social stigma of being ignored. They seem also to have been in the habit of making themselves known at the most inconvenient seasons. They pressed down on Egypt, when weak and distracted, and carried devastation throughout Assyria; but perhaps on no occasion was their presence so unwelcome, not even to the weary Syrians, who fled from the siege of Samaria when they heard that the Hittites were coming, as it was to the historians and students of Europe when they learned that the Hittites claimed a large and abiding place among the great monarchies and empires of the world.

It was exasperating to think that the historic mosaic, put together with such infinite labour, and touched into perfect consistency by so many artistic hands, should have to be broken up for a horde of barbarians who had no record in classic story. It was intolerable, too, when we thought we had left the schools and finished our education, to be told we must unlearn our history and begin again at the beginning. Our historians had not overlooked any of the sources of secular history. The Phoenician records of Sanchoniathon handed down by Philo of Byblius, and Porphyrius, as well as the fragments of Manetho's Egyptian history, had been read in the pages of Eusebius. Scraps and fragments from Ctesias, regarding the Syrian monarchy, had been studied in Photius and Diodorus Siculus. Dion Cassius, Polybius, Josephus, Herodotus, and all the other secular chroniclers of the early past, had been searched and sifted, and every grain of fact had been separated from the chaff of tradition and surmise, and safely garnered.

In the patient and laborious collection of facts, with a view to the building up of history, the Bible was ignored. That unique volume, made up of the literature of a unique people, contained history, poetry, rhapsody, legislation, civil and ecclesiastic,-in fact, the national history of an ancient nation. The book professed to be divine, but it was very human. It mirrored the people of Israel, for whom it was written, in the common details of their lowly lives, and in their relation to the people who lay around them. It assumed to be true, and in its narration of facts the language bore the stamp of selfevidencing simplicity. It referred incidentally to a great people ( or pnn) called Hittites, who moved on parallel lines with Israel from the time of the patriarch Abraham till the final captivity.

When the Semitic tribe, with Abram at their head, migrated from Haran to Canaan, the Hittites inhabited the land (Genesis xv. 20), and fifty years later Abraham, a

stranger and a wandering Sheikh, purchased a grave for his wife from the Hittites, who were then in possession and power at Hebron. The completion of the bargain involved the earliest money transaction on record, and the earliest recognised form of sale and conveyancing (Genesis xxiii. 4). The magnanimous sentiments and polished courtesy, under cover of which the Hittites secured a high price for a useless cave in a useless field, as well as the use of " money current with the merchant," mark them as a mercantile community in an advanced state of civilisation.

The family of the patriarch and the Hittites continued to live side by side. The currents of their lives flowed in parallel channels, and Esau, the grandson of Abraham, chose for himself two Hittite wives, who "were a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah" (Genesis xxvi. 35). Later the Hittites opposed Joshua as he entered the promised land, and the serried lines of Hittite chariots were scattered in confusion by the Israelites in the decisive battle of LAKE MEROM. Later still, Hittite captains marshalled and led the hosts of David and Solomon, and Hittite women were prominent in the hareems of the same renowned monarchs. King David pushed his conquests and extended his border in the land of the Hittites, and Solomon supplied them with commodities from Egypt in their time of need, and in the time of Jehoram, Benhadad, of Damascus, fled headlong from Samaria with his Syrian hosts for fear of "the kings of the Hittites." Besides these and similar incidental references to the Hittites in the Bible, their geographical position generally was indicated in the time of Joshua as being "From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites " (Joshua i. 4).

Had these references been found in any ancient secular book, even among the shreds and fragments of the shady Sanchoniathon, they would have been hailed as historical, and the empire of the Hittites would long since have occupied a recognised place among the great empires of antiquity.

The references, however, were worked into the texture of the Bible, and they were therefore ignored; not indeed altogether ignored, for while Biblical critics in Germany accounted for the most important of them on the theory of "interpolation," English Biblical Critics went further still, and pronounced them "unhistorical." To the thoughtful it seemed strange that an ancient people should interpolate unhistorical statements into their sacred books without sufficient cause, but to the critics it seemed scientific simply to say they had done so. On this question the common spade has achieved signal

success. That rough, impartial instrument has turned up inscribed bricks of Babylon, and laid bare important hieroglyphics in Egypt, to stop the mouths of those who prated of the "interpolations" and "unhistorical" statements of the Bible. It is no longer necessary to deal with this subject in an à priori fashion, to urge the unlikelihood of the Israelites falsifying, out of pure wantonness, their holy writings, which they preserved with more than superstitious reverence, or to dwell on the superhuman act of genius implied in the invention, the creation, of the Bible story of the Hittites. Thanks to our trusty friend, the spade, we are now in a position to confront ingenious theories and bold assertions by hard concrete facts, and those "who believe not Moses and the prophets must be confounded by bricks and stones."

Assyriologists, including Rawlinson, Hinks, Oppert, Boscawen, Pinches, Sayce, and others, have read for us the Assyrian inscriptions; and these inscriptions reveal to us the Hittites as a warlike and aggressive people as early as the time of Abraham. They also inform us that the Israelites were carried into captivity in 721 B.C., and that the Hittites were completely crushed at Carchemish four years later (717 B.C.).

