to many a friend, and sobered, if not silenced, many an adver sary. It waited with equal equanimity for the results of topographical discovery in those lands of which it was more especially the annalist. This was, of all others, the thing most fitted to test, and in which failure would certainly involve the loss of character as well as reverence. In this balance it has been weighed -weighed by caviller and admirer-and not found wanting. There were many cities or places for which it did not need to wait, for all along it had been a correct topographer. Hebron, and Bethlehem, and Samaria, and Nazareth, and many other towns, have stood out from the earliest age as witnesses to its correctness. Above all, Jerusalem! No amount of ecclesiastical rubbish has been sufficient to overlay or displace the main features of that city and its suburbs. Along its western side, spreading out to the south, stretches the old plain or valley of Rephaim, where David fought, once and again, the hosts of Philistia. Here the Kedron, beginning beyond the north-western angle of the wall, sweeps round the city with its quiet curve, deepening as it bends, and widening into the fruitful hollow where the old olives still mark the Garden of Gethsemane. There rises, to the east, the grey ridge of Olivet, with its scattered olives here and there, reminding the gazer of what it once was, ere Titus swept away its verdure, stem and branch. There, to the south-east, where the extremity of the Tyropoon divides Sion from Ophel, is Siloam, or, as it is now modernized, Silwân, -not a brook, as Milton calls it, nor a fountain, as other poets have named it, but a pool, as Nehemiah and the evangelist have truly designated it, a pool now in ruins and almost empty, but still reminding the traveller of Old and New Testament verity. There is Sion, too, with the oblong castle which now represents the Tower of David, which, in all likelihood, has sprung out of the ruins of that very tower which took the name of Judah's king. There are all these great features of the wondrous city, just as Scripture has drawn them. Time and the spoiler have swept away much, but they have failed in some things; and these have been left as witnesses to the truthfulness of the old sketches of Jerusalem given us a hundred times over in the Book of Truth. Not a few of the sites for which it waited long, refusing to alter its measurements according to ecclesiastical caprice, have within these twenty years come to light. In the eastern Kerak, perched on one of the stalwart hills that frown over the Bâhr Lût, is recognised now "Kir of Moab;" as in the Galilean Kerak, whose ruins cover the mounds at the south-western angle of the Bâhr Tubariyeh, is found the Tarrichea of Josephus, if not also the Rakkath of Joshua. For fourteen hundred years Shiloh-where Verifications of Scripture. 553 the tabernacle stood, and Samuel ministered, and Eli died-was fixed on the high peak, some six miles west of Jerusalem, named Nebi Semwîl, in contradiction to the old narrative. A traveller passing northward from el-Bîreh to Nâblus, turns some two or three miles out of his way to the right, and there, on the high slope of a hill which commands a whole network of valleys, he finds mounds of curious ruins, named Seilûn, on the very spot to which the Divine narrative would have led him. Not above a few miles from the hills of Nazareth in one direction, and no farther from Tabor on the other, stands an old square ruin, commanding the whole plain of Esdraelon. The Arabs call it Zerîn; and in it we see the ancient Jezreel of Ahab. A little farther north lies a filthy village, fenced round with prickly pears instead of walls its name is Solam, representing beyond doubt the ancient Shunem of Elisha. These are but one or two of the many places which have of late years come up to view, and the resuscitation of which has so strikingly verified the Scripture as to the accuracy of its minutest details. For other sites it still waits. A few years will bring more numerous confirmations. It waits for the discovery of Capernaum; for Dr Robinson's proof as to Khan Minyeh is defective and inconclusive. It waits for the discovery of Dan, in the extreme north; for Dr Wilson's ingenious conjecture as to the identity of Tell-el-Kadi and Dan, from the common signification of their names (judge), is after all doubtful, though adopted by all subsequent travellers. It waits for the resuscitation of Zelzah, in the borders of Benjamin; for, though the suggestion of the Scotch Deputation, as to its being the modern Beit-jalah, on the olive heights above Rachel's tomb, is not unlikely, it wants corroboration. It waits till, somewhere within a two miles' range of Jerusalem, some traveller shall light on Mizpah of Benjamin, the city of the assembled tribes in the days of the Judges; for Mr Stanley's idea, that it is the Scopus of Josephus, though not improbable, is uncertain. It waits, too, for the discovery of Emmaus, so well known, though but once named in New Testament story; for most assuredly the Nicopolis of the Romans is not the Emmaus of the Evangelist and of Josephus. That the Roman Nicopolis is now the Arab Amwâs, and that Amwâs represents some ancient Emmaus, these points are clear enough. But Emmaus-meaning, as it probably does, hot baths-was a name known in the north as well as the south of