relates how the Amorites were soon driven to take refuge behind the walls, from whence they were driven by the slings and arrows of the Israelites to rush down the ravine of the Arnon for water. All the south-eastern slope of Shihan is covered with the remains of a network of Cyclopean walls, differing in character from those of later date; and driven from these, a flight of two miles would bring them to the edge of the tremendous gorge of the Arnon. Every detail of the battle can be recognised on the spot.

An examination of the country enables us to trace with minute accuracy Balaam's progress. Balak meets the prophet at the banks of the Arnon, the frontier of his kingdom. Then he takes him to Kirjath Huzoth, identified by the Targum with Kiriathaim (Kureituu), and its high place, i.e., Jebel Attarus, at the foot of which are the ruins of Kiriathaim, and which is the first conspicuous eminence north of the Arnon. The next day he goes on to the high places of Baal, i.e., Baal-Meon or Main, the second position, whence he had a commanding view of the future country of Israel. Afterwards they proceed to Pisgah.or Nebo, and finally to the top of Peor facing Jeshimon, i.e., the ridge north of Nebo, and due west of Heshbon, where there are a group of ruins and a full view of the plains of Shittim. I conceive it impossible, when on the spot, not to recognise the four sacrificial stations, or to suppose the account to have been written by one unfamiliar with the country.

The persistency of the names of towns and districts is noteworthy. There is one peculiarity in the Moabite nomenclature, viz., that so many of the names have a dual termination. Now the character of Moab when we have left the edge of the ridge is an upland plain, covered with low mounds which are often in groups. Many of the towns are built on two mounds, surrounded by a common wall, and Professor Palmer discovered that in the provincial vocabulary the name harith is given to these mounds-the very word which occurs in Kir-harosheth or heres—and of the meaning of which we were ignorant. When we see the two hills of both the Kiriathaims we at once appreciate the force of the termination. I may mention one interesting case of persistency in a name. We had been examining Aroer and Dibon. When riding due east, we found ourselves in a long sloping depression, with grass-grown ridges running across it every few hundred yards up the hillsides. We could get no explanation of the meaning of these ridges, but were simply told we were in the "Derb Kurn Dhiban," the way of the vineyards of Dibon. The valley was about three miles long. Probably none of the Arabs ever saw a vine, and there remains not one in the country. But we could see at once that these grass-grown dykes were stone heaps, such as those on which the vine is to-day trailed on the slopes of Hermon and Lebanon; and when we turn to Judges, we read that Jephthah "pursued the Ammonites from Aroer unto the plain of the vineyards.' Now, this was exactly the route which a defeated army from the east would take in its retreat, and the name remains in another language, identical in signification.

Of the eighteen towns mentioned on the stone of Mesha, fourteen occur in Scripture, and can be identified in the modern vernacular. These were all examined by our party. One-Horonaim-occurs both on the stone and in the Bible, and is not yet recovered, but we can infer that it was on the frontier of Edom, which has not yet been thoroughly explored; and three

others are unknown or only doubtfully identified. Of the names hitherto regarded as lost, which occur in the Old Testament, several, such as Dimon, were met with by us.

The fruits and the vines of Moab are repeatedly mentioned; of these not a trace remains in the upper country. A few old almond-trees on Attarus are the only relics. Yet we have evidence of its former state, not only in the traces of vineyards, as near Dibon, but in the wine-presses, and especially in the oil-presses, with their great stones like huge millstones, to be found among the heaps of nearly every city. It is scarcely necessary that I should add, that with the single exception of Kerak, there remains not a town inhabited in the whole country. With the extermination of the settled population the fruit-trees would perish, and with their destruction the rains become uncertain. We may understand the desolation caused by the destruction of the wells (2 Kings iii.) when we notice that on the cistern-supply Moab must have been absolutely dependent; for its only rivers, as the Arnon and Callirrhoe, are in deep gorges, and wholly useless for irrigation. No wonder, then, that the great feature of the country are its hollowed cisterns. These form a perfect labyrinth under every mound, and in number and capacity far exceed even those of southern Judæa, while they give clear evidence of the enormous population the rich soil was enabled to maintain. Terracecultivation, excepting on the steep descent to the Dead Sea, there was none, the country having much greater natural fertility than western Palestine, but no natural fortresses except Kir, a place absolutely impregnable under the conditions of ancient warfare, and which the forces of Israel and Jehoshaphat could only annoy by their slingers, and then raise the siege.

