The younger Pliny goes in A.D. 110 as pro-consul to Bithynia and Pontus, and at once he comes in contact with the Christians, and asks the Emperor for instructions as to what he is to do with them when they came before his tribunal. He says that the contagion of their superstition has seized not only the cities but also the villages and open country, many of every age and rank and of both sexes being involved in the danger. He says he has tried to find out for himself what these Christians are, but beyond the fact that they meet together on a certain day of the week and sing a hymn to their God, Christ, and that they bind one another to forsake dishonesty, sensuality, and other evil things, he can discover nothing. Here we have a letter from a young heathen ruler who had no sympathy with Christianity, which places beyond all doubt the existence of the Christian faith in the two provinces over which he ruled. There are very many such incidental confirmations of the recorded facts of the Christian faith. I am not for a moment disposed to exaggerate their value or to let the spiritual verity stand or fall with them. I will try to indicate hereafter what value rightly belongs to them and what is their real bearing on the Christian faith. I am simply concerned for the present to shew that as the religion of the Bible claims to be historic, to be based upon facts which have actually taken place, we find that claim to be sustained by all kinds of references from independent sources which are quite beyond the suspicion of anything like collusion. Just as a child from its very simplicity may be a very telling witness in a court of justice, so very simple facts coming incidentally to our knowledge, may give strong assurance that certain other facts have actually taken place. The conclusion based on these facts may be quite another matter for separate consideration, but in an historic religion it is something, it is a great deal to have independent witnesses affirm—we know nothing of your religion, but the course of events on which it professes to be based we can testify to be such as you say.

Let us look at some of these confirmations. I say some of them, for popular tradition, literary testimony, excavations and explorations have created for us quite an embarrassment of riches, and all that one can do in a single lecture is to select a few illustrations as samples of the rest. By way of giving something like system to that selection I will first take two narratives from the Old Testament which have been assailed more than most others. In the next place I will mention some cases where in matters of fact the Bible was for a long time supposed to be incorrect, but in which, by evidence inaccessible for centuries, it has at length been shown to be right.

First, let me take two narratives asserted by the Old Testament to be narratives of fact, but which have been in our time especially assailed and treated as myths;-I refer to the account of the deluge in Noah's time and to that of the Exodus of Israel from the land of Egypt. I am not selfcomplacent enough to suppose that I can remove all the difficulties of these narratives; what I think I can do, is that which is within the reach of any plain man of common sense, namely, to try to remove some of the difficulties which have been needlessly thrust into them and which were not there to begin with.

(1) With regard to the first of these two-the destruction of mankind by the Flood, the entire question turns upon this -did it cover the whole earth as we know it now or was it confined to that part of it which was at that time inhabited by a certain race of men, in other words, was it universal or only partial? My own conviction most certainly is that it was limited to a certain inhabited region, that it was universal so far as a certain race was concerned, but only partial so far as the earth was concerned. The object of the Flood was not to destroy the earth but certain men upon it, because of their wickedness. And before they were destroyed God sent Noah as a preacher of righteousness to warn them. But if they had been all over the world he could not possibly have reached

them. The entire story of the preparation of the ark, and of Noah's intercourse with the men to be destroyed while it was preparing, points certainly to the idea of a comparatively small population within a comparatively restricted space.

The contrary hypothesis of all the four quarters of the globe being under water presents enormous difficulties of a very complicated kind. The astronomer will tell you that a body of water over the earth's surface sufficient to cover such mountains as the Himalayas, would so increase the diameter of the earth as to affect its orbit round the sun, and so increase its power of attraction over the other planets as to introduce disorder into the whole planetary system. The geologist will tell you that there are volcanoes which have been extinct from before the historic period and yet their cones have loose cinders and dust right up to the top which they would not have if they had been filled by the waters of

a great flood. But greater difficulties still remain behind. The zoologist will tell you that no ark built by human hands could ever hold twos and sevens of all the living creatures on the face of the whole earth. And even if such an ark could have been built it would have been quite impossible to get all the animals to any one place by a given time, For these are found in areas and seem to have radiated from common centres. There are animals, for example, to be found nowhere but in Australia, and to have brought these to the ark would have required a long sea voyage as well as a long journey by land. The thing only needs to be mentioned to be set aside at once as entirely out of the question. There is no escaping the conclusion, I think, that the deluge was a local event confined to one part of the earth's surface, and that it was universal only in the sense that it destroyed the whole race springing from Adam except the family of Noah. The earth that was destroyed was the earth that was corrupt before God, that was filled with violence. It was spoken of as the whole earth, as it naturally would be by the men who lived then, and from whom the traditions or the records came

which Moses made use of in his history. It was all the world they had any idea of as yet, their travels having extended no farther. Indeed we know it was not unusual even in later times for nations to speak of their own immediate neighbourhood of the world as they knew it as the whole earth. Thus, for instance, it is said "All countries came into Egypt to buy corn." When Jeremiah says that the slain of all the earth shall fall at Babylon, he of course refers only to the different people who had joined the armies of Babylon. In Deut. ii. 25 the Lord spake through Moses to Israel, saying: "This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee." In chapter xi. 25 of the same book, Moses says: "There shall no man be able to stand before you for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as He hath said unto you." It is clear, I think, from the reference, that the expression "under the whole heaven" in the one verse is equivalent to "the land ye shall tread upon" in the other, that is, to the land of Canaan and its contiguous tribes. Such expressions as "under the face of the whole heaven" need present no difficulty if we remember how often we ourselves use the same expression, meaning only thereby that part of the heaven which we can see.

Taking the idea of the Flood in this narrow sense there is nothing that need stagger our common sense in the story. Even Bunsen and Kalisch maintain the historical character of the narrative. Noah's Ark, against which so many covert jests have been directed, was really sufficient to contain a few specimens of each kind of living creature found in that limited district. It was not a ship, of course, inasmuch as it had neither masts, sails, nor rudder. It was simply an immense floating house about one hundred and fifty feet shorter than the Great Eastern, possessing these two qualities ample stowage and ability to keep steady on

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the water. A curious proof of its suitability for the purpose for which it was built was given by a Dutch merchant, Peter Jansen, of Hoorn, who in the year 1604 had a ship built of the same proportions though not of the same size as Noah's Ark. This vessel of Jansen's though not suitable, of course, for a long voyage, was found remarkably adapted for freightage. It was calculated that it would hold a third more lading than other vessels, without requiring more hands to work it. The thing is really not so absurd as some people would have us suppose. The one point of difficulty is the mention of Mount Ararat, for that mountain being seventeen thousand feet above the sea-level would require a world-wide flood to cover it. But it would be necessary to show that the Ararat of that time is the same with the Ararat of our time. Few things have been more difficult to determine than the right connection of many of the Bible names with their actual localities. The reference may not improbably be to some lower range within the line of vision. In any case the whole story must necessarily have been handed on for centuries before it was embodied by Moses in the Book of Genesis, and whether handed on by tradition, or record, or both, there was room for variation in the details while the story itself should remain substantially true. That it is a substantial verity with which we have to do, that there was such a catastrophe as that which Moses describes, which came swiftly and suddenly, leaving no opportunity for escape, we have the authority of our Lord Himself for saying. To reply to this that He probably lent Himself to a delusion or that He spoke of a myth as a reality because being human he knew no better is to say that which if it were true would shake the whole Christian fabric and bring a calamity upon our spiritual hopes as great as that which the Flood brought upon the earth. Let us hold to Christ even if we have to let all our learned critics go.

From the nature of the case much light from the outside is not possible on this narrative of the flood. But such light