have been changed, so that its present condition gives but an inadequate idea of what it once was. We have sufficient reason to believe, therefore, that at the period when the Israelites spent their fifteen or eighteen months in this peninsula, the capacity of the country to support both men and beasts must have been far greater than it is now found to be. Indeed, the Report of the Ordnance Survey Expedition goes to show that at all the localities where the Mosaic History places the Hebrews in this Wilderness, there is no reason to doubt that the physical resources of those localities, so far as identified, were abundantly sufficient to justify all that is related of them. The alleged physical impossibility of the Israelites and their flocks and herds finding the means of subsistence during their stay in this wilderness we consider, therefore, as having been at length fully disproved. And it is equally wonderful and gratifying to observe how the apparent difficulties, which so long beset the Sacred Narrative, have thus melted away as our acquaintance with the country has become thorough and complete. The explorations of this Expedition have served not simply to refute sceptical objections, but also to furnish much positive confirmation of the Bible History. The general route of the Israelites has been traced out, and not a few of their halting-places clearly identified. In many countries it would be impossible to fix upon one road to the exclusion of all others; but owing to the peculiar formation of this region, the explorers were enabled to decide with no little certainty the whole course taken from Egypt to Sinai. The scene of Miriam's "song of triumph over Pharaoh and his hosts," the "Wilderness of Shur," the line of "the three days' journey without water," the bitter springs of "Marah," the sweet "wells of Elim, with their palm-trees," the "encampment by the Sea," the "Wilderness of Sin," the defile of "Rephidim," the way followed to "pitch in the wilderness of Sinai," and the mount from which God proclaimed his holy Lawall these were identified, and were found to accord exactly with the simple and concise account given in the Bible. "We are thus able," says Professor Palmer, "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 geographically 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."* "Not a single member of the expedition," says Mr. Holland, "returned home without feeling more firmly convinced than ever of the truth of that sacred his tory which he found illustrated and confirmed by the natural features of the desert. The mountains and valleys, the very rocks, barren and sunscorched 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." + PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE LAND OF PROMISE. There is no district on the face of the globe containing so many and such sudden transitions as Palestine, being at once a Land of mountains, plains, and valleys. It unites different climates under the same sky, and collects within a small compass the pleasures and productions which nature has elsewhere dispersed at great distances of time and place.-VOLNEY. 587 CANAAN A LAND CHOSEN OF GOD: WESTERN PALESTINE: EASTERN PALESTINE: VALLEY OF THE JORDAN: THE DEAD SEA: REASONS FOR THE CHOICE OF THIS LAND-1. ITS ISOLATION; 2. SUITABLENESS OF ITS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE TO EDUCATE THE CHOSEN PEOPLE; 3. ITS FITNESS TO BE THE BIRTH-PLACE OF THE BIBLE; 4. ITS CENTRAL POSITION, AS TO THE THREE CONTINENTS. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE LAND OF PROMISE. ANKIND having for the second time all but universally corrupted their way, in departing from the True and Living God, it became necessary, if the knowledge and worship of Him were to be preserved in the world, to resort to a different and more effectual method than had hitherto been followed for this end. The plan now adopted by the Most High, as observed in a previous chapter, was to choose a Man, and in him his descendants after him as a nation, to be His witnesses upon the earth-to be the depositaries of the historic and preceptive truths already made known, and of the prophetic truths and promises yet to be accomplished in the coming and Kingdom of Messiah. The person on whom this choice fell was Abraham, the son of Terah, whose native place was Ur, of the Chaldees, "Now the Lord said unto Abraham, Get thee out of |