Egyptologists, among whom we might mention Birch, Renouf, Goodwin, Maspero, Mariette, and Brugsch, have deciphered for us the Egptian hieroglyphics; and in their ancient records we find the kings of the Hittites rivals of the Pharaohs, in peace and war, from the twelfth to the twentieth dynasty. As soon as the key was found to the long silent records of Egypt and Assyria, the veil began to lift off dark continents of history, and the forgotten but mighty Hittite people began to emerge. They appeared chiefly as a martial people, in constant conflict with the great monarchies on their borders; but in almost every respect they correspond to the Hittites of the Bible. The explorer and the decipherer have been pressing on in their discoveries with marvellous energy, and the increasing light from Egypt and Assyria reveal to us, in broad outline and in incidental detail, a series of facts regarding the Hittites, in striking harmony with the narratives of the Bible.

In their existence in the south, and gradual withdrawal northward; in their manner of warfare and use of chariots ; in their advance in civilisation and literary propensities; in the facts of their supplying wives to the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Israel, and their reception of necessary supplies from the monarchs of both countries; in the use of the phrase "kings of the Hittites," common to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Assyrian inscriptions,in these, and other

points which I have dealt with elsewhere, we see the inscriptions and the Bible in harmonious accord, not merely by fortuitous coincidence, but as faithful records of historic facts. So much is now admitted by all who are capable of appreciating the value of the evidence available on the subject. On one important point the spade has failed to support directly and fully the Bible narrative. It might have been supposed that an ancient document which was found in harmony with the inscriptions in ninety-nine cases might have received the credit of being historical in the hundredth case, where the inscriptions were partially silent. At least, accuracy in ninetynine cases, capable of scientific statement, might be supposed to create a presumption in favour of the hundredth case, where there are few traces of evidence one way or another. The statement in question is the important transaction between Abraham and the Hittites, at Hebron, and the objections which were once directed against various passages are now concentrated on this one incident. It is satisfactory to find that the documents which tell us most about the Hittites are generally admitted to speak with historical accuracy in all their references to that people, with one exception. Let us look briefly at the reasons urged for withholding belief in the truthfulness of the narrative referred to.

It is urged that the Hittites could not have been settled in Southern Palestine because there are few direct references to their southern settlements in the inscriptions. To this I reply, that the absence of evidence is not evidence. The Egyptians marched up the coast of Syria, and turned inland to Megiddo and Kadesh, where they met the Hittites. The inscriptions are full of the doings of the Hittites at Megiddo. and Kadesh, because the Egyptians went thither. They have nothing to say of the Hittites of Hebron, because the Egyptians did not go thither. The inscriptions are records of what happened during campaigns in which Egypt must have made great sacrifices. The fact that they do not refer to towns and colonies which lay beyond their scope does not prove that those towns and colonies did not exist. Following, therefore, the strict rules of evidence, there is no sufficient ground for rejecting the story regarding the Hittites at Hebron. I think, however, we are not without positive grounds for believing the story to be true. It is embellished with all the formal details which go to make up the framework of a keen Oriental bargain, and thus bears on its face the semblance of truth.

At a very early period the aggressive Hittites, according to the Assyrian tablets, made war on the Accadians. The

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Hittites were dependent on Egypt for many of their supplies, and it is a matter of history that all strong nations push out their surplus and enterprising population along the highways of their commerce. It was thus that Phoenicia planted her colonies and stations wherever the current of commerce carried her merchants; and it is thus England, France, Germany, and other peoples plant their colonial stations and outposts at the present day. There is no difficulty in believing that the powerful, aggressive, and warlike Hittites should have swarmed over their southern as over their south-eastern border, and that they should have planted stations in Southern Palestine. Nor are we left to supposition on this point. It was the encroachment of the northern barbarians on the borders of Egypt that roused Thothmes the First to drive back the invaders, and, in doing so, he began his first war against the Hittites and their allies; and that war was carried on for nearly 500 years. At that time the Hittites and their king were in Palestine; and Brugsch tells us that there are records, dating from the time of the First Pharaoh of the Twelfth Dynasty, referring to the destruction of Hittite towns and palaces on the border of Egypt. Mariette goes even further, and declares that one of the early Egyptian dynasties was Hittite.

The peaceful character of the transaction between Abraham and the Hittites at Hebron has been seriously urged against the genuineness of the story. This objection does not rest on a profound view of things; it assumes that a warlike people are incapable of engaging with courtesy in a peaceful transaction. I am inclined to think that the very objection is a proof of incapacity to look at a Bible statement with ordinary reasonableness. As a matter of fact, however, the Egyptian inscriptions give us glimpses of the Hittites engaged in peaceful social and domestic transactions; and it may be safely assumed that the Hittites could not have withstood, for a thousand years, the shocks of war from Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria, if they had not been industrious and enterprising in times of peace.

The point, however, which has been most strongly urged is the difference between the Hittite names on the inscriptions and those mentioned in Genesis. The Hittite names in the Bible are all either Semitic or Semiticised, while five-sixths of the Hittite names of the North preserved in the inscriptions are supposed to be non-Semitic. The stumbling-block is the Semitic form of the names of the Southern Hittites.

In reply to this objection, I remark-first: It would be rash to assume for certain that the Hittites were non-Semitic.