It is a small edifice, but sufficient to shelter some dervishes who watch the remains of the prophet, and are supported by the alms of pious pilgrims, who visit the holy sepulcher. The dervishes are now the only inhabitants of Susa; and every species of wild beasts roams at large over the spot on which some of the proudest palaces ever raised by human art once stood.—History of Persia, Vol. I., p. 255, 256.

Dan. 8:3.—Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.—Ver. 20.—The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The empire which was formed by the conjunction of the Medes and Persians was not unfitly represented by a ram with two horns. Cyrus, the founder of this empire, was son of Cambyses, king of Persia, and by his mother Mandane was grandson of Astyages, king of Media; and afterward marrying the daughter and only child of his uncle Cyaxares, king of Media, he succeeded to both crowns, and united the kingdoms of Media and Persia. It was a coalition of two very formidable powers, and therefore it is said that " the two horns were high: but one," it is added,” was higher than the (ether, and the higher came up last." The kingdom of Media was the more ancient of the two, and more, famous in history; Persia was of little note or account till the time of Cyrus: but under Cyrus the Persians gained and maintained the ascendant.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 236.

AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS.—The king of Persia was wont to wear a ram's head made of gold, and adorned with precious stones, instead of a diadem.—Amm, Mar., XIX., I.

BISHOP CHANDLER.—Rams' heads with horns, one higher, and the other lower, are still to be, seen on the pillars at Persepolis.—Vindication, c. r, § 4, p. 154.

Dan. 8:4.—I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beast might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great.

LENGERKE. —Nothing could more truly set forth the conquests made by the Medo-Persian Empire than this representation. On the west the conquests embraced Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor; on the north, Colchis, Armenia, Iberia, and the regions round the Caspian Sea; and on the south, Palestine, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Lybia.—Comment. In loco.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Under Cyrus himself, the Persians pushed their conquests' westward, as far as the Ægean Sea and the bounds of Asia. (Herod., I., 169.)

Northward they subdued the Armenians, Cappadocians, and various other nations. (Xen. Cyro., III., 2, 7; C. 4.) Southward they conquered Egypt under Cambyses, the son and successor of Cyrus. (Herod., III., 39.) The ram was so strong and powerful, “so that no beast could stand before him"—none of the neighboring kingdoms were able to contend with the Persians, but all fell under their dominion. — Dissert. on Proph., p. 237.

Dan. 8:5.—And as I was considering, behold, a he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. Ver. 21.—The rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.

BISHOP NEWTON.—A goat is very properly made the type of the Grecian or Macedonian Empire, because the Macedonians at first, about 200 years before Daniel, were denominated Ægeadœ, or the Goats' People; and upon this occasion, as heathen authors report, Caranus, their first king, going with a great multitude of Greeks to seek new habitations in Macedonia, was commanded by the oracle to take the goats for his guides to empire: and afterward seeing a herd of goats flying from a violent storm, he followed them to Edessa, and there fixed the seat of his empire, made the goats his ensigns or standards, and called the city Ægeœ, or the Goats' Town, and the people Ægeadœ or the Goats' People.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 238.

JUSTINUS.—Caranus, with a great number of Greeks, being directed by the oracle to seek a settlement in Macedonia, when he arrived at Æmathia, seized upon the city of Edessa. This city he obtained through the agency of a large flock of goats, which had been driven there for shelter. This circumstance recalled the mandate of the oracle, which had commanded him to seek an establishment under the conduct of a herd of goats. On which account he religiously adopted goats as the standards of his army, and retained them still as his leaders, who had proved the source of his good fortune. In commemoration of this the city Edessa is called. Ægeæ, and the people Ægeadæ.—Just., lib. vii., c. I.

And the goat had a notable horn between his eyes—this is the first king.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Alexander the Great—he was the first that consolidated the whole power of Greece, and was known in the East as her first king. So he is expressly called in I Mace. i: I: " The first over Greece." —Note, In loco.

IDEM.—In the reign of Amyntas I., nearly 300 years after Caranus, and about 547 B. C., the Macedonians, upon being threatened with an invasion, became tributary to the Persians. In one of the pilasters" of Persepolis, this very event seems to be recorded in a manner that throws considerable light on this subject. A goat is represented with an immense horn growing out of the middle of his forehead, and a man in a Persian dress is seen by his side, holding the horn by his left hand, by which is signified the subjection of Macedon.... In the reign of Archelaus of Macedon, B. C. 413, there occurs, on the reverse of a coin of that king, the head of a goat having only one horn.—Notes, In loco.

TAYLOR COMBE.—I have lately had an opportunity of procuring an ancient bronze figure of a goat with one horn, which was the old symbol of Macedon. It was dug up in Asia Minor.... Not only many of the individual towns in Macedon and Thrace employed this type, but the kingdom itself of Macedon, which is the oldest in Europe, of which we have any regular and connected history, was represented also by a goat, with this peculiarity, that it had but one horn.—See Calmet, V., 410.

Dan. 8:5.—A he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Europe, as all know, is to the west of Asia. Alexander came “on the face of the whole earth," carrying everything before him in all the three parts of the world then known: his marches were so swift and his conquests so rapid, that he might be said in a manner to fly over the ground, without touching it.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 238.

PRIDEAUX.—Alexander flew with victory swifter than others can travel, often with his horse pursuing his enemies upon the spur whole days and nights, and sometimes making long marches for several days, one after the other, as once he did in pursuit of Darius, of near forty miles a day for eleven days together. So that by the speed of his marches he came upon his enemy before they were aware of him, and conquered them before they could be in a posture to resist him.—Conn., part I., lib. 8.

Verse 6.—And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power.

BISHOP NEWTON.—One can hardly read these words without having some image of Darius's army standing and guarding the river Granicus, and Alexander on the other side with his forces plunging in, swimming across the stream, and rushing on the enemy with all the fire and fury that can be imagined.— Dissert. on Proph., p. 239: See also Arrian. de Exiled. Alex., lib. i., c. 14.

Verse 7.—And I saw him come close to the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns.

BISHOP, NEWTON.—Alexander had several "close" engagements or set battles with the king of Persia, and particularly at the river Granicus in Phrygia, at the straits of Issus in Cilicia, and in the plains of Arbela in Assyria. "And he was moved with choler against him," for the cruelties which the Persians had exercised towards the Grecians: and for Darius's attempting to corrupt sometime his soldiers to betray him, and sometimes his friends to destroy him; so that he would not listen to the most advantageous offers of peace, but determined to pursue the Persian king, not as a generous and noble enemy, but as a prisoner and a murderer, to the death that he deserved. "And he smote the ram, and brake his two horns:” he subdued Persia and Media, with the other provinces and kingdoms of the Persian empire, and burned the royal city of Persepolis, the capital of the empire.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 240.

Verse 7.—And there was no power in the ram to stand before him.

ARRIAN.—After the battle of the Granicus had been fought, and Alexander had advanced into Cilicia, Darius himself took the command of the Persian army. At Issus he was defeated, and fled with such precipitation that he left behind him his bow, his shield, and his mantle. His camp was plundered, and his mother, and wife, and children, fell into the hands of the conqueror. At the battle of Arbela, Darius again commanded, and again was put to flight. He now lost Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, and all his treasures, and sought for personal safety at Ecbatana, where he was seized by Bessus, governor of Bactriana, who assumed the royal authority in his stead. Alexander closely pursued the usurper and his captive beyond the Caspian straits. On reaching the camp of Bessus, Darius was found extended in his chariot pierced with many darts. In him the empire of Persia was extinguished, 228 years after it had been first founded by Cyrus the Great.—See Arr. Exiled. Alex., lib. iii., c. 3.

Dan. 8:8.—Therefore the he-goat waxed very great: and when he was strong the great horn was broken.

DR. CHARLES ANTHONY.—The Macedonian power and dominion increased most rapidly. In the year 334 B. C., Alexander invaded Persia, and defeated the Persians in the battle of the Granicas; in the year 333, he again defeated them at the battle of Issus, and conquered Parthia, Bactria, Hyrcania, Sogdiana, and Asia Minor. In the year 332, he conquered Tyre and Egypt, and built Alexandria. In the year 331, he defeated Darius Codomannus, and in 330 completed the conquest of the Persian empire. In the year 328, he defeated Porus, king of India, and intended to pursue his march to the Ganges. In these few years, he overran nearly all the then known world, in conquests more rapid and more decisive than had ever been done before.—See Anthony's Classical Diction., art. "Alexander."

Dan. 8:8.—And when he was strong the great horn was broken.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The empire of the goat was in its full strength, when Alexander died suddenly at Babylon.—Disserts., p. 246.

REV. A. BARNES.—At no time was the empire so strong as at the death of Alexander.—Note, In loco.

CHARLES ANTHONY, LL. D.—Alexander went to Babylon, where many foreign ambassadors waited for him, and was engaged in extensive plans for the future, when he became suddenly sick after a banquet, and died in a few days, B. C. 323. Such was the end of this conqueror, in his 32nd year, after a reign of twelve years and eight months. He left behind him an immense empire, which became the scene of continual wars. The body of Alexander was interred by Ptolemy in Alexandria, in a golden coffin: and the sarcophagus in which the coffin was enclosed has been in the British Museum since 1802. Class. Dict., p. 107.

Dan. 8:8.—And for it (the great horn) came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—In the place of this one horn in which all the power was concentrated there sprang up four others that were distinguished and remarkable... This accords with the accounts in history of the effect of Alexander's death, for though the kingdom was not by him divided into four parts, yet, from the confusion and conflicts that arose, power was ultimately concentrated into four dynasties.—Note, In loco.

BISHOP NEWTON. —Alexander was succeeded in the throne by his natural brother, Philip Aridæus, and by his own two sons, Alexander Ægus and Hercules: but in the space of about fifteen years they were all murdered, and then the first "horn" or kingdom was entirely "broken." The royal family being thus extinct, the governors of provinces, who had usurped the power, assumed the title of kings: and by the defeat and death of Antigonus in the battle of Issus, they were reduced to four, Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, who parted Alexander's dominions between them, and divided and settled them into four kingdoms. These four kingdoms are the four notable horns, which came up in the room of the first "great horn "... They were likewise to extend "toward the four winds of heaven": and in the partition of the empire, Cassander held Macedon and Greece and the western parts; Lysimachus had Thrace, Bithynia, and the northern regions; Ptolemy possessed Egypt, and the southern countries; and Seleucus obtained Syria and the eastern provinces. Thus were they divided toward the four winds of heaven.— Dissert. on Proph., p. 246.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—So Alexander reigned twelve years, and then died. And his servants had rule every one in his place. And after his death, they all put crowns upon themselves; so did their sons after them many years; and evils were multiplied in the earth.—I Macc. i: 7-9. See also Diod. Sic., XX., 53; XXI., I.

Dan. 8:9.—And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—From one, “out of one," of the four powers or kingdoms, into which the empire of Alexander would be divided, there would spring up a power or king, at first small but ultimately great and mighty; ambitious and persecuting. There can be no doubt that Antiochus Epiphanes is denoted here. All the circumstances of the prediction find a fulfillment in him, and if it were supposed that this was written after he had lived, and that it was the design of the writer to describe him by these symbols, he could not have found symbols that would have been more striking or appropriate than this. This prince was the seventh in the line of succession from Seleucus, and had his capital at Antioch.— Notes, In loco.

Which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—Now when the kingdom was established before Antiochus, he thought to reign over Egypt, that he might have the dominion of two realms. Wherefore he entered Egypt with a great multitude, with chariots and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy. And made war against Ptolemee, king of Egypt: but Ptolemee was afraid of him, and fled; and many were wounded to death. Thus they got the strong cities in the land of Egypt, and he took the spoils thereof. (Thus he " waxed great toward the south".)—I Macc. 1:16-19.

IDEM.—Wherefore, Antiochus, being greatly perplexed in his mind (in view of his depleted treasury), determined to go into Persia (" toward the east"), there to take the tributes of the countries, and to gather much money. So the king departed from Antioch, his royal city, the hundred fifty and seventh year; and having past the river Euphrates, he went through the high countries.—I Macc. iii: 28-37.

IDEM.—And after that Antiochus had smitten Egypt, he returned again, in the hundred forty and third year, and went up against Israel and Jerusalem (" the pleasant land ") with a great multitude.... And when he had taken all (the treasure he could find) away, he went into his own land, having made a great massacre, and spoken very proudly.—I Macc. i: 20-25.

JEROME.—Antiochus fought against Ptolemy Philometer and the Egyptians, that is against the south; and again against the east, and those who attempted a change of government in Persia; and lastly he fought against the Jews, took Judœa, entered into Jerusalem, and in the temple of God set up the image of Jupiter Olympius.—Hieron. in Dan., c. 8.

Verse 10.—And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—It is usual to compare princes and rulers, and especially ecclesiastical rulers, with the sun and moon and stars. Now Antiochus did all this—he cast down and trampled on the princes and rulers and people of the holy host or army of God. All that is implied in this was abundantly fulfilled in what he did to the Jewish people. And stamped upon them: nothing could better express the conduct of Antiochus towards the Jews.—Note in loco: Comp. Macc. i: 1-64 and 2 Macc. viii: 2.

JOSEPHUS.—Daniel the prophet had signified that from among these Greek rulers there should arise a certain king, that should overcome our nation, and their laws, and should take away our political government, and should spoil the temple, and forbid the sacrifices to be offered for three years' time. And indeed it so came to pass, that our nation suffered these things under Antiochus Epiphanes, according to Daniel's vision, and what he wrote many years before it came to pass.—Antiquities, B. X., c. II, § 7.

Verse 11, 12.—Yea, he magnified himself to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.... And it cast down the truth to the ground.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—And Antiochus entered proudly into the sanctuary and took away the golden altar, and the candlestick of light, and all the vessels thereof. And the table of the show-bread, and the pouring vessels, and the vials, and the censers of gold, and the veil, and the crowns, and the golden ornaments that were before the temple, all which he pulled off. He took also the silver and the gold, and the precious vessels: also he took the hidden treasures which he found.... And after two years fully expired, the king sent his chief collector of tribute unto the cities of Judah, who fell suddenly upon the city, and smote it very sore, and destroyed much people of Israel. And when he had taken the spoils of the city, he set it on fire, and pulled down the houses and walls thereof on every side.... Her sanctuary was laid waste like a wilderness, her feasts were turned into mourning, her Sabbaths into reproach, her honor into contempt.... Moreover, the king sent letters by messengers unto Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, forbidding burnt-offerings, and sacrifices, and drink-offerings in, the temple; and commanded that they should profane the Sabbaths and festival days: and pollute the sanctuary and holy people: set up altars, and groves, and chapels of idols, and sacrifice swine's flesh, and unclean beasts: that they should also leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and abomination: to the end they might forget the law, and change all the ordinances.—I Macc. i: 20-64.

Verses 13, 14.—How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

BERTHOLD. —This writer reckons from the date of the command issued by Antiochus to set up idol altars to the date of Nicanor's defeat, 2,271 days; and the time consumed for the due celebration of the victory and the cleansing of the temple to have occupied 29 days more: and these figures, 2,271+29=2,300, agree exactly with the statement in the prediction.—In Barnes' Notes.

Then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

JOSEPHUS.—When the generals of Antiochus' armies had been beaten so often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them, that “after these many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem, and purify the temple, and offer the appointed sacrifice." But as soon as he and the whole multitude were come to Jerusalem, and found the temple deserted, and its gates burnt down, and plants growing in the temple of their own accord on account of its desertion, he and those that were with him began to lament, and were quite confounded at the sight of the temple: so he chose out some of his soldiers, and gave them order to fight against those guards that were in the citadel, until he should have purified the temple. When, therefore, he had carefully purged it, and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table of show-bread, and the altar of incense, which were made of gold; he hung up the veils at the gates, and added doors to them. He also took down the altar of burnt-offering, and built a new one of stones that he gathered together, and not such as were hewn with iron tools. So on the five and twentieth day of the month Casleu, which the Macedonians call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the candlestick, and offered incense upon the altar, and laid the loaves upon the table, and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar. Now, it so fell out, that these things were done on the very same day on which their divine worship had fallen off, and was reduced to a profane and common use after three years' time.... Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices at the temple for eight days; and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon, but he feasted them on very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honored. God, and delighted them by hymns and psalms ... . And from that time to this we celebrate this festival.—Antiq., B. XII., c. 7, § 6, 7.

Verse 25.—And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—He shall owe his success in a great measure to a crafty policy, to intrigue, and to cunning.—This was true in an eminent sense of Antiochus. He came to the kingdom by deceit, and a great part of his success was owing to craft and policy. His policy always was to preserve the appearance of friendship, that he might accomplish his purpose while his enemies were off their guard.—Notes, In loco.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—And he spake peaceable words unto them, but all was deceit: for when they had given him credence, he fell suddenly upon the city, and smote it very sore, and destroyed much people of Israel.— I Macc. i: 30.

But he shall be broken without hand.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—That is, without the hand of man. He shall be overcome by a divine and invisible power. And so he died. He was on an expedition to Persia, and there laid siege to Elymais, and was defeated, and fled to Babylon, when learning that his forces in Palestine had been repulsed, penetrated with grief and remorse, he sickened and died. All the statements given of his death, in the books of Maccabees, by Josephus, by Polybius, by Q. Curtius, and by Arrian, agree in representing it as attended with every circumstance of horror that can be well supposed to accompany a departure from this world, and as having every mark of the just judgment of God.—Note, In loco.

The Seventy Weeks

Dan. 9:24.—Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.

PROF. M. STUART.—Daniel had been meditating on the close of the seventy years of Hebrew exile, and the angel now discloses to him a new period of seventy times seven, in which still more important events are to take place. Seventy sevens, or (to use the Greek phraseology,) seventy heptades, are deter' mined upon thy people. Heptades of what? Of days or of years? No one can doubt what the answer is. Daniel had been making diligent search respecting the seventy years; and, in such a connection, nothing but seventy, heptades of years could be reasonably supposed to be meant by the angel.—Hints on Interp., p. 82.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The meaning is seventy sevens of years, or 490 years. —Note, In loco.

Dan. 9:25.—Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" From the going forth of the commandment to restore and build JERUSALEM "—not the temple. The permission to rebuild the temple, and the permission to rebuild the city, were quite different things, and were separately granted by different sovereigns, and the work was executed by different persons. The edict to rebuild the temple was issued by Cyrus, in the first year of his reign; that to restore and rebuild the city and its walls by Artaxerxes Longimanus, in the twentieth year of his reign. The Royal Letters authorizing and empowering the Jews to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and to restore it from its ruinous condition, were given to Nehemiah, and of which he gives a particular account in the 2nd chapter of the sacred book bearing his name. Now this occurred according to the chronology of both Usher and Hengstenberg in the year 454 B. C. From this the date of issuing the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the appearing of Messiah the Prince was to be " seven weeks, and three-score and two weeks," that is sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years: and 483 years bring us down to A. D. 29; just the time when Jesus by his public baptism in Jordan, and by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him, assumed the office and work of the Messiah—and when, as the evangelist Luke tells us, " Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age." —See Notes, In loco.

HENGSTENBERG.—According to the prophecy, the terminus a quo, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, is separated from the terminus ad quem, the public appearance of Christ, by a period of sixty-nine weeks of years, or 483 years. If now we compare history with this, it must appear, even to the most prejudiced, in the highest degree remarkable, that among all the current chronological determinations of the period, not one differs over ten years from the testimony of the prophecy. This wonder must rise to the highest pitch, when it appears from an accurate examination of these determinations, that the only one among them, which is correct, makes the prophecy and history correspond with each other, even to a year!—Christ., II., 394.

From the going forth of the commandment... unto the Messiah, shall be seven weeks, and three-score and two weeks.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The whole period of sixty-nine weeks is divided into two smaller portions, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, or forty-nine years and 434 years.... The fair interpretation of which undoubtedly is, that it would require the “seven weeks," or the first forty-nine years to rebuild the city and settle its affairs on a permanent foundation; and that from the close of that time, another period of " sixty-two weeks," or 434 years, would elapse to the appearing of the Messiah.... As a matter of fact, the completion of the work undertaken by Nehemiah, under the command of the Persian kings, reached to the period here designated, and his last act as governor of Judea, in restoring the people, and placing the affairs of the nation on its former basis, occurred at just about the period of the forty-nine years after the issuing of the command by Artaxerxes Longimanus, i. e., 405 B. C.—Note, In loco.

The street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublous times.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Let anyone read the account of the rebuilding in Nehemiah—the description of the " troubles'' which were produced by the opposition of Sanballat and those associated with him, and he will see the striking accuracy of this expression—an accuracy as entire as if it had been employed after the event in describing it instead of having been used before in predicting it.—Note, In loco.

Dan. 9:26.—And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary: and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—”After threescore and two weeks "—he does not say that it would be immediately on the termination of the sixty-two weeks, but that it would be " after," or subsequent to the close of that period;—the original would be well expressed by the word afterward.... "Messiah shall be cut off;—that is, by death, through the violence or agency of others. It need not be here said that this phrase found a complete fulfillment in the manner in which the Lord Jesus was put to death, nor that this is the very language in which it is proper now to describe the manner in which he was removed. He was cut off by violence; by a judicial decree; by a mob; in the midst of his way, etc.... "And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary "—No one can fail to see the applicability of this to the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple by the Romans not long after the Lord Jesus was put to death.... "And the end thereof shall be with a flood"—that is, it shall be like an overflowing flood,—an expression that appropriately denotes the ravages of an army sweeping everything away. No one can doubt that this language is applicable in every respect to the desolations brought upon Jerusalem by the Roman armies.... "And unto the end of the war desolations are determined "-the war would be one of a most desolating character, and desolations would extend to its close. It is hardly necessary to say that this was, in fact, precisely the character of the war which the Romans waged with the Jews after the death of the Savior, and which, ended in the destruction of the city and the temple; the overthrow of the whole Hebrew polity, and the removal of great numbers of the people to a distant and perpetual captivity. No war, perhaps, has been in its progress more marked by desolation; in none has the purpose of destruction been more perseveringly manifested to its very close.—Notes, In loco.

Dan. 9:27.—And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—" For one week "—the space of seven years: this is the one week that makes up the seventy “determined upon the people and upon the holy city."... “He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week."—Messiah would pursue such a course as would bring many into covenant relation with God, and to establish or “confirm “them in the true religion. And this the Lord Jesus did by his personal instructions, his example, his sufferings and death, and the arrangements which he made to secure the proper effect of his work on the minds of the people—all designed to procure for them the friendship and favor of God, and to unite them to him in the bonds of an enduring covenant. This work was continued (among his people) for about the period here referred to; at least for a period so long that it could properly be represented in round numbers as " one week," or seven years. The Savior's own ministry, which was wholly among the Jews, continued about half that time; and then the apostles prosecuted the same work, laboring with the Jews, for about the other portion; before they turned their attention to the Gentiles, and before the purpose to endeavor to bring in the Jewish people was abandoned.—Notes, In loco.

And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—It is agreed on all hands that our Lord's ministry lasted about three years and a half-the time referred to here.... “He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease "—he would bring the rites, or the offerings of the temple to a close. And as a matter of fact, so far as the divine intention in the appointment of these sacrifices and offerings was concerned, they “ceased " at the death of, Christ—in the middle of the “week." Then the great sacrifice, which they had adumbrated, was offered. Then they ceased to have any significancy, no reason existing for their longer continuance.— Notes, In loco.

And for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate: (in the margin,) Upon the battlements shall be the idols of the desolater.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Nothing would be more appropriate in the common estimation of the Jews, than to speak of such an object as a Roman military standard planted in any part of the temple as an " abomination; " and no word would better denote the character of the Roman conqueror than the word desolater—for the effect of his coming was to lay the whole city and temple in ruins.—Note, In loco.

JOSEPHUS.—And now the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city, and upon the burning of the holy house itself, and all the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns into the temple, and set them over against its eastern gate; and there they did offer sacrifices to them, and there did they make Titus ImpErator, with the greatest acclamations of joy.—Jewish Wars, B. VI., ch. VI., § I.

Concluding Remarks

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The prediction in this chapter could have been the result only of Inspiration. There is the clearest evidence that the prophecy was recorded long before the time of the Messiah, and it is manifest that it could not have been the result of any natural sagacity. How could such events have been foreseen except by Him who knows all things?—How could the order have been determined? How could the time have been fixed? How could it have been anticipated that the Messiah, the Prince, would have been cut off? How could it have been known that he would cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease? How could it have been ascertained that the period during which he would be engaged in this would be “one week," or about seven years? How could it be predicted that a remarkable event would occur in the middle of that period that would in fact cause the sacrifice and oblation ultimately to cease? And how could it be conjectured that a foreign prince would come and plant the standard of abomination in the holy city, and sweep all away—laying the city and the temple in ruins, and bringing the whole polity to an end? These things lie beyond the range of natural sagacity, and if they are fairly implied in this prophecy, they demonstrate that this portion of the book is from God.—Notes, In loco.

HENGSTENBERG.—Until all these arguments are refuted, it remains true that the Messianic interpretation of the prophecy is the only correct one, and that Daniel possessed an insight into the future, which could have been given only by the Spirit of God; and hence, as this favor could have been shown to no deceiver, the genuineness of the book necessarily follows, and the futility of all objections against it is already manifest.—Christ., II., p. 408.

Overthrow of the Persian and Setting up of the Grecian Power

Dan. 11:2.—And now I will show thee the truth. Behold there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.

BISHOP NEWTON.—After Cyrus, the reigning monarch, " there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia,"—these were Cambyses, the son of Cyrus; Smerdis, the Magian; and Darius the son of Hystaspes, who married the daughter of Cyrus; and the fourth was Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius.— Dissert. on Proph., p. 263.

The firth shall he richer than they all.

JUSTIN.—If you consider this king (Xerxes), you may praise his riches, not the general; of which there was so great an abundance in his kingdom, that when rivers were dried up by his army, yet his wealth remained unexhausted.—Just., lib. ii., c. Io; See also Herodt., lib. vii., c. 27, etc.

And he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.

HERODOTUS.—Xerxes spent four full years in collecting his host. Of all the armaments whereof any mention has reached us, this was by far the greatest. For was there a nation in all Asia which Xerxes did not bring with him against Greece? Or was there a river, except those of unusual size, which sufficed for his troops to drink? The land army was found to amount to 1,700,000 men. The sea force amounted to 517,610 men. The horsemen numbered 80,000; the camel-drivers and charioteers were reckoned at 20,000. To all these are to be added the forces gathered in Europe, etc., etc.—Polymnia, c. 20, 21, 60, 184, etc.

Verse 3.—And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The Persians invaded Greece, and the Grecians in their turn would invade the realm of" Persia. This would be under the leadership of Alexander: that he was a “mighty king "' and conqueror; that he ruled " with great dominion," not only over Greece and the whole Persian empire, but likewise added India to his conquests; and that he "did according to his none daring, not even his friends, to contradict and oppose him, or if they did, like Clitus and Calesthenes, paying for it with their lives, are' facts too well known to require any particular proof or illustration.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 264.

Verse 4.—And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided towards the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled; for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—"And when he shall stand up "—when he shall be at the height of his authority and power, “his kingdom shall be broken,"—to wit, by death.—Note, In loco.

ARRIAN.—Alexander died in Babylon, having lived only thirty-two years and' eight months, of which he reigned twelve years and eight months. In so short a time did this sun of glory rise and set.— Arr., VII, 28.

And shall be divided towards the four winds of heaven, and not to his posterity.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—In the space of about fifteen years from the death of Alexander, his family and posterity became extinct, every one of them, having been murdered in one way or another. “His kingdom was broken and divided, but not' for his posterity."—Diod. Sic., lib. xix., c. 5, II, 105; and lib. xx., C. 28.

IDEM.—After which, in the partition of the empire, Cassander herd' Macedon and` Greece, or the western portion; Lysimachus had Thrace and Bythinia, or the northern regions; Ptolemy possessed Egypt, or the southern 'countries; and Seleucus obtained. Syria, or the eastern provinces. —Diod. Sic., lib. xxi., c. i; See also Polyb, V., 67.

Verse 5.—And the king of the south shall he strong, and one of his princes; and he shall be strong above him, and have dominion; his dominion shall be a great dominion.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Though the kingdom of Alexander was divided into four principal parts, yet only two of them have a' place allotted' in this prophecy, Egypt and Syria. These two were by far the greatest and most considerable: and these two at one time were in a manner the only remaining' kingdoms of the four. Judea, lying between them, was sometimes in the possession of the kings of Egypt, and sometimes of the kings of Syria. And it is in respect of their situation to Judea that they are respectively called the kings of the South, and the kings of the North.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 266.

The king of the south shall be strong.

JEROME.—Ptolemy, king of Egypt, was very powerful, having annexed Cyprus, Phenicia, Caria, and many islands and cities and regions to Egypt, as related by the ancients.—Com. In loco.

JUSTIN.—Ptolemy had also enlarged the bounds of his empire by the acquisition of Cyrene, and was now become so great, that he was in a condition not so much to fear as to be feared by his enemies. Justin, lib. xiii., c. 6.

And one of his (Alexander's) princes; he shall be strong above him; his dominion shall be a greater dominion.

BISHOP NEWTON.—This prince was “the king of the north," or Seleucus Nicator, and was strong above Ptolemy: for, as Justin and Plutarch relate, having annexed the kingdoms of Macedon and Thrace to the crown of Syria, he was 'become master of three parts out of four of Alexander's dominions.

Justin denominates him the conqueror of conquerors.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 267.

APPIAN.—After Alexander he possessed the "largest part of Asia; for all was subject to him from Phrygia up to the river Indus, and beyond it.... He was the greatest king of Alexander.—De Bell. Syr., c. 55.

Verse 6.—And in the end of years they shall join themselves together; for the king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement.

JEROME.—After several years spent in war against one another, Antiochus Theus, now “the king of the north, "and Ptolemy Philadelphus, now " king of the south," agreed to make peace upon condition that Antiochus Theus should put away his former wife Laodice and her two sons, and should marry Bernice, the daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus. And, accordingly, Ptolemy brought his daughter to Antiochus, and with 'her an immense dowry, of gold and silver.—Com. In loco.

But she shall not retain the, power of the arm (i. e. of Antiochus).

JEROME.—After some time, Antiochus, in a fit of lave, brought back his former wife, Laodice, with her children, to court again.—Com. In loco.

Neither shall the stand, nor his arm (i. e., his seed).

JEROME.—Laodice, fearing the fickle temper of her, husband, lest he should recall Bernice, caused him to be poisoned; and neither did his seed 'by Bernice succeed him in the kingdom, but Laodice contrived and managed matters so as to fix her eldest son, Seleucus Callinicus, on the throne of His ancestors.—Com. In loco. See also App. de Bell. Syr., c. 65, and Pliny, lib. vii., § to.

But she (Bernice') shall be given up, and they that brought her, and Ile whom she begat, and he that strengthened her in these, times.

JEROME.—Laodice, not content with poisoning her husband, caused also Bernice to be murdered; her Egyptian women and attendants also, endeavoring to defend her, were many of them slain with her; her son likewise was murdered after the same manner, and all who took part with her.—Com. In loco. See also Polynœus, Strat., viii., 50.

Verses 7-9.—But out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate, which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north, and shall deal against them, and shall prevail: and shall also carry captives into Egypt their gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold; and he shall continue more years than the king of the north. So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, and shall return into his own land.

JEROME.—Ptolemy Euergetes, sprung from the same parental stock with Bernice, being her brother, no Sooner succeeded his father to the kingdom than he came with a great army and entered into the provinces of the king of, the north, Seleucus Callinicus, who with his mother Laodice reigned in. Syria, against whom he so far prevailed that he took Syria and Cilicia, and the upper parts beyond Euphrates, and almost all Asia. And when he had heard that a sedition was raised in Egypt, he plundered the kingdom of Seleucus, and 40,000 talents of silver, and precious vessels and images of the gods 2,500: among which were also those which Cambyses, after he had taken Egypt, had carried into Persia. And for thus restoring their gods after many years, the Egyptians, who were a nation much addicted to idolatry, complimented him with the title of Euergetes, or the Benefactor.—Hieron. ad loco.

POLYBIUS—Ptolemy, surnamed Euergetes, being greatly incensed at the cruel treatment of his sister Bernice, marched with an army into Syria, and took the city of Seleucia, which was kept for some years afterward by the garrisons of the kings of Egypt—Polyb., lib. v., c. 58.

POLYNÆUS.—Ptolemy made himself master of all the country from mount Taurus as far as to India without war or battle.—Strat., lib. viii., c. 50.

Verse 10.—But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude, of great forces: and one shall certainly come, and overflow and pass through: then shall he return, and be stirred up, even to his fortress.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The sons of Seleucus Callinicus were Seleucus Ceraunus and Antiochus Magnus. Seleucus Ceraunus was indeed stirred up, and assembled a great multitude of forces in order to recover his father's dominions; but being destitute of money, and unable to keep his army in obedience, he was poisoned by two of his generals after an inglorious reign of two or three years. Upon his decease Antiochus Magnus was proclaimed king. The prophet's expression is very remarkable, that "his sons should be stirred up, and assemble a multitude of great forces," but then the number is changed, and only "one should certainly come, and overflow, and pass through." Accordingly Antiochus came with a great army, took Seleucia, and by means of Theodotus, the Ætolian, recovered Syria, making himself master of some places by treaty, and of others by force of arms. Then after a truce, wherein both sides treated of peace but prepared for war, Antiochus returned, and overcame in battle Nicolaus, the Egyptian general, and had thoughts of invading Egypt itself.—Dissert. on Proph., p. 271. See Polyb., lib. v., c. 61, 68, 69.

Verse 11.—And the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the north: and he shall set forth a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given into his hand.

POLYBIUS.—At that time Ptolemy Philopator was the king of Egypt, and Antiochus Magnus had succeeded to the throne of Syria. Ptolemy, incensed by his losses, assembled a numerous army, and marched out of Egypt to oppose his enemy; he encamped at Raphia, a town not far from the confines of Egypt. Thither also came Antiochus with his army, and a memorable battle was there fought by the two kings. The army of Antiochus, gathered from various nations, was composed of 62,000 foot, 6,000 horse, and 102 elephants. But Ptolemy obtained a complete victory; there being of Antiochus' army no less than 10,000 foot, and 300 horse slain, and above 4,000 men taken prisoners. And Antiochus was forced to retreat with the remnant of his army, and to sue for peace.—Polyb., lib. v., C. 34, 79, 80, 86.

Verse 12.—And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands: but he shall not be strengthened by it.

JUSTIN.—Delivered from his fears, Ptolemy concluded a hasty peace with Antiochus, that he might be no longer interrupted in the gratification of his lusts. Returned to Egypt, he so far forgot the dignity of his position and office as a king, that he consumed his days in feasting, and his nights in lewdness; and became not only the spectator, but the master and leader of all wickedness.—Just., lib. xxx., c. I, 2.

POLYBIUS.—His subjects, expecting great things from their decisive victory over Antiochus, were offended at his inglorious peace, and more inglorious life, and rebelled against him; so that altogether instead of being strengthened by the war, he was much weakened.—Polyb., lib. v., c. 107.

Verse 13.—For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much riches.

PRIDEAUX.—The treaty of peace agreed upon by Antiochus and the king of Egypt was observed for fourteen years.—Conn., III., 19.

JEROME.—Antiochus, having brought his war in the East to a successful close, once more turned his thoughts toward Egypt. He gathered together an incredible army out of the countries beyond Babylon; and, contrary to the league, he marched with this army, Ptolemy Philopator being now dead, against his son, who was then four years old, and was called Ptolemy Epiphanes.—Hieron., In loco.

JUSTIN.—Ptolemy Philopator, king of Egypt, being dead, in contempt of the childhood of his son, who being left heir to the kingdom was a prey even to his domestics, Antiochus, king of Syria, resolved to take possession of Egypt. —, Justin, lib. xxxi., c. I.

Verse 54—And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south: also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they shall fall.

POLYBIUS.—Antiochus was not the only adversary of Egypt at this time.

Several provinces which before were subject to Egypt now rebelled; and Egypt itself was disturbed by seditions. Philip, king of Macedon, also, entered into a league with Antiochus to divide Ptolemy's dominions between them. Certain factions of the Jews likewise set themselves against that country, but these were quickly brought into subjection.—Polyb., lib. xv., c. 25; and lib. iii., c. 2.

Verse 15.—So the king of the north shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities and the arms of the south shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand.

JEROME.—Antiochus, desiring to recover Judea, and the cities of Cœle-Syria and Palestine, which Scopas the Egyptian general had taken, came again into those parts. Scopas was sent again to oppose him, and Antiochus fought with him near the sources of the river Jordan, where now Paneas has been built, destroyed a great part of his army, and pursued him to Sidon, where he shut him up with 10,000 men, and closely besieged him. 'Three famous generals were seat from Egypt to raise the siege; but they could not succeed, and at length Scopas was forced by famine to surrender on the hard conditions of having life only granted to him and his men; they were obliged to lay down their arms, and were sent away stripped and naked.... Antiochus also took many other fenced cities; and ere long rendered himself master of all Cœle-Syria and Palestine.—Hieron., In loco.

Verse 57.—He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom, and upright ones with him; thus shall he do: and he shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her; but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him.

APPIAN.—Antiochus would have gladly seized upon the whole kingdom of Egypt by force, but apprehending war with the Romans he sought to accomplish his designs by a stratagem rather than by force of arms.—De Bell. Syr., c. 5.

JEROME.—Antiochus proposed a treaty of marriage by Eucles the Rhodian, betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to Ptolemy in the seventh year of his reign, and married her to him in the thirteenth. This he did„ instructing and expecting his daughter to betray her husband's interests into his hands. But his wicked design did not succeed. Ptolemy and his, generals were aware of his artifices, and therefore stood upon their guard; and Cleopatra herself affected more the cause of her husband than that of her Father.— Hieron., in loco; see also Livy, lib. xxxvii, c. 3.

Verse 18.—After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he' shall cause it to turn upon him.

LIVY.—Antiochus built and fitted out a great fleet, consisting of one hundred' large ships, a war, and two hundred smaller vessels. With this fleet he sailed for the islands of the Mediterranean; subdued most of the maritime places on the coasts of Asia, Thrace, and Greece; and took Samos, Eubœa, and many other islands. This the Romans accounted as a great indignity offered to them, inasmuch as many of these were their friends and confederates. They, therefore, immediately resolved to repel the invader, and wipe away the reproach. Ancilius the consul encountered and fought Antiochus at the straits of Thermopylæ, routed him, and expelled him out of Greece. Livius and Æmilius beat his fleets at sea; and Scipio finally obtained a decisive victory over him in Asia, at the foot of Mount Sipylus. Antiochus lost 50,000 foot and 4,000 horse in that engagement; 1,400 were taken prisoners, and he himself escaped with difficulty. Upon this defeat he was compelled to sue for peace, and to accept very humbling conditions: he was not to set foot in Europe, and to quit all Asia on this side of Mount Taurus, to defray the whole cost of the war, and to give twenty hostages for the performance of these conditions, one of the hostages being his own son, who afterward was named Antiochus Epiphanes.—Livy, lib. xxxiii., c. 19, etc.; and xxxvi., c,. 45. See also App. de Bell. Syr., c. 6, 12, etc.

Verse 49.—Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found.

LIVY.—From the disastrous field of Mount Sipylus Antiochus fled that nigh to Sardes, and from thence to Apamea, and the next day he came into Syria, to Antioch, his own capital and stronghold.— Liv., lib. xxxvii., c. 44.

JUSTIN.—Some time after, Antiochus marched into the eastern provinces, to collect there the arrears of tribute, and collect what treasure he could and attempting to plunder the rich temple of Jupiter Belus, in Elymais, he was assaulted by the inhabitants of the country, was defeated, and himself and all his attendants were slain. Thus fell and perished Antiochus.—Just., lib. xxxii., c. 2; see also Jer. Hieron. in loco, and Diod. Sic.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The prophecy respecting Antiochus 'the Great terminates here, and the particulars specified are as minute and accurate as if it had been written after the events.—Note, In loco.

Verse 20.—Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes, in the glory of the kingdom: but within a few days he Shall be destroyed, neither in anger nor in battle.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Antiochus was succeeded by his son Seleucus Philopator. The tribute of a thousand talents which he was obliged to pay annually to the Romans, was indeed a grievous burden to him and his kingdom: and he was little more than "a raiser of taxes" all his days.—Disserts., p. 281.

JEROME.—Seleucus Philopator performed nothing worthy of the empire of Syria and of his father, and perished ingloriously without "fighting any battles.—Hieron., In loco.

APPIAN.—Seleucus perished by the treachery of his own treasurer, Heliodorus. De Bell. Syr., C. 45.

Verse 21.—And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.

POLYBIUS.—The successor of Seleucus was his brother. Antiochus, afterward surnamed “Epiphanes" or the illustrious, but more rightly named from his freaks and follies and extravagances "Epimanes” or the Madman.—Athenœus lib. x., c. 10.

APPIAN.—When Seleucus died, Antiochus was not called to the throne; he was from home at Athens; neither was he the rightful heir. Besides, Heliodorus, his brother's murderer, attempted to get possession of it himself; at the same time, a strong party declared in favor of Ptolemy Philometor, king of Egypt, whose mother Cleopatra was the daughter of Antiochus the Great, and sister of the late king Seleucus; while Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, was the legal heir: Nevertheless Antiochus obtained the kingdom. By fair promises he engaged Eumenes, king of Pergamus, and Attalus, his brother, on his side. By a show of great clemency he also won the favor and good will of the Syrians. And (as Livy relates) he ingratiated himself with the Romans by sending ambassadors to court their favor, to pay them the arrears of tribute, to present them besides with golden vessels of 500 pounds weight, and to desire that the friendship and alliance, which they had had with his father, might be renewed with him, and that they would lay their commands upon him as upon a good and faithful confederate king; he would never be wanting in any duty. And thus he came peaceably into power.—App. de Bell. Syr., c. 45; and Livy, xlii., c. 6.

Verse 22.—And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken.

CALMET.—Heliodorus, the murderer of Seleucus and his partisans, as well as those of the king of Egypt, who had formed some designs upon Syria, were vanquished by the forces of Eumenes and Attalus, and were dissipated by the arrival of Antiochus, whose presence disconcerted all their measures.—Art. Antiochus."

Verse 24.—And he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers: he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches.

POLYBIUS.—By Antiochus Epiphanes, the prey of his enemies, the spoil of temples, and the riches of his friends, as well as his own revenues, were expended in public shows, and bestowed in largesses among the people.—Ap. Athen., lib. v., c. 5.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—In liberality of gifts Antiochus abounded above the kings that were before him— Macc. iii: 20.

JOSEPHUS.—Antiochus, having been so magnanimous and so liberal, found that what he had was not sufficient for him to carry on the war, he therefore resolved first, etc.—Antiq., lib. 12, c. 7, § 2.

Verses 25, 26.—And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army, and the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; hut he shall not stand: for they shall cast devices against him. Yea, they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy him, and his army shall be overflown, and many shall fall down slain.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—Now when the kingdom was established before Antiochus, he thought to reign over Egypt, that he might have the dominion of two realms. Wherefore he entered into Egypt with a great multitude, with chariots, and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy. And made war against Ptolemy, king of Egypt, but Ptolemy was afraid of him, and fled; and many were wounded to death. Thus they got the strong cities in the land of Egypt, and he took the spoils thereof.— Macc. i: 16-19.

Verse 27.—And both these, kings' hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper.

JEROME.—After Antiochus was come to Memphis, and the greater part of Egypt hail submitted to him, he and Philometor did frequently eat and converse together, but their peace and friendship were only in appearance. —Hieron., In loco.

POLYBIUS.—Antiochus pretended to take care of his nephew Philometor's interest, and promised to restore him to the crown, at the same time that he was plotting his ruin. On the other side, Philometor professed great obligations to his uncle, and seemed to hold the crown by his favor, at the same time that he was resolved to take the first opportunity of breaking the league with him. But the deceit did not prove successful on either side.—Polyb. Legal. 84, 1. 28, c. 19, and Leg. 82, 1. 28, c. 17, and Jer. Hieron., In loco.

Verse 28.—Then shall he return into his land with great riches, and his heart shall be against the holy covenant.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—Thus he got the strong cities in the land of Egypt, and he took the spoils thereof. And after that Antiochus had smitten Egypt he returned.—I Macc. i: 19, 20.

POLYBIUS.—Of the great opulence of gold, silver, jewels, and other valuables, which Antiochus exhibited, a large part was taken from Egypt, he having broken his league with the young king Philometor.—Ap. Athen., lib. v., c. 5.

Verse 29.—At the time appointed he shall return, and come toward the south; but it shall not be as the former or as the latter.

JEROME.—After two years had expired, Antiochus assembled his forces, and marched again against the Ptolemies.—Hieron., In loco.

BISHOP NEWTON.—This expedition was not as successful as his former ones; and the reason is assigned in the next verse.—Disserts.

Verse 30.—For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.

BISHOP NEWTON.—"Chittim" was the general name for Greece, Italy, and the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean. "The ships of Chittim," therefore, are the ships which brought the Roman ambassadors, who came from Italy, touched at Greece, and arrived in Egypt, being sent by the Senate, at the supplication of the Ptolemies, to command a peace between the contending kings.— Dissert. on Proph., p. 290.

POLYBIUS.—Antiochus Epiphanes, with his army, had entered Egypt, and had gained such positions that he was in a fair way of becoming master of the whole kingdom. The Romans, apprised of his proceedings and intentions, and fearing lest he should grow too powerful by annexing Egypt to his other dominions, sent an embassy to him, to require him to desist from his enterprise, or, in case of his refusal, to declare, war against him. He was drawing near to besiege Alexandria, when he was met by the three Ambassadors from Rome. After a few words on either side, Popillius, the chief of them, demanded of Antiochus whether he was a friend to the Romans? and so saying, presented to him the Tables which contained the decree of the Senate, and desired an immediate answer. Antiochus opened and perused them, and replied that he Would consider the matter with his friends, and return his answer presently. But Popillius, with a rod that he carried in his, hand, drew a circle in the sand round the king, and insisted upon his answer before he stepped out of that circle. The king astonished and frightened at this peremptory and imperious proceeding, after some hesitation, gave his answer, and said, “If this be the will of the Senate and People of Rome, we obey them, and depart." And so, in a brief time, he drew off his army. —Polyb. Legal. 92, lib. xxix., c. ii; see also Appian, de Bell. Syr., and Jerome Hieron., In loco.

Therefore he shall be grieved, and return.

POLYBIUS.—Compelled by the Romans to abandon his designs, Antiochus led back his forces to Syria, angry and groaning, but thinking it expedient to yield to the times for the present.—Polyb. Legal. 92, lib. xxix., c.

And he shall have indignation against the holy covenant.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—He sent also that detestable ringleader, Apollonius, with an army of two and twenty thousand, commanding him to slay all those that were in their best age, and to sell the women and the younger sort: who coming to Jerusalem, and pretending peace, did forbear till the holy day of the Sabbath, when taking the Jews keeping holy-day, he commanded his men to arm themselves. And so he slew all them that were gone to the celebrating of the Sabbath, and running through the city with weapons slew great multitudes. —Mace. v: 24-26.

Verse 31.—And arms (i. e., power) shall stand on his part, and they Shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shah place the abomination that maketh desolate.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—They shed innocent blood on every side of the sanctuary and defiled it, insomuch that the inhabitants of Jerusalem fled because of them; wherefore the city was made a habitation of strangers, and became strange to those who were born in her, and her own children left her. Her sanctuary was laid waste like a wilderness, and her feasts were turned into mourning, her Sabbaths into reproach, her honor into contempt. As had been her glory, so was her dishonor increased, and her excellency was turned into mourning.—Moreover, king Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and everyone should learn his laws; so all the heathen agreed according to the commandment of the king. Yea many Israelites consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols, and profaned the Sabbath. For the king had sent letters by messengers unto Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, that they should follow the strange laws of the land, and forbid burnt-offerings and sacrifices, and drink-offerings, in the temple; and that they should profane the Sabbaths and festival-days, and pollute the sanctuary and holy people; set up altars, and groves, and chapels of idols, and sacrifice swine's flesh, and unclean beasts; that they should also leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and profanation, to the end they might forget the law, and change all the ordinances.... Now, the fifteenth day of the month Casleu, in the hundred and forty-fifth year, they set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and builded idol-altars throughout the cities of Judah on every side.... Now the five and twentieth day of the month they did sacrifice upon the idol-altar, Which was upon the altar of God.—I. Mace. i: 37, etc. See also, Josephus' Antiq., lib. xii., c. 5, § 4.

Verse 36.—And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Antiochus did according' to his will in regard to the city and temple in the most arbitrary manner, and was, in every respect, an absolute despot... "He exalted himself, and magnified himself above every god "—that is, by directing what gods should or should not be worshipped"; attempting to displace the claim of everyone who was worshipped as god at his pleasure, and establishing the worship of other gods in their place. Thus he assumed the right to determine what god should be worshipped at Jerusalem, abolishing the worship of Jehovah, and setting up that of Jupiter Olympius in the stead; and so throughout his whole dominion, by a proclamation, he forbade the worship of any god but his. One who assumes or claims the right to forbid the adoration of any particular god, and to order divine homage to be rendered to any one which he chooses, exalts himself above the gods, as lie in this way denies the tight which they must be supposed to claim to prescribe their own worship.

Nothing could be better descriptive of Antiochus than this; nothing was ever more strikingly fulfilled than this was in him.—Notes, In loco.

Verse 38.—And in his estate shall he honor the god of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honor with gold, with silver, and with precious stones, and with pleasant things.

LENGERKE.—During his long residence in Rome, as an hostage, Antiochus became addicted to the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus, and whose worship he attempted to transfer and establish in his own country. Ob. In loco.

LIVY.—Antiochus sent rich gifts to Rome in honor of the Jupiter he worshipped there. — Lilly, LXII., 6.

IDEM. —It was his purpose to erect a magnificent temple in honor of Jupiter Capitolinus, in Antioch; but this design was never carried out.—Livy, XLI., 20.

PROF. B. F. Westcott, M. A.—The real deity whom Antiochus recognized Was the Roman war-god, and fortresses were his most sacred temples.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 117.

Concluding Observations

BISHOP NEWTON.—It may be proper to stand a little here, and reflect how particular and circumstantial this prophecy is, concerning Egypt and Syria, from the death of Alexander to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. There is not so concise, comprehensive, and regular, an account of their kings and affairs to be found in any authors of those times. The prophecy is really more perfect than any history; and is so wonderfully exact, not only as to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, but likewise equally so beyond that time, that we may conclude in the words of the inspired writer—No one could thus declare the times and seasons, but He who bath them in his own power.—Disserts. on Proph., p. 292.

REV. ALBERT BARNES—If this book was written before the age of Antiochus Epiphanes (of which there is abundant proof), the evidence is clear of its Inspiration, for no man will seriously maintain that these historic events could be drawn out with so much particularity of detail by any natural skill 370 years before they occurred, as must have been the case if written by Daniel. Human sagacity does not extend its vision thus far into the future with the power of foretelling the fates of kingdoms, and giving in detail the lives and fortunes of individual men. Either the infidel must dispose of the testimony that Daniel lived and wrote at the time alleged, or as an honest man, he should admit that he was inspired.—Notes, on Dan.

Hosea

Preservation of the Jews

Hos. 3:4, 5.—For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God.

DUKE OF ARGYLL.—The preservation of the Jews as a distinct people during so many centuries of complete dispersion, is a fact standing nearly, if not absolutely, alone in the history of the world. It is at variance with all other experience of the laws which govern the amalgamation with each other of different families of the human race.... It is not surprising, therefore, that the preservation of the Jews, partly from the relation in which it stands to the apparent fulfillment of Prophecy, and partly from the extraordinary nature of the fact itself, is tacitly assumed by many persons to come strictly within the category of miraculous events.... An extraordinary resisting power has been given to the Jewish people against those dissolving and disintegrating forces which have caused the disappearance of every other race placed under similar conditions. They have been torn from home and country, and removed not in a body, but in scattered fragments, over the world. Yet they are as distinct from every other people now as they were in the days of Solomon. Nevertheless this resisting power, wonderful though it be, is the result of special laws, overruling those in ordinary operation. It has been effected by the use of means. Those means have been superhuman—they have been beyond human contrivance and arrangement.... In their concatenation and arrangement they seem to indicate the purpose of a Living Will, seeking and effecting the fulfillment of its designs.—Reign of Law, p. 20.

Idolatrous Practices

Hos. 4:12.—My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them. THEOPHYLACT.—The diviners set up rods, and began to mutter verses and enchantments, and when the rods fell, they drew their presages from the manner and direction of the fall.—In Pict. Bib., In loco.

CICERO.—That staff of yours, which is the most celebrated ensign of your augurship, is the staff with which Romulus parted out the several districts when he founded the city.—De Div., lib. i., c. 17.

HERODOTUS.—The Scythians use willow twigs for divination.—Melpomene, c. 67.

Hos. 4:13.—They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks, and poplars, and elms (fir-trees), because the shadow thereof is good.

JOSEPH BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—On a sculptured slab at Khorsabad, we find at the-extremity of the hunting ground, an artificial piece of wafer, in which are some fish, and two pleasure-boats. On the margin of the lake is a kiosk or pleasure house, the roof of which is supported by columns resembling those of the Ionic order in Grecian architecture. Surrounding the kiosk are fruit-trees, possibly the fig and others, the branches of which appear to bear leaves and fruit; the round appendages being painted blue and the others red. Near to this spot is a hill and a grove of fir-trees, abounding with pheasants; and on the top of the hill is an altar reminding us of the groves and altars on high places, so often alluded to in the sacred writings, as a heathen custom which the people of Israel were forbidden to imitate: " They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks, and poplars and fir trees, because the shadow thereof is good. "—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 175.

Morning Dew

Hos. 6:4.—O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.

DR. SHAW.—The dews of the night, as we had the heavens only for our covering, would frequently wet us to the skin; but no sooner was the sun arisen, and the atmosphere a little heated, than the mists were quickly dispersed, and the copious moisture which the dews had communicated to the sand would be entirely evaporated.—Travels in Arabia Petrœa.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—Ah! what are my riches, and what my glory? Alas! it is like the dew, which flies off at the sight of the morning sun.—Orient. Illust., p. 499.

First Figs

Hos. 9:10.—I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig-tree at her first time.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—After mild winters it is no uncommon thing for the more forward fig-trees to yield a few ripe figs six weeks or more before the regular season.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Oil Traffic

Hos. 12:1—Oil is carried into Egypt.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—A considerable trade was carried on with Egypt by the merchants of Greece and Judea, who carried their oil thither.— Test. of the Heath., p. 446.

PLUTARCH.—Thales, and Hippocrates the mathematician, are said to have had their share of commerce; and the oil that Plato disposed of in Egypt defrayed the expense of their travels.—Solon, c. 2.

Kissing Idols

Hos. 13:2.—And now they sin more and more, and have made molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.

CICERO.—In the temple at Agrigentum there is a brazen image of Hercules so greatly venerated that its mouth and chin are alike worn away, because men in addressing their prayers and congratulations to him, are accustomed, not only to worship the statue, but even to kiss it.—In Verrem, lib. v., c. 43.

Lebanon

Hos. 14:5.—He shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—When viewed from the sea on a morning in early spring, Lebanon presents a picture, once seen, that is never forgotten but deeper still is the impression left on the mind when one looks down over its terraced slopes clothed in their gorgeous foliage, and through the vistas of its magnificent glens, on the broad and bright Mediterranean. How beautifully do these noble features illustrate the words of the prophet Hosea!—Smith's p. 1622.

Hos. 14:7.—The scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—The vine is still largely cultivated in every part of the Mountain; and the wine is excellent, notwithstanding the clumsy apparatus and unskillful workmen employed in its manufacture.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1622.

Joel

Ravages of Locusts

Joel 1:7.—He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—These locusts at once strip the vines of every leaf and cluster of grapes, and of every green twig. I also saw many large fig orchards “clean bare," not a leaf remaining; and as the bark of the fig-tree is of a silvery whiteness, the whole orchards, thus rifled of their green veils, spread abroad their branches " made white " in melancholy nakedness to the burning sun.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 105.

Joel 1; 15, 16.—Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.-This is most emphatically true. I saw under my own eye not only a large vineyard loaded with young grapes, but whole fields of corn disappear as if by magic, and the hope of the husbandman vanish like smoke.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 105.

Joel 1:18.—How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—This is poetic, but true. A field over which this flood of desolation has rolled shows not a blade for even a goat to nip. The land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 105.

Joel 2:1-11.—Blow ye the trumpet... sound an alarm... let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh... a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong... the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle-array. Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks.... They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.... The sun and moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining: and the Lord shall utter his voice before his army; for his camp is very great.

VOLNEY.—Syria, as well as Egypt, Persia, and almost all the south of Asia, is subject to another calamity, no less dreadful than earthquakes; I mean those clouds of locusts so often mentioned by travelers. The quantity of these insects is incredible to all who have not themselves witnessed their astonishing numbers; the whole earth is covered with them for the space of several leagues. The noise they make in browsing on the trees and herbage may be heard, to a great distance, and resembles that of an army foraging in secret. The Tahtars themselves are a less destructive enemy than these little animals; one would imagine that fire had followed their progress. Wherever their myriads spread, the verdure of the country disappears, as if a covering had been removed; trees and plants, stripped of their 'leaves, and reduced to their naked boughs and stems, cause the dreary image of winter to succeed, in an instant, to the scenery of spring. When these clouds of locusts take their flight, to surmount any obstacle, or to traverse more rapidly a desert soil, the heavens may be literally said to be obscured by them. Happily this calamity is not frequently repeated, for it is the inevitable forerunner of famine and the maladies it occasions.— Travels in Egypt and Syria, Vol. I., p. 283.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—Abeîh, in Lebanon, 1845. For several days previous to the first of June we had heard that millions of young locusts were on their march up the valley toward our village, and at length I was told that they had reached the lower part of it. Summoning all the people I could collect, we went to meet and attack them, hoping to stop their progress altogether, or at least to turn aside the line of their march. Never shall I lose the impression produced by the first view of them. I had often passed through clouds of flying locusts, and they always struck my imagination with a sort of vague terror; but these we now confronted were without wings, and about the size of full-grown grasshoppers, which they closely resembled in appearance and behavior. But their number was astounding; the whole face of the mountain was black with them. On they came like a living deluge. We dug trenches, and kindled fires, and beat, and burned 'to death “heaps upon heaps," but the effort was utterly useless. Wave after wave rolled up the mountain side, and poured over rocks, walls, ditches and hedges, those behind covering up and bridging over the masses already killed. After a long and fatiguing contest; I descended the mountain to examine the depth of the column, but I could not see to the end of it. Wearied with my hard walk over this living deluge, 1 returned, and gave over the vain effort to stop its progress.... Day after day they advanced.... The noise they made in marching and foraging was like that of a heavy shower on a distant forest... When the head of the mighty column came in contact with the palace of the Emeer Asaad, in Abeîh, they did not take the trouble to wheel around the corners, but climbed the wall like men of war, and marched over the top of it; so, when they reached the house of Dr. Van Dyck, in spite of all his efforts to prevent it, a living stream rolled right over the roof. “They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief." Every touch in the picture is true to the life.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 102, etc.

Joel 2:20.—But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill-savor shall come up, because he hath done great things.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—As in the visitation of Egypt, so now it is found that the only means of deliverance from the plague of locusts is when a strong wind drives them into the sea; and even then, as mentioned by Joel, their dead bodies taint the air and induce pestilence.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 315.

PAXTON.—In a state of putrefaction, the stench emitted from their bodies is scarcely to be endured; the traveler, who crushes them below the wheels of his wagon, or the feet of his horses, is reduced to the necessity of washing his nose with vinegar, and holding his handkerchief, dipped in it, continually to his nostrils.—Illust. In loco.

LIVY.—Scarcely recovered from the miseries of the last Punic war, Africa was doomed to suffer another terrible desolation. An immense number of locusts covered the whole country, consumed, etc.... After they had accomplished this terrible destruction, a sudden blast of wind swept and plunged their innumerable hosts into the sea. But the deadly scourge was not then at an end; the raging billows threw up enormous heaps of their dead and corrupted bodies upon that long extended coast, which produced a most insupportable and poisonous stench. This soon brought on a pestilence, which affected every species of animals; so that birds, and sheep, and cattle, and even the wild beasts of the field, perished in great numbers. The destruction of the human species was horrible; in Numidia 80,000 persons died; along the seacoast in the region of Carthage 200,000 perished; and out of a garrison of 30,000 at Utica only ten remained alive.—See Liv., lib. xc.

Judgments of Tyre and Sidon

Joel 3:8.—And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it.

ARRIAN.—Alexander, having taken Tyre, about 8,000 of the inhabitants were slain; some who had fled into the temple of Hercules received a free pardon: the rest, to the number of 30,000, were sold for slaves.—Exped. Alex., lib. ii., C. 24.

CALMET. —Alexander took Tyre. . . . Artaxerxes Ochus destroyed Sidon, and subdued other cities of Phoenicia. In all these wars, the Jews, who obeyed the Persians, did not neglect to purchase Phoenician slaves, whom they sold again to the Arabs.—In Adam Clarke's Com.

Amos

Earthquake

Amos 1:1.—The words of Amos ... .which he saw concerning Israel .... two years before the earthquake.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Earthquakes have at many different epochs devastated the land of Israel.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p, 16.

VOLNEY.—It seems that the coast of Syria is more subject to earthquakes than any part of the country.— Travels, Vol. I., p. 282.

Judgment of Philistia

Amos 1:7, 8.—But I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, which shall devour the palaces thereof: and I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holdeth the sceptre from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine hand against Ekron: and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord.

VOLNEY.—In the plain between Ramla and Gaza (the very plain of the Philistines), we met with a number of villages badly built, of dried mud, and which, like the inhabitants, exhibit every mark of poverty and wretchedness. The houses, on a nearer view, are only so many huts, sometimes detached, at others ranged in the form of cells around a court-yard, enclosed by a mud wall. In winter, they and their cattle may be said to live together, the part of the dwelling allotted to themselves being only raised two feet above that in which they lodge their beasts. Except the environs of these villages, all the rest of the country is a desert, and abandoned to the Bedouin Arabs, who feed their flocks on it.... The ruins of white marble sometimes found at Gaza prove that it was formerly the abode of luxury and opulence. It has shared in the general destruction, and is now no more than a defenseless village. The sea-coast, by which it was formerly washed, is every day removing farther from the desert ruins of Ashkelon.... Amid the various successive ruins, those of Edzoud (Ashdod), so powerful under the Philistines, are now remarkable for their scorpions.—Travels, Vol. II., 335-340.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—The plain sweeps the northern base of the low, rounded hill on which once stood the royal city of Ashdod. The temples, palaces, and houses are all gone. The dust of centuries has covered them.... The modern village of Esdûd, a confused group of mud hovels, lies embowered on the eastern slope. It bears the ancient name; but we might truly change it to Ichabod, for the glory is departed.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 198.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—No site in this country has so deeply impressed my mind with sadness as that of Gaza.... They have stretched out upon Askelon the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness!—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 329.

Bones

Amos 2:1.—He burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—Bones, when reduced to ashes, contain eighty parts out of one hundred of phosphate of lime.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Captives Led With Hooks

Amos 4:2.—Lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fish-hooks.

ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS.—Captives are depicted on many of the Assyrian monuments, led away by rings in their lips, or hooks thrust through their noses.—See Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 171, 172.

Rain Withheld

Amos 4:7.—And I also have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest.

REV. W. M., THOMSON, D. D.—This is utterly ruinous to the hopes of the farmer. A little earlier or a little later would not be so fatal, but drouth three months before harvest is entirely destructive.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 66.

And I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.

IDEM.—There has been a smart shower here, while at Samakh the ground was baked hard, and the grain drooping sadly. The same was true on a former occasion when I came up the Jordan valley. The ground in the Ghor was like a parched desert. There had not been sufficient rain to bring up the grain, and the seed sown had rotted under the clod, while here at Tiberias the whole country was a paradise of herbs and flowers. And thus it was in former times.—Ibid.

Verse 8.—So two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water: but they were not satisfied.

IDEAL—This is a fact often repeated in this country. No longer ago than last autumn it had its exemplification complete in Belad Besharah, the ancient inheritance of Naphtali.—Ibid.

Destruction of Bethel

Amos 5:5.—Bethel shall come to naught.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Clambering to the top of a shattered tower which crowns the hill of Bethel, I looked long, and in sadness, over that dreary field of ruin, only inhabited by a few shepherds; and I saw how terribly time had fulfilled the city's prophetic doom: " Bethel shall come to naught."— Giant Cities,. p. 178.

Sitting in the Gate

Amos 5:15.—Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—I have seen both the governor and the kady, with their suites, sitting in the gate, decreeing and executing judgment, precisely as such things are spoken of in the Bible.... There is scarcely an allusion in the Bible to matters transacted in the gate, but what you may see enacted every day about the gate of Jaffa.—Land and Book, II., 287.

Serpent in the Wall

Amos 5:19.—As if a man... leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent bit him.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Snakes and venomous animals are fond of taking up their lodging in walls of houses, where they can either find or make holes; and it is often dangerous to sit near them, or lean against them. In the East Indies they keep the faithful mongoose, a species of ichneumon, in their houses, for the purpose of destroying the snakes that infest them.—Note, In loco.

Sycamore Fruit

Amos 7:14.—I was a herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—We had been sitting under a sycamore tree, and looking up, we espied two little Arab girls hidden among the branches, gathering the wretched fruit which it bore in abundance. Poor, indeed, must those be, who live by such labor, and deep must have been the poverty of the prophet Amos, when he told the king that he was but “a herd-man, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit."—Land of Israel, p. 35.

The Sun Darkened

Amos 8:9.—And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.

REY. WILLIAM LATHAM BEVAN, M. A.—The date of Amos coincides with a total eclipse, which occurred Feb. 9th, B. C. 784, and was visible at Jerusalem shortly after noon.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, 15. 654.

Caves and Thickets of Carmel

Amos 9:3.—Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Carmel is even now, and was still more in ancient times, covered with woods and copses-pines and oaks in the upper parts, and laurels and olives below. These, with the numerous caverns which the mountain contains, formed hiding-places so extensive and numerous, that the search of any person hidden there would be bewildering and all but hopeless. —Pict. Bib., In loco.

Obadiah

Judgments of Edom

Obad. 1:1, 2.—Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom... Behold I have made thee small among the heathen.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Compared with the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Syrians, Arabs, and other neighboring nations, the Edomites or Idumeans were a small people.—Note, In loco.

Verse 3.—The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—The habits of the Idumeans were singular. The Horites, their predecessors in Mount Seir, were, as their name implies, troglodytes, or dwellers in caves; and the Edomites seem to have adopted their dwellings as well as their country. Jeremiah and Obadiah both speak of them as "dwelling in the clefts of the rocks," and making their "habitations high" in the cliffs, like the eyries of eagles; language which is strikingly illustrated by a survey of the mountains and glens of Edom. Everywhere we meet with caves and grottos hewn in the soft sandstone strata. Those at Petra are well known. Their form and arrangements show that most of them originally were intended for habitations. They have closets and recesses suitable for family uses, and many have windows.... During a visit to this region in 1857, the writer had an opportunity of inspecting a large number of these caverns, and has no hesitation in ranking them among the most remarkable of their kind in the world. The nature of the climate, the dryness of the soil, and their great ' size render them healthy, pleasant, and commodious habitations; while their security made them specially suitable to a country exposed in every age to incessant attacks of robbers.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 664.

Verse 4.—Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down.

BURCKHARDT.—Some of the excavated chambers and dwellings in Petra are so high, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular, that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost.—Travels in Syria, p. 422.

Thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—The long line of the kings and of the nobles of Idumea has for ages been cut off; they are without any representative now, without any memorial but the multitude and the magnificence of their unvisited sepulchers.—Evid. of Proph., p. 154.

Verse 8.—Shall I not in that day, saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—The minds of the Bedouins are as uncultivated as the deserts they traverse.... They view the indestructible works of former ages, not only with wonder, but with superstitious regard, and consider them as the work of genii.—Evid. of Proph., p. 158.

Verses 15, 18.—As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head.... And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—After their return from captivity the Jews, here called “the house of Jacob and of Joseph," did break out as a flame upon the Idumeans; they reduced them into slavery; and obliged them to receive circumcision, and practice the rights of the Jewish religion.—Note, In loco.

JOSEPHUS.—Judas and his brethren did not leave off fighting with the Idumeans, but pressed upon them on all sides, and took from them the city of Hebron, and demolished all its fortifications, and set its towers on fire, and burnt the country of the foreigners, and the city Marissa.... Hyrcanus took also Dora and other cities of Idumea, and subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would be circumcised, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers that they submitted to the use of circumcision, and of the rest of the Jewish way of living, at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.— Antiq., xii., 8, 6, and xiii., 9, 1.

And there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau: for the Lord hath spoken it. ORIGEN.-The Idumeans mingled with the Nabatheans as well as with the Jews. And in the third century of the Christian era, their language was disused, and their very name, as designating any people, soon perished.— See Orig., lib. iii., in Job.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—In the seventh century the Mohammedan conquest gave a death-blow to the commerce and prosperity of the whole country of Edom. Under the withering influence of Mohammedan rule, the great cities fell to ruin, and the country became a desert. The followers of the false prophet were here, as elsewhere, the instruments in God's hand for the execution of his judgments.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 663.

Jonah

Told to Go to Nineveh

Jonah 1:1.—Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying—

REV. CALVIN E. STOWE, D. D.—Jonah was probably born about 850 B. C.; he was a child when Homer was an old blind bard singing on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and is the oldest of the prophets whose writings have reached our times.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1448.

Jonah 1:2.—Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.

STRABO.—Nineveh was a city much greater even than Babylon.—Strab., lib. xvi.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Ninus (the builder of Nineveh) proposed to build a city of such magnitude, that it should not only be the greatest of the cities which were then in all the world, but that none of those who should be born after that time, attempting the like, should easily exceed it.—Diod. Sic., lib. ii., c. 3. Jonah 1:3.—But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The Tarshish of Jonah is probably the Tarsus of the New Testament, and the Tarsoos of modern times, situated near the coast of Cilicia. It points out the fact, which is confirmed by other testimony, that there was much trade going on along the shore, between the different ports of the Mediterranean.—Bible Lands, p. 66.

PROF. EDWARD S. FFOULKES, M. A.—Joppa, now Yâfa or Jaffa, according to Josephus, originally belonged to the Phoenicians, is situated in the southwest of Palestine, being the port of Jerusalem in the days of Solomon, as it has been ever since. The Ordnance Survey makes Joppa a little over 39 miles from Jerusalem.—Smith's Dict., p. 1453.

The Storm

Jonah 1:7.—And they said everyone to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It was a common notion among the ancient mariners that an extraordinary storm must be attributed to the indignation of the gods against some guilty person on board the ship.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

EURIPIDES.—Let no one be willing to act unjustly; neither let him sail with the perjured.—Electr., v. 1354.

XENOPHON. —Cyrus accounted the piety of those about him an advantage to himself; reckoning as they do who choose to undertake a voyage in company with men of piety, rather than with such as appear to have been guilty of anything impious.—Cyrop., lib. viii., c. I.

CICERO. —Diagoras, the atheist, being in a storm at sea, the sailors being greatly alarmed, told him they justly deserved that misfortune for admitting him into their ship.—De Nat. Dear., III., 37.

Jonah 1 so, I.—Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this?... What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?

ORPHEUS. —They doubted in their prudent mind, Whether to kill and cast a prey to fishes Wretched Medea, and avert their fate.—Argon., v. 1178.

The Great Fish

Jonah 1:57.—Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—No description is given us of the fish that swallowed Jonah. It is simply said, “The Lord had prepared a great fish "—ketos, which may signify any sea monster.... Various species of shark, several of which occur in the Mediterranean, have been repeatedly known to swallow a man whole.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 293.

REV. WILLIAM HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—The white shark, which sometimes attains the length of thirty feet, is quite able to swallow a man whole. Some are skeptical on this point. It would, however, be easy to quote passages from the writings of authors and travelers in proof of this assertion. Mr. Couch, in his History of the Fishes of the British Islands, says that the formation of the jaws and throat of this shark render this a matter of but little difficulty. Ruysch says that the whole body of a man in armor (loricatus) has been found in the stomach of a white shark; and Captain King, in his survey of Australia, says he had caught one which could have swallowed a man with the greatest ease. Blumenbach mentions that a whole horse has been found in a shark; and Captain Basil Hall reports the taking of one in which, besides other things, he found the whole skin of a buffalo, which a short time before had been thrown overboard from his ship (I., p. 27). Dr. Baird, of the British Museum (Cyclop. of Nat. Sci., p. 514), says that in the river Hooghly below Calcutta, he had seen a shark swallow a bullock's head and horns entire, and he speaks also of a shark's mouth being sufficiently wide to receive the body of a man.... But how Jonah could have existed for any time in the fish's belly it is impossible to explain by simply natural causes—it was a miracle; and certainly the preservation of the prophet in the belly of the fish is not more remarkable than that of the three children in the midst of Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace.— Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3509.

Jonah 2:10—And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

PROF. COUCH. —Naturalists have recorded that it is no uncommon thing for sharks to throw up again, whole and alive, the prey they have seized.—Hist. of Fishes, Vol. I., p. 33.

DARWIN. —I have heard from Dr. Allen Forres, that he has frequently found a Diodon floating alive and distended in the stomach Of a shark; and that on several occasions he has known it to eat its way out, not only through the coats of the stomach, but through the sides of the monster, which has been thus killed.—As quoted by Houghton in Smith's Dict.

Jonah in Nineveh

Jonah 3:1-3.—And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.

DR. CALVIN E. STOWE. —According to Babylonian tradition, a fish-god or fish-man, named Oannes, was divinely sent to that country, the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, to teach the inhabitants the fear of God and good morals, etc. He came from the sea, and spake with a man's voice, teaching only in the daytime, and returning again every night to the sea. Sculptures of this fish-god are frequently found among the ruins of Nineveh. The head and face of a dignified and noble-looking man are seen just below the mouth of the fish, the hands and arms project from the pectoral fins, and the feet and ankles from the ventral; and there are other forms, but it is always a man in a fish.

—In Smith's Dict., P. 1448.

Jonah 3:3.—Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

DIODORUS SICULUS. —The whole circuit of Nineveh was 480 furlongs. (This was a little more than sixty miles, and, according to common computation, equal to three days' journey for a foot traveler.)—Diod. Sic., lib. ii., c. 3.

Jonah 3:7.—And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —Among the Hebrews we find no instance of their extending fasting, and other acts of mourning and humiliation, to their cattle. Something similar, however, may be found in other nations.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

PLUTARCH. —Alexander's grief at the death of Hephæstion exceeded all bounds. He ordered all the horses and mules to be shorn, that they might have their share in the mourning; and with the same view pulled down the battlements of the neighboring cities.—Alexan., c. 72.

IDEM.—The Thebans, on the death of Pelopidas, cut off their horses' manes and their own hair.— Pelop., c. 3.

IDEM.—The barbarians in their grief for Masistius, cut off their hair and the manes of their horses and mules.—Arist., c. 14.

VIRGIL.—On the death of Daphne:—

The swains forgot their sheep, nor near the brink

Of running waters brought their herds to drink;

The thirsty cattle of themselves abstained

From water, and their grassy fare disdain'd.

—Eclog. V., v. 25.

The Gourd

Jonah 4:6.—And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—" Gourd "—Hebrew, Kikayon. This, the name in the original, leads us at once to the castor-oil tree, which with its broad palmate leaves extends a grateful shade over the parched traveler. It is described by Dioscorides under the name of kiki the identity of which with the Hebrew name, kikayon, will not escape notice; he speaks of it as having leaves like those of the Oriental plane-tree, but larger, smoother, and of a deep hue. The stem and branches are hollow, and of rapid growth, though incapable, without the interposition of a miracle, of rising and becoming a shelter in the course of a night. From the softness and little substance of the stem, it may easily be destroyed by insects, which Rumphius describes as being sometimes the case. The conclusion that this plant is to be identified with the gourd of Jonah is corroborated by local traditions, as well as by the fact that it abounds near the Tigris, where it is not an annual, and grows to a size much more considerable than it is commonly supposed to attain.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Jonah 4:8.—And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die.

TAYLOR.—It was early in the evening, when the pointed turrets of the city of Mosul opened on our view... I was now within sight of Nineveh, renowned in holy writ... The heat here was so intense, that in the middle of the day there was no stirring out, and even at night the walls of the houses are so heated by the day's sun, as to produce a disagreeable heat to the body, even at the distance of a yard from them... Besides this, the ordinary heat of the climate is extremely dangerous to the blood and lungs, and even to the skin, which it blisters and peels from the flesh, affecting the eyes so much that travelers are obliged to wear a transparent covering over them to keep the heat off.—In Calmet.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—It was late in the forenoon before we reached our halting- place, after a dreary and fatiguing ride. We were now fairly in the Assyrian plains; the heat was intense—that heavy heat, which seems to paralyze all nature, causing the very air itself to vibrate.— Nineveh and Babylon, p. 47.

Micah

Judgment of Samaria

Micah 1:1.—The word of the Lord that came to Micah, the Morasthite, in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

W. ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—The entire reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, extended from 756 B. C. to 697 B. C., covering a period of 59 years. Micah's ministry, however, might have embraced only a part of the reign of the first and last of these kings. He was contemporary with Hosea, Amos and Isaiah.— Smith's Dict., p. 1915.

Mic. 1:6.—Therefore I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—We halted at the western gate of Samaria, to take a last look at the place. The gate is a shapeless heap of ruins, forming the termination of the well-known Colonnade. I was never more deeply impressed with the minute accuracy of prophetic description, and the literal fulfillment of every detail, than when standing on that spot. Samaria occupied one of the finest sites in Palestine—a low, rounded hill, in the center of a rich valley, encircled by picturesque mountains. Temples and palaces once adorned it, famed throughout the East for the splendor of their architecture. But the destroyer has passed over it. I saw that long line of broken shafts with the vines growing luxuriantly round their bases; I saw a group of columns in a corn-field on the hilltop; I saw hewn and sculptured blocks of marble and limestone in the rude walls of the terraced vineyards; I saw great heaps of stones and rubbish among the olive groves in the bottom of the valley far below, but I saw no other trace of the city founded by Omri and adorned by Herod. One would think the prophet Micah had seen that desolate site as I saw it, his description is so graphic.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 231.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—We mounted and rode to the top of the flat hill behind, where are the finest remains of the Roman Samaria, in a long street of columns like those in the amphitheater below, the numbers of which we did not attempt to count. There must be more than eighty standing, and the bases of many more still remain, forming the groundwork of a long double colonnade, about fifty feet in width, leading to a ruined triumphal arch, or city gate, at the western extremity.... The platform on which Samaria stood is in one remarkable particular somewhat like that of Jerusalem, in being enclosed on all sides by other hills, which more or less command it. How often from this spot must the besieged Israelites have gazed upon the hosts of the enemy investing their city on all sides!... When again we looked down at the gaunt columns rising out of the little terraced fields, and the vines clambering up the sides of the hill once covered by the palaces of proud Samaria, who could help recalling the prophecy of Micah: "I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof." Not more literally have the denunciations on Tyre or on Babylon been accomplished.

What though Sebaste rose, under Herod, to a pitch of greater splendor than even old Samaria, the effort was in vain, and the curse has been fully accomplished. In the whole range of prophetic history, I know of no fulfillment more startling to the eye witness in its accuracy than this.—Land of Israel, p. 137.

Mic. 1:8.—I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls—rather, as the ostriches.

DR. SHAW.—During the lonesome part of the night ostriches often make a very doleful and hideous noise. I have often heard them groan as if they were in the greatest agonies: an action beautifully alluded to by Micah.—Travels, p. 455.

Mic. 1:15.—Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle.

PROF. J. G. WOOD, M. A., F. L. S.—It is evident that in this passage reference is made, not to the eagle, whose head is thickly covered with feathers, but to nether, the vulture, whose head and neck are but scantily sprinkled with white down.—Bible Animals, p. 345

Judgment of Jerusalem

Mic. 3:12.—Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It was an insulting act of ancient conquerors to pass a plow over a conquered and ruined city, to express that the site should be built upon no more, but be devoted to agriculture.— Note, In loco.

HORACE.—

From hence proud cities date their overthrow,

When, insolent in ruin, o'er their walls

The wrathful soldier draws the hostile plow,

That haughty mark of total overthrow.

—Carm., lib. i., Ode 16.

GIBBON.—After the final destruction of the temple by the arms of Titus and Hadrian, a plowshare was drawn over the consecrated ground as a sign of perpetual interdiction.—Decl. and Fall, chap. 23.

JOSEPHUS.—Now as soon as the Roman army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple.... It was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited.—Jewish War, lib. vii., c. I, § I.

Coming Messiah

Mic. 4:4.—But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The fig-tree affords a thick shade, and is, on this account, a favorite resort of the family, where they may often be seen seated on mats, partaking of a meal, or entertaining friends. Underneath its grateful shade many a refreshing nap is taken in the heat of the day, for it is supposed to exert a healthy influence upon the sleeper. The expression, "to sit under one's own vine and fig-tree," denotes at once, security, domestic enjoyment, and competence.—Bible Lands, p. 537.

Mic. 5:2.—But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel.

MATTHEW.—NOW Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king.—Matt. 2:1

Vain Offerings

Mic. 6:7—Will the Lord be pleased with ten thousand of rivers of oil?

REV. J. ROBERTS.—Allusions are often made in the scriptures to the value of oil; and, to appreciate them aright, it should be recollected that oil only is used to light the houses, for anointing the body, and for many medicinal purposes. “Have you heard of the charity of Venase? Why, he has given a river of oil to the temple; and Muttoo has given a river of ghee."—Orient. Illust., p. 515.

Mic. 6:7.—Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Such offerings had been made by the Phoenicians, and their successors the Carthaginians; and this very custom was copied by the corrupt Israelites.—Note, In loco.

Deceit and Violence

Mic. 6:11.—Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights?

OVID.—Hither comes the tradesman, having a girdle round his robes, and in a state of purity draws some of the water to carry it away in a perfumed urn.

He sprinkles his hairs, too, with the dripping bough, and in a voice accustomed to deceive, runs through his prayers, “Wash away the perjuries of past time," says he, " wash away my lying words of the past day; whether I have called thee to witness, O Mercury, or have invoked the great godhead of Jove, whom I did not intend to listen to me. Do but give me profits; give me the delight that rises from gain, and grant that I may find it lucrative to impose upon my customers." From on high Mercury laughs at his worshipper while making such requests as these.—Fast., lib. v., v. 675.

Mic 7:2.—They hunt every man his brother with a net.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON. —The use of the net in war appears to have been common to many ancient nations. The Romans had their Ratiarii. A combatant of this class carried in his right hand a net with which he endeavored to entangle his enemy by throwing it over his head, and in his left hand a weapon with which to slay him.—Test. of Heath., p. 454

STRABO. —Upon Phryno's proposal to meet in single combat, Pittacus advanced with his fishing gear, enclosed his adversary in a net, pierced him with a three-pronged spear, and dispatched him with a short sword.—Strab., lib. xiii., c. I.

HERODOTUS.—The Sagarthii have no offensive weapons, except their daggers: their principal dependence in action is on cords made of twisted leather, which they use in this manner: when they engage an enemy, they throw out their cords, having a noose at the extremity; if they entangle in them either horse or man, they, without difficulty, put them to death.—Polymnia, c. 85.

Nahum

Destruction of Nineveh

Nah. 1:1—The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

JOSEPHUS.—Now about this time (the latter part of the reign of Jotham, or B. C. 740) a prophet, whose name was Nahum, spoke concerning the overthrow of the Assyrians and of Nineveh... all of which happened a hundred and fifteen years after.—Antiq., ix., II, 3.

Nah. 1:8, 9,—With an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof.... He will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER. —The completeness of the destruction and the permanence of the desolation of Nineveh were foretold with such bold distinctness, as to give the impression that Nahum's language was merely hyperbolical; but the results have proved to the very letter its historical accuracy.... Fearfully and most convincingly have all his predictions been fulfilled. Nineveh went down to "desolation"—sank into “utter ruin"—and its very ruins were lost to the world.—Blending Lights, p. 315-318.

J. BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—Far away it lay buried—no certain trace was known as to the place of its sepulcher—vague tradition said that it was hidden some-where near the river Tigris. More than 2,000 years had it lain in its unknown grave, when a French savant and a wandering English scholar, urged by a noble inspiration, sought the seat of the once powerful empire, and, searching till they found the dead city, threw off its shroud of sand and ruin, and revealed once more to an astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, and the idols; the representations of war, and the triumphs of peaceful art of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture—the Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh— twin-sister of Babylon—glorying in a civilization of pomp and power, all traces of which were believed to be gone; the Nineveh, in which the captive tribes of Israel had labored and wept, and against which the prophecies had gone forth, was, after a sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to light. The proofs of ancient splendor were again beheld by living eyes, and, by the skill of draftsmen and the pen of antiquarian travelers, made known and preserved to the world.—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 1, 2.

Nah. 1:10.—For while they be folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—It happened that the king of Assyria, not knowing anything of the revolt of the Bactrians, and elated by his former successes, was indulging in idleness and reveling; and had prepared wine and other things necessary for feasting his soldiers. While his whole army was now feasting and reveling, Arbaces, receiving intelligence from some deserters of the carelessness and intemperance of the enemy, fell upon them, easily broke into their camp, slew great numbers of them, and drove the remainder back into the city.—Diod. Sic., lib. ii., c. 26.

BOTTA.—In the Bas-reliefs exhumed from the ruins of Nineveh carousing scenes are represented more than once, in which the king, his courtiers, and even the queen, reclining on couches or seated on thrones, and attended by musicians, appear to be pledging each other in bowls of wine.—Mon. de Nin., pl. 63-67, etc.

Nab. 1:14.—Out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave, for thou art vile.

HON. AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P.—Deeply buried in the high mound of Nimroud, we came upon the remains of a Temple. Four of its chambers were explored. The great entrances were to the east. The principal portal was formed by two colossal human-headed lions, sixteen and a half feet high and fifteen feet long. They were flanked by three small winged figures, one above the other, and divided by an ornamental cornice, and between them was an inscribed pavement slab of alabaster. In front of each was a square stone, apparently the pedestal of an altar, and the walls on both sides were adorned with enameled bricks.

About thirty feet to the north of the lion gateway was a second entrance, at each side of which were two singular figures. One was that of a monster, whose head, of fanciful and hideous form, had long pointed ears and extended jaws, armed with huge teeth. Its body was covered with feathers, its forefeet were those of a lion, its hind legs ended in the talons of an eagle, and it had spreading wings and the tail of a bird. Behind this strange image was a winged man, whose dress consisted of an upper garment with a skirt of skin or fur, an under robe fringed with tassels, and the sacred horned hat. A long sword was suspended from his shoulders by an embossed belt; sandals, armlets, and bracelets, completed his attire. He grasped in each hand an object in the form of a double trident, resembling the thunderbolt of the Greek Jove, which he was in the attitude of hurling against the monster, who turned furiously towards him.— This group appears to represent the bad spirit driven out by a good deity; a fit subject for the entrance of a temple.

On the slabs at right angles to these sculptures, forming the outer part of the entrance, were two colossal human figures, without wings, wearing garlands on their heads, and bearing branches ending in three flowers. Within the temple, at right angles to the entrance, were sculptured fish-gods, somewhat different in form from those in the palace of Kouyunjik.

To the right of this entrance, and apparently outside the walls of the temple, was discovered one of the finest specimens of Assyrian sculpture brought to this country. It represents the early Nimroud king in high relief, carved on a solid block of limestone, cut into the shape of an arched frame, in the form of the rock-tablets of Bavian and the Nahr-el-Kelb. The monarch wears his sacrificial robes, and carries the sacred mace in his left hand. Round his neck are hung the four sacred signs, the crescent, the star, the trident, and the cross. His waist is encircled by the knotted cord, and in his girdle are three daggers. Above his head are the mythic symbols of Assyrian worship, the winged globe, the crescent, the star, the bident, and the horned cap. The entire slab, eight feet eight inches high, by four feet six inches broad, and one foot three inches thick, is covered behind and before, except where the sculpture intervenes, with an Inscription, in small and admirably formed arrow-headed characters. It was fixed on a plain square pedestal, and stood isolated from the building. In front of it was an altar of stone, supported on lions' feet, very much resembling in shape the tripod of the Greeks. It would seem from the altar before this figure, that the Assyrians, like other nations of old, were in the habit of deifying the heroes of their race, and that the king who extended the bounds of the empire to distant lands, and raised temples to the gods, received after his death divine honors.

