1892 by Mrs. Lewis and her sister, Mrs. Gibson, and called the Codex Syrsin, or Codex Suræ Veteris Palimpsestus Sinaiticus, the most valuable manuscript the library now contains. This is the oldest Syriac translation of the Gospels, but unfortunately it is far from complete. The parchment is a palimpsest, i..., it has been twice used for writing. This is easily explained. As we know, the material employed for ancient manuscripts had a commercial value which led to its repeated use: the vellum was rubbed down and cleaned, and then used again. Beneath writing that was comparatively modern, relating stories about some "holy" women, Mrs. Lewis detected traces of ancient characters. By the application of chemicals the original writing was brought out, with the happy result that she had found a Gospel text of profound interest and great value. Then each page was photographed by Mrs. Lewis and the fruits of the discovery given to the world.

The chief treasure the monastery library contained in former days was the Bible manuscript found there by Tischendorf, the Codex Sinaiticus. This dates from the fourth century A.D., and is regarded as the oldest and most authoritative text next to the Codex Vaticanus at Rome. Several leaves of this codex are now preserved at the University of Leipzig, but the greater part was purchased by the Emperor Alexander II. in 1869, for the absurdly small sum of eight thousand francs. The library now contains only a copy of this codex.

In the afternoon we assisted" at the convent service: most of the monks were present, the Archimandrite occupying an important stall near the Archbishop's throne. The number of monks is now only twenty-five, but formerly there were as many as four hundred. The service (in Modern Greek) seemed an interminable repetition of prayers, interspersed with excessive censing of everybody and everything. I have never witnessed in any Latin church a service which seemed so degrading and debased.

The monks as they entered passed by a long series of pictures. of saints; they crossed themselves before favourites and kissed the faces on the pictures. At certain points in the service the cantor would repeat Kyrie Eleison (pronounced "guerison") as fast as he could, and until he was breathless, once about forty times, and often twelve or twenty times. At the close, the monks bowed to the ground, as a Moslem does at prayer, some for a score of times, and one of the priests approached the Archimandrite, bowed three times to the ground and retired. We were told that this form of service has continued unchanged

since the fifth century, and if so we cannot wonder that the thirty-three bishoprics which formerly existed in Arabia are now extinct.

The monks showed us the Charnel House. As the monks die they are buried in a garden, and after some time the bones are dug up and placed in this charnel house, the skulls by themselves and the other bones apart. Here lie, carefully piled up, the bones of the monks from the sixth century!!! The bishops' bones are in boxes apart. The whole place savours of "death unto death."

When standing before Jebel Sufsâfa, we could understand how Moses, coming down the eastern side of the mount, and before he reached the hill on which, according to tradition, Aaron watched the idolatrous worship of the golden calf, would hear the shouts of the people before the scene itself came into view. As Moses came round the north-east shoulder of the mount, everything would be clearly visible, and then it was that the tables of the law were broken in pieces "beneath the mountain," and the fragments of the idol strewn on the surface of the brook which descends from a spring on the western slopes of the Sufsâfa. Upon that mountain, and before it, everything recorded in Holy Scripture could take place, as the physical features show; but the same could not be said of any other spot in all the world.

From the Scripture records we find that the Israelites arrived on the plain of Er-Raha-" the Wilderness of Sinai "-in the third month of the first year of their wanderings: that the Tabernacle was set up before the Holy Mount on the first day of the first month in the second year, and that the numbering of the host took place on the first day of the second month of the second year, the number being recorded as 603,550, besides women and children.* Also that the Israelites removed from Sinai, when the cloud was first taken up from off the Tabernacle, on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year so that they were encamped eleven months before the

mount.

I had not fully realized before the merciful providence of God in so ordering events that the giving of the Law-the First or Old Covenant-should at once be followed, and in the same place, by the institution of sacrifices for the pardon of transgressions against that Law which no human being has ever yet been known to keep perfectly. The institution of the Passover,

*See "Notes on the Census Numbers," pp. 265-8.