Palestine. The Emmaus of Luke was a village some seven miles and a half from Jerusalem,—a distance which men might quietly walk to and fro in a day,not a city twenty miles off, a distance which men, going and returning, could not possibly accomplish so as to be present in the evening in Jerusalem. We still wait for the discovery of Emmaus, sixty stadia from Jerusalem. It will come in good time; not by the alteration of the text either of Luke or Josephus, but by some traveller, who has no theory to support, lighting on some old ruin, which his fellah-guide tells him is called Amwâs, like two or three other places,―some far off, and some near. the Bible does not need to make haste, nor do its readers need But for such a discovery to be impatient. It will come in good time. It is not without reason that one would contend for the accuracy of Scripture, even in its words. Accurate precision forms the very perfection of Euclid's "Elements" and Newton's "Principia;" nor is it any disparagement of these to pronounce them stereotyped and unalterable. A modern German, indeed, has said that "everything noble loses its aroma as soon as men restrict it to an unchangeable form;" yet no one supposes that Euclid or Newton have lost their nobility because they are unchangeable in their form and truth. It is the glory of science, that each proposition in these works is as true to-day as it was when first demonstrated by its author. Truth never changes. It advances, it expands, it multiplies; but it does not change. It may be added to, but it cannot be taken from. In acquiring new territory, it does not surrender the old. tions are all genuine additions. Its annexaadvanced, gives up old territory; so no theology, however "adNo mathematics, however vanced," can renounce the dogmatical acquisitions of the past, unless on the ground that they are false. To call them obsolete, is childish; to say they are not suited to the age, is a condemnation of the age more than of them. Mathematics cannot advance save by a perpetual recurrence to first principles; and it is only thus that theology can advance. Nor can anything be more suspicious than this disposition to make progress by leaving old truth behind. No one feels himself shackled by his full belief in the "Principia." His adherence to these is no hindrance to progress: much the reverse. ence to the accurate and unchangeable forms of thought and Nor does our adhertheology, given us in Scripture, prevent our making constant additions to our knowledge. Love does not grow by giving up the past; nor does faith; nor does knowledge; nor does theology. Not willingly would any one admit the inaccuracy of a favourite author: not without a sigh could he bring himself to believe that the words of "Paradise Lost" were not Milton's words. So, not willingly can any one concede the inaccuracy of Scripture: not without a sigh can any one bring himself to believe that its words are not the words of God. If the Atheist be really sincere, it must have been with a sorrowful heart that he relinquished the idea of the existence of an infinitely perfect Originality and Progression. 555 and blessed Being; and it must have been with no ordinary feelings of terror that he discovered that the world's great arch was without a keystone. And if the deniers of verbal accuracy to Scripture be thoroughly sincere, it must have been with no common bitterness of soul that they discovered that the Bible. was inaccurate, and that its words were not the words of God. What struggles it must have cost them to believe this! With what reluctance they must have come to this sad conclusion! With what fear must they enter on all speculation, knowing that they are thus shut out from the great source of certainty! And with what tenderness should they bear with the scruples of those who are still clinging to the words of Scripture, and resting themselves on the belief, that God has spoken, that God has written, not thoughts merely, but words-unerring wordswhich they find to be no chain, no trammel, but a lamp unto their feet, and a light unto their path! The most original thinker is not the man who speculates or dreams; but the man who studies the processes of nature, outer and inner, and on these grafts his thoughts, and out of these originates his propositions, or axioms, or deductions. For all these processes are the visible expression of thoughts far higher and wider than those of man. So the most original and most advanced theologian is not the man who flings abroad new opinions gaily clothed; but the man who studies every word of Scripture, and every fact contained in these. For these words and facts are of all others the most pregnant and fruitful; seeing they are the embodiments of divine, and therefore infinitely profound thought;-thought which, if carefully deposited and honestly cherished, will prove the parent of an endless offspring, -true, original, and progressive, though not of course, like itself, perfect and divine. INDEX TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH VOLUME OF THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. Slave States. Arabia and Palestine, travels in, early and Alison's, Sir A., Histories, 277, 278-re- | American slavery-see Slavery and the Bacon, Whately's, 1-Whately as an au- thor, 1, 2-Bacon's essay on Unity in Béranger, politician and poet, 498—early |