Unfortunately, the heat of the fire which had consumed the building had also broken this monument in two pieces; it sustained still further damage in its transport to England. The Inscription must have contained, when entire, several hundred lines, and is divided on the back of the slab into two columns. It commences with an invocation to the god Ashur, the supreme lord, the king of the circle of the twelve great gods. Then follow the names of these deities; who, perhaps, presided over the twelve months, corresponding with the same circle in the Egyptian mythology.

About one hundred feet to the east of the above, I discovered a second Temple. Its principal entrance faced the south, and was on the same level as the northwest palace. The gateway was formed by two colossal lions with extended jaws, gathered up lips and nostrils, flowing manes, and ruffs of bristly hair, etc. (Thus have been fulfilled the sure words of prophecy: "Out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image; I will make thy grave, for thou art vile.")—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 299-302, and 309.

Nah. 2:3.—The shield of his mighty men is made red; the valiant men are in scarlet.

ASSYRIAN SCULPTURES.—The shields and the dresses of the warriors are generally painted red in the sculptures discovered among the ruins.—See Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 209, 327, etc.

Nah. 2:4.—The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways.

SCULPTURES OF NIMROUD. —(On the walls of the palace at Nimroud is elaborately sculptured, on marble slabs, a battle-scene, in which occurs the following striking illustration of this text)—The first subject on the upper line represents the king in front of the battle, in his chariot, with his charioteer and shield-bearer. To the sides of the chariot are attached, crossing each other, two quivers full of arrows. Each quiver contains a small bow, and is likewise furnished with a hatchet. The bossed shield of the king is placed at the back of the chariot, serving for further protection: in front is the brass or iron pole, terminating in the head of a swan. The spear is inserted behind the chariot in a place appointed for it, decorated with a human head. The harness and trappings of the horses are rich and elaborate like those of Egypt. Above the royal chariot is the winged divinity, wearing the double-horned cap. He directs his arrows against the enemies of the king. Directly before the king, one of the enemy—perhaps the chief—is falling out from his chariot; while his charioteer, unable to guide the horses, is precipitated in front. Behind one of the king's soldiers has seized a flying enemy, and is about to kill him, notwithstanding the efforts of his companion to drag him off to a place of security. Another of the enemy lies dead; and others are actively flying for refuge towards the outworks of the city—which reach to the shores of a shallow stream running through a woody country. The victorious king has pursued the enemy up to the very confines of the city; which is further protected by a ditch and double wall—and from behind which the enemy are discharging their arrows. The city is represented with embattled towers and arched gateway. From the towers the enemy are shooting arrows and throwing stones, under cover of wicker shields. The last figure—as far as the fracture allows us to see—is that of a person endeavoring to obtain a parley: he holds his slackened bow in his left hand, and his right hand is upraised in the act of bespeaking attention.— Bonomi’s Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 224-227.

Nah. 2:6.—The gates of thy: rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—There was an old prophecy among the Ninevites, received from their forefathers, that their city should never be taken till the river became its enemy: and in the third year of the siege, the river, being swollen with continued rains, overflowed part of the city, and broke down the wall for twenty stadia: then the king, thinking that the oracle was fulfilled, and the river become an enemy to the city, built a large funeral pile in the palace, and collecting together all his wealth, and his concubines and eunuchs, burnt himself and the palace with them all: and the enemy entered the breach that the waters had made, and took the city.—Diod. Sic., lib. ii., c. 26, 27.

Nah. 9.—Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold: for there is none end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Arbaces, having taken the city, distributed the citizens of Nineveh through the country villages, leveled the city with the ground, and transferred many talents of gold and silver to Ecbatana, the royal city of the Medes; and so the empire of the Assyrians was subverted.—Diod. Sic., lib. ii., C. 28.

IDEM.—Belesis pretended that he had made a vow to Belus, that when Sardanapalus should be conquered and his palace consumed, he would carry the ashes to Babylon, and there raise a mound near to his temple; but his true reason for desiring to do this was that he had heard of the gold and silver which lay hidden among the ruins. Arbaces, being ignorant of the plot, granted him permission to carry away the ashes: upon which Belesis prepared shipping and took away great treasures of gold and silver to Babylon.—Diod. Sic., lib. ii., c. 28.

Nah. 2:10.—She is empty, and void, and waste.

GIBBON.—Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great NINEVEH had formerly been erected: the city, and even the ruins, had long since disappeared; the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operation of the two armies.—Decl. and Fall, Vol. VIII., p. 250.

Nah. 3:1.—Woe to the bloody city! it is full of lies and robbery.

That this was the true character of Nineveh at this very time—that its kings delighted in, and made a boast of their cruelties, carnage and robberies, is sufficiently attested by their own records recently brought to light. Take a single example from the

INSCRIPTION OF SENNACHERIB.—Like a herd of sleek oxen of abundant fatness eagerly I attacked and defeated them. Their heads I cut off, like victims, their highly worked decorations I tore off with derision. Like the fall of a great shower, their rings and bracelets I cast down upon the earth in a lofty heap. My faultless horses, yoked to my chariot, through the deep pools of blood, stepped slowly. Of my chariot, as it swept away the slain and the fallen, with blood and flesh its wheels were clogged. The heads of their soldiers, like urkiti, I salted, and into great wicker-baskets I stuffed them.—Inscr. of Senn., column v., lines 74-85.

Nah. 3:1-3.—We to the bloody city!... The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcasses; and there is none end of their corpses.

ASSYRIAN SCULPTURES.—This magnificent description of the assault upon the city of Nineveh is illustrated in almost every particular upon the sculptured slabs that have been dug out of its ruins, and the ruins of neighboring cities. The various kinds of armor, helmets, shields, spears, swords, used in battle and during a siege; the chariots and horses, etc., are all seen in the various bas-reliefs discovered by Botta and Layard.—See Nineveh and its Remains, Vol. II., part 2, chap. 4 and 5.

Nah. 3:13, 15.—The fire shall devour thy bars..., There shall the fire devour thee.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—Taken' by themselves, the prophecies of Nahum appear to be unlikely, if not contradictory, in their reference to the means by which the city of Nineveh was to be destroyed. In one portion we read, “That the gates of the river should be opened," and that” there should be an overrunning flood: "in another," Fire shall devour thy bars—There shall fire devour thee." Unlikely as was this combination of fire and water, in the prophecy, as the means that would ensure the destruction of Nineveh, yet it was true, and the prediction was fulfilled to the very letter.—Blending Lights, p. 315-318.

EDITOR OF PICTORIAL BIBLE.—The statement that Nineveh should be destroyed by fire is most remarkably verified by the state in which its ruins have been found. The appearance of the ruins of the more recent palaces—the palace of Khorsabad, the southwest palace of Nimroud, and the palace of Kouyunjik—proves beyond a doubt that they had been destroyed by fire; while it is quite as clear that the northwest and center palaces of Nimroud owed their ruin to a different cause.— Append. to Vol. III., Note 78.

LAYARD.—The palace of Kouyunjik had been destroyed by fire. The alabaster slabs were almost reduced to lime, and many of them fell to pieces as soon as uncovered. The places which others had occupied could only be traced by a thin white deposit, left by the burnt alabaster upon the wall of sun-dried bricks, and having the appearance of a coating of plaster.... The whole entrance of the southwest palace at Nimroud was buried in charcoal, and the fire which destroyed the building appears to have raged in this part with extraordinary fury.—Nineveh and its Remains, Vol. I., p. 121.

BOTTA.—I must acknowledge I no longer doubt that this monument (the Khorsabad palace) was destroyed by fire. The lower portion contains an enormous quantity of charcoal, and even remnants of burnt beams; besides, the surface of the gypsum, in many places, is evidently converted into plaster, and become friable; to these indications, in short, another sign may be added. I have already mentioned the discovery, during the excavations, of a little ball of clay, bearing a mythological impression. Six more, precisely similar, have since appeared, and, on examination, I perceived that a hole was bored through them still retaining fragments of carbonized string.—Letters, English Trans., 1850.

LAYARD. —In the ruins of the Temple of Nimroud was found a mass of lead, melted by the fire, for embedded in it was the iron head of a hatchet.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 308.

Doom of the Assyrian Power

Nah. 3:16.—Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, D. C. L.—Situated upon a navigable river communicating with the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, Nineveh must have soon formed one of the great trading stations between that important inland sea, and Syria, and the Mediterranean, and must have become a depot for the merchandise supplied to a great part of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Persia. The animals represented on the Black Obelisk, now in the British Museum, and on other monuments—the rhinoceros, the elephant, the double-humped camel, and various kinds of apes and monkeys, show a communication direct or indirect with the remotest parts of Asia. The intercourse with foreign nations, and the practice of carrying to Assyria as captives the skilled artists and workmen of conquered countries, must have contributed greatly to the improvement of Assyrian manufactures. —Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2170.

Nah. 3:17.—Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day; but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—To anyone who has attentively watched the habits of the locust, the comparison of Nahum is not only plain, but very striking. In the evenings, as soon as the air became cool, at Abeih, they literally camped in the hedges and loose stone walls, covering them over like a swarm of bees settled on a bush. There they remained until the next day's sun waxed warm, when they again commenced their march. On a cool day they scarcely move at all from their camps. But when the hot sun beats powerfully upon them, they literally flee away and the place is not known where they are. This is true even in regard to those which have not wings. One wonders where they have all gone to. Yesterday the whole earth seemed to be creeping and jumping, to-day you see not a locust.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 106.

And their place is not known where they are.

LUCIAN.—Nineveh is so completely destroyed, that it is not even possible to say where it stood.— Contempl., c. 23.

Nah. 3:18—O king of Assyria... thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—When the enemy had shut up the king within the city, many nations revolted; each going over to the besiegers, for the sake of their liberty.—Diod. Sic., lib. ii.

Nah. 3:19.—There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The war practices of the Assyrians, as represented on the monuments, were characterized by savage cruelty. Their treatment of captives was particularly cruel. In a sculpture at Khorsabad, for example, Mere is a representation of a man flaying a captive alive. In others, the king is represented holding in one hand a rope, which is attached at its other ends to rings through the lips of certain prisoners; while with the other, he is putting out the eyes of a captive with a sharp-pointed instrument. Many bas-reliefs represent Assyrian soldiers bringing in the heads of the slain, and scribes keeping account of their number, to furnish matter for boasting to the vainglorious and barbarous tyrant. More horrible still, the monuments show clearly that it was an occasional practice of the Assyrians to impale their victims, and the practice seems to have become more common during the latter period of the empire. These infamous usages, taken in connection with the extent and overwhelming success of the Assyrian conquests—as represented on the sculptures, and narrated in the inscriptions—enable us to understand the force and point of the question, " Upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually? "—Piet. Bible, Vol. III., p. 729.

There is no healing of thy bruise.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—In accordance with the announcement of Nahum, we find that Assyria never rose again to any importance, nor even succeeded in maintaining a distinct nationality. Once only was revolt attempted, and then in conjunction with Armenia and Media, the latter heading the rebellion. This attempt took place about a century after the Median conquest, during the troubles which followed upon the accession of Darius Hystaspes. It failed signally, and appears never to have been repeated, the Assyrians remaining thenceforth submissive subjects of the Persian empire. They were reckoned in the same satrapy with Babylon, and paid an annual tribute of 1,000 talents of silver. In the Persian armies, which were drawn in great part from the subject-nations, they appear never to have been held of much account, though they fought in common with other levies.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 189.

Habakkuk

Hab. 1:1.—The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.

DELITZSCH.—Habakkuk delivered his prophecy about the 12Th or 13th year of Josiah, that is, about 630 or 629 B. C.—See Der Prophet Habk., Einl. § 3.

The Chaldeans

Hab. 1:6.—For lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The Chaldeans were cruel and oppressive in their disposition, and prompt and speedy in their assaults and conquests.—Note, In loco.

Hab. 1:8.—Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.

J. BONOMI, F. R. S. L.—In the sculptures of Khorsabad and Nimroud, the swiftness of the horses and the ferocity of the riders are well portrayed. The Chaldean cavalry were proverbial for swiftness, courage and cruelty. Appianus, a Greek poet of Cilicia, in the second century, in speaking of the horses bred about the Euphrates, says, " They are by nature war-horses, and so intrepid that neither the sight nor the roaring of the lion appalls them; and besides, are astonishingly fleet."—Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 283.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, D. C. L.—No one can look at the horses of the early Assyrian sculptures without being convinced that they were drawn from the finest models. The head is small and well-shaped, the nostrils large and high, the neck arched, the body long, and the legs slender and sinewy.—Nin. and its Rems., Vol. II., p. 360.

Hab. 1:15.—They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—There appears to be no mode of fishing now in use which was not known to and practiced by the ancients.—Note, In loco.

WILKINSON.—Angling was a favorite pursuit of the wealthy in Egypt, as well as followed by the poor who could not afford a net.—An. Egypt, Vol. III., p. 53.

Hab. 1:16.—Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag; because by them their portion is fat and their meat plenteous.

MEZENTIUS.—My strong Right Hand, and Sword, assert my stroke. Those only gods Mezentius will invoke.—"Æn.. X.. 773.

CAPANEUS.—Only thou, my Right Hand, be my aid; I condemn the gods, and adore thee as the chief in battle, and the irresistible deity.—Statius, in Thebaid, lib. X.

Hab. 2:5.—He enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people.

JUVENAL.—One world sufficed not Alexander's mind; Coop'd up, he seemed on earth and seas confined.—Sat., X., 168.

Hab. 2:11.—For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.

JUVENAL.—O Corydon, poor, simple Corydon! Do you think aught that a rich man does can be secret? Even though his slaves hold their tongues, his cattle will tell the tale; and his dogs and door-posts, and marble statues.—Sat., IX., v. 102.

Zephaniah

Zeph. 1:1.—The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah... in the days of Josiah ... king of Judah.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—The date of this book is given in the inscription; namely, the reign of Josiah, from 642 to 611 B. C. This date accords fully with internal indications.—Smith's Dict., 3617.

Ashkelon and Ekron

Zeph. 2:4.—Ashkelon shall be a desolation.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—The whole site of Ascalon was before us. Not a house nor a fragment of a house remains standing. Not a foundation of temple or palace can be traced entire. One-half of it is occupied with miniature fields, and vineyards, and fig-orchards; rubbish-mounds here and there among them, and great heaps of hewn stones, and broken shafts, and sculptured slabs of granite and marble. The rude fences exhibit similar painful evidences of ancient wealth and magnificence. The other half of the site was still more fearfully desolate. It is so thickly covered with drift sand, that not a heap of rubbish, not a vestige-of a ruin remains visible, save here and there where the top of column rises like a tombstone above the smooth surface. The sand is fast advancing; it has already covered some of the highest fragments of the southern and western wall, and ere a quarter of a century has passed, the site of Ascalon will have been blotted out forever.—Dismounting I took out my Bible and rear the doom pronounced upon Ascalon by the prophets Zechariah and Zephaniah —"Askelon shall not be inhabited "—"Askelon shall be a desolation." Ascalon is a desolation; it shall not be, CANNOT BE, inhabited! As we stood there and looked, we said to each other, "The eye of the Omniscient God alone could have foreseen such a doom as this."—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 207.

And Ekron shall be rooted up.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—Akîr (Ekron) is a wretched village containing some forty or fifty hovels; its narrow lanes encumbered with heaps of rubbish and filth. It stands on a bare slope, and the ground immediately around it has a dreary and desolate look, heightened by a few stunted trees scattered here and there round the houses. Yet this is all that marks the site and bears the name of the royal city of Ekron. There is not a solitary vestige of royalty there now. With feelings it would be difficult to describe, we took out our Bibles again, and read the doom pronounced upon it by the Hebrew prophet while it yet stood in all the pride of its strength and beauty.-Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 195.

Coast of Philistia

Zeph. 2:5.—Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea-coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the Lord is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Still we rode on eastward over the undulating, desolate plain. Our course lay along the southern border of Philistia, where the plain has been overrun for many a century by the wandering Ishmaelites of Et-Tih, and where extensive cultivation and settled habitation are alike impossible. In our ride of more than thirty miles, that day, we did not meet a human being; and from the moment we left the fields of Gaza till we passed in among the rocky spurs of the hills of Judah, we did not see a single sign of human life. We saw many towns and villages in ruins-white mounds of rubbish on the gray plain.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 213.

Moab and Ammon

Zeph. 2:9.—Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles, and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation.

SEETZEN. —All this country, formerly so populous and flourishing, is now changed into a vast desert.... The far greater part of the country is uninhabited, being abandoned to the wandering Arabs, and the towns and villages are in a state of total ruin.—Travels, p. 34, 37.

BURCKHARDT.—Many of the ruins present no objects of any interest. They consist of a few walls of dwelling-houses, heaps of stones, the foundations of some public edifices, and a few cisterns filled up; there is nothing entire, but it appears that the mode of building was very solid, all the remains being formed of large stones. In the vicinity of Ammon there is a fertile plain interspersed with low hills, which for the greater part are covered with ruins.—Travels in Syria, p. 355, 364.

Desolation of Nineveh

Zeph. it: 13, 14.—And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work.

AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD, D. C. L.—" He will make. Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness:"—The canals which once fertilized the soil are now dry. Except when the earth is green, after the periodical rains, the site of the city, as well as the surrounding country, is an arid yellow waste. Flocks of sheep and herds of camels may be seen seeking scanty pasture amongst the mounds. From the unwholesome swamp within the ruins of Khorsabad, and from the reedy banks of the little streams that flow by Kouyunjik and Nimroud may be heard the croak of the cormorant and the bittern. The cedar-wood which adorned the ceilings of the palaces has been uncovered by modern explorers; and in the deserted halls the hyena, the wolf, the fox, and the jackal, now lie down.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2168.

For he shall uncover the cedar work.

IDEM.—Standing one day on a distant part of the mound, I smelt the sweet smell of burning cedar. The Arab workmen, excavating in the small temple, had dug out a beam, and, the weather being cold, had at once made a fire to warm themselves. The wood was cedar; probably one of the very beams mentioned in the inscription as brought from the forests of Lebanon by the king who built the edifice. After a lapse of nearly 3,000 years, it had retained its original fragrance. Many other such beams were discovered, and the greater part of the rubbish in which the ruin was buried consisted of charcoal of the same wood. It is likely that the whole superstructure, as well as the roof and floor of the building, like those of the temple and palace of Solomon, were of this precious material.—Nin. and Bab., p. 308.

Zeph. 2:15.—This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me.

AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD, D. C. L.—(Of the wealth, luxury, magnificence and power of Nineveh, which prompted to this proud presumptuous speech, the following eloquent description of this explorer of one of her palaces, may serve to convey some idea):—The interior of the Assyrian palace must have been as magnificent as imposing. I have led the reader through its ruins, and he may judge of the impression its halls were calculated to make upon one who, in the days of old, entered for the first time the abode of the Assyrian kings. He was ushered in through the portal, guarded by the colossal lions or bulls of white alabaster. In the first hall, he found himself surrounded by the sculptured records of the empire. Battles, sieges, triumphs, the exploits of the chase, the ceremonies of religion, were portrayed on the walls—sculptured in alabaster, and painted in gorgeous colors. Under each picture were engraved, in characters filled up with bright copper, inscriptions describing the scenes represented. Above the sculptures were painted other events-the king, attended by his eunuchs and warriors, receiving his prisoners, entering into alliances with other monarchs, or performing some sacred duty. These representations were enclosed in colored borders of elaborate and elegant design. The emblematic tree, winged bulls, and monstrous animals were conspicuous among the ornaments. At the upper end of the hall was the colossal figure of the king, in adoration before the Supreme Deity, or receiving from his eunuch the holy cup. He was attended by warriors bearing his arms, and by the priests or presiding divinities. His robes, and those of his followers, were adorned with groups of figures, animals, and flowers, all painted with brilliant colors.—The stranger trod upon alabaster slabs, each bearing an inscription recording the titles, genealogy and achievements of the great king. Several doorways, formed by gigantic winged lions or bulls, or by the figures of guardian deities, led into other apartments, which again opened into more distant halls. In each were new sculptures. On the walls of some were processions of colossal figures—armed men and eunuchs following the king, warriors laden with spoil, leading prisoners, or bearing presents and offerings to the gods. On the walls of others were portrayed the winged priests, or presiding divinities, standing before the sacred trees. The ceilings above him were divided into square compartments, painted with flowers or the figures of animals. Some were inlaid with ivory, each compartment being surrounded by elegant borders and moldings. The beams, as well as the sides of the chambers, may have been gilded, or even plated with gold and silver; and the rarest woods, in which the cedar was conspicuous, were used for the wood-work. Square openings in the ceilings of the chambers admitted the light of day. A pleasing shadow was thrown over the sculptured walls, and gave a majestic expression to the human features of the colossal forms which guarded the entrances. Through these apertures was seen the bright blue of an eastern sky, enclosed in a frame, on which were painted, in vivid colors, the winged circle, in the midst of elegant ornaments, and the graceful forms of ideal animals.—" This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me." —Nineveh and its Remains, Vol. II., p. 262.

How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in.

BISHOP NEWTON.—What probability was there that such a capital, the capital of a great kingdom, a city which was sixty miles in compass, a city which contained so many thousand inhabitants, a city which had walls, according to Diodorus Siculus, a hundred feet high, and so thick that three chariots could go abreast upon them, and fifteen hundred towers at proper distances in the walls of two hundred feet in height: what probability was there, I say, that such a city should ever be totally destroyed? and yet so totally was it destroyed, that (for many centuries) the place was hardly known on which it stood.—"Verily this is the word that the Lord hath spoken, Verily there is a God who judgeth in the earth."— Dissertations, p. 126.

Haggai

Hag. 1:1.—In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the Lord by Haggai.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—The prophecies of Haggai were delivered in the second year of Darius Hystaspes, that is, B. C. 520, at intervals from the first day of the sixth month, to the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month in the same year.—Smith's Dict., p. 979.

The Desire of All Nations

Hag. 2:7.—And the Desire of all nations shall come.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—There was in the heathen world, all along, an implicit expectation—yearning—for a redeemer. The nations yearned, and knew not for what. But still they yearned: for as the earth in its long polar night seeks to supply the absence of the day by the generation of the northern lights, so does each people in the long night of its heathen darkness bring forth in its yearnings, after the Life of Christ, a faint and glimmering substitute for the same. From these dreamy longings after the break of day have proceeded oracles, priests, sacrifices, lawgivers, and the like. Men have nowhere given up hoping; nor acquiesced in the world's evil as the world's law. Everywhere they have had a tradition of a time when they were nearer to God than now, a confident hope of a time when they should be brought nearer again. No thoughtful student of the past records of mankind can refuse to acknowledge that through all its history there has run the hope of a redemption from the evil which oppresses it; nor of this only, but that this hope has continually linked itself on to some single man. The help that is coming to the world, it has ever seen incorporated in a person.... “The DESIRE of all nations shall come," was an expectation as deeply graven on the heart and mind of the heathen as of the Jew. —Hulsean Lectures for 1846, p. 186.

The Latter House

Hag. 2:9.—The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts.

REV. CHARLES BRADLEY.—The first temple was splendid in its gold and silver; its main glory, however, lay in the traces it bore, the indications it held of the divine presence. But here, in this second temple, is that God himself manifest in our mortal flesh; no shadowy, indistinct resemblance of him, but, incarnate before us, One whom he himself calls by his Spirit, “The brightness of his glory and the very image of his person." The long waited for “Consolation of Israel," the” Light that was to lighten the Gentiles," “the Desire of all nations," is here, and his mere presence throws a splendor around this building the earth never saw before.—Practical Sermons, No. IX.

Zechariah

Zech. 1:1—In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah.

REV. J. J. S. PEROWNE, B. D.—Zechariah was contemporary with Haggai; and both these prophets had the same great object before them, namely, the building of the second temple.—Smith's Dict., p. 3598.

The Myrtle Trees

Zech. 1:8.—I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom.

EMERSON.—One who has formed his ideas of the Oriental myrtle from the weak and unhealthy plants which spring in the gardens and hot-houses of the North, must have a faint conception of their real beauty. Even in Italy they are much superior to ours (in England), and I remember to have seen one at Florence whose stem was at least nine inches in diameter. But in Greece, and in the Levant, they are really magnificent. In the Morea I have traveled for hours through an uncultivated tract, whilst the groves of myrtle formed an almost continuous arbor above our heads, covered here and there with the delicate flowers, and exhaling at every motion the most delicious perfume, whilst its dark polished leaves combined coolness with beauty. It is such a scene as this that explains the phrase of Zechariah.—Letters from the Egæan.

Wall of Fire

Zech. 2:5.—For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her.

CAMPBELL.—Travelers protect themselves in the night from the attacks of wild beasts by kindling fires around their camping-place. This was our constant practice in the wilds of Africa, when timber to burn could be obtained. While the fires kept burning we were in perfect safety, as no undomesticated animal, however ferocious, will approach near to fire. Something in its brightness seems to give alarm.—African Light.

CALLIMACHUS.—With Apollo Delos is strong and safe. What is a more firm rampart? Walls, indeed, and stones might fall under the violent blast of Strymonian Boreas, but the god is ever undisturbed.—Hymn in Delon., v. 24.

Filthy Garments Removed

Zech. 3:3, 4.—Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him saving. Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.

REV. T. S. MILLINGTON.—Among the Romans it was common for those who lay under any stigma or accusation to appear in mean or filthy garments to take their trial: on being acquitted, these sordid vestments were taken from them, and their customary dress resuMed. The friends and relations of those who were accused sometimes did the same.—Test. of Heath., p. 459.

CICERO.—The Senate was in grief; the city wore an appearance of mourning, its garments having been changed in accordance with the public resolution of the Senate... when all suddenly the two consuls issue an edict that the senators are to return to their former dress. Whether that change of garment was assumed as a token of grief; or as a form of solicitation, whoever was so cruel before, as to forbid any one mourning for himself or entreating for others? What? Are not men accustomed of their own accord to change their garments on the occasion of danger to their friends?—Pro. Sext., c. 14.

QUINTILIAN.—I am sensible that a mean, careless, dirty dress, worn by an accused party and all his friends, have had wonderful effects in his favor.—Quintil., lib. vi., c. I.

The Stork

Zech. 5:9.—Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the epha between the earth and the heaven.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The black pinions of the stork suddenly expanded from their white body have a striking effect, having a spread of nearly seven feet: and the bird on the wing showing its long bright-red bill, and steering itself by its long red legs, stretched out far behind its tail, is a noble sight.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 248.

Wealth of Tyre

Zech. 9:3.—And Tyrus did build herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets.

BISHOP NEWTON.—The situation of Tyrus was very strong, being on an island; and besides the sea to defend her, she was fortified with a wall of 150 feet in height, and of a proportional thickness. “She heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets," being the most celebrated place in the world for trade and riches,” the mart of nations," conveying the commodities of the east to the west, and of the west to the east.—Disserts., p. 555.

Gaza and Askelon

Zech. 9:5.—And the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.

RICHARDSON.—Askelon was one of the proudest satrapies of the lords of the Philistines; now there is not an inhabitant within its walls, and the prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled; when the prophecy was uttered, both of these cities were in an equally flourishing condition, and nothing but the prescience of heaven could pronounce on which of the two, and in what manner, the vial of his wrath should be poured out. Gaza is truly without a king, the lofty towers of Askelon lie scattered on the ground, and the ruins within its walls do not shelter a human being. How is the wrath of man made to praise his Creator! Hath he said, and shall he not do it? The oracle was delivered by the mouth of his prophet more than 500 years before the Christian era, and we behold its accomplishment 1,800 years after that event, and see that the king has perished from Gaza, and that Askelon is not inhabited.—Univer. Hist., Vol. II., p. 204.

Messiah Entering Jerusalem

Zech. 9:9.—Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto, thee: he is just and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

MATTHEW.—And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them and bring them unto me.... And the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? —Matt., 21:1-10.

Staff of Office

Zech. 11:10.—And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I made with all the people.

PAXTON. —A trace of this ancient custom is still discernible in our own country: the lord steward of England, when he resigns his commission, breaks his wand of office, to denote the termination of his power.—Scrip. Illustrations.

Betray Al and Death of Messiah

Zech. 14:20.—So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

MATTHEW.—And he said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.—Matt., 26:15.

Zech. 11:13.—And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

MATTHEW.—Then Judas, which had betrayed him, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, and he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel; and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.— Matt. 27:3, 5, 6, 7.

Zech. 12:10.-They shall look upon me whom they have pierced.

JOHN.—But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side.—John 19:31.

Zech. 13:1.—In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—This is a beautiful, and significant promise, which many actions and customs in this country (Palestine) may, shed light upon and render emphatic. I have repeatedly found, wells closed up tight and the mouth plastered over with mortar. Such wells are reserved until times of special need when all other sources of, supply have failed. —The Land and the Book, II., 400.

Zech. 13:7.—Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against' the man that is my Fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered.

MATTHEW.—And while he yet spake, lo Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.... Aid they laid hold on Jesus, and led him away to Caiaphas ... Then all the disciples forsook him and fled—Matt. 26: 47, 56, 57,

Bells on Horses

Zech. 14:20.—In that day shall there be on the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD.

AUSTEN H. LAYARD, D. C. L.—The first objects found in this chamber (at Nimroud) were two plain copper vessels about two and a half feet in diameter, and three feet deep.... These were filled with curious' relics. I first took-out a number of small bronze bells with iron tongues, and various small copper ornaments, some suspended to wires.... All the objects contained in these vessels, with the exception of the cups and dishes, were probably ornaments of horse and chariot furniture... The horses of the Assyrian cavalry, as well as those harnessed to chariots, are continually represented in the sculptures with bells round their necks, and in the Bible we find allusion to, this custom.—Nineveh and Babylon, p. 149-152.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—It is the great ambition of the people, here in the East, to adorn all their animals about the neck, head, and haunches, with broad bands of leather, carefully embroidered with coarse beads, shells, or Colored wool; sometimes a sentence is worked upon the bands, and numerous bells of various size and tone are fastened upon them.—Bible Lands, p. 227.

Malachi

VITRINGA.—Malachi delivered his prophecies after the second return of Nehemiah from Persia, and subsequently to the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, or about B. C. 420.—In loco.

Ingratitude

Mal. 1:6.—A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if I then be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts.

ARISTOTLE.—A father is by nature the ruler of his sons; and ancestors, of their descendants; and a king, of his subjects.—Ethics, lib. viii., c. II.

Unworthy Offerings

Mal. 1:8.—And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts.

PLATO.—The Lacedemonians conduct themselves in so slighting a manner towards the gods as to sacrifice animals which are even maiMed.—Alcib. de precat., c. 12.

PLUTARCH.—It is necessary that the beast sacrificed to the gods should be pure, sound, entire and uncorrupt.—De defect. orac., c. 49

The Priests to Be Instructors

Mal. 2:7.—For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—The priests of Egypt are highly reverenced and possess great authority with the people, both for their piety towards the gods and their great wisdom and learning, in which they instruct the people. They are always at the king's elbow, as the chief of his privy council, and assist, advise, and instruct him on all occasions.—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 73

CICERO. —Many things, O priests, have been devised and established with divine wisdom by our ancestors; but no action of theirs was ever more wise than the decree that the same men should superintend both what relates to the religious worship due to the immortal gods, and also what concerns the highest interests of the state, so that it might preserve the republic, as the most honorable and eminent of the citizens, by governing it well, and as priests, by wisely interpreting the requirements of religion. The dignity of the whole republic, the safety of all the citizens, their lives, their liberties, their altars, their hearths, their, household gods, their properties, their conditions as citizens, and their homes, all appear to be committed and entrusted to your wisdom, integrity, and power.—Orat. pro domo, c. I.

The Forerunner

Mal. 3:6.—Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.

MATTHEW.—In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.—Matt. 3:1, 2.

The Immutability of God

Mal. 3:6.—I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consuMed.

SOCRATES.—If God be changed, does He change himself to what is better and fairer, or to the worse and more deformed? To the worse surely, replied Adimantes, if He be changed at all, for we can never say that God is at all deficient in beauty or excellence. You speak most correctly, said I: and this being so, think you, Adimantes, that any one, either of gods or men, would willingly make himself any way worse? Impossible, said he. It is impossible, then, said I, for God to desire to change himself.—Plat. De Rep., I. ii., c. 20.

CICERO.—Plato thinks that to be nothing which begins and perishes; and that that alone is which is always the same. —Cic. Tusc., I. i., c. 24.

TACITUS.—The Jews maintain that the Divine Being is eternal and supreme.; that He is incapable of all change, incapable of ever ending. In their cities, therefore, no images are seen, much less in their temples.—Hist., 1. v., c. 5.

Sacrilege

Mal. 3:8.—Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

PLUTARCH.—Caphis went to Delphi, but was loath to touch the sacred deposits, and lamented to the Amphictyones the necessity he was under, with many tears.—Sull., c. 12.

Communion of Saints

Mal. 3:16.—Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.

LUCIAN.—The Deity now looks down from heaven upon the just and unjust, writes down all that every one does in books, and will, on a day that he has appointed, reward them according to their deserts.—Philop., c. 13.

CICERO.—The gods know what sort of person every one really is; they observe his actions, whether good or bad: they take notice with what feelings, and with what piety he attends to his religious duties, and they are sure to make a difference between the good and wicked.—De Leg., lib. ii., c. 7.

Mal. 3:17.—And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

SOPHOCLES. —

Far above all other gifts doth Jove,

The almighty Father hold true piety.

Whether we live or die, that still survives

Beyond the reach of fate, and is immortal.

—Philop., v. 1443.

The Sun of Righteousness

Mal. 4:2.—Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings.

ZACHARIAS. —The DAY-SPRING from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to, guide our feet into the way of peace.—Luke 1:78, 79.

SIMEON. —Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a LIGHT to lighten the Gentiles, and the GLORY of thy people Israel. —Luke 2:29-32.

JOHN.—There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the LIGHT, that all men through him might believe. He was not that LIGHT, but was sent to bear witness of that LIGHT. That was the true LIGHT, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. —John 1:6-9.

MATTHEW.—The people which sat in darkness saw great LIGHT; and to them, which sat in the region and shadow of death LIGHT is sprung up.—Matt. 4:16.

JESUS OF NAZARETH. —I am the LIGHT of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the LIGHT OF LIFE. —John 8:12.

The New Testament

Matthew

BISHOP WILLIAM THOMSON, D. D.—It may be fairly said that the genuineness of the Four Gospel Narratives rests upon better evidence than that of any other ancient writings. They were all composed during the latter half of the rust Century: those of St. Matthew and St. Mark some years before the destruction of Jerusalem; that of St. Luke probably about A. D. 64; and that of St. John towards the close of the century. Before the end of the second century, there is abundant evidence that the four Gospels, as one collection, were generally used and accepted.—Smith's Dict of Bible, p. 942.

THE EARLY FATHERS. —IRENÆUS, a disciple of Polycarp, knew the four Gospels Hœr., iii., c. I. TATIAN, who died A. D. 170, composed a harmony of the Gospels, under the name of Diatesseron; Eus. Hist. Ee., iv., c. 29. THEOPHILUS, bishop of Antioch, about A. D. 168, wrote a commentary on the Gospels; Hieron ad Alga. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, about 189, Was acquainted with the Four Gospels. TERTULLIAN, born about A. D. 160, knew the Four Gospels, and was called on to vindicate the text of one of them against the corruptions of Marcion. ORIGEN, born A. D. 185, calls the Four Gospels the four elements of the Christian faith. We have another class of evidences for the Gospels in the citations made from them. BARNABAS, CLEMENS ROMANUS, POLYCARP, JUSTIN MARTYR, etc., make numerous quotations from them. There is yet another line of evidence. The heretical sects, as well as the Fathers of the church, knew the Gospels, and appealed to them as authorities.—See Smith's Dict. of Bible, art. “Gospel."

NORTON.—The direct historical evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels consists in the indisputable fact, that throughout a community of millions of individuals, scattered over Europe, Asia and Africa, the Gospels were regarded with the highest reverence, as the works of those to whom they are ascribed, at so early a period that there could be no difficulty in determining whether they were genuine or not, and when every intelligent. Christian must have been deeply interested to ascertain the truth.— Gen. of' Gasp., Additional Notes, p. 269.

BISHOP WILLIAM THOMSON, D. D.—The Gospel which bears the name of St. Matthew was written by that apostle according to the testimony of all antiquity. And we are told on the authority of Papias, Irenæus, Pantænus, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and many other fathers, that this Gospel was first written in Hebrew, i. e., in the vernacular language of Palestine, the Aramaic.—Smith's Dict. of Bible.

PAPIAS.—Matthew wrote the Divine Oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and each interpreted them as he was able. —Euseb. Hist. Ec., iii., 39.

IRENÆUS.—Whilst Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and founding the church, Matthew put forth his written Gospel amongst the Hebrews in their own dialect.—Iren., iii., I.

ORIGEN.—As I have learned by tradition concerning the Four Gospels, which alone are received without dispute by the Church of God under heaven, the first was written by St. Matthew, once a tax-gatherer, afterward an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for the benefit of the Jewish converts.— Euseb. Hist. Ec., vi., 25.

EUSEBIUS. Matthew having first preached to the Hebrews, delivered to them, when he was preparing to depart to other countries, his Gospel, composed in their language.—Hist. Ec., iii., 24.

The World's Expectation

Matt. 1:23.—Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

TACITUS.—Many were under a strong impression that in the ancient books, kept by their priests, a prophecy was contained. That at this very time the power of the East should prevail, and out of Judæa should spring such as should rule over all nations.—Hist., lib. v., c. 13.

VIRGIL.—

The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,

Its course propitious now begins.

The base degenerate iron offspring ends;

A golden progeny from heaven descends.

O chaste Lucina! speed the mother's pains,

And haste the glorious birth! thy own Apollo reigns.

The lovely boy, with his auspicious face,

Shall Pollio's consulship and triumph grace:

Majestic months set out with him to their appointed race.

The fathers' banish'd virtue shall restore;

And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.

The son shall lead the life of gods, and be

By gods and heroes seen, and gods and heroes see.

The jarring nations he in peace shall bind,

And with paternal virtues rule mankind.

—Ecl. IV., v. 3-17.

SUETONIUS.—A firm persuasion had long prevailed through all the East that it was fated for the empire of the world at that time to devolve on some One who should go forth from Judæa.—Vespas., c. 4.

The Savior's Birth

Matt. 2:1.—Now... Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king.

JOSEPHUS.—This Herod—Herod the Great—was the second son of Antipater, who was appointed Procurator of Judea by Julius Caesar, B. C. 47, and Cypros, an Arabian of noble descent. At the time of his father's elevation, though only fifteen years old, he received the government of Galilee, and shortly afterward that of Cœle-Syria. When Antony came to Syria, B. C. 41, he appointed Herod and his elder brother Phasael Tetrarchs of Judea. The next year. Herod was obliged to leave Judea, and fled to Rome (B. C. 40). At Rome he was well received by Antony and Octavia, and was appointed by the Senate King of Judea to the exclusion of the Hasmonæn line., In the course of a few years, by the help of the Romans, he took Jerusalem (B. C. 37), and completely established his authority throughout his dominions.— Antiq., B. xiv. c. 7, 9, 13,

Wise Men of the East

Matt. 2:1, 2.—Behold there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem;' saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and. are come, to worship him.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—From a long observation of the stars, and an exact knowledge of the motions and influences of every one of them, wherein they excel all other nations, they foretell many things that are to happen. The appearance of comets, they say, is significative of good or evil, not only to nations in general, but to kings, and even to private individuals.—Diod. Sic., II, 30.

CICERO.—According to the Chaldeans the birth of infants is regulated by the moon, and they observe and take particular notice of the natal stars with which the moon happens to be in conjunction at the moment of a nativity.—De Div., II., 43.

SENECA.—Certain magi, who by good fortune had been at Athens, visited the tomb of Plato, and there offered, incense to him as a divine being.—Epist. 58; see also Diogenes Laertius, II., 45.

Matt. 2:4, 5.—And he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they him, In Bethlehem of Judea.

THE COMPILER.—The town or village of Bethlehem still remains, under the name Beit-lahm. It is situated some six miles south of Jerusalem, on a narrow, hill ridge, and corn-fields below, as in the days of Ruth and Boaz, with the well a little distance from the gate as when David longed to quench his thirst therefrom, and the wild hills spreading eastward where the shepherds flocks "who kept watch by night " may have wandered. The site and the whole surrounding scene of this town are in perfect agreement with all we read of them in the sacred history; there exists no doubt of Sits identity, nor has there ever been a doubt. Justin Martyr, who wrote within fifty years after the death of the apostle John, mentions that the spot of the Nativity was well known, and pointed out to pious visitors in his day. And 180 years later, in commemoration of the event, the emperor Constantine erected his magnificent Basilica, or Church of the Nativity, over what was then believed to be the very place; that church, after passing through many and various vicissitudes; remains there to the present day, and is now the oldest monument of Christian architecture in the world.—From Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 634; see also Thomson's Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 500-515; and Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 432

Matt. 2:11—And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and, worshipped him; and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

REV. JOSEPH ROBERTS. —In the East, the birth of a son is always a time of great festivity; the relations come together on the occasion, to congratulate' the happy parents, and to present their gifts to the little stranger. Some bring the silver anklets; others the bracelets or earrings, or the silver cord for the loins. Others, however, are the bearers of gold, and a variety of needful articles. The “wise men” did not make presents as a matter of charity, but' to show their affection and respect. When the infant son of a king is shown, the people make their obeisance to him.—Orient. Illust., p. 523.

DR. A. CLARKE.—The people of the East never approach the presence of kings and great personages, without a present in their hands.—Note, In loco.

The Flight into Egypt

Matt. 2:13.—Arise, and take the young child' and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

JOSEPHUS.—Herod had no power or authority in Egypt. And beside this the Jews were about this time encouraged to enter and settle in Egypt; and great numbers of them lived there in the enjoyment of high privileges, civil and religious. They even had a Temple and a Priesthood there, after the pattern of those at Jerusalem. Here, then, Joseph and Mary with their Babe would find a safe and welcome refuge among their own nation, and readily obtain employment and support during their stay. For the above facts, see Jos. Antiq., B. 13, c. 3, § I, 2, etc.

Slaughter of the Innocents

Matt. 2:16.—Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The massacre of the Innocents is profoundly in accordance with all that we know of Herod's character. The master passions, of that able but wicked prince were a most unbounded, ambition, and a excruciating jealousy. His whole career was red with the blood of murder. He had massacred priests and nobles; he had decimated the Sanhedrin; he had caused the High Priest, his brother-in-law, the young and noble Aristobulus, to be drowned in pretended sport before his eyes; he had ordered the strangulation of his favorite wife, the beautiful Asmonæan princess Mariamne, though she seems to have been the only human being whom he passionately loved. His sons Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater—his uncle Joseph—Antigonus and Alexander, the uncle father of his wife— his mother-in-law Alexandra—his kinsman Cortobanus—his friends Dositheus and Gadias, were but a few of the multitudes who fell victims to his sanguinary, suspicious and guilty terrors ... . There is no conceivable difficulty in supposing that such a man would have acted in the exact manner which St. Matthew describes; and the belief in the fact receives independent from various sources. —Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 42-44

JOSEPHUS—There was at this time a sect of men among the Jews called Pharisees; these were believed to have the foreknowledge of things to come by inspiration, and certain of them foretold how God had decreed that Herod's government should cease, and his posterity should be deprived of it. These predictions were told to the king. So the king, for this prophecy, slew the Pharisees; and he slew also all those of his own family who had consented to what the Pharisees foretold. —Antiq., XVII., 2, § 4.

SUETONIUS.—It is related that shortly before the birth of Augustus there was; a prophecy in Rome that a king over the Roman people would soon be born. And the expectation that such a Ruler Would appear prevailed SO strongly, that the Senate, in order to guard against such a danger to the Republic, made a decree that all the male children born in that year should be-destroyed by desertion or exposure; but the Senators, whose wives were pregnant, took means to prevent the execution of the statute, because each of them hoped 'that the prophecy might refer to his own child. Vita August., p. 94.

Matt. 2:22.—Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod.

JOSEPHUS.—And now Herod, (in his last sickness,) altered his Testament ... .and granted the kingdom to Archelaus.... When he had done this he died.... When his death was made public, Salome and Alexis gathered the soldiery together in the amphitheater' at Jericho, and read Herod's letter addressed to them, thanking them for their fidelity and good will to him, and exhorting them to afford his yin Archelaus; whom he had appointed for their king; like fidelity and goad will. After which, Ptolemy, who had the king's seal entrusted to him, read the king's Testament. So there was presently an acclamation made to Archelaus, as King.—Antiquities, XVII:, 8; § I.

The Return to Nazareth

Matt, 2:21, 22.—And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and carne into the land a Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign, in Judea is the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither.

JOSEPHUS.—Archelaus was Herod's own son, and without delay let the nation understand his spirit. Even before his claim to the throne had been confirmed by Caesar, who could either give it to him or not, he had given a speoimen of his future virtue to his subjects, and with what kind of moderation and good administration he would govern them, by that his first action which concerned them, his own citizens, and God himself also, when he made the slaughter of three thousand of his own countrymen at the temple! How then were the people to avoid the just hatred of him, etc.—Antiq., XVII., II, § 2.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—It will be recollected that the death of Herod took place just before the Passover; and Joseph being then commanded to return from Egypt, must, according to all reasonable probability, have reached the borders of Judea, just after the perpetration of this sanguinary act, which, we learn incidentally, was at the Passover, just previous to which Herod died. The news of it, therefore, must have met him on his approach, together with the intelligence that Archelaus did reign. Everyone he met could talk of nothing else-every mouth was full of it; and dreadful as the fact was, it doubtless reached his ears with a thousand circumstances of aggravation. This, with the general character of the prince, may well have made Joseph doubt that he could safely execute his design of remaining in Judea; for there, everything combined to render it probable that Archelaus would by no means hesitate to execute the purpose of his father, should it come to his knowledge, or should he even suspect, that the child was still alive whom Herod supposed he had destroyed.—Daily Illust., p. 150.

Matt. 2:22, 23. —Being warned of God in a dream he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth.

DR. JOHN KITTO, F. S. A.—Galilee was obviously, under the circumstances, the best and safest place for the bringing up of the child Jesus. Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of that province, though not a good man, was a person of mild disposition as compared with Archelaus, with whom he was, moreover, on terms so hostile that there was not the least likelihood that he would, even if demanded, give up the infant Christ into his power.—Daily Illust., p. 151.

John Baptist

Matt. 3:4.—And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey:

ÆLIAN.—There are camels in those regions whose hair equals the Milesian wool in softness. The priests and other chief men wear garments formed of this hair.—Hist. Anim., lib. xvii., c. 34.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The hair of the camel, especially the coarser woolly tufts about the hump and back, is in some places torn off, but more generally, as I have observed, closely shorn once a year, and used for weaving into a coarse thick fabric by the Arab women. It is of this material that the "black tents of Kedar "'are generally constructed, as it is much thicker and stouter than woolen stuff. It is very harsh and rough to the touch, and thus the Baptist's dress was in accordance with the austerity of his life.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 66.

And his meat was locusts and wild honey.

HERODOTUS.—The Nasamonians, a numerous people, in summer leave their flocks and herds upon the sea-shore, and go up the country, where they gather dates.... They also chase the locusts, and, when caught, dry them in the sun, after which they grind them to powder, and, sprinkling this upon their milk, so drink it.—Melpomene, c. 172.

BURCKHARDT.—All the Bedawins of Arabia, and the inhabitants of towns in Nejd and Hedjaz are accustomed to eat locusts. I have seen at Medina and Tayf locust shops, where these animals were sold by measure. In Egypt and Nubia they are only eaten by the poorest beggars. The Arabs in preparing locusts as an article of food, throw them alive into boiling water with which a good deal of salt has been mixed. After a few minutes, they are taken out and dried in the sun; the head, feet, and wings are then torn off; the bodies are cleansed from the salt, and perfectly dried, after which process whole sacks are filled with them by the Bedawins. They are sometimes eaten boiled in butter, and they often contribute materials for a breakfast when spread over unleavened bread mixed with butter.—In Land and Book, II., 107.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—However extensive the Bee colonies of the villages, the number of wild Bees of the same species is far greater. The innumerable fissures and clefts of the limestone rocks, which everywhere flank the valleys, afford in their recesses secure shelter for any number of swarms, and many of the Bedowin, particularly in the wilderness of Judea, obtain their subsistence by bee-hunting, bringing into Jerusalem jars of that wild honey on which John the Baptist fed in the wilderness, and which Jonathan long before unwittingly tasted, when the comb had dropped on the ground from the hollow tree in which it was suspended.—Land of Israel, p. 88.

Matt. 3:11.—Whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.

ROBERTS.—In the East, a respectable man never goes out without his servant or attendant.... When the ground is smooth, or where there is soft grass to walk on, the sandals are taken off, and the, servant carries them in his hand. The devoted and humble John did not consider himself worthy to bear the sandals of his Divine Master.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 523.

Christ at Capernaum

Matt. 4:13.—And leaving Nazareth he came and dwelt h Capernaum, which is upon the seacoast.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Christ chose as the earliest center, of his ministry a bright and busy city, whose marble buildings were mirrored in a limpid sea. That little city was Capernaum. It rose under the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly paradise.... But Capernaum has long since fallen and perished; all that remains to indicate its doubtful site are but a few prostrate fragments.... The shores of that sea are now deserted. With the exception of the decaying remnants of Tiberias and Magdala, there is not a single inhabited spot on its once crowded shores. But the natural features still remain. The lake still lies unchanged in the bosom of the hills, reflecting every varying gleam of the atmosphere like an opal set in emeralds; the waters are still as beautiful in their clearness as when the boat of Peter lay rocking on their ripples; and Jesus gazed into their crystal depths; the cuplike basin still seems to overflow with its flood of sunlight; the air is still balmy with natural perfumes; the turtle-dove still murmurs in the valleys, and the pelican in the waves; and. there are palms, and green fields, and streams, and gray heaps of ruin. And what it has lost in population and activity, it has gained in solemnity and interest. —Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 174-177.

The Sea of Galilee

Matt. 4:18, 21.—And Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishers.... going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets.

DEAN A. P. STANLEY.—The Lake of Galilee abounds in fish of all kinds. From the earliest times— so said the Rabbinical legends—the lake had been so: renowned in this respect, that one of the ten fundamental laws laid down by. Joshua on the division of the country was, that any one might fish with a hook, in the Sea of Galilee, so that they did not interfere with the free passage of boats. Two of the villages on the banks derived their name from their fisheries—the western and eastern Bethsaida, or House-of-fish; and all of them' sent forth their fishermen by hundreds over the lake.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 367.

The Fame of Jesus

Matt. 4:24.—And his fame went throughout all Syria.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The region of the Sea of Galilee (at that day) was occupied by people of many nationalities. The cities and villages were very numerous, and all full of people, the very smallest, according to Josephus, containing no less than 15,000 inhabitants. Four principal roads communicated with the shores of the lake. One led down the Jordan valley on the western side; another, crossing a bridge at the south of the lake, passed through Peræa to the fords of Jordan near Jericho; a third led, through Sepphoris, the gay and rising capital of Galilee, to the famous port of Accho on the Mediterranean Sea; a fourth ran over the mountains of Zebulon to Nazareth, and so through the plain of Esdraelon to Samaria and Jerusalem. Through this district passed the great caravans on their way from Egypt to Damascus; and the heathens who congregated at Bethsaida Julias and Caesarea Philippi must have been" constantly seen in the streets of Capernaum. The waters of the lake also were plowed by 4,000 vessels of every description, from the war-vessel of the Romans to the rough fisher-boats of Bethsaida, and the gilded pinnaces from Herod's palace. Burma, Samaria, Syria, Phœnicia were immediately accessible by crossing the lake, the river, or the hills. The town of Tiberias, which Herod Antipas had built to be the capital of Galilee, and named in honor of the reigning emperor, had risen with marvelous rapidity, with its turreted walls, its strong castle, and the golden house of Antipas, flinging far into the lake the reflection of its marble lions and sculptured architraves. Europe, Asia, and Africa had contributed to its population, and men of all nations met in its market-place. All along the western shores of Gennesareth Jews and Gentiles were strangely mingled, and the wild Arabs of the desert might there be seen side by side, with enterprising Phœnicians, effeminate Syrians, contemptuous Romans, and supple, wily, corrupt Greeks.— (From such a center, how readily and quickly would " the fame of Jesus spread throughout all Syria; " and how natural, and how true to facts, is this statement of the gospel.)—Life of Christ, I., p. 178.

DR. WILLIAM HARRIS RULE.—It is remarkable that a full narrative of communication with Syria, contained in the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius, completely tallies with the words of St. Matthew. Eusebius relates that when the Divinity of our Savior was proclaimed among all men, by reason of the astonishing miracles He wrought, and myriads came to Him from all countries to be healed, a Syrian king, Abgar of Edessa, on the Euphrates, renowned among the nations for his valor, found his body wasting away with a grievous and incurable disease, and sent Him by a courier a letter of request to come and heal him. Eusebius had a copy of the letter taken for him from the records which were then kept at Odessa, the capital of his dominions, and his translation into Greek was, until very lately, the only original of many versions. But the late Dr. Cureton found the Syriac original as it had lain in the archives of Edessa, which were transferred thence to Ecbátana, in Armenia, and from that place to the Natron monastery in Egypt, but now rests in the British Museum. It reads thus:

"ABGAR THE BLACK, sovereign of the country, to Jesus, the good Savior, who has appeared in the country of Jerusalem; Peace. I have heard about Thee, and about the healing which is wrought by Thy hands, without drugs and roots.
For, as it is reported, Thou makest the blind to see, and the lame to walk; and Thou cleansest the lepers, and Thou castest out unclean spirits and demons, and Thou healest those who are tormented with lingering diseases, and Thou raisest the dead. And when I heard all these things about Thee, I settled in my Mind one of two things: either that Thou art God, who hast come down from heaven, and doest these things; or that Thou art the Son of God, and doest these things. On this account, therefore, I have written to beg of Thee that Thou wouldst weary Thyself to come to me, and heal this disease which I have. And not only so, for I have also heard that the Jews murmur against Thee, and wish to do Thee harm. But I have a city, small and beautiful, which is sufficient for two."

There can be no reasonable doubt about the authenticity of this letter. Eusebius had a copy brought to him as it was taken from the original copy soon after A. D. 300, authenticated as part of the public records. Moses of Osrohenè, historian of Armenia, found the same document in the " House of Records," in the century following; and his translation into Armenian, like that of Eusebius into Greek, doubles the assurance that it is not fictitious.—Oriental Records (Historical), p. 173.

And they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with diverse diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—There is an irresistible bias in Orientals, of all religions, to run after the mere shadow of a prophet, or a miracle-worker. A grand fraud was enacted in Lebanon a few years ago, in order to raise the wind to build a church. The water that burst out while the workmen were digging the foundation, it was published abroad, would restore the blind to sight; and quickly multitudes of these unfortunate people, from all parts of Palestine and Syria, and even ship-loads from Egypt, hastened to the spot, to bathe their sore or sightless balls in the wonder-working water. I myself saw long files of “blind leading the blind," marching slowly and painfully on toward the blessed stream, and it was not until great suffering and loss that the insane multitude could be restrained from making the worse than useless pilgrimage. Such are Orientals of this day; and to know what was the character, in these respects, of those to whom Christ preached, we need only study that of the people around us. In nothing does the East of this day throw more light upon New Testament history than just on this point, and it is certainly one of much importance.—The Land and the Book, II., 84.

Christ on the Mountain

Matt. 5:1.—And seeing the multitudes he went up into a mountain: and when he was sat, his disciples came unto him.

LORD NUGENT.—Tradition points to Kurun Hattin, as being this mountain, on which our Lord's great discourse, "the Sermon on the Mount," was delivered. And there seems no reason whatever to doubt, and every reason to give credit to the probable truth of this tradition, strengthened as it is by the internal evidence of its position, which appears to be more in accordance than any other with that described in the Scripture narrative.—Lands Classical and Sacred, II., 218.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The scene of the Sermon on the Mount was in all probability the singular elevation known at this lay as the Kurun Hattin, or “Horns of Hattin." It is a hill with a summit which closely resembles an Oriental saddle with its two high peaks. On the west it rises very little above the level of a broad and undulating plain; on the east it sinks precipitately towards a plateau, on which lies, immediately beneath the cliffs, the village of Hattin; and from this plateau the traveler descends through a wild and tropic gorge to the shining levels of the Lake of Galilee. It is the only conspicuous hill on the western side of the lake, and it is singularly adapted by its conformation, both to form a place for short retirement, and a rendezvous for gathering multitudes. —Life of Christ, I., 250.

Matt. 5:2.—And he, opened his mouth and taught them.

ÆSCHYLUS.—I will speak to thee plainly, as friends ought to open the mouth to one another.— Prom. Vinct v. 610.

VIRGIL.—Then Cassandra opened her mouth, and foretold our destiny.—

Æneid, II., 246.

The Beatitudes

Matt. 5:6.—Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.

ARISTOTLE.—A thirst for philosophy. —De Cœlo, II, 12.

HORACE.—An insatiable hunger and thirst after money.—Lib, 1., Epist.

Matt. 5:8.—Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall set God.

EURIPIDES.—

Bacchus.—The god even now, being near, sees what I suffer.

Pentheus.—Where is he? for at least he is not visible to my eyes.

Bacchus.—Near me; but you, being impious, see him not.

—Bacc., v. 500

Matt. 5:11—Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

PLUTARCH.—Alexander used to say there was something noble in hearing one's self ill spoken of, while doing Well.—Alex., c. 41.

SENECA. —Socrates, who reduced all philosophy to the conduct of sound morality, affirmed that the principal part of wisdom was to discover good and evil: Would you be happy, he says, be not concerned to be thought by some a fool; if anyone should reproach you, contumeliously, let him do it; you can suffer nothing as long as you adhere to virtue.—Epist. 71.

Salt of the Earth

Matt. 5:13.—Ye are the salt of the earth.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS.—Pythagoras? opinion of salt was, that it ought to be set before people as a reminder of justice; for salt preserves everything which it touches.—Pythag. Vit., c. 19.

PLUTARCH—A word or a nod from a person revered for his virtue is of more weight than the most elaborate speeches of other men.—Phoc., c. 5.

But if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—I have often seen just such salt, and the identical disposition of it that our Lord has mentioned. A merchant of Sidon having farmed of the government the revenue from the importation of salt, brought over an immense quantity from the marshes of Cyprus—enough, in fact, to supply the whole province for at least twenty years. This he had transferred to the mountain's, to cheat the government out of some small percentage.

Sixty-five houses in June—Lady Stanhope's village—were rented and filled with salt. These houses have merely earthen floors, and the salt next the ground in a few years entirely spoiled. I saw large quantities of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of men and beasts. “It was good for nothing." Similar magazines are common in this country, and have been from remote ages, as we learn from history both sacred and profane; and the sweeping out of the spoiled salt and casting it into the streets are actions familiar to all men.—The Land and the Book, II., 43.

MAUNDRELL.—In the Valley of Salt, near Gebul, and about four hours' journey from Aleppo, there is a small precipice, formed by the continual taking away of the salt. In this you may see how the veins of it lie. I broke a piece of it, of which, the part that was exposed to the rain and sun and air, though it had the sparks and particles of salt, yet had perfectly lost its savor. The innermost, which had been connected to the rock., retained its savor, as I found by proof.—Early Travels, p. 512.

Light of the World

Matt. 5:14.—Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

MAUNDRELL.—Not far from the Mount of Beatitudes is the city of Saphet, supposed by some to be the ancient Bethulia. This stands upon a very eminent and conspicuous mountain, and is seen far and near; and this "city set on a hill," and so plainly seen from where he sat, as he taught the multitude, may have been pointed out and alluded to by Christ as he spoke these words. And this is the more probable from the fact, that our Lord did often illustrate his discourses by objects that were before the eyes of his auditors.—Journey, p. 115.

The Law Abiding

Matt. 5:18.—For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all he fulfilled.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The New Commandments of the Mount of Beatitudes were not meant to abrogate, but rather to complete the Law which was spoken from Sinai to them of old. That law was founded on the eternal distinctions of right and wrong-distinctions strong and irremovable as the granite bases of the world. Easier would it be to sweep away the heaven and the earth, than to destroy the least letter, one yod—or the least point of a letter, one projecting horn-of that code which contains the very principles of all moral life.—of Christ, I., 260.

Raca and Fool

Matt. 5:22.—Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

LIGHTFOOT. —Raca—a word used by one that despiseth another with the highest scorn: very usual in the Hebrew writers, and very common in the mouth of the nation.—In loco.

BLOOMFIELD.—Thou fool—a term expressive of the greatest abhorrence, equivalent to " thou impious wretch," for in the language of the Hebrews folly is equivalent to “impiety."—In loco.

The Altar

Matt. 5:23, 24.—If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, etc.

JOSEPHUS.—In front of the Temple stood the Altar, fifteen cubits in height, and in breadth and length of equal dimensions, viz., fifty cubits: it was built four-square, with horn-like corners projecting from it; and on the south side a gentle declivity led up to it. Moreover it was made without any iron tool, neither did iron ever touch it at any time.—Jewish Wars, V., 5, § 6.

Sinful Look

Matt. 5:28.—But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

OVID.—That which is not done, only because it is not permitted, is done; for though the body be kept pure, the mind is adulterous.—Amor., lib. iii., eleg. 4.

PLUTARCH.—When Sophocles, who went in joint command with Pericles upon an expedition at sea, happened to praise the beauty of a certain young person, Pericles answered,—A general, my friend, should not only have pure hands but pure eyes.—Pericl., c. 8.

The Right Eye, and Right Hand

Matt. 5:29, 30.—And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.... And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee.

SENECA.—We can never quarrel enough with our vices: I beseech you, Lucilius, to persecute these unceasingly; throw away from you everything that tears the heart; and if you cannot otherwise get rid of it, spare not the heart itself.—Epist., 51.

ROBERTS.—This metaphor is in common use at this day in the East: “I can never give her up; she is my right eye." “That fellow forsake his sins! Never—they are his right eye."—Orient. Ill., p. 524.

Swearing

Matt. 5:34.—But I say unto you, Swear not at all.

ISOCRATES.—Never call God to witness for the sake of your own advantage, even though you might swear truly. —Orat., I.

EPICTETUS.—Avoid swearing, if possible, altogether; if not, as far as possible. —Euchir., 33

PYTHAGORAS.—Reverence an oath.—Aur, car., v. 2.

AULUS GELLIUS.—It is not allowable for the Flamen Dialis to swear on any, occasion whatever.—Aul. lib. x., c. 15.

Matt 5:34, 35.—Neither by heaven, for it is God's throne: nor by the earth, for it is his footstool.

PHILO, the Jew.—The most high and ancient Cause need not be immediately mentioned in swearing; but the earth, the sun, heaven, and the whole world.— in Pict. Bib., In loco.

MAIMONIDES.—He that swears by heaven, and by the earth, and by the sun, and the like, though his intention be nothing less than to Him who created them, this is not an oath.—Ibid.

A. RHODIUS.—Inviolable oath that Cholchians fear By heaven above and earth below I swear.—Arg., III., 714.

Matt. 5:36.—Neither shalt thou swear by thy head.

HOMER.—I adjure thee by thine own head.—Odyss., XV., 262.

JUVENAL.—Many traces of primeval chastity may have existed under Jove, before the Greeks were yet ready to swear by another's head.—Sat. VI., 15.

MARTIAL—You swore to me by your gods, and by your head, that you would not make me your heir.—Mart., lib. ix., epgr. 48.

Retaliation

Matt. 5:38.—Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

DR. A. CLARKE.—This was the Law of Moses (Ex. 21:24); and the Greeks and Romans had the same law. So strictly was it attended to at Athens, that if a man put out the eye of another who had but one, the offender was condemned to lose both his eyes, as the loss of one would not be an equivalent misfortune. It seems that the Jews had made this law (the execution of which belonged to the civil magistrate) a ground for authorizing private resentments, and all the excesses committed by a vindictive spirit.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 5:39.—But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

CICERO.—It will appear expedient that a man should not only be munificent in giving, but also that he should not be harsh in exacting; conceding to many much that is his own right, and shunning disputes as far as he can, and, even a little more than he can conveniently.—De Offic., II., 18.

Treatment of Enemies

Matt. 5:43.—Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.

MOSES.—Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.—Deut. 23:6.

MAIMONIDES.—A Sew sees a Gentile fall into the sea, let him by no means lift him out; true, it is written, " Thou shalt not rise up against the blood of thy neighbor: "-but this is not thy neighbor.—In Adam Clarke's Com.

Matt. 5:44.—But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.

PLATO.—It is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much one may have suffered from him.—Crito, c. 10.

ARISTOTLE.—It is not the province of a magnanimous man to be mindful of injuries, but rather to overlook them.—Arist's Eth., IV., 3.

M. ANTONINUS.—It is the part of a man to love even those who offend him, —M. Ant., VII., 22.

SOCRATES.—I bear no resentment toward those who condemned me, or against my accusers.—Plat. Socrat. Apol., c. 33.

Matt. 5:45.—That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for lie maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

STRABO.—It has been justly said that men resemble the gods most chiefly in doing good.—Strab., X., 3.

M. ANTONINUS.—The gods, though immortal, do not grudge through so great a duration of time to bear with so many wicked ones of every sort; nay more, they take all manner of care of them: and Bost thou who art so soon to perish grow weary of bearing with them; and that, too, being thyself one of them? M. Ant., VII., 70.

IDEM.—The gods act with clemency towards such, and reach out to them their helping hand, that they may obtain health, and riches, and glory; such is their goodness. You may do the same: or say, what hinders you.—M. Ant., VII., 70.

Matt. 5:48.—Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

M. ANTONINUS. —It will be a great advantage to you, to remember this of the gods, that they do not wish us to flatter them, but to imitate them. —M. Ant., X. 8.

Alms Unseen

Matt. 6:1.—Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

EPICTETUS.—A wise and good man doth nothing for appearance, but for the sake of having acted well.—Epict., III., 24.

Matt. 6:2.—Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites, etc.

MARTIAL.—It makes a difference whether a man is good, or only wishes to appear so.—Mart., lib. viii., Epig. 38.

Matt. 6:3.—But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.

M. ANTONINUS.—A good man, when he has done any meritorious act, makes no noise about it: and it may almost be said he knows not that he has done it. —M. Ant., V., 6.

Prayer in Secret

Matt. 6:5.—And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—A traveler in the East is constantly reminded of this practice, reprehended in the Pharisees, because they did it “to be seen of men." In Moslem countries, Palestine among them, nothing is more common than to see men at their prayers in the open air and in public places—in the streets—the squares—the markets—the shops—the coffee—houses—by the sea—shore—in the fields—or in the woods.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

ROBERTS.—False religion has ever been fond of show; hence its devotees have assumed a greater appearance of sanctity, as if to make up for the deficiency of real worth. Perhaps few systems are so replete with the show of religion as Hinduism. Its votaries may be seen in every street with uplifted hands, or bespattered bodies: they are standing before every temple, making their prostrations, or repeating their prayers!—Oriental Illustrations, p. 524.

Vain Repetitions

Matt. 6:7.—But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

PROF. C. E. STOWE, D. D.—It is a characteristic of all superstitious devotion to repeat endlessly certain words, especially the names of the deities invoked. When the priests of Baal besought their god for fire to kindle their sacrifice, they cried incessantly for several hours, in endless repetition, O Baal hear us, O Baal hear us, O Baal hear us, etc. When the Ephesian mob was excited to madness for the honor of their goddess, for two hours and more they did nothing but screech with the utmost tension of voice, Great the Diana of the Ephesians, Great the Diana of the Ephesians, Great the Diana of the Ephesians, etc. In the same way, in the devotions of pagan Rome, the people would cry out more than five hundred times, without ceasing, Audi, Cesar; Audi, Cæsar; Audi, Cæsar; etc. Among the Hindus, the sacred syllable, Om, Om, Om, is repeated as a prayer thousands of times uninterruptedly.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2705.

God Our Father

Matt. 6:9.—After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven, etc.

EPICTETUS.—Ulysses knew that no human creature is an orphan; but there is a Father who always, and without intermission, takes care of all. For he had not merely heard it, as a matter of talk, that Jupiter was the Father of mankind; but he esteemed and called him his Father, and performed all that he did with a view to him.—III., 24.

MAXIMUS TYRTIUS.—God the Father and Maker of all things that exist.— Diss., 38.

Forgiveness

Matt. 6:15.—If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

EPICTETUS.—What then? Shall I not hurt him who hath hurt me? Consider, first, what hurt is; and remember what you have heard from the philosophers. For if both good and evil consist in choice, see whether what you say does not amount to this—" Since he hath hurt himself, by injuring me, shall I not hurt myself by injuring him?”—Epict., ii., 10.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS. —If to inflict an injury is in itself a wrong thing, it must be equally wrong to retaliate; for if he who commits an injury is more guilty than he who suffers it, he who commits a similar injury in retaliation renders himself equally guilty. And if he who inflicts a wrong does wickedly, he who renders evil for evil does no less wickedly, though he may seem only to avenge an injury.—Diss., 2.

Treasures on Earth

Matt. 6:19.—Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

MARTIAL.—

Thieves may break locks, and with your cash retire;

Your ancient seat may be consumed by fire;

Debtors refuse to pay you what they owe;

Or your ungrateful field the seed you sow;

You may be plundered by a jilting whore;

Your ships may sink at sea with all their store;

Who gives to friends, so much from fate secures;

That is the only wealth forever yours.

—Mart., lib. v., epig. 42.

BARTOLOMEO.—At Pondicherry, I met with an incident which excited my astonishment. I had put my effects into a chest which stood in my apartment, and being one day desirous of taking out a book in order to amuse myself with reading, as soon as I opened the chest, I discovered in it an innumerable multitude of white ants, or rather termes. When I examined the different articles, I observed that these little animals had perforated my shirts in a thousand places, and gnawed to pieces my books, my girdle, my amice, and my shoes, They were moving in columns, each behind the other: and each carried away in its mouth a fragment of my effects which were more than half destroyed. Critica Biblica.

Two Masters

Matt. 6:24.—No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

PLATO.—The more men indulge in the desire of wealth, the less will they esteem virtue; for virtue is so at variance with wealth, that supposing each to be placed at the opposite end of a balance, they would always weigh the one against the other.—De Rep., VIII., 6.

Anxiety for the Future

Matt. 6:25.—Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

SOCRATES.—I go about doing nothing else than persuading you, both young and old to take no care either for the body or for riches, prior to or so much as for the soul, how it may be most perfect, telling you that virtue does not spring from riches, but riches, and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.—Socr. Apol., 17.

Matt. 6:26.—Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

THE COMPILER.—The neighborhood of the Sea of Galilee was enlivened nearly the year round (as it still is) by flocks of birds of various kinds. These, wheeling over the heads of the listening multitude on the mount, in their graceful and sportive and happy flights, would present a striking contrast with the toiling and careworn dwellers of the plain below—sowing, reaping, and stowing away. Such a sight, we may well suppose, it was that led to the touching appeal, Behold the fowls of the air, etc.—In Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 664.

Matt. 6:28.—Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

THE COMPILER.—Summer now coming on, the brilliantly-colored flowers of Palestine were everywhere putting forth their beauties. Variegated tulips, purple and red gladioli, and scarlet anemones (to which the common name shûsan, "lilies," was applied) abounded on the plain of Gennesaret, and covered the hillsides around the Master and the listening throng; and to deepen the impression made by the appeal to the fowls of the air, they are bidden again to fix their eyes and their attention on these—Consider the lilies of the field, etc.—In Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 664.

SIR J. E. SMITH.—I am of the opinion that the plant alluded to by the Savior was the Amaryllis lutea, whose golden liliaceous flowers afford one of the most brilliant and gorgeous objects in nature, as the fields of the Levant are overrun with them; to them the expression of "Solomon in all his glory" not being arrayed like one of them, is peculiarly appropriate.—In Pict. Bible.

Matt. 6:30.—Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

DR. A. CLARKE.—The inhabitants of the East, to this day, make use of dry straw, withered herbs, and stubble, to heat their ovens.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 6:31, 32.—Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed.... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

JUVENAL.—

Receive my counsel, and your wisdom prove;

Intrust thy fortune to the powers above:

Leave them to manage for thee, and to grant

What their unerring wisdom sees thee want.

In goodness, as in greatness, they excel;

O that we loved ourselves but half so well.

—Sat. X., v. 346.

Matt. 6:34.—Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

SENECA.—Nothing can be more miserable, nothing more ridiculous, than to be always in fear: what madness is it for a man to anticipate his misfortunes! Epist., 96.

IDEM.—O when will you behold the day, when you shall know that time does not belong to you; when in a pleasing tranquility, and the full enjoyment of self-complacency, you are regardless of tomorrow.—Epist., 32.

The Mote and Beam

Matt. 7:3.—And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

MENANDER.—No one sees faults clearly in himself; but if another behave ill, he will observe it.—.Apud. Stob., XXIII.

PLUTARCH.—Why are you so sharp-sighted, O malicious fellow, after your neighbor's faults, while you overlook your own?—De trap. an. c. 8.

Pearls before Swine

Matt. 7:6.—Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—" Pearls “are a common Eastern metaphor for precious sayings, or well-chosen sacred words. Thus a short didactic poem is called by the Arabs, "A string of Pearls."—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 299.

Golden Rule

Matt. 7:12.—Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.

SENECA.—Do as you would have others do to you. —Epist., 92.

HERODOTUS.—I shall certainly avoid doing that myself which I deem reprehensible in another.—Thalia, c. 143.

The Wide and the Narrow Gate

Matt. 7:13,14.—Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

PLATO.—Hesiod is pointed out by many as a man of wisdom, because he asserted that the road to wickedness is smooth, and offers itself to be traversed without difficulty, being very short.—De Leg., lib. iv., c. 9.

XENOPHON.—Sensuality, to Hercules.—I will lead you through those paths which are smooth and flowery, where every delight shall court your enjoyment, and sorrow and pain shall never appear.

Virtue's response.—The wise governors of the universe have decreed that nothing great, nothing excellent, shall be obtained without care and labor: they give no real good, no true happiness, on other terms. Memorabilia, lib. ii., c. I.

HORACE.—Virtue's paths untrodden lie, Those paths that lead us upward to the sky. —Hor., lib. iii., car. 24.

The Tree and Its Fruit

Matt. 7:16.—Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

THEOGNIS.—

No lovely rose,

Or hyacinth, from the rude bramble grows;

Nor from a slavish and degraded breed

Can gentle words or courteous acts proceed.

—Theog, v. 537.

EPICTETUS.—How can a vine have the properties, not of a vine, but of an olive tree? or an olive tree, not those of an olive, but of a vine?—Epict., lib. ii., c. 20.

SENECA.—Good does not spring from evil, any more titan a fig from an olive tree. Every leaf and fruit answers its own seed: that which is good cannot degenerate: as what is fit and honorable cannot rise from what is wrong and vile, so neither can good spring from evil: for fit, and good, is the same thing. -Eibist., 87.

Hearing and Doing

Matt. 7:24-26.—Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth, etc.

THE COMPILER.—In Palestine, especially in Galilee, heavy rains, rapidly flowing together among the hills, often form torrents that rush down unexpectedly with a violence that tears up the soil and sweeps away whatever may lie in their course. This was what the Savior doubtless had many times witnessed in the parts of Nazareth, as it is still what often occurs there, and His eye while on the Mount might have fallen upon the jagged traces, which some such a torrent had recently plowed down the side of a neighboring hill, which His discerning mind seized and converted into a most appropriate close to his wonderful discourse—" Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, etc."—In Present Conflict of Science with Religion, 15. 665.

The Wondrous Teacher

Matt. 7:28, 29.—And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

PROF. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The teaching of their scribes was narrow, dogmatic, material; it was cold in manner, frivolous in matter, second-hand, and iterative in its very essence; with no freshness in it, no force, no fire; servile to all authority, opposed to all independence; at once erudite and foolish, at once contemptuous and mean; never passing a hair's breadth beyond the carefully-watched boundary line of commentary and precedent; full of balanced inference and orthodox hesitancy, and impossible literalism; intricate with legal pettiness and labyrinthine system; elevating mere memory above genius, and repetition above originality; concerned only about priests and Pharisees, in Temple and Synagogue, or School, or Sanhedrim, and mostly occupied with things infinitely little. It was not indeed wholly devoid of moral significance, nor is it impossible to find here and there, among the debris of it, a noble thought; but it was occupied a thousand fold more with Levitical minutia; about mint, and anise, and cumin, and the length of fringes, and the breadth of phylacteries, and the washing of cups and platters, and the particular quarter of a second when new moons and Sabbath-days began.—But this teaching of Jesus was wholly different in its character, and as much grander as the temple of the blue heaven under which it was uttered was grander than the stifling synagogue or Crowded school.... It dealt not with scrupulous tithes and ceremonial cleansing, but with the human soul, and human destiny, and human life-with Hope, and Charity, and Faith. There were no definitions in it, or explanations, or "scholastic systems," or philosophic theorizing, or implicated mazes of difficult and dubious discussion, but a swift intuitive insight into the very depths of the human heart-even a supreme and daring paradox that, without being fenced round with exceptions or limitations, appealed to the conscience with its irresistible simplicity, and with an absolute mastery stirred and dominated over the heart. Springing from the depths of holy emotions, it thrilled the being of every listener as with an electric flame. In a word, its authority was the authority of the Divine Incarnate; it was a Voice of God, speaking in the utterance of man; its austere purity was yet pervaded with tenderest sympathy, and its awful severity with an unutterable love. It was, to borrow the image of the wisest of the Latin Fathers, a great sea whose smiling surface broke into refreshing ripples at the feet of their little ones, but into whose unfathomable depths the wisest might gaze with the shudder of amazement and the thrill of love.—(How obviously truthful and natural, then, the last touch of the evangelist in his account of the great Sermon on the Mount—"And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the Scribes,")—Life of Christ; Vol. I., p. 265-269.

The Leper Healed

Matt. 8:2.—And behold there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

REV. HENRY HAYMAN, B. D.—The Egyptian and Syrian climates, but especially the rainless atmosphere of the former, are very prolific in skin diseases.

The heat and drought acting for long periods upon the skin, and the exposure of a large surface of the latter to their influence, combine to predispose it to such affections. There was a variety of the disease in Palestine.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1630.

Matt. 8:3.—And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

CICERO.—The power of the Deity is infinite. As nothing but the will is necessary for the motion of our bodies, so the divine will of the gods can, with the like ease, create, move, and change all things.—De Nat. Deor., III., 39.

The Centurion's Faith

Matt. 8:5.—And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, etc.

DEAN STANLEY.—About the beginning of the Christian era, the basin of the Sea of Galilee was the home of a vast population, and a focus of life and energy.... The tax-gatherers were there, sitting by the lake side.... The Roman soldiers were there, quartered with their slaves, to be near the palaces of the Herodian princes, or to repress the turbulence of the Galilean peasantry.—S. and P., p. 369.

Matt. 8:9.—For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

GIBBON.—The strictest subordination and obedience were exacted of every Roman soldier. On his first entrance into the service, an oath was administered to him with every circumstance of solemnity. He promised to submit his own will to the commands of his leaders though he should sacrifice his life thereby, It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy.... The Roman infantry was divided into three principal classes, each of which was composed of thirty companies, and each company contained two hundred men. Over every company were placed two Centurions, one to each hundred; who were, however, far from being equal in rank and honor, though possessing the same office. One was under authority to the other.—Decline and Fall of R. E., Vol. I., chap. I.

CESAR.—There were in that legion two Centurions of great bravery.—De Bel. Gal., V. 44.

LIVY.—Lucius Virginius held an honorable rank among the centurions in the camp.—Livy, III., 44.

Matt. 8:11, 12.—And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

SOCRATES.—If on arriving at Hades, released from those who pretend to be judges, one should find those who are true judges, and who are said to judge there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, Æacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the demigods as were just during their own life, would this be a sad removal? At what price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus, Hesiod, and Homer? I should be willing to die often if this be true.—Apol. Socr., c. 32.

CICERO.—O glorious day! when I shall depart to that Divine company and assemblage of spirits, and quit this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have spoken before, but also to my friend Cato, than whom never was better man born.—.De Senec., c. 23.

Peter's Wife's Mother

Matt. 8:14, 15.—And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she arose and ministered unto them.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—The miracles of Christ—while they are not nature, so neither are they against nature. Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we know, they are, but not contrary to it.... The healing of the sick can in no way be termed against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed was against the true nature of man—that it is sickness which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should term the miracle not the infraction of a law, but behold in it the lower law neutralized, and for the time put out of working by a higher; and of this abundant analogous examples are evermore going forward before our eyes. Continually we behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral; yet we say not, when the lower thus gives place in favor of the higher, that there was any violation of law,—that anything contrary to nature came to pass; rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swallowing up the law of a lesser. Thus, when I lift my arm, the law of gravitation is not, as far as my arm is concerned, denied or annihilated; it exists as much as ever, but is held in suspense by the higher law of my wilt... So in a miracle of healing, the law of disease, as to its power and progress, is suspended, by the Divine will, so that the original law of health flows on again.—Notes on the Miracles of Christ, p. 20, 21.

The Great Tempest

Matt. 8:23, 24.—And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—Small as the Lake of Galilee is, and placid, in general, as a molten mirror, I have repeatedly seen it quiver, and leap, and boil like a caldron, when driven by fierce winds from the eastern mountains, and the waves ran high—high enough to fill, or “cover " the ships, as Matthew has it. In the midst of such a gale “calmly slept the Son of God, in the hinder part of the ship, until awakened by the terrified disciples."—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 59.

REV. J. P. NEWMAN, D. D.—It was while riding over this broad plateau that we were startled by one of those squalls peculiar to this inland sea. The air had been quiet, the lake calm, and the heavens were cloudless, but within five minutes the wind blew a gale, the sea became troubled, the waves rolled high, and dashed wildly on the shore. It was a repetition of that scene when the disciples were sailing over the sea; when “Jesus, was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow." The natural causes operating and producing such effects in that distant age are still in force. The sea is 600 feet lower than the ocean; the mountains on the east and north rise to a great height, and their sides are furrowed with deep and wild ravines; and the temperature of this volcanic basin differing from that of the mountains above, these profound gorges serve as vast conductors, through which, at certain periods, the cold winds from above rush suddenly down, causing a tempest in an unexpected moment.—From Dan to Beersheba, p. 406.

And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—At the extreme end of the stern is often seen a small, low bench, upon which the steersman sometimes sits for a change. Here the captain often rests his head when, as is his custom, he sleeps upon the quarter-deck. This little bench may generally be seen in the fishing crafts, particularly those which ply on the Sea of Galilee, a circumstance which explains the nature of the "pillow" upon which rested the head of our Lord during the sudden storm narrated in the Gospel. Passengers of distinction alone are allowed a place upon the quarter-deck.—Bible Lands, p. 62; see also Rob Roy, p. 358.

Demoniacs from the Tombs

Matt. 8:28-32.—And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass that way, etc.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The name of this prostrate town, my Bedawin guide told me, is Kerza, or Gersa. I identify these ruins with the long-lost site of "Gergesa," where our Lord healed the two men possessed with devils, and suffered those malignant spirits to enter into the herd of swine.... In this Gersa we have a position which fulfills every requirement of the Gospel narrative, and with a name so near that in Matthew as to be in itself a strong corroboration of the truth of this identification. It is within a few rods of the shore, and an immense mountain rises directly above it, in which are ancient tombs, out of some of which the two men possessed of the devils may have issued to meet Jesus. The Lake is so near the base of the mountain that the swine, rushing madly down it, could not stop, but would be hurried on into the water and drowned.... All is perfectly natural just at this point, and here, I suppose, it did actually occur.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 34-36.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Dr. Thomson visited at the mouth of the Wady Semakh, directly opposite Gennesaret, some ruins, called by his guide Kerza or Gersa, which he identifies with the "Gergesa" of St. Matthew. The discovery is most interesting and important. I visited the spot myself from a boat, and observed the remains of a village and a khan; but, unfortunately, I was not aware at the time of the interest attaching to the place, and did not ascertain, or at least note down, the name given to it by my boatmen. In one important particular my memory corroborates the statement of Dr. Thomson, viz., that while there is here no precipice, running sheer to the sea, but a narrow belt of beach, the bluff behind is so steep, and the shore so narrow, that a herd of swine, rushing frantically down, must certainly have been overwhelmed in the sea before they could recover themselves.—Land of Israel, p. 465.

CAPTAIN LIGHT.—I left Tiberias early the following morning, coasted along the lake, and trod the ground celebrated for the miracle of the unclean spirit, driven by the Savior among the swine. The tombs still exist in the form of caverns, on the sides of the hill that rise from the shore of the lake; and from their wild appearance, may well be considered the habitation of men exceeding fierce, possessed by a devil. They extend for more than a mile from the present town.—Travels in Egypt and the East.

There met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce.

WARBURTON.—On descending from the heights of Lebanon, I found myself in a cemetery, whose sculptured turbans showed that the neighboring village was Moslem. The silence of the night was now broken by fierce yells and howlings, which I discovered proceeded from a naked maniac, who was fighting with some wild dogs for a bone. The moment he perceived me, he left his canine comrades, and bounding along with rapid strides, seized my horse's bridle, and almost forced him backward over the cliff, by the grip he held of the powerful Mameluke bit.—Crescent and Cross.

Take up Thy Bed

Matt. 9:6.—Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL.—On the morning after my arrival at Bombay, I got up with the first blush of the dawn, and went out in search of adventures. I had not gone far before I saw a native sleeping on a mat spread in the little verandah extending along the front of his house. He was wrapped up in a long robe of white linen or white cotton cloth. As soon as the first rays of the sun peeped into his rude sleeping- chamber, " He arose, took up his bed, and went into his house”—i. e., having rolled up his mat, which was all the bed he had or required, he walked into the house with it.—Fragments of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III.

Receipt of Custom

Matt. 9:9.—And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.F. R. S.—Lying as Capernaum did, at the nucleus of roads which diverged to Tyre, to Damascus, to Jerusalem, and to Sepphoris, it was a busy centre of merchandise, and therefore a natural place for the collection of tribute and taxes.—Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 245.

Publicans

Matt. 9:11.—Why eateth your master with publicans and sinners?

CICERO.—The office of a publican was the basest of all livelihoods.—De Offic., 42.

STOBÆUS.—Publicans were the wolves and bears of human society.—Serm., II., 34.

PROF. E. H. PLUMPTRE, M. A.—The casuistry of the Talmud enumerates three classes of men with whom promises need not be kept—murderers, thieves, and publicans (Nedar., III., 4). No money known to come from them was received into the aims-box of the synagogue, or the Corban of the temple (Baba Kama, x. I). They were not fit to sit in judgment, or even to give testimony (Sanhedr., f. 25, 2).—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2637.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—If we can imagine an Irish Roman Catholic in Ireland undertaking the functions of a Protestant tithe proctor, we can realize the detestation in which the publicans were held by the Jews.—Life of Christ, I., 245, n.

Matt. 9:12.—But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

PLATO.—To those who are not sick the physician is useless; and the pilot to those who do not sail.—De Rep., I., 7.

PHOCION.—The good have no need of an advocate.—Plut. Phoc., c. to.

New Wine and Old Bottles

Matt. 9:17.—Neither do men put new wine into old bottles; else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, etc.

THE COMPILER.—Wine-bottles made of skin are mentioned by Homer, Herodotus, Virgil, and many other of the classic writers.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The grape juice which is to undergo the process of fermentation is put into skins, which are either entirely new, or which have been carefully examined and found able to withstand the pressure. These skin-bottles have been used in the East from time immemorial, and are still employed throughout the country as far as Persia, also in Northern Africa, and even in Spain-a relic doubtless of the Moors.—Bible Lands, p. 121.