One of the most interesting, yet the most utterly ruined, of all the sites in Moab is Macharus, connected with Scripture history as the scene of the martyrdom of John the Baptist. The Roman army under Bassus fearfully avenged the desperate resistance of the last remnant of the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem, and by the expenditure of enormous labour have heaped all the stones of the city into one huge cairn. They have left, however, the foundations of the citadel level with the soil, and in that citadel, Josephus tells us, Herod had his palace. A deep well, a very large, vaulted cistern, with roof still intact, and, most interesting of all, two dungeons, one of which may probably have been the prison-house of the Baptist, are the only remains within the keep.

The identification of Nebo can scarcely be called very recent, the place having been visited and recognised independently by the Duc de Luynes and myself, within the space of ten days, in the spring of 1864. The name Nebbeh remains, though Pisgah seems to be lost, or rather transferred, under its Arabic form, Feshkhah, to the opposite headland on the west of the Dead Sea. The view harmonises with that described in Deuteronomy. The Plain of Shittim, where Israel was encamped, is spread out like a map at our feet. The lower course of the Jordan and its mouth, together with its plain, is open to the view as far as opposite Shechem, and the whole of western Palestine from south of Hebron, Judæa, the heights of Benjamin, the hills of Samaria, all as far as Carmel and the Plain of Esdraelon.

Just in front of Nebo, on the lower ledge overlooking the Dead Sea,

are the ruins of an ancient city, with remains of temples and of Christian churches, showing that it was inhabited to the time of the Saracenic invasion, which is by some given as Shia'gha, by others, Ziagha or Ziara. In this place, I believe, I have recognised Zoar, which we know was an Episcopal city in the time of Eusebius. The position exactly harmonises with the mention of Zoar in Moses' Pisgah view. After Jericho, the ruins are the nearest feature in the landscape, directly in front, perched on a low brow, almost in a line with Jericho, and the object on which the eye would naturally rest in its survey next after the Jordan Plain. This site, likewise, meets more closely than any other the conditions for the position of Zoar as given in the story of Lot; assuming, as I think on all considerations we fairly may, that the doomed cities were in the Plain of Jordan, north of the Dead Sea.

There is yet something to be accomplished in Moab. The south-east of the country has not been carefully examined; and it is to be regretted that the American exploration has not as yet accomplished any results; but we may expect that, with efficient explorers, such as have now gone out, fresh light will be cast on the sacred records, as well as on the later history of the country. For the present, the state of Moab is exactly as foretold by Zephaniah, a breeding of nettles and a perpetual desolation, and the men of the east possess it, i.e., the Bedouin, such as the Beni Sakk'r and 'Anizeb, who, emerging from their eastern fortresses, annually depasture it.

If we can expect no further light to be cast upon Scripture history by new Moabite stones, a series of discoveries, of which we can scarcely yet guess the importance, promises to carry back the province of historical criticism to the epoch of the Flood. The brilliant discoveries of Botta, Layard, Rawlinson, and others, more than twenty years ago, had supplied a contemporary commentary on the Books of Kings and Chronicles; and now the clay tablets of Kouyunjik, read, and many of them exhumed, by the learning and marvellous acumen of Mr G. Smith, from the library of Sennacherib, are spanning the chasm of centuries farther back. It is true that the tablets of Assyria are two or three hundred years later than the Moabite Stone, or about B.C. 660; but Mr Smith has shown that they bear intrinsic evidence of being copies of documents of incalculably greater antiquity. This is especially the case with the Deluge tradition, of which there are now three copies, presenting various readings. Some of the characters in the original documents were of an ancient type, and as the Assyrian copyist did not always know their representatives in his own time, he has left some of them in their original form. There are, besides, sentences which have been originally side glosses, which have crept into the text. Assyrian scholars tell us, too, that the language is peculiar and archaic when compared with the Assyrian of the historic epoch.

If, notwithstanding all this, we had found an identity with the Scriptural account, it might have been argued that Moses, or perhaps Abraham, had obtained their story from the myths of Chaldea-the cradle of their race; that here we had the source of the Pentateuch. I say nothing of the difficulties in which this theory must involve us, to account for Moses, learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, seizing upon Chaldean traditions. But when, instead of identity, we find a constant difference

between the two accounts, while the events narrated in both are the same, and occur in the same order, it is impossible to evade the conclusion that they are distinct records of one event. The minor differences bespeak an independent tradition. The Biblical account is that of an inland people, the tablet of a maritime. The ark is called a ship; it is launched, it sails on the sea, and has a pilot. While both accounts make the Deluge to be a Divine punishment for the wickedness of the world, the one recognises God alone, the other brings in in various ways all the principal deities of the Assyrian Pantheon; both mention the altar on the summit of the mountain after quitting the ark, and both the sacrifices by sevens. There are differences as to the duration of the flood, but probably none as to the place where the ark rested; for the peak we call Ararat, the Nizir of the tablet, really lay east of Assyria.

to us.