The Disciples Sent Forth to Preach

Matt. 10:9, 10.—Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses; nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The instructions given to the primitive evangelists may be thus expounded:—" Provide neither silver, nor gold, nor brass in your purses. "You are going to your brethren in the neighboring villages, and the best way to get to their hearts and their confidence is to throw yourselves upon their hospitality. Nor was there any departure from the simple manners of the country in this. At this day the farmer sets out on excursions quite as extensive, without a para in his purse; and the modern Moslem prophet of Tarshîha thus sends forth his apostles over this identical region. Neither do they encumber themselves with two coats. They are accustomed to sleep in the garments they have on during the day, and in this climate such plain people experience no inconvenience from it. They wear a coarse shoe, answering to the sandals of the ancients, but never take two pair of them; and although the staff is an invariable companion of all wayfarers, they are content with one.—The Land and the Book, Vol. I., p. 533.

Matt. 10:12.—And when ye come into a house, salute it.

SCHÖTTGEN. —When traveling in the East, no one need ever scruple to go into the best house of any Arab village to which he comes, and he will always be received with profuse and gratuitous hospitality. From the moment we entered any house, it was regarded as our own. There is not an Arab you meet who will not empty for you the last drop in his water-skin, or share with you his last piece of black bread. The Rabbis said that Paradise was the reward of willing hospitality.—Hor. Hebr., 108.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The salute was the immemorial Shalom lakem, which was believed to include every blessing.—Life of Christ, Vol. I., 364.

Persecution Foretold

Matt. 10:18.—And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This prediction was completely and abundantly fulfilled. The Apostles were once and again brought before the council at Jerusalem. Paul stood before Felix and Festus, governors of "Judea. Great numbers of Christians and Christian teachers were summoned into the presence of Pliny, governor of Bythinia. Peter is said to have been brought before Nero, John before Domitian, Roman emperors; and others before Parthian, Scythian and Indian kings. The fulfillment of this prophesy is a signal evidence that Christ possessed a knowledge of the future. Few things were more improbable, when this was uttered, than that the fishermen of Galilee would stand before the illustrious and mighty monarchs of the East and the West.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 10:21.—And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Were there no evidence that this had been done, it would scarcely be credible. The ties which bind brothers and sisters, and parents and children together, are so strong that it could scarcely be believed that division of sentiment on religious subjects would cause them to forget these tender relations. Yet, dreadful as this prediction was, history assures us, that it has been fulfilled, and that all this has been done. Incredible as it seems, parents and children, and husbands and wives, were found wicked enough to deliver up each other, to the most cruel deaths on account of their attachment to the Gospel.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 10:22.—And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.

REV. ALFRED NEVIN, L. B., D. D.—Tacitus, the Roman historian, like a true Pagan, says, “that the Christians were convicted of enmity to the human race." Jews hated them as revolters from their own religion. Pagans could tolerate each other, and respect and worship each other's gods. But Christians abhorred all Paganism, and so all Pagans abhorred them; thus Christians were hated of all men, whether Jews or Gentiles.—Popular Expositor, In loco.

Matt. 10:28.—And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

SOCRATES.—They may, indeed, kill, but hurt me they cannot.—In Epict., lib. i., C. 29.

ÆSCHYLUS.—The devouring flames, my son, that waste.

The body of the dead, touch not the soul.—Choeph., v. 321.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—Socrates yielded his body to be bound, but by no means his soul, over which the Athenians had no power.—Max. Tyr., Diss. 39.

Protection of Providence

Matt. 10:29.—Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Little birds are still strung together and sold for " two farthings " in the towns of Palestine.—Life of C., I., 366.

XENOPHON. —The Deity is so great and of such a nature that he beholds all things at once, and hears all things, and is everywhere present, and takes care of all things unceasingly.—Mentor., I., 4.

Matt. 10:30.—But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

CICERO.—The gods not only provide for mankind universally, but for particular men.—De Nat. Deor., 1., 65.

SOPHOCLES.—All that happens to us is the work of heaven.—Ajax, v. 1036.

DR. JOHN YOUNG.—This awful BEING, unrelated to time, and unrelated to , yet stands in enduring relation to those who are conditioned by both. He is not far from the creation, but very near—near in His entire Godhead, to every atom and every being. Every atom, every being, exists every moment in His immediate, perfect perception. He is the radiant, open, vast eye of the universe, which never slumbers and never shuts, and which is ever as perfectly percipient of the minutest point as if nothing else were within the range of vision.— Creator and Creation, p. 13.

The Baptist's Messengers

Matt. 11:2-6.—Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, etc.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Josephus tells us that this prison was the fortress of Machærus, or Makor, a strong and gloomy castle, built by Alexander Jannæus, and strengthened by Herod the Great—on the borders of the desert, to the north of the Dead Sea, and on the frontiers of Arabia. We know enough of solitary castles and Eastern dungeons to realize what horrors must have been involved for any man in such an imprisonment; what possibilities of agonizing torture, what daily risk of a violent and unknown death. How often in the world's history have even the most generous and dauntless spirits been crushed and effeminated by such hopeless captivity!. ... To a child of freedom and of passion, to a rugged, passionate, untamed spirit like that of John, such a prison was worse than death. For the palms of Jericho and the balsams of Engedi, for the springing of the beautiful gazelles amid the mountain solitudes, and the reflection of the moonlight on the mysterious waves of the Salt Lake, he had nothing now but the chilly damps and cramping fetters of a dungeon, and the brutalities of such a jailer as a tetrarch like Antepas would have kept in a fortress like Makor. In that black prison, among its lava streams and basaltic rocks, which was tenanted in reality by far worse demons of human brutality and human vice than the " goats " and " satyrs " and " doleful creatures" believed by Jewish legend to haunt its whole environment,—we cannot wonder, if the eye of the caged eagle began to film Among so many miracles wrought by Jesus throughout Galilee, might not one be spared to deliver his unhappy kinsman who had gone before His face to prepare his way before him?.... What wonder, we say again, if the eye of the caged eagle began to film! What more natural than that he should have sent, and asked, "Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another?" —Life of Christ, Vol. I., 289-292.

Corazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum

Matt. 11 20-24.—Woe unto thee Corazin! Woe unto thee Bethsaida!... And thou Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell, etc.

DR. A. CLARKE.—Here ruin, desolation, and the utmost woe are threatened upon these impenitent cities. This prediction of our Lord was literally fulfilled; for, in the wars between the Romans and the Jews, these cities were totally destroyed, so that no traces are now found of Bethsaida, Corazin, or Capernaum.—Note, In loco.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—" Woe unto thee Chorazin! Woe unto thee Bethsaida! " and unto thee Capernaum, “His own city," a yet deeper woe! With such thoughts in his heart, and such words on his lips, he started from the scene of his rejected ministry; and on all this land, and most of all on that region of it, the woe has fallen. Exquisite still in its loveliness, it is now desolate and dangerous. The birds still sing in countless myriads; the water-fowl still play on the crystal mere; the, brooks flow into it from the neighboring hill, " filling their bosoms with pearl, and scattering their path with emeralds; " the aromatic herbs are still fragrant when the foot crushes them, and the tall oleanders fill the air with their delicate perfume as of old; but the vineyards and fruit gardens have disappeared; the fleets and fishing-boats cease to traverse the lake; the hum of men is silent; the stream of prosperous commerce has ceased to flow. The very names and sites of the towns and cities are forgotten; and where they once shone bright and populous, flinging their shadows across the sunlit waters, there are now gray mounds where even the ruins are too ruinous to be distinguishable.... And the very generation which rejected him was doomed to recall in bitter and fruitless agony these peaceful, happy days of the Son of Man. Thirty years had barely elapsed when the storm of Roman invasion burst furiously over that smiling land. He who will may read in the Jewish War of Josephus the hideous details of the slaughter which decimated the cities of Galilee, and wrung from the historian the repeated confession that “It was certainly God who brought the Romans to punish the Galileans," and exposed the people of city after city " to be destroyed by their bloody enemies." —Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. too.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Wherever these cities stood, the absence of remains and the obliteration of their very names more utterly than of those of Sodom and Gomorrah, testify to a fulfillment of that prophetic woe, which, though not denounced against the walls and stones, but against those who dwelt in them, is illustrated by their erasure from the face of the earth—"cast down to hell," lost and forgotten, though consecrated by the presence and mighty works of the Divine Savior. Capernaum in its oblivion preaches to Christendom a sermon more forcible than the columns of Tyre or the stones of Jerusalem. —Land of Israel, p. 448.

The Hungry Disciples Defended

Matt. 12:1.—At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—I have often seen my muleteers as we passed along the wheat fields, pluck off ears, rub them in their hands, and eat the grains, just as the Apostles are said to have done. This is allowable. The Pharisees did not object to the thing itself, only to the time when it was done.—Land and Book, Vol. II., 510.

Matt. 12:2.—But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—To reap and to thresh on the Sabbath were of course forbidden by the primary law; but the Rabbis had decided that to pluck corn was to be construed as reaping, and to rub it as threshing; even to walk on grass was forbidden, because that too was a species of threshing;. and not so much as a fruit must be plucked from a tree. (See Maim., Shabb., C. 7, 8.)—Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 435.

Matt, 12:5.—Have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—The Rabbis had laid it down that there was " no Sabbatism in the temple; " that the priests on the Sabbath might hew the wood, and light the fires, and place hot, fresh-baked show-bread on the table, and slay double victims, and circumcise children, and thus in every way violate the rules of the Sopherim about the Sabbath, and yet be blameless. (See Maim., Pesach., I).—Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 437.

The Withered Hand

Matt. 12:10.—And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days? that they might accuse him.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—According to the stiff and narrow school of Shammai, no one on the Sabbath might even comfort the sick, or enliven the sorrowful, or even send for a physician.—Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 432.

Matt. 12:25.—Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.

CICERO.—What house is there so established, or what state so firmly settled that may not utterly be overthrown by hatred and dissension?—De Arnie., c. 7.

Christ's Parables True to Nature

Matt. 13:3.—And he spike many things unto them in parables.

THE COMPILER.—Every observant traveler through Palestine has been struck with the thought, that the imagery of the Savior's parables must have been derived from the peculiar, yet to the inhabitants familiar scenes and operations of that country. And this no doubt is true. The Lord read his Parables to the people from what almost daily fell under their own observation. They are truths which his discerning eye saw inscribed on their fields, their flocks, their vines, and fig-trees. He did not put the lessons into these objects; they were there before. He simply gave voice to the inarticulate symbols which they by nature bore; and thus his Parables are, in an important sense, the natural productions of the land wherein he dwelt and taught—In Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 665.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—It is important to remark that all the allusions, illustrations and parables of Jesus are perfectly natural and appropriate to the country, the people, the teacher, the age, and every other circumstance mentioned or implied in the evangelical narratives. We have the originals still before us. The teachings and illustrations of our Lord would have been out of place in any other country except this. They could not have been uttered anywhere else.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 86.

Parable of the Sower

Matt. 13:3-9.—Behold a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way-side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up, etc.

PROP. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—As I rode along the track under the hill-side, by which the plain of Gennesareth is approached, I asked, Is there anything on the spot to suggest the images of the Savior's parables? Seeing nothing at the moment but the steep sides of the hill alternately of rock and grass, when I thought of the parable of the Sower, I answered, that here at least was nothing on which the Divine Teaching could fasten. The thought had hardly occurred to me, when a slight recess in the hill-side, close upon the plain, disclosed at once, in detail, and with a conjunction which I remember nowhere else in Palestine, every feature of the great parable. There was the undulating corn-field descending to the water's edge. There was the trodden pathway running through the midst of it, with no fence or hedge to prevent the seed from falling here and there on either side of it, or upon it; itself hard with the constant tramp of horse and mule, and human feet, There was the good rich soil which distinguishes the whole of that plain and its neighborhood from the bare hills elsewhere descending into the lake, and which, where there is no interruption, produces one vast mass of corn. There was the rocky ground of the hill-side protruding here and there through, the cornfields, as elsewhere through the grassy slopes. There were the large bushes of thorn—the "Malik," that kind of which tradition says that the Crown of Thorns was woven,—springing up, like the fruit-trees of the more inland parts, in the very midst of the waving wheat. And the countless birds of all kinds, aquatic fowls by the lakeside, partridges and pigeons hovering, as on the Nile bank, over the rice plain, immediately recall the "birds of the air," which came and devoured the seed by the wayside.—Sinai and Pat., p. 418, 419.

Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit.

ARISTOTLE.—We must consider whether it is not true, that the word 'and doctrine have not the same good effect upon all, but it is requisite that the soul of the hearer should have been previously cultivated, as is the ground for the seed which it is intended to nourish.—Eth. X., 9.

And brought forth fruit, some a hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold.

HERODOTUS.—The country of the Euesperidæ is remarkably fertile; in one of its plentiful years, it produces an hundred-fold; that of Cinyps three hundred-fold.—Melpomene, c. 198.

STRABO.—Babylonia produces barley in larger quantities than any other country; for a produce of three hundred-fold is spoken of.—Strab., XVI., I.

PLINY.—A modius of wheat, at Byzatium, a champaign district of Africa, will yield as much as one hundred and fifty modii of grain.—Hist. Nat., XVIII., 21.

Parable of the Wheat and Tares

Matt. 13:24-30.—Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but when men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way: etc.

ROBERTS.—Strange as it may appear, this is still literally done in the East. See that lurking villain, watching for the time when his neighbor shall plow his field: he carefully marks the period when the work has been finished, and in the following night, proceeding with stealthy steps, he casts in what the natives call the pandinellu, i. e., " pig-paddy." This being of rapid growth springs up before the good seed, and scatters itself before the other can be reaped; so that the poor owner of the field will be some years before he can rid the soil of the troublesome weed. But there is another, noisome plant which these wretches cast into the ground of those whom they hate; it is called perum-pirandi, and is more destructive to vegetation than any other plant. Has a man purchased a field which another intended to buy? the disappointed person declares, " I will plant the perum-pirandi in his grounds. "—Oriental Illustrations, p. 530.

But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—When the tares first spring up, they are in no way distinguishable from the wheat; the difference, however, begins to appear as soon as the ear comes in sight. This difference, slight at first, grows more and more marked as the seed ripens, so that by the time the field has grown, yellow the ears of wheat can be distinguished from the tares at a single glance. Bible Lands, p. 85.

Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—The thrifty husbandman sows none but "good seed," that is, picked seed; whilst the lazy does not trouble himself thus to pick out the tares.—Ibid.

The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Even the farmers, who in this country generally weed their fields, do not attempt to separate the tares from the wheat. They would not only mistake good grain for tares, but very commonly the roots of the two are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate them without plucking up both. Both, therefore, must be left to grow together until the time of harvest. —The Land and Book, Vol. II., p. III.

And in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

DR. H. J. VAN-LENNEP.—The mode of separation described in the parable is the one still followed when the tares are very abundant:—the tares are first pulled up with the hands, bound in bundles by themselves, and burned, in order to prevent the increase of the noxious weed.—Bible Lands, p. 85.

DEAN STANLEY.—In the great corn-fields of Samaria, I saw women and children employed in picking out the tares from among the wheat. Dr. Wilson describes the same sight in the plains of the Upper Jordan, beyond the Lake of Merom.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 419.

Parable of the Mustard Seed

Matt. 13:31, 32.—The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; which, indeed, is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—I have seen the wild mustard plant, on the rich plain of Akkar, as tall as the horse and his rider.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 100.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—In crossing the Plain of Akka from Birweh, on the north side, to Mount Carmel, on the south, I met with a field—a little forest it might almost be called-of the common mustard plant of the country.—It was in blossom at the time, full-grown; in some cases, as measured, six, seven, and nine feet high, throwing out branches on every side. It might well be called a tree, and certainly, in comparison with its tiny seed, "a great tree."—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2043.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Goldfinches and linnets alight and perch on the mustard tree in flocks, for the sake of the seed, of which they are very fond.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 473.

Parable of the Leaven in the Meal

Matt. 13:33.—The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

REV. WILLIAM LATHAM BEVAN, M. A.—The Hebrew word seor, translated “leaven," has the radical sense of effervescence or fermentation. Various substances were known to the ancients to have fermenting qualities; but the ordinary “leaven" consisted of a lump of old dough in a high state of fermentation, which was inserted into the mass of dough prepared for baking.—Smith's Dict., p. 1621.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—A little piece of dough 1S always kept for leaven from one baking till the next, when it is mixed in the meal, and thus the whole mass is leavened.—Bible Lands, p. 88.

Parable of the Hid Treasure

Matt. 13:44.—Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

RICHARDSON.—In the East, on account of the frequent changes of Dynasties, and the revolutions which accompany them, many rich men divide their goods into three parts: one they employ in commerce, or for their necessary support; one they turn into jewels, which, should it prove needful to fly, could be easily, carried with them; a third part they bury. But while they trust no one with the place where the treasure is buried, so is the same, should they not return to the spot before their death, as good as lost to the living, until, by chance, a lucky peasant, while he is digging in the field, lights upon it. So that when we read in Eastern tales, how a man has found a buried treasure, and, in a moment, risen from poverty to great riches, this is, in fact, an occurrence that not infrequently happens, and is a natural consequence of the customs of these people.—Dissertations on the Languages, etc., of Eastern Nations, p. 180.

TRENCH.—After Mardonius had been conquered at Platæa; a report existed that he had left great treasures buried within the circuit where his tent had stood; Polycrates, a Theban, buying the ground, sought long for the treasure, tut not finding it, inquired at Delphi, and was told to "Turn every stone," which doing, he found it.—Notes On Parabs., p. 104, n.

ROBERTS.—There can be no doubt that there are immense treasures buried in the East at this day. Not long ago, a toddy-drawer ascended a palmirah tree to lop off the upper branches, when one of them in falling stuck in the ground. On taking out that branch he saw something yellow; he looked, and found an earthen vessel full of gold coins and other articles. I rescued three of the coins from the crucible of the goldsmith, and what was my surprise to find on one of them in ancient Greek characters, konobobryza! About two years ago an immense hoard was found at Patlam, which must have been buried for several ages.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 531.

Parable of the Pearl of Great Price

Matt. 13:45, 46 Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Pearls were among the most highly prized gems with the ancients, as at the present day; and formerly their value relatively to precious stones was even higher.— Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 299.

REV. WILLIAM HOUGHTON, M. A., F. L. S.—Pearls are found inside the shells of various species of Mollusca. But the " pearl of great price " is doubtless a fine specimen yielded by the pearl oyster, still found in abundance in the Persian Gulf, which has long been celebrated for its pearl fisheries.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2403.

PLATO.—Wisdom alone is the right coin for which we ought to barter all other things.—Phœdo., c. 13.

Parable of the Draw Net

Matt. 13:47, 48.—Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.

TRENCH.—The particular kind of net is distinctly specified by the word in the original. It is a net of the largest size—sean or seine—which suffered nothing to escape from it ; it was all-embracing, to indicate the wide reach and potent operation of the Gospel.—Notes On the Parabs., p. 110.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The fishermen in the Parable are described as drawing their net to shore sitting down, and gathering the good into vessels, but casting the bad away. The bad here, doubtless, means not the putrid or corrupt, but the "unclean "—those forbidden by the law, as wanting fins and scales, and those rejected from prejudice or custom. As illustrating this expression, we may observe that the greater number of the species taken in the lake are rejected by the fishermen, and I have sat with them on the gunwale while they went through their net, and threw out into the sea those that were too small for the market, or were considered unclean. This custom brings out in great force the full bearing of the Parable.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 290.

A Prophet in His Own Country

Matt. 13:57.—And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor save in his own country, and in his own house.

PLINY.—Protogenes was held in little estimation by his own fellow-countrymen, a thing that generally is the case.—Hist. Nat., lib. XXXV., c. 36.

Herod's Alarming Conscience

Matt. 14:1, 2.—At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, and said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him.

GIBBON.—Symmachus was dragged in chains from Rome to the palace of Ravenna; and the suspicions of Theodoric could only be appeased by the blood of an innocent and aged senator. Theodoric was now descending with shame and guilt into the grave: his mind was humbled by the contrast of the past, and justly alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity. One evening, as it is related, when the head of a large fish was served on the royal table, he suddenly exclaimed that he beheld the angry countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge, and his mouth armed with long sharp teeth, which threatened to devour him. The monarch instantly retired to his chamber, and, as he lay, trembling with aguish cold, under a weight of bed-clothes, he expressed in broken murmurs to his physician, Elpidius, his deep repentance for the murders of Boethius and Symmachus.—Decline and Fall of the R. E., chap. 39.

The Baptist's Imprisonment and Death

Matt. 14:3-12.—For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife. For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her, etc.

JOSEPHUS.—About this time Aretas, the king of Arabia-Petrea, and Herod had a quarrel on the account following Herod, the tetrarch, had married the daughter of Aretas, and had lived with her a great while; but when he was once at Rome he lodged with Herod, who was his brother indeed, but not by the same mother; for this Herod was the son of the high priest Simon's daughter. However, he fell in love with Herodias, this last Herod's wife, who was the daughter of Aristobulus their brother, and the sister of Agrippa the Great. This man ventured to talk with her about a marriage between them, which address, when she admitted, an agreement was made for her to change her habitation, and come to him as soon as he should return from Rome: one article of this marriage also was this, that he should divorce Aretas's daughter. Being secretly informed of this wicked plot, she fled to her father, and told him of Herod's intentions. So Aretas made this the first occasion of his enmity between him and Herod, who had also some quarrel with him about their limits at the country of Gemalitis. So they raised armies on both sides, and prepared for war; and when they had joined battle, all Herod's army was destroyed by the treachery of certain fugitives. Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, who was called the Baptist; for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God; and so came to his baptism. Now when the people came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence of John over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God's displeasure to him.—Ant., b. 18, c. 5, § I, 2.

But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Dancers and dancing-women were at that time in great request. ( Jos. Antq., 12, 4, 6.) A luxurious feast of the period was not regarded as complete unless it closed with some gross pantomimic representation.—Life of Christ, I., 390.

Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask.

AUTHOR OF ESTHER.—Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee, to the half of the kingdom.—Esther 5:3.

HERODOTUS.—When Xerxes had received Artaynta into his palace as his son's bride, he suddenly conceived a passion for her; and she, very soon, returned his love. Now, Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, had woven with her own hands, a long robe of many colors, and very curious, which she presented to her husband as a gift. Xerxes, who was greatly pleased with it, forthwith put it on; and went in it to visit Artaynta, who happened likewise on this day to please him greatly. He therefore bade her ask him whatever boon she liked, and promised that, whatever it was, he would assuredly grant her request. Then Artaynta said to him, “Wilt thou indeed give me whatever I like to ask?" So the king, suspecting nothing, pledged his word, and swore to her. She then, as soon as she heard his oath, asked boldly for the robe. Hereupon Xerxes tried all possible means to avoid the gift; not that he grudged it, but because he dreaded Amestris, who already suspected, and would now, he feared, detect his love. So he offered her cities instead, and heaps of gold, and an army which should obey no other leader. But, as nothing could prevail on Artaynta to change her mind, at the last he gave her the robe. Calliope, c. 108, 109.

And he sent and beheaded John in the prison.

JOSEPHUS.—Out of Herod's suspicion, John, who was called the Baptist, was sent a prisoner to Macherus, a castle in the borders of the dominions of Aretas and Herod, and was there put to death.—Antq., b. 18, c. 5, § 2.

And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—This bad age produced more than one parallel to such awful and sanguinary nonchalance on the part of women nobly born. Fulvia again and again ran a golden needle through the tongue of Cicero's dissevered head; and Agrippina similarly outraged the head of her rival, Lolia Paulina. (See Dio Cass., xvii., 9,.60: 33.)—Life of Christ, I., p. 393.

THOLUCK.—This learned author has clearly shown that the personal names, the places, dates, and customs, Jewish and Roman, mentioned or implied in the account of Herodias and of the beheading of John, are fully confirmed by contemporary writers.—See Glaubwurdigkeit der Evans. Geschichte, p. 354-357.

The Multitude Fed in the Desert

Matt. 14:15-21.—And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away that they may go into the villages and buy themselves victuals, etc.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—Our long ride through the Jaulan has whiled away the time and the road quite to the end of this Butaiha, and this bold headland marks the spot, according to my topography, where the 5,000 were fed with five barley loaves and two small fishes. From the four narratives of this stupendous miracle, we gather, 1st, that the place belonged to Bethsaida; 2nd, that it was a desert place; 3rd, that it was near the shore of the lake, for they came to it by a boat; 4th, that there was a mountain close at hand; 5th, that it was a smooth, grassy spot, capable of seating many thousand people. Now all these requisites are found in this exact locality, and nowhere else, so far as I can discover. This Butaiha belonged to Bethsaida. At this extreme southeast corner of it, the mountain shuts down upon the lake bleak and barren. It was, doubtless, desert then as now, for it is not capable of cultivation. In this little cove the ships or boats were anchored. On this beautiful sward at the base of the rocky hill the people were seated to receive from the hands of the Son of God the miraculous bread.—The Land and the Book, II., 29.

RAE WILSON.—This mount was called by my guide, The Multiplication of Bread, or, as I had heard others denominate it, The Table of our Lord. It is remarkable, that at this day there is "much grass in the place." Near it I was joined by a miserable, ragged soldier, who had been stationed at the foot of the hill to protect the grass.—Travels in the Holy Land, Vol. II.

The Adverse Wind

Matt. 14:24.—But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—My experience in this region enables me to sympathize with the disciples in their long night's contest with the wind. I spent a night in that Wady Shukaiyif, some three miles up it, to the left of us. The sun had scarcely set when the wind began to rush down toward the lake, and it continued all night long with constantly increasing violence, so that when we reached the shore next morning the face of the lake was like a huge boiling caldron. The wind howled down every Wady from the northeast and east with such fury that no efforts of rowers could have brought a boat to shore at any point along that coast. In a wind like that, the disciples must have been driven quite across to Gennesaret, as we know they were. To understand the causes of these sudden and violent tempests, we must remember that the lake lies low—600 feet lower than the ocean; that the vast and naked plateaus of the Jaulan rise to a great height, spreading backwards to the wilds of the Hauran, and upward to snowy Hermon; that the water-courses have cut out profound ravines and wild gorges, conveying to the head of this lake, and that these act like gigantic funnels to draw down the cold winds from the mountains.—The Land and the Book, II., 32.

Matt. 14:34.—And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The land of Gennesaret, according to both Josephus and the New Testament, was situated on the west side of the lake. Josephus describes it as thirty furlongs in length, and twenty in breadth, the exact extent of the Ghuweir, so fruitful that all sorts of trees will grow upon it, and enjoying perpetual spring. Not the slightest question can arise as to the identification of Gennesaret with the modern El Ghuweir.—Land of Israel, p. 444

Unwashed Hands

Matt. 15:2.—Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.

JOSEPHUS.—The Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses.—Antiq., b. xiii., c. II, § 6.

MISHNA.—Any transgression of the “Traditions of the Elders," or the "Law upon the lip," is more heinous than a transgression of the written Law.—Sanhed., X., 3.

ARISTOPHANES.—Water for the hands! bring in the table; we sup; we are washed. Vesp., v. 1216.

ROBERTS.—No Hindu of good caste will eat till he have washed his hands.

Thus, however numerous a company may be, the guests never commence eating till they have done this.—Oriental Illustrations, p. 532.

Matt. 15:11.—Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

MENANDER.—Each one is destroyed by his own vices; and all things that do injury are within ourselves.—Apud. Stob., 38.

The Woman of Canaan

Matt. 15:21, 22.—Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, etc.

DR. WELLS.—The old inhabitants of this tract were descendants of Canaan, the grandson of Noah, who were not driven out by the Israelites; whence this part of the country seems to have retained the name of Canaan, long after the name had ceased in the parts which were taken possession of by the Israelites. The Greeks called the tract inhabited by the old Canaanites, along the Mediterranean Sea, Phenicia; the more inland parts, as being inhabited partly by Canaanites or Phenicians, and partly by Syrians, who had conquered it, they called Syro-Phenicia. Hence this woman is said, by Matthew, to be of Canaan, but by Mark, to be a Syro-Phenician by nation, as she was a Greek by religion and language.—Historical Geography of the Bible.

The Multitude in the Wilderness

Matt. 15:32, 33.—Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—In the Gospel narratives, allusions to manners and customs are more numerous than even those to the topography of the land, and they agree most perfectly with the supposed age of the world and character of the people. It is implied in almost countless ways that those with whom our Lord associated on these shores were accustomed to outdoor life. They meet on the mountain to hear him preach; they follow him into a desert place of Bethsaida to be fed; they spend whole days there without any apparent provision for either shelter, sleep, or food; they are found in the open court of houses, or on the shore of the lake, at all times, etc., etc. Now all the specifications are here, just as they should be—the mountain, the desert place, the shore, the open court, the climate so warm as to lead the people into the open air, the present habits of the people—everything in exact accord with the Gospel narratives.

The inhabitants not only go forth into the country, as represented in the New Testament, but they remain there, and sleep in the open air, if occasion require, without the slightest inconvenience.—The Land and the Book, II., 84.

Matt. 15:36.—And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—We never read in the Bible of cutting of bread with a knife; nor is this now done in the East. Bread was, and is, always “broken." The bread being baked in small cakes, or in broad and thin ones, not in large, dense loaves, is easily broken into such portions as may be required.—Illust.

Matt. 15:38.—And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The incidental mention of women and children in the great assemblies gathered around Jesus is true to Oriental life, strange as it may appear to those who read so much about female seclusion in the East. In the great gatherings of this day, at funerals, weddings, fiestas, and fairs, women and children often constitute' the largest portion of the assemblies. I have seen, hundreds of these gatherings in the open air; and should a prophet now arise with a tithe of the celebrity of Jesus of Nazareth, there would quickly be immense assemblies about him “from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan."—Land and Book, II., 84.

Magdala

Matt. 15:39.—And he sent away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the coasts of Magdala.

CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E.—At the southern extremity of the plain of Gennesareth is a heap of ruins, now called Mejdel, the site of Magdala, once the home of that Mary whose history is so touchingly recorded in the New Testament.—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 275.

DEAN STANLEY.—But the most sacred region of the lake—shall we not say of the world?—is the little Plain of Gennesareth. Few scenes have undergone a greater change. Of all the numerous towns and villages in what must have been the most thickly-peopled district of Palestine, one only remains. A collection of a few hovels stands at the southeastern corner of the Plain,—its name hardly altered from the ancient Magdala or Migdol—so called, probably, from a watch-tower, of which ruins appear to remain, that guarded the entrance of the Plain; deriving its whole celebrity from its being the birthplace of her, through whom the name of " Magdalen " has been incorporated into the languages of the world. A large solitary thorn-tree stands beside it. Its situation, otherwise unmarked, is dignified by the high limestone rock which overhangs it on the southwest, perforated with caves, while a clear stream rushes past into the sea.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 374.

A Sign From Heaven

Matt. 16:1.—The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven.

HON. E. T. B. TWISTLETON, M. A.—Antiochus Epiphanes had "partially succeeded in breaking down the barrier which divided the Jews from his other subjects (about 170 B. C.); and it was in the resolute determination to resist the adoption of Grecian customs, and the slightest departure from the requirements of their own law that the Perîshîn, or " Pharisees," took their rise as a party-the signification of the name being Separated.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 2471.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —The “Sadducees “had their origin and name from one Sadoc, a disciple of Antigonus of Socho, president of the Sanhedrim, and teacher of the Law in one of the great divinity schools in Jerusalem, 264 B. C.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 16:2, 3.—He answered and said unto them, When it is evening ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern She face of the sky, etc.

PLINY.—When the clouds are red at sunset, they give promise of a fine day to-morrow.—Hist. Nat., XVIII., 35.

LUCIAN.—Ruddy evening skies foretell the morning fair.—Phars., IV., 125.

ARATUS.—

If bright he rise, from speck and tarnish clear,

Throughout the day no rain or tempest fear:

But if returning to the eastern sky,

A hollow blackness on his center lie;

Or north and south his lengthened beams extend,

These signs a stormy wind or rain portend.

—Diosem., v. 87

Matt. 16:6.—Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

CHRYSOSTOM.—That which is once leavened becomes leaven to the rest.—In Matth., Hom., 46.

Cesarea Philippi

Matt. 16:13.—When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, etc.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —Cesarea Philippi was a city in the tribe of Naphthali, near to Mount Libanus, in the province of Iturea. Its ancient name was Dan, afterward it was called Lais. But Philip the tetrarch, having rebuilt and beautified it, gave it the name of Cesarea, in honor of Tiberius Cesar, the reigning emperor; but to distinguish it from another Cesarea, on the coast of the Mediterranean, and to perpetuate the fame of him who built it, it was called Cesarea Philippi.—Note, In loco.

JOSEPHUS. —When he had conducted Cesar to the sea, and was returned home, Herod built him a most beautiful temple, of the whitest stone, near the place called Panium. This is a very fine cave in a mountain, which is abrupt and prodigiously deep, and full of still water; over it hangs a vast mountain, and under the caverns arise the springs of the river Jordan. Herod adorned this place, which was already a very remarkable one, still further, by the erection of this temple, which he dedicated to Cesar.—Antq., XV., 10, 3.

DEAN STANLEY.—The cavern-sanctuary of Cesarea was at once adopted by the Grecian settlers, both in itself and for its romantic situation the nearest like-that Syria affords of the beautiful limestone grottos which in their own country were inseparably associated with the worship of the sylvan Pan. This was the one Paneum, or sanctuary of Pan, within the limits of Palestine, which before the building of Philip's city gave to the town the name of Paneas, a name which has outlived the Roman substitute, and still appears in the modern appellation of Banias. Greek inscriptions in the face of the rock (still legible) testify its original purpose.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 390.

Peter

Matt. 16:18.—And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

HOMER.—Thou shalt descend to the gates of hell.—Iliad, lib. v., v. 646.

ÆSCHYLUS.—I adjure thee by these gates of hell.—v. 1291.

Matt. 16:19.—And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

MARTIN.—When the Jews made a man a Doctor of the Law, they put into his hand the KEY of the closet in the temple, where the sacred books were kept, and also tablets to write upon; signifying by this that they gave him authority to teach, and to explain the Scriptures to the people.—In Clarke's Com., In loco.

Self-Denial

Matt. 16:24.—Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

SENECA.—You command impossibilities. We are at best but poor and infirm mortals. This self-denial is too hard a lesson for us.—But do you know why the things commanded seem impossible? I will tell you. It is because we think them so; but they are not so in fact. We defend our vices because we love them. —Epist., 116.

The Soul Beyond Price

Matt. 16:26.—For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

PLATO.—Socrates. You would not be willing to give your life in exchange for all Greece, and for absolute dominion over all the Greeks and. Barbarians. Alcibiades. No, indeed! For what use could I make of them?—Plat. II., 4.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—There was one living who, scarcely in figure, might be said to have “the whole world." The Roman Emperor Tiberius was at that moment infinitely the most powerful of living men, the absolute, undisputed, deified ruler of all that was fairest and richest in, the kingdoms of the earth. There was no control to his power, no limit to his wealth, no restraint upon his pleasures. And to yield himself still more unreservedly to the boundless self-gratification of a voluptuous luxury, not long after this time he chose for himself a home on one of the loveliest spots on the earth's surface, under the shadow of the slumbering volcano, upon an enchanting islet in one of the most softly delicious climates of the world. What came of it all? He was, as Pliny calls him, tristissimus ut constat hominum, confessedly the most gloomy of mankind. And there, from this home of his hidden infamies, from this island where on a scale so splendid he had tried the experiment of what happiness can be achieved by pressing the world's most absolute authority; and the world's guiltiest indulgences, into the service of an exclusively selfish life, he wrote to his servile and corrupted Senate, " What to write to you, Conscript. Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel that they are daily destroying me, if I know." Rarely has there been vouchsafed to the world a more overwhelming proof that its richest gifts are but fairy gold that turns to dust and dross, arid its most colossal edifices of personal splendor and greatness no more durable barrier against the encroachment of bitter misery than are the babe's sand heaps to stay the mighty march of the Atlantic. In such perplexity, in such anguish, does the sinful possession of all riches and all rule end. Such is the invariable Nemesis of unbridled lust. It does not need the snaky tresses or the shaken torch of the fabled Erinnyes. The guilty conscience is its own adequate avenger; and "if the world were one entire and perfect chrysolite," and that gem ours, it would not console us for one hour of that inward torment, or compensate in any way for those lacerating pangs.—Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 136.

SENECA.—There is nothing admirable in thee, but the soul. Nothing so great as to be compared with the greatness of it.—Epist. 8.

The Temple Tribute

Matt. 17:24.—And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute (margin, didrachma)?

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—A tax of half a shekel was collected of every Jew who had reached the age of twenty years as a "ransom for his soul" unto the Lord. This money was devoted to the service of the temple. This tax was paid by every Jew in every part of the world, whether rich or poor; and as on the first occasion of its payment, to show that the souls of all alike are equal before God, " the rich paid no more, and the poor no less." It produced vast sums of money, which were conveyed to Jerusalem by honorable messengers. These collections are alluded to by Cicero, Dio Cassius, and Josephus.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., 41.

CICERO.—As gold, under the pretense of being given to the Jews, was accustomed every year to be sent out of Italy and all the provinces to Jerusalem, Flaccus issued an edict establishing a law that it should not be lawful for gold to be exported after this way.—Pro Flac., c. 28.

JOSEPHUS.—After the destruction of Jerusalem with the temple, Caesar also laid a tribute upon the Jews wheresoever they were, and enjoined every one of them to bring two drachmae every year into the capitol, as they used to pay the same to the temple at Jerusalem.—Jewish Wars, VII., 6, § 6.

Matt. 17:27.—Go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money (marg., stater): that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

REGINALD STUART Foot.; British Museum.—The stater must here mean a silver tetradrachm; and the only tetradrachms then current in Palestine were of the same weight as the Hebrew shekel. And it is observable, in confirmation of the minute accuracy of the Evangelist, that at this period the silver currency in Palestine consisted of Greek imperial tetradrachms, or staters, and Roman denarii of a quarter their value, didrachms having fallen into disuse. Had two didrachms been found by Peter, the receivers of tribute would scarcely have taken them.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, Is. 3109.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—A stater equals four drachmas, and was exactly the sum required for two people.—Life of Christ, II., 45, n.

The. Punishment of Drowning

Matt. 18:6.—But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill—stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—It was customary among the Jews, as well as other nations, to cast sacrilegious and other execrable men into the sea, with a great weight about their necks.—Test. of Heath., p. 488.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Philip hanged Onomarchus, and the rest he caused to be thrown into the sea, as being guilty of sacrilege.—Diod. Sic., XVI., 35.

GENTOO CODE.— If a woman cause any person to take poison, sets fire to any person's house, or murders a man, then the magistrate, having bound a stone to her neck, shall drown her.—Halhead’s, p. 306.

Offending Brother

Matt. 18:15.—If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone.

SOCRATES.—It is not usual, Melitus, to accuse men before this court for undesigned offenses, but to take them apart and admonish them.—Plat. Socr. Apol., c. 13.

Christ in the Midst

Matt. 18:20.—Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

MENANDER.—True reason will find a temple everywhere; for it is the mind that holds communion with God.—Ap. Just. de mon. Del.

SENECA.—God himself ministers to man, and is everywhere present and easy of access to all.— Epist., 95.

The Debtor and His Family Sold

Matt. 18:25.—But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—By the laws of the Hebrews, they were permitted to sell debtors, with their wives and children, into servitude for a time sufficient to, pay the debt.—Note, In loco.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—By the Laws of the Twelve Tables it was ordained that insolvent debtors should be given up to their creditors bound in fetters and cords. Though they did not entirely lose the rights of freemen they were in actual slavery, and often treated more harshly even than slaves. —Test. of Heath., p. 489.

LIVY.—One who had been a centurion in the army complained that in consequence of debts incurred during the war, he had been dragged by a creditor, not into servitude, but into a place of correction, or rather of execution. He then showed his back, disfigured with the marks of fresh stripes.—Liv., IL, 23.

The Question of Divorce

Matt. 19:3.—The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—This question (as the word tempt " implies) was beset with many difficulties. It had given rise to a decided opposition of opinion between the two most important and flourishing of the rabbinic Schools. Hillel with his school explained the Mosaic Law in the sense that a man might "divorce his wife for any disgust which he felt towards her; " even, as the celebrated R. Akiba ventured to say, if he saw any other woman who pleased him more; whereas the school of Shammai interpreted it to mean that divorce could only take place in cases of scandalous un-chastity. In those corrupt days the vast majority acted on the principle laid down by Hillel. While polygamy had fallen into discredit, they made a near approach to it by the ease with which they were able to dismiss one wife and take another. Even Josephus, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, who on every possible occasion prominently lays claim to the character and position of a devout and religious man, narrates, without the shadow of an apology, that his first wife had abandoned him, that he had divorced the second after she had borne him three children, and that he was then married to a third.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 550, etc.

Matt. 19:6, 10.—What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder ... . His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—What a fatal blow would have been given to the world's happiness and the world's morality had He assented to their rash conclusion! And how marvelous a proof is it of His Divinity, that whereas every other pre-eminent moral teacher—even the very best and greatest of all—has uttered or sanctioned more than one dangerous and deadly error which has been potent to poison the life or peace of nations-all the words of the Lord Jesus were absolutely holy, and divinely healthy words.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 556.

Matt. 19:11, 12.—But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, that have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—Some are born with such a temperament of body, that they are all their lives devoid of those sexual inclinations, to which others are subject.—Note, In loco.

HERODOTUS. —It happened that Periander, son of Cypselus, had taken three hundred boys, children of the chief nobles among the Corcyræans, and sent them to Alyattes for eunuchs. —Thalia c. 48.

IDEM. —And now the Persian generals made good all the threats wherewith they had menaced the Ionians before the battle. For no sooner did they get possession of the towns than they chose out all the best-favored boys and made them eunuchs.—Erato, c. 32.

JOSEPHUS.—It deserves our admiration how much the Essenes exceed all other men in virtue and righteousness. They neither marry wives, nor are desirous to keep servants; as thinking the latter tempts men to be unjust, and the former gives the handle to domestic quarrels.... They reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions as a virtue: They neglect wedlock, but choose other persons' children while they are pliable and fit for learning, and esteem them to be of their kindred.—Antig., XVIII., 1, 5; and J. Wars, II., 8, 2.

EUSEBIUS.—Origen, understanding the latter clause of this verse literally, went and literally fulfilled it on himself.—Eccl. Hist., VI., 8.

The Little Children Blessed

Matt. 19:13.—Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Women were not honored, nor children loved in antiquity as now they are;, no halo of romance and tenderness encircled them; too often they were subjected to shameful cruelties and hard neglect. But He who came to be the friend of all sinners, and the helper of all the suffering and the sick, came also to elevate woman to her due honor, and to be the protector and friend of helpless infancy and innocent childhood.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 558.

The Danger of Riches

Matt. 19:20.—All these things have I kept from my youth up; what lack I yet?

RABBI CHANINA.—Death is come to fetch me hence; Go and bring me the Book of the Law, and see whether there is anything in it which I have not kept. —G frörer., II., 102.

Matt. 19:23.—Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

PLATO.—It is impossible to be exceeding good and exceeding rich.—De Leg.,

MARTIAL.—It is a difficult thing to preserve morality from the corruption of riches.—Mart., lib. xi., epis. 5.

Matt. 19:24.—It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—A mode of expression common among the Jews to signify a thing impossible or very unusual.—Note, In loco.

AL KORAN.—Nor shall he enter heaven till a camel shall pass through the eye of a needle.—Sarat. VII., v. 37.

RABBI SHESHETH.—Perhaps thou art one of the Pambidithians who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle.—Lightfoot, In loco.

Matt. 19:26.—With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

SOPHOCLES.—By powers immortal all things may be done.—Ajax, v. 86.

LINUS.—All things are easy to God to do, and nothing is impossible.—Fragm.

Parable of the Householder

Matt. 20:1.—For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a roan that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—We hear the Divine Teacher speak of the vineyards; of the good branches purged; of the dry ones gathered for the fire; of the penny-a-day laborers standing in the market waiting to be hired, and of their receiving their wages at the close of each day. Such things as these we now see constantly, daily, and to the minutest shade of verbal accuracy.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 85.

REV. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP, D. D.—During the whole season when vineyards may be dug, the common workmen go early in the morning to the Soak or market-place of the village or city. The owners of vineyards come to the place and engage the number of laborers they need. These immediately go to the vineyard and work there until a little while before the sun sets. We have often seen men stand in the market-place through the entire day without finding employment, and have repeatedly engaged them ourselves at noon, for half a day's job, and later for one or two hours' work in our garden.—Bible Lands, p. 114.

Matt. 20:2.—And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

PROF. R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, M. A.—The “penny" of the householder was a denarius, a Roman silver coin, which passed current as equal to the Greek drachm, though in fact some grains lighter. It was equal to 8½ d. (or about 16 cents) at the latter end of the commonwealth; afterward, something less of our money. It was not an uncommon, though a liberal day's pay.—On Parab., p. 139.

TACITUS.—The Roman soldiers required that their pay should be a denarius, or sixteen aces per day.—An., lib. i., c. 17.

Matt. 20:6, 7.—Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us.

MORIER.—At Hamadan we observed every morning, before the sun rose, that a numerous band of peasants collected with spades in their hands, waiting to be hired for the day to work in the surrounding fields. This custom struck me as a most happy illustration of our Savior's parable, particularly when, passing by the same place late in the day, we still found others standing idle, and remembered his words, "Why stand ye here all the day idle? " as most applicable to their situation, for on putting the same question to them they answered us, " Because no man hath hired us."—Second Journey Through Persia, p. 265.

The Ascent from Jericho to Jerusalem

Matt. 20:17,18.—And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—This was as they advanced towards Jericho.... Here it was necessary to rest before entering on the dangerous, rocky, robber-haunted gorge which led from it to Jerusalem, and formed a rough, almost continuous, ascent of six hours, from 600 feet below to nearly 3,000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 183.

Cup of Suffering

Matt. 20:23.—And he said unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This was fulfilled. James was slain with the sword by Herod (Acts 12:2). John lived many years; but he attended the Savior through his sufferings, and was himself banished to Patmos, a solitary island, for the testimony of Jesus Christ-a companion of others in tribulation. (Rev. 1: 9).—Note, In loco.

Jericho

Matt. 20:29.—And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed him.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Jericho—that famous city-the city of fragrance, the city of roses, the city of palm-trees, the " Paradise of God." It is now a miserable and degraded Arab village, but was then a prosperous and populous town, standing on a green and flowery oasis, rich in honey and leaf-honey, and myro-balanum, and well watered by the Fountain of Elisha, and by other abundant springs.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 582.

Mount of Olives

Matt. 21:1.—And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus, etc.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—On the east, Jerusalem is immediately enclosed by a long ridge running north and south. From every roof of the city this long ridge forms a familiar feature—so near, so immediately overhanging the town, that it almost seems to be within it.... Three paths lead from Bethany to Jerusalem; one a steep foot-path over the summit of Mount Olivet; another, by a long circuit over its northern shoulder; the third, the natural continuation of the road from Jericho over the southern shoulder, between the summit which contains the Tombs of the Prophets and that called the "Mount of Offense." “There can be no doubt that this last is the road of the Entry of Christ."—Sinai and Pal., p. 183-187.

The Triumphant Escort

Matt. 21:8.—And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches, etc.

AUTHOR OF 2 Kings.—Then they hasted and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, “Jehu is king."—2 Kings 9:13.

PLUTARCH.—When Cato left Macedonia to return to Rome, the soldiers spread their garments in the way and kissed his hand: instances of esteem which few generals met with from the Romans in those times.—Cato Min., c. 12.

MALCOLM.—When we approached Isfahan, the king and all his nobles went seven miles to meet the Prince (of the Usbegs). The whole road into the city was covered with rich silks, over which the two sovereigns rode.—History of Persia, Vol. I., p. 581.

The Fruitless Fig Tree

Matt. 21:19.—And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—Mount Olivet, besides its abundance of olives, is still sprinkled with fig trees.... Fig trees may now be seen overhanging the road from Jerusalem to Bethany, growing out of the rocky sides of the mountain—Sinai and Palestine, p. 414.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—The custom of plucking ripe figs, its you pass by the orchards, is still universal in this country, especially from trees by the roadside, and from all that are not enclosed.— Land and Book, I., 539

The Demand for Christ's Authority

Matt. 21:23.—And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S —Sternly and abruptly they asked him. But the answer they received surprised and confounded them. With that infinite presence of mind, of which the world's history furnishes no parallel, and which remained calm under the worst assaults, Jesus told them that the answer to their question depended on the answer which they were prepared to give to His question: “The baptism of John, was it from heaven or of men?" ... .This reduced them to a complete dilemma—reduced them to the ignominious necessity of saying, before all the multitude, “We cannot tell."—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 218, 219.

The Baptism of John

Matt. 21:26.—But if we say, Of men, we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet.

JOSEPHUS.—Now John, who was called the Baptist, was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism. When the people came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved by hearing his words, Herod feared, lest the great influence John had over the people, might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise.—Antiq., XVIII., 5, § 2.

Matt. 21:31.—Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

EPICTETUS.—By Jupiter, one might sooner hope to convince the most unnatural debauchees, than those who are thus dead and blind to their own evils.—Epict., lib. ii., c. 20.

Parable of the Vineyard Let Out to Husbandmen

Matt. 21:33.—Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and la it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.

DEAN STANLEY, D. D.—One of the main characteristics of the southern scenery of Palestine—the enclosures of loose stone, with the square gray tower at the corner of each, catch the eye on the bare slopes of Hebron, of Bethlehem, and of Olivet,—at first sight hardly distinguishable from the ruins of ancient churches or fortresses, which lie equally scattered over the hills of Judea. And thus the past history of the nation concurs with our own present experience in pointing to what was one of the most obvious and familiar images of Palestine at the time when the parables were delivered, of which no less than five have relation to vineyards.—Sinai and Pal., p. 413.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The grapes were not carried home, but the juice was expressed on the spot, every vineyard possessing its own Winepress. It consisted of two vats, hewn one below the other out of the solid rock, on the slope of the hill; the two were connected by small holes bored through the rock, through which the juice streamed into the lower Vat. These ancient winepresses are among the most interesting remains of the Holy Land, perhaps the only relics still existing of the actual handiwork of Israel prior to the first captivity. They attest the culture of the vine in every part of the country, even where man has long ceased to dwell, except as a nomad. The hills of southern Judea abound with them, and in the little explored region between Hebron and Beersheba we found them on all the ranges. Among the brushwood and thickets of Mount Carmel they are very numerous; I have visited as many as eleven on the east of Carmel alone, and four very near the town of Caiffa. There are many in Galilee, especially in the neighborhood of Kedes.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 408, 409.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Vineyards were often planted to be let out for profit, the owner receiving a part of the fruit.—Note, In loco.

PLINY.—Some of my estates had hitherto been very badly managed; and, I have found that the only method in which I can get any profit from them, is to let them out on shares.—Ep., 1. 9, 37

Parable of the Marriage Feast

Matt. 22:4.—Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my failings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—This second invitation, or admonishment rather, is quite according to Eastern manners. Thus Esther invites Haman to a banquet on the morrow (Esther 5:8), and when the time is actually arrived, the chamberlain came to bring him to the banquet (vi: 14). Modern travelers testify to the same custom now of repeating the invitation to a great entertainment, at the moment when all things are in actual readiness.—On Parab., p. 575.

Matt. 22:9, 10.—Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together as many as they found, both bad and good; and the wedding was furnished with guests.

REV. J. ROBERTS.—It is as common in the East for a rich man to give a feast to the poor, the maimed, and the blind, as it is in. England for a nobleman to entertain men of his own degree. Does he wish to gain some temporal or spiritual blessing? he orders his head servant to prepare a feast for one or two hundred poor guests. Messengers are then dispatched into the streets and lanes to inform the indigent, that on such a day rice and curry will be given to all who are there at the appointed time. Long before the hour, the visitors may be seen bending their steps towards the house of the Rasa, or king.—Orient. Illust., p. 535

Matt. 22:11, 12.—And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: and he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

CICERO.—Why did you attend at the banquet given by Quintus Arrius in a black robe? Whom did you ever see do such a thing before? Whom did you ever hear of?—In Vat., c. 12.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—It was part of the state and magnificence of kings and wealthy persons in the East, to have great store of costly dresses laid up, as at the present day a great portion of their wealth is very commonly in. vested in numerous changes of costly apparel. Moreover, costly dresses were often given as honorable presents, marks of special favor: and marriage festivals and other occasions of festal rejoicing were naturally those upon which gifts were distributed with the largest hand. If the gift took the form of costly raiment, it would reasonably be expected that it should be worn at once, as part of the purpose of the distribution would else be lost, which was to testify openly the magnificence and liberality of the giver, and also to add to the splendor and glory of the festal time,—not to say that the rejection of a gift, or the appearance of a slight put upon it, is ever naturally esteemed as a slight and contempt not of that gift only, but also of the giver.—On the Parabs., p. 183.

OLEARIUS.—The ambassadors and myself being invited to the table of the Persian monarch, it was told us by the mehmandar, that we according to their usage must hang the splendid vests that were sent us from the king over our dresses, and so appear in his presence. The ambassadors at first refused; but the mehmandar urged it so earnestly, alleging, as also did others, that the omission would greatly displease the king, since all other envoys observed such a custom, that at last they consented, and hanged, as did we also, the splendid vests over their shoulders, and so the cavalcade proceeded. Travels, p. 254.

Matt. 22:13.—Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

CHARDIN.—The officer through whose hands the royal robe was to be forwarded, out of spite, sent in its stead a plain habit. The vizier would not appear in the city arrayed in this, lest it should be taken as an evidence that he was in disgrace at court, and put on in its stead a royal habit, the gift of the late king, and in that made his public entry into the city. When this was known at court, they declared the vizier a dog, that he had disdainfully thrown away the royal apparel, saying, I have no need of Sha Sefi's habits. Their account incensed the king, who severely felt the affront, and it cost the vizier his life, —In Trench On Para., p. 184.

The Question of Tribute to Cesar

Matt. 22:15-22.—Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The Herodians, as a party, had mainly a political significance; they stood outside the current of religious life. They were, in fact, mere provincial courtiers, supporters of the Herodian Family and of, Roman Imperialism. That the Pharisees should tolerate even the most temporary partnership with such men as these, whose very existence was a violent outrage on their most cherished prejudices, enables us to gauge more accurately the extreme virulence of hatred with which Jesus had inspired them. But to crush their enemy, the priests can unite with the politicians. They came to him circumspectly, deferentially, courteously: Rabbi, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man; for thou regardest not the person of men.

It was as though they would entreat Him, without fear or favor, confidentially to give them His private opinion; and as though they really wanted His opinion for their own guidance. But why all this sly undulatory approach and serpentine insalivation? Tell us, therefore—since you are so wise, so true, so courageous—tell us, therefore, is it lawful to give tribute to Cœsar, or not? He must, they thought, answer “Yes" or " No;" there is no possible escape from a plain question so cautiously, sincerely, and respectfully put. Perhaps he will answer, "Yes, it is lawful." If so, such a decision will at once explode and evaporate any regard, which the people may feel for Him. If, on the other hand, He should answer, "No, it is not lawful," then in that case, too, we are equally rid/ of Him; for then He is in open rebellion against the Roman power, and these new Herodian friends of ours can at once hand Him over to the jurisdiction of the Procurator. Pontius Pilatus will deal very roughly with His pretensions, and will, if need be, without the slightest hesitation, mingle His blood, as he has done the blood of other Galileans, with the blood of the sacrifices.

They must have awaited the answer with breathless interest; but even if they succeeded in concealing the hate which gleamed in their eyes, Jesus at once saw the sting and heard the hiss of the Pharisaic serpent. They had fawned on Him with their “Rabbi," and " true," and " impartial," and " fearless; " He blights them with the flash of one indignant word, Hypocrites! That word must have undeceived their, hopes, and crumbled their craftiness into dust.

Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Bring me the tribute money.

While the people stood round in wondering silence, they brought Him a denarius, and put it in His hand. On one side were stamped the haughty, beautiful features of the emperor Tiberius, with all the wicked scorn upon the lip; on the obverse his title of Pontifex Maximus!—Whose image and superscription is this? They say unto Him, Cœsar's. There, then, was the simplest possible solution of their cunning question. Render, therefore, unto Cœsar the things that are Cœsar's. Their national acceptance of this coinage answered their question, and revealed its emptiness: for it was understood among the Jews, and was laid down in the distinctest language by their greatest Rabbis in later days, that to accept the coinage of any king was to acknowledge his supremacy. By accepting the denarius, therefore, as a current coin they were openly declaring that Caesar was their sovereign, and they had settled the question that it was lawful to pay the poll-tax, by habitually doing so.

And when they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way. Amazed and humiliated at the sudden and total frustration of a plan which seemed irresistible—compelled, in spite of themselves, to admire the guileless WISDOM which had in an instant broken loose from the meshes of their sophistical malice—they sullenly retired. There was nothing which even they could take hold of in his words.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 228-233.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—Everything in the, country will be found in most perfect agreement with all ascertained facts of chronology, topography, and history.... As an example—one of many equally pertinent—take the demand about the tribute money, and the answer of Jesus, " Render unto Caesar the things that are Cæsar's." We have examined the “image and superscription "of this Roman penny on the very spot where the tax-gatherer sat, and with the evidences scattered all around us that these lordly Romans were actually here. History, the treasured Coin, and these prostrate Ruins, unite in proving that the teacher Jesus, the caviling Pharisees, and the tax-gathering Romans were all here, and the entire incident is admirably illustrated and confirMed.—The Land and the Book, Vol. II., p. 83.

The Sadducees and the Resurrection

Matt. 22:23-33.—The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection.

JOSEPHUS. —The doctrine of the Sadducees is this, that souls die with the bodies.— Antiq., XVII., 1,§ 4.

IDEM.—The Sadducees take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades.-Jewish War, IL, 8, § 14. ST.

LUKE.—The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit.—Acts 23:8.

And they asked him, saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: likewise the second also, and the third unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Had Jesus been like any other merely human teacher, He might have treated this question with that contemptuous scorn which it deserved; but the spirit of scorn is alien from the spirit of the dove, and with no contempt He gave to their conceited and eristic dilemma a most profound reply. Though the question came upon Him most unexpectedly, His answer was everlastingly memorable. It opened the gates of Paradise so widely that men might see therein more than they had ever seen before, and it furnished against one of the commonest forms of disbelief AN ARGUMENT THAT NEITHER RABBI NOR PROPHET HAD CONCEIVED... In that heaven beyond the grave, though love remains, yet all the mere earthliness of human relationship is superseded and transfigured. They that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, add the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; but are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God had described himself to their great law-giver as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. How unworthy would such a title have been, had Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, then been but gray handfuls of crumbling dust, or dead bones, which should molder in the Hittite's cave! He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err. Would it have been possible that he should deign to call Himself the God of dust and ashes? How NEW, HOW LUMINOUS, HOW PROFOUND A PRINCIPLE OF SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION!

And when the multitude heard this, they' were astonished at his doctrine. Even some of the Scribes, pleased by the spiritual' refutation of a skepticism which their reasonings had been unable to remove, could not refrain from the grateful acknowledgment, "Master, thou hast well said." THE MORE THAN HUMAN/ WISDOM AND INSIGHT OF THESE REPLIES created, even among his enemies, a momentary diversion in His favor.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., 233-238.

The Great Commandment

Matt. 22:34-40.—Then one of the Pharisees, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The Rabbinical schools had come to the sapient conclusion that there were in the ceremonial and moral laws 248 affirmative precepts, and 365 negative—in all 613. Now surely, out of such a large number of precepts and prohibitions, all could not be of quite the same value; some were "light," and some were "heavy." But which? and what was the greatest commandment of all? According to some Rabbis, the most important of all is that about the tephillin and the tsîtsith, the fringes and phylacteries; and “he who diligently observes it is regarded in the same light as if he had kept the whole law." Some thought the omission of ablutions as bad as homicide; some that the precepts of the Mishna were all “heavy; " those of the Law were " some heavy " and " some light." Others considered the third to be the greatest commandment.... On the question proposed by the lawyer, the Shammaites and Hillelites were in disaccord, and as usual, both schools were wrong.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the _first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The scribe had the sense to observe, and the candor to acknowledge, that the answer of Jesus was wise and noble. “Well, Master," he exclaimed, " thou hast said the truth."—Life of Christ, Vol. II., 239-242.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

PRESIDENT TIMOTHY DWIGHT, S. T. D., LL. D.—These two precepts, notwithstanding their brevity, are so comprehensive as to include every possible moral action. The archangel is not raised above their control; nor can any action of his exceed that bound which they prescribe. The child, who has passed the verge of moral agency, is not placed beneath their regulation; and whatever virtue he may exercise is no other than a fulfillment of their requisitions. All the duties, which we immediately owe to God, to our fellow-creatures, and to ourselves, are by these precepts alike comprehended and required. In a word, endlessly various as moral action may be, it exists in no form or instance in which he who perfectly obeys these precepts will not have done his duty, and will not find himself justified and accepted by God.— Theology, Serm. XCI.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Love to God issuing in love to man—love to man, our brother, resulting from love to our Father, God—on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 241.

Those in Moses Seat to Be Obeyed

Matt. 23:2.—The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Moses was the legislator of the Jews. By him the Law was given; and the office of explaining that Law devolved on the Scribes and Pharisees. In the synagogues they sat while expounding the Law, and rose when they read it. By sitting in the seat of Moses we are to understand authority to teach the Law.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 23:3.—Ail therefore whatsoever they hid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say and do not.

LUCIAN.—It is impossible to find out two more discordant things in the world than the Sophists' discourses and their actions.—Fugit., c. 19.

EPICTETUS.—We who are called Stoics say one thing and do another. We talk well and act ill.—lib. iii., c. 7.

Broad Phylacteries

Matt. 23:5.—They make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—An original phylactery lies now before me. It is a piece of fine vellum, about eighteen inches long, and an inch and quarter broad. It is divided into four unequal compartments: in the first is written, in a very fair character, the first ten verses of Ex. 13; in the second compartment is written from the 11Th to the 16th verse of the same chapter inclusive; in the third from the 4th to the 9th verse inclusive, of Deut. 6, beginning with, " Hear, O Israel," etc.; in the fourth, from the 13th to the 21St verse inclusive, of Deut. 11—Note, In loco.

The Chief Seats

Matt. 23:6.—And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues.

CAMPBELL.—The middle couch; which lay along the upper end of the table, and was therefore accounted the most honorable place, and that which the Pharisees are said particularly to have affected, was distinguished by the name, “the first couch."—In loco.

MARTIAL.—Rufus, do you see you person who is always sitting bejeweled and perfumed, upon the front benches?—Mart., lib. ii., epig. 29.

ROSENMULLER.—According to the most ancient custom among the Jews those who had no office in the synagogue sat in the order of age. But in many places it came to be the practice, at length, that they who had acquired some reputation for learning should occupy a more honorable seat. And there are extant in the books of the Hebrews decrees or rules on this subject, from which it appears that the doctors of the law ranked the same as the Pharisees.—In loco.

Greetings

Matt. 23:7.—And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—There were three words used among the Jews as titles of dignity, Rabh, Rabbi, Rabban. These Rabbins were looked up to as infallible oracles in religious matters, and they usurped not only the place of theme Law, but of God himself.—In loco.

Matt. 23:8.—And all ye are brethren.

LUCIAN.—The original legislator of the Christians taught them that they were all brothers.—De Mort. Pereg., c. 13.

Proselyting

Matt. 23:13.—Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

HORACE.—I'll force you, like the proselyting Jews, To be like us, a brother of the muse.—Hor., lib. i., Sat. 4.

JUSTIN MARTYR.—The proselytes did not only disbelieve Christ's doctrine, but were abundantly more blasphemous against him than the Jews themselves, endeavoring to torment and to cut off the Christians wherever they could, they being in this the instruments of the Scribes and Pharisees.

Profane Swearing

Matt. 23:16.—Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Woe for the blind hair splitting folly which so confused the sanctity of oaths as to tempt their followers into gross profanity. The miserable quibbles by which, in consequence of such pernicious teaching, the Jews evaded their oaths, became notorious even in the heathen worlds. See Martial, Ep. XI., 94. The charges which our Lord uttered are also amply supported by Jewish testimonies.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 245.

MARTIAL.—Behold, thou deniest and swearest to me by the temples of Jupiter; I will not credit thee: swear, O Jew, by the temple of Jehovah.—Martial, Ep. XI., 95.

Matt. 23:17, 19.—Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?... the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?

MICHAELIS.—There came a doctrine into vogue among the Jews, in the time of Christ, which made such a nice distinction between what was and what was not an oath, that illiterate people were really incapable of comprehending it, or indeed forming any idea of it: and thus a Jew had it in his power to be guilty of the greatest treachery to his neighbor, even when the latter thought he had heard him swear by all that was sacred. Who could suppose, for instance, that a Jew did not speak seriously, when he swore by the temple. Yet by this doctrine, such an oath was merely nothing, because the stones of the temple were not consecrated! The Pharisees were in the way of saying, “If a man swear by the temple, he is not bound by that oath; but if he swear by the gold of the temple, he is, bound." This was a very paradoxical distinction; and no one who heard their oaths, could possibly divine it, unless he happened to be initiated into the whole villainy of the business. But the foundation of the refined distinction made by the Pharisees was, that the gold was sanctified, but not the materials of the edifice. Again, the Pharisees said, “If a man swear by the altar, it is no oath; but if he swear by the offering, he is bound; “because, forsooth, the offering was consecrated, but the stones of the altar, nothing more than common stones.—Com. on Laws of Moses.

Tithing Mint and Anise

Matt. 23:23.-Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

ISOCRATES.—Show your gratitude to heaven, not only by sacrifices, but by a sacred observance of all oaths: the first, indeed, shows munificence; but the latter only, a truly good and noble disposition.— Orat., I.

Whited Sepulchers

Matt, 23:27.—Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

JAHN.—The doors of sepulchers, indeed the whole external surface, unless they were so conspicuous without it, as to be really discovered and known, were painted white, on the last month of every year, that is, the month Adar. The object of this practice was, by a timely warning, to prevent those, who came to the feast of the Passover, from approaching them, and thus become contaminated. —Bib. Archœ., § 207.

HARMER.—The Passover was at hand when our Lord made this comparison, as is evident from the context; and therefore it is likely the sepulchers were just whitened afresh, when the season for such rainy and bad weather as is wont to wash off these decorations was just over, and the time was at hand when Israel were about to assemble in Jerusalem at their national solemnities, which were all or nearly all held in the dry part of the s ear.—Observations, Vol. III., p. 92.

Tombs of the Prophets

Matt. 23:29.—Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, and say, etc.

VITRINGA.—We may not doubt but that the synagogues were built at first near the sepulchers of distinguished men, thus to perpetuate their memory with posterity. For if ever men were inclined to build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, the Jews were those men. Thus we read in the Cippis Helraicis, that they were accustomed to honor the tomb of Mordecai by a certain annual religious celebration: " From all over that region the Jews congregated together on the day of Purim, and proceeded towards his sepulcher, chanting canticles and eulogies, with drums and choirs exulting and rejoicing, because a miracle was there perforMed." The same is said of the tomb of Esther. Benjamin of Tudela says, “Before one of the synagogues are the tombs of Mordecai and Esther." The opinion was prevalent, at that time, that the souls of the dead hovered about the tombs which enclosed the bodies, and help from God could be obtained with more facility by their intercession. The sepulcher of Moses was concealed, lest this folly should take place.—De Synagoga.

BURDER.—It was a custom among the Greeks, as well as among the Jews, not only to erect, but also to repair and adorn the monuments of those who had merited well of them, or who had suffered an undeserved death.—Orient. Cust.

Messengers of Grace Persecuted

Matt. 23:34.—Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—He did send them apostles and other teachers of religion: some of these were killed, as Stephen and James; some of them were imprisoned, as Peter and John; some of them were beaten, as were the whole company of the apostles at the command of the Jewish council; and multitudes of them were pursued even to strange cities.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 23:35, 36.—That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily, I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—And did not all the righteous blood shed upon the earth since the days of Abel come upon that generation? Did not many of that generation survive to witness and feel the unutterable horrors which Josephus tells?—to see their fellows crucified in jest, "some one way and some another," till "room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses for the carcasses?”—to experience the "deep silence" and the kind of deadly night which seized upon the city in the intervals of rage?—to see 600,000 dead bodies carried out of the gates?—to see friends fighting madly for grass and nettles, and the refuse of the drains?—to see bloody zealots "gaping for want, and stumbling and staggering along like mad dogs? "—to hear the horrid tale of the miserable mother who, in the pangs of famine, had devoured her own child? —to be sold for slaves in such multitudes that at last none would buy them?—to see the streets running with blood, and the " fire of burning houses quenched in the blood of their defenders? "— to have their young sons sold in hundreds, or exposed in the amphitheaters to the sword of the gladiator or the fury of the lion, until at last, "since the people were now slain, the Holy House burnt down, and the city in flames, there was nothing farther left for the enemy to do?” In that awful siege it is believed that there perished 1,000,000 men, beside the 97,000 who were carried captive, and most of whom perished subsequently in the arena of the mine; and it was an awful thing to feel, as some of the survivors and eye-witnesses—and they not Christians—did feel, that "the city had deserved its overthrow by producing a generation of men who were the causes of its misfortunes; " and that " neither did any other city ever suffer Such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, since the beginning of the world." (Every detail in this paragraph is taken from Josephus' B. J. V., 6—VI., 10, passim.)—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 250.

Jerusalem Lamented

Matt. 23:37.—O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The metaphor which our Lord uses here is a very beautiful one. When the hen sees a bird of prey coming, she makes a noise to assemble her chickens, that she may cover them with her wings from the danger. The Roman Eagle is about to fall upon the Jewish state—nothing can prevent this but their conversion to God through Christ—Jesus cries throughout the land, publishing the Gospel of reconciliation—they would not assemble, and the Roman Eagle came and destroyed them.—Note, In loco.

The Coming Desolation

Matt. 23:38.—Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

REV. MATTHEW HENRY.—Both the City and the Temple, God's house and their own, shall be laid waste-shall be left desolate, left a wilderness.—Com., In loco.

JOSEPHUS.—But as for that House, God had for certain long age doomed it to the fire: and now that fatal day was come, according to the revolution of ages; it was the 10th day of the month Ab. At which time, one of the Roman soldiers, without staying for any orders, and without any concern or dread upon him at so great an undertaking, and being hurried only by a certain divine fury, snatched somewhat out of the materials that were on fire, and being lifted up by another soldier, he set fire to a golden window, through which there was a passage to the rooms that were round about the Holy House, on the north side of it. As the flames went upward, the Jews made a great clamor, such as so mighty an affliction required, and ran together to prevent it: and now they spared not their lives any longer, nor suffered anything to restrain their force, since that Holy House was perishing, for whose sake it was that they kept such a guard about it. —Jewish Wars, VI., 4, § 5.

REV. W. M. THOMSON, D. D.—No traveler thinks of leaving Jerusalem without paying a visit to the Wailing place of the Jews, in the Tyropean, at the base of the wall which supports the west side of the Temple area. Those stones, no doubt, formed part of the foundations of the Holy House. No sight meets the eye in Jerusalem more sadly suggestive than this wailing of the Jews over the ruins of their Temple. It is a very old custom, and in past ages they have paid immense sums to their oppressors for the miserable satisfaction of kissing the stones and pouring out lamentations at the foot of their ancient sanctuary. With trembling lips and tearful eyes, they sing, Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity forever: behold, see, we beseech Thee, we are all Thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful House, where our fathers praised Thee, is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste.—Land and Book, II., 587.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, A. M.—It was on Friday I found myself in the “Jews’ Place of Wailing." A crowd of miserable devotees had assembled—men and women of all ages, and from all countries, dressed in their quaint and various costumes. Old men were there,—pale, haggard, careworn men, tottering on pilgrim staves; and little girls with white faces, and lustrous black eyes, gazing wistfully now at their parents, now at the old wall. Some were on their knees, chanting mournfully from a book of Hebrew prayers, swaying their bodies, to and fro; some were prostrate on the ground, pressing forehead and lips to the earth; some were close to the wall, burying their faces in the rents and crannies of the old stones; some were kissing them, some had their arms spread out as if they would clasp them to their bosoms, some were bathing them with tears, and all the while sobbing as if their hearts would burst. It was a sad and touching spectacle. Eighteen centuries of exile and woe have not dulled their hearts' affections, or deadened their feelings of national devotion. Here we see them assembled from the ends of the earth, poor, despised, downtrodden outcasts,—amid the desolations of their fatherland, beside the dishonored ruins of their ancient Sanctuary,—chanting, now in accents of deep pathos, and now of wild woe, the prophetic words of their own Scripture.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 128.

Destruction of the City and Temple Foretold

Matt. 24:1.—And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—And now Jesus left the temple for the last time; but the feelings of the apostles still clung with the loving pride of their nationality to that sacred and memorable spot. They stopped to cast upon it one last lingering gaze, and one of them was eager to call his attention to its goodly stones and splendid offerings—those nine gates overlaid with gold and silver, and the one of solid Corinthian brass yet more precious; those graceful and towering porches; those beveled blocks of marble forty cubits long and ten cubits high, testifying to the toil and munificence of so many generations; those double cloisters and stately pillars; that lavish adornment of sculpture and arabesque; those alternate blocks of red and white marble, recalling the crest and hollow of the sea-waves; those vast clusters of golden grapes, each cluster as large as a man, which twined their splendid luxuriance over the golden doors. They would have him gaze with them on the rising terraces of courts—the Court of the Gentiles with its monolithic columns and rich mosaic; above this the flight of fourteen steps which led to the Court of the Women; then the flight of fifteen steps which led up to the Court of the Priests; then, once more, the twelve steps which led to the final platform crowned by the actual Holy, and Holy of Holies.-It is as though they thought that the loveliness and splendor of this scene would intercede with Him, touching his heart with mute appeal. But the heart of Jesus was sad. To Him the sole beauty of a Temple was the sincerity of its worshippers, and no gold or marble, no brilliant vermilion or curiously-carven cedar-wood, no delicate sculpturing or votive gems could change for Him a den of robbers into a House of Prayer.—Life of Christ, Vol. p. 254.

Matt. 24:2.-And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily, I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

TACITUS. —The situation of Jerusalem was steep and high, and fortified besides with works and ramparts, such as would have proved a sufficient defense even to a place standing on a plain. There were two hills immensely high, and enclosed by a wall built purposely crooked with angles and windings. They had also great towers, some built upon the summit, and raised sixty feet high, others upon the sides of the hills mounting up to a hundred and twenty feet. The temple was raised like a great castle, and enclosed with fortifications of its own, in structure and strength superior to all the others. Even the portals and cloisters built round the Temple were a noble fortress.—Hist., lib, v., c. 11, 12.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Thirty-five years afterward i. e., from Christ's prophetic utterance) that Temple sank into the ashes of its destruction; neither Hadrian, nor Julian, nor any other, were able to build upon its site; and now that very site is a matter of uncertainty.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 256.

JOSEPHUS. —The city taken—and no more people left to slay or plunder—Cæsar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as were of the greatest eminency, and so much of the wall as enclosed the city on the west side. But for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited. This was the end to which Jerusalem came-a city of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.—Jewish Wars, VII., I, § I.

MAIMONIDES. —The very foundations of the Temple were Jigged up, according to the Roman custom. On that 9th day of the month Ab, fatal for vengeance, the wicked Terentius Rufus, of the children of Edom, plowed up the Temple, and the places round about it, that the saying might be fulfilled, “Zion shall be plowed as a field."—Taanith, c. 4.

JOHN HURRAY, F. S. A.—Jesus had already foretold that of the holy Temple “Not one stone should be left upon another that would not be thrown down." How literally that event was verified in the destruction of Jerusalem, by Titus Vespasian, history proclaims, and existing monuments record. This terrible calamity, both Tacitus and Josephus have described; and the ARCH OF TITUS, at Rome, still affords, in its falling splendor, a memorial to the truth of this fact. This triumphal Arch of Titus, designed to commemorate the taking of Jerusalem, was erected on the via sacra, which commenced at the Circus Maximus, and extended to the Capitol. The sides of the arch-way are decorated by bas-reliefs: on the south side is seen the triumphant entry into Rome; and on the opposite side is shown the procession of captive Jews, “with staves in their hands," bearing the spoils of the temple: the Golden Candlestick, with its seven branches; the Golden Table, the Censer, the Silver Trumpets, etc.

There can be no doubt that these are exact representations of the sacred furniture of the Temple— Truth of Rev. Dem., p. 368.

False Christs

Matt. 24:4, 5.—Take heed that no man deceive you: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

JOSEPHUS.—There appeared about that time many men who deceived and deluded the people under pretense of Divine Inspiration; and these prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty.—Jewish Wars, II., 13, § 4.

IDEM.—Now it came to pass, while Fadus was procurator of Judea, that a certain magician, whose name was Theudas, persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them, and follow him to the River Jordan, for he told them he was a prophet, and that he would at his own command, divide the River, and afford them an easy passage over it; and many were deluded by his words.—Antq., XX, 5, § I.

IDEM.—Now, as for the affairs of the Jews, they grew worse and worse continually, for the country was again filled with robberies, and impostors who deluded the people. Yet did Felix catch, and put to death, many of these impostors every day.... And now these impostors and deceivers persuaded the multitude to follow them into the wilderness, and pretended they would exhibit manifest wonders and signs, that should be performed by the providence of God. And many that were prevailed on by them suffered the punishments of their folly. Moreover there came out of Egypt about this time to Jerusalem, one that said he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along with him to the Mount of Olives. He said farther, that he would show them from hence, how at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down; and he promised them, that he would procure them an entrance into the city through those walls, when they were fallen down.— Antq., XX., 8, § 5, 6.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Matt. 24:6.—And ye shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars.

BISHOP NEWTON, D. D.—According to these words of Christ, there were "wars and rumors of wars," as appears in all the historians of those times, and above all in Josephus. To relate the particulars would indeed be to transcribe great part of his history of the Jewish wars. There were more especially " rumors of wars," when Caligula, the Roman Emperor, ordered his statue to be set up in the temple of Jerusalem, which the Jews refused to suffer, and persisted in their refusal; and having therefore reason to apprehend a war from the Romans, were in such a consternation that they omitted even the tilling of their lands but this storm was soon blown over, and their fears were dissipated by the timely death of that emperor.—Dissertations, p. 333.

See JOSEPHUS.—Antq., lib. 18, c. 9, and Bel. Jud., lib. 2, c. 10, and TACITUS, Hist., lib. 5, C. 9.

Matt. 24:7.—For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

BISHOP NEWTON, D. D.—Here, Christ declares that greater disturbances than those which happened under Caligula, should fall out in the latter times of Claudius, and in the reign of Nero. That of “nation against nation " portended the dissensions, insurrections, and mutual slaughter of the Jews, and those of other nations, who dwelt in the same cities together: as particularly at Caesarea, where the Jews and Syrians contended about the right of the city, which contention at length proceeded so far, that above 20,000 Jews were slain, and the city was cleared of the Jewish inhabitants. At this blow the whole nation of the Jews were exasperated; and dividing themselves into parties, they burnt and plundered the neighboring cities and villages of the Syrians, and made an immense slaughter of the people. The Syrians in revenge destroyed not a less number of the Jews, and every city, as Josephus expresseth it, was divided into two armies. At Scythopolis the inhabitants compelled the Jews who resided among them to fight against their own countrymen, and after the victory basely setting upon them by night, murdered above 13,000 of them, and spoiled their goods. At Ascalon they killed 2,500, at Ptolemais 2,000, and made not a few prisoners. The Syrians put many to death, and imprisoned more. The people of Gadara did likewise, and all the other cities of Syria, in proportion as they hated or feared the Jews. At Alexandria the old enmity was revived between the Jews and heathens, and many fell on both sides, but of the Jews to the number of 50,000. The people of Damascus too conspired against the Jews of the same city, and assaulting them unarmed, killed 10,000 of them. That of “kingdom against kingdom " portended the open wars of different Tetrarchies and Provinces against one another: as that of the Jews who dwelt in Peræa against the people of Philadelphia concerning their bounds, while Cuspus Fadus was procurator; and that of the Jews and Galileans against the Samaritans, for the murder of some Galileans going up to the feast of Jerusalem while Cumanus was procurator; and that of the whole nation of the Jews against the Romans and Agrippa, and other allies of the Roman emperor, which began while Gessius Florus was procurator. But, as Josephus saith, there was not only sedition and civil war throughout Judæa, but likewise in Italy, Otho and Vitellius contending for the empire.—Dissertations, p. 333.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—As a proof of the troublous and warlike character of this period, it may be stated that, within the brief space of two years (A. D. 68 and 69) four emperors, Nero, Galba, Otho and Vitellius, suffered death. Eva from Proph., p. 57.

Famines, Pestilences, and Earthquakes

Matt. 24:7.—And there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places.

LUKE.—And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world; which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar (A. D. 46, 47, 48). —Acts 11:28.

SUETONIUS.—During a scarcity of provisions, occasioned by bad crops for several successive years, Claudius was stopped in the middle of the Forum by the mob, who so abused him, at the same time pelting him with fragments of bread, that he had some difficulty in escaping into the palace by a back door. He therefore used all possible means to bring provisions into the city, even in winter.—Claud., c. 19.

JOSEPHUS.—Queen Helena went down to the city Jerusalem, her son conducting her on her journey a great way. Now her coming was of very great advantage to the people of Jerusalem; for whereas a famine did oppress them at that time, and many people died for want of what was necessary to procure food withal, queen Helena sent some of her servants to Alexandria with money to buy a great quantity of corn, and others of them to Cyprus, to bring a cargo of dried figs. And as soon as they were come back, and had brought those provisions, which was done very quickly, she distributed food to those that were in want of it; and left a most excellent memorial behind her of this benefaction, which she bestowed on our whole nation. And when her son Izates was informed of this famine, he sent great sums of money to the principal men in Jerusalem.—Antiq., 20, 2, 5.

TACITUS.—Many prodigies happened this year (A. D. 52). Among them was reckoned the barrenness of the season, and the effect of it, famine. Nor were the complaints of the people confined to houses and corners; they even gathered in tumultuous crowds around the prince. It is certain that there was then in Rome but just provision for fifteen days.—Ann., lib. xii., c. 43.

And earthquakes in divers places.

BISHOP NEWTON, D. D.—Earthquakes—as particularly that in Crete in the reign of Claudius, mentioned by Philostratus in the life of Apollonius, and those also mentioned by Philostratus at Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, in all which places some Jews inhabited; and those at Rome mentioned by Tacitus; and that at Laodicea in the reign of Nero, mentioned by Tacitus, which city was overthrown, as were likewise Hierapolis and Colosse; and that in Campania, mentioned by Seneca; and that at Rome in the reign of Galba mentioned by Suetonius; and that in Judea mentioned by Josephus.— Dissertations, p. 335.

TACITUS.—The city of Apamea, having been overturned by an earthquake, a remission of tribute was granted it for five years.—Ann., XII., 43.

IDEM.—In this year (A. D. 62) Laodicea, one of the capital cities of Asia, "having been overthrown by an earthquake, rose again by her own ability and means into her former luster.—Ann., lib. xiv., c. 27.

SENECA.—During the consulship of Regulus and Virginius, an earthquake devastated Campania; and that too in the month of February, although our ancestors were in the habit of assuring themselves that no such calamity would ever happen during the winter. Pompeii was destroyed, and much of the surrounding country.—Quæst. Nat., lib. vi., c. I.

SUETONIUS.—As Galba was entering Rome (A. D. 68) he was welcomed by an earthquake.— Galb., c. 18.

JOSEPHUS.—In the night there broke out a most terrible tempest, and violent strong winds with the most vehement showers, and continual lightnings, and horrid thunderings, and prodigious bellowings of the shaken earth: and it, was manifest, that the constitution of the universe, was confounded for the destruction of men; and any one might easily conjecture, that these things portended no common calamity.—Jewish Wars, IV., 4, § 5.

Hatred and Violence Towards Christians

Matt. 24:9.—Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

BISHOP NEWTON, D. D.—We need look no further than the Acts of the Apostles for the completion of these particulars. —Disserts., p. 338.

CAVE.—Peter, Simeon, and Jude were crucified. Paul was beheaded. James was killed with a sword. Matthew, Thomas, Matthias, Mark and Luke were put to death in different countries, and in various manners.—Lives of the Apostles.

MOSHEIM.—The Jewish priests and rulers, zealous for the laws of Moses, and plainly perceiving that if Christianity should prevail there would be an end of their authority and emoluments, opposed the doctrine of Christ with all imaginable violence and rancor; and availing themselves of every favorable opportunity to lay hold on his apostles and their disciples, they threw them into prison, where they were threatened and scourged, and had every other species of evil heaped on them without reserve: some of them being even made to undergo capital punishment. Of the malevolence and injustice which the first teachers of Christianity thus experienced at the hands of the Jews, abundant testimony is left on record.... Not content with doing this in their own country, they dispatched legates or missionaries into all the different provinces, for the purpose of animating their distant brethren with similar sentiments of jealousy and hatred towards the Christians, and stirring them up to seek for every occasion of annoying and persecuting this inoffensive flock. And, as with one consent, the Jews everywhere made it their endeavor, by various calumnies and infamous machinations, to draw on the Christians the indignation and of the presidents, the magistrates, and the people at large.

The Romans, it is true, extended their toleration to every kind of religion, from whence no danger to the public safety was to be apprehended; but, at the same time, they would not endure that any one should deride or attempt to explode the religion of the state, or that which had the support of the laws; for there existed between the government and religion of the Romans such an intimate connection and dependence on each other, that whoever attacked or endeavored to undermine the latter, could not of necessity appear to them otherwise than as hostile to the former, and inimical to the dignity of the state. But the Christians, from their very principles, strenuously endeavored to make the Romans renounce their vain and idolatrous superstitions, and were continually urging the citizens to give up and abolish those sacred rites, on the observance of which, as they thought, the welfare and dignity of the commonwealth so much depended. For this reason, the Christians, though they intended no ill whatever to the state, came to be looked upon and treated as enemies of the Roman government.

The fact that the Christians boldly asserted the falsehood and insufficiency of every other religious system in the world, was an additional cause of offense. For the inference which the Romans drew from this was, that the members of this sect were not only immeasurably arrogant and supercilious in their pretensions, but were also filled with hatred toward all those who differed from them in opinion, and were consequently to be regarded as persons likely to sow amongst the people the most inveterate discord, and to occasion disturbances of a very serious, nature to the state.... These considerations had the effect of stirring up the emperors, the senate, the presidents, and the magistrates, to endeavor, as far as in them lay, to arrest the progress of Christianity by means of most rigorous laws and punishments.

But this was not all. Attached to the service of that host of deities which the Romans worshipped, both in public and private, there was an immense number of priests, augurs, soothsayers, and ministers of inferior order, who not only derived from it the means of living at their ease, with every luxury at command, but were also, from the sacred nature of the functions with which they were invested, sure to stand high in the estimation of the people, and to possess no inconsiderable degree of influence over them. When all these perceived that it was highly probable, or rather felt it to be morally certain, that if once the Christian religion should become predominant with the public, there would immediately be an end to all the emoluments, honors, and advantages, which they then enjoyed; a regard for their own interests naturally prompted them to endeavor, by every means in their power, to lessen the credit of the Christians, and to render them obnoxious to the people and to the magistrates. Associated with these in their efforts to put down Christianity, there was an innumerable multitude of persons of various other descriptions, to whom the public superstitions were a source of no small profit; such as merchants who supplied the worshippers with frankincense and victims, and other requisites for sacrifice, architects who planned the temples and the altars, vintners, gold and silver smiths, carpenters, statuaries, sculptors, players on the flute, harpers and others to all of whom the heathen polytheism, with its numerous temples, and long train of priests, and ministers, and ceremonies, and festivals, was a principal source of affluence and prosperity.

The results of all these things were frequent and most violent persecutions, during which great numbers suffered death in the cause of Christ. These are facts that stand supported by the weightiest and most positive evidence.—Historical Commentaries, Vol. I., p. 120-536.

TACITUS.—At that period, these people were commonly known by the name of Christians. The author of that name was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal, under the procurator Pontius Pilate. But this pestilent superstition, checked for a while, broke out afresh, and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but also in Rome, where all that is evil on the earth finds its way and is practiced. At first those only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterward a vast multitude discovered by them; all of whom were condemned, not so much for the, crime of burning the city (of which they were innocent), as for their enmity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, that they might be torn to pieces by dogs; some were crucified; while others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up for lights in the nighttime, and thus burned to death. For these spectacles Nero gave his own gardens, and, at the same time, exhibited there the diversions of the circus; sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer, and at other times driving a chariot himself: until at length these men, though really criminal and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated, as people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man.—Tacit., lib. xv., c. 44.

SUETONIUS.—Nero inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious superstition.—Nero, c. 16.

MOSHEIM.—The example of Nero was, in this respect, pretty uniformly copied after by his successors during three centuries; although their severity was not always carried to the same extent: and hence the professors of Christianity had to endure a long series of dire afflictions, or to use a more familiar term, persecutions, to which an end was not put until the time of Constantine the Great.— Hist. Comments., I., 125.

Defections

Matt. 24:11.—And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH.—The Apostle of the Gentiles often complained of "false brethren," that many turned away from him, and that he stood alone, forsaken by all, when he first appeared before Nero. —Evid. from Proph., p. 58.

TACITUS. —At first, those only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterward a vast multitude discovered by them; all of whom were condemned.—Ann., lib. xv., c. 44.

False Prophets

Matt. 24:11.—And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Such particularly was Simon Magus, and his followers, the Gnostics, were very numerous. Such also were the Judaizing teachers, "false prophets," as they are called by St. Paul, " deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ." Such also were Hymeneus and Philetus, of whom the apostle complains, that they affirmed " the resurrection to be past already, and overthrew the faith of some."—Disserts., p. 339.

The Gospel Preached in All the World

Matt. 24:4.—And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

PAUL.—The gospel, which is come unto you, as it is in all the world... The hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven.—Col. 1:6, 23.

IDEM.—I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. —Rom. 1:8.

IDEM.—So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.—Rom. 10:17, 18.

CLEMENT.—Paul was a preacher both in the East and in the West: he taught the whole world righteousness, and traveled as far as to the utmost borders of the West—Ep. ad Cor. I., c. 5.

EUSEBIUS.—The apostles preached the gospel in all the world, and some of them passed beyond the ocean to the Britannic Isles.—Dem. Evang., III., 5.

THEODORET.—The apostles had induced, not the Romans only, but every nation and kind of men to embrace the gospel.—Serm. IX.

BISHOP NEWTON.—It appears from the writers of the history of the church, that before the destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 70) the gospel was not only preached in Lesser Asia, and Greece, and Italy, the great theaters of action then in the world; but was likewise propagated as far northward as Scythia, as far southward as Ethiopia, as far eastward as Parthia and India, as far westward as Spain and Britain.—Disserts., p. 341.

GIBBON.—While the great Roman Empire was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or to the limits of the Roman Empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and learning as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans, it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa; and by means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a world unknown to the ancients.—Decline and Fall of R. E., Chapter 15

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—What but the wisdom of God could foretell this? and what but the power of God could accomplish it?—Note, In loco.

The Abomination of Desolation

Matt. 24:15, 16.—When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place—then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains.

BISHOP NEWTON.—" The abomination of desolation," according to Luke, is the Roman army, which was thus designated, for its ensigns and images, which, were an "abomination" to the Jews. As Chrysostom affirms, every idol and every image of a man was called an abomination among the Jews. The object of that army would be to "desolate" Jerusalem. When therefore the Roman army shall advance to besiege Jerusalem, then let them who are in Judea consult their own safety, and fly into the mountains. This counsel was wisely remembered, and put in practice by Christians afterward.—Disserts., p. 344

EUSEBIUS.—The Christians were commanded by an oracle revealed to the best approved among them, that before the wars began, they should depart from the city, and inhabit a village beyond Jordan, called Pella. And this they did, and so escaped the general ruin which befell the city.— Euseb., lib. iii., c. 5.

The Warning

Matt. 24:17, 18.—Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Our Savior maketh use of these expressions to intimate that their flight must be as sudden and hasty as Lot's was out of Sodom. And the Christians escaping just as they did was the more providential, because afterward all egress out of the city was prevented (Jos. J. B. 4, 9, I). Disserts., p. 345.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—By such warnings the Christians were preserved. Before John of, Giscala had shut the gates of Jerusalem, and Simon of Gerasa had begun to murder the fugitives— before the Roman eagle waved her wing over the doomed city, or the infamies of lust and murder had driven every worshipper in horror from the Temple Courts—the Christians had taken timely warning, and in the little Peræan town of Pella were beyond the reach of all the robbery, and murder, and famine, and cannibalism, and extermination which made the siege of Jerusalem a scene of greater tribulation than any that has been since the beginning of the world.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 262.

Extreme Sufferings

Matt. 24:19.—And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

BISHOP NEWTON.—For neither will such persons be in a condition to fly, neither will they be able to endure the distress and hardships of a siege. This woe was sufficiently fulfilled in the cruel slaughters which were made both of the women and children, and particularly in that grievous famine, -which so miserably afflicted Jerusalem during the siege. —Disserts., p. 345.

JOSEPHUS.—The famine was too hard for all other passions or affections; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths; and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they refrained not from taking from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives.—Jewish Wars, V., 10, 3.

IDEM.—All hope of escaping out of the city was now cut off. The famine widened its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were frill of women and children that were dying by famine.—Jewish Wars, V., 12, 3.

IDEM. —A certain woman, Mary of Bethezub, eminent for her family and he wealth, had fled to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. Having been stripped and plundered of all her substance and provisions by the soldiers, out of necessity and fury, she attempted a most unnatural thing: snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said: " O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? Should the Romans spare our lives, we must be slaves. But this famine will destroy us before that slavery comes. And these seditious murderers more terrible than both. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these wicked wretches, and a byword to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews." As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one-half of him, and kept the other half by her, concealed.... When this shocking deed became known, the whole city was filled with horror.... Those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy.—Jewish Wars, VI., 3, 4.

Matt. 24:21.—For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Never was a narrative more full of horrors, frenzies, unspeakable degradations, and overwhelming miseries, than is the history of the siege of Jerusalem. Never was any prophecy more closely, more terribly, more overwhelmingly fulfilled than this of Christ.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 249.

JOSEPHUS.—Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to me that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were. This makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations.— Preface to Jewish Wars, § 4.

IDEM.—To speak briefly, no other city ever suffered such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was from the beginning of the world.—J. B., v. 10, § 5.

BISHOP PORTEUS.—Is not this precisely what our Savior says, " There shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world, no, nor ever shall be?" It is impossible, one would think, even for the most stubborn infidel not to be struck with the great similarity of the two passages; and not to see that the prediction of our Lord, and the accomplishment of it as described by the historian, are exact counterparts of each other, and seem almost as if they had been written by the same person. Yet Josephus was not born till after our Savior was crucified, and he was not a Christian, but a Jew, and certainly never meant to give any testimony to the truth of our religion.—Lectures on Matthew, in loc.

Matt. 24:22.—And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

BISHOP NEWTON.—If these wars and desolations were to continue, none of the Jews would escape destruction, they would all be cut off root and branch. Josephus computes the number of those who perished in the siege at 1,000,000, besides those who were slain in other places: and if the Romans had gone on destroying in this manner, the whole nation of the Jews would certainly in a little time have been extirpated. But for the elect's sake (i. e., the Christians') those days shall be shortened. Titus himself was desirous of putting a speedy end to the siege, having Rome and the riches and the pleasures there before his eyes (Tacit. Hist., 5, 11). The besieged, too, helped to shorten the days by their divisions and mutual slaughter: by burning their provisions, which would have sufficed for many years, and by fatally deserting their strongest holds, where they could never have been taken by force, but by famine alone. By these means the days were shortened. Titus himself could not but ascribe his success to God, as he was viewing the fortifications, after the city was taken. His words to his friends were very remarkable: " We have fought," said he," with God on our side; and it is God who bath pulled the Jews out of these strongholds; for what could the hands of men or machines do against these towers?" (B. J., vi., 9, I.) God, therefore, in the opinion of Titus, as well as of the Evangelist, shortened the days.—Disserts., p. 350.

Caution Against Deceivers

Matt. 24:23-26.—Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, etc.

See the testimonies under verses 4 and 5 of this chapter.

BISHOP NEWTON.—It is surprising that our Savior should not only foretell the appearance of these impostors, but also the manner and circumstances of their conduct. For some he mentions as appearing in the desert, and some in the secret chambers; and the event hath in all points answered the prediction (see Josephus, Ant., 20, 7, 6; and B. J., 2,,13, 4; and 6, 5, 2).—Disserts., 352.

The Enemy's Course

Matt. 24:27.—For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

BISHOP PEARCE.—The Roman army entered into Judea on the east side of it, and carried on their conquests westward, as if not only the extensiveness of the ruin, but the very route which the army would take, was intended in the comparison of the lightning coming out of the east, and shining even unto the west. —Dissert. on the Destruct. of Jerusalem.

The Carcass and the Eagles

Matt. 24:28.—For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

BISHOP NEWTON.—By the word carcass is meant the Jewish nation, which was morally and judicially dead; and by the eagles the Romans, who are properly compared to these fiercest birds of prey, and whose ensign was an eagle.—Disserts., is. 354.

PLINY.—Caius Marius, in his second consulship, abdicating the old standards, appointed the eagles for the Roman legions. Since then it has been remarked that hardly ever has a Roman legion encamped for the winter without a pair of eagles making their appearance at the spot.—Hist. Nat., lib. x., c. 5.

WHERESOEVER the carcass is.

JOSEPHUS.—While Jerusalem had to struggle with three of the greatest misfortunes, war and tyranny and sedition, there was no part of Judea but was in a like miserable condition.... The Romans pursued the Jews, and took and slew them everywhere.—B. J., 4, 7,; etc., etc.

The Civil and Ecclesiastical Issues

Matt. 24:29.—Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Some have understood this verse to refer to the end of the world, but the words "immediately after the tribulation of those days," show evidently that he is not speaking of any distant event, but of something immediately consequent upon the tribulation before mentioned, and that must be the destruction of Jerusalem. It is true, his figures are very strong, but not stronger than are used by the ancient prophets upon similar occasions. The prophet Isaiah speaks' in the same manner of Babylon, Ezekiel of Egypt, Daniel of the Jews, and Joel of this very destruction of Jerusalem. Thus, in the usual prophetic language, Christ declares the final dissolution of the Jewish polity in church and state.— Disserts., p. 361.

DR. WARBURTON.—These prophetic figures were borrowed from ancient hieroglyphics. For in the hieroglyphic writing, the sun, moon, and stars, were used to represent states and empires, kings, queens and nobility; their eclipse and extinction, to represent temporary disasters, or entire overthrow: in like manner the prophets call kings and empires by the names of the heavenly luminaries, and represent their misfortunes and overthrow by the eclipse, extinction or fall of those luminaries. So the Savior foretells, under the figures of " the sun and moon being darkened and of the stars falling," the abolition of the Jewish policy, and the establishment of the Christian.—Divine Legation, II., b. 4, § 4.

LIGHTFOOT.—The Jewish heaven shall perish, and the sun and moon of its glory and happiness shall be darkened-brought to nothing. The" sun" is the religion of the church; the " moon " is the government of the state; and the " stars" are the judges and doctors of both.... All this received its literal fulfillment.—In loco.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—The darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars, and the shaking of the powers of the heavens, denote the utter extinction of the light of prosperity and privilege to the Jewish nation; the unhinging of their whole constitution in church and state; the violent subversion of the authority of their princes and priests; the abject miseries to which the people in general, especially their chief persons, would be reduced; and the moral or religious darkness to which they would be consigned.— Note, In loco.

Matt. 24:30.—And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—This destruction and overthrow would be an evident " sign " and demonstration of the Son of man's exaltation to his throne in heaven; whence he would come in his divine providence, as riding on " the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory " to destroy " his enemies, who would not have him to reign over them; " at which events, "all the tribes of the land" would mourn and lament, whilst they saw the tokens, and felt the weight, of his terrible indignation.—Note, In loco.

Matt. 24:31.—And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

BISHOP NEWTON.—After the destruction of Jerusalem, Christ by his “angels," or ministers will gather to himself a glorious church out of all the nations under heaven. No one ever so little versed in history needs to be told, that the Christian religion spread and prevailed mightily after this period; and hardly any one thing contributed more to this success of the Gospel than the destruction of Jerusalem, falling out in the very manner, and with the very circumstances, so particularly foretold by our blessed Savior.—Disserts., p. 363.

DR. T. SCOTT.—He would send forth his “angels," or messengers, the preachers of the Gospel, as with a great sound of a trumpet, proclaiming the year of jubilee, "the acceptable year of the Lord." Thus he would “gather his elect " into his church, from every quarter, all over the world.—Note, In loco.

The Time Near and the Events Certain

Matt. 24:34.—Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—The predictions of this chapter were delivered by our Savior on Tuesday of Passion Week, April the 4th, A. D. 30, (or, A. U. C. 780).—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 188, and 265.

JOSEPHUS.—The war with the Romans commenced in the 12Th year of the reign of Nero, or A. D. 66. —Antq., 20, II, 1.

IDEM.—The siege of Jerusalem began early in the spring of A. D. 70. —Jewish Wars, 5, 3, 1, and 6, 9, 3.

IDEM.—The Temple was burned, July 15th, A. D. 70, the same day and month on which it had been burned by the king of Babylon.—Antq., 20, II, 8.

IDEM.—The City was taken, September 12Th, A. D. 70, or in the 12Th year of the reign of Vespasian.—,Antq., b. vi., c. 10.

Matt. 24:35.—Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

BISHOP NEWTON.—It appears next to impossible, that any man should duly consider these prophecies, and the exact completion of them; and if he is a believer, not to be confirmed in the faith: or if he is an infidel, not be converted. Can any stronger proof be given of a divine revelation than the spirit of prophecy, and can any stronger proof be given of the spirit of prophecy, than the examples now before us, in which so many contingencies, and I may say improbabilities, which human wisdom or prudence could never foresee, are so particularly foretold, and so punctually accomplished! At the time when Christ pronounced these prophecies, the Roman governor resided at Jerusalem, and had a force sufficient to keep the people in obedience: and could human prudence foresee that the city as well as the country would revolt and rebel against the Romans? Could human prudence foresee famines, and pestilence, and earthquakes, in divers places? Could human prudence foresee the speedy propagation of the Gospel so contrary to all human probability? Could human prudence foresee such an utter destruction of Jerusalem, with all the circumstances preceding and following it? It was never the custom of the Romans absolutely to ruin any of their provinces. It was improbable therefore that such a thing should happen at all, and still more improbable that it should happen under the humane and generous Titus, who was indeed, as he was called, "The Love and Delight of Mankind."—Disserts., p. 381.

The Warning Repeated

Matt. 24:41.—Two women shall be grinding at the mill: the one shall be taken, and the other left.

DR. CLARKE.—Scarcely had we reached the apartment prepared for our reception (at Nazareth), when, looking into the court-yard belonging to the house, we beheld two women grinding at the mill, in a manner most forcibly illustrating the saying of our Savior. They were preparing flour to make our bread, as is always customary in the country when strangers arrive. The two women, seated upon the ground, opposite to each other, held between them two round flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, and such as in Scotland are called querns. In the center of the upper stone was a cavity for pouring in the corn; and by the side of this, an upright wooden handle for moving the stone. As the operation began, one of the women with her right hand pushed this handle to the woman opposite, who again sent it to her companion,—thus communicating a rotary and very rapid motion to the upper stone; their left hands being all the while employed in supplying fresh corn, as fast as the bran and flour escape from the sides of the machine.—Travels, IV., 167, 168.

Matt. 24:50,51.—The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder; and appoint him his portion, etc.

JAHN.—Dichotomy, or "cutting asunder," was a method of putting criminals to death that prevailed among several ancient nations.—Archœology, 260, 265.

HERODOTUS.—Sabacôs saw in his sleep a vision:—a man stood by his side, and counseled him to gather together all the priests of Egypt and cut every One of them asunder.—Euterpe, c. 139.

IDEM.—Having thus spoken, forthwith Xerxes commanded those to whom such tasks were assigned, to seek out the eldest of the sons of Pythius, and having cut his body asunder, to place the two halves, one on the right, the other on the left of the great road, so that the army might march out between them. —Polymnia, c. 39.

AULUS GELLIUS.—Of the inhuman custom of cutting and dividing up the human body on account of debts due, it is painful even to speak.—Aul. Gell., lib. xx., c. I.

Parable of the Ten Virgins

Matt. 25:1-13.—Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, etc.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—The circumstances of a marriage among the Jews, so far at least as they supply the groundwork of the present parable, are sufficiently well known, and have been abundantly illustrated by writers on Jewish antiquities; and indeed no less through the accounts given by modern travelers in the East,—for the customs alluded to hold in full force to the present day, and form as important a part of the nuptial ceremony as they did in ancient times.—On Parabs., p. 192.

REV. WILLIAM WARD.—At a marriage, the procession of which I saw some years ago, the bridegroom came from a distance; and the bride lived at Serampore, to which place the bridegroom was to come by water. After waiting for two or three hours, at length, near midnight, it was announced, as if in the very words of Scripture, " Behold the bridegroom cometh! go ye out to meet him." All the persons employed now lighted their lamps, and ran with them in their hands to, fill up their stations in the procession. Some of them had lost their lights, and were unprepared; but it was then too late to seek them: and the cavalcade moved on to the house of the bride, at which place the company entered a large and splendidly-illuminated area before the house, covered with an awning, where a great multitude of friends, dressed in their best apparel, were seated upon mats. The bridegroom was carried in the arms of a friend, and placed in a superb seat in the midst of the company, where he sat a short time, and then went into the house, the door of which was immediately closed, and guarded by Sepoys. I and others expostulated with the door-keepers, but in vain. Never was I so struck with our Lord's beautiful parable, as at that moment. "And the door was shut."—View of the Hindoos, Vol. II., p. 29.

Parable of the Talents

Matt. 25:54-30.—For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, etc.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—Slaves in antiquity were often artisans, or were allowed otherwise to engage freely in business, paying, as it was frequently arranged, a fixed yearly sum to their master; or, they had money given them wherewith to trade on his account, or with which to enlarge their business, and to bring him a share of the profits.—On Parabs., p. 213.

The Final Judgment

Matt. 25:32.—And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP. —When sheep and goats are fed together in the same pasture, the shepherd often has occasion to separate them, especially as the goats are apt to be troublesome to the sheep when folded in the same enclosure, on account of their butting propensities and general restlessness; hence it is a very common sight to see a shepherd "dividing his sheep from the goats." It is done with the crook, by striking the goats either on their bodies or their horns, and thus driving them off by themselves, while the quiet sheep remain in their places. The comparison of the righteous and the wicked to these two classes of animals has a foundation in their respective tempers and characteristic traits, and to an Oriental mind is extremely graphic and appropriate. The goat is constantly compared, by the inhabitants of Eastern lands, to the Evil One.—Bible Lands, p. 207.

Matt. 25:34 and 41.—Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then shall he also say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

PLATO.—When the judges gave judgment, they commanded the just to go on the right hand, and upwards through the heaven, having placed marks on the front of those that had been judged; but the unjust they commanded to the left, and downwards, and these likewise had behind them marks of all that they had done.—De Rep., lib. x., c. 13.

VIRGIL—

Here in two ample roads the way divides,

The right direct, our destin'd journey guides

By Pluto's palace, to the Elysian plains;

The left to Tartarus, where bound in chains

Loud howl the damn'd in everlasting pains.

—Æn., 540.

Caiaphas

Matt. 26:3.—Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the

people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas.

JOSEPHUS.—Caiaphas was appointed High Priest by the Procurator Valerius Gratus, Pilate's predecessor in the government of Judea, towards the end of his administration, or about A. D. 24; and his removal was one of the first acts of Vitellius, Pilate's successor, A. D. 36. Caiaphas, therefore, was High Priest during the whole of Pilate's administration.—Antiq., 18, 2, 2, and 18, 4, 3.

The Alabaster Box

Matt. 26:7.—There came unto him a woman, having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

PLINY. —The stone called alabaster is hollowed out into vessels for ointments, which is said to be preserved with greatest purity in these receptacles.—Hist. Nat., lib. 36, c. 8.

IDEM.—Unguents exceed in price so large a sum as 400 denarii per pound.—Hist. Nat., lib. 13, c. 4.

MARTIAL.—The perfumes I own were good, which you gave your guests yesterday; but you carved nothing. It is a curious entertainment to be anointed and starved at the same time.—Mart., lib. iii., epig. 12.

PLATO.—The man whom we esteem as a pious, wonderful, and pleasant person we should send away, pouring oil upon his head, and crowning him with a woolen chaplet.—De Rep., lib. iii., c. 9.

Matt. 26:12.—For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

PLINY. —The use of unguents has begun to be adopted by our own country among the honors paid to the dead.—Nat. Hist., lib. xiii., c. I.

JUVENAL. —Crispuss, reeking with unguents more than enough to furnish two funerals.— Sat. IV., v. 108.

Matt. 26:13.—Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman bath done, be told for a memorial of her.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Another remarkable proof of the prescience of Christ. Such a matter as this, humanly speaking, depended on mere fortuitous circumstances, yet so has God disposed matters that the thing has continued, hitherto, as firm and regular as the ordinances of heaven.—In loco.

The Last Supper

Matt. 26:26-28.—And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Never since that memorable evening has the church ceased to observe the commandment of her Lord; ever since that day, from age to age, has this blessed and holy Sacrament been a memorial of the death of Christ, and a strengthening and refreshing of the soul by the, body and blood, as the body is refreshed and strengthened by the bread and wine.— Life of Christ, II., 292.

Gethsemane

Matt. 26:36.—Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Their way led them through one of the city gates—probably that which then corresponded to the present gate of St. Stephen—down the steep sides of the ravine, across the wady of the Kidron, which lay a hundred feet below, and up the green and quiet slope beyond it. To one who has visited the scene at the very season of the year and at that very hour of the night-who has felt the solemn hush of the silence even at this short distance from the city wall—who has seen the deep shadows flung by the great boles of the ancient olive-trees, and the checkering of light that falls on the sward through their moonlight-silvered leaves, it is more easy to realize the awe which crept over those few Galileans, as in almost unbroken silence, with something perhaps of secrecy, and with a weight of mysterious dryad brooding over their spirits, they followed Him, who with bowed head and sorrowing heart walked before them to His willing doom!... I had the deep and memorable happiness of being able to see Gethsemane with two friends, unaccompanied by any guide, late at night and under the full glow of the Paschal moon, on the night of April 14th, 1870. It is usually argued that the eight old time-hallowed olive-trees cannot reach back to the time of Christ, because Titus cut down the trees all round the city. This argument is not decisive; but still it is more probable that these trees are only the successors and descendants of those which have always given its name to the sacred hill. It is quite certain that Gethsemane must have been near this spot, and the tradition which fixes the site is very old.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 305, 308.

TISCHENDORF.—I found the traditionary locality in perfect harmony with all that we learn from the Evangelists.—Reise in den Orient, I., 312.

Pilate

Matt. 27:2.—And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

BISHOP COTTON, D. D.—Pontius Pilate was the sixth Roman procurator of Judea, and under him our Lord labored, and suffered, and died, as we learn, not only from the obvious Scriptural authorities, but also from Tacitus. He was appointed A. D. 26.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2527.

JOSEPHUS. —Gratus went back to Rome, after he had tarried in Judea eleven' years, when Pontius Pilate came as his successor.—Antiq., lib. xviii., c. 2, § 2.

TACITUS. —In the reign of Tiberius, Christ suffered capital punishment by order of the procurator Pontius Pilate.—Ann., 15, 44

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Of Pilate's origin, and of his antecedents before A. D. 26, when he became the 6th procurator of Judea, but little is known. In rank he belonged to the ordo equester, and he owed his appointment to the influence of Sejanus.—Life of Christ, II., 360.

Remorse of Judas

Matt. 27:3,4.—Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.

TACITUS. —The crime committed, at once its enormity becomes apparent.—Ann., XIV 10.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—There is in a great crime an awfully illuminating power. It lights up the theater of the conscience with an unnatural glare, and, expelling the twilight glamour of self-interest, shows the actions and motives in their full and true aspect. In Judas, as in so many thousands before and since, this opening of the eyes which follows the consummation of an awful sin to which many other sins have led, drove him from remorse to despair, from despair to madness, from madness to suicide.— Life of Christ, II., 357

I have betrayed the innocent blood.

BISHOP PORTEUS.—Judas was the constant companion of our Savior's ministry, and witness to everything he did or said. If there had been any plan concerted to impose a false religion on the world, Judas must have been in the secret. His testimony is invaluable, because it is the testimony of an unwilling witness; the testimony, not of a friend, but of an enemy.—Lectures on Matthew.

ROBERT HALDANE.—The greatest enemy, with a choice of means for detection of fraud and collusion, could not have pointed out anything better calculated to suit his purpose, than the/ placing of Judas among the apostles. It was a remarkable provision made by the Lord, for increasing, to the highest point, the value of the testimony of the twelve apostles. He, like them, although in a different way, sealed his testimony with his blood.—Evidence of Divine Revelation.

And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Did he expect them to console his remorseful agony, to share the blame of his guilt, to excuse and console him with their lofty dignity? In guilt there is no possibility for mutual respect, no basis for any feeling but mutual abhorrence.—Life of Christ, II., 358.

Pilate's Wife's Dream

Matt. 27:19.—When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Dreams were occasionally considered as indications of the Divine will, and among the Romans and Greeks as well as the Jews, great reliance was placed on them.— Note, In loco.

HORACE.—After midnight, when dreams are true.—Sat. I., 10, 31.

OVID.—Just before sun-rise—the time in which they were wont to have dreams that proved true.— Her., XIX., 195.

Pilate Washing His Hands

Matt. 27:24.—When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made.

JOSEPHUS.—(Jewish mobs, as we may learn from Josephus, often proved both dangerous and abusive.) “They came about Pilate's tribunal, and made a clamor at it."—" Many myriads of the people got together, and made a clamor against him, and insisted that he should leave off that design. Some of them also used reproaches, and abused the man (Pilate), as crowds of such people usually do.... So he bade the Jews go away, but they, boldly casting reproaches upon him, etc.—Jewish Wars, 2, 9, 4; and Antiq., 18, 3, 2.

He took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person, see ye to it.

MOSES.—All the elders shall wash their hands, and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. —Deut. 21:6, 7.

PLUTARCH.—Cataline having killed Marcus Marius, brought his head to Sylla as he sat upon his tribunal in the forum, and then washed his hands in the lustral water at the door of Apollo's temple.— Sull., c. 32.

His Blood Be on Us

Matt. 27:25.—Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—And now mark, for one moment, the revenges of History. Has not his blood been on them, and on their children? Has it not fallen most of all on those most nearly concerned in that deep tragedy? Before the dread sacrifice was consummated, Judas died in the horrors of a loathsome suicide. Caiaphas was deposed the year following. Herod died in infamy and exile. Stripped of his procuratorship very shortly afterward, on the very charges he had tried by a wicked concession to avoid (on the trial of Jesus), Pilate, wearied out with misfortunes, died in suicide and banishment, leaving behind him an execrated name. The house of Annas was destroyed a generation later by an infuriated mob, and his son was dragged through the streets, and scourged and beaten to his place of murder. Some of those who shared in and witnessed the scenes of that day—and thousands of their children—also shared in and witnessed the long horrors of that siege of Jerusalem which stands unparalleled in history for its unutterable fearfulness. "It seems," says Renan," as though the whole race had appointed a rendezvous for extermination. "They had shouted," We have no king but Caesar! " and they had no king but Cæsar; and leaving only for a time the fantastic shadow of a local and contemptible royalty, Caesar after Caesar outraged, and tyrannized, and pillaged, and oppressed them, till at last they rose in wild revolt against the Caesar whom they had claimed, and a Caesar slaked in the blood of its best defenders the red ashes of their burnt and desecrated Temples. They had forced the Romans to crucify their Christ, and though they regarded this punishment with especial horror, they and their children were themselves crucified in myriads by the Romans outside of their own walls, till room was wanting and wood failed, and soldiers had to ransack a fertile inventiveness of cruelty for fresh methods of inflicting this insulting form of death. They had given thirty pieces of silver for their Savior's blood, and they were themselves sold in thousands for yet smaller sums. They had chosen Bar-Abbas in preference to their Messiah, and for them there has been no Messiah more, while a murderer's dagger swayed the last counsels of their dying nationality. They had accepted the guilt of blood, and the last pages of their history were glued together with the rivers of their blood, and that blood continued to be shed in wanton cruelties from age to age. They who will, may see in incidents like these the mere unmeaning chances of History; but there is in History nothing unmeaning to one who regards it as the Voice of God speaking among the destinies of men; and whether a man sees any significance or not in events like these, he must be blind indeed who does not see that when the murder of Christ was consummated, the ax was laid at the root of the barren tree of Jewish nationality. Since that day Jerusalem and its environs, with their " ever-extending miles of grave-stones and ever-lengthening pavement of tombs and sepulchers," have become little more than one vast cemetery—an Aceldama, a field of blood, a potter's field to bury strangers in. Like the mark of Cain upon the forehead of their race, the guilt of that blood has seemed to cling to them—as it ever must until that same blood effaceth it.—Life of Christ, Vol. II., p. 388-391.

Jesus Scourged

Matt. 27:26.—And when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D.—The punishment of crucifixion properly commenced with scourging, after the criminal had been stripped; hence in the common form of sentence we find "summore, lictor, despolia, verbera," etc. For this there are a host of authorities. It was inflicted not with the comparatively mild virgœ, but the more terrible flagellum, which was not used by the Jews. Into these scourges the soldiers often stuck nails, pieces of bone, etc., to heighten the pain, which was often so intense that the sufferer died under it.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 513.

LUCIAN.—In my opinion he ought to be crucified, having been first scourged. —Piscat., c. 2.

LIVY.—Some, who had been ringleaders of the conspiracy at Etruria, the Praetor scourged with rods, and then crucified.—Livy, b. 33, c. 36.

QUINTUS CURTIUS.—Alexander commanded Arimazes, with all his family, to be scourged, and then crucified.—Q. Curt., lib. vii., c. ix.

JOSEPHUS.—They also caught many of the quiet people, and brought them. before Florus, whom he first chastised with stripes, and then crucified. —Jewish Wars, 2, 14, 9.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—He delivered Jesus over to be scourged. The Greek word used for the scourging implies that it was done, not with rods, for Pilate had no lictors, but with what Horace calls the “horrible flagellum," of which the Russian knout is the only modern representative. It was a punishment so truly horrible, that the mind revolts at it. The unhappy sufferer was publicly stripped, was tied by the hands in a bent position to a pillar, and then, on the tense, quivering nerves of the naked back, the blows were inflicted with leathern thongs, weighted with jagged edges of bone and lead; sometimes even the blows fell by accident—sometimes, with terrible barbarity, were purposely struck—on the face and eyes. It was a, punishment so hideous that, under its lacerating agony, the victim generally fainted, often died; still more frequently a man was sent away to perish under the mortification and nervous exhaustion which ensued.—Life of Christ, II., p. 379.

HORACE. —To be cut by the horrible scourge.—Sat., III.,

IDEM. —He was beaten to death with the flagellum.—Sat., II., 41.

Jesus Mocked

Matt. 27:27-30.—Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee bee him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—Among the Romans, insult and derision were the customary preliminaries to the last agony. The" et pereuntibus addita ludibria" of Tacitus (Ann. 15, 44) might stand for their general practice.—Life of Christ, II., p. 380.

JOSEPHUS.—SO they were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city.—Jewish Wars, 5, II, I.

Jesus Bearing His Cross

Matt. 27:31, 32.—And they led him away to crucify him. And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—In John (19:16, 17) we are told Christ himself bore the cross, and this he did for a part of the way; but being exhausted with the scourging and other cruel usage which he had received, he was found incapable of bearing it alone; therefore they obliged Simon, not I think to bear it entirely, but to assist Christ by bearing a part of it. It was a constant practice among the Romans to oblige criminals to bear their cross to the place of execution: insomuch that Plutarch makes use of it as an illustration of the misery of vice: " Every kind of wickedness produces its own particular torment, just as every malefactor, when he is brought forth to execution, carries his own cross." —Note, In loco.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—When the cross had been prepared they laid it upon his shoulders, and led him to the place of punishment. To one enfeebled by the horrible severity of the previous scourging, the carrying of such a burden would be an additional misery. But Jesus was enfeebled not only by this cruelty, but by previous days of violent struggle and agitation, by an evening of deep and overwhelming emotion, by a night of sleepless anxiety and suffering, by the mental agony of the garden, by three trials and three sentences of death before the Jews, by long and exhausting scenes in the Prætorium, by examination before Herod, and by the brutal and painful derision which He had undergone, first at the hands of the Sanhedrim and their servants, then from Herod's bodyguard, and lastly from the Roman cohort. All these, superadded to the sickening lacerations of the scourging, had utterly broken down His physical strength. His tottering footsteps, if not His actual falls under that fearful load, made it evident that He lacked the physical strength to carry it from the Prætorium to Golgotha. Even if they did not pity His feebleness, the Roman soldiers would naturally object to the consequent hindrance and delay. But they found an easy method to solve the difficulty. They had not proceeded farther than the city gate, when they met a man coming from the country, who was known to the early Christians as "Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus;" and perhaps, on some hint from the accompanying Jews that Simon sympathized with the teaching of the Sufferer, they impressed him without the least scruple into their odious service.—Life of Christ, II., 394

EPICTETUS.—It appears from the writings of this author that for Roman soldiers to impress people to assist them, or to carry burdens for them, was no uncommon thing.—See Dissert., IV., I.

Jesus Refusing Vinegar Mingled With Gall

Matt. 27:34.—They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—It was a common custom among the Jews to administer a stupefying potion, compounded of sour wine, frankincense and myrrh, to condemned persons, to alleviate their sufferings, or to render them insensible to them. The Rabbins say that they put a grain of frankincense into a cup of strong wine. This practice was founded on Prov. 31:6, " Give strong drink to him who is ready to perish, and wine to him who is bitter of soul," because he is just going to suffer the punishment of death. Some person, out of kindness, administered this to our blessed Lord; but he refused it, determined to endure the fullness of pain, and to tread the winepress alone.—Note, In loco.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—It had been the custom of wealthy ladies in Jerusalem to provide this stupefying potion at their own expense, and they did so quite irrespectively of their sympathy for any individual criminal. It was probably taken freely by the two malefactors; but when they offered it to Jesus, He would not take it. The refusal was an act of sublimest heroism. The effect of the draft was to dull the nerves, to cloud the intellect, to provide an anesthetic against some part, at least, of the lingering agonies of that dreadful death. But He, whom some modern skeptics have been base enough to accuse of feminine feebleness and cowardly despair, preferred rather "to look Death in the face"—to meet the king of terrors without striving to deaden the force of one agonizing anticipation, or to still the throbbing of one lacerated nerve.—Life of Christ, II., 400.

Jesus Crucified

Matt. 27:35.—And they crucified him.

TACITUS.—The founder of the Christian name was Christ, one who, in the reign of Tiberius, suffered death as a criminal under Pontius Pilate, imperial procurator of Judea; and for a while the pestilent superstition was quelled, but revived again and spread, not only over Judea, where this evil was first broached, but even through Rome.—Ann., lib. xv., c. 44.

LUCIAN.—These people worship the famous man who was crucified in Palestine for having introduced new mysteries into the world.—De Mort. Pereg., c. II.

And parted his garments, casting lots.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Arrived at the place of execution, the sufferer was stripped naked (Artemid. Oneirocr, II., 58); the garments being the perquisites of the soldiers who performed the disagreeable work (Dig. XLVIII., 20, 6).—Smith's Diet, of the Bible, p. 514.

Jesus Watched Upon the Cross

Matt. 27:36.—And sitting down they watched him there.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Our Lord, having been crucified, was watched, according to custom, by a party of four soldiers, whose express office was to prevent the surreption of the body. But for this guard, the persons might have been taken down and recovered, as was actually done in the case of a friend of Josephus.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 554.

Jesus' Accusation

Matt. 27:37.—And set up over his head his accusation, written, This Is JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—It was a common custom to affix a label to the cross, giving a statement of the crime for which the person suffered. This is still the case in China, when a person is crucified. Sometimes a man was employed to carry this before the criminal, while going to the place of punishment.—Note, In loco.

SUETONIUS.—A label hanging from his neck before his breast, signifying the cause of his punishment. Calig., c. 32.

IDEM.—Domitian ordered him to be dragged from the benches into the arena, and exposed to the dogs, with this label upon him, "A Parmularian guilty of talking impiously."—Dom., c. so.

See also Eusebius, V., 5, and Plutarch, Cleom., c. 39.

Jesus Reviled

Matt. 27:39.—And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying etc.

JUVENAL.—How does the mob of Remus behave? Why follow fortune, as mobs always do, and hate him that is condemned.—Sat., X., 72.

Jesus' Divinity Confessed

Matt. 27:54.—They feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

LORD BYRON.—If ever man was God or God man, Jesus Christ was both.— Quoted in Keith's Demonst., p. 317.

ROUSSEAU.—What prepossession, what blindness must it be, to compare (Socrates) the son of Sophroniscus to (Jesus) the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, before had put them in practice; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their example to precept. But where could Jesus learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality of which he only hath given us both precept and example? The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes! if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. —Emelius, Vol. II., p. 218.

Jesus' Grave Guarded

Matt. 27:65, 66.—Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.

PONTIUS PILATE.—The ancient Romans were particularly careful to preserve the memory of all remarkable events which happened in the city; and this was done either in their Acts of the Senate (Acta Senatûs), or in the Daily Acts of the People (Acta Diurna Populi), which were diligently made and kept at Rome. In like manner, it was customary for the governors of provinces to send to the emperor an account of remarkable transactions that occurred in the places where they resided, which were preserved as the Acts of their respective governments. In conformity with this usage, Pilate kept memoirs of the Jewish affairs during his Procuratorship, which were called Acta Pilati. Referring to this usage, Eusebius says: " Our Savior's resurrection being much talked of throughout Palestine, PILATE informed the Emperor of it, as likewise of his miracles, of which he had heard; and that, being raised up after he had been put to death, he was already believed by many to be a God." These accounts were never published for general perusal, but were deposited among the archives of the empire, where they served as a fund of information to historians. Hence we find long before the time of Eusebius, that the primitive Christians, in their disputes with the Gentiles, appealed to these Acts of Pilate as to most undoubted testimony. Thus, Justin Martyr, in his first apology for the Christians, which was presented to the Emperor Antoninus Pius and the Senate of Rome, about the year 140, having mentioned the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and some of its attendant circumstances, adds: "And that these things were so done, you may know from the Acts made in the time of PONTIUS PILATE." Afterward, in the same apology, having noticed some of our Lord's miracles, such as healing diseases and raising the dead, he says: "And that these things were done by him, you may know from the ACTS made in the time of PONTIUS PILATE." The learned Tertullian, in his Apology for Christianity, about the year zoo, after speaking of our Savior's crucifixion and resurrection, and his appearance to the disciples, and ascension into heaven in the sight of the same disciples, who were ordained by him to publish the Gospel over the world, thus proceeds: "Of all these things relating to Christ, PILATE himself, in his conscience already a Christian, SENT AN ACCOUNT to Tiberius the Emperor." And again, in another connection, he says: "Search your own PUBLIC DOCUMENTS, and you will there find that Nero was the first who raged with the imperial sword against this Sect, when rising most at Rome."—These testimonies of Justin and Tertullian are taken from public Apologies for the Christian Religion, which were presented either to the emperor and senate of Rome, or to magistrates of public authority and great distinction in the Roman Empire. Now it is incredible that such writers would have made such appeals, especially to the very persons in whose custody these Documents were, had they not been fully satisfied of their existence and contents.—Horne's Introduction, p. 81.

Jesus Risen

Matt. 28:8, 9.—And they departed quickly from the sepulcher with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet and worshipped him.

JOSEPHUS. —Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.—Antq., XVIII., 3, 3.

M. RENAN. —This accomplished French skeptic allows that Matthew wrote the Gospel which bears his name; that he was an eye-witness and an ear-witness of what he records, or had very direct means of knowing the truth of it. He concedes all this on the internal credibility of the narrative, and on the authority of Papias, who wrote early in the second century, and of a chain of succeeding writers, who quote or refer to the Gospel. He is specially fond of insisting that Matthew preserved the discourses of our Lord—" he deserves, evidently, a confidence without limit for the discourses; " and, in particular, he grants that the parables, as being one narrative, could not be altered, and that we have them as our Lord delivered them.... I find that there are about 971 verses in Matthew's Gospel, and Renan refers to no fewer than 791 of these as giving an accurate account of the sayings or doings of our Lord. With the remaining verses he is not pleased, and contrives to dispense with them.—Dr. McCosh's Positivism, p. 225, 232.

Mark

BISHOP WILLIAM THOMSON, D. D.—All ancient testimony makes Mark the author of the Gospel which has come down to us bearing his name. Eusebius says, on the authority of Clement of Alexandria, that the hearers of Peter at Rome desired Mark, the follower of Peter, to leave with them a record of his teachings, upon which Mark wrote his Gospel, which the apostle afterward sanctioned with his authority, and directed that it should be read in the churches (Euseb. H. E., II., 15). Tertullian also speaks of the Gospel of Mark as being connected with Peter, and as having his authority (Cont. Marc. IV., 5). Both Justin Martyr and Irenmus quote from this Gospel.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, art. " Gospel of Mark."

PAPIAS.—This also John the elder said:—Mark being the interpreter of Peter, wrote down exactly whatever things he remembered, but yet not in the order in which Christ either spoke or did them; for he was neither a hearer nor a follower of the Lord's, but he was afterward a follower of Peter.— Euseb. H. E., III., 39.

See Matt. 1:1.

The Baptist's Ministry

Mark 1:4, 5.—John did baptize in the wilderness, and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

JOSEPHUS. —John, who was called the Baptist, was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism. The people came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved by hearing his words, and they seemed ready to do anything he should advise.—Antq, 18, 5, 2

Mark 1:6.—And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey. See Matt. 3:4.

Mark 1:7.—There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

See Matt. 3:11.

Christ in the Wilderness

Mark 1:13.—And was with the wild beasts.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—It is not a natural thing that the wild creatures should attack with ferocity, or fly in terror from, their master man. The terror or the fury of animals, though continued by hereditary instinct, was began by cruel and wanton aggression; and historical instances are not wanting in which both have been overcome by the sweetness, the majesty, the gentleness of man.-Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 120.

Mark 1:16.—Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers. See Matt. 4:18.

Mark 1:19.—And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.

See Matt. 4:21.

Mark 1:21.—And they went into Capernaum, etc.

See Matt. 4:13.

Mark 1:22.—And they were astonishes at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.

See Matt. 7:28.

Mark 1:23, 24.—And there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit: and he cried out, saying, Let us alone, what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? etc.

See Matt. 8:29-32.

Mark 1:30, 31—But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever: and anon they tell him of her. And he came and took her by the hand, etc.

See Matt. 8:14.

Mark 1:40.—And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, etc.

See Matt. 8:2, 3.

Mark 2:11.—Arise and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thy house.

See Matt. 9:6.

Mark 2:14.—And as he passed by he saw Levi the son of Alpheus, sitting at the receipt of custom, etc.

See Matt. 9:9.

Mark 2:17.—They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick. See Matt. 9:12.

Mark 2:22.—And no man putteth new wine into old bottles, etc. See Matt. 9:17.

Mark 2:23.—And it came to pass, that he went through the corn-fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.

See Matt. 12:1, 2

Mark 3:6.—And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

See Matt. 22:16.

Boanerges

Mark 3:17.—And he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder.

PLUTARCH. —We are told that Pericles, in his harangues, thundered and lightened; and that his tongue was armed with thunder.—Percl., c. 8.

PLINY. —With what glowing language do you thunder forth the praises of your father?—Hist. Nat. Dedic.

Christ Suspected of Insanity

Mark 3:21.—For they said, He is beside himself.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—To the world there has been ever a tendency to confuse the fervor of enthusiasm with the eccentricity of a disordered genius. " Paul, thou art mad! " was the only comment which the Apostle's passion of exalted eloquence produced on the cynical and blasé intellect of the Roman Procurator. " Brother Martin has a fine genius! " was the sneering allusion of Pope Leo X. to Luther. " What crackbrained fanatics," observed the fine gentlemen of the eighteenth century when they spoke of Wesley and Whitefield.—Life of Christ, Vol. I., p. 282.

Mark 3:23, 24.—How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

See Matt. 12:25.

Mark 4:3-8.—Behold there went out a sower to sow: and it came to pass as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, etc.

See Matt. 13:3-9.

Mark 4:30, 31.—And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, etc.

See Matt. 13:31.

The Great Storm

Mark 4:38.—And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—At the extreme end of the stern is often seen a small low bench, upon which the steersman sits for a change. Here the captain often rests his head when, as is his custom, he sleeps upon the quarterdeck. This little bench may generally be seen in the fishing crafts, particularly those which ply on the Sea of Galilee, a circumstance which explains the nature of the pillow upon which rested the head of our Lord during the sudden storm narrated in Mark. Passengers of distinction alone are allowed a place upon the quarter-deck.—Bible Lands, p. 62.

Demoniac from the Tombs

Mark 5:1, 2.—And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.

See Matt. 8:28-32.

The Diseased Woman

Mark 5:25, 26.—And a certain woman which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind and touched his garment.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Legend has assigned to this woman Veronica as a name, and Paneas (Cæsarea Philippi) as a residence. An ancient statue of bronze at this place was believed to represent her in the act of touching the fringe of Christ's robe; and Eusebius and Sozomen both mention this statue, which is believed to have been so curious a testimony to the reality of Christ's miracle, that Julian the Apostate is charged with having destroyed it.—Life of Christ, I., 356.

The Damsel Restored

Mark 5:39.—Why make ye this ado and weep? the damsel is not dead but sleepeth.

JAHN. —The grief of the Orientals formerly, on an occasion of death, was, and it is to this day in the East, very extreme. As soon as a person dies, the females of the family with a loud voice set up a sorrowful cry. They continue it as long as they can without taking breath, and the first shriek of wailing dies away in a low sob. After a short space of time, they repeat the same cry, and so continue for eight days. Many other indications of grief are often given, such as tearing the hair and clothes, smiting the breast, lying down in ashes, putting dust upon the head, etc.—Bib. Archœol., sect. 211.

Mark 6:4.—A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

See Matt. 13:57

Mark 6:14-29.—And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad;) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him, etc.

See Matt. 14:1-12.

Mark 6:35-44.—And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: send them away that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread, etc.

See Matt. 14:15-21.

Mark 6:53.—And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore.

See Matt. 14:34.

Mark 7:1, 2.—Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say with unwashen hands, they found fault.

See Matt. 15:1, 2.

Mark 7:14,15.—And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, these are they that defile a man.

See Matt. 15:11.

Mark 7:24, etc.—And from thence he arose and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, etc.

See Matt. 15:21.

Mark 8:1-9.—In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, etc.

See Matt. 15:32.

Mark 8:27.—And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Cæsarea Philippi; etc. See Matt. 16:13.

Mark 9:42.—And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.

See Matt. 18:6.

Mark 9:50.—Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his saltiness, etc. See Matt. 5:13.

Mark 10:2-52.—And the Pharisees came. to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him, etc. See Matt. 19:3-6.

Mark 10:13.—And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.

See Matt. 19:13.

Mark 10:20.—And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth.

See Matt. 19:20.

Mark 10:23-27.—How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

See Matt. 19:23-26.

Mark 10:32.—And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem. and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed, etc. See Matt. 20:17,18.

Mark 10:39.—And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of: etc. See Matt. 20:23.

Mark 10:46.—And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimeus, etc.

See Matt. 20:29.

Mark 11:1.—And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, etc. See Matt. 21:1.

Mark 11:8.—And many spread their garments in the way; and others cut down branches of the trees and strewed them in the way. See Matt. 21:8.

Mark 11:12-14.—And on the morrow when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off, etc. See Matt. 21:19.

Mark 11:25.—And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any; etc. See Matt. 6:15.

Mark 11:27.—And they come again to Jerusalem, and as he was walking in the temple, there came to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things?

See Matt. 21:23.

Mark 12:1.—And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, etc. See Matt. 21:33.

Mark 12:13-17.—Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar or not?

See Matt. 22:15.

Mark 12:18.—Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection. And they asked him, saying, Master, Moses, etc.

See Matt. 22:23.

Mark 12:28.—And one of the scribes came... and asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?

See Matt. 22:35.

Mark 12:38.—And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, etc.

See Matt. 23:1.

The Poor Widow

Mark 12:43.-Verily, I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury, etc.

XENOPHON.—Socrates, when he sacrificed, feared not that his offering would fail of acceptance because he was poor; but, giving according to his ability, he doubted not but in the sight of the. gods he equaled those men whose gifts and sacrifices overspread the whole altar.—Mem., lib. i., c. 3.

PLATO.—It would be a dreadful thing if the gods looked to the value of gifts and sacrifices, and not to the souls of those who offer them.-Alcib., II., 13.

ARISTOTLE.—Liberality is denominated according to the property which is possessed; for the liberal does not consist in the multitude of the gifts, but in the habit of the giver; and this habit gives according to the means of giving. Nothing hinders that he may be a more liberal man who gives fewer things, if he gives them from less means.—Eth., lib. iv., c. a.

OVID.—Although the power be wanting, yet the inclination is to be commended; with this I trust the gods are content. This is the reason why even the poor approach the altars acceptably; and why a lamb pleases not less than a slaughtered ox.—De Pont., lib. iii., eleg. 4.

Mark 13:1.—And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!

See Matt. 24 a, etc.

Mark 13:9.—But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils: and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: etc.

See Matt. 10:17,18, and 24:9.

Mark 13:10.—And the gospel must first be published among all nations. See Matt. 24:14.

Mark 13:12.—Now the brother shall betray the brother, etc.

See Matt. 10:21, and 24:10.

Mark 13:13.—And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.

See Matt. 24:9.

Mark 13:14.—But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, etc.

See Matt. 24:15.

Mark 13:19.—For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation, etc.

See Matt. 24:21.

Mark 13:25.—And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or lo, he is there; etc. See Matt. 24:23.

Mark 13:24, 25.—But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, etc. See Matt. 24:29.

Mark 13:26.—And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.

See Matt. 24:30.

Mark 14:1.—After two days was the feast of the Passover, etc.

See Matt. 26:3.

Mark 14:3.—And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box, etc.

See Matt. 26:7.

Mack 14:9.—Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of as a memorial of her.

See Matt. 26:12,13.

Mark 14:22-24.—And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed and brake it, and gave to them, etc.

See Matt. 26:26-28.

The Cock-Crowing

Mark 14:30.—And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.

ARUNDELL. —It has often been remarked, in illustration of Scripture, that in the Eastern countries the cocks crow in the night, but the regularity with which they keep what may be called the watches has not been perhaps sufficiently noticed. I will, however, confine myself to one, and that is between eleven and twelve o'clock. I have often heard the cocks of Smyrna crowing in full chorus at that time, and with scarcely the variation of a minute. The second cockcrowing is between one and two o'clock. Therefore when our Lord says, "In this night, before the cock crow twice," the allusion was clearly to these seasons.—Discoveries in Asia Minor.

Mark 14:32.—And they came to the place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

See Matt. 26:36.

Mark 15:1—And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the or elders and scribes, and the whole council, etc. See Matt. 27:1.

Mark 15:15.—And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.

See Matt. 27:26.

The Pretorium

Mark 15:16.—And the soldiers led him away into the hall, called Pretorium; and they call together the whole band.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—At Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate occupied one of the two gorgeous palaces which had been erected there by the lavish architectural extravagance of the first Herod. It was situated in the Upper City, to the southwest of the Temple Hill, and like the similar building at Cæsarea, having passed from the use of the provincial king to that of the Roman governor, was called Herod's Prætorium. It was one of those luxurious abodes, "surpassing all description," which were in accordance with the tendencies of the age, and on which Josephus dwells with ecstasies of admiration. Between its colossal wings of white marble was an open space commanding a noble view of Jerusalem, adorned with sculptured porticos and columns of many-colored marble, paved with rich mosaics, varied with fountains and reservoirs, and green promenades.

Externally, it was a mass of lofty walls, and towers, and gleaming roofs, mingled in exquisite varieties of splendors; within, its superb rooms, large enough to accommodate a hundred guests, were adorned with gorgeous furniture and vessels of gold and silver.... In that kingly palace—such as in His days of freedom He had never trod—began, in three distinct acts, the fourth stage of that agitating scene which preceded the final agonies of Christ.—Life of Christ, II., 364.

See Matt. 27:27.

Mark 15:21.—And they compel one Simon, a Cyrenian, etc. See Matt. 27:32.

Mark 15:23.—And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not. See Matt. 27:34.

Mark 15:24—And when they had crucified him, etc.

See Matt. 27:35.

The Superscription

Mark 15:26.—And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

BURDER.—Thus Attalus the martyr was led round the amphitheater, with a tablet before him, inscribed, "This is Attalus the Christian." The same custom prevailed in crucifixions.-In loco.

See Matt. 27:37.

Mark 15:39.—The centurion said, Truly this man was the Son of God. See Matt. 27:54.

The Women at the Tomb

Mark 16:1.—And when the Sabbath was past Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

PLINY.—Take into account the vast number of funerals that are celebrated throughout the whole world each year, and the heaps of odors that are piled up in honor of the dead.—Hist. Nat., XII., 18.

PLUTARCH.—On the death of Sylla, so great a quantity of spices was brought by the women, that, exclusive of those carried in 210 great baskets, a figure of Sylla, at full length, and of a lictor besides, was made of cinnamon and the choicest frankincense.—Sylla, c. 38.

Mark 16:20.—And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. See Matt. 24:14.

Luke

Preface

Luke 1:1.—Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us.

REV. GEORGE CAMPBELL, D. D., F. R. S.—The very circumstance of the number of such narratives, at so early a period, is itself an evidence that there was something in the first publication of the Christian doctrine which excited the curiosity and awakened the attention of persons of all ranks and denominations; insomuch, that every narrative which pretended to furnish men with additional information concerning so extraordinary a personage as Jesus, seems to have been read with avidity.—Prelim. Disserts. and Notes.

Luke 1:2.—Even as they delivered them unto us.

REV. G. CAMPBELL, D. D., F. R. S.—In the gospel histories a simple narrative of the facts is given; but no attempt is made, by argument, asseveration, or animated expression, to bias the understanding or work upon the passions. The naked truth is left to its own native evidence.—Ibid.

Which from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word.

IDEM.—It is impossible, on reflection, to hesitate a moment in affirming, that the historian here meant to acquaint us, that he had received his information from those who had attended Jesus, and been witnesses of everything during his public ministration upon the earth, and who, after his ascension, had been entrusted by Him with the charge of propagating his doctrine throughout the Luke 1:3,4.-It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou halt been instructed.

BISHOP WILLIAM THOMSON, D. D.—The third Gospel is ascribed, by general consent of ancient Christendom, to "the beloved physician," Luke, the friend and companion of the apostle Paul.—Smith's Dict. of Bible.

IRENÆUS,—Luke, the follower of Paul, preserved in a book the Gospel, which that apostle preached.—Cont. Hœr., III., I.

See Testimonies at the beginning of Matthew.

Luke 1:5.—There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, etc.

See Matt. 2:1.

Burning Incense

Luke 1:9.—According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense, when he went into the temple of the Lord.

WETSTEIN.—The sacerdotal offices being various, it was agreed among the priests, that all should be assigned or distributed by lot. By the first lot, was designated he who should cleanse the outside of the altar. Secondly, thirteen were taken who should sacrifice the lamb, sprinkle the blood, trim the lamps, and burn and scatter the incense. Thirdly, he who should ascend the high altar, and lay upon it the members of the victim. Them most honorable of all the functions was that of burning incense; an office that could only be discharged once.—From the Talmud.

Luke 1:76.—And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways.

See Matt. 3:4, and 11: 2-6; also Mark 1:4.

The Taxing

Luke 2:1.—And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Carat Augustus, that all the world should be taxed (enrolled).

DR. HENRY ALFORD.—Augustus Caesar was the first Roman emperor. He was born A. U. C. 691 or B. C. 63. His father was Caius Octavius, and his mother, Atia, the sister of Julius Caesar. The senate conferred on him the title Augustus in the year B. C. 27. In A. D. 12, he adopted Tiberius as his successor, and admitted him to a share in the government. Augustus died at Nola, in Campania, Aug. 19th, A. D. 14, in the 76th year of his age.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 199.

PROF. EDWARD HAYES PLUMTRE, M. A.—An enrollment or census of persons and property was a common official act of the Romans. The inscription on the monument of Ancyra, names three general censuses in the years A. U. C. 726, 746, 767. Dion Cassius mentions another in Italy, A. U. C. 757. Others in Gaul are assigned to A. U. C. 727, 741, and 767. Strabo, writing early in the reign of Tiberius, speaks of such enrollments as if they were common things. In A. U. C. 726, when Augustus offered to resign his power, he laid before the senate a Rationarium imperil. After his death, in like manner, a Brevarium talus imperil was produced, containing full returns of the population, wealth, resources of all parts of the empire, a careful digest apparently of facts collected during the labors of many years... Two distinct registrations of this sort are mentioned in the New Testament, both of them by St. Luke; the first is said to have been the result of "a decree of the emperor Augustus," and the second is referred to in the speech of Gamaliel, Acts 5:37. Of this second census Josephus also gives a somewhat extended account.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3185, 3186.

Luke 2:2.—And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.

DR. HENRY ALFORD. —Considerable difficulty existed formerly in connection with this verse; 'but lately an unexpected light has been thrown upon it, by A. W. Zumpt, of Berlin, who has shown by arguments too long to be reproduced here, but very striking and satisfactory, that Cyrenius was, first, governor of Syria from the year 4-1 B. C.; and, a second time, from A. D. 6, forward.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 525.

PRESIDENT T. D. WOOLSEY, D. D., LL. D.—The enrollment in Luke 2:2 might thus be called " the first " in opposition to the second, or more noted one, which Luke had in his mind, and which he mentions in his report of Gamaliel's speech, Acts 5:37.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 526.

Luke 2:4, 5.—And Joseph also went.... unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem „.. to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

TERTULLIAN.—This author, writing against Marcion, incidentally appeals to the returns of the Census for Syria (taken at this very time), as accessible to all who cared to search them, and as proving that the birth of Jesus took place at Bethlehem.—Adv. Marc., IV., 19.

The Savior Born at Bethlehem

Luke 2:7.—And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—In Palestine it not infrequently happens that the entire khan (" the inn ") or at any rate the portion of it in which the animals are housed, is one of those innumerable caves which abound in the limestone rocks of its central hills. Such seems to have been the case at the little town of Bethlehem, in the land of Judea. Justin Martyr, who was born at Shechem, A. D. 103, and was familiar with Palestine, places the scene of the nativity in a cave. This is, indeed, the ancient and constant tradition both of the Eastern and Western Churches, and it is one of the few to which, though unrecorded in the Gospel history, we may attach a reasonable probability. Over this Cave has risen the Church and Convent of the Nativity.... It is impossible to stand in the little Chapel of the Nativity, and to look, without emotion, on the Silver Star let into the white marble, encircled by its sixteen ever-burning lamps, and surrounded by the inscription, Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est.—Life of Christ, I., p. 5.

The Angel's Announcement

Luke 2:8.—And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The same practice continues to this day.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 139.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—One mile from Bethlehem is a little plain, in which, under a grove of olives, stands the bare and neglected chapel known by the name of The Angel to the Shepherds. It is built over the traditional site of the fields where, in the beautiful language of St. Luke-more exquisite than any idyll to Christian ears—" there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night, when, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them." The present rude chapel is, perhaps, a mere fragment of a church built over the spot by Helena.—Life of Christ, I., T.

Luke 2:2.—Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

HINDOO INSCRIPTION—written in Sanscreet, on a stone found, and still existing, in a cave, near the ancient city of Gya, in the East Indies:

The Deity, who is the Lord, the possessor of all, APPEARED in this ocean of natural beings, at the beginning of the Kalee Yoog (Age of contention and baseness). He who is omnipresent, and everlastingly to be contemplated, the Supreme Being, the Eternal One, the Divinity worthy to be adored-appeared here with a portion of his Divine Nature. Reverence be unto thee, in the form of Bŏŏd-dhă (Author of happiness). Reverence be to thee the Lord of the earth! Reverence be unto thee an INCARNATION of the Deity, and the Eternal One! Reverence' be unto thee, O God, in the form of the God of Mercy; the dispeller of pain and trouble, the Lord of all things, the Deity who overcometh the sins of the Kalee Yoog; the guardian of the universe, the emblem of mercy towards those who serve thee, O' M! (Jehovah); the possessor of all things in Vital Form! Thou art Brahma, Veeshnoo, and Măhĕsa! (the Hindu Trinity). Thou art Lord of the universe! Thou art under the form of all things, movable and immovable, the possessor of the whole! and thus I adore thee. Reverence be unto the BESTOWER OF SALVATION, and the Ruler of the Faculties! Reverence be unto thee the Destroyer of the evil spirit! O Damordara! (God of Virtue) show me favor! I adore thee, who art celebrated by a thousand names, and under various forms, in the shape of Bŏŏd-dhă, the God of Mercy! Be propitious, O most High God!-Translation, by Dr. C. Wilkins, in Asiatic Researches, Vol. I., p. 284.

The Period of John's Ministry

Luke 3:1-3.—Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—Tiberius, the second Roman emperor, began to reign A. D. 14, and reigned until A. D. 37. It will be seen hence that the ministry of John the Baptist, the public life of the Savior, and some of the introductory events of the apostolic age, must have fallen within his administration. The ancient writers who supply most of our knowledge respecting this emperor are Tacitus and Suetonius.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 3245.

JOSEPHUS.—Herod the Great, in his last will and testament, made on his dying bed (B. C. 4), appointed Herod Antipas his son to be tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.... Herod Antipas, accompanied by his wife, went to Rome, from whence, under certain accusations brought against him, he was banished into Gaul (A. D. 39), and there he died an exile. (Thus it will be seen that the period of Herod's tetrarchy covered the ministry of both John and of Christ.) —Antiq., 17, 8, I; and 18, 7, 2.

IDEM.—By the appointment of Cæsar, Batanea, and Trachonitis, and Auranitis, and certain parts of Zeno's house about Jamnia, with a revenue of a hundred talents, were made subject to Philip. (He died A. D. 34.)—Jewish Wars, 2, 6, 3.

IDEM.—(That Lysanias bore the office and title of tetrarch is sufficiently proved by the following incidental allusion of the Jewish historian.) And Caius gave to Agrippa the tetrarchy of Lysanias, and changed his iron chain for a golden one of equal weight.—J. B., 18, 6,

IDEM.—Annas was appointed high priest by Quirinus, the imperial governor of Syria, in his thirty-seventh year (A. D. 7). After a term of seven years, he had to resign his office, which after having been occupied by a number of others, was conferred on his son-in-law, Joseph Caiaphas, who remained till the Passover of A. D. 37. Annas and Caiaphas were together at the head of the Jewish people, the latter as actual high priest, and the former as president of the Sanhedrim.—See Antiq., 18, 2, I; and 18, 2, 2; and 20, 9, I.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—There is one remark to be made here about the manner in which the Gospels were written. They have every mark of openness and honesty An impostor does not mention names, and times, and places,, particularly. For thereby it would be easily seen that he was an impostor. But the sacred writers describe objects and men as if they were perfectly familiar with them. They never appear to be guarding themselves. They speak of things most minutely. And if they had been impostors, it would have been easy to detect them. If, for example, John did not begin to preach in the fifteenth year of Tiberius; if Philip was not tetrarch of Iturea; if Pontius Pilate was not governor of Judea; how easy would it have been to detect them in falsehood! Yet it was never done. Nay we have evidence of that age in Josephus that these descriptions are strictly true; and consequently the Gospels must have been written by men who were personally acquainted with what they wrote, who were not impostors, and who were honest men. If they were honest, then the Christian religion is true.—Note, In loco.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The facts which St. Luke mentions in these verses tend much to confirm the truth of the evangelical history. Here we find the persons, the places, and the times marked with the utmost exactness. It was under the first Cæsars that the preaching of the Gospel took place; and in their time, the facts on which the whole of Christianity is founded made their appearance: an age the most enlightened, and Vest known from the multitude of its historic records. It was in Judea, where everything that professed to come from God, was scrutinized with the most exact and unmerciful criticism. In writing the history of Christianity, the evangelists appeal to certain facts which were publicly transacted in such places, under the, government and inspection of such and such persons, and in such particular times. A thousand persons could have confronted the falsehood, had it been one! These appeals are made—a challenge is offered to the Roman government, and to the Jewish rulers and people—a new religion has been introduced, in such a place, at such a time—this has been accompanied with such and such facts and miracles! who can disprove this? None—because none could. (Nay, the acknowledgment was forced from the bitterest enemies of the cause—" That indeed notable miracles have been done by these men is manifest to all them that dwell at Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it.") Now, let it be observed, that the persons of that time, only, could confute these things had they been false—they never attempted it: therefore these facts are absolute and incontrovertible truths: this conclusion is necessary. Shall a man then give up his faith in such attested facts as these, because more than a thousand years after, an infidel creeps out, and ventures publicly to sneer at what his iniquitous soul hopes is not true 2—In loco.

Luke 3:3.—And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

See Mark 1:4.

John's Teaching

Luke 3:13.—And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.

PROF. E. H. PLUMTRE, M. A.—The Publicani were banded together to support each other's interest, and at once resented and defied all interference. Their agents, the Portiores, were encouraged in the most vexatious or fraudulent exactions, and a remedy was all but impossible. Cicero, in writing to his brother, speaks of the difficulty of keeping the Publicans within bounds, and yet not offending them, as the hardest task of the governor of a province.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2636.

Luke 3:16.—1 indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, etc. See Matt. 3

Luke 4:14.—And there went out a fame of him through all the region. See Matt. 4:24.

Luke 4:16.—And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

See Matt. 2:23.

Luke 4:24.—No prophet is accepted in his own country. See Matt. 13:57.

The Precipice of Nazareth

Luke 4:29.—And they led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—The little town of Nazareth nestles in the southern hollows of that hill; many a mass of precipitous rock lies imbedded in its slopes, and it is probable that the hill-side may have been far more steep and precipitous two thousand years ago. To one of these rocky escarpments they dragged Him, in order to fling Him headlong down. It may have been the cliff above the Maronite church, which is about forty feet high. When I was at Nazareth, my horse was hurt, and might easily have been killed, by sliding down a huge mass of rock on the hill-side.—Life of Christ, I., p. 227.

PLUTARCH. —The people of Delphi having condemned Æsop, the ambassador of Crœsus, for sacrilege, put him to death by casting him down from the summit of the rock which they call Hyampea.—De Ser. Num. Vind., c. 12.

Descent From Nazareth to Capernaum

Luke 4:31.—And he came down to Capernaum, etc.

THE COMPILER.—The site of Nazareth stands 1,750 feet higher than that of Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee, so that when He came from the former to the latter place, as stated both by Luke and John, he literally "went down" to Capernaum. So accurate are the statements of the Gospel history.—Harmonies of the Universe, p. 638.

See Matt. 4:13.

Luke 4:32.—And they were astonished at his doctrine; for his word was with power.

See Matt. 7:28, 29.

Luke 4:38.—And Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought him for her.

See Matt. 8:14.

Luke 5:2.—And he saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets.

See Matt. 4:18.

Fishing in the Sea of Tiberias

Luke 5:6.—And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes; and their net brake.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—Walking along the shore, not far from Mejdel (Magdala), we had an opportunity of watching the mode of fishing as it is now carried on. An old Arab sat on a low cliff, and threw poisoned crumbs of bread as far as he could reach, which the fish seized, and, turning over dead, were washed ashore and collected for the market. The shoals were marvelous black masses of many hundred yards long, with the black fins projecting out of the water as thickly as they could pack. No wonder that any net should break which enclosed such a shoal. The lake swarms with fish, as I could not have believed water could swarm.—Land of Israel, p. 430.

Luke 5:12.—Behold a man full of leprosy; who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

See Matt. 8:2.

Luke 5:27.—And after these things, he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom.

See Matt. 9:9.

Luke 5:37.—And no man putteth new wine into old bottles.

See Matt. 9:17.

Old and New Wine

Luke 5:39.—No man having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better.

ANACREON.—Bring me, then, my gentle page, Wine that glows with strength and age.— Anacr., carm. 38.

HORACE.—Bring us down the mellow'd wine, Rich with years that equal mine.— Hor., lib. v., carm., 13.

Luke 6:1.—And it came to pass that they went through the corn fields, and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, etc.

See Matt. 12:1.

Luke 6:6, 7.—And there was a man whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, etc.

See Matt. 12:10.

Luke 6:21.—Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled.

See Matt. 5:6.

Luke 6:22.—Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, etc. See Matt. 5:11.

Luke 6:27, 28.—But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, etc.

See Matt. 5:44.

Luke 6:29.—And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, etc.

See Matt. 5:39.

Luke 6:31.—And as ye would that men should do to you, etc.

See Matt. 7:12.

Luke 6:35.—But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, etc.

See Matt. 5:45.

Luke 6:36.—Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

See Matt. 5:48.

Luke 6:41.—And why beholdest thou the mote that is, etc.

See Matt. 7:3.

Luke 6:43.—For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, etc.

See Matt. 7:16.

Luke 6:47—49.—Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built a house, and digged deep, etc.

See Matt. 7:24.

Luke 7:1, 2.—He entered into Capernaum, and a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, etc.

See Matt. 8:5.

Nain

Luke 7:36-38.—And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people. Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.... And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not, etc.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Nain—now a squalid and miserable village—is about twenty-five miles from Capernaum, and lies on the northwest slope of Jebel el-Duhy, or little Hermon. The name (which it still retains) means " fair," and its situation near Endor—nestling picturesquely on the hill-slopes of the graceful mountain, and full in view of Tabor and the heights of Zebulon—justifies the flattering title.— Life of Christ, I., 284.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—To the east of Nain, by the roadside, about ten minutes walk from the village, lies the ancient burying-ground, still used by the Moslems; and probably on this very path our Lord met that sorrowing procession.—Land of Israel, p. 129.

Luke 7:19.—And John calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come, etc. See Matt. 11:2-6.

Entertainment in Simon's House

Luke 7:36-38.—And he went into the Pharisee's, and sat down to meat. And behold a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

SCOTCH MISSION.—At a dinner at the Consul's house at Damietta, we were much interested in observing a custom of the country. In the room where we were received, besides the divan on which we sat, there were seats all round the walls. Many came in and took their places on those side-seats, uninvited and yet unchallenged. They spoke to those at table on business or the news of the day, and our host spoke freely to them. This made us understand the scene in Simon's house at Bethany, where Jesus sat at supper, and Mary came in and anointed his feet with ointment; and also the scene in the Pharisee's house, where the woman who was a sinner came in, uninvited and yet not forbidden, and washed his feet with her tears. We afterward saw this custom at Jerusalem, and there it was still more fitted to illustrate these incidents. We were sitting round Mr. Nicolayson's table, when first one and then another stranger opened the door, and came in, taking their seat by the wall. They leaned forward, and spoke to those at the table.— Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews in 5839.

See Matt. 26:7.

Luke 7:46.—My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—Egyptian monuments represent servants anointing guests on their arrival at their entertainer's house, and alabaster vases still exist which retain traces of the ointment they once contained. This was adopted from the Egyptians by the Jews, and the settlement of many of these people at Alexandria served to maintain Egyptian customs among them.—Bible Lands, 534.

Luke 8:5.—A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and it was trodden down, etc. See Matt. 13:3.

Luke 8:23.—But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down a storm of wind upon the lake, etc.

See Matt. 8:23.

Luke 8:26-36.—And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city, a certain man, which had devils long time, etc.

See Matt. 8:28.

Luke 8:43-48.—And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, etc.

See Mark 5:25.

Luke 9:3.-And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, etc.

See Matt. To: 9.

Luke 9:7.—Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him: and he was perplexed, because it was said, etc.

See Matt. 14:1.

Luke 9:12-17.—And when the day began to wear away, then came the twelve, and said unto him, Send the multitude away, etc.

See Matt. 14:55.

Luke 9:25.—For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

See Matt. 16:26.

Looking Back

Luke 9:62.—And Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

HESIOD.—

He steadily shall cut the furrow true

Nor towards his fellows glance a rambling view,

Still on his task intent.

—Oper. et Dies, v. 445.

Salutations

Luke 10:4.—And salute no man by the way.

DR. W. M. THOMSON—The same is now required of special messengers.

No doubt the customary salutations were formal and tedious, as they are still, and consume much valuable time. There is also such an amount of insincerity, flattery, and falsehood in the terms of salutation prescribed by etiquette, that our Lord, who is truth itself, desired his representatives to dispense with them as far as possible, perhaps tacitly to rebuke them.—The Land and the Book, I., 534.

Luke 10:5.—And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house.

See Matt. 10:12.

Luke 10:13-15.—Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaid etc.

See Matt. 11:21-23.

Scorpions

Luke 10:19.—Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, etc.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM. —Scorpions swarm in every part of Palestine. Their sting is very painful, and sometimes fatal.—Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 303.

The Road From Jerusalem to Jericho

Luke 10:30-37.—A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves which stripped him, etc.

THE COMPILER.—The scene of the parable of "The Good Samaritan" is laic on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; and for the deed of violence and blood which it describes, no more suitable scene could have been found in all the land and the topographical allusions in this beautiful narrative offer clear evidence that its author was familiar with the country, and had himself traveled the road and marked the peculiar features of the scene of which he has given so correct and vivid a picture. The unfortunate traveler, it is said, "went down" from Jerusalem to Jericho: the former city stood on the high central ridge of the country, the latter in the deep Jordan valley, more than 3,000 feet below; see hence how strictly accurate the description of the parable is. The road from immediately beyond Bethany lay through "a wilderness as bare and as solitary as the Desert of Arabia," and for part of its course through a deep and tremendous gorge, dismal and desolate to the last degree. Buckingham, in his Travels speaking of this portion of the road, says: " The very aspect of the scenery, the bold projecting crags of rocks, the dark shadows in which everything lay buried below, the towering height of the cliffs above, and the forbidding desolation: which everywhere reigned around, seem to tempt to robbery and murder, an occasion a dread of it in those who pass that way." And Stanley, describing this locality, says: "The caves in the overhanging mountains, the sharp turns of the road, the projecting spurs of the rocks, everywhere facilitate the attack an escape of the plunderers." Here they seize upon the traveler, and rifle him of everything valuable about him, and then leave him bleeding and naked under the fierce heat reflected from the white, glaring mountains, to die, unless pet chance a passer-by pity and save him. A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. This touching description, while thus in perfect keeping with the features of the scene, is also in entire harmony with its whole history. Josephus testifies that not only was Judea at this time overrun with robbers and ruffians, who committed the greatest excesses, but that this road in particular was deplorably harassed by banditti. St. Jerome also mentions that this particular part of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho was called the "Red Way," as much blood had there been shed by robbers; and that in his time, there was at one point in this wilderness a Fort, with a Roman garrison, for the protection of travelers; so that the incident of the poor traveler in the parable falling in that very journey among robbers seems taken from life. And this dread locality is the resort of robbers to this day, and nowhere in Palestine is a guard more necessary; he who goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho without an escort is as liable now as ever to fall among thieves. The parable, indeed, has been enacted within our own day, not a Jew, but an Englishman, being the victim on this occasion.—Harmonies of the Universe, p. 671.

The Good Part

Luke 10:42.—Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. ARISTOTLE.—We declare that the true good is something belonging to and within ourselves, and which cannot easily be taken away from us.—Eth., lib. i., c. 5.

Luke 11:2.—Our Father which art in heaven, etc.

See Matt. 6:9.

Luke 11:17.—Every kingdom divided against itself, etc.

See Matt. 12:25.

The Blessed Mother

Luke 11:27.—A certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.

MUSÆUS.—

Blessed is the father from whose loins you sprung,

Blessed is the mother at whose breast you hung,

Blessed, doubly blessed, the fruitful womb that bore

This Heavenly Form for mortals to adore.

—Her. et Leand., v. 138.

Luke 11:42.—But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint, etc.

See Matt. 23:23.

Luke 11:43.—Woe unto you, Pharisees 1 for ye love the uppermost seats, etc.

See Matt. 23:6.

Luke 11:44.—Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear, etc.

See Matt. 23:27.

Luke 11:47.-Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchers, etc.

See Matt. 23:29.

Luke 11:49-51.—Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets, and apostles, etc.

See Matt. 23:34.

The Innumerable Multitude

Luke 12:1.—In the meantime when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say, etc.

JOSEPHUS.—The cities lie here very thick; and the very numerous villages are so full of people, because of the fertility of the land... that the very smallest of them contain above 15,000 inhabitants.—B. J., 3, 3, 2.

Luke 12:4.—Be not afraid of them that kill the body, etc.

See Matt. 10:28.

Luke 12:6.—Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, etc.

See Matt. 10:29.

The Rich Fool

Luke 12:18.—And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

PHILEMON.—Let anyone who goes into the country and passes by the monuments and sepulchers of the dead, reflect thus-Each one of these used to say, In due season I will travel, I will extend my boundaries, and increase my possessions.—Apud. Comp. Men. et Philemon.

Luke 12:20.—But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul 'shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

SENECA.—How ridiculous it is to promise ourselves a long life, when we are not certain of to-morrow! what folly to stretch out and enlarge on distant hopes, saying, I will buy; I will build; I will give credit; I will call in my debts; I will sue for honors; and when I have had enough of public business, I will retire, and indulge in my weary age, in repose and quiet! Believe me, all things are doubtful and uncertain, even to the most happy.—Epist., 101.

Luke 12:22.—Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, etc.

See Matt. 6:25.

Luke 12:46.—The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, etc.

See Matt. 24:51.

The Gospel a Cause of Division

Luke 12:51.—Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division, etc.

See Matt. 10:34.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—The prediction of these effects, which no philosophizing or speculative observer would ever have expected from so benign a religion, forms an additional demonstration that it is from God.—Note, In loco.

Sign of Showers

Luke 12:54.—When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The winds in Palestine are remarkably regular, both in their seasons and in their effects. Thus, in the forty-three days during which rain fell in 1863-4, the wind was invariably west, or southwest.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 33.

Sign of Heat

Luke 12:55.—And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and k cometh to pass.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—The south wind, or Sirocco, is always oppressive at whatever time of the year it blows. We had two days' Sirocco with the south wind in November; again in January 14th and 15th; March 1St and 2nd; April 21St and 25th; May 15th, 16th, 26th and 27th. These were the only occasions on which there was south wind, and on each occasion the Sirocco was most oppressive.— Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 33.

A Fig Tree in a Vineyard

Luke 13:6.—A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, etc.

THE COMPILER.—In this parable we meet a feature that to our notions seems peculiar, and, therefore, so far improbable—a Fig tree planted in a Vineyard. However at variance this may be with our ideas and practice in this Western World, where we never plant a mixture of vines and corn and fruit trees, but each kind by itself: yet, as Dean Stanley informs us from his own observation, nothing is more common in Palestine than to see fig trees, thorn trees, and apple trees growing in vineyards, and even in corn fields, wherever they can get soil to support them.—Harmonies of the Universe, p. 673.

Luke 13:18,19.—It is like a grain of mustard seed, etc.

See Matt. 13:31.

Luke 13:21.— It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid, etc.

See Matt. 13:33.

Luke 13:24.—Strive to enter in at the strait gate, etc.

See Matt. 7:13.

Luke 13:25.—When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, etc.

See Matt. 25:10.

Luke 13:28.—There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, etc.

See Matt. 8:11, 12.

The Fox Herod

Luke 13:32.—And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, etc.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—If ever there was a man who richly deserved contempt, it was the paltry, perjured princeling—false to his religion, false to his nation, false to his friends, false to his brethren, false to his wife—to whom Jesus gave the name of " this fox."... Judea might well groan under the odious and petty despotism of these hybrid Herodians—jackals who fawned about the feet of the Caesarean lions.—Life of Christ, II., 98.

Luke 13:34.—O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, etc.

See Matt. 23:37.

Luke 13:35.—Behold your house is left unto you desolate, etc.

See Matt. 23:38.

Luke 14:3.—Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?

See Matt. 12:10.

The Highest and the Lowest Seat

Luke 14:8-10.—When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honorable man than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest seat. But when thou art bidden, go and sit in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.

XENOPHON.—Let the best men with you be honored with the principal seats, as they are with me. The most deserving men in all companies are honored with the principal seats.—Cyrop., VIII., 6.

MORIER.—When the assembly was nearly full, the governor of Kashan, a man of humble mien, although of considerable rank, came in and seated himself at the lowest place; when the master of the house, after numerous expressions of welcome, pointed with his hand to an upper seat in the assembly, to which he desired him to move, and which he accordingly did.—Journey Through Persia.

Bid and Feast the Poor

Luke 14;12, 13.—When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: etc.

PLATO.—In private entertainments, it will not be proper to invite our friends, but mendicants, and those who are in need of a hearty meal.—Phœdo., c. 8.

CICERO.—In conferring or requiting kindness, the chief rule of our duty ought to be, if all other circumstances are equal, to confer most upon the man who stands in greatest need of assistance. The reverse of this is practiced by the generality, who direct their greatest services to the man from whom they hope the most, though he may stand in no need of them.—De Of, lib. i., c. 15.

Luke 14:16-24.—A certain man made a great supper, and bade many; and sent his servant at supper time, etc.

See Matt. 22:2

Luke 14:27.—And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

See Matt. 16:24.

Luke 14:34.—Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savor, etc.

See Matt. 5:13.

The Lost Sheep

Luke 15:4-7.—What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he, etc.

PROF. R. C. TRENCH, M. A.—There is no image upon which the early church seems to have dwelt with greater delight than this of Christ as the Good Shepherd bringing home his lost sheep. We have abundant confirmation of this in the very many gems, seals, fragments of glass, and other early Christian relics which have reached us, on which Christ is thus portrayed as bringing back a lost sheep to the fold upon his shoulders. In Tertullian's time it was painted on the chalice of the Holy Communion. Christ appears in the same character of the Good Shepherd in bas-reliefs on sarcophagi, and paintings in the catacombs. Sometimes there are other sheep at his feet, generally two, looking up with apparent pleasure at him and his burden; in his right hand he most often holds the seven-reeded pipe, emblem of the attractions of Divine Love, while with his left he steadies the burden which he is bearing on his shoulders. Sometimes he is sitting down, as if weary with the length of the way. And it is observable that this representation always occupies the place of honor, the center of the vault or tomb.—Notes on the parables, p. 298.

The Ten Pieces of Silver

Luke 15:8.—Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it.

BLOOMFIELD.—It will not seem strange that the woman should have needed to light a candle, in order to search for the coin, when we consider how exceedingly ill lighted were the houses of the lower ranks in ancient times. This is manifest from the relics of Herculaneum and Pompeii, where many of the smaller houses have no windows at all; and in such as have them they are rather loop-holes than windows.—In loco.

The Prodigal

Luke 15:15.—And he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

BLOOMFIELD.—An employment contemptible among the Jews, as it had been with the Egyptians. Equally contemptible was it among the Greeks.—In loco.

Luke 15:16.—And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—" Husks "—fruit of the Carob tree—a tree very common in Palestine from Hebron northwards. It blossoms at the end of February, and the pods are found in numerous quantities in April and May. They are flat and narrow, from six to ten inches in length. Before they are ripe, they are of a sweetish taste. These " husks," or pods, are to be seen on the stalls in all Oriental towns. They are chiefly used for feeding animals, especially pigs. Both Horace and Juvenal speak of them as the food of the poorest and most miserable classes of men.—Nat. Hist. of Bib., p. 360,

Luke 15:32.—It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—All this is indeed a divine epitome of the wandering of man and the love of God, such as no literature has ever equaled, such as no, ear of man has ever heard elsewhere. Put in the one scale all that Confucius, or Sakya Mouni, or Zoroaster, or Socrates ever wrote or said—and they wrote and said many beautiful and holy words—and put in the other the Parable of the Prodigal Son alone, with all that this single parable connotes and means, and can any candid spirit doubt which scale would outweigh the other in eternal preciousness—in divine adaptation to the wants of man?—Life of Christ, II., 135.

Luke 16:13.—No servant can serve two masters, etc.

See Matt. 6:24.

Luke 16:17.—And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. See Matt. 5:18.

Dives and Lazarus

Luke 16:22.—And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.

SOCRATES.—If I did not think that I should go first of all amongst other deities who are both wise and good, and next amongst men who have departed this life, better than any here, I should be wrong in not grieving at death.— Phœdo, c. 8.

Luke 16:22, 23.—The rich man also died, and was buried. And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

PHILEMON.—Do you think that the dead, who, during their lifetime, enjoyed all kinds of luxuries, have escaped the deity, as if unseen by him? There is an eye of Justice which sees all things. Even in Hades there are two paths; one of which is for the just, and the other for the unjust.—Apud Clem. Alex. Strom., VII.

Luke 17:1.—Then said he unto his disciples, It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, etc.

See Matt. 18:6.

Luke 17:3.—If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him, etc. See Matt. 18:15.

The Ten Lepers

Luke 17:12.—And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off.

LIGHTFOOT.—Lepers were not excluded from villages, and from those country towns which were unwalled in the time of Joshua.—In loco.

CARNE.—Near the foot of a hill, in Cyprus, in a most lonely spot, and in a wretched cottage, lived a family of lepers. These unfortunate people were avoided by all the other inhabitants, who dreaded to come near their dwelling. The disease was hereditary, for every one of their numerous family was afflicted with it. Some of them stood at the door, and looked the pictures of sadness and solitude. They would be starved, did not some of the people, who live in the plain, bring food occasionally, and place it at a short distance from the cottage. So great is the horror entertained of this disease.—Letters from the East.

Luke 17:23.—And they shall say to you, See here; or, See there: go not after them, nor follow them.

See Matt. 24:23.

Luke 17:24.—For as the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part, etc.

See Matt. 24:27.

Luke 17:31.—In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his staff in the house, let him not, etc.

See Matt. 24:17,

Luke 17:34,35.—I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, etc.

See Matt. 24:41.

Luke 17:37.—And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither, will the eagles be gathered together.

See Matt. 24:28.

The Duty of Prayer

Luke 18:1.—Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.

SENECA.—Cease not to pray; and ask particularly for wisdom, a sound mind, and health of body. Fear not to importune a gracious God, when you ask not for any foreign good, or for what belongs to another person.—Epist., 10.

Smiting Upon the Breast

Luke 18:13.—But smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful, etc.

QUINTILLIAN.—By clenching the hand, and smiting the breast, we imply, repentance or passion.—Quintil., lib. xi., c. 3.

HOMER.—Smiting upon his breast, Ulysses thus began to chide his heart.—Od., xx., 17.

Luke 18:15 —And they brought unto him also, infants, that, etc.

See Matt. 19:13.

Luke 18:21.—All these have I kept from my, youth up.

See Matt. 19:20.

Luke 18:24—How hardly shall they that have riches, etc.

See Matt. 19:23.

Luke 19:1.—And Jesus, entered and passed through Jericho. See Matt. 20:29.

Zaccheus

Luke 19:2.—And behold there was a man named Zacchæus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—A colony of publicans was established in the city of Jericho to secure the revenues accruing from the large traffic in a kind of balsam, which grew more luxuriantly there than in any other place, and to regulate the exports between the Roman province and the dominions of Herod Antipas. —Life of Christ, II., 183.