It is too soon to ask what has been proved. At least a new field of inquiry and discovery in the early part of the Bible history is opened out Who, a century ago, could have dreamed that a contemporary history of the wars of Assyria, Babylon, and Israel would be restored to us To-day that period is modern to the Semitic scholar, as he collates the various readings of a language archaic in the days of Jehoshaphat, and as he sifts the legends of the Flood. May it not be that in that cradle of civilisation still lie the histories which the Assyrians copied 2500 years ago, and that among them may be tablets which shall cast light on the dispersion on the antediluvian Eden itself? At least, while a speculative criticism, and the inner consciousness, and an oracular Matthew Arnold have been making free with the later books, historical and geographical research have been building an impregnable fortress of facts round the earlier books of the Bible.

THE PRESIDENT.

Ir is not the custom at these Congresses to propose any vote of thanks, but I am sure you will all agree in carrying by acclamation a vote of thanks to those persons who have come together to-night to give us so much valuable instruction upon the land which above all others is the object of our highest interest. We have been revelling in the pleasures of memory; let us spend a few moments in thinking of the pleasures of hope. The second speaker said, and said with truth, that the Promised Land is still a Land of Promise. Our hearts assent to that; let our prayers be offered up, from our hearts, that that promise, in God's own time, may be fulfilled. We know what that promise is, that though God has scattered the Jews among all lands, from them will He bring them back. That He has scattered the Jews among all lands, I can bear witness; because amongst the first subscribers to the first church in New Zealand were three of the Jewish community. That God will bring them back, my own experience has convinced me; for there, too, in that distant land I had the inestimable privilege of grafting into the Church of Christ one of those whom St Paul has foretold should be grafted on to it. It was a mother married to a Christian, who in teaching her children the Holy Scriptures, became herself converted. Now, dear friends, we have to think of this great object of interest which is open to us for the future. It is to pray God to have mercy upon all these children of Israel whom

He has scattered in other lands, to bring them back to their own country, that country which Abraham looked into, into houses built with the hand of God Himself, into that city which has foundations, whose builder is God. It may be a distant hope; so was it a distant hope when that aged man waited for the consolation of Israel in the temple of Jerusalem. And though the hope be one that maketh the heart sick, though it be long deferred, yet it is a hope which rests upon the promise of a God that cannot fail. It is that God who has declared that in Him and in His Blessed Son shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, who is the God both of the Jew and the Gentile. It needs for us no special vision from heaven to convince us, as it convinced St Peter, that salvation was for the Gentiles, and not for the Jews alone. God forbid that we should ever think that the Jews are cast out from the hope of salvation, seeing that God has included all the nations of the earth. Let this then be our hope and our abiding prayer, bearing in mind continually that without this we cannot be made free; our own salvation cannot be completed until Jew and Gentile from every nation under heaven, from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west, shall come into that Kingdom of Christ which shall extend over the whole earth until the day shall come when He shall be surrendered to His Father, that God may be all in all.

THURSDAY EVENING, 7th OCTOBER.

The BISHOP of BLOMFONTEIN took the Chair at Seven

o'Clock.

CHILDREN'S SERVICES.

PAPERS.

The REV. HENRY BRASS, M.A., Incumbent of St Matthew's, Redhill, Surrey.

"FEED MY LAMBS" was one of the last commands of our risen Lord, a proof of love to Him who took the little ones in His arms and blessed them. And as the faithful Pastor looks upon the young of his flock, and thinks how many are likely to stray from the fold, or knows by painful experience how few of the Children in his Schools become regular attendants on the means of grace, it becomes a matter of increasing anxiety how he can best carry out the responsibility laid upon him.

Of course he must not forget the real root of the evil-the corrupt nature of all Adam's children. "The carnal mind is enmity against God," and therefore, unless influenced by the grace of God, they will be only too glad to escape from the restraints of true religion. But still, when, perchance, his eye lights upon the children's gallery, and he sees some sleepy