Luke 19:4.—And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him; for he was to, pass that way.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—In Palestine, the Sycamore tree only grows in the mild climate of the maritime plains, Phenicia, Acre, and Sharon, and in the hot Jordan valley. In growth with its low-spreading branches and dark foliage, it recalls the English oak, and its shade is most pleasing. It is, consequently, a favorite way-'side tree, and is often planted by an Arab café to tempt the wayfarer to rest. It is very easy to climb, with its short trunk, and its wide lateral branches forking out in all directions. There are still a few gnarled and aged sycamores among the ruins by the wayside at ancient Jericho, and by the channel of the Wady Kelt.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, J. 398.

The Nobleman Going to Receive a Kingdom

Luke 19:12.—A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This expression is derived from the state of things in Judea in the time of our Savior. Judea was subject to the Romans, having been conquered by Pompey about sixty years before Christ. It was, however, governed by Jews who held the government under the Romans. It was necessary that the prince or king should receive a recognition of his right to the kingdom by the Roman emperor, and in order to this that he should go to Rome; or, as it is said here, that he might receive to himself a kingdom. This actually occurred several times. Archelaus, a son of Herod the Great, about the time of the birth of Jesus, went to Rome to obtain a confirmation of the title which his father had left him, and succeeded in doing it. Herod the Great, his father, had done the same thing before to implore the aid and countenance of Antony. Agrippa, the younger, grandson of Herod the Great, went to Rome also to obtain the favor of Tiberius, and to be confirmed in his government. Such instances, having frequently occurred, would make this parable perfectly intelligible to those to whom it was addressed.—Note, In loco.

Luke 19:14.—But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This actually took place.—Archelaus went to Rome to obtain from Augustus a confirmation of his title to reign over that part of Judea which had been left him by his father, Herod the Great. The Jews knowing his character, sent an embassy of fifty men to Rome to prevail on Augustus not to confer the title on him, but they could not succeed. He received the kingdom, and reigned in Judea in the place of his father. As this fact was fresh in the memory of the Jews, it makes this parable much more striking.—Note, In loco.

Luke 19:29.—And it came to pass when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, etc.,

See Matt. 21:1.

Christ Weeping Over Jerusalem

Luke 19:41—And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it.

PROF. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.—Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the city, the other streamed forth from Bethany. The two streams met mid-way. Gradually the long procession swept up and over the ridge, where first begins "the descent of the Mount of Olives towards Jerusalem... A few moments, and the path mounts again, it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into view. As now the dome of the Mosque El-Aksa rises like a ghost from the earth before the traveler stands on the ledge, so then must have risen the Temple tower; as now the vast enclosure of the Mussulman sanctuary, so then must have spread the Temple courts; as now the gray town on its broken hills, so then the magnificent city, with its background—long since vanished away—of gardens and suburbs on the western plateau behind. Immediately below was the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the Valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side-its situation as of a city rising Out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road,—this rocky ledge—was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and " He, when He beheld the city, wept over it." Nowhere else on the Mount of Olives is there a view like this; and this, almost the only spot which the Gospel narrative fixes with exact certainty, is almost the only unmarked spot,—undefiled Or unhallowed by mosque, or church, chapel, or tower—left to speak for itself, that here the Lord's feet stood, and here His eyes beheld what is still the most impressive view which the neighborhood of Jerusalem furnishes,-and the tears rushed forth at the sight.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 187-190.

Luke 19:43.—For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side.

JOSEPHUS. —The Romans having begirt Jerusalem with their forces, and having made several assaults without the desired effect, Titus resolved to surround the city with a wall; and by the diligence and emulation of the soldiers, animated by the presence, and acting under the continual inspection of the General, this work, which was worthy of months, was with incredible speed completed in three days. The wall was of the dimensions of thirty furlongs, and was strengthened with thirteen forts at proper distances: so that all hope of safety was cut off from the Jews, together with all the means of escaping out of the city. No provisions could be carried in, and no person could come out unknown to the enemy.—Jewish Wars, lib. v., c. 12, § r, and 2 and 3.

Luke 19:44.—And shall lay thee even with the ground, etc.

See Matt. 24:2.

Luke 20:2.—Tell us by what authority doest thou these things?

See Matt. 21:23.

Luke 20:6.—But if we say, Of men; all the people will stone us: for they be persuaded that John was a prophet.

See Matt. 14:5.

Luke 20:9.—A certain man planted a vineyard and let it forth to husbandmen, etc.

See Matt. 21:33.

Luke 20:22.—Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Cesar, or no?

See Matt. 22:15.

Luke 20:27.—Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him, etc.

See Matt. 22:23-33.

Luke 21:3.—This poor widow hath cast in more than they all.

See Matt. 12:43.

Destruction of the Temple and City Foretold

Luke 21:5-10—And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones, and gifts, he said, etc.

See Matt. 24:1, etc.

Luke 21:11.—And fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

JOSEPHUS.—While the Jews, miserable people, allowed themselves to be persuaded by deceivers, they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation. Thus there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year.—The people being assembled to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the ninth hour of the night, there shone so great a light about the altar and the temple, that it seemed to be bright day, and this continued for half an hour.—The eastern gate of the temple which was of solid brass and very heavy, and was scarcely shut at evening by twenty men and was fastened by strong bars and bolts, was seen at the sixth hour of the night to open of its own accord, and could hardly be shut again.—Before the setting of the sun there was seen over all the country chariots and armies fighting in the clouds, and besieging cities.—At the Feast of Pentecost, as the priests were going into the inner temple by night as usual to attend their service, they heard first a motion and noise, and then a voice as of a multitude, saying, " LET US DEPART HENCE."—And what might be reckoned the most terrible of all, one Jesus, an ordinary country fellow, four years before the war began, and when the city was in peace and plenty, came to the Feast of Tabernacles, and ran up and down the streets crying day and night, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the temple, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, a voice against all the people! " The magistrates endeavored by stripes and torture, to restrain him; but he still cried with a mournful voice, "We, we, to Jerusalem!" This he continued to do for seven years and five months together, and especially at the great Festivals; and he neither grew hoarse, nor was tired: but went about the walls, and cried with a loud voice, " We, we to the city, and to the people, and to the temple! " and, just as he added, at last, " We, we also to myself! " a stone hurled from an engine struck him and killed him immediately.— Jewish Wars, lib. vi., c. 5, § 3.

TACITUS.—Before the taking of Jerusalem by Titus there had been omens, and prodigies, things which that nation, so addicted to superstition, but so averse to the gods, hold it unlawful to expiate either by vows or victims. Hosts were seen to encounter in the air; refulgent arms appeared; and by a blaze of lightning shooting suddenly from the clouds, all the temple was illuminated; the great gates of the temple were suddenly thrown open, and a voice more than human was heard to declare that the gods were about to depart. —Hist., V., 13.

DR. JORTIN.—If Christ had not expressly foretold this, many, who give little heed to portents, and who know that historians have been too credulous in that point, would have suspected that Josephus exaggerated, and that Tacitus was misinformed; but as the testimonies of Josephus and Tacitus confirm the predictions of Christ, so the predictions of Christ confirm the wonders recorded by these historians.—Remarks on Eccles. Hist., Vol. I., p. 41.

BISHOP NEWTON.—Allowing all that incredulity can urge—that the light in the temple, and the armies in the air were but the play of natural meteors; that other of these prodigies were feigned, and others exaggerated—yet the prediction of them is not the less divine on that account.—Disserts., p. 337.

Luke 21:17.—And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.

See Matt. 10:22.

Luke 21:18.—But there shall not an hair of your head perish.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This is a proverbial expression, denoting that they should not suffer any essential injury. This was strikingly fulfilled in the fact that in the calamities of Jerusalem there is reason to believe that no Christian suffered. Before those calamities came on the city (remembering the warning of Christ), they had fled to Pella, a city on the east of the Jordan.—Note, In loco.

Luke 21:20.—And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, etc.

See Matt. 24:15.

Luke 21:21.-Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains.

See Matt. 24:16.

Luke 21:23.-But woe unto them that are with child, etc.

See Matt. 24:19.

Luke 21:24.—And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

JOSEPHUS.—The number of those who fell by the edge of the sword was very great. Those who perished during the siege of Jerusalem numbered no less than 1,100,000. Many were also slain at other times and in other places. By the command of Florus, who was the first author of the war, there were slain at Jerusalem 3,600. By the inhabitants of Caesarea, above 20,000. At Scythopolis 13,000. At Ascalon 2,500; and at Ptolemais 2,000. At Alexandria, under Tiberius Alexander the president, 50,000. At Joppa, when it was taken by Cestius Gallus, 8,400. In a mountain called Asamon near Sepphoris, above 2,000. At Damascus 10,000. In a battle with the Romans at Ascalon 10,000. In an ambuscade near the same plate 8,000. At Japha 15,000. Of the Samaritans upon Mount Gerizim 11,600. At Jotapa 40,000. At Joppa, when taken by Vespasian, 4,200. At Tarichea 6,500; and after the city was taken 1,200. At Gamala 4,000 slain, besides 5,000 who threw themselves down a precipice. Of those who fled with John from Gischala 6,000. Of the Gadarenes 15,000 slain, besides an infinite number drowned. In the villages of Idumea above 10,000 slain. At Gerasa 1,000. At Machærus 1,700. In the wood of Jardes 3,000. In the castle of Masada 960. In Cyrene by Catullus, the governor, 3,000. Besides these, many of every age, sex and condition, were slain in this war, who were not reckoned, but of those who are reckoned the number amounts to above 1,357,600.—See Jewish Wars; Books II., III., IV., VI. and VII.

And shall be led away captive into all nations.

JOSEPHUS.—The number of captives was very great. There were taken, particularly at Japha, 2,130; at Jotapa 1,200; at Tarichea 6,000 chosen young men were sent to Nero; the rest sold to the number of 30,400, besides those who were given to Agrippa; of the Gadarenes 2,200; in Idumea above 1,000. Many besides these were taken at Jerusalem, so that the number of the captives taken in the whole war amounted to 97,000: the tall and handsome young men Titus reserved for his triumph; of the rest, those above seventeen years of age were sent to the works in Egypt, but most were distributed through the Roman provinces; those under seventeen were sold for slaves.—See Jewish Wars, Books III., IV. and VI.

And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

BISHOP NEWTON.—And accordingly Jerusalem has never since been in the possession of the Jews, but hath constantly been in subjection to some other nation, as first to the Romans, and afterward to the Saracens, and then to the Franks, and then to the Mamelukes, and now to the Turks.—Disserts. on the, Prophs., p. 366.

Luke 21:25.—And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, etc.

See Matt. 24:29.

Luke 21:27.—And then shall they see the Son of man coming, etc.

See Matt. 24:30

Luke 21:33.—Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words, etc.

See Matt. 24:35.

Luke 22:2.—And the chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him; for they feared the people.

See Matt. 26:3.

Luke 22:20.—And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, etc.

See Matt. 26:26.

Luke 22:34.—I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, etc.

See Mark 14:30.

The Bloody Sweat

Luke 22:44—And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

LIBR. WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—Of this malady, "bloody sweat," known in medical science by the term Diapedesis, there have been examples recorded both in ancient and modern times. The cause assigned is generally violent mental emotion.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3128.

ARISTOTLE.—It happens to some that they sweat a certain bloody moisture, caused by the disordered state of their bodies.—De Part. An., III., 5.

LUCIAN.—

Blood falls for tears, and o'er his mournful face

The ruddy drops their tainted passage trace:

His mouth and gushing nostrils pour a flood,

And ev'n the pores ooze out the trickling blood.

—Phars., IX., 810.

MALDONATO.—A man at Paris, in full health and vigor, on hearing the sentence of death pronounced upon him, became covered with a bloody sweat.—Comm. in Evang.

Luke 23:1.—And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate.

See Matt. 27:2.

Luke 23:16.—I will therefore chastise him, and release him.

See Matt. 27:26.

Luke 23:26.—And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, etc.

See Matt. 27:32.

The Evils and Sufferings of Coming Days

Luke 23:29.—For behold the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, etc.

See Matt. 24:19.

Luke 23:30.—Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Many of them, and the majority of their children, would live to see such rivers of blood shed, and such complications of agony, as the world had never known before—days which would seem to overpass the capacity of human suffering, and would make men seek to hide themselves, if it might be, under the very roots of the hill on which their city stood.—These words of Christ met with a painfully literal illustration when hundreds of the unhappy Jews at the siege of Jerusalem hid themselves in the darkest and vilest subterranean recesses, and when, besides those who were hunted out, no less than 2,000 were killed by being buried under the ruins of their hiding-places (B. J., 6, 9, 4).— Life of Christ, II 397

Parting His Raiment

Luke 23:34.—And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—The clothes of the victims always fell as perquisites to the men who had to perform so weary and disagreeable an office as their crucifixion.—Life of Christ, II., p. 407.

Luke 23:38.—And a superscription also was written over him, etc.

See Matt. 27:37.

Luke 23:47.—Certainly this was a righteous man.

See Matt. 27:54.

Luke 24:1.—Now upon the first day of the week, very early, etc,

See Mark 16:1.

Christ's Witnesses

Luke 24:48.—And ye are witnesses of these things.

WHITBY.—Christ's resurrection, being a matter of fact, must be proved by the testimony of eye-witnesses, and, if they be honest men, and such as suffer the greatest prejudices in fortunes, reputation and life, for this testimony, we have the greater reason to believe it: for their honesty must render them unwilling to testify a falsehood; their interest and prudence would not suffer them, without any necessity laid upon them, to testify a lie; much more to testify the grossest falsehood, to their utmost damage, and without any prospect of advantage.—Note, In loco.

John

REV. W. T. BULLOCK, M. A.—No doubt has been entertained at any time in the church, either of the canonical authority of this gospel, or of its being written by St. John. IGNATIUS, the disciple of John, was acquainted with his Gospel, for he quotes it more than once. Its phraseology may be clearly traced in the EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS, and in JUSTIN MARTYR, about A. D. 150. TATIAN, A. D. 170, wrote harmony of the four Gospels, and he quotes St. John's Gospel in his only extant work; so do his contemporaries, APOLLINARIS, ATHENAGORAS, and the writer of the Epistle of the churches of Vienne and. Lyons. THEOPHILUS of Antioch expressly ascribes this Gospel to John. And, to close the list of writers of the second century, the numerous and full testimonies of IREN/EUS in Gaul, and TERTULLIAN at Carthage, and the Roman writer of the MURATONIAN FRAGMENT, sufficiently show the authority attributed in the Western Church to this Gospel. The third century introduces equally decisive testimony from the Fathers of the Alexandrian Church, CLEMENT and ORIGEN, which it is unnecessary to quote here at length.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1427.

PROF. GEORGE PARK FISHER, D. D.—It is an indisputable fact that in the last quarter of the second century the Fourth Gospel was received in every part of Christendom as the work of the apostle John. The prominent witnesses are TERTULLIAN in North Africa, CLEMENT in Alexandria, and IRENÆUS in Gaul. The testimony of Irenmus is decisive. He had in his youth known POLYCARP, the immediate disciple of John, and retained a vivid recollection of his person and words.— Smith's Dict., p. 1431.

The Word

John 1:3.—All things were made by him.

CICERO.—All things must necessarily arise from some first cause.—Disp. ruse., lib. i., c. 23.

God Invisible

John 1:18.—No man hath seen God at any time.

PLUTARCH. —Numa seems to have thought, like Pythagoras, that the first cause is not an object of sense, nor liable to passion, but invisible, incorruptible, and discernible only by the mind.—Num., c. 8.

John 1:27.—Whose shoes' latchet I am not worthy to unloose. See Matt. 3:11.

Cana

John 2:1.—And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus, etc.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—The traditional site of "Cana" is at Kefr Kenna, a small village four and a-half miles northeast of Nazareth. It now contains only the ruins of a church, said to stand over the house in which the Savior's first miracle was performed, and the fountain from which the water for the miracle was brought.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 351.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—There is not now a habitable house in Kânâ. Poor little lonely thing! the proudest cities on earth might envy your lot. Nineveh and Babylon, and a thousand other names may be forgotten, but not "Cana of Galilee." It may even come to pass that Paris, London and New York will be dropped out of mind, and their very sites be lost; but to the end of time, and to the end of the world, whenever and wherever there shall be the voice of the bride and the bridegroom, then and there will Cana of Galilee be remembered. —The Land and the Book, II., 124.

The Descent to Capernaum

John 2:12.—After this he went down to. Capernaum, etc.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—" He went down "—a touch of accuracy, since the road is one long descent.— Life of Christ, I., 174.

The Temple in Building

John 2:20.—Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou, etc.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Herod finished the main work on the temple, according to Josephus, in nine and a half years; yet some additional buildings or repairs were constantly carried on for many years afterward. He began the work sixteen years before the birth of our Lord, and this conversation was in the thirtieth year of our Lord, which make the term exactly forty-six years.—Note, In loco.

The Wind

John 3:8.—The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

XENOPHON. —The winds are not discoverable to our sight, though we plainly see their effects; and know when they arise. And if there be anything in man partaking of the Divine Nature, it must be the soul which governs and directs him; yet no one considers this an object of sight. —Mem., lib. iv., c. 3.

John 3:24.—For John was not yet cast into prison.

See Matt. 14:3.

Jacob's Well

John 4:5, 6.—Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar. Now Jacob's well was there.

DEAN STANLEY.—Of all the special localities of our Lord's life in Palestine, this is almost the only one absolutely undisputed. By the edge of this well, in the touching language of the ancient hymn, Quœrens me, sedisti lassus. Here on the great road through which “He must needs go," when "He left Judea, and departed into Galilee," He halted, as travelers still halt, in the noon or evening of the spring day, by the side of the well, amongst the relics of a former age. Up that passage through the valley, His disciples “went away into the city," which He did not enter. Down the same gorge came the woman to draw water, according to the unchanged custom of the East, which still, in the lively concourse of veiled figures round the way-side wells, reproduces the image of Rebekah, and Rachel, and Zipporah: Above them, as they talk, rose " this mountain" of Gerizim, crowned by the. Temple, of which the vestiges still remain, where the fathers of the Samaritan sect "said men ought to worship," and to which still, after so many centuries, their descendants turn as the only sacred spot in the universe. And around them, as He and she thus sate or stood by the well, spread far and wide the noble plain of waving corn. It was winter or early spring-four months yet to the harvest; and the bright golden ears of those fields had not yet whitened their unbroken expanse of verduer.—Sinai and Palestine, p. 238.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM. —We mounted the edge of the old vault, and read together John iv., the first unfolding of a spiritual religion, for the whole world. That chapter read by Jacob's Well brings home the accuracy of the narrator. The very ruins are in keeping with the scene.—Land of Israel, p. 147.

LIEUTENANT S. ANDERSON, R. E.—We lowered a candle down the well, and found the air perfectly good, and, after the usual amount of noise and talking among the workmen and idlers, I was lashed with a good rope round the waist and a loop for my feet, and lowered through the mouth of the Well by some trusty Arabs directed by my friend Mr. Fletcher, the Protestant Missionary. After having passed through the narrow mouth, I found myself suspended in a cylindrical chamber, in shape and proportion not unlike that of the barrel of a gun.... The Well is 75 feet deep, 712 feet diameter, and is lined throughout with rough masonry, as it is dug in alluvial soil. The bottom of the Well was perfectly dry at this time of the year (the month of May), and covered with loose stones. There was a little pitcher lying at the bottom unbroken, and this was an evidence of there being water in the Well at some seasons, as the pitcher would have been broken had it fallen upon the stones.—Recovery of Jerusalem, 362.

DR. J. P. NEWMAN.—Had St. John written the incidents of the Savior's Journey from Jerusalem to Sychar with a previous knowledge that his narrative would be subjected to a searching criticism by the enemies of Divine Truth, he could not have written with greater accuracy. As the facts of topography on which the traveler relies for the credibility of the story are recorded merely as incidents of the story itself, the correspondence between the statement and the fact is the more, wonderful and convincing.—Dan to Beersheba, p. 318.

Conversation with the Woman

John 4:24.—God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

PLATO.—God the eternal, the chief Ruler of the universe, and its Creator, the mind alone beholds, but that which is produced we behold by sight.—Tim. Locr., c. 5.

PLINY. —I consider it an indication of human weakness to inquire into the figure and form of God. For, whatever God be, and wherever he exists, he is all sense all sight, all hearing, all life, all mind, and all within himself.—Hist. Nat., lib. ii., c. 5.

John 4:27.—And upon this came his disciples, and marveled that he talked with the woman.

PHARISAISM.—To talk with a woman in public was one of the six things which a Rabbi might not do.—See Berachôth, fol. 43, b.

John 4:44.—For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.

See Matt. 13:57.

Descent From Cana to Capernaum

John 4:49.—Sir, come down ere my child die.

DR. E. CLARKE.—The expression “Come down," applied to Capernaum, is singularly illustrated by the features of the country: for, in fact, the whole route from Cana, according to the position of the place now so called, is a continued descent towards Capernaum.—Travels.

Bethesda

John 5:2, 3.—Now there is at Jerusalem... a pool ailed Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

DR. HENRY J. VAN-LENNEP.—Mineral springs are abundant in Western Asia, and most of them formerly had protecting structures built over them, some of whose remains are yet standing. The Pool of Bethesda was probably supplied with water from an intermittent spring, which also possessed mineral qualities. This characteristic in springs of ebbing and flowing is not at all uncommon. Bethesda is now dry, but the Pool of Siloam, which is of the same nature, and was probably supplied from the same source, has an intermittent ebb and flow recurring every few minutes.—Bible Lands, p. 46.

John 5:8.—Rise, take up thy bed and walk.

See Matt. 9:6.

John 6:5-14.—When Jesus lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? etc.

See Matt. 14:15.

John 6:18.—And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew.

See Matt. 14:24.

Tiberias

John 6:23.—Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias, etc.

JOSEPHUS.—And now Herod the tetrarch, who was in great favor with Tiberius, built a city of the same name with him, and called it Tiberias. He built it in the best part of Galilee, at the lake of Gennesareth. There were warm baths at a little distance from it, in a village called Emmaus.— Antiq., 18, 2, 3.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—The ancient name of Tiberias has survived in that of the modern Tŭbarieh, which occupies unquestionably the original site, except that it is confined to narrower limits than those of the original city. About a mile south along the shore are the warm baths which Pliny reckoned among the greatest known curiosities of the world. Tubarieh is four and a half hours distant from Nazareth, and one hour from Mejdel, (ancient Magdala).—Smith's Dict. of Bible, 3243.

CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E.—The modern, town of Tabariyeh occupies only a small portion of the ground covered by the ancient Tiberias. A small church, and a. mosque half in ruins, with its courtyard and fountain, are the only buildings which attract attention; but lying about may still be seen some traces of the grandeur of the ancient city-here a magnificent block of polished granite from Upper Egypt, cut into a basin six feet four inches in diameter—there a hunting scene carved on the surface of a hard black lintel of basalt. To the south the ruins cover some extent of ground; there are the remains of a sea-wall, and of some portions of a city-wall, twelve feet thick; many traces of old buildings, broken shafts and columns, half-buried in rubbish; and at one place, foundations which appear to belong to a church, perhaps to that which was built during the reign of Constantine on the site of Adrian's unfinished temple.—Recov. of Jerusl., p. 280.

The Bread of Life

John 6:48, 49, and 59.—I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna, in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread that came down from heaven..,. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E.—The White Synagogue at Capernaum, built entirely of white limestone, must once have been a conspicuous object, standing out from the dark basaltic background; it is now nearly level with the surface, and its capitals and columns have been for the most part carried away or turned into lime. The original building is seventy-four feet nine inches long, by fifty-six feet nine inches wide; it is built north and south, and at the southern end has three entrances. In the interior we found many of the pedestals of the columns in their original positions, and several capitals of the Corinthian order buried in the rubbish; there were also blocks of stone which had evidently rested on the columns and supported wooden rafters.... If Tell-Hum be Capernaum, as we believe it to be, this is without doubt the synagogue built by the Roman centurion (Luke 7:4, 5), and one of the most sacred places on earth. It was in this building that our Lord gave the well-known discourse in John 6, and it was not without a certain strange feeling that on turning over a large block we found the pot of manna engraved on its face, and remembered the words, "I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead."—Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 268-9.

Doing the Will of God

John 7:17.—If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, etc.

ARISTOTLE.—That which is best is not apparent except to a good man. Depravity distorts the judgment, and produces deception about the practical principles. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for any one to be a prudent man, unless he is also a good man. —Eth., VI., 12.

The Incomparable Teacher

John 7:46.—Never man spake like this man.

ST. AUGUSTINE.—The teaching of Christ is a great sea whose smiling surface breaks into refreshing ripples at the feet of our little ones, but into whose unfathomable depths the wisest may gaze with the shudder of amazement and the thrill Of love.—Conf., XII., 14.

REV. F. W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S.—And we who can compare Christ's teaching—the teaching of One whom some would represent to have been no more than the Carpenter of Nazareth—with all that the world has of best and greatest in Philosophy, and Eloquence, and Song, must not we too add, with yet deeper emphasis, that teaching as one having authority, He spake as never man spake? Other teachers have by God's grace uttered words of wisdom, but to which of them has it been granted to regenerate mankind? What would the world be now if it had nothing better than the dry aphorisms and cautious hesitations of Confucius, or the dubious principles and dangerous concessions of Plato? Would humanity have made the vast moral advance which it has made, if no great Prophet from on High had furnished it with anything better than Sakya Mouni's dreary hope of a nirvana, to be won by unnatural asceticism, or than Mahomet's cynical sanction of polygamy and despotism?

No faith—no teaching—has ever been able like Christ's to sway the affections and hearts of men. Other religions are demonstrably defective and erroneous; His has never been proved to be otherwise than perfect and entire; other systems were esoteric and exclusive, His simple and universal; others temporary and for the few, His eternal and for the race. Confucius, Sakya Mouni, Mahomet, could not even conceive the ideal of a society without falling into miserable error; Christ established the reality of an eternal and glorious kingdom-whose theory for all, whose history in the world, prove it to be indeed what it was from the first proclaimed to be-the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God.

And yet how exquisitely and freshly simple is the actual language of Christ compared with all other teaching that has ever gained the ear of the world! There is no science in it, no art, no pomp of demonstration, no carefulness of toil, no trick of rhetoricians, no wisdom of the schools. Straight as an arrow to the mark His precepts pierce to the very depths of the soul and spirit. All is short, clear, precise, full of holiness, full of the common images of daily life. There is scarcely a scene or object familiar to the Galilee of that day, which Jesus did not use as a moral illustration of some glorious promise or moral law. He spoke of green fields, and springing flowers, and the budding of the vernal trees; of the red or lowering sky; of sunrise and sunset; of wind 'and rain; of night and storm; of clouds and lightning; of stream and river; of stars and lamps; of honey and salt; of quivering bulrushes and burning weeds; of rent garments and bursting wine-skins; of eggs and serpents; of pearls and pieces of money; of nets and fish. Wine and wheat, corn and oil, stewards and gardeners, laborers and employers, kings and shepherds, travelers and fathers of families, courtiers in soft clothing and brides in nuptial robes-all these are found in his discourses. He knew all life, and had gazed on it with a kindly as well as a kingly glance. He could sympathize with its joys no less than he could heal its sorrows, and the eyes that were so often suffused with tears as they saw the sufferings of earth's mourners beside the bed of death, had shone also with a kindlier glow as they watched the games of earth's happy little ones in the green fields and busy streets.—Life of Christ, I., 269-272.

ROUSSEAU.—I confess to you farther, that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible are they compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the Sacred Personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere Man? Do we find that he assumed the air of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manners! what an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! what sublimity in his maxims! what profound wisdom in his discourses! what presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! how great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, without weakness and without ostentation?— Emilius, Vol. II., p. 218.

Who Should Cast the First Stone

John 8:7.—He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

CICERO.—All men are required to abstain most especially from those vices for which they have reproved others. Everything which you have impeached in another must be earnestly avoided by yourself.—In Verr., IV., 2.

The Bondage of Sin

John 8:33, 34.—They answered him, We he Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.

EPICTETUS.—No wicked man is free. If you were to tell this to a man that has been twice Consul he will cry—How? Am I a slave? My father was free, and my mother was free. It may be so, good sir; for they perhaps were generous, and you are mean; they brave, and you a coward; they sober, and you dissolute.—Epict., IV., i.

IDEM.—Surely no one who lives in error is free.—Epict., II, 1.

John 8:36.—If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

EPICTETUS.—No man hath power over me; I am made free by God; I know his commandments, and no man can bring me under bondage.—Epict., IV., 7.

PLUTARCH.—The good man only is free, and all bad men are slaves.—Cat. Min., c. 67.

The Pool of Siloam

John 9:7.—Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.

JOSEPHUS.—Now the valley of the cheesemongers, as it was called, and was that which we told you before distinguished the hill of the upper city from that of the lower, extended as far as Siloam; for that is, the name of a fountain which hath sweet water in it, and this in great plenty also.—Jewish Wars, 5, 4, 1.

REV. HENRY BAILEY, B. D.—Siloam is one of the few undisputed localities in the topography of Jerusalem, and which still retains its old name, with Arabic modification, Silwan. Apart from the identity of name, there is an unbroken chain of exterior testimony, during eighteen centuries, connecting the present Birket Silwan with the “Shiloah " of Isaiah, and the " Siloam" of St. John. —Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3036.

CARNE.—The Fountain of Siloam breaks out of a rock on the side of Mount Zion, and falls into an open and rock-hewn excavation, to which a flight of ancient stone steps descends: it is deep, and clear as crystal. Its waters are as sweet, as full, and as beautifully clear now, as in the days of our Lord. It is a luxury to sit on the grass that grows above and look down on this celebrated water, the most useful, as well as healthful in the whole neighborhood; and follow its rapid stream as it gushes down the side of Zion, and thence into the valley beneath, that passes into the wilderness.—Illustrations of the Holy Land, Vol. III.

The Shepherd and His Sheep

John 10:3.—And he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.

HEARTLEY.—I asked my man if it was usual in Greece to give names to sheep. He informed me that it was, and that the sheep obeyed their shepherd when he called them by their names. This morning I had an opportunity of verifying the truth of this remark. Passing by a flock of sheep, I asked the shepherd the same question which I put to my servant, and he gave me the same answer. I then bade him to call one of his sheep. He did so, and it instantly left its pasturage and companions, and ran up to the hand of the shepherd with signs of pleasure, and with a prompt obedience which I had never before observed in any other animal. The shepherd told me that many of his sheep are still wild: that they had not yet learned their names, but that by teaching they would all learn them.—Researches in Greece and the Levant, p. 321.

John 10:5.—And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him; for they know not the voice of strangers.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—What our Savior says of the good shepherd is true to the letter. He leads them forth from the fold, just where he pleases. It is necessary that they should be taught to follow, and not to stray, when they are sure to get into trouble. The shepherd calls sharply from time to time to remind them of his presence. They know his voice and follow on; but, if a stranger call, they stop short, lift up their heads in alarm, and, if it is repeated, they turn and flee, because they know not the voice of a stranger. This is not the fanciful costume of a parable; it is simple fact.—The Land and the Book, I., 301.

Bethany

John 11:1, 18.—Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus, of Bethany ... Now Bethany Was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—There never appears to have been any doubt as to the site of Bethany, which is now known by a name derived from Lazarus—el'Azariyeh. It lies on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, a mile beyond the summit, and not very far from the point at which the road to

Jericho begins its more sudden descent towards the Jordan Valley. The place is now but a ruinous village of some twenty families. In it are shown the traditional sites of the house and tomb of Lazarus, and of the house of Simon the leper. As to the real age and character of these remains there is at present no information to guide us—they are first heard of in the fourth century.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, is. 285.

John 11:43.—And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—The village of Bethany is to this day called El-Azariyeh, a corruption of Lazarus, and a continuous memorial of the miracle.—Life of Christ, II., 170.''

John 12:2.—Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, etc. See Matt. 26:7.

John 12:12-15.—On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm-trees, and went forth to meet him, etc.

See Matt. 21:8, and Luke 19:41.

Knowledge and Practice

John 13:17.—If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

ARISTOTLE.—The end of ethical doctrines is not knowledge but action.—Eth., lib. i., c. 3.

CICERO.—It is not enough to treasure these things in the memory; they must be called forth into action. He is not the happy man who knows these things, but he who does them.—Epist., 75.

One Leaning on Jesus Bosom

John 13:23.—There was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.

PLINY.—Nerva was at supper with a few guests; next to him was Veiemo, who even leaned on his bosom.—Epist., IV., 22,

The Badge of Love

John 13:35.—By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love to one another.

TERTULLIAN.—See, said the heathen, how they love one another; and are ready to lay down their lives for each other.—Apology.

Love Unto Death

John 15:13.—Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. EURIPIDES.—Alas! alas! what shall I say hearing this noble speech of the maiden who is willing to die on behalf of her brothers? who can utter more noble words than these? who of men can do a greater deed?—Herac., v. 535.

John 15:27.-And ye also shall bear witness, etc.

See Luke 24:48.

John 18:1.—When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, etc.

See Matt. 26:36.

John 18:18.—And led him away to Annas first, etc.

See Matt. 26:57.

The Night Cold

John 18:18.—And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals, for it was cold; and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them and warmed himself.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—The incident of Peter's warming himself at such a fire on the night of the crucifixion, tallies both with the climate of the country at the end of March or the beginning of April, and with the present customs of the people. The nights at Jerusalem, at that season of the year, are cool, though the days may be warm. The air after sun-down becomes chilly, and, under the open sky, a person needs to increase his raiment or have recourse to a fire.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 473.

John 19:1.—Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.

See Matt. 27:26.

Pilate the More Afraid

John 19:7, 8.—The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—Pilate was guilty, and guilt is cowardice, and cowardice is weakness. His own past cruelties, recoiling in kind on his own head, forced him now to crush the impulse of pity, and to add to his many cruelties another more heinous still. He knew that serious complaints hung over his head. Those Samaritans whom he had insulted and oppressed-those Jews whom he had stabbed promiscuously in the crowd by the bands of his disguised and secret emissaries-those Galileans whose blood he had mingled with their sacrifices-was not their blood crying for vengeance? Was not an embassy of complaint against him imminent even now? Would it not be dangerously precipitated if, in so dubious a matter as a charge of claiming a kingdom, he raised a tumult among a people in whose case it was the best interest of the Romans that they should hug their chains? Dare he stand the chance of stirring up a new and apparently terrible rebellion rather than condescend to a simple concession, and even necessary compromise?—His tortuous policy recoiled on his own head, and rendered impossible his own wishes. The Nemesis of his past wrongdoing was that he could no longer do right.—Life of Christ, II., 376.

The Terror of Caesar's Name

John 19:12.—If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.

DR. F. W. FARRAR.—At that dark and terrible name of Cæsar, Pilate trembled. It was a name to conjure with. It mastered him. He thought of that terrible implement of tyranny, the accusation of lœsa majestas, into which all other charges merged, which had made confiscation and torture so common, and had caused blood to flow like water in the streets of Rome. He thought of Tiberius, the aged gloomy Emperor, then hiding at Capreæ his ulcerous features, his poisonous suspicions, his sick infamies, his desperate revenge. At this very time he had been maddened into a yet more sanguinary and misanthropic ferocity by the detected falsity and, treason of his only friend and minister, Sejanus, and it was to Sejanus himself that Pilate is said to have owed his position. There might be secret delators in that very mob. Panic-stricken, the unjust judge, in obedience to his own terrors, consciously betrayed the innocent victim to the anguish of death.—Life of Christ, II., 386.

John 19:17.—And he bearing his cross went forth into a place, etc.

See Matt. 27:31.

John 19:19.—And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross.

See Matt. 27:37.

John 19:23.—Then the soldiers when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, etc.

See Luke 23:34.

The Thirst of Crucifixion

John 19:28.—After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

DR. NICHOLSON.—As-Sujuti, an Arabic writer, describing the crucifixion of a young Turk, in 1247, says that he complained of intense thirst on the first day, and his sufferings were increased by seeing constantly before him the waters of the Baradâ, on the banks of which he was crucified.—In Kitto, I., 595

John 19:39.—And there came also Nicodemus ... and brought a mixture of myrrh and. aloes, about an hundred pound weight.

See Matt. 26:12, and Mark 16:1.

Thomas Convinced

John 20:28.—And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

WESTCOTT.—If Christ did. not rise, we have not only to explain how the belief in His resurrection came to be received without any previous hopes which could lead to its reception, but, also how it came to be received with that intensity of personal conviction which could invest the life and person of Christ with attributes never before assigned to any one, and that by Jews who had been reared in the strictest monotheism.—Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 112.

The Naked Fisherman

John 21:7.—Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—In this hot climate it is common to fish with nothing but a sort of shawl or napkin tied round the waist. This they doff or don in a moment.—The Land and the Book, II., 81,

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM.—These fishermen with the casting-net at the present day work stark naked, with the exception of a thick woolen skull cap. On the Egyptian monuments, all persons catching fish and waterfowl with nets are depicted naked. The custom, therefore, appears to have been ancient and widespread.—Nat. hist. of Bible, p. 290.

Acts

Preface

Acts 1:1.—The former treatise have I Made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.

REV. HENRY ALFORD, D. D.—The book of Acts was written about A. D. 63. Its genuineness has ever been recognized in the church. It is mentioned by EUSEBIUS (H. E., III., 25) among the accepted and inspired writings. It is first directly quoted in the Epistle of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne to those of Asia and Phrygia, A. D. 177; then repeatedly and expressly by IRENÆUS, CLEMENT of Alexandria, TERTULLIAN, and so onwards.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 23.

See Gospel of Luke 1:1-4.

PROF. HUG.—The Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of Luke constitute a whole, of which the latter is the first and the former the last part. In the Gospel he presents to us the history of Jesus, until, his ascension; in the Acts he again resumes the thread of the narrative, where he had dropped it in the first history. If we connect the beginning of Acts with the end of the Gospel, we evidently perceive that, in the latter, he postpones the circumstantial treatment of the ascension, to preserve it for the following work; and that he had already resolved upon the plan of its continuation in the Acts of the Apostles when he was finishing the Gospel.—Introd. to Acts, sect. 72.

Christ's Witnesses

Acts 1:8.—And ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

See under Matt. 24:14.

His Own Place

Acts 1:25.—Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.

PLATO.—The impure soul is carried by necessity to a place suited to it; but the soul that has passed through life with purity and moderation, having the gods for its fellow-travelers and guides, settles each in the place suited to it.—Phœdo., c. 57.

Jews Dwelling in All Countries

Acts 2:5.—And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

PHILO JUDÆUS.—To Caius Cæsar.... The holy city of Jerusalem, not merely as the metropolis of Judæa, but of many other regions, because of the colonies led out at different times from Judea; not only into neighboring countries, such as Egypt, Phenicia, Syria, and Cœlosyria; but also into those that are remote, such as Pamphilia, Cilicia, and the chief parts of Asia as far as Bithynia, and the innermost parts of Pontus: also into the regions of Europe, Thessaly, Bœotia, Macedonia, Ætolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, and the principal parts of Peloponnesus. Not only the continents and provinces are full of Jewish. colonies, but the most celebrated isles also, Eubœa, Cyprus, and Crete, not to mention the countries beyond the Euphrates. All these are inhabited by Jews. Not only my native city entreats thy clemency, but other cities also, situated in. different parts of the world, Asia, Europe, Africa; both islands, sea-coasts, and inland countries.—Philonis Opera (Mongey Edit.), Vol. II., p. 587.

Prophetic Signs

Acts 2:20.—The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon, etc.

See under Matt. 24:29.

The Gate Beautiful

Acts 3:2.—And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them who entered into the temple.

JOSEPHUS.—Now, nine of the Temple gates were covered over with gold and silver, as were the jambs of their doors and their lintels: but there was one gate that was without the inward court of the holy house, which was of Corinthian brass, and greatly excelled those that were only covered over with silver and gold. The magnitudes of the other gates were equal one to another; but that of the Corinthian gate, which opened on the East over against the gate of the holy house itself, was much larger, for its height was fifty cubits, and its doors were forty cubits; and it was adorned after the most costly manner, as having much richer and thicker plates of silver and gold upon them than the other.—Jewish Wars, 5, 5, 3.

Annas and Caiaphas

Acts 4:6.—And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, etc.

See Luke 3:2.

Obedience to God before Men

Acts 4:20.—For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

SOCRATES.—I honor and love you, O Athenians; but I shall obey God rather than you; and as long as I breathe and am able, I shall not cease studying philosophy, and exhorting you, and warning every man I may meet.—Plat. Apol. Socr., c. 17.

All Things Common

Acts 4:32.—And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; hut they had all things common.

ARISTOTLE. —The proverb that the property of friends is common, is right; for friendship consists in community: and to brothers and companions all things are common. —Eth., lib. viii., c. 9.

SENECA.—True friends have all things in common.—Epist., 48.

The Sadducees

Acts 5:17.—Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him (which is the sect of the Sadducees).

See Matt. 22:23.

Judas of Galilee

Acts 5:37.—After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him.

JOSEPHUS.—Yet was there one Judas, a Gaulonite, of a city whose name was Gamala, who taking with him Saddouk, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to a revolt, who both said that this taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert their liberty.— Antq., 18, I, I.

Circumcision

Acts 7:8.—And he gave him the covenant of circumcision.

See Gen. 17

The Dearth

Acts 7:11.—Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Chanaan, and great affliction.

See Gen. 41:56, and 47:13.

The King Who Knew Not Joseph

Acts 7:18.—Till another king arose, which knew not Joseph.

See Ex. 1:8.

The Wisdom of Egypt

Acts 7:22.—And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

REV. T. S. MILLINGTON.—All ancient profane writers suppose Egypt to have been the seat of learning in the earliest ages.—Testimony of the Heathen, is. 535.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Many wise and learned men among the Grecians journeyed into Egypt in ancient times to study the laws and sciences of that country. The Egyptian priests relate that Orpheus, Musæus, Melampus, Dædalus, Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Plato, Pythagoras, and others, all came to Egypt: and they give proofs of their having been there.—Diod. Sic., lib. i., c. 96.

STRABO.—Heliopolis was anciently the principal residence of the priests, who studied philosophy and astronomy.—Strab., lib. xvii., c. 1.

Acts 7:28, 29.—Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday? Then fled Moses at this saying, etc.

See Exod. 2:15.

The Burning Bush

Acts 7:33.—Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet; for the place where thou standest is holy ground.

See Ex. 3:5.

The Golden Calf

Acts 7:41.—And they made a calf in those days, and offered, etc. See Ex. 32:4.

The Dying Prayer

Acts 7:60.—And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.

PLUTARCH.—When Phocion was about to suffer death, one of his friends asked him whether he had any commands for his son. "Yes," said he;" by all means tell him from me, to forget the ill-treatment I have had from the Athenians."—Phoc., c. 36.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

CALLIMACHUS.—

Beneath this tomb, in sacred sleep,

The virtuous Saon lies;

Ye passengers forbear to weep,

A good man never dies.

—Epigr., 10.

Roman Road to Gaza

Acts 8:26.—And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.

PROF. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL. D., F. R. S.—The Romans, that national genius for road-making which has left its traces in the remotest parts of Europe, greatly increased the facilities for communication among the most rugged hills of Palestine. There was a chariot-road to Egypt, originally constructed, as is probable, by Solomon, and paved by the Romans, of which traces remain.—Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 106.

Gaza, which is desert.

ARRIAN.—Gaza is a large and populous city situated on a high hill, and surrounded by a strong wall. It is the last inhabited place which travelers meet on their way from Phenicia to Egypt, and borders, upon a vast desert.—Exped. Alex., lib. ii., c. 26.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Gaza is remarkable for its continuous existence and importance from the very earliest times. It is still a place of very considerable size. The secret of this unbroken history is to be found in its situation. It lay on the road which must always have been the line of communication between the valley of the Nile and the whole region of Syria. " Those traveling towards Egypt naturally lay in here a stock of provisions and necessaries for the desert; while those coming from Egypt arrive at Gaza exhausted, and must of course supply themselves anew."—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 874.

Candace

Acts 8:27.—Candace, queen of the Ethiopians.

PLINY.—A female, whose name was Candace, was said to rule over Meroe, in Ethiopia, that name having passed from queen to queen for many years.—Hist. Nat., lib. vi., c. 35.

Cities of Philistia

Acts 8:40.—But Philip was found at Azotus.

REV. W. L. BEVAN, M. A.—Azotus (anciently named Ashdod) was one of the five confederate cities of the Philistines, situated about thirty. miles from the southern frontier of Palestine, three from the Mediterranean Sea, and nearly midway between Gaza and Joppa. It stood on an elevation overlooking the plain, and the natural advantages of its position were improved by fortifications of great strength. It is now an insignificant village, with no memorials of its ancient importance, but is still called Esdud. —Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 171.

And passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Cæsarea.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—These cities through which Philip passed were Joppa, Lydda, Askalon, Arimathea, etc., all lying along the coast of the Mediterranean. —Note, In loco.

JOSEPHUS.—Now upon his observation of a. place near the sea, which was very proper for containing a city, and was before called Strato's Tower, Herod set about getting a plan for a magnificent city there, and erected many edifices with great diligence all over it; and this of white stone. He also adorned it with most sumptuous palaces, and large edifices for containing the people; and, what was the greatest and most laborious work of all, he adorned it with a haven, that was always free from the waves of the sea. Its largeness was not less than the Pyræum at Athens, and had towards the city a double station for the ships, etc. This city he named Cœsarea, in honor of Caesar. It was 600 stadia (or about seventy miles) from Jerusalem.—Antq., 15, 9, 6.

Damascus

Acts 9:1, 2.—And Saul ... went unto the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues.

PROF. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A.—Damascus is one of the most ancient, and has at all times been one of the most important of the cities of Syria. It is situated (120 miles northeast of Jerusalem, and 190 southeast of Antioch) in a plain of vast size and of extreme fertility which lies east of the great chain of Anti-Libanus, on the edge of the desert. This plain is watered by the Barada, the "Abana” of Scripture. It is still a city of 150,000 inhabitants.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 530.

Saul's Conversion

Acts 9:3.—And as he journeyed he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven.

DR. HOGG.—We turned into a wide, open road, and passing through a large unenclosed Christian cemetery, soon reached' the place, still highly venerated, of the apostle's miraculous conversion. The present track deviates from the straight line, leaving, a few yards to the right, the precise spot believed to be that where he “fell to the earth." This is evidently a portion of an ancient road, consisting entirely of firm embedded pebbles, which, having never been broken up, stands alone like the fragment of an elevated causeway. The sides have been gradually lowered by numerous pilgrims, who, in all ages, have sought the pebbles to preserve as relics.—Visit to Alex., Damasc and Jerus., 1835.

Acts 9:5.—It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

EURIPIDES.—Kick not against the pricks, or you will suffer for it. Agam., v. 1524.

PLAUTUS. —If you thump a goad with your fists, your own hands are hurt the most.— True., act I., sc. 2.

House of Ananias

Acts 9:10.—And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, etc.

DR. RICHARDSON. —The spot on which the house of Ananias stood is still pointed out to the traveler; it is situated among poor houses, near the Catholic Convent, and seems to be held in equal veneration by Turks and Christians, and is equally a place of prayer for both.—In Pict. Bible.

The Street Called Straight

Acts 9:11.—And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire, etc.

MAUNDRELL.—This morning we went to see the street called "Straight." It is about half a mile in length, running from east to west through the city. It being narrow, and the houses jutting out in several places on both sides, you cannot have a clear prospect of its length and straightness. In this street is shown the house of Judas with whom Paul lodged.—Journey, p. 133.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—The old city—the nucleus of Damascus—is oval in shape, and surrounded by a wall, the foundations of which are Roman, if not earlier, and the upper part a patchwork of all subsequent ages. Its greatest diameter is marked by the Straight Street, which is an English mile in length. At its east end is Bab Shurky, the " East Gate," a fine Roman portal, having a central and two side arches. This is the street along which Paul was led by the hand, and in which was " the house of Judas," where he lodged.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 355.

Tarsus

Acts 9:11—And inquire for one called Saul, of Tarsus.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Tarsus was a celebrated city of Cilicia, on the river Cydnus, not far from its mouth. According to Strabo, it was founded by Triptolemus and his Argive followers. It continued a flourishing city for a long period, and was celebrated as the seat of refinement and learning. It still survives, but only as the shadow of its former self. It is now called Tarsous, and is in subjection to Adana, an adjacent city.—Classical Dictionary.

Escape in a Basket

Acts 9:25.—Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The method of drawing up or letting down persons in baskets is still very much resorted to in the East, when danger is apprehended from the ordinary mode of ingress or egress. The Christians of Damascus fail not to point out the exact spot where the Apostle was let down.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Lydda and Saron

Acts 9:32-35.—And it came to pass as Peter passed through all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda. And there he found a certain man named Eneas, which had kept his bed eight years, and was sick of the palsy. And Peter said unto him, Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole arise and make thy bed. And he arose immediately. And all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron saw him, and turned to the Lord.

MR. GEORGE GROVE, Cryst. Pal.—Quite in accordance with these and other scattered indications of Scripture is the situation of the modern town, which exactly retains its name, and probably its position. Lidel, or Lŭdd, stands in the Merj, part of the great maritime plain, which anciently bore the name of "Sharon." It is nine miles from Joppa, and is the first town on the northernmost of the two roads between that place and Jerusalem. In A. D. 66, the city was burnt by Cestius Gallus, on his way from Cæsarea to Jerusalem.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1701.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—Even now, though its glory is gone, Lydda has an imposing look. It is embowered in verdure. The village stands on a gentle eminence. We climbed to the top of the crumbling wall, and there sat down to read the story of Peter's visit to this place, The whole village was in full view, and the great plain around it. Peter was away on one of his missionary tours in the hill country of Samaria, “and He came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda." He came down through the defiles of those mountains, and across that broad rich plain of Sharon, or Saron, to this old town. The saints met him as he entered, and told him of the sufferings of poor paralytic Eneas; and the scene then enacted at his bedside was such as the people had never before witnessed.— Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 192.

Joppa

Acts 9:38.—And forasmuch as Lydda was nigh Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.

PROF. J. LESLIE PORTER, M. A.—The joyful news of the healing of Eneas soon found its way to Joppa, only ten miles distant; and then the mourning friends of the charitable Tabitha despatched quick messengers to tell Peter of her death, half hoping that even she might not be beyond the reach of his power. Peter delayed not, but set out across that western plain on another journey of mercy.—Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 193.

Italian Band

Acts 10:1.—There was a certain man in Cæsarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—It is no longer questioned that the Roman cohorts were distinguished from each other as well as the legions, not by numbers only but by names. Five legions are known to have been called “Italian," and at least one cohort. One of Gruter's inscriptions speaks of a " Cohors militum Italicorum voluntaria, quæ est in Syria. "There was a class of soldiers in the Roman army who enlisted of their own accord, and were known as voluntarii in distinction from conscripts. It is supposed, therefore, with good reason, that there was such a cohort at Caesarea, at the time to which Luke's narrative refers, and that it was called Italian because it consisted of native Italians; whereas the other cohorts in Palestine were levied, for the most Part, from the country itself. And as Cæsarea was the residence of the Roman procurator, it was important that he should have there a body of troops on whose-fidelity he could rely. We may add that, if the soldiers who composed this legion were Italians, no doubt Cornelius himself who commanded them was an Italian. —Smith' s Dict. of Bible, p. 118 r.

House of Simon the Tanner

Acts 10:5, 6.—And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: he lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea-side.

EDWARD SALUSBURY FFOULKES, M. A.—Joppa (now Yâffa) is a town on the southwest coast of Palestine, the port of Jerusalem in the days of Solomon, as it has been ever since.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1453

PROF. A. P. STANLEY, D. D.—One of the few localities which can claim to represent an historical scene of the New Testament is the site of the house of Simon the tanner, at Jaffa or Joppa. The house itself is a comparatively modern building, occupied by Muslims, and regarded by them as sacred. Its claims are remarkably confirmed by the circumstances of the situation. The house is close " on the sea-shore; " the waves beat against the low wall of its court-yard. In the court-yard is a spring of fresh water, such as must always have been needed for the purposes of tanning, and which, though now no longer so used, is authentically reported to have been so used, in a tradition, which describes the premises to have been long employed as a tannery.—Sinai and Palestine, ". 269.

PROF. J. L. PORTER, M. A.—I landed at Joppa, a bustling town of 5,000 inhabitants, beautifully situated on the western slope of a hill, looking down into the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Guided by a young Jew I went at once to " the house of Simon the tanner." The house is modern, but it probably occupies the old site. It stands by " the sea-side; and from its roof—flat now as in ancient times—I looked out on the same boundless sea on which the apostle must have looked when " he went up upon the housetop 'to pray." The hour too was the same—" the sixth hour," or noon. There was Something deeply impressive in being thus brought as it were into immediate connection with that wondrous vision which the Lord employed as a key to open the Gentile world to Christ's Gospel.— Giant Cities of Basilan, p. 229.

Antioch in Syria

Acts 11:25, 26.—Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Antioch in Syria was the capital of the Greek kings of Syria, and afterward the residence of the Roman governors of the province which bore the same name. This metropolis was situated west of the chain of Lebanon, where the Orontes breaks through the mountains. It stood at a bend of the river, partly on an island, partly on the level which forms the left bank, and partly on the steep and craggy ascent of Mount Silpius. Antioch was founded in the year 300 B. C. by Seleucus Nicator. It grew under the successive Seleucid kings, till it became a city of great extent and remarkable beauty. The early Roman emperors raised, there some large and important structures, such as aqueducts, amphitheaters, and baths. Herod the Great contributed a road and a colonnade. Jews were settled there from the first in large' numbers, and were allowed to have the same political privileges with the Greeks. The modern name of the place is Antakia, and which is a shrunken and miserable place. Some of the walls have been shattered by earthquakes; a gateway remains which still bears the name of St. Paul.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 113.

And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

J. S. HOWSON.—"Christians" was the name which naturally found its place in the reproachful language of their enemies. In the first instance, we have every reason to believe that it was a term of ridicule and derision. And it is remarkable that the people of Antioch were notorious for inventing names of derision, and for turning their wit into the channels of ridicule. Apollonius of Tyana was driven out of the city by their insults, and sailed away (like St. Paul) from Seleucia to Cyprus.—Con. and Haw's. Life of Paul, Vol. I., p. 119.

Famine in the Days of Claudius

Acts 11:28—And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Claudius Cæsar began his reign A. D. forty-one, and reigned thirteen years. During his reign no less than four different famines are mentioned by ancient writers. The first happened at Rome; and occurred in the first or second year of the, reign of Claudius. It is mentioned by Dio, whose words are these: " There being a great famine, Claudius not only took care for a present supply, but provided also for the time to come." (Dio., lib. 60.) A second famine is mentioned as having been particularly severe in Greece. Of this famine Eusebius speaks in his Chronicon, p. 204: " There was a great famine in Greece, in which a modius of wheat (about half a bushel) was sold for six drachms." This occurred in the ninth year of Claudius. In the latter part of his reign, A. D. 51, there was another famine at Rome, mentioned by Suetonius (Claud., c. 18), and by Tacitus (Ann. XII., 43). Of this Tacitus says, that it was so severe, that it was deemed to be a divine judgment. A fourth famine is mentioned as having occurred particularly in Judea. This is described by Josephus (Ant. 20, 2, 5). "A famine," says he, "did oppress them at the time (in the time of Claudius); and many people died for the want of what was necessary to procure food withal. Queen Helena sent some of her servants to Alexandria, with money to buy a great quantity of corn, and others of them to Cyprus to bring a cargo of dried figs." This famine is described as having continued under two procurators of Judea, Tiberias Alexander and Cassius. Fadus. This famine continued during the fifth, sixth, and seventh years of the reign of Claudius, and to this doubtless the sacred writer refers in Acts 11:28. —Note, In loco.

Herod's Persecution

Acts 12:1.—Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The king here named was Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great; and the time, about A. D. 47.—Note, In loco.

Acts 12:2.—And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—" Killing with the sword” was the punishment which, according to the Talmud, was inflicted on those who drew away the people to any strange worship. (Sanhedr., fol. iii.) James was probably accused of this, and hence this punishment.—Note, In loco.

Acts 12:3.—And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—That Herod was ambitious, vain, and fawning, and sought, as his great principle, popularity, is attested by Josephus: “This king was by nature very beneficent, and liberal in his gifts, and very ambitious to please the people with such large donations; and he made himself very illustrious by many expensive presents he made them. He took delight in giving, and rejoiced in living with good reputation." (Ant. 19, 8, 3.)—Note, In loco.

Acts 12:4.—And delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him.

VEGETIUS.—Quaternion is a military term, signifying a guard of four soldiers, two of whom were attached to the person of a prisoner, while the other two kept watch outside the door of his cell.—De Re Mil., III., S.

Peter's Deliverance

Acts 12:5.—Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the

church unto God for him.

LUCANUS.—Perigrinus, who professed Christianity, being in prison, the brethren were assiduous in affording him every supply that could conduce to his comfort. By the first dawn of day, a number of old women, widows and young orphans, were seen hovering about, the prison; some of the principal persons even bribed the jailer, and passed whole nights with him. Likewise sumptuous meals were carried in to him, and they read their sacred books together.—De Mort. Pereg., c. 12.

Acts 12:6.—Peter was asleep between two soldiers, bound with two chains.

LARDNER.—This was a common mode of securing prisoners among the Romans.—Credibility, Part I., c. 10, § 9.

Acts 12:10.—When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —In the East the gates are often plated over with iron, for greater security, to the present day. Pitts speaks of such in Algiers, and Pocoke at Antioch.—Note, In loco.

Acts 12:19.—And when Herod had sought for him, and found him not, he examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The Roman law condemned jailers, watchmen, etc., to suffer the same kind of punishment which should have been inflicted on the prisoner whom they allowed to escape.— Note, In loco.

Herod's Death

Acts 12:19-23.—And Herod went down from Judea to Cæsarea, and there abode.... And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost.

JOSEPHUS.—Now when Agrippa had reigned three years, over all Judea, he came to the city Cæsarea, which was formerly called Strato's Tower; and there he exhibited shows in honor of Caesar, upon his being informed that there was a certain festival celebrated to make vows for his safety. At which festival a great multitude was gotten together of the principal persons, and such as were of dignity through his province. On the second day of which shows, he put on a garment made wholly of silver, and of a contexture truly wonderful, and came into the theater early in the morning; at which time the silver of 'his garment being illuminated by the first reflection of the sun's rays upon it, shone out after a surprising manner, and was so resplendent as to spread a horror over those that looked intently upon him; and presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place and another from another (though not for his good), that "he was a god;" and they added, "Be thou merciful to us; for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as a superior to mortal nature." Upon this the king did neither rebuke them nor reject their impious flattery. But as he presently afterward 'looked up, he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the messenger of ill tidings, as it had once, been the messenger of good tidings to him; and fell into the deepest sorrow. A severe pain also arose in his belly, and began in a most violent manner. And when he had been quite worn out by the pain in his belly for five days, he departed this life, being in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and in the seventh year of his reign. —Antig., 19, 8, 2.

And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.

HOMER.—Thoas, who reigned in Ætolia, was honored by his people as a god. —Iliad, XIII., 218.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—The city venerates the king, when he approaches, like a god.—Diss., 16.

And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory. TACITUS.—Tiberius would not accept the title of Father of his country, and sharply rebuked those who styled his doings divine, and himself Lord.—Ann., II., 87.

And he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.

HERODOTUS.—Pheretime, having gratified her revenge on the Barceans, returned from Lybia to Egypt, and there perished miserably. Whilst alive her body was the victim of worms: thus it is that the gods punish those who have provoked their indignation.—Melpomene, c. 205.

PROF. CHARLES ROLLIN.—Antiochus Epiphanes... suffered inexpressible, torments. Worms crawled from every part of him; his flesh fell away piecemeal; and the stench was so great that it became intolerable to the whole army.—Ancient History, b. xix., c. 2, sec. 3.

The Church at Antioch

Acts 13:1.—Now there were in the church that was at Antioch, etc.

See chap. 11:5-26.

Seleucia and Cyprus

Acts 13:4.—So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Seleucia was practically the sea-port of Antioch. The river Orontes, after flowing past Antioch, entered the sea not far from Seleucia. The distance between the two places was about sixteen miles. The remains of Seleucia are numerous; but to us the most interesting are the two piers of the old harbor, which still bear the names of Paul and Barnabas. The masonry continues so good that the idea of clearing out and repairing the harbor has recently been entertained.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2906.

IDEM.—These piers were unbroken when Saul and Barnabas came down to Seleucia, and the large stones fastened by their iron cramps protected the vessels in the harbor from the swell of the western sea. Here, in the midst of un-sympathizing sailors, the two missionary apostles, with their younger companion, stepped on board the vessel which was to convey them to Salamis.— Life and Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. I., p. 238.

And from thence they sailed to Cyprus.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Cyprus—This is well known as a large and important Wand of the Mediterranean, about one hundred miles from the coast of Syria, and sixty miles from that of Cilicia. Once it had many cities, of which the principal were Salamis and Paphos, the former situated on the eastern coast, and the latter at the opposite extremity of the island. At present Cyprus exhibits but the ruin of its former glory and beauty.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Sergius Paulus, the Deputy

Acts 13:7.—The deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a prudent man.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The word rendered "deputy" is anthypatos, or proconsul. This has been objected td by infidels as a mistake, under the impression that Cyprus was not such a province as gave the title of Proconsul to its governor. Lardner, however, ably vindicated the literal accuracy of the Evangelist, and produced a passage from Dion Cassius, in which this very title is given to the governor of Cyprus. The accuracy of Luke, even on this obscure and much-disputed point, has now been most conclusively established by the discovery of a coin belonging to Cyprus, struck in the reign of Claudius Caesar, who was emperor when Paul visited the island. Proclus, who was the next governor after Sergius Paulus, on this coin is entitled Proconsul. That Cyprus was a Proconsulate is also evident from an ancient inscription of Caligula's reign, in which Aquilius Scaura is called the “Proconsul of Cyprus."—Pict. Bible, In loco.

DR. J. S. HOWSON.—St. Luke's language is in the strictest sense correct.—Smith's Dict. of Bible.

Perga in Pamphilia

Acts 13:13.—Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphilia.

PLINY.—The towns of Pamphilia are Side, Aspendum, Pletenissum, and Perga.—Hist. Nat., V., 26.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The province of Pamphilia was opposite the western extremity of Cyprus, where Paul embarked, and occupied a central portion of the southern coast of Asia Minor, having on the east Paul's native province of, Cilicia, and the small province of Lycia on the west. Perga was the chief town of Pamphilia. The apostle seems to have landed at Perga; and the Cestrus was in fact then navigable to the town, although the entrance to the river is now impassable, having been long closed by a bar. The site has been established. by Col. Leak as that where extensive remains of vaulted and ruined buildings were observed by General Kohler on the Cestrus west of Stavros.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Antioch in Pisidia

Acts 13:14.—But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia,

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The province of Pisidia lay immediately behind Pamphilia, inland. Its capital, Antioch, is named as "Antioch in Pisidia," to distinguish it from other places of the same name in Syria, particularly that on the Orontes. Arundell discovered the site in 1833. Hamilton copied several. Latin inscriptions from the ruins, in one of which the only words not entirely effaced were ANTIOCHEÆ CÆSARI, which is an important circumstance, as Pliny states that Antioch in Pisidia was also called Caesarea.—Pict. Bible.

PLINY.—In the country of the Pisidæ, is the colony of Caesarea, also called Antiochia.—Nat. Hist., V., 24.

Iconium

Acts 14:1.—And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Iconium was the capital of the province of Lycaonia; and must have been a place of some importance from this circumstance, as well as from being mentioned by Pliny as the chief of fourteen cities in the Tetrarchy of Lycaonia. It was situated upon the lake Trogolis, 120 miles inland from the Mediterranean; and it still exists under the name of Konieh, as one of the very first inland cities of Asiatic Turkey.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

And so spake that a great multitude, both of the Jews and also of the Greeks, believed.

PROF. H. 13. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—This statement accords with the extent and variety of the ruins still found on the spot. It accords also with the geographical position of the place so well situated for trade and intercourse with other regions. The Greeks and Jews were the commercial factors of that period, as they are so largely at the present time; and hence the narrative mentions them as very numerous precisely here. The bulk of the population belonged to a different stock.— Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 1117.

Lycaonia

Acts 14:6.—And they fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia.

PLINY.—Lycaonia belongs to the jurisdiction of the Province of Asia, To this jurisdiction is also added a tetrarchy of Lycaonia in that part which joins Galatia. —Hist. Nat., V., 25.

DR. J. S. HOWSON.—Lystra was in the heart of the country. Further to the east was Derbe; at the western limit was Iconium, in the direction of Antioch in Pisidia. A good Roman road intersected the district along the line thus indicated. Lycaonia is for the most part a dreary plain, bare of trees, destitute of fresh water, and with several salt lakes.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1701.

The Gods Among Men

Acts 14 11, 12.—And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. And they called Barnabas Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, became he was the chief speaker.

REV. JOHN SAUL HOWSON, D. D.—It was a common belief among the ancients that the gods occasionally visited the earth' in the form of men. The expeditions of Jupiter were usually represented as attended by Mercury. He was the companion, the messenger, the servant of the gods. Thus the notion of these two Divinities appearing together in Lycaonia is quite in conformity with what we know of the popular belief. But their appearance in that particular district would be welcomed with more than usual credulity. Those who are acquainted with the literature of the Roman poets are familiar with a beautiful tradition of Jupiter and Mercury visiting in human form these very regions in the interior of Asia Minor. And it is not without a singular interest that we find one of Ovid's stories reappearing in the sacred pages of the Acts of the Apostles. In this instance, as in so many others, the Scripture in its incidental descriptions of the Heathen World, presents " undesigned coincidences " with the facts ascertained from Heathen memorials.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. I., p. 190.

OVID.—I myself have seen the place: for Pittheus sent me into the Phrygian realms, formerly subject to his father Pelops. Near this is a lake, formerly habitable land, but now a collection of waters, the resort of cormorants and coots that delight in fens. Hither came 'Jupiter in human shape. Mercury, too, the grandson of Atlas, the bearer of the mystic rod, putting off his wings, accompanied his father. They went to thousands of houses, begging admittance, and shelter, but found all the thousands locked against them. Yet one received them, small indeed, and thatched with straw and marshy reeds; yet in this homely cottage dwelt pious Baucis and Philemon, both in years.—Meta., VIII., 622.

And they called Paul Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker.

EURIPIDES. —I, Mercury, the messenger of Jove, greatest of the gods, am come to this land.— Ion, v. 4.

Acts 14:13.—Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.

OVID.—Jupiter and his brother, who rules over the wide ocean, together with Mercury, were on their travels. Hyrieus caught sight of them. As soon as he could recover self-possession, he sacrificed the ox, the tiller of his farm, and roasted him on a large fire.—Fast., lib. v., v. 495-514.

IDEM.—The fairest victim must the powers appease; A purple fillet his broad brow adorns; With flowery garlands crown'd, and gilded horns.—Met., lib. xv.

Nature Witnessing for God

Acts 14:17.—Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave' us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A.—The agency of the Divine Being pervades every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change.— IV. Bridgewater Treaties, p. 185.

DR. WILLIAM CARPENTER.—All our science is but an investigation of the mode in which the Creator acts; its highest laws are but expressions of the mode in which He manifests his agency to us: He is the efficient cause alike of the simplest and most minute, and of the most complicated and most majestic phenomena of the universe.—General and Comparative Physiology, p. 1080.

JOHN YOUNG, LL. D.—Strictly speaking, there is no agent in Nature but one, that is, the Creator. In the flowing river and the restless ocean—in the waving plain and the solitary flower—in the gentle and the stormy wind—in the falling rain and the noiseless dew—in the beams of light and the diffusion of heat-in the activities of inorganic substance and of vegetable and of animal matter, it is verily " The Supreme" we behold—" The Supreme" acting. In the spring time of the year, when the earth grows green, and sends up its wondrous life, and fields and woods and hills are clothed with beauty, it is " The Supreme" acting, we behold. When, again, the produce of the earth is cut down, and by-and-by is gathered up, a munificent provision for man and beast,—or when the snows of winter cover, and its frosts harden, the soil so lately clad with verdure and laden with abundance,—or when we think of the changing seasons of the year, produced by the revolutions of our Planet around the sun,—or when we turn to the myriads of planets, stars, suns and systems that replenish space, and reflect on their mighty

Attalia

Acts 14:25.—And when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down into Attalia.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Revisiting Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, Paul and Barnabas descended through the Pisidian mountains to the Plain of Pamphilia, in which was the city of Perga, from whence they traveled to Attalia. Attalia received its name from Attalus Philadelphus, who built it at the mouth of the Cestrus, that he might command the trade of Syria and Egypt. Its present name is Satalia. —.Life and Epists. of Paul, I., 200.

Acts 15:2, 3.—They determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem and on their way they passed through Phenice and Samaria.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—These places were directly on their route to Jerusalem. —Note, In loco.

God Omniscient

Acts 15:18.—Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.

XENOPHON.—The gods who are eternal know all things that have been, all things that are, and all that shall happen in consequence of everything.—Cyrop., lib. i., c. 6.

Interdicted Food

Acts 15:20.—But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

LUCIAN.—The Christians were everywhere at his service, and let him want for nothing; but afterward having ruined himself with them, having been seen eating some food interdicted by their tenets, they refused to tolerate him any longer amongst them.—De Mort. Pereg., c. 16.

Provinces of Asia Minor

Acts 16:6-9.—Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not. And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Phrygia was the name of a very large province of Asia Minor. Its boundaries differed greatly in different ages. Its principal cities were Apamea, the metropolis; Laodicea, the seat of one of the " seven churches" mentioned in Revelation; Colosse, the seat of another church to whom Paul addressed one of his epistles; etc. Galatia was another important province of Asia Minor, but not more than half as large as Phrygia; to the Christian church founded here Paul addressed the Epistle to the Galatians. Asia, as the term is here used, was another small province of this region. Mysia was a

Samothracia

Acts 16:11—Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight, course to Samothracia, and the next day to Neapolis.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —Samothracia is a small island in the Ægean Sea, on the direct course from Troas to Macedonia. It still retains its ancient name in the modified form of Samotraki.—Neapolis was a seaport of Edonis, a district of Macedonia, bordering on Thrace. It was a place of little note. It is mentioned by Pliny.—Pict. Bible.

Macedonian Colony

Acts 16:12.—And from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony.

REV. THOMAS HARTWELL HORNE, B. D.—This passage, which has greatly exercised the ingenuity of critics and commentators, may, more correctly, be thus rendered: Philippi a city of the first part of Macedonia, or of Macedonia Prima. This is an instance of minute accuracy, which shows that the author of the Acts of the Apostles actually lived and wrote at that time. The province of Macedonia, it is well known, had undergone various changes, and had been divided into various portions! and particularly four, while under the Roman government. There are extant many medals of the First Province, or Macedonia Prima, mostly of silver, with the inscription MAKEDONON PROTES, or First Part of Macedonia, which confirm the accuracy of Luke, and at the same time show his attention to the minutest particulars. It is further worthy of remark, that the sacred historian terms Philippi a colony. By using the term kolonia (which was originally a Latin word, colonia), instead of the corresponding Greek word apoikia, he plainly intimates that it was a Roman colony, which the 21St verse certainly proves it to have been. And though the critics were for a long time puzzled to find any express mention of it as such, yet some coins have been discovered in which it is recorded under this character, particularly one, which explicitly states that Julius Cæsar himself bestowed the dignity and privileges of a colony on the city of Philippi, which were afterward confirmed and augmented by Augustus. This medal corroborates the character given to the city by Luke, and proves that it had been a colony for many years, though no author or historian but himself, whose writings have reached us, has mentioned it under that character.— Introduction, Vol. I., p. 90.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—Traces of this Colonial rank of Philippi appear at the present time among the ruins on the ground. The traveler even at Neapolis, the seaport of the ancient city, sees around him Latin inscriptions on sarcophagi, tablets and fallen columns. Two of the epitaphs there contain the name of Claudius, the emperor who was on the throne when Paul passed through Neapolis to the "Colony" where he gathered his first church in Europe. —Smith' s Dict., p. 477.

PLINY.—The colony of Philippi is distant from Dyrrha-chirom three hundred and twenty miles.— Hist. Nat., lib. iv., c. 18.

Lydia

Acts 16:14.—And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The business which brought Lydia to Philippi was connected with the dyeing trade, which had flourished from a very early period, as we learn from Homer, in the neighborhood of Thyatira, and is permanently commemorated in inscriptions which relate to the " Guild of Dyers '? in that city, and incidentally give a singular confirmation of the veracity of St. Luke in his casual allusions.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, Vol. I., p. 295

Pythoness

Acts 16:16.—And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying.

REV. THOMAS S. MILLINGTON.—The literal rendering is the spirit of a Python, which Plutarch says was in his day the name for a ventriloquist. This damsel appears to have uttered ambiguous prophecies after the manner of the Pythian Apollo; or of the Sibyls. The ancients were fully persuaded that the Sibyls were inspired by the gods.—Test. of the Heathen, p. 541.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Daphne, the daughter of Tiresias the soothsayer, was not inferior to her father in the art of divination. Being endowed with a wonderful genius, she wrote a great number of oracles in different characters. Being often in an enthusiastic state of inspiration, she uttered many things that were prophetical, and was therefore called a Sibyl.—Diod. Sic., lib. iv., c. 66.

ARISTOTLE.—At Cumæ, on the coast of Italy, is shown the cave in which the Sibyl uttered her prophecies.—De Mir. Ausc.

STRABO.—Erythræ was the native place of the Sibyl, an ancient inspired prophetess.—Strabo, lib. xiv., c. I.

The Roman Law and Religion

Acts 16:21.—And teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The letter of the Roman Law, even under the Republic, was opposed to the introduction of foreign religions; and though exceptions were allowed, as in the case of the Jews themselves, yet the spirit of the Law entirely condemned such changes in worship as were likely to un-settle the minds of the citizens, or to produce any tumultuous uproar (Liv. xxxix., 16).—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, I., 302.

CICERO.—No person shall have any separate gods, or new ones; nor shall he privately worship any strange gods, unless they be publicly allowed.—De Legibus, II., 8.

SERVIUS.—Care was taken among the Athenians and the Romans, that no one should introduce new religions. It was on this account that the Jews were banished from the city.—On Virgil, Æn. VIII., 187.

Acts 16:22.—And the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them.

LIVY.—The lictors, being sent to inflict punishment, beat them with rods, being naked.—Liv., II., 5.

CICERO.—He commanded the man to be seized, and to be stripped naked in the midst of the forum, and to be bound, and rods to be brought.—Cont. Verres.

SENECA.—Go, lictors: strip off their garments: let them be scourged—Quoted by Howson.

The Inner Prison

Acts 16:24.—Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The " inner prisons " were pestilential cells, damp and cold, from which the light was excluded, and where the chains rusted on the limbs of the prisoners. One such place may be seen to this day on the slope of the capitol at Rome. It is known to the readers of Cicero and Sallust by the name Tullianum. This is a type of the dungeons in the provinces; and we find the very name applied, in one instance, to a dungeon in the province of Macedonia.— Life and Epistles of St. Paul, I., p. 305.

ARISTOPHANES.—Only as many of them as are fastened to the stocks are zealous. -Pax., v. 478.

IDEM.—How I will fasten you in the stocks!—Equit., v. 367.

EUSEBIUS.—Great were the sufferings which Origen endured under an iron collar, and in the deepest recesses of the prison, when, for many days, he was extended and stretched to the distance of four holes on the rack.—Hist. Bed., VI., 39.

The Jailer's Terror

Acts 16:27.—And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Awakened in a moment by the earthquake, his first thought was of his prisoners, "they being fled," aware that inevitable death awaited him, with the stern and desperate resignation of a Roman official, he resolved that suicide was better than disgrace, " and drew his sword." Philippi was famous in the annals of suicide.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 301.

BISCOE.—By the Roman Law, the jailer was to undergo the same punishment which the malefactors who escaped by his negligence were to have suffered.—Bisc., p. 330

The Serjeants

Acts 16:35.—And when it was day, the magistrates sent the, sergeants, saying, Let those men go.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—" Serjeants," properly rod—bearers. They were the official attendants of the higher Roman magistrates, and executed their orders, especially for the arrest and punishment of criminals. In the provinces the lictors carried staves, not fasces, as at Rome. Luke speaks of the presence of rod-bearers only in his account of what took place at Philippi; and it is almost the only place in his narrative where he could rightly introduce them. Philippi being a Roman colony, unlike other Grecian cities, was governed after the Roman mode; its chief officers assumed the more honorary title of praetors, and in token of the Roman sovereignty, had rod-bearers or lictors as at Rome.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, .p. 2927.

The Magistrates Alarmed

Acts 16:37, 38.—But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and fetch us out. And the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates; and they feared, when they heard that they were Romans.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—In this matter the magistrates had violated three important laws, the infraction of which was in general treated with so much severity by the Roman Government, that these colonial magistrates had ample cause for the alarm with which they received the Apostle's message. I In punishing them without trial they had violated the law, which strictly forbade any citizen to be punished unheard. 2. They had also infringed the 'Valerian law, which forbade that any Roman Citizen should be bound. 3. They had acted against the Sempronian or Porcian law, which exempted a citizen from being punished with rods.

—Pict. Bib., In loco.

QUINTILIAN.—To bind a Roman citizen is a misdemeanor; to strike him is a crime, to kill 'him is next to parricide.—Quint., VIII., 4.

CICERO.—It is a transgression of the law to bind a Roman citizen: it is wickedness to scourge him.— In Verrem., Orat., V.

IDEM.—The Porcian Law has removed the rod from the body of every Roman citizen.

Orat. pro Rabirio.

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSUS.—The punishment appointed for those who abrogated or transgressed the Valerian Law was death, and the confiscation of his property.—Ant. Rom., II.

Amphipolis, Apollonia and Thessalonica

Acts 17:1.—Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT.—Amphipolis was a city of Macedonia, distant thirty three Roman miles from Philippi. Its site is now occupied by a village called Neokhorio, or " New Town."—Apollonia was another city of Macedonia, distant thirty Roman miles from Amphipolis, and thirty-seven from Thessalonica.— Thessalonica was still another city of the province of Macedonia. It received its name from Thessalonica, wife of Cassander and sister of Alexander the Great. Saloniki (its present name) is still the most important town of European Turkey next after Constantinople.—Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

Chief Magistrates

Acts 17:5, 6.—But the Jews... took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort.... They drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, etc.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON. —We must recur, however, to the narrative in the Acts, for the purpose of noticing a singularly accurate illustration which it affords of the political constitution of Thessalonica. Not only is the demus mentioned (ton demon, Acts 17:5) in harmony with what has been said of its being a " free city," but the peculiar title, politarchs (xvii: 6), of the chief magistrates. This term occurs in no other writing; but it may be read to this day conspicuously on an arch of the early imperial times, which spans the main street of the city. From this inscription it would appear that the number of politarchs was seven.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3232.

Another King

Acts 17:7, 8.—And these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people, and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.

GROTIUS.—The Roman people, and after them the emperors, would not permit the name of king to be mentioned in any of the vanquished provinces, except by permission.—Quoted in Barnes' Notes.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—We obtain a deeper insight into the cause why the whole charge against Paul and Silas was brought forward with so much vehemence, and why it was so likely to produce an effect on the magistrates, if we bear in mind the fact, that the Jews were under the ban of the Roman authorities about this time, for having raised a tumult in the metropolis, at the instigation (as was alleged) of one Chrestus, or Christus (Suet. Claud. 25); and that they must have been glad, in the provincial cities, to be able to show their loyalty and gratify their malice, by throwing the odium off themselves upon a sect whose very name might be interpreted to imply a rebellion against the emperor.—Life and. Epists. of St. Paul, I., p. 332;

Berea

Acts 17:10.—And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON. —Berea was on the eastern slope of the Olympian range. It had many natural advantages, and is even now considered one of the most agreeable towns in Rumili. A few insignificant ruins of the Greek and Roman periods may yet be noticed.— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 339.

Athens

Acts 17:15.—And they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Athens, the celebrated capital of Attica, was founded, according to the common account, by Cecrops, B. C. 1550. In the time of Xenophon it is said to have contained 10,000 houses. From other ancient writers we learn that the extent of Athens was nearly equal to that of Rome within the walls of Servius. Perhaps not one single city in the world can boast, in the same space of time, of so large a number of illustricus citizens, as regarded either warlike operations or the walks of civil life. The Romans, in the more polished ages of their Republic, sent their youths to finish their education at Athens. Modern Athens, a few years ago, contained about 12,000 inhabitants. Classical Dictionary.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON. —It is no ordinary advantage that we possess a description of Athens under the Romans, by a celebrated traveler and antiquarian, Pausanias. Pausanias visited Athens about fifty years after St. Paul, when but comparatively few changes had taken place in it. The work of Pausanias will be our best guide to the discovery of what St. Paul saw. By following his route through the city, we shall be treading in the steps of the Apostle himself, and shall behold those very objects which excited his indignation and compassion.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 352.

The Idolatry of Athens

Acts 17:16.—Now while Paul' waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry—(in the ma; gin), full of idols.

PAUSANIAS. —The Athenians exceed all in their diligence about the gods. Paus., I., 24, § 3.

LUCIAN. —At Athens, on every side, there are altars, victims, temples, and festivals.—T. I. PromEth., p. 180.

LIVY. —Athens was full of the images of gods and men, adorned with every variety of material, and with all the skill of art —Liv., 45, 27.

PETRONIUS. —At Athens, it was easier to find a god than a man.—Sat., XVII.

JOSEPHUS. —All men say that the Athenians are the most religious of all the Grecians.— Cont. Ap., II., 12.

SOPHOCLES. —The city of Athens goes beyond all in worshipping and reverencing the gods.—Œdip. Colon., v. 1006.

The Market

Acts 17:17.—Therefore disputed he... in the market daily with them that met with him.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON. —The Market, Agora, was situated in the valley enclosed by the heights of Pnyx, Areopagus, and Acropolis. The Agora must not be conceived of as a great " market," like the bare spaces in many modern towns, where little attention has been paid to artistic decoration, but is rather to be compared to the beautiful squares of such Italian cities as Verona and Florence, where historical buildings have closed in the space within narrow limits, and sculpture has peopled it with impressive figures—the memorials of history. In the more palmy days, the Agora was the center of a glorious public life, where the orators and statesmen, the poets and the artists of Greece, found all the incentives of their noblest enthusiasm; and still continued to be the meeting-place of philosophy, of idleness, of conversation, and of business, when Athens' could only be proud of her recollections of the past.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 353, 354.

Epicureans and Stoics

Acts 17:18.—Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics encountered him.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Epicureans.—This sect of philosophers was so named from Epicurus, who was born 341 B. C. They denied that, the world was created by God, and that the gods exercised any care or providence over human affairs, and also the immortality of the soul. Against these positions of the sect, Paul directed his main argument, in proving that the world was created, and governed by God. Stoics.—These were a sect of philosophers, so named from the Greek Stoa, a porch, or portico, because Zeno, the founder of the sect, held his school and taught in a porch, in the city of Athens. Zeno was born 360 B. C. The doctrines of the sect were, that the universe was created by God; that all things were fixed by fate; that even God was under the dominion of fatal necessity; that the passions and affections were to be suppressed and restrained. They supposed that matter was eternal, and that God was either the animating principle or soul of the world, or that all things were a part of God. In their views of a future state they fluctuated much.—See Classical Dictionary, Arts. “Epicurus" and "Zeno."

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Athens was distinguished among all the cities of Greece and the world, for the cultivation of a subtle and refined philosophy. This was their boast, and the object of their constant search and study.—Note, In loco.

Areopagus

Acts 17:19.—And they took him, and brought him to Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Areopagus.—This name (Areios Pagos) is the same which is rendered “Mars Hill " below, from Ares, a name of Mars, and 'Sagas, a hill or high station. Areopagus was an insulated precipitous rock, broken towards the south, but on the north side sloping gently down to the Temple of Theseus. It stood nearly in the center of Athens.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON. —The place to which they took Paul was the summit of the hill of Areopagus, where the most awful court of judicature had sat from time immemorial, to pass sentence on the greatest criminals, and to decide the most solemn questions connected with religion. The judges sat in the open air, upon seats hewn out in the rock, on a platform, which was ascended by a flight of stone steps immediately from the Agora. On this spot a long series of awful causes, connected with crime and religion, had been determined, beginning with the legendary trial of Mars, which gave to the place its name of “Mars Hill." A Temple of the god was on the brow of the eminence; and an additional solemnity was given to the place by the sanctuary of the Furies, in a broken cleft of the rock, immediately below the judges' seat. Even in the political decay of Athens, this spot and this court were regarded by the people with superstitious reverence. It was a scene with which the dread recollections of centuries were associated. It was a place of silent awe in the midst of the gay and frivolous city. Those who withdrew to the Areopagus from the Agora, came, as it were, into the presence of a higher power. No place in Athens was so suitable for a discourse upon the mysteries of religion... The Athenians took the Apostle from the tumult of public discussion, to the place which was at once most convenient and most appropriate.— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 374.

HERODOTUS. —There is a hill opposite the citadel at Athens, which the Athenians call the Hill of Mars, or Areopagus.—Urania, c. 52.

EURIPIDES.—There is at Athens, a certain Hill of Mars, where the gods first sate in judgment concerning blood, where savage Mars, in wrath for the impious nuptials of his daughter, slew Halirrothius, the son of the ruler of the ocean, where from that time there is a most pious and firm judgment for the gods.—Electr., v. 1258.

PLUTARCH. —Some of the philosophers held resolutely that there were no gods, and Euripides the tragedian signified as much in his writings, though he dared not openly proclaim his opinion for fear of the court of Areopagus.—De Placit. Philos., lib. i., c. 7.

LUCIAN. —Are you not afraid lest he shall commence a suit against you in Areopagus?— Vit. Anct., c. 7.

CICERO. —When it is said, “The commonwealth of Athens is governed by the council," it is meant " of the Areopagus."—De Nat. Deor., II., 29.

JUVENAL. —You must keep my secrets as religiously as the court of Mars at Athens.— Sat. IX., v. 101.

Seeking and Retailing News

Acts 17:21.—For all the Athenians and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

KUINOEL. —Many of the ancient writers bear witness to the garrulity, and curiosity, and intemperate desire of novelty, among the Athenians, by which they inquired respecting all things, even those in which they had no interest, whether of a public or private nature.—In loco.

DEMOSTHENES. —Is it your sole ambition to wander through the public places, each inquiring of the other, “What new advices?"—Demosth. Phil., I.

THEOPHRASTUS.—The Athenian lover of the marvelous greets his acquaintance with, Whence came you? What say you? Have you any fresh news?—Truly theirs seems to me a most wearisome mode of life, passing entire days, as they do, in running from shop to shop, from the portico to the forum, with no other business than to promulgate idle tales, by which to afflict the ears of all they meet,— Charact., XXIV.

PLUTARCH.—These busy-bodies intrude themselves into the high courts of justice, the tribunals, the market-places, and public assemblies; What news? saith one of them; How now?—De Curios., c. 8.

Altar to the Unknown God

Acts 17:23.—As I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

LUCIAN. —I swear by the unknown God at Athens.—Philop., c. 13.

IDEM. —We have found out the unknown God at Athens, and worshipped him with our hands stretched up to heaven.—Philop., c. 29.

PHILOSTRATUS. —And this at Athens, where there are even altars to the unknown God.— Vita Apollo, VI., 3.

PAUSANIAS. —At Athens, there are altars of gods which are called the unknown ones.— In Attic., c. I.

God Not Confined to Temples

Acts 17:24.—God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Close to the spot where Paul stood was the Temple Mars. The Sanctuary of the Eumenides was immediately below him. The Parthenon of Minerva was facing him above. Their presence seemed to challenge the assertion in which he declared here, that " in TEMPLES made with hands the Deity does not dwell."—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 376.

God in Need of Nothing

Acts 17:25.—Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing

he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.

EURIPIDES. —The Deity, if he be truly deity, lacks nothing.—Her. fur., v. 1345.

PLUTARCH. —God is absolutely exempt from wants.—Comp. Arist. c. Caton, C. 4.

All Made of One Blood

Acts 17:26.—And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth.

CICERO.—Originally, mankind were one harmonious family. But they, through their depravity, disagreed and quarreled, not recollecting that they are all consanguineous and akin, and equally subject to the same paternal providence. —De Leg., I fragm.

A. VON HUMBOLDT.—The different races of men are forms of one sole species; they are not different species of a genus.—Cosmos.

PROF. T. H. HUXLEY, F. R. S.—I am one of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than' one species of man.—Origin of Species, p. 113.

DR. CHARLES DARWIN.—I have no doubt that all the races of man are descended from a single primitive stock.—Desc. of Man, I., 220.

God the Cause and Ground of All Existence

Acts 17:28.—For in him we live, and move, and have our being.

ARISTOTLE.—The principle of life is inherent in the Deity: for the energy or active exercise of mind constitutes life, and God constitutes this energy; and essential energy belongs to God as his best and everlasting life.—Metaph. XI., 8.

R. JOHN YOUNG.—The Eternal One, alone, is self-existent. The reason, the ground of the existence of the universe, of every living being, of every single atom: at every moment, is not in itself, but wholly and only in the will and power of the Creator. It is nothing, has no meaning, no reality, no being, except in Him. Underneath it and in it, sustaining it, entirely causing it, are the Almighty Will and the Almighty Power. Let these be withdrawn for a moment, let them only not be, that is, let there be no present Divine volition, and no present exertion of Divine power, and that moment it is nothing, for the sole ground of its being is gone.—Creator and Creation, p. 58.

Man the Offspring of God

Acts 17:28.—

As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are all his offspring.

ARATUS.—

Let us begin from Jove. Let every mortal raise

His grateful voice to tune Jove's endless praise.

Jove fills the heaven, the earth, the sea, the air:

We feel his spirit moving here, and everywhere.

And we his offspring are.

—Phœn., v. I.

CLEANTHES.—

Most glorious of immortals, Thou many-named

Always almighty, prime Ruler of nature,

Governing all by law, Jove, hail!

For mortals all, Thee to address is meet;

For we are thy offspring.

—Hymn in Joy.

Idols No Similitude of God

Acts 17:29.—Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art or man's device.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—On Mars Hill, the Apostle was surrounded by sculpture as well as by temples. In front of him, towering from its pedestal upon the rock of the, Acropolis, was the bronze Colossus of Minerva, armed with spear and shield and helmet, as the champion of Athens. Standing almost beneath its shade, he pronounced that the Deity was not to be likened either to that, the work of Phidias, or to other forms in gold, silver, or stone, graven by art, or man's device, which peopled the scene before him.—Life of St. Paul,' I., 376.

SENECA.—From any obscure corner of the world you may rise to heaven. Rise then, and show yourself worthy of the Deity; a god not made of gold or silver; for of such materials it is indeed impossible to form a likeness of God. —Epist., 31.

Acts 17:33.—So Paul departed from among them.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—God, in his providence, has preserved to us, in fullest profusion, the literature which unfolds to us all the life of the Athenian people, in its glory and its shame; and he has ordained that one conspicuous passage in the Holy Volume should be the speech, in which his servant addressed that people as ignorant idolaters, called them to repentance and warned them of judgment. And it can hardly be deemed profane if we trace to the same Divine Providence the preservation of the very imagery which surrounded the speaker—not only the sea, and the mountains, and the sky, which change not with the decay of nations—but even the very temples, which remain, after wars and `revolutions, on their ancient pedestals in astonishing perfection. We are thus provided with a poetic and yet a truthful commentary on the words that were spoken once for all at Athens; and art and nature have been commissioned from above to enframe the portrait of that Apostle, who stands forever on the Areopagus as the teacher of the Gentiles.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 381.

Corinth

Acts 18:1.—After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Corinth was about forty-six miles east of Athens, situated on the isthmus that connects Peloponnesus to Attica; and was the capital of all Achaia. It was most advantageously situated for trade; for by its two ports, the Lecheum and Cenchrea, it commanded the commerce both of the Ionian and Ægean Seas. It was destroyed by the Romans under Mummius, about 146 B.C.; but was rebuilt by Julius Caesar, and became one of the most considerable cities of Greece.—Note, In loco.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Corinth, in the time of Paul, was a large mercantile city, in immediate connection with Rome and the West of the Mediterranean, with Thessalonica and Ephesus in the Ægean, and with Antioch and Alexandria in the East.—Life of St. Paul, I., 385.

IDEM.—Corinth still exists, on the old site, and bearing the old name; but is now shrunk to a wretched village. Two relics of Roman-work are still to be seen, one a heap of brick-work which may have been part of the baths erected by Hadrian; the other the remains of an amphitheater with subterranean arrangements for gladiators. Far more interesting are the ruins of the ancient Greek temple—the old columns which have looked down on the rise, prosperity and the desolation of three successive Corinths. The fountain of Peirene, "full of sweet and clear water," as it is described by Strabo, is still to be seen in the Acrocorinthus. The scene of the Isthmean games also, from which St. Paul borrows some of his most striking imagery, may yet be traced; to the south are the remains of the Stadium, where the foot-races were run, and to the east are those of the theatre the arena of the pugilistic contests.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 494

The Jews Banished From Rome

Acts 18:2.—Aquila... lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because that Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.

SUETONIUS.—Claudius banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus.—Claud, c. 25.

Tentmakers

Acts 18:3.—By their occupation they were tentmakers.

MAIMONIDES.—The wise generally practice some of the arts, lest they should be dependent on the charity of others.—Tract Talmud Tora, c. I., § 9.

Gallio

Acts 18:12.—And when Gallio was deputy of Achaia, the Jews, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—After the Romans had conquered Greece, they reduced it to two provinces, Macedonia and Achaia, which were each governed by a proconsul. Gallio was the brother of the celebrated philosopher Seneca, and was made proconsul of Achaia A. D. 53. He is said to have been of a remarkably mild and amiable disposition.—Note, In loco.

TACITUS.—Mella, brother to Gallio and Seneca.—Ann., XVI., 17.

PLINY.—Annæus Gallio received great benefit from a sea voyage at the close of his consulship.— Hist. Nat., XXXI., 6.

SENECA.—Of Gallio I may say, no mortal was ever so mild to any one, as he was to all; and in him there was such a natural power of goodness that there was no semblance of art or dissimulation.— Prœf. Quest. Natu", 4.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, LL. D.—It is worth observing as a mark of Luke's accuracy that he mentions Gallio as Anthypateyontos, "Proconsul," in the reign of Claudius; for under the preceding emperors, Tiberius and Caligula, Achaia was an imperial province, and the title of the governor would have been Proprætor.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 863.

Cenchrea

Acts 18:18.—Having shorn his head in Cenchrea.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Cenchrea was the eastern harbor of Corinth, and distant from it about nine miles. Pausanias (ii: 3) describes the road as having tombs and a grove of cypresses by the wayside. The modern village on the site retains the ancient name. Some traces of the moles of the port are still visible. A coin has been found which exhibits the port exactly as it is described by Pausanias, with a temple at the extremity of each mole, and a statue of Neptune on a rock between them.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 402.

The Voyage from Corinth to Ephesus

Acts 18:18, 19.—And sailed thence into Syria... and he came to Ephesus.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—No voyage across the Ægean was more frequently made than that between Corinth and Ephesus. They were the capitals of two flourishing and peaceful provinces of Achaia and Asia, which were to each other as Liverpool and New York. Cicero says that, on his eastward passage, he spent fifteen days, and on his return thirteen days. With favorable wind, the voyage could be accomplished in shorter time.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, I., 423.

Alexandria

Acts 18:2.—And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, etc.

PROF. B. Foss WESTCOTT, M. A.—Alexandria was a flourishing commercial city of Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great, B. c. 332. The population was mixed from the first. The three regions into which the city was divided corresponded to the three chief classes of its inhabitants, Jews, Greeks and Egyptians. According to Josephus, “the Jews obtained equal privileges with the Macedonians."— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 62.

Ephesus

Acts 19:1.—Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Ephesus was an illustrious city in the district of Ionia, at the mouth of the river Cayster. All the cities of Ionia were remarkably well situated for the growth of commercial prosperity, and none 'more so than Ephesus. With a fertile neighborhood and an excellent climate, it was also most conveniently placed for traffic with all the neighboring parts of the Levant. In the time of Augustus it was the great emporium of all the regions of Asia within the Taurus. Its harbor, at the mouth of the Cayster, was elaborately constructed. Two great roads, in the Roman times, led eastward from Ephesus: one through the passes of Tmolus to Sardis, and thence to Galatia and the northeast; the other round the extremity of Pactyas to Magnesia, and so up the valley of the Maeander to Iconium, whence the communication was direct to the Euphrates and to the Syrian Antioch. There were also coast roads leading northward to Smyma, and southward to Miletus. By the latter of these it is probable that the Ephesian elders traveled, when summoned to meet Paul at the latter city. Part of the pavement of the Sardian road has been noticed by travelers under the cliffs of Gallesus.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 747.

Exorcists

Acts 19:13.—Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—By all ancient testimony, Jewish, Christian and Heathen, there were a great number of such vagrant pretenders, who went about and obtained gainful employment. Among the Jews themselves there was indeed a strong partiality for the arts of magic and superstition.— Pict. Bible, In loco.

Ephesian Books

Acts 19:19.—Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The worship of Diana and the practice of magic were closely connected together. Eustathius says, that the mysterious symbols, called “Ephesian Letters," were engraved on the crown, the girdle, and the feet of the goddess. These Ephesian Letters, or monograms, have been compared to the Runic characters of the North. When pronounced, they were regarded as a charm; and were directed to be used, especially by those who were in the power of evil spirits. When written, they were carried about as amulets. Curious stories are told of their influence. Cœsus is related to have repeated the mystic syllables when on his funeral pile; and an Ephesian wrestler is said to have always struggled successfully against an antagonist from Miletus until he lost the scroll, which before had been like a talisman. The study of these symbols was an elaborate science: and books, both numerous and costly, were compiled by its professors.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., p. 21

MENANDER.—Such an one walks with the bridegroom and his bride, speaking to them the Ephesian Charms.—Apud Suid.

PLUTARCH.—The magicians compel those who are possessed with a demon to recite and pronounce the Ephesian Letters, in a certain order, by themselves.— Sympos., 7.

CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.—Androcydes, a Pythagorean, says that the Letters which are called Ephesian are symbols.—Strom., 2.

Shrines of Diana

Acts 19:24.—For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—One of the idolatrous customs of the ancient world was the use of portable images or shrines, which were little models of the more celebrated objects of devotion. They were carried in processions, on journeys and military expeditions, and sometimes set up as household gods in private houses. Pliny says that this was the case with the Temple of the Cnidian Venus; and other heathen writers make allusion to the “shrines " of the Ephesian Diana, which are mentioned in the Acts. The material might be wood, or gold, or silver. Few of those who came to Ephesus would willingly go away without a memorial of the goddess and a model of her temple. We find the image of the Ephesian Diana on the coins of a great number of other cities and communities, e. g., Hierapolis, Mitylene, Perga, Samos, Marseilles, etc., bearing testimony to the notoriety of her worship.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 77.

Images No Gods

Acts 19:26.—This Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands.

PLUTARCH.—The Greeks were accustomed to speak of the statues of brass and stone, or painted figures, not as images made in honor of the gods, but as the gods themselves.—Isid. et Osirid., c. 71.

LIVY.—The Ambracians complained that their temples were despoiled of their ornaments, and the images of their gods, nay, the gods themselves torn from their mansions and carried away.— Liv., lib. xxxviii., c. 43.

HORACE.—The wife and husband are turned out, bearing in their bosoms their paternal gods.— Hor., lib. ii., carm. 18.

Temple of Diana

Acts 19:27.—So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed.

PLINY.—The most wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration, is the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, which took one hundred and twenty years in building, a work in which all Asia joined. It was 425 feet in length, and 220 in breadth, and the columns were sixty feet high. The number of columns was 127, each of them the gift of a king; and thirty-six of them were enriched with ornament and color. The folding-doors were of cypress-wood; the part which was not open to the sky was roofed over with cedar; and the staircase was formed of the wood of one single vine from the island of Cyprus. The value and fame of the temple were enhanced by its being the treasury, in which a large portion of the wealth of Western Asia was stored up.—See Hist. Nat., lib. xxxvi., 21; xxxiv., 7; xvi., 79; xiv., 2.

LIVY.—The Temple of Diana was universally celebrated.—Liv., lib i., c. 45.

The Theater

Acts 19:29.—And the whole city was filled with confusion... and they rushed with one accord into the theater.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The site of Ephesus has been visited and examined by many travelers during the last 200 years. The whole place is now utterly desolate, with the exception of the small Turkish village at Ayasaluk. It is satisfactory, however, that the position of the Theater on Mount Prion is absolutely certain. It must have been one of the largest in the world.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 750.

FELLOWS.—Of the site of the theater, the scene of the tumult raised by Demetrius, there can be no doubt, its ruins being a wreck of immense grandeur. I think it must have been larger than the one at Miletus, and that exceeds any I have elsewhere seen in scale, although not in ornament. Its form alone can now be spoken of, for every seat is removed, and the proscenium is a hill of ruins.—Asia Minor, p. 274.

Chief of Asia

Acts 19:13.—And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theater.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—"Chief of Asia," in the original, Asiarchs.

These were officers appointed to preside over the games had in connection with the festivals of Diana. We find similar titles in use in the neighboring provinces, and read, in books or on inscriptions, and coins, of Bithyniarchs, Galatarchs, Lyciarchs, and Syriarchs. Those who held this office at the famous games of Asia and Ephesus were men of high distinction and great wealth, and might literally be called " the chief of Asia."—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., P. 83.

STRABO.—Tralles is as well peopled as any of the cities of Asia, and its inhabitants are wealthy: some of them constantly occupy chief stations in the province, and are called Asiarchs.—Strabo, XIV., I.

The Town-Clerk

Acts 19:35.—And when the town-clerk had appeased the people, etc.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Like other free cities, Ephesus had its magistrates: one of these was that officer who is described as "town-clerk " in the authorized version of the Bible. From the parallel case of Athens, and from the Ephesian records themselves, it appears that he was a magistrate of great authority, in a high and very public position. He had to do with state-papers; he was keeper of the archives, etc. No magistrate was more before the public at Ephesus. His very aspect was familiar to all the citizens; and no one was so likely to be able to calm and disperse an excited multitude.— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 8I.

What man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—"A worshipper "—Greek, Neocoros, of which the literal signification is Temple-sweeper. This originally was an expression of humility, and applied to the lowest menials engaged in the care of the sacred edifice; but afterward became a title of the highest honor, and was eagerly appropriated by the most famous cities. This was the case with Ephesus in reference to her national goddess. The city was personified as Diana's devotee. The title Neocoros was boastfully exhibited on the current coins. Even the free people of Ephesus was sometimes named Neocoros. Thus the “town-clerk " could with good reason begin his speech by the question, "What man is there that knows not that the city of the Ephesians is neocoros of the great goddess Diana," etc.— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 79.

The image which fell down from Jupiter.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—If the Temple of Diana at Ephesus was magnificent, the image enshrined within the sumptuous enclosure was primitive and rude—little more or better than a shapeless block of wood. Yet, rude as the image was, it was the object of the utmost veneration. Like the Palladium of Troy—like the most ancient Minerva of the Athenian Acropolis—like the Paphian Venus or Cybele of Pessinus—like the Ceres in Sicily mentioned by Cicero-it was believed to have fallen down from the sky.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 77.

EURIPIDES.—In the Tauric territory Diana possesses altars, and there is the image of the goddess, which, they say, fell down from heaven.—Iph. in Taur., v. 86.

Acts 19:40.—We are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—One of the Roman Laws made the raising of such commotions a capital offense:—" He who raises a mob shall forfeit his life."—Comment., In loco.

Troas

Acts 20:5, 6.—These going before tarried for us at Troas.

See chap. xvi: v. 8.

Assos

Acts 20:13, 14.—And we went before to ship, and sailed unto Assos, there intending to take in Paul: for so had he appointed, minding himself to go afoot. And when he met with us at Assos, we took him in, and came to Mitylene.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Assos was a town and seaport of the province of Asia, in the district anciently called Mysia. It was situated on the northern shore of the gulf of Adramyttium, and was only about seven miles from the opposite coast of Lesbos. A good Roman road, connecting the towns of the central parts of the province with Troas, passed through Assos, the distance between the two latter places being about twenty miles. These geographical points illustrate St. Paul's rapid passage through the town, as mentioned in Acts 20:13, 14. The ship in which he was to accomplish his voyage from Troas to Ptolemais went round Cape Lectum, while he took the much shorter journey by land. Thus he was able to join the ship without difficulty, and in sufficient time for her to anchor off. Mitylene at the close of the day on which Troas had been left.—Smith's. Dict. of the Bible, p. 184.

Mitylene, Chios, Etc

Acts 20:15.—And we sailed from Mitylene, and came the next day over against Chios; and the next day we arrived at Samos, and tarried at Trogillium; and the next day we came to Miletus.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Mitylene was the chief town of the island of Lesbos. Chios was a small island to the south of Lesbos; it was a very rich and beautiful island. It is still called Khio. Samos was another island, about eighty miles in circumference, and within six miles of the Ionian coast: Pythagoras was a native of this isle, and Lycurgus died in it. Trogillium was a promontory opposite Samos. Miletus was a seaport of Caria, thirty miles south of Ephesus; it was the birth-place of Thales, one of the seven sages.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Paul's Devotion to Christ

Acts 20:24.—But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.

GIBBON.—The ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which the doubtful and imperfect faith of modern ages cannot give us any adequate notion.—Decline and Fall, chap. xv.

More Blessed to Give Than to Receive

Acts 20:35.—Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said it is more blessed to give than to receive.

ARISTOTLE.—It is more the province of virtue to benefit than to be benefited. —Eth., IV., 1.

The Course of the Ship

Acts 21:1.—And it came to pass that after we were gotten from them and had launched, we came with a straight course unto Coos, and the day following unto Rhodes, and from thence unto Patara.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—It is quite clear, from St. Luke's mode of expression, that the vessel sailed from Miletus on the day of the interview. With a fair wind she would easily run down to Coos in the course of the same afternoon. The distance is about forty nautical miles; the direction is due south. Coos is an island about twenty-three miles in length, separated by a narrow channel from the mainland. On leaving Cobs the vessel would have to proceed through the channel which lies between the southern shore of the island and that tongue of the mainland which terminates in the Point of Cnidus. If the wind continued in the northwest, the vessel would be able to hold a straight course from Coos to Cape Crio, and after rounding the point she would run clear before the wind all the way to Rhodes. No view in the Levant is more celebrated than that from Rhodes towards the opposite shore of Asia Minor. Patara was a Lycian seaport, ruins of which still remain to show that it was once a place of some magnitude and splendor.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., p. 219-225.

From Patara to Tyre

Acts 21:2, 3.—And finding a ship sailing over unto Phenicia, we went aboard, and set forth... and landed at Tyre.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The distance between Patara and Tyre is 340 geographical miles, which, with the favorable winds of the season, might easily have been accomplished in forty-eight hours. So much has been written concerning the situation, the past history, and the present condition of Tyre, that these subjects are familiar to every reader, and it is unnecessary to dwell upon them.— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., p. 227.

Ptolemais

Acts 21:7, 8.—And when we had finished our course from Tyre, we came to Ptolemais... and the next day came unto Caesarea.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Ptolemais was the intermediate stage between Tyre and Caesarea. It had recently been made a Roman colony by the emperor Claudius. It shared with Tyre and Sidon, Antioch and Caesarea, the trade of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. With a fair wind, a short day's voyage separates it from Tyre. From Ptolemais to Cesarea, the distance was somewhat over thirty miles, a day's journey by land.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, p. 231.

Review of the Whole Journey

Acts 21:15.—And after those days we took up our carriages, and went up to Jerusalem. DR. JOHN ' SAUL HOWSON.—Thus we have accompanied St. Paul on his last recorded journey to Jerusalem. It was a journey full of incident; and it is related more minutely than any other portion of his travels. We know all the places by which he passed, or at which he stayed; and we are able to connect them all with familiar recollections of history. We know, too, all the aspect of the scenery. He sailed along those coasts of western Asia, and among those famous islands, the beauty of which is proverbial. The very time of the year is known to us. It was when the advancing season was clothing every low shore, and the edge of every broken cliff, with a beautiful and refreshing verdure; when the winter storms had ceased to be dangerous, and the small vessels could ply safely in shade and sunshine between neighboring ports. Even the state of the weather and the direction of the wind are known. We can point to the places on the map were the vessel anchored for the night; and trace across the chart the track that was followed, when the moon was full.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 235.

Paul Ready to Die for Christ

Acts 21:13.—Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep, and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.

LUCIAN.—These poor people (the Christians) have taken it into their heads that they shall, body and soul, be immortal, and live to all eternity; thence it is that they contemn death, and that many of them run violently into his clutches.—De Mort. Pereg., C. 13.

Gentiles Excluded From the Holy Place

Acts 21:28.—Men of Israel, help: This is the man that teacheth all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place: and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place.

JOSEPHUS. —When you go through these first cloisters unto the second court of the temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three -cubits; its construction was very elegant: upon it stood pillars, at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek and some in Roman letters, That no Foreigner should go within that sanctuary; for that second court of the temple was called the Sanctuary, and was ascended to by fourteen steps from the first court.— Jewish Wars, b. V., c. 5, § 2.

EXPLORATION OF PALESTINE.—The inscribed stone from king Herod's temple is, perhaps, the most interesting, next to the “Moabite Stone," of all the discoveries connected with the name of M. Clermont Ganneau. Close to the Via Dolorosa lies a small cemetery. Here is a gateway. While examining the wall, step by step, M. Ganneau observed two or three Greek characters on a block forming the angle of the wall, on which was built a small arch. The characters were close to the surface of the ground. M. Ganneau proceeded to scrape away the soil, in hopes of finding them continued. More characters appeared, and when the stone was finally cleared, the discoverer had the gratification of reading the following inscription in Greek:

No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the

Temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible

to himself for his death, which will ensue.

We may boldly affirm that this Greek inscription is not only the most ancient, but also the most interesting, in all its bearings, which Jerusalem has yet produced.—Our Work in Palestine, Appendix, p. 340.

Tower of Antonia

Acts 21:31, 32.—And as they went about to kill him, tidings came unto the chief captain of the band, that all Jerusalem was in an uproar: who immediately took soldiers and centurions, and ran down unto them.

JOSEPHUS.—Now, as to the tower of Antonia, it was situated at the corners of two cloisters of the court of the temple, of that on the west and that on the north: it was erected upon a rock of fifty cubits in height, and was on a great precipice. The entire structure resembled a tower. It contained also four distinct towers at its four corners; whereof the others were but 50 cubits high, whereas that which lay upon the southeast corner was 70 cubits high, that from thence the whole temple might be viewed: but in the corner where it joined to the two cloisters of the temple, it had passages down to them both, through which the guards (for there always lay in this tower a Roman legion) went several ways among the cloisters, with their arms, on the Jewish festivals in order to watch the people, that they might not there attempt to make any innovations; for the temple was a fortress that guarded the city, as was the tower of Antonia a guard to the temple; and in that tower were the guards of those three.—Jewish Wars, b. V., c. 5, § 8.

Acts 21:34, 35.—He commanded him to be carried into the castle: and when he came upon the stairs, etc.

JOSEPHUS.—Where the tower of Antonia joined to the two cloisters of the temple, it had passages down to them both, through which the guards went several ways among the cloisters with their arms, on the Jewish festivals.—Ibid.

Egyptian Impostor

Acts 21:38.—Art not thou that Egyptian, which before these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?

JOSEPHUS.—These works that were done by the robbers filled the city with all sorts of impiety.... Moreover, there came out of Egypt about this time to Jerusalem, one that said he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along with him to the Mount of Olives: and he would show them from thence, how at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down; and he promised them that he would procure them an entrance into the city through those walls, when they were fallen down. Now, when Felix was informed of these things, he ordered his soldiers to take their weapons, and came against them with a great number of horsemen and footmen from Jerusalem„ and attacked the Egyptian, and the people that were with him. He' also slew 400 of them, and took zoo alive. But the Egyptian himself escaped out of the fight, and appeared no more.—Antq., b. xx., c. 8, § 6.

Tarsus

Acts 21:39.—But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.

XENOPHON.—Tarsus, a large and rich city of Cilicia.—Anab., I., c. 2.

STRABO.—The inhabitants-of Tarsus apply to the study of philosophy and to the whole encyclical compass of learning with so much ardor, that they surpass Athens, Alexandria, and every other place which can be named where there are schools and lectures of philosophers. In other respects Tarsus is well peopled, extremely powerful, and has the character of being the capital.—Strab., lib. xiv., C. 5.

Examination by Scourging

Acts 22:24.—Then the chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he should be examined by scourging; that he might know, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This method of extorting a confession was not unusual among the Romans, and was sometimes practiced by the Jews themselves. The Romans, however, could not thus treat one who enjoyed the privilege of Roman freedom; and examination by torture was therefore limited to slaves and aliens.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

CICERO.—Why has Milo emancipated his slaves? I suppose lest they should give information against him; lest they should be unable to bear pain; lest they should be compelled by torture to confess that Publius Clodius was slain by the slaves of Milo.—Pro Milon., c. 21.

Roman Citizenship

Acts 22:25.—And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?

CICERO.—The Porcian law forbade a rod to be laid on the person of a Roman citizen.— Pro Rab., c. IV.

QUINTILIAN.—To bind a Roman citizen is a misdemeanor; to strike him is a crime.— Quint., lib. viii., c. 4.

Acts 22:27, 29.—Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him.

CICERO.—It is a heinous sin to bind a Roman citizen; it is wickedness to beat him.—Cont. Verres.

IDEM.—How often has this exclamation, I am a Roman citizen! brought aid and safety even among barbarians in the remotest parts of the earth.—Cont. Verres., V. 57.

Acts 22:28.—And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said. But I was free born. And Paul said, But I was free born.

DIO CASSIUS.—The civitas or citizenship of Rome was, in the early part of the reign of Claudius, sold at a high rate, and afterwards for a mere trifle.— In Con. and Rows. Life of Paul, II., 259.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—At the period of the Apostle's birth, the Jews were unmolested at Tarsus, where his father lived, and enjoyed the rights of a Roman citizen.— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 45

Smiting Upon the Mouth

Acts 23:2.—And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth.

MORIER.—As soon as the ambassador came, he punished the principal offenders by causing them to be beaten before him; and those who had spoken their minds too freely, he smote upon the mouth with a shoe.—Second Journey Through Persia, p. 8.

Acts 23:3.—Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.

SENECA.—They are sordid, base, and like their walls adorned only externally.—De Provid., c. 6.

JOSEPHUS.—This Ananias was slain, about five years after this, during the disturbance that occurred in Jerusalem when the Sicarii had taken possession of the city. He attempted to conceal himself in an aqueduct, but was drawn forth and killed.—See Jewish Wars, 2, 17, 8.

The Conspiracy

Acts 23:52.—And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.

JOSEPHUS.—This historian relates a similar conspiracy, in which ten Jews bound themselves by an oath to destroy the First Herod, because he had violated the ancient customs of the nation.

—See Antiq., 15, 8, 3,

Cæsarea

Acts 23:23.—And he called unto him two centurions, saying, Make ready two hundred soldiers to go to Cæsarea, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Cæsarea was on the coast, thirty-five miles to the north of Joppa, and fifty-five miles northwest from Jerusalem.—Pict. Bible, In loco. See chap. viii., v. 40,

Felix the Governor

Acts 23:24.—Bring him safe unto Felix the governor.

JOSEPHUS.—So Claudius sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to take care of the affairs of Judea.— Antiq., b. xx., c. 7, § i.

TACITUS.—Felix was appointed procurator of Judea by the Emperor Claudius, whose freedman he was, on the banishment of Ventidius Cumanus (A. D. 53). He ruled the province in a mean and cruel and profligate manner. —Hist. V., 9, and Ann., XII., 54.

Antipatris

Acts 23:31.—Then the soldiers, as it was commanded them, took Paul, and brought him by night to Antipatris, etc.

JOSEPHUS.—After this solemnity and these festivals were over, Herod erected another city called Caphar-saba, where he chose out a fit place, both for plenty of water and goodness of soil, where a river encompassed the city itself, and a grove of the best trees for magnitude was round about it: this he named Antipatris, from his father Antipater.—Antiq., b. xvi., c. 5, § 2.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The old name, Kefr-Saba, still lingers among the present Arabic population; and extensive patches of Roman pavement along the old road may yet be found.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 118

Descent From Jerusalem to Cæsarea

Acts 24:1.—And after five days Ananias the high priest descended with the elders, etc.

THE COMPILER.—From Jerusalem to Cusarea there was a literal descent of full 2,600 feet.

Felix's Term of Office

Acts 24:10.—Then Paul... answered, Forasmuch as I know that thou hast been of many years a judge unto this nation, etc.

TACITUS.—Felix, for some years, governed Judea.—Ann., XII., 54.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Felix, at this time, had been governor seven years.— Pict. Bible, In loco.

Time of Trial

Acts 24:22, 23.—And when Felix heard these things... he deferred them and said, When Lysias the chief captain shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter. And he commanded a centurion to keep Paul, and to let him have liberty.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—When an accusation was brought against a Roman citizen, the magistrate, who had criminal jurisdiction in the case, appointed the time for hearing the cause, and detained the accused in custody during the interval. He was not bound to fix any definite time for the trial, but might defer it at his own arbitrary pleasure; and he might also commit the prisoner at his discretion to any of the several kinds of custody recognized by the Roman Law: these were, first, confinement in the public gaols, which was the most severe kind; second, free custody, which was the mildest kind; third, military custody, in which the accused person was given in charge to a soldier, who was responsible with his own life for the safe-keeping of his prisoner (Geib, p. and Tac., III., 2).—Life of St. Paul, II., 288.

Felix and Drusilla

Acts 24:24.—And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul.

JOSEPHUS.—And when Agrippa had received these countries as the gift of Cesar, he gave his sister Drusilla in marriage to Azizus, king of Emesa.... But as for this marriage, it was in no long time afterward dissolved upon the following occasion: while Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw this Drusilla, and fell in love with her; for she did indeed exceed all other women in beauty. And through one Simon, a magician, she was prevailed upon to transgress the law of her forefathers, and to marry Felix.— Antiq., XX., 7, I and 2.

TACITUS.—Claudius, when the Jewish kings were all deceased, or at least extremely reduced in power, gave Judea to be ruled as a province by the Roman Knights, or by his own freedmen. Antonius Felix was one of these, one who, rioting in the excesses of licentiousness and cruelty, exercised the authority of a king, with the spirit and baseness of a slave. He had received in wedlock Drusilla, granddaughter to Antony and Cleopatra; insomuch that while the emperor was Mark Antony's grandson, Felix, his manumised slave, was married to the granddaughter of that very Mark Antony.— Tac. Hist., lib. v., c. 9.

Felix Trembling

Acts 24:25.—And as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled.

CICERO.—The power of conscience is very great, O Judges, and is of great weight on both sides: so that they fear nothing who have done no wrong, and they, on the other hand, who have done wrong think that punishment is always hanging over them.—Pro Milon., c. 23.

Felix Looking for a Bribe

Acts 24:26.—He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This stroke finishes the character of Felix, in exact keeping with other parts of his character.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

TACITUS.—In the practice of all kinds of lust and cruelty he exercised the power of a king with the temper of a slave.—Hist., V., 9.

Festus Appointed Governor

Acts 24:27.—But after two years, Porcius Festus came into Felix's room.

JOSEPHUS.—Now when Porcius Festus was sent as successor to Felix, by Nero, the principal of the Jewish inhabitants of Caesarea went up to Rome to accuse Felix.—Antiq., XX., 8, 9.

IDEM.—Now it was that Festus succeeded Felix, as procurator, and made it his business to correct those that made disturbances in the country.—Jewish Wars, II., 14, I.

HERODIAN.—Porcius Festus also was a freedman.—Herod, IV., 8, I I.

Caesar's Tribunal

Acts 25:10.—Then said Paul, I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be judged.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Every procurator represented the person of the Emperor in the province over which he presided; and as the seat of government was at Caesarea; and Paul was now before the tribunal on which the Emperor's representative sat, he could say with the strictest propriety, that he stood before Caesar's judgment seat, where as a freeman of Rome, he should be tried.—Com., In loco.

Appeal to Cesar

Acts 25:11.—I appeal unto Cæsar.

GEIB.—This was the regular technical phrase for lodging an appeal (Plut. Cæs., c. 4). The. Roman Law did not require any written appeal to be lodged in the hands of the court; pronunciation of the single word Appello was sufficient to suspend all further proceedings.—Gesch. d. rom. Grim., p. 686.

DR. DODDRIDGE.—It is well known, that the Roman Law allowed such an appeal to every citizen, before sentence was passed, and made it highly penal for any governor, after that, to proceed to any extremities against the person making it.—Note, In loco.

TACITUS.—Nero exalted the dignity of the fathers by ordaining that whoever should appeal from the judges to the senate, should be exposed to the hazard of forfeiting the same sum of money as did those who appealed to the Emperor.—Ann., XV., 28.

Acts 25:12.—Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Cæsar shalt thou go.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The Roman governors of provinces had a certain number of persons with them, whom they were bound to consult and advise with in every important matter, and particularly in matters of judicature. This has been proved by numerous citations from Cicero, Josephus, Dio, and Philo Judæus.— Pict. Bib., In loco.

IDEM.—The appeal being once made, the inferior magistrate or distant governor had no further power in the case; and it became highly penal for him to take any further measures in the matter, save that of sending to Rome, with all convenient speed, the person who had appealed to the tribunal of the Emperor. —Pict. Bib., In loco.

Agrippa and Bernice

Acts 25:13.—And after certain days king Agrippa and Bernice came unto Caesarea to salute Festus.

PROF. BROOKE Foss WESTCOTT, M. A.—This Agrippa was the son of Herod Agrippa I. (mentioned in Acts 12) At the time of the death of his father, A. D. 44, he was at Rome, and his youth (he was seventeen years old) prevented Claudius from carrying out his first intention of appointing him his father's successor (Jos., Ant., 19, 9, I and 2). Not long afterward, however, the Emperor gave him (A. D. 50) the kingdom of Chalcis, which had belonged to his uncle; and then transferred him, A. D. 52, to the tetrarchies formerly held by Philip and Lysanias (Jos. Ant., 20, 6, I), with the title of king. The relation in which he stood to his sister Bernice was the cause of grave suspicion (Jos. Ant., 20, 6, 3), which was noticed by Juvenal. In the last Roman War Agrippa took part with the Romans, and after the fall of Jerusalem retired with Bernice to Rome, where he died.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1053.

TACITUS. —Queen Bernice, then in her full bloom of youth and beauty, was a great favorite even with Vespasian, old as he was, for her liberality and magnificent gifts.—Hist., II., 81.

SUETONIUS. —Queen Bernice received from Titus, as was supposed, an offer of marriage, but when the people publicly expressed an unfavorable opinion of him and said that he would prove another Nero, he sent away Bernice from the city, much against the inclinations of both of them.—Tit., c. 7.

JUVENAL.—

That far-famed gem which Bernice wore,

The hire of incest, and thence valued more;

A brother's present in that barbarous state

Where kings the Sabbath barefoot celebrate.

—Sat., VI., v. 156.

No Man Condemned Unheard

Acts 25:16.—It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him.

PHILO.—The Roman Prefects yielded themselves to be the common judges, hearing equally the accusers and defendants, condemning no man unheard, prejudging no man; but judging without favor or enmity, according to the nature of the case.—De’Prœsid. Rom.

APPIAN.—It is not their custom to condemn men before they have been heard.—Hist. Roman.

TACITUS.—A defendant is not to be prohibited from adducing all things, by which his innocence may be established.—Ann. II.

LUCIAN. —It would be furnishing our calumniator with a pretext for reviling us if we should condemn a man without having previously heard him in his own vindication. —Piscat., c. 10.

The Charge Sent to Cæsar

Acts 25:26.—Of whom I have no certain thing to write unto my lord. PRESIDENT T. D. WOOLSEY, D. D., LL. D.—An appeal from a decision in a province, when lowed, was authenticated by apostoli or &era dimissoriœ, which contained a notice of the appeal to the higher court, and were accompanied by the necessary documents, evidence, etc.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 129.

IDEM.—Could Festus, in the reign of Nero, call the Emperor his lord in accordance with the Roman usage? A free Roman under the republic never called anyone his “lord," kurios or dominus. That the term was applied to the emperor at this period we have clear evidence. Augustus rebuked the use of the title, but could not repress it, nor could Tiberius prevent its application to himself. Herod Agrippa addressed the emperor under this name. Afterward the use of it became much more frequent. The letters of Pliny to Trajan, and those of Fronto to Marcus Aurelius, begin with Domino meo. And Nero was so called. These remarks serve to show the wonderful accuracy of Luke in the Acts, of which accuracy all new study is constantly furnishing additional proof.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 818.

Paul Delivered to a Centurion

Acts 27:1.—And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners unto one named Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The sending of state prisoners to Rome from various parts of the empire was an event of frequent occurrence. Thus we are told by Josephus (Vita, c. 3), that Felix, “for some slight offense, bound and sent to Rome several priests of his acquaintance, honorable and good men, to answer for themselves to Caesar." Such groups must often have left Caesarea, and other Eastern ports, in merchant vessels bound for the West.—Life of St. Paul, II., 309.

A centurion of Augustus' band.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Lipsius has found the name of this cohort on an ancient, marble; see Lips., in Tacit. Hist., lib. ii. The same cohort is mentioned by Suetonius, in his Life of Nero, 20.—Com. In loco.

The Coasts of Asia

Acts 27:2.—And entering into a ship of Adramyttium, we launched, meaning to sail by the coasts of Asia.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Adramyttium was a seaport in the province of Asia, or, as it was sometimes called, Mysia. It gave, and still gives its name to a deep gulf on this coast, opposite to the opening of which is the island of Lesbos. Ships of Adramyttium must have been frequent on this coast, for it was a place of considerable traffic. It lay on the great Roman road between Assos, Troas, and the Hellespont on one side, and Pergamos, Ephesus and Miletus on the other, and was connected by similar roads with the interior of the country. In the time of St. Paul Pliny mentions it as a Roman assize-town. The modern Adramyti is a poor village; but it is still a place of some trade and ship-building.-Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 35.

Meaning to sail by the coasts of Asia.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—This is to be accounted for, perhaps, by the reflection that the Mariner's Compass was unknown at that day; whence all voyages were, as far as possible, performed by creeping along the coasts; and that it was considered a matter of great peril and enterprise, whenever accident compelled or circumstances rendered it requisite to put forth to sea.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

Sidon

Acts 27:3.—And the next day we touched at Sidon.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The passage from Cæsarea to Sidon is 67 miles, a distance easily' accomplished, under favorable circumstances, in less than twenty-four hours.—Life of St. Paul, II., 312.

Course of the Voyage

Acts 27:4.—And when we had launched from thence, we sailed under Cyprus, because the winds were contrary.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—On going to sea from Sidon, the wind was unfavorable-blowing from the westward. The direct course from Sidon to "the coasts of Asia" would have been to the southward of Cyprus; but, as Luke relates, “they sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were contrary "— that is, they sailed to the northeast and north of the island. The reason why this course was taken will be easily understood by those who have navigated those seas in modern times. By standing to the north, the vessel would fall in with the current which sets in a northwesterly direction past the eastern extremity of Cyprus, and then westerly along the southern coast of Asia Minor, till it is lost at the opening of the Archipelago. And besides this, as the land was neared, the wind would draw off the shore, and the water would be smoother; and both these advantages would aid the progress of the vessel.— Life of Paul, II., 313.

CAPTAIN BEAUFORT.—From Syria to the Archipelago there is a constant current to the westward, slightly felt at sea, but very perceptible near the shore, along this part of which it runs with considerable but irregular velocity: between Adratchan Cape and the small adjacent island we found it one day almost three miles an hour.—Karamania, p. 41.

Myra

Acts 27:5.—And when we had sailed over the sea of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra, a city of Lycia.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The situation of Myra was at the opening of a long and wonderful gorge, which conducts the traveler from the interior of the mountain-region of Lycia to the sea. A wide space of plain intervened between the city and the port.—Life of St. Paul, II., 315.

IDEM. —Myra is remarkable still for its remains of various periods of history. The tombs, enriched with ornaments, and many of them having inscriptions in the ancient Lycian characters, show that it must have been wealthy in ancient times. Its enormous theater attests its considerable population in what may be called its Greek age. In the deep gorge which leads into the mountains is a large Byzantine church, a relic of the Christianity which may have begun with St. Paul's visit.—Smith's Bible Dict., p. 2044.

Acts 27:6.—And there the centurion found a ship of Alexandria, sailing into Italy: and he put us therein.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The port of Myra was one of the many excellent harbors which abound in the southwestern part of Asia Minor. From this circumstance, and from the fact that the coast is high and visible to a great distance,—in addition to the local advantages mentioned before, the westerly current and the off-shore wind,—it was common for ships bound from Egypt to the westward to be found in this neighborhood when the winds were contrary. It was therefore a natural occurrence, and one which could have caused no surprise, when the centurion met in the harbor at Myra with an Alexandrian corn-ship on her voyage to Italy.—Life of St. Paul, II., 316.

Sailing Slowly by Cnidus, Crete, Etc.

Acts 27:7.—And when we had sailed slowly many days, and scarce were come over against Cnidus, the wind not suffering us, we sailed under Crete, over against Salmone.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON —Since the distance from Myra to Cnidus is only 130 miles, it is certain that they must have sailed " slowly." The delay was occasioned by contrary winds. At this point they lost the advantages of a favoring current, a weather shore, and smooth water, and were met by all the force of the sea from the westward: and it was judged the most prudent course, instead of contending with a head sea and contrary winds, to run down to the southward, and, after rounding Cape Salmone, the easternmost point of Crete, to pursue the voyage under the lee of that island.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 317.

SIR C. PENROSE.—" Sailed slowly many days "—from the light and baffling winds, usual in those seas and at that season.—MS.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—" Cnidus."—This city was situated on a peninsula of the same name, opposite Rhodes. The peninsula consists of high mountains, sloping steeply upwards from the port, but to the west presenting a perpendicular face of rock from 100 to 300 feet high, utterly inaccessible to friend or enemy. The town of Cnidus stood at the extremity of this peninsula, and was spread over the ascent of a high mountain rising gradually from the sea. It had three fine ports, sheltered by a peninsula and divided by an isthmus.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

BEAUFORT.—Few places bear more incontestable proofs of former magnificence and fewer still of the ruffian industry of their destroyers, than Cnidus. The whole area of the city is one promiscuous mass of ruins; among which may be traced streets and gateways, porticos and theaters. The smallest harbor has a narrow entrance between high piers, and was evidently the closed basin for triremes, which Strabo mentions. The southern harbor is formed by two transverse moles; these noble works were carried into the sea to the depth of nearly a hundred feet; one of them is almost perfect; the other, which is more exposed to the southwest swell, can only be seen under water.—Karamania, p. 81, etc.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—" Crete," now, called Candia, is a large island fronting the Ægean Sea. It is a hundred and sixty miles long, and in its widest parts thirty-five miles broad. The soil is rich and exceedingly fruitful. It was very populous, and anciently had a hundred cities, from which it received the name of Hecatompolis.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Direction of the Wind

Acts 27:8.—And, hardly passing it, came unto a place which is called the Fair Havens: nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The statements at this particular point of St. Luke's narrative enable us to ascertain, with singular minuteness, the direction of the wind (viz., from the northwest): and it is deeply interesting to observe, how this direction, once ascertained, harmonizes all the inferences which we should naturally draw from other parts of the context.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 319.

IDEM. —The position of Fair Havens is known. Though not mentioned by classical writers, it is still known by its old Greek name. Lasea, too, has recently been most explicitly discovered. In fact Fair Havens appears to have been practically its harbor. These places are situated four or five miles to the east of Cape Matala, which is the most conspicuous headland on the south coast of Crete, and immediately to the west of which the coast trends suddenly to the north. This last circumstance explains why the ship which conveyed St. Paul was brought to anchor in Fair Havens-beyond, its course would have been in the teeth of the wind.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 808.

Sailing Become Dangerous

Acts 27:9.—Now when much time was spent, and when sailing was now dangerous, because the fast was now already past, Paul admonished them.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The fast of Expiation was on the tenth of Tisri, and corresponded to the close of September or the beginning of October; and is exactly the time when seafaring is pronounced to be dangerous by Greek and Roman writers. See Philo De Viert. App. II.; Hesiod, Of. et Di. 671; Aristoph. w. 709; etc.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 321.

Phenice

Acts 27:12.—And because the haven was not commodious to winter in, the more part advised to depart thence also, if by any means they might attain to Phenice, and there to winter.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Phenice is mentioned both by Ptolemy and Strabo as a port on the southern coast of the island of Crete. It was opposite the small island of Clauda or Gaudos, and about fifty-two nautical miles to the northwest of Fair Havens.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Euroclydon

Acts 27:14, 15.—But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon. And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive.

DR. JOHN Saul. HOWSON.—The change in the fortunes of these mariners came without a moment's warning. Soon after weathering Cape Matala, and, while they were pursuing their course in full confidence, close' by the coast of Crete, a violent wind came down from the mountains, and struck the ship (seizing her, according to the Greek expression, and whirling her round), so that it was impossible for the helmsman to make her keep her course. The character of the wind is described in terms expressive of the utmost violence. It came with all the appearance of a hurricane: and the name Euroclydon, which was given to it by the sailors, indicates the commotion in the sea which presently resulted. — Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 325.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—" Euroclydon "—by this we may understand one of those whirlwinds or hurricanes so common in those seas at this time of the year, and which is so well known to our seamen by the name of a Levanter, and which the ancients called Typhon.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

PLINY.—The squall which is called Typhon carries along a portion of the cloud which it has broken off, rolling and turning it round, aggravating its own destruction by the weight of it, and whirling it from place to place. This is very much dreaded by sailors, and it not only breaks their sail-yards, but the vessels themselves, bending them about in various ways.—Hist. Nat., II., 49.

Clauda

Acts 27:16.—And running under a certain island which is called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Clauda is an island about twenty miles to the southwest of Cape Matala, on the southern coast of Crete.... Running under the lee of this isle, they hoisted the boat on board, a work, in a gale, always accomplished with “difficulty."—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 326-7.

Undergirding the Ship

Acts 27:17.—They used helps, undergirding the ship.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—In consequence of the extreme danger to which they were. exposed from leaking, it was customary to take to sea, as part of their ordinary gear, "undergirders," which were simply ropes for passing round the hull of the ship, and thus preventing the planks from starting. One of the most remarkable proofs of the truth of this statement is to be found in the inscribed marbles dug up, in the year 1834, at the Piræus, which give us an inventory of the Attic fleet in its flourishing period.— Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 302.

PLATO.—This light was the belt of heaven, like the undergirding of a ship, by which the whole circumference is bound together.—De Rep., X., 14.

HORACE.—

The wounded mast

And sail-yards groan beneath the southern blast,

Nor without ropes the keel can longer brave

The rushing fury of th' imperious wave.

—Hor., l. i., car. 14.

The Quicksands

Acts 27:17.—And fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake sail, and so were driven.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—" Quicksands "—the original for this word is The Syrtis—the broad and deep bight on the North African coast, between Carthage and Cyrene. This region was an object of peculiar dread to the ancient navigators of the Mediterranean, both on account of the drifting sands and the heat along the shore itself, and of the shallows and uncertain currents of water in the bay. Josephus relates that he was himself once wrecked in this part. Apollonius Rhodius, who was familiar with all the notions of the Alexandrian sailors, in his Argonaut, supplies illustrations of this passage in Paul's history, in more respects than one-in the sudden violence of the terrible north wind, in its long duration, and in the terror which the sailors felt of being driven into the Syrtis. There were properly two Syrtes, the eastern or larger, now called the Gulf of Sidra, and the western or smaller, now the Gulf of Cabes. It is the former to which our attention is directed in this passage of the Acts. The ship was caught by a northeasterly gale on the south coast of Crete, near Mount Ida, and was driven to the island of Clauda. This line of drift, continued, would strike the greater Syrtis: whence the natural apprehension of the sailors.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2652.

The Wreck Foretold

Acts 27:26.—Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island.

REV. WILLIAM JAY, D. D.—" We must be cast on a certain island "—not a continent, but an island, and a certain island—and we must be cast upon it, that is, wrecked there; the vessel will be destroyed, though the passengers will be preserved. And so it came to pass.—Evening Exercises, Octr. 23.

Nearing Land

Acts 27:27.—But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—A gale of such duration, though not very frequent, is by no means unprecedented in that part of the Mediterranean, especially towards winter. The writer has heard of easterly and northeasterly gales lasting for a still longer period, both in the neighborhood of Gibraltar and to the eastward of Malta. A captain in the merchant service mentions a fruit vessel near Smyrna hindered for a fortnight from loading by a gale from the northeast. She was two days in beating up a little bay a mile deep. He adds, that such gales are prevalent there towards winter. Another case is that of a vessel bound for Odessa, which was kept three weeks at Milo with an easterly gAle. This also was late in the year (October). A naval officer writes thus: "About the same time of the year, in 1839, I left Malta for the Levant in the Hydra,' a powerful steam frigate, and encountered Euroclydon (or, as we called it, a Levanter) in full force. I think we were four days without being able to sit down at table to a meal; during which time we saw 'neither sun nor stars.' Happily she was a powerful vessel, and we forced her through it, being charged with dispatches, though with much injury to the vessel. Had we been a mere log on the water, like St. Paul's ship, we should have drifted many days."—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 334.

Driven up and down in Adria.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—In the apostolic age, Adria denoted that natural division of the Mediterranean which Humboldt names the Syrtic Basin, and which had the coasts of Sicily, Italy, Greece and Africa for its boundaries. This definition is explicitly given by almost a contemporary of St. Paul, the geographer of Ptolemy, who also says that Crete is bounded on the west by Adrias. Later writers state that Malta divides the Adriatic Sea from the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Isthmus of Corinth the Ægean from the Adriatic.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 35.

The shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—There is little doubt as to what were the indications of land. The roar of breakers is a peculiar sound, which can be detected by a practiced ear, though not distinguishable from the other sounds of a storm by those who have not " their senses exercised " by experience of the sea.— Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 334.

Sounding

Acts 27:27-29.—The shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; and sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—We have seen that when under the lee of Clauda, the direction in which the vessel was drifting was west by north, which is the exact bearing of the northern part of Malta from the south of Clauda. And we find that every succeeding indication in the narrative, not only tends to bring us to the shore of Malta, but to the very Bay (the Cala di San Paolo) which has always been the traditional scene of the wreck. In the first place we are told that they became aware of land by the presence of breakers, and yet without striking. Now an inspection of the chart will show us that a ship drifting west, by north might approach Koura point, the eastern boundary of St. Paul's Bay, without having fallen in previously with any other part of the coast: for, towards the neighborhood of Valetta, the shore trends rapidly to the southward. Again, the character of this point, as described in the Sailing Directions, is such that there must infallibly have been violent breakers upon it that night. Yet a vessel drifting west by north might pass it, within a quarter of a mile, without striking on the rocks. But what are the soundings at this point? They are now twenty fathoms. If we proceed a little further we find fifteen fathoms. It may be said that this, in itself, is nothing remarkable. But if we add, that the fifteen fathom depth is in the direction of the vessel's drift (west by north) from the twenty fathom depth, the coincidence is startling! But at this point we observe, on looking at the chart, that now there would be breakers ahead—and yet at such a distance ahead, that there would be time for the vessel to anchor, before actually striking on the rocks.

They cast four anchors out of the stern.—If they had anchored by the bow, there was good ground for apprehending that the vessel would have swung round and gone upon the rocks. They therefore let go four anchors by the stern. By this method her way would be more easily arrested, and she would be in a better position for being run ashore next day. Modern Greek vessels may still be seen anchoring by the stern in the Golden Horn at Constantinople, or on the coast. of Patmos. But the best illustration is afforded by one of the paintings of Herculaneum, which represents "a ship so strictly contemporaneous with that of St. Paul, that there is nothing impossible in the supposition, that the artist had taken his subject from that very ship, on loosing from the pier at Puteoli."—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 341-2 and 335-6.

The Anchorage

Acts 27:39-41.—And when it was day they knew not the land: hut they discovered a certain creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it were possible, to thrust in the ship. And when they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and hoisted up the mainsail to the wind, and made toward shore. And falling into a place where two seas met, they run the ship aground.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The character of the coast on the further side of the bay is such, that though the greater part of it is fronted with mural precipices, there are one or two indentations, which exhibit the appearance of a creek with a (sandy or pebbly) shore. And again we observe that the small island of Salmonetta is so placed, that the sailors, looking from the deck when the vessel was at anchor, could not possibly be aware that it was not a continuous part of the mainland; whereas, while they were running her aground, they could not help observing the opening of the channel, which would thus appear a place between two seas, and would be more likely to attract their attention, if some current resulting from this juxtaposition of the island and the coast interfered with the accuracy of their steering. And finally, to revert to the fact of the anchors holding through the night (a result which could not confidently be predicted), we find it stated in our English " Sailing Directions," that the ground in St. Paul's Bay is so good, that, while the cables hold, there is no danger, as the anchors will never start.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 343.

The Ship Run Ashore

Acts 27:41.—They ran the ship aground; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained unmovable, but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves.

SIR CHARLES PENROSE.—The mainsail being hoisted, it would press the ship further on upon the land.—MS.

JAMES SMITH, ESQ.—A careful examination of the beach revealed the fact, that the ship would strike a bottom of mud, graduating into tenacious clay, into which the fore part would fix itself, and be held fast, whilst the stern was exposed to the force of the waves.— Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, p. 104.

Melita

Acts 28:1.—And when they were escaped they knew that the island was called Melita.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Melita, as is well known, was the ancient name of Malta. This island, situated very nearly mid-way between Europe and Africa, has been reckoned sometimes as belonging to the one and sometimes to the other. It is about twenty miles long and twelve miles broad. Its ancient capital stood upon elevated ground about the center of the island. There are in this city numerous alleged memorials of St. Paul's sojourn here.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—There are over against that part of Sicily which lies to the south, three islands at a distance in the sea, each of which has a town and safe ports for ships overtaken by tempests. The first, called Melita, is about 800 stadia from Syracuse, and has several excellent harbors. The inhabitants are very rich, inasmuch as they exercise many trades, and in particular, manufacture cloths remarkable for their softness and fineness. Their houses are large, and splendidly ornamented with projections and stucco. The island is a colony of Phoenicians, who, trading to the Western Ocean, use it as a place of refuge, because it has excellent ports, and lies in the midst of the sea.— Diod. Sic., lib. V., C. 12.

Barbarians

Acts 28:2.—And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness.

REV. T. S. MILLINGTON.—The inhabitants of this island are called "barbarians " in accordance with the custom of the Greeks and Romans, who called all people by that name who spoke a language different from their own.—Test of Heath., p. 555.

OVID.—Here, I am a barbarian, for no person understands me.—Tristia, v. 10.

HERODOTUS.—The Egyptians call all those barbarians who have not the same language with themselves.—Euterpe, c. 158.

STRABO.—Of the barbarians, the Persians were the best known to the Greeks, for none of the other barbarians who governed Asia ruled Greece.—Strab., XV., 3.

PAUL.—If I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian; and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.—I Cor. xiv: I I.

The Viper

Acts 28:3—There came a viper out of the heat and fastened on his hand.

BLOOMFIELD.—The poisonous vipers of Italy and Africa do not, like some species of harmless snakes with us, wind around a person's hand, but dart upon and bite them at once, and keep fast hold.— In loco.

Acts 28:4.—And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The ancients held that no murderer, however he might evade human justice, ever finally escaped the avenging justice of heaven. That serpents were often the agents of this justice was believed both by Jews and heathen. The Talmud mentions the story of a man who slew his friend, but was immediately after bitten by a serpent, and died.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Acts 28:5—And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.

JESUS CHRIST.—Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.—Luke 10:19.

Publius

Acts 28:7.—In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was Publius.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The term Protos, chief, used here by St. Luke, was the ancient title of the governor of this island, as is evident from an inscription found in Malta, which reads thus:

Lucius CAIUS, SON OF QUIRINUS, A ROMAN KNIGHT, CHIEF OF THE MELITESE .

This title is another proof of the accuracy of St. Luke, who uses the very epithet by which the Roman Governor of that island was distinguished.—Note, In loco.

Alexandria

Acts 28 it.—And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux.

PROF. B. F. WESTCOTT, M. A.—Alexandria was the Roman capital, of Egypt.

It was founded by Alexander the Great B. c. 332. Its beauty became proverbial. The climate and site are singularly healthy. The harbors formed by the island of Pharos and the headland Lochias, were safe and commodious, alike for commerce and for war, and the lake Mareotis was an inland haven for the merchandise of Egypt and India. Its importance as one of the chief corn-ports of Rome secured for it the general favor of the first emperors. The Alexandrine corn-vessels were large and handsome; and, as Josephus informs us, even Vespasian made a voyage in one of them. They generally sailed direct to Puteoli; but under stress of weather often sailed under the Asiatic coast.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 62.

Astor and Pollux

Acts 28:2.—We departed in a ship ... .whose sign was Castor and Pollux.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, the twin-sons of Jupiter and Leda, They were regarded as the tutelary divinities of sailors. Hence the frequent allusions of Roman poets to these divinities in connection with navigation (see Hor., carm. I., 3, 2). Castor and Pollux were especially honored at Alexandria and the neighboring districts. In Catullus, IV., 27, we have distinct mention of a boat dedicated to them. Herodotus says (III., 37) that the Phoenicians used to place the figures of deities at the bow of their vessels. Virgil (Æn. X., 209) and Ovid (Trist. I., 10, 2) supply us with illustrations of the practice; and Cyril says that such was always the Alexandrian method of ornamenting each side of the prow.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 395.

CATULLUS.—

As when through storms the sailor long has pray'd

To Pollux now, and now for Castor's aid,

Soft breathes the favoring air and calms the sea;

Such Manlius was, such help and bliss to me.

—Catul., carm. 68.

Syracuse

Acts 28:12.—And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Syracuse was in their track.—Life of P., II., 347.

CAN. J. W. BLAKESLEY, B. D.—Syracuse was a very celebrated city on the eastern coast of Sicily. The magnificence which Cicero describes as still remaining in his time, was then no doubt greatly impaired. The situation of this city rendered it a convenient place for the African corn-ships to touch at, for the harbor was an excellent one, and the fountain of Arethusa in the island furnished an unfailing supply of excellent water.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3140.

Rhegium and Puteoli

Acts 28:13.—And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHONY, LL. D.—Rhegium was a celebrated and flourishing city at the southern extremity of Italy, opposite the coast of Sicily. It was founded about 700 B. C. The modern name of the place is Reggio.—Classical Dictionary.

LEWIN.—" We fetched a compass "—as the wind was westerly, and they were under shelter of the high mountainous range of Ætna on their left, they were obliged to stand out to sea in order to fill their sails, and so come to Rhegium by a circuitous course. I was informed by a friend that when he made the voyage from Syracuse to Rhegium, the vessel in which he sailed took a similar circuit for a similar reason. —Quoted by Dr. Howson.

And after one day, the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The south wind would be favorable not only for carrying the ship through the Straits, but for all the remainder of the voyage. Puteoli lies nearly due north from Rhegium. The distance is about 182 miles. If we assume (in accordance with what has been proved above) that the vessel sailed at the rate of seven knots an hour, the passage would be accomplished in about twenty-six hours, which agrees perfectly with the account of St. Luke, who says that, after leaving Rhegium, they came " the next day" to Puteoli.—Life of St. Paul, II., 349.

IDEM. —Puteoli, under the early Roman emperors, was the great landing-place of travelers to Italy from the Levant, and the harbor to which the Alexandrian corn-ships brought their cargoes. It was at that period a place of very great importance. It was situated on the " Bay of Cumæ," now called the Bay of Naples. Close to it was Baiæ, one of the most fashionable of the Roman watering places. Its associations with historical personages are very numerous. Scipio sailed from hence to Spain. Cicero had a villa in the neighborhood. Here Nero planned the murder of his mother. Vespasian gave to this city peculiar privileges. And here Hadrian was buried.—The remains of Puteoli are considerable. The aqueduct, the reservoirs, portions (probably) of baths, the great amphitheater, the Temple of Serapis which affords very curious indications of changes of level in the soil, are all well worthy of notice. But our chief interest here is concentrated on the ruins of the ancient mole, which is formed of the concrete called Pozzolana, and sixteen of the piers of which still remain. No Roman harbor has left so solid a memorial of itself as this one at which St. Paul landed in Italy.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2647.

Acts 28:14.—Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days: and so we went toward Rome.

DR. J. S. HOWSON.—From its trade with Alexandria and the East, Puteoli must necessarily have contained a colony of Jews, and they must have had a close connection with the Jews of Rome.

And so we went toward Rome.—We are now about to trace the Apostle's footsteps along that road which was at once the oldest and most frequented in Italy, and which was called, in comparison with all others, the "Queen of Roads." This was the Appian Way, the most crowded approach to the metropolis of the world. The distance from Puteoli to Rome is about 125 miles.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 353-6.

Appii Forum, and the Three Taverns

Acts 28:15.—And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and the Three Taverns.

ANTONINUS.—The Three Taverns was a place 33 miles distant from Rome, and Appii Forum 51 miles, both on the Appian Way.—Itinerary.

CICERO.—This epistle was dated from Appii Forum at four o'clock; I had written another, a short time before from the Three Taverns.—4d Att., lib. ii., ep. 10.

Captain of the Guard

Acts 28:16.—And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard.

DR. ADAM CLARKE—" Captain of the guard," stratopedarkes, literally and properly, Commander of the Camp. Tacitus (Ann., IV., 2) informs us, that in the reign of Tiberius, Sejanus, who was then Præfect of these troops, did, order to accomplish his ambitious designs, cause them to be assembled from their quarters in the city, and stationed in a fortified Camp near it; so that their commander is with peculiar propriety styled by St. Luke, the Commander of the Camp. For, the arrival of St. Paul at Rome was in the seventh year of Nero (A. D. 62); and it is certain, from Suetonius (Tibr., c. 37), that the custom of keeping the prætorian soldiers in a camp near the city was retained by the emperors succeeding Tiberius. It was customary for prisoners who were brought to Rome, to be delivered to the Commander of this Camp, who had the charge of the state prisoners (Plin., lib. x., ep. 65). The person who now had that office was the noted Afranius Burrhus, who was a principal instrument in raising Nero to the throne. He is praised by the historians for his moderation and love of justice; and his treatment of St. Paul—" suffering him to dwell by himself" —is no mean proof of this.—Com. In loco.

Paul in His Hired House

Acts 28:30.—And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The Roman courts required the personal presence of the prosecutor. It would seem that, at this time, an accused person might be thus kept in prison for an indefinite period, merely by the delay of the prosecutor to proceed with his accusation. And even when the prosecutors were present, and no ground alleged for the delay of the trial, a corrupt judge might postpone it, as Felix did, for months and years, to gratify the enemies of the prisoner. And if a provincial governor, though responsible for such abuse of power to his master, might venture to act in this arbitrary manner, much more might the emperor himself, who was responsible to no man. Thus we find that Tiberius was in the habit of delaying the hearing of causes, and retaining the accused in prison unheard, merely out of procrastination (Joseph. Ant., 18, 6, 5). So that even after St. Paul's prosecutors had arrived, and though we were to suppose them anxious for the progress of the trial, it might still have been long'' delayed by the emperor's caprice. We read (Tac. Ann., XIII., 43) of an interval of twelve months permitted during Nero's reign, in the case of an accusation against Suilius, for misdemeanors committed during his government of Proconsular Asia.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 375.

Romans

PROF. JOSEPH B. LIGHTFOOT, D. D.—The date of the Epistle to the Romans is fixed with more absolute certainty, and within narrower limits, than that of, any other of St. Paul's epistles—which was in A. D. 58. The internal evidence is so strongly in favor of the genuineness of this Epistle that it has never been seriously questioned. This is confirmed by external testimony, from various sources. Passages from the Romans are found embedded in the Epistles of CLEMENT and POLYCARP (Clem. Cor., C. 35; Poly. Phil., c. 6). It is also quoted in IRENÆUS, "ideo Paulum dixisse." It is alluded to by the writer of the EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS, and by JUSTIN MARTYR. It has a place, moreover, in the MURATORIAN CANON, and in the Syriac and Old Latin Versions. Nor have we the testimony of orthodox writers alone. The Epistle was commonly quoted as an authority by the Heretics of the sub-apostolic age. In the latter part of the second century the evidence in its favor is still fuller. It is obviously alluded to in the letter of the churches of VIENNE and LYONS, by ATHENAGORAS, and THEOPHILUS of Antioch; and is quoted frequently and by name by IRENÆUS, TERTULLIAN, and CLEMENT of Alexandria.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2748.

The City of Rome

Rom. 1:7.—To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, etc.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The site and character of the city of Rome, as the metropolis of the world, are too well known to require description. Its population was colossal. Within a circuit of little more than twelve miles, more than two millions of inhabitants were crowded. In this prodigious collection of human beings there were of course all the contrasts which are seen in a modern city-all the painful lines of separation between luxury and squalor, wealth and want. But in Rome all these differences were on an exaggerated scale, and the institution of slavery modified further all social relations. The free citizens were more than a million; the senators were about a thousand; the knights, who filled a great proportion of the public offices, were more than ten thousand; the troops quartered in the city may be reckoned at fifteen thousand; the rest were the Plebs urbana, a vast number of whom were poor, and lived on public or private charity. Yet were these pauper citizens proud of their citizenship, though many of them had no better sleeping-place for the night than the public porticos or the vestibules of temples. They cared for nothing beyond bread for the day, the games of the circus, and the savage delight of gladiatorial shows. Every kind of nationality and religion had its representative in the great capital. In short, Rome was like London, with all its miseries, vices and follies exaggerated, and without Christianity. Beyond the river was a district named "Trastevere;” this was the residence of a low rabble, and the place of the meanest merchandise; and here was the ordinary residence of the Jews. A great part of this district was doubtless squalid and miserable, like the Ghetto of modern Rome, though the Jews were often less oppressed under the Caesars than under the Popes. Here, then, on the level ground, between the windings of the muddy river and the base of the Janiculum hill, was the home of those Israelitish families among whom the Gospel bore its first-fruits in the metropolis of the world. The Jewish community thus established in Rome had its first beginnings in the captives brought by Pompey after his eastern campaign. Many of them were manumitted; and thus a great proportion of the Jews in Rome were freedmen. Frequent accessions to their numbers were made as years went on-chiefly from the mercantile relations which subsisted between Rome and the East. Many of them were wealthy, and large sums were sent annually for religious purposes from Italy to the mother country. Even the proselytes contributed to these sacred funds. In the early years of Nero, which were distinguished for a mild and lenient government of the empire, the Jews in Rome seem to have enjoyed complete toleration, and to have been a numerous, wealthy and influential community.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, II., 367-369.

Undesigned Coincidence

Rom. 1:13.—Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you (but was let hitherto), that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.

DR. WILLIAM PALEY.—The purpose of visiting Rome expressed in the Acts, and thus in the epistle, has been shown by this able author, to be one of those undesigned coincidences which strongly shows that both books are genuine. Comp. Rom. 15:23 with Acts 19:21. A forger of these books would. not have thought of such a contrivance as to feign such a purpose of going to Rome at that time, and have mentioned it in that manner. Such coincidences are among the best proofs that could be demanded, that the writers did not intend to impose upon the world.—See Horœ. Polinœ., p. 16, etc.

Debt of Benevolence

Rom. 1:14.—I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians; both to the wise and to the unwise.

EPICTETUS.—The philosopher will make it his business to debate with all mankind; with the Athenians, Corinthians, and Romans equally; not about taxes and revenues, or peace and war, but about happiness and misery, prosperity and adversity, slavery and freedom.—Epict., III., 22.

The Power of the Gospel

Rom. 1:16.—I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—The doctrines of the Gospel create a new motive to action, and sustain an ennobling aim. Love and holiness are their natural fruits. This motive to action and this elevating aim were absent from the world. The sublime moral maxims of Oriental nations—the early learning of Egypt—the philosophic and aesthetic culture of Greece—and the jurisprudence of Rome, rising from the midst of an all-embracing idolatry—never produced any results approaching those which the preaching of the Gospel has diffused through every generation. In the doctrines of the cross, revealing the love of God in Christ Jesus, there is the supernatural introduction of a new motive “power"—there is that which is changing the intellectual and moral aspects of the whole world. The triumphs of the Gospel in Asia, Europe and Africa, during the earlier centuries, have arrested the thought of even the most indifferent, and have taxed the philosophy of the skeptic to account for their completeness. In comparatively recent times, the most ferocious and debased cannibal tribes have been subdued by the influence of the Gospel-the most sunken tribes in the world—men of all races, of all grades in society, and of all stages in culture, have rejoiced in the blessing of which, through faith in Jesus Christ, they have become partakers. No tribe has ever yet been found so sunken as to be beyond the power of Divine truth, when presented in the Gospel message. In every part of the habitable globe where the voice of the missionary has been heard, most notable changes have been effected, and the sufficiency of divine grace has been most distinctly manifested.—Blending Lights, chap. xvi.

DR. THOMAS CHALMERS.—The beauty of that holiness which is enshrined in the four brief biographies of the Man of Nazareth, has done more, and will do more to regenerate the world, and bring in an everlasting righteousness, than all other agencies put together.—In A. T. S. Al. for 1850.

God Seen in His Works

Rom. 1:20.—For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen," being understood by the things that are made, even his external power and Godhead; so that being they are without excuse.

CICERO.—Though you see not the Deity, yet by the contemplation of his works, you are led to acknowledge a God.—Disp. Tusc., I., 28.

XENOPHON.—The supreme God holds himself invisible, and it is only in his works that we are capable of admiring him.—Mein., IV., 3.

PLATO.—God the eternal, the chief ruler of the universe and its creator, the mind alone beholds; but that which is produced we behold by sight.—Tim. Loc., C. 5.

BISHOP GEORGE BERKELEY, D. D.-Though I cannot with eyes of flesh behold the invisible God; yet I do in the strictest sense behold and perceive by all my senses such signs and tokens, such effects and operations as suggest, indicate, and demonstrate an invisible God.—Min. Phil., Dial. IV., c. 5.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.—This beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. He governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of the universe. He is not only God, but Lord or Governor. We know him only by his properties and attributes, by the wise and admirable structure of things around us, and by their final causes; we admire him on account of his perfections, we venerate and worship him on account of his government.—Principia, concluding Note.

DR. WILLIAM BUCKLAND.—The whole course of the Geological inquiry which we have now conducted to its close, has shown that the physical history of our globe, in which some have seen only waste, disorder, and confusion, teems with endless examples of Economy, and Order, and Design; and the result of all our researches, carried back through the unwritten records of past time, has been to fix more steadily our assurance of the Existence of One Supreme Creator of all things, to exalt more highly our conviction of the immensity of his perfections, of his Might and Majesty, his Wisdom and Goodness, and all-sustaining Providence. The Earth from her deep foundations unites with the celestial orbs that roll through boundless space, to declare the glory and show forth the praise of their common Author and Preserver.—Bridgewater Treatise, p. 443.

ROBERT HUNT, ESQ.—The task of wielding the wand of science—of standing a scientific evocator within the charmed circle of its powers, is one which leads the mind through nature up to nature's God.— Poetry of Science, p. 317.

God Known to the Heathen

Rom. 1:21.—When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful.

REV. ALBERT BARNES. —That many of the philosophers of Greece and Rome had a knowledge of one God, there can be no doubt. This was undoubtedly the case with Pythagoras, who had traveled extensively in Egypt, and even in Palestine; and also with Plato and his disciples. This point is clearly shown by Cudworth in his Intellectual System, and by Bishop Warburton in the Divine Legation of Moses.—Note, In loco.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—The barbarians, all of them, acknowledge the existence of a deity.—Diss., 38.

CICERO.—All allow that there is a certain Divine Nature and Energy. —Tusc., I., 13.

The Folly and Idolatry of the Wise

Rom. 1:22,—Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —This is most strikingly true of all the ancient philosophers, whether Greeks or Romans, as their works which remain, sufficiently testify, not excepting Socrates, Plato, or Seneca. I might crowd my page with proofs of this; but this is unnecessary.—In loco.'

Rom. 1:23.—And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Most of the idols of the classical ancients were in the likeness of men and women; and many of them were in fact intended to represent heroes, benefactors, and inventors who had been deified, and to whom temples, altars, and statues were erected. The worship of men thus deified, Constituted no small part of the ancient idolatry.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—Instead of worshipping the living and immortal God, they deified a host of dead men, called heroes, distinguished for nothing so much, as for murder, adultery, sodomy, rapine, cruelty, drunkenness, and all kinds of debauchery. To such contemptible divinities, splendid temples were erected, adorations addressed, costly offerings presented, and rites and ceremonies performed, subversive of every principle of decency and morality, and degrading to the reason and character of man.— Philosophy of Religion, Chapter III.

LUCIAN.—If you go into Egypt, you will see Jupiter with the face of a ram, Mercury as a fine dog, Pan is become a goat; another god is Ibis, another the crocodile, and another the ape. There, many shaven priests gravely tell us, that the gods being afraid of the rebellion of the giants, assumed these shapes.— Quoted in Christ. Phil., p. 86.

ANAXANDRIDES.—I cannot agree with you (Egyptians); our customs and laws differ so widely. You adore the ox; I sacrifice it to the gods. You think the eel a great deity; we look upon it as the most delicious dainty. You abstain from the flesh of swine; I delight in it beyond all things. You adore the dog; I give him a good beating whenever I catch him stealing my meat. If you see a cat indisposed, you weep; I am delighted to kill it and take its skin. The mygale with you has great influence; with us none whatever.—Play of the Cities.

JUVENAL.—

Who knows not, Bithynian Volusius, what monsters

Mad Egypt can worship? This place adores a crocodile;

That fears an ibis saturated with serpents.

A golden image of a sacred Cercopithecus shines

Where the magic chords resound from the half Memnon,

And ancient Thebes lies overthrown with its hundred gates.

There a sea-fish, there a river-fish, there

Whole towns worship a dog, nobody Diana.

It is a sin to violate a leek or an onion, or to break them with a bite.

O holy nation! for whom are born in gardens

These deities! Every table abstains from animals bearing

Wool; it is there unlawful to kill the off-spring of a she-goat,

But lawful to be fed with human flesh.

—Satire, XV.

Worshipping the Creature

Rom. 1:25.—Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

GIBBON.—The religion of the nations was not merely a speculative doctrine professed in the schools or preached in the temples. The innumerable deities and rites of polytheism were closely interwoven with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or of private life. The important transactions of peace and war were prepared or concluded by solemn sacrifices, in which the magistrate, the senator and the soldier, were obliged to preside or to participate. The public spectacles were an essential part of the cheerful devotion of the Pagans, and the gods were supposed to accept, as the most grateful offering, the games that the prince and people celebrated in honor of their peculiar festivals. The Christian, who with pious honor avoided the abomination of the circus or the theater, found himself encompassed with infernal snares in every convivial entertainment, as often as his friends, invoking the hospitable deities, poured out libations to each other's happiness. When the bride, struggling with well-affected reluctance, was forced in hymeneal pomp over the threshold of her new habitation, or when the sad procession of the dead slowly moved toward the funeral pile; the Christian, on these interesting occasions, was compelled to desert the persons who were the dearest to him, rather than contract the guilt inherent in those impious ceremonies. Every art and every trade that was in the least concerned in the framing or adorning of idols was polluted with the stain of idolatry. If we cast our eyes over the numerous remains of antiquity, we shall perceive, that besides the immediate representations of the gods, and the holy instruments of their worship, the elegant forms and agreeable fictions consecrated by the imagination of the Greeks, were introduced as the richest ornaments of the houses, the dress, and the furniture, of the Pagans. Even the arts of music and painting, of eloquence and poetry, flowed from the same impure origin.— Decline and Fall of R. E., Chapter 15

Vile Affections

Rom. 1:26, 27.—For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women, etc.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Their system of idolatry necessarily produced all kinds of impurity. How could it be otherwise, when the highest objects of their worship were adulterers, fornicators, and prostitutes of the most infamous kind; such as Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Venus, etc. Of the abominable evils with which the Apostle charges the Gentiles in these verses, I could produce a multitude of proofs from their own writings; but it is needless to make the subject plainer than the Apostle has left it.—In loco.

SENECA.—No other effect could possibly be produced, but that all shame on, account of sin must be taken away from men, if they believed in such gods.—De Vitâ Beatâ, c. 26.

See Martial, ep. I., 90: Cicero, Tusc., Ques. IV., 20, 33, 34; Arist., Pol. II., 10.

Rom. 1:27.—Receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Premature old age, disease, decay, and an early death—the certain effects of such vices; as proved by the history of man. God has marked the indulgence of licentious passions with his frown. Since the time of the Romans and 'the Greeks, as if there had not been sufficient restraints before, he has originated a new disease, which is one of the most loathsome and distressing which has ever afflicted man, and which has swept of millions of victims!—Note, In loco.

Murder

Rom. 1:29.—Full of envy, murder, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Murder was particularly prevalent in Rome. In proof it is necessary only to refer to the common events in the Roman history of assassinations, deaths by poison, and the destruction of slaves. But in a special manner the charge was properly alleged against them, on account of the inhuman contests of the gladiators in the amphitheaters. “Several hundreds, perhaps several thousands," says Gibbon, " were annually slaughtered in the great cities of the empire."—Note, In loco.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The paintings of the gladiatorial combats on the walls of Herculaneum and Pompeii are replete with details of the most sickening barbarity.—Pict. Bib.

Infanticide

Rom. 1:31.—Without natural affection.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The Apostle doubtless refers here to the practice so common among heathens of exposing their children, or putting them to death. This crime, so abhorrent to all the feelings of humanity, was common among the heathen. The Canaanites, we are told, sacrificed their sons and their daughters. Among the ancient Persians it was a common custom to bury children alive. In most of the Grecian states, infanticide was not merely permitted, but actually enforced by law. But among all the nations of antiquity, the Romans were the most unrelenting in their treatment of infants. Minutius Felix thus describes their barbarity: " I see you exposing your infants to wild beasts and birds, or strangling them after the most miserable manner." (c. 30.) Pliny the Elder defends the right of parents to destroy their children, upon the ground of its being necessary in order to preserve the population within proper bounds. The Phenicians and Carthagenians, likewise, were in the habit of sacrificing infants to their gods.—Note, In loco.

A Law Unto Themselves

Rom. 2:14.—For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.

MAJOR JERVIS.—There are those who always speak the truth; the Santals are the most truthful men I ever met.—In Blend. Lights, p. 176.

MR. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. —A number of prisoners, taken during the Santa' insurrection, were allowed to go free on parole, to work at a certain spot for wages. After some time cholera attacked them, and they were obliged to leave; but every man of them returned and gave up his earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages, with money in their girdles, walked thirty miles back to prison rather than break their word.—Natural Selection,p. 352.

EPICTETUS.—Who ever came into the world without an idea of good and evil, fair and base, becoming and unbecoming, happiness and misery, proper improper, what ought to be done and what ought not to be done.—Epict., II.,

Conscience

Rom. 2:15.—Their conscience also bearing witness.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Conscience is the judgment which the mind passes on the morality or immorality, the right or wrong, of its own actions, when it instantly approves or condemns them. Its design is to answer the purpose of an ever attendant witness of a man's conduct; to compel him to pronounce on his own doings, and thus to excite him to virtuous deeds, to give comfort and peace when he does right, and to deter from evil actions by making him, whether he will or no, his own executioner. By nature every man thus approves or condemns his own acts; and there is not a profounder principle of the Divine administration, than thus compelling every man to pronounce on the moral character of his own conduct.—Note, In loco.

OVID.—As the mind of each man is conscious of good or evil, so does he conceive within his breast hope or fear according to his actions.—Fast., I., 485.

The Teacher Should Be a Doer

Rom. 2:21.—Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?

MAXIMUS TYRIUS. —He is not to plead against adulterers who has himself committed adultery, nor to condemn insolent conduct, being himself insolent; but one who is liberated from passions, that he may become a true accuser of injustice.—Diss., 15.

The True Jew

Rom. 2:28, 29.—For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

EPICTETUS. —Why do you call yourself a Stoic? Why do you act a Jew when you are a Greek? Do you not see on what terms each is a Jew, a Syrian, an Egyptian? And when we see one wavering we say this is not a Jew, but acts one. But when he assumes the sentiments of one who has been baptized and circumcised, then he both really is, and is called a Jew. Thus, we falsify our profession, are Jews in name, but in reality something else.—Epict., II., 9.

One Dying for Another

Rom. 5:7.—For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.

EURIPIDES. —The Fates permit that Admetus should escape impending death if he can furnish in his place another dead for the powers below; but he found no one, save his wife, who was willing to die for him, and she is now within the house breathing her last. —Ale., v. 12.

ARISTOTLE.—That which is asserted of the worthy man is true, that for the sake of his friends and his country he will even die, if requisite.—Eth., IX., 8.

VALERIUS MAXIMUS. —Dionysius the tyrant condemned Pythias to death for conspiring against him. Pythias begged leave to go for a short period to a neighboring place, in order to arrange some family affairs, and offered to leave one of his friends in the hands of Dionysius as a pledge for his return by an appointed time, and who would be willing, in case Pythias broke his word, to die in his stead. Dionysius, quite skeptical as to the existence of such a friendship, and prompted by strong curiosity, assented to the arrangement, and Damon took the place of Pythias. The day appointed for the return of the latter arrived, and public expectation was highly excited as to the probable issue of this singular affair. The day drew to a close, no Pythias came, and Damon was in the act of being led to execution, when, on a sudden, the absent friend, who had been detained by unforeseen and unavoidable obstacles, presented himself to the eyes of the admiring crowd, and saved the life of Damon. Dionysius was so much struck by this instance of true attachment, that he pardoned Pythias, and entreated the two to allow him to share their friendship.— Val. Max., 4, 7

Dead Unto Sin

Rom. 6:11, 12.—Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

PLATO.—As many as rightly apply themselves to philosophy aim at nothing else than to die and be dead.... The true philosopher is occupied not about the body, but separated from it as much as possible and occupied about his soul. —Phædo., C. 9.

CICERO. —The whole life of philosophers is a preparation for death.—Tusc lib. i., c. 31.

Servants of Sin

Rom. 6:16.—Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

XENOPHON. —Is it your opinion, said Socrates, that liberty is a fair and valuable possession? So valuable, replied Euthydemus, that I know of nothing more precious. But he who is so far overcome by sensual pleasure that he is not able to practice what is the best and consequently the most eligible, do you count this man free, Euthydemus? Far from it, replied the other. You think then, said Socrates, that freedom consists in being able to do what is right; and slavery, in not being able; whatever may be the cause that deprives us of the power? I do most certainly. The debauchee then you must suppose is in this state of slavery? I do, and with good reason. —Memorab., IV., 5.

SENECA. —Show me the man who is not a slave. One is a slave to lust: another to covetousness; another to ambition: and all to fear. I can show you a man of consular dignity a slave to an old woman; a very rich man a slave to his handmaid; and many a young nobleman the very bond-slave of a player. No slavery is more infamous than that which is voluntary.—Epistle, 47.

Prohibition Stirring up the Spirit of Transgression

Rom. 7:8.—But sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

REV. T. S. MILLINGTON.—The natural desire which prevails to do that which is forbidden has been noticed in all ages.—Test. of Heath., p. 560.

OVID.—Cease to irritate vices by forbidding them. We always strive after that which is forbidden, and desire those things which have been denied. —Amor., III., eleg. 4.

HORACE.—The human race, bold to endure all things, rushes on through crimes and everything that is forbidden.—Hor., lib. i., carm. 3.

Inward Conflict

Rom. 7:15.—For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that I do not: but what I hate, that do I.

EURIPIDES.—I know the ills I am about to dare, but my rage is master of my counsels, which is indeed the cause of the greatest calamities to men. —Med., V. 1074.

XENOPHON.—Araspes says to Cyrus: I have, plainly, two souls; for a single soul cannot be a good one and a bad one at the same time; nor can it, at the same time, affect both noble actions and vile ones. It cannot incline and be averse to the same things at the same time; but it is plain there are two souls, and when the good one prevails it does noble things; when the bad one prevails it attempts vile things.— Cyrop., VI., I.

EPICTETUS.—He is an able speaker who can discover to each man the contradiction by which he errs, and prove clearly to him that what he would, he doth not; and what he would not do, that he doth.—Epict., lib. ii., c. 26.

OVID.—I see the right, and I approve it too, Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.—Mett., VII., 20.

Rom. 7:21-23.—I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

PHILEMON.—Oh! how corrupt is the nature of man: else there had been no need of laws.—Apud Stob., II.

PROPERTIUS.—Nature in every breast implanted vice.—Lib. ii., eleg. 18, v. 17.

HORACE.—No man is born without vices.—Lib. i., Sat. 3, v. 68.

CICERO.—Whilst we are shut up in this prison of the body, we are fulfilling as it were the function and painful task of destiny: for the heaven-born soul has been degraded from its dwelling place above, and, as it were, buried in the earth, a situation uncongenial to its divine and immortal nature.— De Senec. C. 21.

SENECA.—No one learns virtue before he hath unlearned vice: in this respect we are all pre-engaged.—Epist., 50.

The Body of Death

Rom. 7:24.—O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

VIRGIL.—

The living and the dead, at his command

Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand;

Till choked with stench, in loath’d embraces tied,

The lingering wretches pined away and died.

—Æn., VIII., 485.

Carnal and Spiritual Mind

Rom. 8:6.—To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ARISTOTLE.—As much as possible we should immortalize ourselves, and do everything in order to live according to our most excellent part.—Eth., X., C. 7.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—The body is diseased, disturbed, corrupted; but if you place over it as a ruler a robust and healthy soul, it will pay no attention to the disease, and despise the evil.—Diss., 45.

The Glory to Be Revealed

Rom. 8:18.—For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

PLATO.—These are the gifts which a just man receives during life; but these things are as nothing, either in number or magnitude, when compared with the happiness which awaits good men, or the sufferings which are reserved for the wicked after death.—De Rep., X., 13.

Ignorance in Prayer

Rom. 8:26.—We know not what we should pray for as we ought.

PLATO.—Does it not seem to you that there is need of much forethought, in order that a person may not unconsciously pray for great evils for himself, while he thinks he is praying for good?—Alcid., II., I.

IDEM.—O Jupiter, give us good things, whether we pray for them or no; but withhold evil things from us, even though we pray for them.—Alcid., II, 5.

All Working for Good

Rom. 8:28.—And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.

PLATO.—To a good man, said Socrates, nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods; and what has befallen me is not the effect of chance: but this is clear to me, that now to die, and be freed from my cares, is better for me.—Socr. Apol., c. 33.

IDEM.—We are to think thus of the just man-that if he happen to be in poverty, or in disease, or in any other of those seeming evils, these things to him issue in something good, either whilst alive or dead.—De Rep., X., 12.

Olive Grafting

Rom. 11:17.—And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; boast not against the branches.

JAHN.—The Cotinus and the Oleaster are both called wild olive trees. They are nevertheless of different kinds. The fruit of the Cotinus is used for no other purpose than coloring; but the Oleaster is that species of wild olive whose branches are grafted into barren olive trees, that are in a state of cultivation, in order that their fruitfulness may be produced.—Bible Arehœology, sect. 71.

All One Body in Christ

Rom. 12:5.—So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

SENECA.—We are members of one great body: we are all akin by Nature, who hath formed us of the same elements, and placed us here together for the same end: she hath implanted in us mutual affection, and made us sociable; she hath commanded justice and equity: by her appointment it is more wretched to do an injury than to suffer one; and by her command the hand is ever ready to assist our brother.— Epist., 95.

Individual Talents

Rom. 12:6.—Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophecy according to the proportion of faith: or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth on teaching.

EPICTETUS.—First determine with yourself what you should be; and then do what you have to do. The particular end relates to the study and choice of each individual. A harpist is to act as a harpist; a carpenter as a carpenter; a philosopher as a philosopher; and an orator as an orator.—Epict., III., 23.

Giving With Simplicity

Rom. 12:8.—He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity.

MARTIAL.—I hate the crafty and mischievous arts of presents. Gifts are like fish-hooks; for who does not know that the greedy fish is deceived by the fly which he swallows? When the poor man abstains from making presents to his rich friend, Quintilianus, he shows a liberal spirit.—Mart., lib. v., epig. 18.

Honoring Others

Rom. 12:8.—In honor preferring one another.

MARTIAL.—Your regard to friendship is sincere, Your own applause than mine you hold less dear.—VIII., 18.

Industry

Rom. 12:8.—Not slothful in business.

XENOPHON.—The wise governors of the universe have decreed that nothing great, nothing excellent, shall be obtained without care and labor. They give no real good, no true happiness, on other terms. If then you wish for the fruits of the earth, cultivate it: if for the increase of your flocks and herds, let your flocks and herds have your attention and care.—Socr. Mem., II., I.

Mutual Sympathy

Rom. 12:15.—Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

XENOPHON.—It is a matter of great difficulty always to serve those whom one has a desire to serve; but for this very reason we ought to rejoice with them when any good fortune happens to them, and to grieve with them under any adversity, to appear zealous Co assist them in their distresses, and afraid lest any should miscarry in anything, and to endeavor to prevent this by care and circumspection.— Cyrop., I., 6.

CICERO.—We rejoice in the joy of our friends as much as we do in our own, and are equally grieved at their sorrow.—De Fin., I., 20.

SENECA.—Rejoice at the success of every one, and be grieved at their misfortunes.—Epist., 103.

Humility

Rom. 12:16.—Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.

POLYBIUS.—I exhort thee not to be high-minded.—Polyb., lib. xv.

EPICTETUS.—Let no one ever hear you utter a word about your talents; nor suffer it if any one commends you for them; but think that you are nobody, and that you know nothing.—Epict., II., 1.

Revenge Forbidden

Rom. 12:17.—Recompense to no man evil for evil.

PLUTARCH.—Lycurgus having an eye struck out by Alexander, Without giving way to passion or resentment, stopped and showed the people, who were persecuting him, the injury he had suffered. They were struck with shame and sorrow, and delivered up Alexander to him for punishment: but Lycurgus took him to his house, and treated him with kindness, showing him no ill-treatment, either by word or action, and Alexander, won by the mildness and goodness of his heart, confessed to his friends that Lycurgus was not that proud and severe man he had been taken for, but above all others gentle and engaging in his behavior.—Lycurg., c. I I.

Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

SENECA.—How happy are you in giving no room to anyone to say a false thing of you.—Epist., 46.

Rom. 12:19.—Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath.

PLUTARCH.—One of Pythagoras' maxims was, Do not stir the fire with a sword, but rather give place to him who is enraged.—De Lib. Educ., c. 17.

POLYBIUS.—To overcome enemies by kindness and just treatment, affords not a less, but a greater benefit than overpowering them by force of arms.—Polyb., lib. v.

M. ANTONY.—The best way of avenging an injury is not to do the like. M. Ant., lib. vi., c. 6.

Rom. 12:21.—Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

ISOCRATES.—Be not overcome by infamous passions, avarice, anger, voluptuousness, melancholy, despair. You will overcome covetousness if you think equity and justice the noblest treasures. You will overcome anger if you dispose yourself to be such towards those who commit faults as you would desire others to be towards you in like case.—Ad Demon.

Rulers Appointed of God

Rom. 13:4.—For he is the minister of God to thee.

PLUTARCH. —When the crown was offered to Numa, his father and his friend Marcius urged him to accept it: Consider, said they, that a king is the minister of God. —Num., c. 6.

Rom. 13:7.—Render therefore to all their dues.

ARISTOTLE.—To our relations, and tribesmen, and fellow-citizens, and everyone else, we should always endeavor to give what belongs to them, and to compare the claims of each with respect to relationship, or virtue, or acquaintance.—Eth., IX., 2.

Time to Awake

Rom. 13:11.—It is high time to awake out of sleep.

SENECA.—Let us awake therefore, that we may be sensible of our errors and correct them.— Epist., 53.

None Liveth to Himself

Rom. 14:7.—None of us liveth to himself.

SENECA.—No one can live happily who lives to himself alone, and considers nothing but his own advantage: you must live for others if you would "live honorably for yourself.—Epist., 48.

God the Judge of All

Rom. 14:10.—But why dolt thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at naught thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

EPICTETUS.—Do not give judgment from another tribunal, till you have been judged yourself at the tribunal of justice.—Fragm., 55.

STATIUS.—

With urn in hand the Cretan Judge appears,

And lives and crimes with his assessor's hears:

The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal,

Loth to confess, unable to conceal.

—Theb., lib. iv., v. 530.

Approving Conscience

Rom. 14:22.—Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.

CICERO.—Those are wise monitors who teach us to do nothing of which we are doubtful whether it is honest or just; for whatever is honest manifests itself by its own luster, but doubt implies the entertainment of injustice.—De Off., lib. i., c. 9.

God Only Wise

Rom. 16:27.—To God only wise be glory through Jesus Christ forever.

HERODOTUS.—Perfect wisdom is the prerogative of Heaven alone.—Polymnia, c. 10.

First Corinthians

'BISHOP CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D.—This Epistle was written in the year 57 or 58. Of its genuineness and authenticity no doubt has ever been entertained. The external evidences are extremely distinct. See Clem. Rom. ad Cor., c. 47, 49: Polyc. ad Phil., c. I I: Ignat. ad Eph., c. 2: Irenmus Hær., III., I I., Athenag. de Resurr., c. 18: Clem. Alex. Pædag., I., 33: Tertull. de Præscr., c. 33.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 494.

The Church at Corinth

1 Cor. 1:2.—Unto the church of God which is at Corinth.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—This church was planted by the Apostle himself, about A. D. 52. —Note, In loco.

See under Acts 13:1.

The Preaching of Christ

Cor. 1:23.—We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.

TRYPHO, the Jew.—We cannot wonder enough that you should expect any good from God, who place all your hope on a man who was crucified.—Dialog of Justin Martyr and Trypho.

ST. AUGUSTIN.—The wise men of the world insult over us, and ask, Where is your understanding, who worship for a God a man who was crucified?—Quot. in Pict. Bible.

LUCIAN.—These people have been taught to renounce the Grecian deities, and to bow the knee to their crucified sophist, and to live in conformity to his laws.—De Mort. Pereg., c. 13.

Base and Despised Instruments

1 Cor. 1:28.— And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are.

EURIPIDES.—I see the work of the gods, how they exalt, tower-like, some things that were naught, but destroy others that are in repute.—Troad., v. 608.

Hidden Wisdom

1 Cor. 2:6.—Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught.

SENECA.—As in sacred things none know the mysterious parts but such as have been initiated; so in philosophy, her mysteries are unfolded to none but such as have been admitted into her sanctuary.— Epist., 95.

Saved As by Fire

1 Cor. 3:15.—If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

CICERO.—This man, scorched indeed though he was by the fire made by our allies, yet escaped from those flames and that danger.—In Verr., II., c. 27.

LIVY.—In my former consulate I escaped the flames of popular rage, not without being scorched.—Liv., XXII., c. 40.

The Christian a Temple of God

1 Cor. 3:16.—Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

EPICTETUS.—You carry a God about with you, and are unconscious of it. Do you suppose I mean some god of gold or silver? It is within yourself you carry him, and profane him, without being sensible of it, by impure thoughts and unclean actions.—Epic., II., 8.

All Things Yours

1 Cor. 3:21.—All things are yours.

CICERO.—Everything will be properly said to belong to that man who alone knows how to make use of everything.—De Fin., III., 22.

Judgment of Men

1 Cor. 4:3.—With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.

SENECA.—Regard not the opinion of men: it is at best doubtful, and generally partial.—Epist., 26.

God the Bestower of All Gifts

1 Cor. 4:7.—For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?

PINDAR.—

For by the ruling powers of heaven

All virtues are to mortals given.

Wisdom is theirs-from them are sprung

:The active hand, the fluent tongue.

—Pyth., I., 80.

CICERO.—Curius and Fabricius had never been such men as they were, but for the divine assistance.—De Nat. Dear., IL, 66.

The Apostles Made a Spectacle

1 Cor. 4:9.—For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to, death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Here, Paul may mean to refer to the custom of bringing forth those in the amphitheater at the conclusion of the spectacles who were to fight with other men, and who had no chance of escape. These inhuman games abounded everywhere; and an allusion to them would be well understood, and is indeed often made by Paul. This interpretation receives support from the words which are used here, "God hath exhibited," "spectacle," or theater, which are all applicable to such an exhibition. The theater, or amphitheater of the ancients was composed of an arena, or level floor, on which the combatants fought, and which was surrounded by circular seats, rising above one another to a great height, and capable of containing many thousand spectators.—Note, In loco.

SENECA.—In the morning men are exposed to lions and bears; but at midday to their spectators. Those that kill are exposed to one another; the victor is detained for another slaughter; and the conclusion of the fight is death.—De Predic., c. 14.

SUETONIUS.—Caligula, after disfiguring many persons of honorable rank, by branding them in the face, condemned them to fight with wild beasts.—Calig., c. 27.

Unheard-of Crime

1 Cor. 5:1.—It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.

CICERO.—This was an incredible and unheard-of crime.—Pro Chien., 5, 6.

Suffering Wrong

1 Cor. 6:7.—Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?

PLATO.—To injure in any respect me and mine, is both more disgraceful and worse for him who does the injury than for me who am injured.—Gorg., c. 64.

Things Expedient

1 Cor. 6:12.—All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient.

CICERO.—There are things which are not expedient, even if they are lawful. But whatever is not lawful is most certainly not expedient.—Pro Bath., c. 3.

Fornication

1 Cor. 6:18.—Flee fornication.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —The frequent cautions against lewdness, which the apostle gives to the Corinthian converts, are explained and illustrated by the character of Corinth—notorious, even among the heathen, for the dissolute conduct of its inhabitants, and for their abandonment to every kind of sensuality and voluptuous indulgence. The heathen world in general regarded the indulgence of the sensual appetites as a matter in itself indifferent; but even heathen Morality was shocked at the proverbial excesses of Corinth. Indeed, what could be expected of the state of society in a town which possessed a temple to Venus, in which a thousand women were kept in honor of the goddess, and ministered to the gratification of her adorers? Such abandoned worship was not only in itself sufficient to corrupt a city, but secured to it the further corruption which it derived from the continual arrival of dissolute strangers, who came from all parts to visit this unholy temple. Considering, therefore, the loose principles in which the native converts had been brought up, the temptations by which they were surrounded, and the vague ideas concerning Christian liberty which they entertained, we can easily understand the deep anxiety which St. Paul experienced, and his frequent and earnest representations on this subject.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

Uncircumcision

1 Cor. 7:18.— Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised.

CELSUS.—The process of restoring a circumcised person to his natural condition by a surgical operation was sometimes undergone.—De Re Medica, VII., 25.

AUTHOR OF MACCABEES.—In those days went there out of Israel wicked men, who persuaded many, saying, Let us go and make a covenant with the heather that are round about us.... And they built a place of exercise at Jerusalem according to the customs of the heathen: and made themselves uncircumcised; and forsook the holy covenant, and joined themselves to the heathen.-t Mac.

Right Use of the World

1 Cor. 7:31.—Use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.

SENECA.—The world IS forever changing, and remains not the same for t moment; for though it may have all things in it that it ever had, it possesseth them not in the same manner; the whole order is continually changed.—Epist. 58.

Idols and Their Temples

1 Cor. 8:4.—We know that an idol is nothing in the world.

CICERO.—The atoms, the vacuum, the appearances, which they call " eidola,” idols.—De Fin., I., 6.

1 Cor. 8:5.—For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth (as then be gods many, and lords many).

CICERO.—Why are we to add many more gods? What a multitude of them there is!— De Nat. Deor., III., 16.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—We are informed by Hesiod, Varro, and other ancient authors, that no less than thirty thousand subordinate divinities were comprised within that system of idolatry which prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, They had both celestial and terrestrial deities. They assigned peculiar gods to the fountains, the rivers, the hills, the mountains, the lawns, the groves, the sea, and even to hell itself. To cities, fields, houses, edifices, families, gates, nuptial chambers, marriages, births, deaths, sepulchers, trees and gardens, they also appropriated distinct and peculiar deities.— Philos. of Religion, Chapter 3

1 Cor. 8:10.—For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience, etc.

REV. T. S. MILLINGTON.—The feasts which took place among the heathen on the occasion of the sacrifices offered to their gods were often held in their temples.—Testim. of Heath., p. 572.

HERODOTUS— Standing before the shrine the mother of Cleobis and Biton implored the divinity to grant her sons the greatest blessing man could receive. After they had sacrificed and feasted in the temple they retired to rest: but they rose no more.—Clio, c. 31.

The Instructor's Work

1 Cor. 9:1.—Are not ye my work in the Lord?

ARISTOTLE.—Benefactors love, and are fond of those whom they have benefited; for he who is benefited is the work of his benefactor.—Eth., IX., 7.

SENECA.—I claim you to myself; you are my work; when first saw your good disposition, I laid my hand upon you.—Epist., 34

Muzzling the Ox

1 Cor. 9:9 It is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.

DR. W. M. THOMSON.—The command of Moses not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn is literally obeyed to this day by most farmers, and you often see the oxen that draw the mowrej eating from the floor as they revolve. There are niggardly peasants, however, who do muzzle the ox, enough to show the need of the command, and Paul intimates that there were just such in the church in his day.— The Land and the Book, II., 316.

The Race

1 Cor. 9:24.—Know ye not that they which run in a race ran all but one receiveth the prize?

REV. T. S. MILLINGTON.—Paul draws a lesson from' the self-denials practiced by the competitors in the Isthmian games. “Know ye not?" he begins: this was an appropriate form of address to those to whom the practices which he describes were familiar, as they were to all the Corinthians, among whom the Isthmian games were celebrated. Plato has the same simile, and the same application of it. See De Rep., x., 12.—Testim. of Heathen, p. 572.

REV. ALBERT BARNES. —"All run "—who entered the lists; “but one "—the victor alone, " received the prize."—Note, In loco.

So run that ye may obtain.

ANACHARSIS. —The prize was conferred on the successful champions on the last day of the games, and with great solemnity, pomp, congratulation and rejoicing. Every one thronged to see and congratulate them; their relations, friends and countrymen, shedding tears of tenderness and joy, lifted them on their shoulders to show them to the crowd, and held them up to the applauses of the whole assembly, who strewed handfuls of flowers over them.—Anachar., III., 448.

Striving for the Mastery

1 Cor. 9:25.—And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. EPICTETUS. Would you be a victor in the Olympic games? So, in good truth, would I; for it is a glorious thing. But pray consider what must go before, and what must follow, and so proceed in the attempt. You must then live by rule, eat what will be disagreeable, and refrain from delicacies: you must oblige yourself to constant exercise, at the appointed hour, in heat and cold; you must abstain from wine and cold liquors: in a word, you must be as submissive to all the directions of your master as to those of a physician.—Euchirid., c. 35.

HORACE. —

A youth who hopes the Olympic prize to gain,

All arts must try, and every toil sustain;

The extremes of heat and cold must often prove,

And shun the weakening joys of wine and love.

—De Ark. Poet., v. 412.

Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown.

PLUTARCH. —Branches of the Pine Tree formed the ancient coronets of the Isthmian games; the crown of Parsley was then introduced from Numea; but afterward the Pine Garland flourished again and recovered its ancient reputation.—Sympos., lib. v., qu. 3.

ARISTOPHANES. —At the Olympic games, the victorious athletes were crowned with a chaplet of Wild Olive.—Plut., v. 586.

PLINY. —It is with the Laurel that the victors at Delphi are crowned, and warriors who enjoy the honors of a triumph at Rome.—Hist. Nat., XV., 30.

Beating the Air

1 Cor. 9:26.—So fight I, not as one that beateth the air.

LUCIAN. —If an athlete, in order to put himself in breath, ere he begins the contest, should fight with an imaginary antagonist, and deal out lusty fisticuffs and kicks in the air, as if he were giving them to his opponent, will the umpire immediately by the public crier proclaim him invincible?—Hermot., c. 33.

VIRGIL.—

Thus, glorying in his strength, in open view

His arms around the towering Dares threw;

Stalk'd high, and laid his brawny shoulders bare

And dealt his whistling blows in empty air.

—Æn., V. 375.

Keeping Under the Body

1 Cor. 9:27.—I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.

PYTHAGORAS. —Accustom yourself to command the belly, sleep, lust and anger.—Aur. Car., v. 9.

SENECA.—Maintain this sound and salutary way of living; so far only to indulge the body, as to preserve it in good health. Despise those superfluities which needless labor acquires by way of ornament or credit. Think there is nothing admirable in thee but the soul.—Epist., 8.

QUINTILIAN. —Without moderation nothing can be either glorious or salutary. —Quint., XII., 10.

Temptation and a Way to Escape

1 Cor. 10:13.—God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

EPICTETUS.—Hast thou overcome thy lust, thine intemperance, thine anger? How much greater cause hast thou then for offering sacrifice, than if thou hadst obtained a consulship or a prætorship! for these things come only from thyself and from the gods.—Epict., IV., 4.

Cup of Devils

1 Cor. 10:21.—Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's Table, and of the table of devils.

JOHN MURRAY, F. S. A.—The worship of demons originated in the worship of the " serpent," the personification of the devil. Paul's allusion to the " cup of devils " is easily understood, from the cup of libation we see in bas reliefs, on bronzes, and on coins, as presented to serpents. The serpent is celebrated in the Orphic Hymns; and a serpent was the guardian of the Acropolis of Athens.—Revel. Dem., 200.

Do All to the Glory of God

1 Cor. 10:31.—Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

EPICTETUS. —How may a man eat acceptably to the gods? If he eat with justice, and with gratitude, and fairly, and temperately, and decently, will not this be to eat acceptably to the gods?—Epict., I., 13.

Covering and Uncovering the Head

1 Cor. 11:4, 5.—Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoreth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dishonoreth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

PLUTARCH.—It was the custom for women to come into the public assembly covered, and for men uncovered.—Prob. Rom., c. 14.

Long and Short Hair

1 Cor. 11:14, 13.—If a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him. But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her.

PHOCYLIDES. —To men long hair is unbecoming; but to women it is graceful. —Phocyl., v. 200.

Many Members, but One Body

1 Cor. 12:20-22.—But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS. —If the Phrygian fabulist should devise a fable to this effect; that the foot, being indignant with the rest of the body, should declare that it was. incapable through weariness, of bearing any longer, in an upright position, so great a burden, and that in future it should continue in rest and quietness; or, if the teeth, enraged at having prepared nourishment for so great a quantity of flesh, should refuse to perform their duty; if these things should take place, what else would ensue in the fable than the destruction of the man? The like takes place in the political community.—Max. Tyr., Diss. 5.

MENENIUS AGRIPPA delivered a similar apologue; see—Livy, Hist., II., 32.

Charity

1 Cor. 13:1.—Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

DR. BLOOMFIELD.—It would be difficult to find a finer passage than this in the writings of Demosthenes himself.—Note, In loco.

1 Cor. 13:4.—Charity suffereth long and is kind.

PYTHAGORAS. —Do not hate your friend on account of a trifling offense.—Aur. Carm., v. 6.

1 Cor. 13:6.—Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.

ARISTOTLE.—He who is delighted with a falsehood, resembles a depraved man.—Eth., IV., 7.

IDEM.—The worthy man, so far as he is worthy, rejoices in these actions which are conformable to virtue; but is indignant with those which proceed from vice: just as a musician is delighted with beautiful melodies, but is pained with those that are bad.—Eth., IX., 9.

1 Cor. 13:7.—Beareth all things.

THEOGNIS.—It is the part of a good man to bear all things.—Theogn., v. 658.

Childhood and Manhood

1 Cor. 13:11.—When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

SENECA.—Number your years, Seneca, and you will be ashamed to desire and seek after those things in which you delighted when a child.—Epist. 27.

Superior Knowledge in the Future State

1 Cor. 13:12.—For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.

XENOPHON.—I see that the soul communicates vigor and motion to mortal bodies during its continuance in them. Neither can I be persuaded that the soul is divested of intelligence in its separation from this gross senseless body; but it is probable that when the soul is separated it becomes pure and entire, and is then more intelligent.—Cyrop., VIII., 7.

PLATO.—Being pure and free from the folly of the body, we shall in all likelihood be with others like ourselves, and shall of ourselves know the real essence, and that probably is truth: for it is not allowable for the impure to attain to the pure.—Phœd., c.

PLUTARCH.—The souls of men, so long as they are here below, and encompassed with bodies and passions, can have no participation of God, except so much as they may attain to as in a dark dream by the aid of philosophy; but when they shall be set free, and pass into the place which is invisible, immaterial, pure, and impassionable, then the same God is their leader and king, they cleave unto him as much as they can, they contemplate him without satiety, and desire that beauty which it is not possible to utter or express.—De Isid. et Osirid., c. 79.

CICERO. —We shall certainly discover things in a more clear and perfect degree when the soul is disengaged from the body, and has arrived at that goal to which nature leads her. When we shall be nothing but soul, then nothing will interfere to prevent our seeing everything in its own true character.—Tusc., I., 20.

SENECA.—You will then say you lived in darkness before, when you shall behold the full glories of that light, which. now you see but dimly through the narrow circles of the eyes. And yet at so great a distance the mind is filled with admiration! How will it then amaze you when, I say, you shall behold that divine light in its full spread of glory in heaven.—Epist., 102.

Dying Daily

1 Cor. 15:31.—I die daily.

SENECA.—Where will you find a man who sets any value upon time, or seems to understand that he dies daily?—Epist., I.

IDEAL—We must die soon, nay, we die every day; for we daily draw near our end.—Epist, 120.

Fighting With Beasts

1 Cor. 15:32.—If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?

LUCIAN. —We took our seats among the rest of the spectators, and saw first some wild beasts, which, for the purpose of making them more fierce, had been pierced with darts and then baited by dogs, let loose upon some wretches in chains, who, I suppose, had committed atrocious crimes. After this the gladiators entered, etc. Toxar., c. 59

JOSEPHUS.—Herod revolted from the laws of his country, and corrupted their ancient constitution by the introduction of foreign practices. In the first place, he appointed solemn games to be celebrated every fifth year, in honor of Caesar, and built a theater at Jerusalem, as also a very great amphitheater in the plain. He had also made a great preparation of wild beasts, and of lions themselves in great abundance, and of such other beasts as were of either uncommon strength, or of such sort as were rarely seen. These were prepared either to fight with one another, or that men who were condemned to death were to fight with them.—Aniq., 15, 8, 1.

IDEM.—While Titus was at Caesarea, he solemnized the birthday of Domitian after a splendid manner, and inflicted a great deal of the punishment intended for the Jews in honor of him; for the number of those that were now slain in fighting with beasts, and were burnt, and fought with one another, exceeded two thousand five hundred.—Jewish Wars, 7, 3, I.

A False Maxim

1 Cor. 15:32.—Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.

PERSEUS.—

O rather cultivate the joy of sense,

And crop the sweets which youth and health dispense;

Give the light hours to banquets, love, and wine:

These are the zests of life, and these are mine!

Dust and a shade are all you soon must be:

Live then, while yet you may.

—Sat., V., v. 151.

Evil Communications

1 Cor. 15:33.—Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.

XENOPHON.—AS converse with the good must exercise and improve every virtue, so to associate with the bad must prove no less pernicious and baneful. —Memorab., I. 2.

PLAUTUS.—Hold no converse with profligate men.—Trinum., II., 2.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—With these evil communications he corrupted the morals of men. — Diod. Sic., XVI., 54.

Stars Differ in Glory

1 Cor. 15:41.—One star differeth from another star in glory.

SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL.—Astronomers are in the habit of distinguishing the stars into classes, according to their apparent brightness. These are termed magnitudes. The brightest stars are said to be of the first magnitude; those which fall so far short of the first degree of brightness as to make a strongly marked distinction are classed in the second; and so on down to the sixth or seventh, which comprise the smallest stars visible to the naked eye, in the clearest and darkest night. Beyond these, however, telescopes continue the range of visibility, and magnitudes from the eighth down to the sixteenth are familiar to those who are in the practice of using powerful instruments; nor does there seem the least reason to assign a limit to this progression.—Outlines of Astronomy, Art. 778.

Resurrection Body

1 Cor. 15:49.—And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

J. P. COOKE, Prof. of Chemistry in Harvard, University.—The materials of our bodies are being constantly renewed, and the great mass of their structure changes in less than a year. At every motion of your arm, and at every breath you draw, a portion of the muscles concerned is actually burnt up in the effort. During life, in some utterly mysterious manner, beyond the range of all human science, the various gases and vapors of the atmosphere, together with a small amount of a few earthy salts, are elaborated into various organized structures they first pass into the organism of the plant, and thence are transferred into the body of the animal; but no sooner are they firmly built into the animal tissues than a destructive change begins, by which before long they are restored to the air or the soil, only to renew the same cycle of ceaseless change. Life, during its whole existence, is an untiring builder; the oxygen of the atmosphere a fell destroyer; and when at last the builders cease, then the spirit takes its heavenward flight, and leaves the frail tenement to its appointed end. Dust returns to the dust, and these mortal mists and vapors to the air.

I know that there are some who entertain a vague fear that these well-established facts of chemistry conflict with one of the most cherished doctrines of the Christian faith; but so far from this, I find that they elucidate and confirm it. Modern scientific discoveries have shown that our only abiding substance is merely the passing shadow of our outward form, that these bones and muscles are dying within us every day, that our whole life is an unceasing metempsychosis, and that the final death is but one phase of the perpetual change. Thus the idea of a spiritual body becomes not only a possible conception, but, more than this, it harmonizes with the whole order of nature; and now that we can better trace the process of growth in the organic world, and understand more of their hidden secrets, the inspired words of Paul have acquired fresh power, and convey to us a deeper meaning than they ever gave to the early Fathers of the Church. Chemistry has shown us that it is the form alone (not the substance) of our mortal bodies which is permanent, and that we retain our PERSONALITY under constant change; and lastly, in organic nature, the sprouting of the seed, the breaking of the bird from the egg, the bursting of the butterfly from the chrysalis, and ten thousand other transmutations not less wonderful, which we are daily witnessing around us, all unite their analogy to elucidate and confirm the glorious and comforting doctrine of a material resurrection in form. —Religion and Chemistry, p. 103-106.

SENECA.—A day will come after death, which shall raise us again to light.— Epist., 36.

1 Cor. 15:53.—And this mortal must put on immortality.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—This very thing, which the multitude call death, is the, beginning of immortality, and the birth of a future life; bodies being corrupted by the very law and time of their existence, but the soul being recalled to her proper place and life. —Diss., 25.

R. BECHAI.—When the godly shall arise, their bodies shall be pure and innocent; obedient to the instinct of the soul: there shall be no adversary, nor any evil disease.—Fol., 14.

R. PINCHAS.—The holy blessed God shall make the bodies of the righteous as beautiful as the body of Adam was when he entered into Paradise.

R. LEVI.—When the soul is in heaven, it is clothed with celestial light; when it returns to the body, it shall have the same light; and then the body shall shine like the splendor of the firmament of heaven. Then shall men gain the knowledge of what is perfect.—Sohar. Gen., fol. 69.

Second Corinthians

Genuineness and Authenticity of the Epistle

2 Cor. 1:1.—Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia.

BISHOP CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D.—The Second Epistle to the Corinthians was written a few months after the First, in the same year, viz.: 58. The genuineness and authenticity of this Epistle are supported by the most decided external testimony. See Irenæ. Hær., III., 7; Athenagoras de Resurr., c. 18; Clem. Alex. Strom., III., 94; Tertull. de Pudicit., c. 13.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 496.

For an account of Corinth, see Acts 18:1.

CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Achaia was a province of Greece, and comprehended that part of the country lying between Thessaly and the southern part of the Peloponnesus. Classical Dictionary.

BISHOP CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D.—This epistle was written a few months subsequently to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, or in the autumn of A. D. 58.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 496.

Savor of Life and of Death

2 Cor. 14-16.—Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: to the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life.

ELSNER.—The apostle appears in these words to refer to the sacrifices and to the odors arising from the incense and flowers, which accompanied the triumphs of the Greeks and Romans; these might well be called "the savor of death " to those captives who, after forming part of the procession, were led away to execution, and a "savor of life" to those more fortunate ones who at the close were pardoned and set at liberty.—Note, In loco.

PLUTARCH.—At the triumph of Æmilius the temples were set open and adorned with garlands, and the streets were filled with the smoke of incense.— Æmil c. 32.

CICERO.—Those who have triumphs, and who on that account keep the generals of the enemy alive a longer time, in order that, while they are led in triumph, the Roman people may enjoy a noble spectacle and behold the fruits of victory; nevertheless, when they begin to turn their chariot from the Forum towards the Capitol, order them to be taken back to prison, and the same day brings to the conquerors the end of their authority, and to the conquered the end of their lives.—In Verr., VI., c. 30.

EPICTETUS.—Are all hearers benefited by what they hear? or will you find some benefited and some injured? Both. Then those who hear prudently are benefited, and those who hear unskillfully are hurt? It is so.—Epict., lib. ii., c. 24.

The Earthly and the Heavenly House

2 Cor. 5:1.—For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

ADDISON.—

Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,

This longing after immortality?

Or, whence this secret dread and inward horror

Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul

Back on herself, and startles at destruction?

'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us:

'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,

And intimates eternity to man.

The soul, secured in her existence, smiles

At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years:

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

Unhurt, amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

This Tabernacle

2 Cor. 5:4.—For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

SENECA.—Nature hath enchained me with this heavy load of flesh. Must I die? Then I shall be no more sick or bound; I shall feel the stroke of death no more.—Epist., 24.

CICERO.—When we are emancipated from the binds of the body, then indeed we shall begin to live; for this present life is really death.—Tusc., I., 31.

PLUTARCH.—My soul seemeth to vaticinate and presage its approaching dismission from its prison.—Sympos., II., 27.

Straitened

2 Cor. 6:12.—Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.

EPICTETUS.—We squeeze ourselves, we straiten ourselves; that is, our own principles straiten us.—Epic., I., 25.

Christ and Belial

2 Cor. 6:15.—What concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

QUINTILIAN.—Virtue can have no fellowship with wickedness in the same breast.—Quint., XII., 1.

Christian Liberality

2 Cor. 8:3.—To their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves.

LUCIAN.—Whenever any cunning impostor applies to them (the Christians), who understands the proper trick, he finds it an easy matter to lead these simple people by the nose, and very soon to become a rich man at their expenses—De Mort. Pereg., c. 73.

2 Cor. 8:12.—For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.

PLINY.—The gods are not dissatisfied when they are worshipped by everyone to the best of his ability.—Hist. Nat., lib. i., dedicat.

See Mark 12:43.

2 Cor. 9:7.—Every man according as he purposeth in his heart so let him give; not grudgingly or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.

ARISTOTLE.—The liberal man gives freely and without grudging, and from the pure love of what is beautiful and virtuous. He will give and spend on things on which he ought, and as much as he ought; and will act thus willingly aid with pleasure.—Eth., IV., 1.

The Perils of Paul

2 Cor. 11:26.—In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Perils of rivers and perils of robbers—these words express the very dangers which St. Paul would be most likely to encounter on his journey from Perga in Pamphylia to Antioch in Pisidia. The lawless and marauding habits of the population of those mountains which separate the table-land in the interior of Asia Minor from the plains on the south coast, were notorious in all parts of ancient history. Strabo uses the same strong language both of the Isaurians and of their neighbors the Pisidians, whose native fortresses were the barrier between Phrygia and Pamphylia. We have the same character of the latter of these robber tribes in Xenophon, who is the first to mention them.—" Perils of rivers,"—the rivers of Asia Minor, like all the rivers of the Levant, are liable to violent and sudden changes. And no district in Asia Minor is more singularly characterized by its "water-floods "than the mountainous tract of Pisidia, where rivers burst out at the bases of huge cliffs, or dash down wildly through narrow ravines. And it is an interesting fact, that Paul's name is still traditionally connected with one of them, as we learn from the information recently given to an English traveler by the Archbishop of Pisidia.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 162-164.

Caught up Into Paradise

2 Cor. 12:2-4.— I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth)... how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

LUCIAN.—I chanced to meet a certain bald-headed, long-nosed Galilean, who had mounted into the third heaven and had learned most excellent things. He renovated me by water, delivered me from the realms of ungodliness, and led me into the path of the blessed.—Philop., C. 1 2.

Prevalent Licentiousness

2 Cor. 12:21.—And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the Uncleanness and fornication, and lasciviousness which they have committed.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—We have before mentioned the peculiar licentiousness of manners which prevailed at Corinth. So notorious was this, that it had actually passed into the vocabulary of the Greek tongues and the very word "to Corinthianize," meant "to play the wanton;" nay, the bad reputation of the city had become proverbial, even in foreign languages, and is immortalized by the Latin poets. Such being the habits in which many of the Corinthian converts had been educated, we cannot wonder if it proved most difficult to root out immorality from the rising church. The offenders against Christian chastity were exceedingly numerous at this period.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, II., 27.'

Self-Examination

2 Cor. 13:5.—Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.

SENECA.—Examine well yourself: make different scrutinies and observations; but more especially consider this, whether you have made progress in philosophy, or in life itself-in knowledge or in practice.—Epist., 16.

Nothing Against the Truth

2 Cor. 13:8.—We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.

ARISTOTLE.—It may, perhaps, seem better, and even necessary for the sake of the truth, to oppose the opinions even of our friends; for both being dear to us it is right to give the preference to truth.— Eth., I., 6.

EPICTETUS.—I cannot, when I see one thing to be the principal and most excellent, declare another thing to be so, in order to gain favor.—Epict., II, 23.

Galatians

Genuineness and Authenticity of the Epistle

Gal. 1:2. —Unto the churches of Galatia.

BISHOP CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D.—The Epistle to the Galatians was written in A. D. 57 or 58. With regard to its genuineness and authenticity, no writer of any credit or respectability has expressed any doubts. The testimony of the early church is most decided and unanimous. Beside references to the Epistle, we have direct citations found as early as the time of the Apostolic Fathers. See Polyc. ad Phil., c. 3.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 856.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The Roman province of Galatia may be roughly described as the central region of the peninsula of Asia Minor, with the provinces of Asia on the west, Cappadocia on the east, Pamphylia and Cilicia on the south, and Bithynia and Pontus on the north. It would be difficult to define the exact limits. In fact they were frequently changing.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 854.

IDEM.—The " Galatia" of the New Testament was really the " Gaul" of the East. The Epistle to the Galatians would more literally and more correctly be called the " Epistle to the Gauls." When Livy, in his account of the Roman campaigns in Galatia, speaks of its inhabitants, he always calls them " Gauls." When the Greek historians speak of the inhabitants of ancient France, the Nord they use is "Galatians." The two terms are merely the Greek and Latin forms of the same appellation.—Life and Epistles of St. Paul, I., 244.

Galatian Character

Gal. 1:6.—I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The Christians of Galatia were they who received the Apostle " as if he had been an angel "—who " if it had been possible, would have plucked out their eyes and given them to him"—and then were " so soon removed " by new teachers " from him that canal them, to another gospel,"—who began to " run well," and then were "t hindered,"—who were " bewitched" by that zeal which compasseth sea and land to make one "proselyte,"—arid who were as ready, in the fervor of their party spirit, to " bite and devour one another," as they were willing to change their teachers and their gospels. It is, no mere fancy which discovers, in these expressions of St. Paul's Epistle, indications of the character of that remarkable race of mankind (the Gauls or French) which all writers, from Caesar to Thierry, have described as susceptible of quick impressions and sudden changes, with a fickleness equal to their courage and enthusiasm, and a constant liability to that disunion, which is the fruit of excessive vanity.—Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 243.

PROF. LIGHTFOOT.—The main features of the Gaulish or Galatian character are traced with great distinctness by the Roman writers. Quickness of apprehension, promptitude in action, great impressibility, and eager craving after knowledge, this is the brighter aspect of the Celtic character. Inconstant and quarrelsome, treacherous in their dealings, incapable of sustained effort, easily disheartened by failure, such they appear when viewed on their darker side. "Fickleness" is the term used to express their temperament. This instability of character was the great difficulty against which Caesar had to contend in his dealings with the Gauls. He complains that they all with scarcely an exception are impelled by the desire of change. Nor did they show more constancy in the discharge of their religious than of their social obligations. The hearty zeal with which they embraced the Apostle's teaching, followed by their rapid apostacy, is only an instance out of many of the reckless facility with which they adopted and discarded one religious system after another.—On Galatians, p. 1-17.

Plucking Out the Eyes for Another

Gal. 4:15.—I bear you record, that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.

LUCIAN.—Dandamis, wishing to ransom his friend Amizoces, and having been already despoiled of all his goods, the Sarmates promised to release his friend if he would redeem him with his eyes. Dandamis instantly offered his eyes to be, plucked out. Which being done, and the Sarmates having thus received their ransom, he took Amizoces by the arm, went away leaning on him, and thus both together swam across the river to their camp. Amizoces, who could not bear to see the brave Dandamis wandering about without his eyes, afterward put out his own.—Toxar., c. 39.

Flesh and Spirit

Gal. 5:17.—For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that y would.

SENECA.—What is it, Lucilius, that when we intend to go one way, still drives us another? What is it that thwarts our spirit?—Epistola, 52.

PLUTARCH.—The soul consists of two parts, the one being addicted to the truth, and loving honesty and reason,—the other brutish, deceitful, and sensuous. —De adul. et am., c. 20.

See Rom. 7:15.

Restoring the Fallen

Gal. 6:1.—Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

VIRGIL.—This is a common evil; at one time or other we have all done wrong.

Either we are, or have been, or may be, as bad as he whom we condemn.— Ec de hon. amor.

Bearing One Another's Burden

Gal. 6:2 and 6.—Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth, in all good things.

LUCIAN.—When Perigrinus was in prison, several came from different cities in Asia, as deputies from the Christians in those parts, to offer their assistance, to be his advocates on his trial, and to comfort him. For these people, in all such cases where the interest of the whole community is concerned, are inconceivably alert and active, sparing neither trouble nor expense.—De Mort. Pereg., c. 13.

Self-Deception

Gal. 6:3.—For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

PLATO.—If my sons, when they grow up, think themselves to be something when they are nothing, reproach them for it.—Apol. Socr., c. 33.

EPICTETUS.—Whoever is ignorant what he is, and wherefore he was born, will wander up and down, deaf and blind, supposing himself to be somebody, while he is, in reality, nobody.—Epict., II., 24.

As We Sow so Shall We Reap

Gal. 6:7.—Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

DEMOSTHENES.—The sower of the seed is surely the author of the whole harvest of mischief.— De Coron.

Gal. 6:9.—And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

ARISTOTLE.—As one swallow does not make spring, nor one day; so neither does one day, nor a little time, make a man blessed and happy. —Eth., I., 7.

Ephesians

Authenticity and Genuineness of the Epistle

Eph. 1:1.—Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus.

For the city of Ephesus, see Acts 19:1.

BISHOP CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D.—The Epistle to the Ephesians was written by St. Paul during his first captivity at Rome in the early part of A. D. 62. With regard to its authenticity and genuineness, it is not too much to say that there are no just grounds for doubt. The testimonies of antiquity are unusually strong. Even Marcion did not deny that this Epistle was written by St. Paul, nor did heretics refuse occasionally to cite it as confessedly due to him as its author.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 744.

God Supreme, and Orders All

Eph. 1:11.—Who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The affirmation here is not merely that God accomplishes the designs of salvation according to the counsel of his own will, but that he does everything. His agency is not confined to one thing, or to one class of objects. Every object and event is under his control, and is in accordance with his eternal plan.—Note, In loco.

LORD BACON. —I believe, that notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating since the first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he Both accomplish and fulfill his divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by providence, as He could by miracle and new creation, though his working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature, which is his own law upon the creature.— Confession of Faith.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A., F. R. S.—God is the Author and Governor of the universe through the laws which He has given to its parts, the properties which He has impressed upon its constituent elements: these laws and properties are the instruments with which He works: the institution of such laws, the selection of the quantities which they involve, their combination and application, are the modes in which He exerts and manifests his power, his wisdom, his goodness: through these attributes, thus exercised, the Creator of all shapes, moves, sustains and guides the visible Creation. This has been the view of the relation of the Deity to the universe entertained by the most sagacious and comprehensive minds ever since the true object of natural philosophy has been clearly and steadily apprehended.— Astronomy and General Physics, Chap, VIII.

DR. WILLIAM CARPENTER.—God is the efficient cause alike for the simplest and most minute, and of the most complicated and most majestic phenomena of the universe.— Gen. and Comp. Phys., p. 1080.

The Soul Enlightened

Eph. 1:18.—The eyes of your understanding being enlightened.

PHILO.—What the eye is to the body, that the understanding is to the soul.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—One of the first effects of true religion is on the understanding. It enlarges its views of truth; gives it more exalted conceptions of God; corrects its errors; raises it up towards the great fountain of love. And nowhere is the effect of true religion more apparent than in shedding light on the intellect of the world, and restoring the weak and perverted mind to a just view of the proportion of things, and to the true knowledge of God.—Note, In loco.

The Dead in Sin Quickened

Eph. 2:1.—And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.

EPICTETUS.—We are all wonderfully afraid of bodily death, and use every means in our power to avoid it; but a dead soul gives us no concern.—Epict., I., 5.

SENECA.—Many things chain us down; many things enfeeble us; we have been long dead in sin: it is a difficult matter to wash and be clean; for we are not only stained, but infected.—Epist., 59.

Christ the True Foundation

Eph. 2:20, 21.—Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.

SENECA.—We must consider that we are born for the good of the whole; human society resembles a vaulted roof of stone, which would soon fall unless prevented by one stone supporting another.— Epist., 95.

One God and Father

Eph. 4:6.—One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

ROBERT ANCHOR THOMPSON, M. A.—As far as observation can carry us, external nature furnishes abundant evidence of the unity and immensity of the Creator. This evidence consists in the immensity of space and of material being, and in the continued unity of the globe' through the long periods of the past... Astronomy discovers the unity and immensity of the Supreme Being in space, or beyond it; Geology, in time, or beyond it. Chemistry, in the reality of all present conditioned existence, or beyond it. Astronomy has taught us to look into the depths of space from star to star, and from system to systems through distances all but infinite. Compared with the immense fields of the stellar universe, the solar system sinks into an infinitesimal speck. The immense distances and enormous magnitudes of the stars are beyond question. In the interminable range of system upon system, and firmament upon firmament, of which we catch a glimpse through the astronomer's telescope, the imagination is bewildered and lost. Yet in these immensities of matter and of space we have evidences of the same unity in diversity which is everywhere manifest in the world. Astronomy bears testimony with the world in which we live, that "there are diversities of operation, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." The discoveries of Geology terminate in the same conclusion. We pass through long periods of progress, and over sudden changes and catastrophes; but all, after ages of ages, are found to have evolved harmonious results. The very convulsions of the earth were among the steps most essential in its preparation for man. The inference is confirmed by the remains of former animal and vegetable kingdoms. Many varieties are met with, far more of extinct than of existing species. But they are all members of one great system of creation. They are bound to one another in similar relations, with the different systems now existing in the world, and are always adapted to the constitution of the globe at the time of their existence. Chemical science bears a similar testimony. On its numerous diversities, and the constant unity in diversity, it is unnecessary to speak farther. This, then, is the testimony of the material world, in whatever direction we may look. In its magnitude, and in its minuteness, in the distant causes of the past, and in the deep causes of the present, it stretches from the finite toward the Infinite, and everywhere discovers itself to have been created and ordered by one and the same Intelligent Agency —the Eternal and Self-existent Being.—Christian Theism, Book III., c. 2.

Stability

Eph. 4:14.—That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.

LUCIAN.—If you have not acquired that skill and ability which may suffice to make you a good Stoic, you will be led about by the nose at everybody's pleasure, and no reed will be more easily shaken about by every blast or faint breath of wind.—Hermotim., c. 68.

All Members of One Body

Eph. 4:16.—Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Here the church is compared to the human body, in the which the "head" conveys vital influences, vigor, motion, etc., to its every part. The human frame is admirably arranged for growth and vigor and activity. Every member and joint contributes to its healthful and harmonious action. One part lends beauty and vigor to another, so that the whole is finely proportioned and admirably sustained. Let anyone read Paley's Natural Theology, or any work on anatomy, and he will find innumerable instances of the truth of this remark; not only in the proper adjustment and placing of the members, but in the manner in which it is united to the other parts of the body. All the investigations of anatomists only serve to give increased beauty and force to the general terms which the apostle uses here. All that he says here of the human frame is strictly accurate, and is such language as may be used by an anatomist now.—Note, In loco.

The New Man

Eph. 4:24.—And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

PLATO.—Evil of necessity moves round this mortal nature and this region. Wherefore we ought to endeavor to fly hence as quickly as possible. But this flight consists in resembling God as much as possible; and this resemblance, in becoming just and holy with wisdom.—Theœtet, c. 25.

Lying

Eph. 4:25.—Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Truth was of but small account among many, of even the best heathens; for they taught that, on many occasions, a lie was to be preferred to the truth itself; here are examples: "A lie is better than a hurtful truth."—Menander. "Good is better than truth."—Proclus. "When telling a lie will be profitable, let it be told."—Darius. "He may lie who knows how to do it in a suitable time."—Plato. "There is nothing decorous in truth, but when it is profitable; yea, sometimes truth is hurtful, and lying is profitable to men."—Maximus Tyrius. Having been brought up in such a loose system of morality, these converted Gentiles had need of these apostolical directions, Put away lying, speak every man truth.— In loco.

Anger

Eph. 4:26.—Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

CICERO.—To subdue one's inclinations, to master one's angry feelings, to be moderate in the hour of victory; these are actions which raise men into the likeness of the gods.—Pro Marcel., c. 3.

PLUTARCH.—We are to imitate the Pythagoreans, who, if at any time they were so carried away by anger as to reproach and to revile each other, yet before the sun went down they would shake hands, embrace each other, and become good friends again.—De Frat. Amor., c. 17.

Eph. 4:31.—Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you.

HORACE.—Away with anger and clamor.—Hor., lib. iii., carm. 8.

Abominations Committed in Secret

Eph. 5:12.—For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. DR. ADAM CLARKE. —This no doubt refers to the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian mysteries, which were performed in the night and darkness, and were known to be so impure and abominable, especially the latter, that the Roman Senate banished them both from Rome and Italy. How the discovery of these depths of Satan was made, and the whole proceedings in that case, may be seen in Livy XXXIX., c. 8-19, where the reader will see the force of what the apostle says here-the abominations being of the most stupendous kind, and of the deepest dye.—Note, In loco.

Redeeming the Time

Eph. 5:16.—Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

SENECA.—Such hours as have hitherto been stolen from you unawares, or have slipped by inadvertently, recollect, and for the future turn to some good account. Embrace every hour; ale stronger hold you have on to-day, the less will be your dependence on to-morrow. Life, however unimproved, still glides away.—Epist., I.

SUETONIUS.—Titus, reflecting once at supper that he had done nothing for any one that day, broke out into that memorable and justly-admired saying, My friends, I have lost a day.—Tit., c. 8.

Psalms and Hymns

Eph. 5:19.—Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

PLINY.—Those who had been Christians—but who had left them—affirmed that the whole of their fault or error lay in this: that they were wont to meet together, on a stated day, before it was light, and sing among themselves, alternately, a hymn to Christ as God, etc.—Letter to Trajan.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA composed the following hymn for Christians:

O king of saints, thou all-subduing Word of the Most High Father, thou Lord of Wisdom, thou support in toils ever gracious, of the race of men, Jesus the Savior. Heavenly way, ever-during Word, Light eternal, fountain of mercy, in virtue strong, life revered of them who hymn thee God, Christ Jesus. Simple praises, sincere hymns, to Christ the king, offerings pure of lively doctrine let us chant together, with simplicity let us praise the Mighty Child; the band of peace, we sons of Christ, people of sober mind, let us together praise the God of peace.—Clem. Alex. Pad., lib. iii., c. 12.

GREGORY NAZIANZEN composed the following for the churches:

O glorious Word of the eternal Father, uttering his vast mind, more excellent than any speech; Light of unmingled light; One-Begotten; Image of the immortal Father; most certain Seal; shilling as bright as that great Spirit; filling eternity; whose praise all celebrate; Giver of all wealth; enthroned high in heaven; almighty Source of mind; Bringer of life; Ruler of all that are, and all that shall be, for by Him all subsist; by Him were laid the foundations of the world, and all things are committed to his care.— Greg. Naz. Carmina Varia., caret. 55.

Duty of Husbands and Wives

Eph. 5:22.—Wives, submit yourselves unto, your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

PLUTARCH.—The husband ought to rule over the wife, not as a master over that which he possesseth, but as the soul governs the body, by a natural and sympathetic affection.—Conj. Prat., c. 33.

EURIPIDES.—This is her greatest safety.—Med., v. 14.

Eph. 5:28.—So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Because she is one with him, and their interests are identified. Because by this, he really promotes his own welfare, as much as he does when he takes care of his own body. A man's kindness to his wife will be more than repaid by the happiness which she imparts; and all the real solicitude which he shows to make her happy, will come to more than it costs.—Note, In loco.

Eph. 5:29.—For no man ever yet hated his own flesh.

CURTIUS.—We do not hate those things that pertain to our own bodies.—Curt., VII.

SENECA.—I confess that there is in us implanted the love of our own body. Epist,

Duty of Children

Eph. 6:1.—Children, obey your parents in the Lord; for this is right.

ARISTOTLE.—A father is by nature adapted to rule over his children... on which account parents are honored.—Eth., VIII.,

IDEM.—It is not possible to confer adequate honor upon the gods or on parents; for no one can bestow these according to desert; but he who pays homage to them to the utmost of his power, appears to be a worthy man.—Eth, VIII., 14.

PLAUTUS.—Daughters can never take too much care of their parents: whom ought we to esteem more dear to us than these?—Stich., act I., sc. 2.

QUINTILIAN.—A son never ought to forget the reverence he owes to his parents.—Quint., II., I.

Duty of Parents

Eph. 6:4—And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

PLATO.—Children are to be chastised; but not in an ignominious manner, with insults, so-as to encourage an angry feeling in them.—De Leg., VII., 4.

PLUTARCH.—I would on no account have fathers to be too severe and rigorous with their children. —De lib. Educ., c. 18.

Duty of Servants

Eph, 6:5.—Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.

SENECA.—If any one supposes that slavery affects the whole man, he is mistaken; the better part of the man is exempt from it. The body of a slave is subject to his master; the mind is under a different law: the body is bought and sold; the mind cannot be brought into slavery. As long as a slave yields that service which can be exacted from him, it is a duty; but when he willingly offers that which he could not be compelled to do, he confers a benefit upon his master.—De Benef., III., 20.

Duty of Masters

Eph. 6: 9.—And, ye masters, do the same thing unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

SENECA. —Live so with an inferior as you would have a superior live with you. As often as you think on the power you have over a servant, reflect on the power your master has over you. Live courteously with your servant; vouchsafe him conference; admit him to counsel, and even to your table.—Epist., 47.

Fiery Darts

Eph. 6:16.—Fiery darts.

THUCYDIDES.—The Peloponnesians threw darts bearing fire into the trenches and ignited the fagots; thereby kindling such a flame under the walls of Platæa, as had never been seen before.— Thucyd., II., 75.

ARRIAN.—The Tyrians defended themselves with darts, and cast their missives, bearing fire at their points, into the very ship of the Macedonians.—Exped. Alex., II., 21.

Philippians

Authenticity and Genuineness

Phil. 1:1.—Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.

For Philippi, see Acts 16:12, 35.

REV. WILLIAM T. BULLOCK, M. A.—The canonical authority, Pauline authorship and integrity of this epistle have been unanimously acknowledged down to the present century. Marcion (A. D. 140) in the earliest known Canon held common ground with the church touching the authority of this epistle: it appears in the Muratorian Fragment; also among the acknowledged books in Eusebius; in the lists of the Council of Laodicea, A. D. 365; and the Synod of Hippo, 393; and in all subsequent lists, as well as in the Peshito and later versions. Even contemporary evidence may be claimed for it. Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians, A. D. 107, refers to this Epistle of Paul as a well-known distinction belonging to that church. It is quoted by Irenmus and Tertullian. A quotation from it is found in the epistle of the churches of Lyons and Vienne, A. D. 177. The testimony of later writers are innumerable.— Smith's Dict. of the Bible, p. 2492.

The Issue of Death to the Christian

Phil. 1:21.—To die is gain.

DR. EDWARD YOUNG.—

Death is the crown of life:

Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;

Were death denied, to live would not be life;

Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.

Death wounds to cure; we fall; we rise; we reign!

Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies;

Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.

Death gives us more than was in Eden lost.

The king of terrors is the prince of peace.

—Night Thoughts, III.

The Strait Betwixt Life and Death

Phil. 1:22, 23.—But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor; yet what I shall choose I wot not: for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.

PLATO.—The fellowship between soul and body is not, as I earnestly and solemnly affirmed, better than the dissolution of it. —De Leg., VIII., i.

PLUTARCH—We ought to weep over the new-born infants, upon whom evil is to come; but those dying and ceasing from their labors we should send forth from their homes with rejoicings and congratulations.—De and. Poet., c. 14.

ÆLIAN.—Cercidas, when he was about to die, said that he hoped to meet in a future life Pythagoras the philosopher, Hecatæus the historian, Olympus, and the poet Homer; and when he had said this his spirit fled. Var. Hist., XIII., 19.

Phil. 1:24, 25.—Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide: and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith.

SENECA.—It pertains to a great mind to be willing to come back to life for the sake of others; which distinguished men often do.—Epist., 104.

Christian Conversation

Phil. 1:27.—Only let your conversation be as it becometh the Gospel of Christ.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—If men live as “becometh the gospel," they live well. Their lives are honest and honorable; they are men of truth and uprightness. No man on a dying bed ever yet regretted that he had framed his life by the rules of the gospel, or felt that his conduct had been conformed too much to it.—Note, In loco.

Confirmation

Phil. 2:26.—For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death.

DR. WILLIAM PALEY.—In this passage, no intimation is given that the recovery of Epaphroditus was miraculous: it is plainly spoken of as a natural event. This instance, together with that in the Second Epistle to Timothy, "Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick," affords a proof that the power of performing cures, and by parity of reason, of working other miracles, was a power which only, visited the apostles occasionally; and did not at all depend upon their own will. Paul undoubtedly would have healed Epaphroditus, if he could; nor would he have left Trophimus at Miletum sick, had the power of working cures awaited his disposal. Had this epistle been a forgery, forgery on this occasion would not have spared a miracle: much less would it have introduced St. Paul professing the utmost anxiety for the Safety of his friend, yet acknowledging himself unable to help him; which, he does, almost expressly in the case of Trophimus: him have I left sick; and virtually in the passage before us, in which he felicitates himself on the recovery of Epaphroditus in terms which almost exclude the supposition of, any supernatural means being used to effect it. This is a reserve which nothing but truth would have imposed. — Hourœ Paulina, p. 106, Carter's Edition,

Christ Supremely Excellent

Phil. 3:8.—I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.

LUCIAN.—These people (the Christians) bow the knee to their crucified Sophist, and live in conformity to his laws. All things else they despise in the lump, holding them vain and worthless, without having a sufficient reason for being attached to these opinions.—De Mort. Peregr., c. 13.

Pressing Toward the Mark

Phil. 3:13.—But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—In the Grecian races, one running to secure the prize would not stop to look behind him to see how much ground he had run over, or who of his competitors had fallen or lingered in the way. He would keep his eye steadily on the prize, and strain every nerve that he might obtain it. If his attention was diverted for a moment from that, it would hinder his flight, and might be the means of his losing the crown.—In loco.

Phil. 3:14.—I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

POLYBIUS.—Some men, like bad racers, abandon their designs, when they are arrived even almost at the end of their course: while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory against their rivals, by exerting in that very moment more strenuous efforts than before.—Polyb., XVI., extr. 6.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS.—" Thou art now an old man; rest from thy labors,

Diogenes."—If I have run long in the rate, will it become me to slacken my pace when come near the end? Should I not rather stretch forward?—Diog. Laert., lib. vi., c. 2, sect. 6.

Gluttons

Phil. 3:19.—Whose god is their belly: who mind earthly things.

CICERO.—That spendthrift and glutton, born for his belly, not for praise and glory.—In Pison., c. 17.

DEMOSTHENES.—Men who measure their happiness by their bellies.—De Coron.

PERSEUS.—O souls bowed down to earth, and void of aught celestial.—Pers. Sat., II., v. 61.

The Vile Body Changed Into the Glorious

Phil. 3:21.—Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.

DWIGHT —

Shall spring the faded world revive?

Shall waning moons their light renew?

Again shall setting suits ascend

And chase the darkness from our view?

Shall life revisit dying worms

And spread the joyful insect's wing?

And, oh, shall man awake no more

To see thy face, thy name to sing?

Faith sees the bright eternal doors

Unfold to make her children way;

They shall be clothed with endless life,

And shine in everlasting day.

Moderation

Phil, 4:5.—Let your moderation be known unto all men.

PYTHAGORAS. —A mean in everything is best. Moderation is to be observed in food, in drink, and in exercise.—Aur. Car., v. 33.

HORACE.—There is a mean in all things: there are certain limits within or beyond of which moral rectitude cannot exist.—Hor., lib. i., Sat. 1.

Dwell Upon What Is Good

Phil. 4:8.—Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

XENOPHON.—Socrates was accustomed to inquire and discourse continually on these subjects— what was pious, what was impious; what honorable, what base; what just, what unjust; what wisdom, what folly; what courage, what cowardice; what a state, or political community, what the character of a statesman, a politician; what the government of men, what the character of one equal to such government. It was on these and other matters of the same kind that he used to dissert; in which subjects those who were knowing, he esteemed men of honor and goodness; and those who were ignorant, to be no better than the basest of slaves.—Soc. Mem., I. I

Contentment

Phil. 4:11.—I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.

EPICTETUS.—I would be able to say to God—Have I ever accused thee, or censured thy dispensations? I have been sick because it was thy pleasure, and so have others; but I willingly. I have been poor, it being thy will; but with joy. I have not been in power, because it was not thy will; and power I have never desired. Hast thou ever seen me out of humor on this account? Have I not always approached thee with a cheerful countenance, prepared to execute thy commands? Let death overtake me while I am thinking, while I am reading, while I am writing such things as these.—Epict., III., 5.

Cæsar's Household

Phil. 4:22.—All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Cæsar's household.

ST. JEROME.—Paul, being by the emperor cast into prison, became the more known to his family; and he turned the house of Christ's persecutor into a church.—In Philem.

THEODORUS METOCHITA.—Among those converted in Caesar's household were Nero's baker and one of his concubines.—As quoted by Dr. Adam Clarke.

Colossians

The Church at Colosse

Col. 1:1, 2.—Paul and Timotheus to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse.

CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Colossæ was a large and flourishing city of Phrygia Pacatiana, situated in an angle formed by the rivers Lycus and Mæander. Strabo speaks of the great profits accruing from its wool trade. One of the first Christian churches was established here, and one of St. Paul's epistles was addressed to it. In the tenth year of the reign of Nero, or about two years after the epistle of St. Paul was sent, this city was nearly destroyed by an earthquake. Under the Byzantine emperors, Colossæ, being in a ruinous state, made way for a more modern town named Chonæ, which was built at a short distance from it. Some remains of Colossæ and its more modern successor are to be seen near each other on the site called Khonas, or Kanassi, by the Turks. —Classical Dictionary.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Colossæ was situated close to the great road which led from Ephesus to the Euphrates. Hence our impulse would be to conclude that St. Paul passed this way, and founded or confirmed the Colossian Church on his third missionary journey.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 481.

BISHOP CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D.—With regard to the genuineness and authenticity of the Epistle to the Colossians, it is satisfactory to be able to say with distinctness that there are no grounds for doubt. The external testimonies from Justin Martyr, Theophilact, Irenaeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian and Origen are explicit; and the internal arguments are unusually strong.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 482.

Cal. 1:6.—The Gospel—which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, etc.

See Matt. 24:14.

The Creator and Upholder of All

Col. 1:16, 17.—All things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

LORD BROUGHAM.—See only in what contemplations the wisest of men end their most sublime inquiries! Mark where it is that a Newton finally reposes after piercing the thickest veil that envelopes nature—grasping and arresting in their course the most subtle of her elements and the swiftest— traversing the regions of boundless space—exploring worlds beyond the solar way—giving out the law which binds the universe in eternal order! He rests, as by an inevitable necessity, upon the contemplation of the great First Cause, and holds it his highest glory to have made the evidence of his existence and the dispensations of his power and of his wisdom better understood by men.— Discourse, Of Natural Theology, p. 194.

DR. JOHN YOUNG.—The reason, the ground of the existence of the universe, of every single atom at every moment, is not in itself, but wholly and only in the will and power of the Creator. It is nothing, has no meaning, no reality, no being, except in Him. Underneath it and in it, sustaining it, entirely causing it, are the Almighty will and the Almighty power. Let these be withdrawn for a moment, let them only not be, that is, let there be no present Divine volition, and no present exertion of Divine power, and that moment it is nothing, for the sole ground of its being is gone. “By Him all things consist."— Creator and Creation, p. 58.

Vain Philosophy

Col. 2:8.—Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

MOSHEIM.—By none of its adversaries or corrupters was Christianity, from almost its first rise, more seriously injured; by none was the church more grievously lacerated, and rendered less attractive to the people, than by those who were for making the religion of Christ accommodate itself to the principles of the Oriental Philosophy respecting the Deity, the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the human soul. We speak of the Gnostics. We find St. Paul, in various parts of his epistles, alluding to these, and exhorting the followers of Christ to maintain the discipline of their blessed Master whole and uncontaminated by any of the fables or inventions of the philosophers of this sect. But an insane curiosity, and that itch for penetrating into abstruse or hidden things, caused many to turn their backs on the advice and admonition of the apostle and his associates, and to give heed to these false teachers.— Historical Commentaries, I., 228.

Col. 2:13.—And you, being dead in your sins, etc.

See Eph. 2:1.

Angel Worship

Col. 2:18.—Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility, and worshipping of angels, etc.

HARTLEY.—The modern Greeks have a legend to this effect: "An overwhelming inundation threatened to destroy the Christian population of that city. They were fleeing before it in the utmost consternation, and imploring superior succor for their deliverance. At this critical moment the archangel Michael descended from heaven, opened the chasm in the earth to which they still point, and at this opening the waters of the inundation were swallowed up, and the multitude was saved." A church in honor of the archangel was built at the entrance of the chasm. This is mentioned by Nicetas. A council held at the neighboring town of Laodicea, in the fourth century, condemned this angel worship; and Theodoret speaks of it as existing in the same region.—See Life and Epistles of St. Paul, p. 390; and Hartley's Researches in Greece, p. 52.

Col. 2:19.—And holding the Head, from which all the body, etc. See Eph. 4:16.

The Affections Set on Things Above

Col. 3:2.—Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.

SENECA.—Soar aloft; estranged even from those things which seem most necessary and dear to you. Meditate something more noble and sublime; that blessed day, for instance, when the mysteries of nature shall be revealed to you, this darkness be dispersed, and the light break in upon you on every side.—Epistle, 102.

IDEM.—We are to prepare ourselves for communion with the gods; and to have eternity always in view.—Ibid

Col. 3:8.—But now ye also put off all these; anger, Wrath, malice, etc.

See Eph. 4:31.

Col. 3:9.—Lie not one to another, etc.

See Eph. 4:25.

Col. 3:10.—And have put on the new man, etc.

See Eph. 4:24.

Praise and Thanksgiving

Col. 3:16, 17.—Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

EPICTETUS.—If we had any understanding, ought we not both in public and in private, constantly to sing hymns, and speak well of the Deity, and rehearse his benefits? Ought we not, whether we are digging, or plowing, or eating, to sing the hymn to God? Great is God, who has supplied us with these instruments to till the ground I Great is God, who has given us hands, a power of swallowing, a stomach; who has given us to grow insensibly, to breathe in sleep., —Epict., I., 16.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus—to the letter of this precept the Mahommedans adhere most strictly, for they never undertake a work, eat meat, or write a book, without prefacing all with " In the name of the most merciful and compassionate God." Not only books of devotion, but books on all arts and sciences; books of tales and romances; books of poetry, and those on the elements of reading, etc., begin thus.—Note, In loco.

Col. 3:18.—Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, etc.

See Eph. 5:22.

Col. 3:19.—Husbands, love your wives, etc.

See Eph. 5:28.

Col. 3:20.—Children, obey your parents in all things, etc.

See Eph. 6

Col. 3:25.—Fathers, provoke not your Children to anger, etc.

See Eph. 6:4.

Col. 3:22.—Servants, obey in all things your masters, etc.

See Eph. 6:5.

Col. 4:1.—Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.

See Eph. 6:9.

Col. 4:5.—Redeeming the time.

See Eph. 5:16.

Seasoned Speech

Col. 4:6.—Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

QUINTILIAN.—"The Set Of a discourse is that natural seasoning which prevents its being insipid; and which, upon deeper reflection, leaves, as it were, a relish upon the palate, enlivens the attention, and prevents the oration from creating a laugh. And as salt, though pretty liberally sprinkled upon meat, if not excessive, affords a pleasing relish: so, in speaking, this salt has somewhat so pleasing that it raises a desire of hearing more.—Quint., VI., 3.

Hierapolis

Col. 4:13.—For I bear him record, that he hath a great zeal for you, and them that are in Laodicea, and them in Hierapolis.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—Hierapolis is mentioned only once in scripture, and that incidentally, namely in Col. 4., 13, where its church is associated with those of Colossæ and Laodicea. Such association is just what we should expect, for the three towns were all in the basin of the Mæander, and within a few miles of one another. The situation of Hierapolis is extremely beautiful and its ruins are considerable, the theater and gymnasium being the most conspicuous. Richter states that Hierapolis and Laodicea lie within view of each other on the opposite sides of the Lycus.— Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1063.

First Thessalonians

Authenticity and Genuineness

1 Thessalonians 1:1.—Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus unto the church, of the Thessalonians. For Thessalonica, see Acts 17:1.

PROF. JOSEPH B. LIGHTFOOT, D. D.—The epistles to the Thessalonians are the earliest of St. Paul's writings—perhaps the earliest written records of Christianity. Both these epistles were written toward the close of the year 52 or the beginning of 53. There is no trace that the genuineness of this epistle was ever disputed at any age or in any section of the church, or even by any individual. It was included in the old Latin and Syriac Versions; it is found in the Canon of the Muratorian fragment; and it was also contained in that of Marcion. Towards the close of the second century from Irenæus downwards, we find this epistle directly quoted and ascribed to St. Paul. The evidence derived from the character of the epistle itself is so strong that it may fairly be called irresistible.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3226.

Thessalonica a Center of Communication

1 Thess. 1:8.—From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God ward is spread abroad.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSOH.—The reason of the pre-eminence of Thessalonica is to be found in its geographical position. Situated on the inner bend of the Thermaic Gulf,—half-way between the Adriatic and the Hellespont,—on the sea-margin of a vast plain watered by several rivers,—and at the entrance of the pass which commands the approach to the other great Macedonian level,—it was evidently destined for a mercantile emporium. Its relation with the inland trade of Macedonia was as close as that of Amphipolis; and its maritime advantages were perhaps even greater. Thus, while Amphipolis decayed under the Byzantine emperors, Thessalonica continued to prosper. There probably never was a time, from the day when it first received its name, that this city, as viewed from the sea, has not had the aspect of a busy commercial town. We see at once how appropriate a place it was for one of the starting-points of the Gospel in Europe; and we can appreciate the force of the expression used by St. Paul within a few months of his departure from the Thessalonians, when he says that " from them the word of the Lord had sounded forth like a trumpet, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place."— Life and Epists. of St. Paul, I., 323.

The Perverseness of the Jews

1 Thess. 2:15.—And they please not God, and are contrary to all men.

JUVENAL.—The Jews.... they would not even point out the way to anyone except of the same religion, nor, being asked, guide any to a fountain except the circumcised.—Satr., XIV., 103.

TACITUS.—A people cherishing hatred against all others.—Hist., V., 5.

APOLLONIUS.—Atheists and misanthropes, and the most uncultivated barbarians.— See Josephus, Cont. Apion, II., 15.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—Those alone among all nations who were unwilling to have any intercourse with any other nation, and who regarded all others as enemies. —Died. Sit., XXXIV.

1 Thess. 4:3.—That ye should abstain from fornication, etc. See 1 Cor. 6:18.

God the Judge and Avenger

1 Thess. 4:6.—That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because the Lord is the avenger of all such.

CICERO.—With respect to the statement that God is not merely a Judge, but an Avenger, the sense of religion appears to be strengthened by the fear or immediate punishment which awaits the offender.—De Leg., II., 10.

Hope Concerning the Dead in Christ

Theas. 4:13.—I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

SENECA.—Our eyes ought not to be dry on the death of a friend; neither should they stream: it is decent to weep, but useless to bewail. Let us consider that we must soon be What he is whom we now bewail; and perhaps (if the opinion of some wise men be true that there is such a place) he whom we fondly imagine to have perished, is sent before us to that happy mansion.—Epist., 63.

TACITUS.—IT there be any place for the manes of the just; if, as philosophers say, great spirits perish not with the body, mayest thou rest in peace, O Agricola I Recall us also from weak regrets and womanly lamentations to the contemplation of thy virtues, for, which it were wrong to mourn and complain.— Agric. c. 46.

Spiritual Armor

1 Thess. 5:8.—But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

EPICTETUS.—Every one's life is a warfare, and that long and various. —Epict., III., 24.

SENECA.—Our condition is a warfare, and such a one wherein no rest, no leisure time is allowed. Pleasures are in the first place to be subdued.—Epist., 51.

IDEM.—The task imposed upon us is hard and laborious; we must engage, therefore, as it were in battle.—Epist., 52.

Mutual Edification

1 Thess. 5:11.—Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.

ARISTOTLE.—The friendship of worthy men is worthy, and is mutually increased by mutual converse. They also appear to become better by energizing with and correcting each other. For they mutually express those things with which they are mutually delighted: whence it is said by Theognis, “From good men what is good is learned."—Eth., IX, 12,

Evil for Evil

1 Thess. 5:11.—See that none render evil for evil unto any man.

PLATO.—It is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much one may have suffered from him.—Crito, c. so.

SENECA.—A good man will pardon an injury, provided he can do so without breach of piety and fidelity.—Epist., 81.

IDEM.—Nature has commanded justice and equity; and by her appointment it is more wretched to do an injury than to suffer, one.—Epist., 95.

Prayer Unceasing

1 Thess. 5:17.—Pray without ceasing.

SENECA.—Cease not to pray; and ask particularly for wisdom, a sound mind, and health of body. Fear not to importune a gracious God, as long as you ask not for any foreign good, or for what belongs to another person. Epist., 10.

Thanksgiving

1 Thess. 5:18.—In everything give thanks.

XENOPHON.—I shall never be wanting in my acknowledgments to the gods; and it even troubleth me that we cannot make a suitable return for the benefits they have conferred upon us.— Mem. Soc., IV., 3.

Sanctification

1 Thess. 5:23.—I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

ARISTOTLE.—It is the property of a man to have a life consisting of three parts.—Topic., V., 4.

PLUTARCH.—It is the common opinion that man is a compound nature.... The understanding is as much' better than the soul as the soul is better than the body. The conjunction of the soul with the understanding produces reason; but with the body, passion.—De fac. in orb. lun., c. 28.

VIRGIL.—Hail, sacred parent! Hail again paternal ashes and soul, and shade!—Æn., V.

Second Thessalonians

Canonicity of the Epistle

2 Thess. 1:1.—Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus unto the church of the Thessalonians.

For Thessalonica, see. Acts 17:1, and 1 Thess. 1:1.

PROF. J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D. D.—The external evidence in favor of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians is even more definite than that in favor of the first Epistle. It seems to be referred to in one or two passages of Polycarp, and also in Justin Martyr. It is found in the Syriac and old Latin versions; and in those of the Muratorian fragment, and of the heretic Marcion; it is quoted expressly by name by Irenæus and others at the close of the second century, and was universally received by the church. The internal character of the epistle too, as in the former case, bears the strongest testimony to its Pauline origin. Its genuineness has never been questioned.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3228.

The Coming of Christ, and the Man of Sin

2 Thess. 2:1-4. Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition: who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—The Thessalonians, from some expressions in the former epistle, were alarmed, as if the end of the world was at hand, and Christ was, coming to judgment. The apostle, to correct their mistakes and dissipate their fears, assures them, that the coming of Christ, will not be yet a while: there will be first a great “falling away," a great apostasy or defection of Christians from the true faith and worship. This apostasy all the concurrent marks and characters will justify us in charging upon the Church of Rome.

If the apostasy be rightly charged upon the church of Rome, it follows of consequence that " the man of sin " is the pope, not-meaning this or that pope in particular, but the pope in general, as the chief head and supporter of this apostasy. The apostasy produces him, and he again promotes the apostasy. He is properly The man of sin, not only on account of the scandalous lives of many popes, but by reason of their more scandalous doctrines and principles, dispensing with the most necessary duties, and granting or rather selling pardons and indulgences to the most abominable crimes. Or if by "sin" be meant idolatry particularly, as in the Old Testament, it is evident to all how he hath corrupted the worship of God, and perverted it from spirit and truth to superstition and idolatry of the grossest kind. He also, like the false apostle Judas, is " the son of perdition," whether actively as being the cause and occasion of destruction to others, or passively as being destined and devoted to destruction himself.

" He opposeth; "—he is the great adversary to God and man, excommunicating and anathematizing, persecuting and destroying by crusades and inquisitions, by massacres and horrid executions, those sincere Christians, who prefer the word of God to all the authority of men. The heathen emperor of Rome may have slain his thousands of innocent Christians, but the Christian bishop of Rome has slain his ten thousands. There is scarce any country, that hath not at one time or another been made the stage of these bloody tragedies: scarce any age, that hath not in one place or other seen them enacted.

"He exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; " not only above inferior magistrates, but likewise above bishops and primates, exerting an absolute jurisdiction and uncontrolled supremacy over all; nor only above bishops and primates, but likewise above kings and emperors, deposing some and advancing others, obliging them to prostrate themselves before him; to kiss his toe; to hold his stirrup; to wait barefooted at his gate, as Hildebrand did to Henry IV.; treading even upon their necks, as Alexander III did to Frederic I.; and kicking off the imperial crown with his Loot, as Celestin did to Henry VI.; nor only above kings and emperors, but likewise above. Christ and God himself, " making the word of God of none effect by his traditions," forbidding what God hath commanded, as marriage, communion in both kinds, the use of the scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and the like, and also commanding or allowing what God hath forbidden, as idolatry, persecution, works of supererogation, and various other instances.

"So that he as God sitteth in the temple of God; "—having his seat or cathedra in the 'Christian church: and he sitteth there " as God," especially at his inauguration, when he sitteth upon the high altar in St. Peter's church, and maketh the table of the Lord his footstool, and in that position receiveth adoration.

“Showing himself that he is God; " at all times he exerciseth divine authority in the church; affecting divine titles and attributes, as holiness and infallibility; assuming divine powers and prerogatives in condemning and absolving men; in retaining and forgiving sins; in asserting his decrees to be of the same or greater authority than the word of God, and commanding them to be received under the penalty of the same or greater damnation. Like another Salmoneus, he is proud to imitate the state and thunder of the Almighty; and is styled, and is pleased to be styled, “Our Lord God the Pope "—" Another God upon earth "—"King of kings, and Lord of lords." " The same is the dominion of God and the Pope "—" To believe that our Lord God the Pope might not decree, as he decreed, it were a matter of heresy "—" The power of the Pope is greater than all created power, and extends itself to things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal "—" The Pope doeth whatsoever he listeth, even things unlawful, and is more than God." Such blasphemies are not only allowed, but even approved, encouraged, rewarded in the writers of the church of Rome: and they are not only the extravagances of private writers, but are the language even of public decretals and acts of councils. So that the Pope is evidently the god upon earth: or at least there is no one like him, who " exalteth himself above every God; " no one like him, " who sitteth as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."—Dissertations on the Prophecies, No. XXII.

2 Thess. 5-8.—Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of, iniquity doth already work: only he who, now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed.

DR. THOMAS SCOTT.—The Roman empire, united under one potent government, and extremely jealous of all other power and authority, prevented the establishment of that spiritual tyranny and usurpation by which Satan was attempting to make his grand effort against Christianity; but it would not have been prudent for the apostle explicitly to mention it, in an epistle for general perusal; nor would it have accorded to the style of prophecy; however, most of the Fathers so far understood rim as to declare that Antichrist would not come till after the downfall of the Roman empire. Had it not been for this, obstacle, the evil would have broken out much sooner; for even when this was written, “the mystery of iniquity did already work." But the Roman Empire, which then "letted," or hindered its full effect, by keeping the church under persecution, and curbing all authority but its own, would continue to retard this event until it should be removed “out of the way." It was not till the subversion of the Western empire by the northern nations, and the division of it into ten kingdoms, that way was made for the full establishment of the Papal usurpation at Rome, the capital of the empire. —Com., In loco.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—In the same proportion as the power of the empire decreased, the authority of the church increased, the latter at the expense and ruin of the former; till at length the Pope grew up above all, and the wicked one was fully manifested and revealed, or the lawless one, as he may be called; for the Pope is declared again and again not to be bound by any laws of God or man. —Dissert., XXII.

2 Thess. 2:9, 10.—Even him, whose coming is after the coming of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—And doth it require any particular proof, or is it not too generally known, that the pretensions of the Pope and the corruptions of the church of Rome are all supported and authorized by feigned visions and miracles, by pious frauds and impostures of every kind? There hath been printed at London, so lately as in the year 1756, a book entitled, " The Miraculous Power of the Church of Christ, Asserted through each Successive Century, from the Apostles down to the Present Time; " and from thence the author draweth' the conclusion, that the Catholic church is the true church of Christ. They must certainly "not receive the love of the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness," who can believe such fabulous and ridiculous legends, who hold it a mortal sin but to doubt of any article of their religion, who deny the free exercise of private judgment, who take away the free use of the Holy Scriptures, and so "shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, neither going in themselves, neither suffering them, who were entering in, to go in."—Dissert., XXII.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—It is hardly necessary to remark that the Papacy has always relied for support on its pretended miracles. Even in our own age the wonders performed by the Prince Hohenloe, and by the pretended seamless garment of the Savior, have been proclaimed as true miracles, and as furnishing indubitable evidence of the truth of the Roman Catholic system. The dissolving of the blood of St. Januarius, the removal of Pilate's stairs to Rome, and the transportation to Italy of the "House of our. Lady," are among the miracles to which there is a constant reference in the Papal communion. In addition to these and to all similar pretensions, there is the power claimed of performing a miracle at the pleasure of the priest by the change of bread and wine into "the body and blood, the soul and divinity" of the Lord Jesus. The power of working miracles has been one of the standing claims of the Papacy. Lying wonders—all deceivableness of unrighteousness. It would be impossible for language to describe them more clearly, in the apprehension of all Protestants, than is done in this language of the apostle Paul.—Note, In loco.

IDEM.—To any one acquainted with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, nothing can be more manifest than the correspondence of the facts in history respecting the rise of the Papacy, and the statement of the apostle Paul here. The simple facts are these: I. There were early corruptions in the church at Rome, as there were elsewhere, but peculiarly there, as Rome was the seat of philosophy and of power. 2. There were great efforts made by the bishop of Rome to increase his authority, and there was a steady approximation to what he subsequently claimed—that of being universal bishop. 3. There was a constant tendency to yield to him deference and respect in all matters. 4. This was kept in check as long as Rome was the seat of the imperial power. Had that power remained there, it would have been impossible for the Roman bishop ever to have obtained the civil and ecclesiastical eminence which he ultimately did. Rome could not have two heads, both claiming and exercising supreme power; and there never could have been "a revelation of the man of sin." 5. Constantine removed the seat of empire to Constantinople; and this, removal or “taking away " of the only restraint on the ambitious projects of the Roman bishops, gave all the opportunity which could be desired for the growth of the Papal power. In all history there cannot, probably, be found a series of events corresponding more accurately with a prophetic statement than this.—Paul, therefore, must have been inspired. —Notes, In loco.

First Timothy

Authenticity

1 Timothy 1:1-2.—Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,... unto Timothy, my own son in the faith.

PROF. EDWARD HAYES PLUMTRE, M. A.-The epistles to Timothy have been universally regarded as the productions of Paul. They are reckoned among the Pauline Epistles in the Muratorian Canon and the Pshito version. Eusebius places them among the books of the New Testament. They are cited as authoritative by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenmus. Quotations from them are found in Ignatius, Polycarp, and Theophilus of Antioch. Respecting the exact date of this epistle there are two opinions, one placing it in the year 58 or 59, the other in 64 or 65.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3255.

1 Tim. 1:3.—As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, etc.

See Acts 19:1, etc.

Genealogies

1 Tim. 1:4.—Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Fables—silly legends, of which no people ever possessed a greater stock than the Jews. Their Talmud abounds with them.—Endless genealogies—Herod destroyed the public registers of the Jews: he, being an Idumean, was jealous of the noble origin of the Jews; and that none might be able to reproach him with his descent, he ordered the genealogical tables, which were kept among the archives in the temple, to be burnt (Euseb., I., 8). From this time the Jews could refer to their genealogies only from memory, or from those imperfect tables which had been preserved in private hands; and to make out any regular line from these, must have been endless and uncertain work.— Comm., In loco.

PLUTARCH.—While we neglect and are ignorant of that which concerns ourselves we are continually searching into the genealogies of others, and can readily tell that our neighbor's grandfather was no better than a base and servile Syrian, and that his grandmother was a Thracian,—that such an one is in debt and owes three talents, and is in arrear moreover with his interest. We are inquisitive also in such matters as these—Whence came such an one's wife? what was it that such and such people talked of when they were alone together? —De Curiosit., c. 2.

The Law for Evil Doers

1 Tim. 1:9.—The law is not made for a righteous man, etc.

ARISTOTLE.—The elegant and liberal man will so conduct himself, as if he were a law to himself.— Eth., IV., 8.

Prayer to Be Offered for All

1 Tim. 2:1, 2.—I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

CYPRIAN.—We pray to God, not only for ourselves, but for all mankind, and particularly for the emperors.—Defense before Roma Procon.

TERTULLIAN.—We pray for all the emperors, that God may grant them, long life, a secure government, a prosperous family, vigorous troops, a faithful senate, an obedient people; that the whole world may be in peace; and that God may grant both to Caesar, and to every man the accomplishment of their just desires. —Apol., c. 30.

ORIGEN.—We pray for kings and rulers, with their royal authority, they may be found possessing a wise and prudent mind.—Cont. Cel., VIII.

Prayer to Be Offered Everywhere

1 Tim. 2:8.—I will, therefore, that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.

CICERO.—The best, the chastest, the most sacred and pious worship of the gods, is to reverence them always with a, pure, perfect, and unpolluted mind and voice.—De Nat. Dear., II., 28.

Modest Apparel

1 Tim. 2:9.—In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame facedness and sobriety.

EPICTETUS.—We ought to make women sensible that they are esteemed for nothing else but the appearance of a decent, and modest, and discreet behavior. —Euchir., 40.

Woman's Place and Duty

1 Tim. 2:11, 12.—Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

PLATO.—If you wish to know the virtue of a woman, it is to manage well the affairs of her family, to keep safe the things in the house, and to hearken to her husband.—Men., c. III.

PHILEMON.—It is the part of a good wife, Nicostrate, not to be superior to her husband, but to obey him. A woman who rules her husband is a great evil. —Apud Stab.

PLUTARCH.—Numa taught the Roman matrons to be sober, and accustomed them to silence.— Comp. Lycurg. c. Num., c. 3.

SOPHOCLES.—Woman, thy sex's noblest ornament is silence.—Ajax, v. 293.

Apostacy Foretold and Described

1 Tim. 4:1-4.—Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—Some shall depart from the faith, or rather, Some shall apostatize from the faith. The apostle had predicted the same thing before to the Thessalonians. It is not every error, or every heresy, that is “apostasy" from the faith. It is a revolt in the principal and essential article, when we worship God by an image or representation, or when we worship other beings besides God, and pray unto other mediators besides "the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." This is the very essence of Christian worship, to worship the one true God through the one true Christ; and to worship any other god, or any other mediator, is apostasy and rebellion against God and against Christ.

Giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, or rather, Giving heed to erroneous spirits and doctrines concerning demons (daimonion). This therefore is a prophecy that the idolatrous theology of demons professed by the Gentiles should be revived among Christians—that they should apostatize and worship demons. Demons, according to the theology of the Gentiles, were middle powers between the sovereign gods and mortal men. So saith Plato: “Every demon is a middle being between God and mortal man " (Plat. Sym., 28). So Apuleius " Demons are middle powers, by whom both our desires and deserts pass unto the gods; they are carriers between men on earth and the gods in heaven; hence of prayers, thence of gifts; they convey to and fro, hence petitions, thence supplies; or they are interpreters on both sides, and bearers of salutations; for it would not be for the majesty of the celestial gods to take care of these things." (De Deo Socr.) Of these demons there were accounted two kinds. One kind of demons were the souls of men deified or canonized after death. Thus Hesiod: "After they were dead, they were by the will of great Jupiter promoted to be demons, keepers of mortal men, observers of their good and evil Works," etc. (Of. et Di., I., 120.) So also Plato: “When good men die, they attain great honor and dignity, and become demons" (Plat. Crat., 33). The other kind of demons were such as had never been the souls of men, nor ever dwelt in mortal bodies. Both Apuleius and Ammonius speak of these; thus the latter: "There are two kinds of demons, souls separated from bodies, or such as had never inhabited bodies at all." (Plut. de Defect Orac.) These latter demons may be, paralleled with angels, as the former may with canonized saints; and as we Christians believe that there are good and evil angels, so did the heathen that there were good and evil demons.—Here St. Paul foretells that Christians, in the latter times, should attend to doctrines concerning demons. Christians never actually worshipped the evil ones, or devils, but they did come to worship demons, deceased men and women and angels.

Even in the days of the apostle there appeared the beginnings of "a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels." But the worshipping of the dead was not introduced so early into the church; it was advanced by slow degrees; and what was at first nothing more than a pious and decent respect to the memory of saints and martyrs, degenerated at last into an impious and idolatrous adoration. At first annual festivals were instituted to their honor; the next step was praying in the cemeteries at their sepulchers; then their bodies were translated into the churches; then the power of working miracles was attributed to their dead bodies, bones, and other relics; then their wonder-working relics were conveyed from place to place, and distributed among other churches; then they were invocated and adored for performing such miracles, for assisting men in their devotions, and interceding for them with God; and not only the churches, but even the fields and highways were filled with altars for invoking them.

Epiphanius, a Father of the fourth century, who was very zealous against the worship a saints and images, which was then springing up in the church, loudly complains of some Christians, who made a goddess of the blessed Virgin, and offered a cake to her as to the queen of heaven. He condemns their heresy as impious and abominable, and declares that "upon these also is fulfilled that of the apostle, Some shall apostatize from the sound doctrine, giving heed to fables and doctrines of demons; for they shall be, saith the apostle, worshippers of the dead, as in Israel also they were worshipped." It is observable that this writer explains as well as recites the words of the apostle (Epiph. adv. Hær., 78, 23).

Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. The great apostasy of the 'latter times was to prevail through the hypocrisy of liars) and hath not the great idolatry of Christians, and the worship of the dead particularly, been diffused and advanced in the world by such instruments and agents, who have " changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever?" It is impossible to relate or enumerate all the various falsehoods and lies which have been invented and propagated for this purpose; the fabulous books forged under the names of apostles, saints and martyrs; the fabulous legends of their lives, actions, sufferings and deaths; the fabulous miracles ascribed to their sepulchers, bones, and other relics; the fabulous dreams and revelations, visions and apparitions of the dead to the living; and even the fabulous saints, who never existed hut in the imagination of their worshippers. And all these stories the monks, the priests, the bishops of the church, have imposed and obtruded upon mankind, it is difficult to say whether with greater artifice or cruelty, with greater confidence or hypocrisy and pretended sanctity, a more hardened face or a more hardened conscience. The history of the church, saith Pascal, is the history of truth; but, as written by bigoted Papists, it is rather the history of lies. So well Both this prophecy coincide and agree with that in Thessalonians that the coming of the man of sin should be " after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness."

Forbidding to marry. This error also had an early origin. Saturninus, in the second century, declared matrimony to be an evil. Tatian and Marcion concurred in his opinion. The followers of these became known by the name of Continents, from their continence in regard to marriage and meats. The Gnostics asserted that to marry and beget children proceeded from the devil, and taught that men ought not to bring into the world other unhappy persons, nor supply food for death. The Council of Eliberis, in Spain, A. D. 305, forbade the clergy to marry, and commanded even those who were married to abstain altogether from their wives. The Council of Neocæsarea, A. D. 314, forbade unmarried presbyters to marry on the penalty of degradation. The monks soon after overspread the eastern church, and the western, too: and as the monks were the first who brought single life into repute, so they were the first also who revived and promoted the worship of demons. It is a thing universally known, that one of the primary and most essential laws and constitutions of all monks, whether solitary or associated, whether living in deserts or in convents, is the profession of single life, to abstain from marriage themselves, and to discourage it all they can in others. And the monks and priests and bishops of the. Church of Rome, at the present time, do not they also profess and recommend single life, as well as the worship of saints and angels? The celibacy of the clergy was fully decreed by Gregory VII. in the eleventh century; and this has been the universal law and practice of the church ever since.

Commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. As we learn from Irenæus, the ancient heretics called Continents, who taught that matrimony was not to be contracted, introduced abstinence also from animal food. It is as much the law and constitution of all monks to abstain from meats as from marriage. Frequent fasts are the rule, the boast of their order. But this idle, popish, monkish, abstinence is as unworthy of a Christian, as it is unnatural to a man. —Dissertations on the Prophecies, No. XXIII.

COUNCIL OF TRENT.—It is good and useful to supplicate the saints, and to fly to their prayers, power, and aid; but they who deny that the saints are to be invoked, or who assert that they do not pray for men, or that their invocation of them is idolatry, hold an impious opinion. —Sess., 25.

PRAYER BEFORE MASS.-In union with the holy church and its minister, and invoking the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and all the angels and saints, we now offer the adorable sacrifice of the mass, etc.

GENERAL CONFESSION.—I confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned exceedingly.

COUNCIL OF TRENT. —Whosoever shall say that the marriage state is to be preferred to a state of virginity, or celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or celibacy, than to be joined in marriage; let him be accursed.—Tenth Article, on Marriage.

CATECHISM.—It is strictly forbidden by the church to eat flesh meat on days of abstinence. To eat flesh meat on any day on which it is forbidden, without necessity and leave of the church, is very sinful.— Dr. Butler's Catech.

IBID.—The abstinence on Saturday is dispensed with, for the faithful throughout the United States, for the space of ten years (from 1833 to 1843) except when a Fast falls on a Saturday. The use of flesh meat is allowed at present by dispensation, in the diocese of Philadelphia, on all the Sundays of Lent, except Palm Sunday, and once a day on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday in each week, except the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, and also excepting Holy Week.

Godliness Profitable

1 Tim. 4:8.—Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—The man that fears, loves, and serves God, has God's blessing all through his life. His religion saves him from all those excesses both in action and passion, which sap the foundations of life, and render existence itself often a burden. The peace and love of God in the heart, produce a serenity and calm which cause the lamp of life to burn clear, strong, and permanent. Evil and disorderly passions obscure and stifle the vital spark. Every truly religious man extracts the utmost good out of life itself; and, through the Divine blessing, gets the uttermost good that is in life; and, what is better than all, acquires a full preparation here below, for an eternal life of glory above.

Thus godliness has the promise of, and secures the blessings of, both worlds.— Comm., In loco.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Godliness—piety or religion—is profitable unto all things—in every respect. There is not an interest of man, in reference to this life, or: to the life to come, which it would not promote. It is favorable to health of body, by promoting temperance, industry, and frugality ; to clearness and vigor of intellect, by giving just views of truth, and of the relative value of objects ; to peace of conscience, by leading to the faithful performance of duty; to prosperity in business, by making a man sober, honest, prudent, and industrious ; to a good name, by leading a man to pursue such a course of life as shall deserve it ; and to comfort in trial, calmness in death, and immortal peace beyond the grave.— Note, In loco.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—The influence of the Christian Religion on nations is not less evident and happy than on individuals. Wherever it has been received, it has brought with it superior light, and has completely banished the absurd systems of polytheism and pagan idolatry, with all the cruel and obscene rites with which they were accompanied ; and in their place, has substituted a system of doctrine and practice, both pure and rational. When it made its way through the Roman Empire, it abolished the unnatural practice of polygamy and concubinage, reduced the number of divorces, and mitigated the rigor of servitude, which among that people was cruel and severe. Polished and polite, as the Romans have been generally considered, they indulged in the most barbarous entertainments. They delighted to behold men combating with wild beasts and with one another; and we are informed by respectable historians, that the fights of gladiators sometimes deprived Europe of 20,000 lives in one month. Neither the humanity of Titus, nor the wisdom and virtue of Trajan, could abolish these barbarous spectacles, till the gentle and humane spirit of the Gospel put a final period to such savage practices, and they can never again be resumed in any nation where its light is diffused, and its authority acknowledged. It humanized the barbarous hordes that overturned the Roman Empire, and softened their ferocious tempers, as soon as they embraced its principles and yielded to its influence. It civilized, and raised from moral and intellectual degradation, the wild Irish, and our forefathers the ancient Britons, who were classed among the rudest of barbarians till the time they were converted to the religion of Jesus; so that the knowledge we now see diffused around us, the civilization to which we have, advanced, the moral order which prevails, the beauties which adorn our cultivated fields, the comforts and decorations connected with our cities and towns, and the present improved state of the arts and sciences, may all be considered as so many of the beneficial effects which the Christian religion has produced among us. In our own times, we have beheld effects no less powerful and astonishing, in the moral revolution which Christianity has lately produced in Tahiti, in the Sandwich Islands, in Madagascar, and in many other parts of the world—where races of the most degraded character and condition, have been enlightened, and transformed into civilized societies, worshipping the true and living God, and rejoicing in the hope of a blessed immortality. In fine, Christianity is adapted to every country and every clime. Its doctrines and precepts are equally calculated to promote the happiness of princes and subjects, statesmen and philosophers, the high and the low, the rich and the poor. It is completely adapted to the nature and necessities of men. It forbids the use of nothing but what is injurious to health of body or peace of mind, and it has a tendency to promote a friendly and affectionate intercourse among men of all nations. And we do not think it possible that the mind of man can receive a more convincing demonstration of the truth of Christianity than is set before us in the authentic facts on which it rests, in its tendency to produce universal happiness, and in the intrinsic excellence for which it is distinguished.—Improvement of Society, Sect. IX.

Steadfastness in Faith and Practice

1 Tim. 4:16.—Take heed unto thyself, And unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—The good man, persevering in his goodness, both saves himself, and brings others to a better mind.—Diss., 5.

Provision for the Household

1 Tim. 5:8.—But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

GALGACUS. —Nature dictates that to everyone, his own children and relatives should be most dear.—In Tacitus.

CICERO.—Every man should take care of his own family.—Ad Capt.

1 Tim. 5:18.—Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. See 1 Cor. 9:9.

1 Tim. 6:1.—Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, etc.

See Eph. 6:5.

Godliness and Contentment

1 Tim. 6:6.—Godliness with contentment is great gain.

See chap. 4:8.

SENECA.—I can never think him a poor man who has still enough, however small a portion it may be, wherewith to be content.—Epist., I.

1 Tim. 6:7.—For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

SENECA.—No man is born rich; every one that comes into the world is commanded to be content with food and raiment.—Epist., 20.

IDEM.—Nature, in returning, shakes off all encumbrances as in entering; thou canst not carry back more than thou broughtest in.—Epist., 20.

PHOCYLIDES. —There is no such thing as carrying riches to Hades and enjoying them there.— Phocyl., v. 104

The Love of Money

1 Tim. 6:10.—The love of money is the root of all evil.

PHOCYLIDES.—The love of money is the mother of every ill; gold and silver have always been a snare to men. o gold, chief source of ills, corrupter of life, that turneth all things upside down! – Phocyl., v. 37.

ANACREON.—

Gold breaks through every sacred tie,

And bids a friend or brother die;

The fruitful source of kindred strife,

Gold would not spare a parent's life.

Long wars and murders, crimes untold

All spring from cursed thirst of gold.

—Anac., carm. 46.

JUVENAL.—

Not any vice that taints the human soul,

More frequent points the sword, or drugs the bowl,

Than the dire lust of an untamed estate—

Since he who covets wealth disdains to wait

Law threatens, conscience calls, yet on he hies,

And this he silences, and that defies;

Fear, shame—he bears down all, and with loose rein,

Sweeps headlong o'er the alluring paths of gain.

—Sat. XIV., v. 173

1 Tim. 6:11.-But thou, O man of God, flee these things.

LUCIAN.—He thought that he who taught that riches were to be despised, ought first to show himself superior to the love of gain.—Nigr., c. 25.

The Good Fight

1 Tim. 6:12.—Fight the good fight of faith.

PLATO.—Great is the contest, great beyond all appearance, to become a good man.—De Rep., X., 8.

Vain Philosophy

1 Tim. 6:20, 21.—Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and opposition of science falsely so called; which some professing have erred concerning the faith.

PROF. PRITCHARD, Oxford.—There is no need to be frightened at the phantoms raised by such terms as matter, and force, and molecules, and protoplasmic energy, and rhythmic vibrations of the brain; there are no real terrors in a philosophy which affirms the conceivability that two and two might possibly make five; or in that which predicates that an infinite number of straight lines constitute a finite surface; or that which denies all evidence of a design in nature; or in that which assimilates the motives which induce a parent to support his offspring to the pleasures derived from wine and music; or in that which boldly asserts the unknowableness of the Supreme, and the vanity of prayer. Surely, philosophies which involve results such as these have no permanent grasp on human nature; they are in themselves suicidal, and, in their turn, after their brief day, will, like other philosophies, be refuted or denied by the next comer, and are doomed to accomplish the happy dispatch.—Address on Science and Religion before the Church Congress, at Brighton, England.

Second Timothy

Authenticity

2 Tim. 1:1, 2.—Paul, an apostle of. Jesus Christ by the will of God to Timothy my dearly beloved son.

See 1 Tim. 1:1, 2.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—The second epistle to Timothy unites not fewer proofs in favor of its Pauline origin than the first epistle.—Introduction to Epist.

Life and Immortality Revealed

2 Tim. 1:10.—Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—It is not meant that there were no intimations of this truth before; but that Christ removed all doubt and ambiguity on the subject. The ideas of the wisest of the heathen respecting a future life were very obscure, and their hopes very faint. Seneca says of it, “that which our wise men do promise, but do not prove." (Epist., 102.) And Cicero alluding to the different sentiments of philosophers concerning the matter, says, “Which of these opinions is true, some god must tell us; which is most like to truth, is a great question." Of the resurrection and future life of the body, they had no conception whatever. With what propriety, then, may it be said that these doctrines were brought to light through the Gospel.—Notes, In loco.

The True Soldier

2 Tim. 2:4.—No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.

GROTIUS.—Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry, or to engage in any husbandry or trade; and they were forbidden to act as tutors to any person, or curators to any man's estate, or proctors in the cause of other men: and all this, lest such engagements and relations should divert their minds from that which was to be the sole object of pursuit.—In loco.

Striving Lawfully

2 Tim. 2:5.—And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strive lawfully.

PAUSANIAS.—Every competitor in the athletic contests, before he was entered upon the list, was obliged to take an oath that he would violate none of the regulations, and if afterward he did violate any one regulation, it debarred him from the prize, even though victorious.—Eliaca.

Gentleness and Patience

2 Tim. 2:24, 25.—And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.

PLATO.—How can one in mild terms admonish and teach those who deny that the gods have any existence, and that too without a single sufficient reason?

‘Let us however make the attempt: for there is no reason why they should be mad after pleasure, and we should be so too with anger against them. Let our addresses to persons of this kind, therefore, be kind and passionless, and let us speak, mildly, repressing our anger, conversing with them thus—" My child, you are young: but time, as it advances, will cause you to change your opinions, etc."—De Leg., X., 3.

2 Tim. 3:1—This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

See 2 Thess. 2:1-12, and 1 Tim. 4:1-3.

Inspiration of Scripture

2 Tim. 3:16, 17.—All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—This properly refers to the Old Testament; and it is the solemn testimony of Paul that it was all inspired.—Note, In loco.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—And, finally, I may state, as the conclusion of the whole matter, that the Bible contains within itself all that under God is required to account for and dispose of all forms of infidelity, and to turn to the best and highest uses all that man can learn of, nature; if only its truths can be presented in an intelligent and loving manner, and by the lips of men themselves animated by the Divine Spirit, whose inspiration speaks in the Sacred Scriptures.— Nature and the Bible, p. 221.

Ready to Be Offered

2 Tim. 4:6.—I am now ready to be offered up, and the time of my departure is at hand.

LUCAN.—In war, in dangers, oft it has been known, That fear has driven the headlong coward on; Give me the man, whose cooler soul can wait With patience for the proper hour of fate.— Phars., VII., 103.

The Faith Kept

2 Tim. 4:7.—I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.

EPICTETUS. —The champions in this greatest of combats must not grow 'weary, but be content to bear suffering. For this is no combat of wrestling or boxing, where both he who succeeds and he who succeeds not may be equal in worth, or equal in misery; but a combat for good fortune and for happiness itself.—Epict., lib. 25.

SENECA. —Life is a warfare.: such men therefore who are ordered from place, who undergo all manner of difficulties in the execution of the most dangerous commissions, are the brave men and chiefs in the army.—Epist., 94.

The Crown of Righteousness

2 Tim. 4:8.—Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.

PLUTARCH. —To Lycurgus whose performances were so illustrious, the conclusion of life was the crown of happiness.—Lycurg., c. 29.

DR. JOHN KITTO. —The soldiers and officers of the Roman army received various rewards, proportionate to their merit. The greatest of all rewards was the civic crown of oak-leaves, given to one who had saved the life of a citizen. The honorary crowns were usually conferred by the general in the presence of the army, and such as received them, after a public eulogium on their valor, were placed next to his person, All this seems strikingly illustrative' of the comparison used by the apostle, and points its applications.—Pict. Bib. In loco.

Titus

Authenticity of the Epistle

Titus 1:1 — Paula servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ... to Titus, mine own son after the common faith.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The direct external evidence in favor of the authenticity and genuineness of this epistle is as firm and complete as that of the other pastoral epistles, if not more so. Nothing can well be more, explicit than the quotations from it in Irenmus, in Clemens Alexandrinus, in Tertullian, to say nothing of earlier allusions in Justin Martyr and Theophilus. 'Internally also the Epistle to Titus has all the characteristics of the other pastoral epistles. All this tends to show that this letter was written about the same time and under similar circumstances with the other two. While, on the other hand, this epistle has marks in its phraseology and style which assimilate it to the general body of the epistles of St. Paul.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3268.

God Cannot Lie

Titus 1:2.—God, that cannot lie.

PLATO.—What then does the god mean? for he does not speak falsely; that it is impossible for him to do.—Apol. Socr., c. 6.

Titus 1:5.—For this cause left I thee in Crete, etc.

See Acts 27:7.

Character of the Cretians

Titus 1:12. —One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

DR. ADAM CLARKE. —This was Epimenides, who was reckoned by many the seventh wise man of Greece. By the Cretans he was reputed a prophet; Diogenes Laertius mentions some of his prophecies. The words quoted here by the apostle, according to St. Jerome and others, are taken from a work of Epimenides, now no longer extant, and form this hexameter verse:

The Cretans are always liars; destructive wild beasts; sluggish gluttons.

OVID.—I sing of things well known. Crete, with the hundred cities, how-ever fond of lying, cannot deny this.—De art. amand., I., 297.

CALLIMACHUS.—The Cretans, always liars, vaunt in vain, And impious built thy tomb on Dicte's plain. —Hymn Joy., v. 8.

CICERO.—And what a bench will it be, O ye good gods! A Cretan judge, and he the most worthless of men. Whom can a defendant employ to propitiate him? He comes of a hard nation.—Phil., V., 5.

Titus 2:9.—Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, etc.

See Eph. 6:5.

That Blessed Hope

Titus 2:13.—Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

PLATO.—Excellent the contest; great the hope!—Phœdo, c. 63.

CICERO.—These opinions do indeed bring us hope, if it is any pleasure to you to think that souls, after they leave the body, may go to heaven as to a permanent home. I have great pleasure in that thought, and it is what I most desire.—Disp. Tusc., I., I I.

Titus 3:9.—But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, etc.

See 1 Tim. 1:4.

Nicopolis

Titus 3:12.—Be diligent to come unto me to Nicopolis, for I have determined there to winter.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—There were several cities of the naive of Nicopolis; but that here intended doubtless was the celebrated Nicopolis of Epirus, built by Augustus in memory of the battle of Actium, and on the ground occupied by his army before the engagement. This was on a peninsula to the west of the bay of Actium, what is now a low and unhealthy situation, and a very desolate place. The remains have been often described.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2147.

Philemon

Genuineness of the Epistle

Verse 1.—Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon, our dearly beloved, and fellow laborer.

PROF. HORATIO BALCH HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—The date of this epistle may be fixed with much precision; it was written in the year 63, or early in 64. Nothing is wanting to confirm the genuineness of this epistle. The external testimony is unimpeachable. It is not quoted so often by the earlier Christian. Fathers as some of the other letters; its brevity, and the fact that its contents are not didactic or polemic, account for that omission. The Canon of Muratori, which comes to us from the second century, enumerates this as one of Paul's epistles. Tertullian mentions it, and says that Marcion admitted it into his collection. Origen and Eusebius include it among the universally acknowledged writings of the early Christian times. It is so well attested, historically, that, as Dr. Wette says, its genuineness on that ground is beyond doubt. It will be found also that all the historical allusions which the apostle makes to events in his own life, or to other persons with whom he was connected, harmonize perfectly with the statements or incidental intimations contained in the Acts of the Apostles, or other epistles of Paul.—Smith's Dict. of p. 2483.

DR. DODDRIDGE.—It is impossible to read over this admirable, epistle without being touched with the delicacy of sentiment and the masterly address that appear in every part of it. We see here, in a most striking light, how perfectly consistent true politeness is—not only with all the warmth and sincerity of a friend, but even with the dignity of the Christian and the apostle. And if this letter were to be considered in no other view than as a mere human composition, it must be allowed to be a masterpiece in its kind. As an illustration of this remark, it may not be improper to compare it with an epistle, of Pliny, that seems to have been written on a similar occasion; which, though penned by one that was reckoned to excel in the epistolary style, though it has undoubtedly many beauties, yet must be acknowledged by every impartial reader vastly inferior to this animated composition of the apostle.—In loco.

CAIUS PLINY to Sabinianus, Health,

Thy freedman, with whom thou didst say thou wert incensed, came to me, and having thrown himself at my feet, grasped them as if they had been thine. He wept much; he plead much; and yet pleaded more by his silence. In short, he fully convinced me that he was a penitent. I do sincerely believe that he is reformed, because he perceives that he has done wrong. I know that thou art incensed against him; and I know also that thou art justly so; but then clemency has its chief praise when there is the greatest cause for anger. Thou hast loved the man; and I hope that thou wilt, love him again. In the meantime it may suffice that thou dost suffer thyself to be entreated for him. It will be right for thee again to be offended if he deserves it; because, having allowed thyself to be entreated, you will do it with greater propriety.

Forgive something for his youth; forgive on account of his tears; forgive on account of thine own kindness: do not torment him; do not torment thyself-for thou wilt be tormented when thou, who art of so gentle a disposition, dost suffer thyself to be angry. I fear, if I should unite my prayers to his, that I should seem not to ask, but to compel. Yet I will write them, and the more largely and earnestly, too, as I have sharply and severely reproved him;, solemnly threatening him, should he offend again, never more to intercede for him. This I said, to him, because it was necessary to alarm him; but I will not say the-same to thee. For perhaps I may again entreat thee, and again obtain, if now that shall be done which it is fit that I should ask and you concede. Farewell.—Epistolar, lib. ix., ep. 21.

Onesimus Once a Slave

Verse 16.—Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, D. D., LL. D.—Onesimus was a native of Colossae in Phrygia. Slaves were numerous in that region, and the name itself of Phrygia was almost synonymous with that of slave. Hence it happened that in writing to the Colossians, Paul had occasion to instruct them concerning the duties of masters and servants to each other. Onesimus was one of this unfortunate class.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2252.

Undesigned Coincidence

Verses 23, 24.—There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow-laborers.

DR. WILLIAM PALEY.—As the letter to Philemon, and that to the Colossians, were written at the same time, and sent by the same messenger, the one to a particular inhabitant, the other to the church of Colosse, it may be expected that the same or nearly the same persons would be about St. Paul, and join with him, as was the practice, in the salutations of the epistle. Accordingly we find the name of Aristarchus, Marcus, Epaphras, Luke and Demas in both epistles. Timothy, who is joined with St. Paul in the superscription of the epistle to the Colossians, is joined with him in this. Tychicus did not salute Philemon, because he accompanied the epistle to Colosse, and would undoubtedly there see him.— Horœ Balance, c. XIII., No. 2.

Hebrews

Author of the Epistle

Rev. WILLIAM T. BULLOCK, M. A.—During the first century after this epistle was written, there was not one dissentient voice respecting its canonical authority: it was received by Clement, writing from Rome; by Justin Martyr, familiar with the traditions of Italy and Asia; by his contemporaries, Pinytus the Cretan bishop, and the predecessors of Clement and Origen at Alexandria; and by the compilers of the Peshito version of the New Testament. Afterward a temporary doubt concerning its authorship arose in some of the Latin churches. The church of Jerusalem, as the original receiver of the epistle, was the depository of that oral testimony on which both its authorship and canonical authority rested, and was the fountain-head of information which satisfied the Eastern and Greek churches. But the church of Jerusalem was early hidden in exile and obscurity. And Palestine, after the destruction of Jerusalem, became unknown ground to that class of “dwellers in Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome," who once maintained close religious intercourse with it.

All these considerations may help to account for the fact that the Latin churches hesitated to receive this epistle, for a time. All the rest of orthodox Christendom from the beginning was agreed upon the canonical authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews. No Greek or Syriac writer ever expressed a doubt. It was acknowledged in various public documents; received by the framers of the Apostolic Constitutions, A. D. 250; quoted in the epistle of the Synod of Antioch, A. D. 269; appealed to by the debaters in the first Council of Nice, A. D. 325; included' in that catalog of canonical books which was added to the canons of 'the Council of. Laodicea, A. D. 365; and sanctioned by the Quinisextine Council at Constantinople, A. D. 692. The canonical authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews is then secure, so far as it can be established by the tradition of Christian churches. The doubts which affected it were admitted in remote places, or in the failure of knowledge, or under the pressure of times, of intellectual excitement; and they have disappeared before full information and calm judgment.-Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1023.

Heb. 1:10.:—Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.

See Gen. 1:1 and Psa. 102:25.

Creation's Change and Dissolution

Heb. 1:11, 12.—They shall perish, but thou remainest: and they shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON.—1. There is pat present, in the material world, a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than equivalent dissipation, is impossible to inanimate material processes, and is probably never effected by means of organized matter, either endowed with vegetable life or subjected to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come, the earth must again be, unfit for habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be, performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject.—Transactions of the Royal Society, 1852.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER. —Inexorable fact and demonstration have not only dissipated perpetually recurrent theories as to the eternity of the present material system, but furnished presumptive evidence of a new and higher order of existences. These remarkable conclusions not only confirm the Bible declaration as to a commencement, but with prophetic directness they sustain its delineations of change and dissolution, and of the establishment of new heavens and a new earth.—Blending Lights, p. 25.

Ministering Angels

Heb. 1:14.—Are they not ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation

HESIOD.—

Earth hovering spirits they their charge began,

The ministers of good, and guards of men;

Mantled with mists of darkening air they glide,

And compass earth and pass on every side,

And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes,

Where just deeds live, 'or crooked wrongs arise;

And shower the wealth of seasons from above,

Their kingly office, delegate from Jove.

—Oper. et Dies, v. 121.

PLUTARCH.—There is a third kind of providence, viz., that of the angels (daimonia), who are placed and ordained about the earth, as superintendents, to observe and watch over the deeds of men.— De Fat., c. 9.

Heb. 2:6.—What is man that thou art mindful of him, etc.

See Psa. 8:3, 4.

Heb. 2:8.—Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.

See Gen. 1:28.

Fear of Death

Heb. 2:15.—And delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

GIBBON.—The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colors the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul... Since therefore the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most, the probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the condition, of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body.—Decline and Fall, Chapter 15

SHAKSPEARE.—

Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life;

But that the dread of something after death,—

The undiscovered country from whose bourne

No traveler returns,-puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

—Hamlet.

Fellow-Feeling

Heb. 2:18.—For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.

VIRGIL—

For I myself like you have been distressed,

Till heaven afforded me this place of rest:

Like you, an alien in a land unknown,

I learn to pity woes so like my own.

—Æn., I., 628.

The Honor due the Master Builder

Heb. 3:3, 4.—For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honor than the house. For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The architect is worthy of more respect than the house he has made. He exhibits intellect and skill; the house, however splendid, has neither. The plan of the house was drawn by him; its beauty, its proportions, its ornaments, are what he made them, and but for him they would not have existed. Michael Angelo was worthy of more honor than St. Peter's at Rome; and Sir Christopher Wren worthy of more than St. Paul's at London. Galileo is worthy of more praise than the Telescope, and Fulton more than a Steam-engine. All the evidence of skill and adeptness that there is in the invention had its origin in the inventor; all the beauty of the statue or the temple had its origin in the mind of him that designed it. An author is worthy of more honor than a book; and he that forms a work of art is worthy of more respect than the work itself.—Now, Lie that built all things is God! —Note, In loco.

Faith Necessary to Profit

Heb. 4:2.—The word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—How can a man be profited by the records of history if he does not believe them? How can he be benefited by the truths of science if he does not believe them? So of the knowledge of salvation.—Note, In loco.

All Naked and Open to God

Heb. 4:13.—Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

HESIOD.—Jove's all-seeing and all-knowing eye Discerns at pleasure things that hidden lie.— Op. et. Di., v. 265.

PLUTARCH.—God is not ignorant of the nature and disposition of every man.—De ser. num. vind., c. 20.

EPICTETUS.—God sees and hears every thought.—Epict., II., 8.

LUCIAN.—Man may not see thee do an impious deed; But God thy very inmost thought can read.—Phil., ep. 9.

Milk for Children

Heb. 5:12.—Ye are become such as have need of milk, and not strong meat.

EPICTETUS.—Will you not be weaned from your milk like children, and adapt yourselves for strong meat?—Epict., II., 16.

All Must Die

Heb. 9:27.—It is appointed unto men once to die.

SENECA.—All mankind, whoever are or shall be, are condemned to die. All those flourishing cities that have the world at command, and all the greatness and splendor of foreign empires, in whatever part of the globe, shall one day fall into various kind of ruins and be no more. Why then should I complain or be grieved, if I precede the general fate of things by a few moments?—Epist., 71.

The Christian Assembly

Heb. 10:25.—Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

PLINY.—Those who confessed that they had once been Christians, but had abandoned that profession, asserted at the same time that this had been the sum of their fault or error, namely, that they were accustomed to meet together on a certain day before the dawn, to repeat alternately among themselves hymn's to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by an oath, not to any evil purpose, but that they would not be guilty of theft, robbery, adultery, or dishonesty; which being done, they departed, but assembled again to eat food in common, and in an harmless manner.—Epistle to Trojan.

Faith Indispensable

Heb. 11:6.—Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

SENECA.—The first step to the right worship of God is to believe that there is a God. And next, to ascribe to him all majesty, and goodness, without which true majesty cannot subsist; to know likewise that it is he who governs the world and presides over the universe as his own, who hath taken mankind in general under his protection, and on some is pleased to bestow particular favor. He can neither do nor suffer evil. —Epist., 95.

Heb. 11:7.—By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house.

See Gen. 6:5, etc.

Strangers and Pilgrims

Heb. 11:13.—Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

PLUTARCH.—Empedocles showeth that all men are but strangers, passengers, foreigners, and exiles in the world.—De Exil., c. 18.

Firm Endurance

Heb. 11:35.—Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance.

SENECA.—Why do you wonder at my saying, that some rejoice in being burned, wounded, bound in chains, and slain, nay, that sometimes they have made it their choice.—Epist., 71.

Heb. 11:37.—They were sawn asunder.

ARISTOPHANES.—May I perish, and be sawn in two.—Equit., v. 765.

Ignominy of the Cross

Heb. 12:2.—Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.

GIBBON.—An instrument of the tortures which were inflicted only on slaves and strangers, became an object of horror in the eyes of a Roman citizen; and the ideas of guilt, of pain, and of ignominy, were closely united with the idea of the CROSS.—Decline and Fall, c. xx.

CICERO.—In the middle of the forum of Messana, a Roman citizen, O judges, was beaten with rods; and a cross, a cross, I say, was prepared for him.—In Verr. VI., 62.

IDEM.—Even if death be threatened, we may die freemen; but the executioner, and the veiling of the head, and the very name of the cross should be far removed, not only from the persons of Roman citizens, but from their thoughts, and eyes, and ears; the bare possibility of being exposed to these things, the mere mention of them is unworthy of a Roman citizen and of a freeman.—Pro. Rab., c. 5.

Divine Chastisement

Heb. 12:6.—Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—To all these wanderings and sufferings the Divinity exposed him with benevolent intentions. These exercises were assigned to him by a divine allotment, through which he both was, and appeared to be, a worthy man.—Diss., 22.

SENECA.—The gods neither suffer evil themselves, nor inflict it upon others; though they sometimes chastise and lay heavy afflictions upon some persons, which have the appearance of Evil.—Epist., 95.

Heb. 12:11.—Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

PLATO.—The art which makes men better is that which chastises properly, and knows the good and bad.—Amator., c. 7.

MENANDER.—Let no one be too much cast down in adversity: perhaps this may be the occasion of good.—Apud Stab., 108.

CATO.—I had rather my good actions should go unrewarded than my bad ones uncorrected.— Plut. Cat. Maj., c. 8.

Sympathy for the Imprisoned

Heb. 13:3.—Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.

LUCIAN.—Proteus, being accused of worshipping the famous Magus (Jesus Christ), who was crucified in Palestine for having introduced novel mysteries into the world, was arrested and thrown into prison; a circumstance that contributed not a little to fan in him that singular vanity which had actuated him through life. For no sooner was he in confinement than the Christians, who looked upon it as a great disappointment to the common cause, attempted by all possible means to procure his enlargement from prison; and not succeeding, they let, him at least want for nothing, and were the more assiduous in affording him every supply that could conduce to his accommodation and comfort. By the first dawn of day a number of old women and deaconesses, and young orphans, were seen hovering about the prison; some of the most principal even bribed the jailers, and passed whole nights with him. Likewise sumptuous meals were carried in to him; and they read their sacred books together. Several even came from different cities in Asia, as deputies from the Christians in those parts, to offer their assistance and to be his advocates on his trial, and to comfort him.—De Morte Pereg., c. 12, 13.

James

Canonicity of the Epistle

James 1:1.—James, a servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes, which

are scattered abroad, greeting.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The particular proof of the canonical authority of this epistle is contained in the evidence that it was written by one of the apostles. It was early received as of authority in the churches. It was included in the old Syriac version, the Peshita, made either in the first century or in the early part of the second. Ephrem, the Syrian, in his Greek works, made use of it in many places. It is quoted as of authority by several of the Fathers, as by Clement of Rome, by Hermas, and by Jerome (see Lardner, Vol. VI., p. 195-199).—Introd. to James, p. xiv.

PROF. FREDERICK MEYRICK, M. A., Oxon.—Eusebius bears witness that it was publicly read in the churches, and in his time accepted as canonical. Origen bears the same testimony as Eusebius. It is quoted by nearly all the Fathers of the fourth century. In A. D. 397 the Council. of Carthage accepted it as canonical, and from that time there has been no further question of its genuineness on the score of external testimony: and the objection on internal grounds proves nothing except against the objectors, for it really rests on a mistake.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1208.

Wavering

James 1:6.—But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed.

EPICTETUS.—No man can improve while he is-wavering. Whichever way you decide to be preferable, incline to that way altogether, and let no other kind of reasoning draw you aside.—Epict., lib. iv., c. 2.

CICERO.—A mind that disagrees and quarrels with itself, cannot taste any portion of clear and unrestrained pleasure.—De Fin., I., 18.

Whence Temptations Spring

Jas. 1:13, 14.—Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

HOMER.—

Perverse mankind! whose wills, created free,

Charge all their woes on absolute decree;

All to the dooming gods their guilt translate,

And follies are miscalled the crimes of fate.

—Odyss., I., 32.

PLATO.—To say that God, who is good, is the cause of ills to any one, this we must by all means oppose, nor suffer it to be said in our state.—De Rep., II., 19.

All Good From God

James 1:17.—Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—There is nothing good given to man which does not proceed from God.— Diss., 22.

PLATO.—We have no good 'at all which the gods did not impart.—Ruth., c. 18.

The Hearer Only

James 1:23.—For if any man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass.

PLAUTUS.—Not only for the sake of the face were it right for men to have a mirror for themselves, but one with which they might be able to examine the heart of discretion and the resources of the mind; when they had looked in that, they might afterward consider how they had passed their lives in guilt.— Epidic., act iv., scene I.

The Friend of God

James 2:23.—Abraham believed God, and it seas imputed undo him Ter righteousness: and he

was called the Friend of God.

PLATO.—As respects the gods, the unjust man will be a foe, but the just man a friend.— De Rep., I., 23.

EPICTETUS.—I am free and the friend of God, so as to obey him willingly; but I must not value any other things; for it is not his will that I should value them.—Epict., IV., 3.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—The pious man is a friend to the Deity; but the superstitious man is a flatterer only.—Diss., 4.

The Tongue a World of Iniquity

James 3:5, 6.—Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.

EURIPIDES.—From a small beginning the tongue furnishes a mighty dispute to men.— Androm., v. 642.

PLUTARCH.—By means of a little spark you might set Mount Ida on fire: so a word spoken to one man may reach to every ear in the city.—De Garrul., C. 10.

All Living Creatures Tamable

James 3:7.—For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind.

EURIPIDES.—Small is the power which nature has given to man, but by various acts of his superior understanding, he has subdued the tribes of the sea, the earth, and the air.—In Barnes.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—There is perhaps no kind of creature, to which man has access, which might not be tamed by him, with proper perseverance. The ancients seem to have made more exertions to this end, and with much better success, than ourselves. The examples given by Pliny of creatures tamed by men, relate to elephants, lions, and tigers, among beasts; to the eagle among birds; to asps and other serpents: and to crocodiles, and various fishes, among the inhabitants of the water (Nat. Hist. VIII., 9, 16, 17; and X. 5, 44.) The lion was very commonly tamed by the ancient Egyptians.—Pict. Bib., In loco.

The Tongue Untamable

James 3:8.—But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

REV. ALBERT BARNES. —The allusion here seems to be to the bite of a venomous reptile. Nothing would better describe the mischief that may be done by the tongue. There is no sting of a serpent that does so much evil in the world; there is no poison more deadly to the frame than the poison of the tongue is to the happiness of man. Who, for example, can stand before the power of the slanderer? What mischief can be done in society that can be compared with that which he may do?—In loco.

SHAKSPEARE.—

'Tis slander;

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue

Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath

Rides on the posting winds, and Both belie

All corners of the world: kings, queens, and states,

Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave

This viperous slander enters.

—In Cymbeline.

James 3:9.—And therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—The human soul is most near and most similar to divinity. —Diss., 38.

See Gen. 1:27.

Whence Come Wars

James 4:1.—From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members?

PLATO.—Nothing else but the body and its desires occasion wars, seditions, and contests; for all wars among us arise on account of our desires to acquire wealth.—Phœdo, c. I I.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—All things are full of war and injustice: for desires wander everywhere, exciting in every land an immoderate desire of possessing; and all places are filled with armies marching to invade the property of others.—Diss., 13.

CICERO.—Desires are insatiable, and ruin not only individuals but entire families, and often overturn the whole state. From desires arise hatred, dissensions, quarrels, seditions, wars. Nor is it only out of doors that these passions vent themselves, nor is it only against others that they run with blind violence; they are often shut up, as it were, in the mind, and throw that into confusion with their disagreements.— De Fin., I., 13.

The Proud and the Humble

James 4:6.—God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. XENOPHON.-Perhaps God has ordained this in order to humble these proud conceited boasters, and to give us the greater glory who derive all our hopes from the gods.—Anab., VI., 3.

DIODORUS SICULUS.—God, I conceive, purposely sets himself, by contrary events, to disappoint the expectations of those who proudly resolve beforehand what shall absolutely be done.—Diod. Sic., XX., 13.

The One Lawgiver

James 4:12.—There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy.

PROF. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A.—How incomparably the nature of God must be elevated above any conceptions which our natural reason enables us to form! The Divine Mind must be conceived by us as the seat of those Laws of nature which we have discovered. It must be no less the seat of those Laws which we have not yet discovered, though these may and must be of a character far different from anything we can guess. The Supreme Intelligence must therefore contain the Laws, each according to their true dependence, of organic life, of sense, of animal impulse, and must contain also the purpose and intent' for which these powers were put into play. But the Governing Mind must comprehend also the Laws of responsible creatures which the world contains, and must entertain the purposes for which their responsible agency was given them. It must include the Laws and Purposes connected by means of the notions, which responsibility implies, of desert and reward, of moral excellence in various degrees, and of well-being as associated with right-doing. All the Laws which govern the moral world are expressions of the thoughts and intentions of our Supreme Ruler. All the contrivances for moral no less than for physical good, for the peace of mind, and other rewards of virtue, for the elevation and purification of individual character, for the civilization and refinement of states, their advancement in intellect and virtue, for the diffusion of good, and the repression of evil; all the blessings that wait on perseverance and energy, in a good cause; on unquenchable love of mankind, and unconquerable devotedness to truth; on purity and self-denial; on faith, hope, and charity; all these things are indications of the character, will, and future intentions of that God, of whom we have endeavored to track the footsteps upon earth, and to show his handiwork in the heavens. And if, in endeavoring to trace the tendencies of the vast labyrinth of Laws by which the universe is governed, we are sometimes lost and bewildered, and can scarce, or not at all, discern the line by which pain, and sorrow, and vice, fall in with a scheme directed to the strictest right and greatest good, we yet find no room to faint or falter: knowing that these are the darkest and most tangled recesses of our knowledge; that into them science has as yet cast no ray of light; that in them reason has as yet caught sight of no general law by which we may securely hold: while, in those regions where we can see clearly, where science has thrown her strongest illumination upon the scheme of creation; where we have had displayed to us the General Laws which give rise to all the multifarious variety of particular facts; we find all full of wisdom, and harmony, and beauty: and all this wise selection of means, this harmonious combination of Laws, this beautiful symmetry of relations, directed with no exception which human investigation has yet discovered, to the preservation, the diffusion, the well-being of those living things, which, though of their nature we know so little, we cannot doubt to be the worthiest objects of the Creator's care.—Astronomy and General Physics, p. 193.

See Ex. 20:3-17; and Deut. 5:7-21.

Presuming on the Future

James 4:13, 14.—Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue them a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

PLUTARCH.—How blind is man to futurity!—Solon, c. 12.

SENECA.—How ridiculous is it to promise ourselves a long life, when we are not certain of to-morrow. O the madness of entering into distant speculations.—Epist., 101.

See Prov. 27:1

James 4:15.—For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. CYRUS.—Our design will succeed, if God be willing.—Xen. Anab., VII., 3.

The Latter Rain

James 5:7.—Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and bath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—In the climate of Palestine there are two rainy seasons—the autumnal and the spring rains—called here and elsewhere in the scriptures "the early and the latter rain."—In loco.

James 5:12.—But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath; etc.

See Matt, 5:34.

The Effectual Prayer

James 5:16.—The effectual fervent prayer of e righteous man availeth much.

PINDAR.—The gods above with favoring ear The prayers of pious mortals hear.—Olymp., VIII., 10.

First Peter

Authenticity of the Epistle

1 Pet. 1:1.—Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, tia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

REV. FREDERICK CHARLES COOK, M. A.—Concerning the authenticity of this epistle no doubt has ever been entertained in the church. The external evidence to this is of the strongest kind. It was known to Polycarp, and frequently referred to by him in the beginning of the second century; it was recognized by Papias, and repeatedly quoted by Irenæus, Clemens of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. It was accepted without hesitation by the universal church. The internal evidence is equally strong.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 2455.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, all these were provinces of Asia Minor.—In loco.

CICERO.—The Senate decrees that Caius Cassius, proconsul, shall have the government of Syria; and that he shall have money and men for carrying on the war throughout Syria, Asia, Bithynia, and Pontus.— Phil., II., 12.

Trial of Faith

1 Pet. 1:7.—That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

PLATO.—Young persons are to be tried far more than gold in the fire. And he who, in childhood, youth, and manhood, has been thus tried and come out pure, may be appointed governor and guardian of the state; honors are to be paid him while he lives, and at his death he should receive the highest rewards of public burial and other memorials.—De Rep., III., 20.

CICERO.—It is difficult to distinguish true friendship from that which is counterfeit, unless something occur to try it as gold is tried in the fire.—Epist. Fam., IX., 15.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Gold, when exposed to the action of fire, becomes red hot before it melts; but in melting suffers no alteration; but if a strong heat be applied while in fusion, it becomes of a beautiful green color. The continual action of any furnace, however long applied, has no effect on any of its properties. It has been kept in a state of fusion for several months, in the furnace of a glass house, without suffering the smallest change.—Com. In loco.

Milk for Babes

1 Peter 2:2.—As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.

QUINTILIAN.—I recommend it to teachers that they imitate the nurses in nourishing the tender mind, and that they fill it with the milk, as I may call it, of agreeable literature—Quintil., II., 4.

Holy Priesthood

1 Pet. 2:5.—Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, etc.

M. ANTONINUS.—The good and virtuous man is a kind of priest and minister of the gods.— M. Anton., III., 4.

1 Pet. 2:13.—Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme. See Rom. 13:4.

1 Pet. 2:14.—Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well.

ULPIAN.—It is the duty of a good and vigilant president to see to it that his province be peaceable and quiet. And that he ought to make diligent search after sacrilegious persons, robbers, man-stealers and thieves, and to punish every one according to their guilt.—See Larcener's Credibility, Works I., 77.

1 Pet. 2:18.—Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, etc.

See Eph. 6:5-9.

1 Pet. 3:1.—Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, etc.

See Eph. 5:22.

Plaiting the Hair

1 Pet. 3:3.—Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing gold, or of putting on of apparel.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—Plaiting the hair, and variously folding it about the head, was the most ancient and most simple mode of disposing of this chief ornament of the female head. It was practiced anciently in every part of the East; and is so to the present day in India, in China, and also in Barbary. It was also prevalent among the Greeks and Romans, as ancient gems, busts and statues, still remaining, sufficiently declare. We have a remarkable instance of the plaiting of the hair in a statue of Agrippina, wife of Germanicus. Antique relics show the different modes of dressing the hair which obtained among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, and other nations. Thin plates of gold were often mixed with the hair, to make it appear more ornamental by the reflection of light and of the solar rays. Small golden buckles were also used in different parts; and among the Roman ladies, pearls and precious stones of different colors. In monuments of antiquity the heads of the married and single women may be known; the former by the hair being parted from the forehead over the middle of the top of the head; the latter by being quite close, or being plaited and curled, all in a general mass,—Note, In loco.

Ornament of the Heart

1 Peter 3:4.—But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

NAUMACHIUS.—Be not too fond of gold, neither wear purple hyacinth about your neck, or the green jasper, of which foolish persons are proud. Do not covet such vain ornaments, neither view yourself too often in the glass, nor twist your hair into a multitude of curls, etc.— In Benson, quoted from Fragments.

PLUTARCH.—Crates, the philosopher, said, That is an ornament which doth adorn, and that adorneth a wife which maketh her more comely and decent. Jewels of gold, emeralds, robes of purple and scarlet, cannot do this; bat only that which causeth her to be reputed grave, sober, lowly and modest.— Conj. Prœt., c. 26.

PLAUTUS.—I had rather be adorned with a good disposition than with gold. —Pœn., act I., scene 2.

Sarah's Reverence for Abraham

1 Peter 3:6.—Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—The word " lord " has the elementary idea of ruling, and this is the sense here. Among the Romans it was quite common for wives to use the appellation lord when speaking of their husbands. The same custom also prevailed among the Greeks. —Note, In loco.

PHOCION'S WIFE.—My ornament is my husband, now for the twentieth year general of the Athenians. —Plut. Life of Phoc.

1 Pet. 3:7.—Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, etc.

See Eph. 5:28.

Unity, Love, and Sympathy

1 Peter 3:8.—Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous.

EPICTETUS.—Be of service to your companions, by giving way to all, yielding to them, bearing with them; and not by throwing out your own ill humor upon them.—Epict., III., 13.

The Good Ever Safe

1 Pet. 3:53.—And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?

PLATO.—It is very difficult to possess the power of not being injured; nor is it possible to acquire it perfectly, otherwise than by becoming perfectly good. —De Leg., VIII., I.

PLUTARCH. —As Agis was going to execution he perceived one of the officers lamenting his fate with tears; upon which he said, My friend, dry up your tears; for, as I suffer innocently, I am in a better condition than those who condemn me contrary to law and justice.—Agis, c. 20.

What Christians Should Be

1 Pet. 3:15, 16.—But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear: having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evil doers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.

GIBBON.—When the Christians of Bithynia were brought before the tribunal of the younger Pliny, they assured the proconsul that, far from being engaged in any unlawful conspiracy, they were bound by a solemn obligation to abstain from the commission of those crimes which disturb the private or public peace of society, from theft, robbery, adultery, perjury and fraud. Near a century afterward Tertullian, with an honest pride, could boast that very few (if any) Christians had suffered by the hand of the executioner, except on account of their religion. Their serious and sequestered life, averse to the gay luxury of the age, inured them to chastity, temperance, economy, and all the sober domestic virtues. As the greater number were of some trade or profession, it was incumbent on them, by the strictest integrity and the fairest dealing, to remove the suspicions which the profane aw too apt to conceive against the appearances of sanctity. The contempt of the world exercised them in the habits of humility, meekness and patience. The more they were persecuted, the more closely they adhered to each other. Their mutual charity and unsuspecting confidence has been remarked by infidels, and was too often abused by perfidious friends.—Decline and Fall, Chapter 15

The End Near

1 Peter 4:7.—But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.

SENECA—The end of all things is at hand: the time, I say, is near; even that which` shall eject the happy, and deliver the wretched.—Epist., too.

The Cloak of Charity

1 Peter 4:8.—For charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

MENANDER.—It is not my part to expose an evil that is unseen. I say that it ought rather to be concealed.—Apud Stob., c. XIII

PLUTARCH. —Pompey's reputation as to power was great, and it was equally respectable as to virtue and moderation: with which, he covered the offenses of his friends and acquaintances.—Pomp., c. 39.

Second Peter

Authenticity of the Epistle

2 Peter 1:1.—Simon who have obtained Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them who have obtained like precious faith with us.

REV. ALBERT BARNES . —Jerome and Origen state that there were some persons who entertained a doubt of the genuineness of this epistle, and that this doubt was founded on a supposed difference of style between this and Peter's former epistle. This fact may serve to show the care which was evinced in admitting, books to be canonical, and as proving that they were not received without the utmost caution. The effect of examination in this case was to remove all doubt and suspicion ; and the epistle was received as the production of Peter.—Introd. to Epist.,§ I.

REV. FREDERICK CHARLES COOK, M. A.—The contents of this epistle seem quite in accordance with its asserted origin. Passages in Clement of Rome,. Hermas, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenmus, indicate that these Fathers were acquainted with the epistle. To these may be added a probable reference in the Martyrdom of Ignatius, and another in the Apology of Melito. Clement of Alexandria wrote a comment upon it. It is quoted twice by Origen, according to Ruffinus. Didymus refers to it very frequently in his great work on the Trinity. And, finally, included in the collection of Catholic Epistles, known to Eusebius and Origen.—Smith's .Dict. of Bible, p. 2457.

Putting off the Tabernacle

2 Pet. 1:14.—Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ bath showed me.

PLATO.—We are fettered to this body which we now carry about with us, as an oyster is to its shell.— Phœdr., c. 30.

CICERO. —The body is but a kind of vessel or receptacle of the soul.—Tuse. Disp., I., 22.

SENECA . —This body is not a fixed habitation, but an inn, in which we can make but a short stay, and must certainly leave it at the pleasure or displeasure of our host.—Epist., 120.

Even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me;

ST. JOHN.—Verily, verily, I. say unto thee, When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake Jesus, signifying by what death he should glorify God.—Gospel, xxi: 18, 19.

2 Peter 2:5.—And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, etc.

See Gen. 7:7, etc.

2 Peter 2:6.—And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, etc.

See Gen. 19:24.

Bondage of Sin

2 Peter 2:19.—For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.,

See Rom. 6:16.

DR. ADAM CLARKE.—This is in allusion to the ancient custom of selling for slaves those whom they had conquered and captivated in war. The ancient law was, that a man might kill him whom he overcame in battle, or keep him for a slave. These were called send, slaves, from the verb servare, to keep or preserve. And they were also called mancipia, from manu capeuntur, they were taken captive by the hand of the enemy. Thus the person who is overcome by his lusts, is represented as being the slave of these lusts.—Note, In loco.

Scoffers

2 Peter 3:4-6.-Scoffers.... saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing in the water and out of the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

PROF. JOHN HENRY KURTZ, D. D.—Here reference is made to the analogy of a historical fact— the Deluge, to the final catastrophe of the world-its conflagration. No antediluvian philosopher, even of the most advanced order, could have suspected or foreseen any tokens of the possibility or probability of such a universal and mighty catastrophe, involving and transforming the whole surface of the earth: and yet the Flood broke forth when it was least expected, and sources of destruction were opened in the fountains of the great deep and from the windows of heaven, in a manner surprising and appalling to all minds.— "And as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." As formerly, from the profound depths of the earth, never penetrated by the inquiring eye of man, and from the regions aloft, where the clouds were formed according to a law which no human investigation had yet discovered, there suddenly broke out floods of destruction, which in a moment silenced all skeptics and deriders with their appalling terrors,—so also there may lie hidden in the heights and depths of the universe, latent forces, which in the future may leap forth at the call of the Mighty Creator and Judge of the world, with an energy and universality capable of bringing about at once a transformation and renovation of the heavens and the earth.—Bible and Astronomy, p. 516.

See Gen. 6:5, etc.

The Earth Reserved Unto Fire

2 Peter 3:7.—But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

SOPHOCLES.—A raging fire shall devour all things earthly and above.—"Apud Justin Martyr.

M. ANTONINUS.—Heraclitus used to discourse much concerning the conflagration of the world.— M. Ant., III., 3.

LUCIAN.—Coming events in futurity are extremely lamentable; I mean the general conflagration which will consume the universe.—Vitar. Auct., c. 13.

CICERO.—It will happen that some day or other all this world will be burnt up with fire.— Quœst. Academ., c. 37,

PLINY.—It really exceeds all other wonders that one single day should pass without everything being consumed; especially when we reflect that concave mirrors placed opposite the sun's rays produce flames most readily, and that numerous small but natural fires abound everywhere in the earth.—Hist. Nat., II.

DUKE OF ARGYLL.-Under a thinner air, the torrid zone might be wrapped in eternal snow; under a denser air, and with differing refracting powers, the earth and all that is therein might be burned up.— Reign of Law, p. 53.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—The globe is carrying within itself volcanic forces sufficient to dislocate and overwhelm its inhabited crust, if only the balance of pressure and upheaval be in the least destroyed; and chemistry has long attested the facility of an universal overthrow and conflagration. The subtlest and most delicate combinations are invested with such tremendous power that they require but slight modification to insure a literal fulfillment of the apostolic prophecy regarding the heavens passing away with a great noise, and the earth and its works being burnt up.—Blending Lights, p. 31.

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON.—The earth is filled with evidence that it has not been going on forever in the present state, and that there is a process of events towards a state INFINITELY DIFFERENT FROM THE PRESENT.—Geological Time, p. 16.

PROF. RICHARD A. PROCTOR, F. R. A. S.—The earth is our chief timepiece; and it is of the correctness of this giant clock that we are now to speak,... It is no idle dream, but a matter of absolute certainty, that though slowly, still very surely, our terrestrial globe is losing its rotation-movement; in other words, the length of her day is increasing.... This fact appears to us to have an interest apart from the mere speculative consideration of the future physical condition of our globe. Instead of the recurrence of ever-varying, closely intermingled cycles of fluctuation, we see, now for the first time, the evidence of cosmical decay—a decay which, in its slow progress, may be but the preparation for renewed genesis— but still a decay which, so far as the races at present subsisting upon the earth are concerned, must be looked upon as finally and completely destructive.—Light Science for Leisure Hours, pp. 45-62.

A Thousand Years as One Day

1 Pet. 3:8.—But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a. thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

PLUTARCH.—If we compare the time of life with eternity, we shall find no difference between long and short; for a thousand, or ten thousand, years are but a certain indefinite point; or, rather, the smallest part of a point.—Consol. ad Apoll.

The Final Conflagration

2 Peter 3:10.—But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

PROF. JOHN HENRY KURTZ, D. D.—As fire is the most energetic and mighty of all the elements, so also is it the most universally disseminated: it lies hidden in all bodies, and may be called forth at any moment by mechanical and dynamic means. An inextinguishable furnace of fire glows within the hidden depths of the earth; fiery bolts leap forth from the clouds of the heavens; fire is begotten by the sun; and those as it were spiritual agencies of electricity, which in all probability flit through the regions of the created everywhere, seeking ever and in vain their equilibrium, involve a signal fullness and intensity of fire-development.—Bible and Astronomy, p. 518.

PROF. J. P. COOKE, Harvard University.—The fire-element in nature is oxygen; this gas is the producer of flame and combustion, and is the mightiest and most destructive of all the elements. Mingled with and restrained by other elements, in its natural and ordinary condition, oxygen is bland and harmless, without odor or taste, and seems devoid of any active properties. But beneath this apparent mildness there is concealed an energy so violent that, when once thoroughly aroused, nothing can withstand it. A single spark of fire will change the whole character of this element, and what was before inert and, passive becomes in an instant violent and irrepressible. The gentle breeze which was waving the corn and fanning the browsing herds becomes the next moment A CONSUMING FIRE, before which' the works of man melt away into air!... Now you may be surprised at the statement, but it is nevertheless true, that between one-half and two-thirds of the crust of this globe and of the bodies of its inhabitants consist of oxygen. One-fifth of the volume of the whole atmosphere is composed of oxygen. No less than eight-ninths of all water is formed of the same gas. It makes up three fourths of our own bodies, and no less than four-fifths of every plant, and at least one-half of the solid rocks.—Let, then, this element but be released, let the mysterious affinities that now hold it in restraint but cease, and the hardened rocks, or even the very waters of the ocean, would supply the fire and fervent heat that would consume the earth and the works that are therein.—Religion and Chemistry, Lecture III.

DR. THOMAS DICK.—When, in reference to the dissolution of our globe and its appendages, it is said that “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise," the aerial heaven, or the surrounding atmosphere, is to be understood. How this appendage to our world may be dissolved, or pass away with a mighty noise, it is not difficult to conceive, now that we have become acquainted with the nature and energies of its constituent parts. One essential part of the atmosphere contains the principle of flame; and if this principle were not counteracted by its connection with another ingredient, or were it let loose to exert its energies without control, instantly one immense flame would envelope the terraqueous globe, which would set on fire the foundations of the mountains, wrap the ocean in a blaze, and dissolve not only coals and wood and other combustibles, but the hardest substances in nature. It is more than probable that, when the last catastrophe of our globe arrives, the oxygen and nitrogen, or the two constituent principles of the atmosphere, will be separated by the interposition of Almighty Power. And the moment this separation takes place, it is easy to conceive that a tremendous concussion will take place, and the most dreadful explosions will resound throughout the whole expanse which surrounds the globe, which will stun the assembled world and shake the earth to its foundations. For if, in chemical experiments, conducted on a small scale, the separation of two gases, or their coming in contact with the principle of flame, is frequently accompanied with a loud and destructive explosion, it is impossible to form an adequate idea of the loud and tremendous explosions which would ensue were the whole atmosphere at once dissolved, and its elementary principles separated from each other and left to exert their native energies. A sound as if creation had burst asunder, and accompanied the next moment with a universal blaze, extending over sea and land, would present a scene of sublimity and terror which would more than realize all the striking descriptions given in Scripture of this solemn scene.—Philos. of a Future State, Part II.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—The heavens themselves, apparently the stablest of all existences, show very marvelous changes. Stars long known have, been lost; they have disappeared in the abysses of space, and their name alone remains. No later than May, 1866, the splendors of an apparently new star in the constellation Corona Borealis arrested the attention of astronomical students. Anxiously watched by competent observers, in separate localities; its changes were accurately noted and compared. It rose' in magnificent brilliancy; it slowly waned; it disappeared. The Astronomer Royal has expressed his belief in the burning of that distant world. Inflammable gases, combining, it has been supposed, gave to it the appearance by which observers were dazzled and impressed.—Blending Lights, p. 30.

VON LITTROW.—In the year 1572, on the 11Th of November, Tycho observed in Cassiopeia, at a place where before he had only seen very small stars, a new star of uncommon magnitude. It was so bright that it surpassed even Jupiter 'and Venus in splendor, and was visible even in the day-time. At the end of the year, however, it gradually diminished, and at length, in March, 1574 sixteen months after its, discovery, entirely disappeared, since which no trace of it has ever been seen. When it firsts appeared, its light was of a dazzling white color; two months after: it became yellowish; in a few months more; it assumed a reddish hue, like Mars; in January and February of 1574, it glimmered only with a gray or lead-colored light, and then totally vanished.—Die Wunder Himmels oder Gemeinfassliche Darstellung der Weltsystems, § 227.

PROF. E. LOOMIS.—Several instances are on record of temporary stars, which have suddenly become visible, and after remaining a while, apparently immovable, have died away and left no trace behind. Such a star is said to have appeared about the year B. C. 125. Such stars are also recorded in the years A. D. 389, 945, 1264, 1572, 1604, and 1670. A similar phenomenon on the 27th of April, 1848, was witnessed: this appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus; its light was reddish in the telescope; Dr. Peterson observed that thy reddish color at times increased suddenly in intensity, and again as suddenly disappeared. Other observers noticed these peculiar red flashes. It gradually decreased in brilliancy till in June, 1850, when it became extinct.—Recent Progress of Astronomy, p. 124.

The New Earth

2 Peter 3:13.—Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—It is further to be observed that the biblical idea of a future state of this earth, in which its conditions shall become similar to those of the spiritual heaven, is not altogether foreign to science. A recent writer (Ponton) has well put this by a reference to the stages through which the earth has already passed in geological time. Suppose an earth wholly mineral, and that some prophetic intelligence were to endeavor to shadow forth in terms of the mineral the approaching introduction of plants, we can readily imagine the difficulties of such an attempt; or suppose the plant introduced, and the effort to be made to shadow forth the new creation of the animal, in terms of the plant; or suppose the lower animals introduced, and our imaginary prophet to have the task of explaining from their habits what man would think and do when introduced on the earth. All these changes we now know as actual facts; but may there not be other changes in store for the universe, and may not men, inspired by prophetic insight, be commissioned to shadow forth, in terms of the human and natural, the new and glorious manifestations of Divine power which are to be realized in the future state?-Nature and the Bible, p. 72.

ROBERT HUNT.—These experiments of Cagniard de la Tour and Boutigny, connect themselves, in a striking manner, with those of Mr. Grove and Dr. Robinson; and they teach us that but a very slight alteration in the proportions of the calorific principle given to this planet would completely change the character of every material substance of which, it is composed, unless there was an alteration in the-physical condition of the elements themselves. Supposing the ordeal of fiery-purification to take place upon this planet, these experiments appear to indicate the mighty changes which would thence result. There would be no annihilation, but everything would be transformed from the center of the globe to the verge of its atmosphere—old things would pass away, all things become new, and the beautiful myth of the phœnix be realized in the fresh creation.—Poetry of Science, p. 89.

Things Hard, to Be Understood

2 Peter 3:16.—As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things: in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

BISHOP R. WATSON, D. D., F. R. S.—What if there should be some incomprehensible doctrines in the Christian Religion; some circumstances which in their causes, or their consequences, surpass the reach of human reason; are they to be rejected on that account? You are, or would be thought, men of reading, and knowledge, and enlarged understandings; weigh the matter fairly, and consider whether revealed religion be not, in this respect, just upon the same footing with every other object of your contemplation. Even in mathematics, the science of demonstration itself, though you get over its first principles, and learn to digest the idea of a point without parts, a line without breadth, and a surface without thickness, yet you wilt find yourself at a loss to comprehend the perpetual approximation of lines which can never meet; the doctrine of incommensurables, and of an infinity of infinities, each infinitely greater, or infinitely less, not only than any finite quantity, but than each other. In physics, you cannot comprehend the primary cause of anything; not of the light by which you see; nor of the elasticity of the air, by which you hear; nor of the fire by which you are warMed. In physiology, you, cannot tell what first gave motion to your heart, nor what continues it, nor why its motion is less voluntary than that of the lungs; nor why you are able to move your arm to the right or left, by a simple volition: you cannot explain the cause of animal heat, nor comprehend the 'principle by which your body was first formed, nor by which it is sustained, nor by which it will be reduced to earth. In natural religion you cannot comprehend the eternity or omnipresence of the Deity; nor easily understand how his prescience can be consistent with your freedom, Or his immutability with his government of moral agents; nor why he did not make all his creatures equally perfect; nor why he did not create them sooner; in short, you can look into any branch of knowledge but you will meet with Subjects above your comprehension. The fall and redemption of human kind are not more incomprehensible than the creation and conservation of the universe; the Infinite Author of the works of providence and of nature is equally inscrutable; equally past our finding out in them both.—Letters to Edward Gibbon, closing appeal.

First John

Authenticity of the Epistle

REV. FREDERICK MEYRICK, M. A.—The external evidence to the authenticity of the First Epistle of John is of the most satisfactory nature. Eusebius places it in his list of "acknowledged" books, and we have ample proof that it was acknowledged and received as the production of the apostle John in the writings of Polycarp, Papias, Irenmus, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Cyprian: and there is no voice in antiquity raised to the contrary. On the other hand, the internal evidence for its being the work of St. John from its similarity in style, language, and doctrine to the Gospel bearing his name is overwhelming. Macknight has drawn out a list of nineteen passages in the epistle which are so similar to an equal number of passages in the Gospel that we cannot but conclude that the two writings emanated from the same mind.—Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 1439.

None Without Sin

John 1:8.—If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

EPICTETUS.—Is it possible, by observing these rules, to be faultless? Impracticable; but this is possible, to use a constant endeavor to be faultless.—Epict., IV., 12.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—What man is so worthy as to pass through life securely and without blame?—Diss., 26.

1 John 2:18.—Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

See 2 Thess. 2:1-10, and 1 Tim. 4:1-4.

Cain's Envy

1 John 3:12.—Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And where fore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

MAXIMUS TYRIUS.—Those who are depraved cannot endure that the virtues should be exalted in their presence.—Diss., 29.

IDEM.—Socrates encountered the envy and hatred of those who rose against him, from their rage against things excellent.—Diss., 39.

Brotherly Love

1 John 3:16.—Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

TERTULLIAN.—Behold, how they love one another; they are ready to die one for another.— Apol., c. 39.

EUSEBIUS.—In a time of plague, the Christians visited one another, and not only hazarded their lives, but actually lost them in their zeal to preserve the lives of others.—Eccl. Hist., VII., 22.

1 John 3:18.—My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

EPICTETUS.—To all other pleasures prefer this—to know that you are obeying God, and performing, not in word but in deed, the duty of a wise and good man.—Epict., III., 24.

Approbation of Conscience

1 John 3:21.—Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.

SENECA.—Many praise you, but are you satisfied with yourself, if you are what they take you for and applaud? Let your goodness be approved by your own heart.—Epist., 6.

Love Without Fear

John 4:18.—There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

ARISTOTLE.—Men love those who are not objects of fear, and in Whom they can confide; for no one loves him of whom he is afraid.—De Rhet., II., 4.

HORACE.—He who lives in fear is a slave, nor can he ever be anything better. —Epist., 16.

SENECA.—God is reverenced And 'coved: love cannot accord with fear. —Epist., 47.

The Lover of God a Lover of His Brother

1 John 4:20.—If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

CICERO.—it is very inconsistent when we are disregarded and despised by one another, to entreat that we may be dear to and beloved by the immortal gods. —De Fit., III., 20.

The Divine Commands Not Grievous

John 5:3.—His commandments are not grievous.

SENECA.—Do you know why things commanded seem impossible? I will tell you. It is because we think them so: they are not so in reality. We defend our vices because we love them, and we had rather find out some excuse for them than shake them off. Nature has given us sufficient strength, if we would exert ourselves in the use of it. We pretend we cannot, but the truth is, we will not. —Epist., 116.

Second and Third John

Authenticity of These Epistles

REV. FREDERICK MEYRICK, M. A.—Some doubt existed in an early day concerning the authenticity of this epistle. Clement of Alexandria alludes to it. The Adumbrationes bears direct testimony to it. Dionysius and Alexander of Alexandria attribute this and the following Epistle to St. John. So does Irenmus. Aurelius quoted them in the council of Carthage, A. D. 256, as St. John's writings. Ephrem of Syrus speaks of them in the same way in the fourth century. In the fifth they were almost universally received.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1441.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Though there were doubts among many of the Fathers respecting the genuineness of these epistles, yet they were admitted in several councils of the church to be genuine. In the 85th of the apostolic canons (so Called); in the 60th Canon of the Synod of Laodicea; the council of Hippo, A. D. 393, and the third council of Carthage, A. D. 397, they were reckoned as undoubtedly pertaining to the Inspired Canon of Scripture.—Introd to Epists., § 1, (e).

Jude

Canonicity of This Epistle

REV. EDMUND VENABLES, M. A.—Although the epistle of Jude is one of the so-called Antilegomena, and its canonicity was questioned in the earliest ages of the church, there never was any doubt of its genuineness among those by whom-it was known. It is quoted as Apostolic by Ephrem of Syrus. The earliest notice of the epistle is in the famous Muratorian Fragment, circa A. D. 170. It was recognized by Clement of Alexandria. Eusebius informs us that it was among the books of. Canonical Scripture. Origen refers to it expressly as the work of “The Lord's brother. "Of the Latin Fathers, Tertullian once expressly cites this epistle as the work of an Apostle; so also does Jerome. It is likewise quoted by Malchion, a presbyter of Antioch, in a letter to the bishops of Alexandria and Rome, and by Palladius, the friend of Chrysostom; and it is contained in the Laodicene Catalog, A. D. 363; and in the Carthagenian,

A. D. 397, as well as in those emanating from the churches of the East and West.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 1505

Rebel Angels

Verse 6.—And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains udder darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

H. Fox TALBOT, F. R. S.—At the 'creation harmony prevailed in heaven. All the sons of God, says Job, shouted for joy. What caused the termination of this blissful state we are not informed; but the Babylonians have preserved for us a remarkable tradition of it, which is found on 'a cuneiform Tablet, now in the British Museum. This Tablet describes the revolt of the gods or angels against their Creator. While the host of heaven were assembled and were all engaged M singing hymns of praise to their Maker, suddenly some evil spirit gave the signal of revolt. The hymns ceased in one part of the assembly, which burst forth into loud curses and imprecations on their Creator. In His wrath he sounded a loud blast of the trumpet, and drove them from his presence never to return.—Records of the Past, Vol. VII., p. 123.

BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTION.—The Divine Being spoke three times, the commencement of a psalm. The god of holy Songs, Lord of —religion and worship, seated a thousand singers and musicians.; and established a choral band, who, to his hymn were to respond in multitudes.... With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song, spoiling, confusing, confounding, his hymn of praise. The god of the bright crown with a wish to summon his adherents Sounded a trumpet blast which would wake the dead; which to those rebel angels prohibited return, he stopped their service, and sent them to the gods) who, were his enemies. In their room He created mankind. The first who received life, dwelt along with Him. May He give them strength, never to neglect his word, following the serpent's voice, whom 'His bands had made. And may the god of divine speech expel from his five thousand that wicked, thousand, who, in the midst of his heavenly song, had shouted evil blasphemies! The god Ashur, who had seen the malice of those angels who deserted' their allegiance to raise a rebellion, refused to go forth with them.—Records of the Past,, Vol. VII., p. 127.

Revelation

Authenticity of This Book

Rev. 1:1, 2.—The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

REV. W. T. BULLOCK, M. A.—It has been the general belief of Christians in all ages that St. John was the writer of this book. The evidence of its authenticity, internal and external, is conclusive. It is supposed to have been written somewhere in the period from A. D. 95 to 97. The historical testimonies that the Apostle John was its author are singularly distinct and numerous. Justin Martyr, about A. D. 150, says: "A man among us whose name was John, one of the Apostles of Christ, in a revelation which was made to him, prophesied that the believers in our Christ shall live a thousand years in Jerusalem." The author of the Muratorian Fragment, about A. D. 170, speaks of St. John as the writer of the Apocalypse, and describes him as a predecessor of St. Paul in the office of Apostle. Melito of Sardes, about A. D. 170, wrote a treatise of the Revelation of John. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, about A. D. 180, in a controversy with Hermogenes, quotes passages out of the Revelation of John. Irenæus, about A. D. 195, often quotes the Revelation as the work of John, and describes him as the disciple who was leaning on Jesus' bosom at supper, and asked Him who should betray Him. The testimony of Irenmus is the more important, as it mounts up into the preceding generation, and is virtually that of a contemporary of the Apostle. In vindicating the true reading of " the number of the Beast," he cites not only the old correct copies of the Book, but also the oral testimony of the very persons who themselves had seen St. John face to face. Apollonius of Ephesus, about A. D. 200, in controversy with the Montanists of Phrygia, quoted passages out of the Revelation of John, and narrated a miracle wrought by the Apostle at Ephesus. Clement of Alexandria, about A. D. 200, quotes the book of Revelation as the work of John the Apostle. Tertullian, A. D. 207, quotes by name “the Apostle John in the Apocalypse."

Hippolytus, about A. D. 230, quotes it as the work of St. John. Origen, about A. D. 233, speaking of this apostle, says that "he wrote the Revelation." The testimony of later writers, in the third and fourth centuries, that John the Apostle wrote the Book of Revelation, are equally distinct and far more numerous.— Smith's Dict. of Bible. p. 2723

The Eternal One

Rev. 1:4.—Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come.

PLUTARCH, —The temple of Isis, in Egypt, bore this inscription: “I am all that was, and is, and shall be, and my veil no mortal can remove."—De Is. el Osir., c. 9.

ORPHEUS.—Jupiter is the head, Jupiter is the middle, and all things are made by Jupiter. — In Auctor. Lib. de Mundo,.

PAUSANIAS.—Jupiter was; Jupiter is; Jupiter shall be.—Phocic., c. 12.

The First and the Last

Rev. 1:8.—I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M. A.—The expression, ".I am Alpha and Omega," is illustrated by the usage in Rabbinical writers of Aleph and Tau, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Jalkut Rubeni said: "Adam transgressed the whole law from Aleph to Tau," that is, from the beginning to the end. In the early times of the Christian church the letters Alpha and Omega were combined with the cross, or with the monogram of Christ. One of the oldest monuments on which this occurs is a marble tablet found in the catacombs at Melos, which belongs, if not to the first century, to the first half of the second.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 73.

Patmos

Rev. 1:9.—I John, ... .was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—Patmos is a small island in the Icarian Sea, about thirty miles from the coast of Asia Minor. It does not exceed fifteen miles in circumference, and is nothing but a continued rock, very mountainous and very barren. Its coast is high, and consists of a series of capes. Its port is a deep gulf on the northeast of the island, sheltered by high mountains on every side but one. The town is situated upon a high rocky mountain, rising immediately from the sea, and contains about 400 houses. In the middle of the town, near the top of the mountain, is the large monastery of St. John the Evangelist. About half-way down the mountain, from the town to the Scala, there is a natural grotto in the rock, in which, tradition says, St. John abode and wrote the Apocalypse. Over this grotto a small church has been built. On account of the stern and desolate character of the island, the Roman emperors thought it a suitable spot to which criminals might be confined. To this island, accordingly, the apostle John was banished by the Emperor Domitian, towards the end of his reign, or about A. D. 95 or 96.—Pict. Bible, In loco.

The Lord's Day

Rev. 1:10.—I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day.

PROF. MOSES STUART.—The term "Lord's Day" was used generally by the early Christians to denote the first day of the week. It occurs twice in the Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, about A. D. tot., in calls the Lord's Day “the queen and prince of all days." Chrysostom, in Psa. 119, says: "Ii was called the Lord's Day because the Lord rose from the dead on that day." Later Fathers make a marked distinction between the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, meaning by the former the Jewish Sabbath, or the seventh day of the reek, and by the latter the first day of the week, kept holy by the Christians. So Theodoret, speaking of the Elionites, says: "They keep the Sabbath ac-, cording to the Jewish law; and sanctify the Lord's Day in like manner as we do."—In loco.

Seats of the Seven Churches

Rev, 1:11.—What thou seest write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and Unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

PLINY.—A great part of Æolia has recourse to the jurisdiction of Smyrna; but to Ephesus, that other great luminary of Asia, resort the more distant peoples.—Pergamos, by far the most famous city in Asia.—To the jurisdiction of. Pergamos belong the people of Thyatira, and many other states less known to fame.—Twenty-five states resort to Cibyratica for legal purposes, together with the most famous city of Laodicea.—Sardis lies on the side of Mount Tmolus. The jurisdiction is now called by this name, and many people resort to it.— Hist. Nat., lib. v., C. 29, 30, 31, 33.

And send it unto the churches which are in Asia.

REV. THOMAS HARTWELL HORNE, B. D.—That Christian churches had been established at this period throughout Asia Minor is sufficiently attested by Pliny, Governor of Pontus and Bithynia, in his letter to the emperor Trajan, written in A. D. 107, requesting instruction as to the manner in which he should deal with those accused of being Christians. From this letter we learn the great progress Christianity had made. Christians, he tells us, there were everywhere, throughout the whole extent of his province, in cities, in villages, and in the open country. Among them were persons of all ages, of every rank and condition, and of both sexes; and some of them also were citizens of Rome. The prevalence of Christianity appears likewise from the universal decay of Pagan worship: the temples were deserted, and the sacrifices discontinued. Beasts, brought to market for victims, had few purchasers. So many were accused, and were in danger of suffering on account of the prevalence of this opinion, as gave the governor no small concern. Further, it is evident that there were not only many at this time who bore the Christian name, but that such people had been there for many years.—Introduction, I., 84.

Rev. 2:1.—Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus, write, etc. See Acts 19:1, etc.

The Candlestick Removed

Rev. 2:5.—Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works;.' or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—There is not the least evidence that the church of Ephesus did repent, and the threatening has been most signally fulfilled. Long: since the church has become utterly extinct, and for ages there was not a single professing Christian there. Every memorial of there having been a church there has departed, and there are nowhere, not even in Nineveh, Babylon, or Tyre, more affecting demonstrations of the fulfillment of ancient prophecy than in the present state of the ruins of Ephesus.— Note, In loco.

GIBBON.—In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first Angel, the extinction of the first Candlestick of the Revelations; the desolation, is complete; and the temple of Diana, or the church of Mary, will equally elude the search of the curious traveler.—Decline and Fall, Chapter 64.

Smyrna

Rev. 2:8.—And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna, write, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Smyrna was, a celebrated commercial town of Ionia (Ptol. V.), situated near the bottom of that Gulf of the Ægean Sea which received its name from it (Mela. I.), at the mouth of the small river Meles, 320 stadia, or forty miles, north of. Ephesus. (Strab., XV.) It was a very ancient city, but having been destroyed by the Lydians, it lay waste for 400 years, or to, the time of Antigonus. It was rebuilt at the distance of twenty stadia from the ancient city, and in the time of the first Roman emperor it was one of the most flourishing cities of Asia. It was destroyed by an earthquake, A. D. 177,. but the emperor Marcus Aurelius caused it to be rebuilt with more than its former splendor.— Note, In loco.

PROF. H. B. HACKETT, LL. D.—Smyrna was forty miles from Ephesus. Paul preached the Gospel there at an early date. The Apostle John must often have passed between the two places during his long life at Ephesus. The spot: where Polycarp is supposed to have been burnt at the stake is near the ruins of a stadium on the hill behind the present town. It may be the exact spot, or certainly near there, for it is the place where the people were accustomed to meet for public spectacles. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, touched at Smyrna on his voyage to Rome, where he was thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheater, about A. D. 108. Two of his letters were addressed to Polycarp and the Smyrneans. Smyrna is the only one of the Seven Churches which retains any importance at the present time. Its population is stated to be 150,000, nearly one-half of whom are Mohammedans.—Smith's Dict. of Bible, p. 3064.

Tribulation for Ten Days

Rev.2:10—Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—To the church of Smyrna it is predicted, that she should " have tribulation ten days," or ten years, according to the usual style of prophecy: and the greatest persecution that the primitive church ever endured, was the persecution of Diocletian, which lasted ten years, and grievously afflicted all the Asian, and indeed all the eastern churches.—Dissert., XXIV.

Pergamos

Rev. 2:12.—And to the angel of the church in Pergamos, write, etc.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Pergamos was the most important city of Mysia, situate in the southern part of that country, on the Caicus. It is first mentioned by Xenophon. After passing through various vicissitudes, it continued to flourish and prosper as a Roman city, so that Pliny does not scruple to style it the fairest city of Asia. To the Christian the history of Pergamos affords an additional interest, since it was one of the seven churches of Asia, mentioned in the book of Revelation.— Classical Dictionary.

BISHOP THOMAS NEWTON, D. D.—Pergamos is still called Bergamo, and is situated sixty-four miles north of Smyrna. It has some good buildings, but more ruins. It is mainly occupied by Turks. One Christian church only remains, that dedicated to St. Theodorus. The cathedral church of St. John is buried in its own ruins; their "angel” or bishop long since removed; and its fair pillars adorn the graves, and rotten carcasses of its destroyers, the Turks. Its other fine church, called Santa Sophia, is turned into a mosque, and daily profaned with the blasphemies of the false prophet.—Dissert., XXIV.

The White Stone

Rev. 2:17.—To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—It is a remarkable fact that in the vicinity of Pergamos an unusual number of white stones cover the ground in every direction, and the traveler can hardly fail to be struck with the applicability of the words in which the Scriptural promise to this church is couched.-.Pict. Bib., In loco.

OVID.—

A custom was of old, and still remains,

Which life or death by suffrages ordains:

White stones and black within an urn are cast;

The first absolve, but fate is on the last.

—Metam., XV., 41.

PLUTARCH.—Heaven was favorable both to Cimon and Lucullus, directing the one what he should do, and the other what he should avoid; so that each obtained the stone from the gods as persons in whom there was something excellent and divine.—Comp. Cim. c. 3.

Thyatira

Rev. 2:18.—And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira, write, etc.

PROF. CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D.—Thyatira was a city of Lydia, near the northern confines, situate on the small river Lycus, not far from its source. This city, according to Strabo, belonged originally to Mysia; from the time of Pliny, however, we find it ascribed to Lydia. Its ruins are now called Ak Hisar.—Classical Dictionary.

See Acts 16:14.

Sardis

Rev. 3:1, And unto the angel of the church in Sardis, write, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of, Lydia, one of the provinces of Asia Minor, and was situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, in a fine plain watered by the river Patoclus, famous for its golden sands. It was the capital where the celebrated Crœsus, proverbial for, his wealth, reigned. The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous mode of living: perhaps there may be an allusion to this fact, in the words which are used in the address to the church there, " Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments."— Note, In loco.

REV. J. HARTLEY.—The ruins of Sardis are, with one exception, more entirely gone to decay than those of most of the ancient cities which we have visited. No Christians reside on the spot: two Greeks only work in a mill here, and a few wretched Turkish huts are scattered among the ruins. We saw the churches of St. John and the Virgin, the theater, and the building styled the Palace of Crœsus; but the most striking object at Sardis is the temple of Cybele. I was filled with wonder and awe at beholding the two stupendous columns of this edifice, which are still remaining; they are silent but impressive witnesses of the power and splendor of antiquity.—In Pict. Bib.

The Suddenness of the Visitation

Rev. 3:3.—If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

EMERSON.—I am not sufficiently versed in theological lore to trace the gradations of the fall of Sardis; but its overthrow came "like a thief in the night," during that earthquake which, in the reign of Tiberius, leveled its proudest compeers with the dust.—Letters from the Ægean.

Philadelphia

Rev. 3:7.—And unto the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write, etc.

REV. ALBERT BARNES.—Philadelphia stood about twenty-five miles southeast from Sardis, in the plain of Hermas. It was the second city in Lydia, and was built by king Attalus Philadelphus, from whom it received its name. In the year B. C. 133 the place passed, with the country in the vicinity, under the dominion of the Romans. The site is reported by Strabo to be liable to earthquakes, but it continued to be a place of importance down to the Byzantine age; and, of all the towns in Asia Minor, it withstood the Turks the longest. It was taken by Bajazat, A. D. 1392.—Note,, In loco.

A Pillar

Rev. Hi: 12.—Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.

DR. JOHN KITTO.—At Philadelphia there are few ruins; but in one part are four pillars, which are supposed to have been columns of a church. One solitary pillar has been often noticed, as reminding beholders of the remarkable words in the Apocalypse, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God."—Kita s Cyclop.

GIBBON.—This city at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect, a column in a scene of ruins.— Decline and Fall, Chapter 64.

And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God.

HARTLEY.—The circumstance that Philadelphia is now called Allah-Shehr, the City of God, when viewed in connection with the promises made to that church, and especially with that of “writing the name of the City of God " upon its faithful members, is, to say the least, a singular occurrence.— In Keith's Evid. from Proph.

Laodicea

Rev. 3:14.—And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write.

DR. JOHN SAUL HOWSON.—The two passages in the New Testament where the city of Laodicea is mentioned, define its geographical position in harmony with other authorities. It was situated in the valley of the Mæander, on a small river called the Lycus, with Colosse and Hierapolis a few miles distant to the west. Built, or rather rebuilt, by one of the Seleucid monarchs, and named in honor of his wife, Laodicea became under the Roman government a place of some importance. The damage which was caused in the reign of Tiberius was promptly repaired by the energy of the inhabitants. It was soon after this occurrence that Christianity was introduced into Laodicea.... In subsequent times it became a Christian city of eminence, the seat of a bishop, and a meeting-place of councils. It is often mentioned by the Byzantine writers. The Mohammedan invaders destroyed it, and it is now a scene of utter desolation; but the extensive ruins near Denislu justify all that we read of Laodicea in Greek and Roman writers. Many travelers have visited and described the place.—Smith's Dict. of Bible.

Lukewarmness

Rev. 3:16.—So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew the out of my mouth.

DR. ALEXANDER KEITH. —Laodicea was the mother church of sixteen bishoprics. Its three theaters, and the immense circus, which was capable of containing upwards of 30,000 spectators, the spacious remains of which are yet, to be seen, give proof of the greatness of its ancient wealth and population, and ' indicate too strongly that in that city, where Christians were rebuked, without exception, for their lukewarmness, there were multitudes who were lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. The fate of Laodicea, though opposite, has been no less marked than that of Philadelphia. There are no sights of grandeur nor scenes of temptation around it now. Its own tragedy may be briefly told. It was lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot; and therefore it was loathsome in the sight of God. It was loved, and rebuked, and chastened, in vain. And it has been blotted from the world. It is now as desolate as its inhabitants were destitute of the fear and love of God; and as the church c the Laodiceans was devoid of true faith in the Savior and zeal in his service, it is, as described by Dr. Smith, "utterly desolate, and without any inhabitant, except wolves, and jackals, and foxes." A fearful significance is thus given to the terrific denunciation, “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth."—Evidence of Prophecy, p. 259.

The New Earth

Rev. 21:1.—And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth Were passed away; and there was no more sea.

PRINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, LL. D., F. R. S.—If it pleased God to create in the beginning an earth "formless and void," and to elaborate from this all that has since existed, who are we, to say that the plan was not the best? Nor would it detract from our view of the creative wisdom and power if we were to hold that in ages to come the sun may experience the same change that has befallen the earth, and may become "black as sackcloth of hair," preparatory, perhaps, to changes which may make him also the abode of life; or if the earth, cooling still further, should, like our satellite the moon, absorb all its waters and gases into its bosom, and become bare, dry and parched, until there shall be " no more sea," how do we know but that then there shall be no more "need of the sun," because a better light may be provided? Or that there may not be a new baptism of fire in store for the earth, whereby, being melted with fervent heat, it may renew its youth in the fresh and heavenly loveliness of "a new heaven and a new earth," free from all the evils and imperfections of the present?—Story of the Earth and Man, p. 15.

DR. WILLIAM FRASER.—There is to be "dissolution," not annihilation; there is to be a new economy, “a new heaven and a new earth." The sublime announcements of St. Peter and of the Apocalyptic Seer, so long accepted by many apologists as invested with Merely poetic drapery, and so long sneered at as sensational by rigorous physicists, have been rescued from misinterpretation. The statement that “there shall be no more sea," can only be ridiculed by those who are ignorant of the truths which the natural sciences have already evolved and vindicated.—Blending. Lights, p. 31.

See 2 Peter 3 Jo and 13.

Conclusion

DANIEL MARCH, D. D.—So we might go over all the lands named in the Bible, and search through all the museums that are stored with relics from the graves of the past, and we should gather from all our researches increasing light to throw upon' the page of Divine Revelation. The student of the Bible has nothing to fear, but everything to gain, from the increase of knowledge on all subjects, from all sources, among all classes of men. No matter how far the boldest and keenest inquirers may carry their investigations, every real discovery, every established fact in science, in history, in nature, must be in harmony with the Word of God, and must promote its mission of light and instruction in the world.

Let the astronomer explore the heavens and trace the pathway of worlds on the high fields of immensity. Let him analyze the floating fire-mist in the midnight sky, and conjecture the countless centuries that must pass while it is condensing and rounding itself into suns and systems. Let the geologist mine his way down to the foundations of the earth, and read the inscriptions which the centuries have written on the eternal rocks. Let, the naturalist trace connection and development along all the ascending grades of being, from the floating slime of the sea to the full-formed and perfect man. Let the physiologist trace, if he can, the electric chain with which the immortal mind is darkly bound to its perishable prison of flesh. Let the linguist find out what he can from the study of all languages and all literature concerning the unity or diversity of race. Let the sacred record itself be subjected to the most severe and exhaustive criticism in every statement of fact and in every declaration of principle. Let tireless millions run to and fro through all the earth, and increase all departments of human knowledge, until the student stands aghast at the mountainous accumulation. Still the one book of Divine Revelation shall be in harmony with all truth. For its full, perfect vindication before the world, it is only necessary that students, critics and common people shall become honest, diligent, candid disciples of the truth.—Researches and Travel in Bible Lands, in "Wood's Animals of the Bible," p. 710.

Testimony of The Ages: Confirmations of the Scriptures

Table of Contents

Introduction

Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

Joshua

Judges

Ruth

First Book of Samuel

Second Book of Samuel

First Book of Kings

Second Book of Kings

First Chronicles

Second Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah

Ether

Book of Job

Book of Psalms

Proverbs

Ecclesiastes

Song of Solomon

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Lamentations

Ezekiel

Daniel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

The New Testament

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts

Romans

First Corinthians

Second Corinthians

Galatians

Ephesians

Philippians

Colossians

First Thessalonians

Second Thessalonians

First Timothy

Second Timothy

Titus

Philemon

Hebrews

James

First Peter

Second Peter

First John

Second and Third John

Jude

Revelation