The goddess-mother directs him on his way, "and now they ascend the hill which most overhangs the city, and from above looks toward the opposite towers." Sidy Bosaid, this overhanging hill, the highest point upon the peninsula, and three hundred and ninety-three feet above the sea, was only half a mile from the city wall, and twice that distance from the Byrsa; and from its summit could be seen the stately towers, the gates, the theater's deep foundations, and the eager Tyrians.

ART. VI. RECENT CONFIRMATIONS OF THE
SCRIPTURE RECORD.

Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; being the Result of a Second Expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum. By AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Monuments of Egypt; or, Egypt a Witness for the Bible. By FRANCIS L. HAWKES, LL.D. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Record; stated anew, with special reference to the Doubts and Discoveries of Modern Times. By GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

Le Bible et Moderne Science. MARCEL D. SERRES in Bibliotheque Universelle de Genève, No. 106.

EGYPT, Nineveh, Babylon-these names have been for years most significantly suggestive of death-of death in its widest grasp and completest triumph. Yet these nations are not dead. Never did they live to so grand a purpose as now. The mys terious figures and angles of their exhumed slabs are worth more than the finest chiseling of the features of any god. They help to authenticate God's revelation. They reaffirm God's authority. They remove the shrouding vail of antiquity.

Antiquity greatly affects credibility. Credibility decreases by geometrical ratio as antiquity increases by arithmetical. A thousand corroborative incidents have passed into oblivion. A multitude of side lights have gone out. And the intensity of the central light itself is inversely as the square of the distance.

Hence objections are raised against the Scriptures which could not have been seriously proposed at the time of their writing.

Respect for what is ancient merely because it is ancient is not a distinguishing characteristic of this age. And with good reason. The utilities of to-day find little assistance, the philosophy of to-day finds much that is puerile, the science of to-day much of stupidity and error in the pretended knowledge of the earlier ages. Even the scholar, on whose estimate antiquity is dependent for respect and credence, finds the father of history the father of many absurdities and lies. And so whatever is ancient is suspected. Add to this that Christianity makes the greatest possible demands both for reverence and obedience, and contains so much that is not only incomprehensible to the mind, but opposed to the desires of man, and it becomes evident that its book is not only subject to criticism, but provokes it.

Hence students of the myths of ancient literature turned to that literature most ancient of all with minds prepared to find at least allegories if not fables in Moses as well as Ovid, Isaiah as the Sybil. The Old Testament quickly yielded to criteria no modern history could endure. Parts of the New soon followed, and then the whole, till we were left to console ourselves only with a "God-man eternally incarnate, not an individual but an idea."

To this dire exigency of man God was not indifferent. He did not leave man to be driven back to the unutterably sweet rest and peace found in his word by the absurdities, contradictions, and mysteries into which he had plunged himself. No! when the human mind lay panting and shuddering from its fruitless struggles after light, he added fresh fuel to the beacon of his holy word. He made its light penetrate that outer darkness where man had flung himself. He poured illumination on the blind. Gathering up authentication from the very borders of the chaos of the primal earth, from the graves of perished empires, from the present monuments of cursed peoples, from the stars in their courses and the strata of the earth, he declares, "I am God, and beside me there is none other." To render his word authoritative and powerful he has treasured evidences of its truth in the very bowels of the earth through decades of centuries, and now brings them forth, not only when man

desperately needs them, but when they can be copied, pictured, printed, and preserved above ground, rendering no further authentication needful for all time.

Let us follow the lines of confirmation, which naturally divide themselves into three-Historical, Incidental, and Scientific.

Two of the authors from whom we draw most of our materials have long been favorites with the public. They need no criticism, either favorable or adverse. They wrote in a spirit more devoted to truth than theory, and a public, sympathizing in the conclusions reached, has accorded them unusual honor. The record of discoveries made since their writing is found in the third author mentioned, and is scattered over the whole range of scientific publication and periodical literature.

One cannot but confess that a Divine Providence directed the exhuming as well as the preserving of these monuments. For who could expect to find in isolated pictures, commemorating single events of single reigns, facts authenticating the history of a despised and distant nation with which they came in contact but little in the course of a long and momentous national history? Who could expect to find monuments of an exodus so deeply humiliating and so unprecedentedly disastrous recorded and preserved by the very sufferers themselves? True, there are none designed to be such; but such there are, and providentially left when all was designed to be obliterated. Just as De Wette was getting hard at work on his Introduction to the Old Testament the expedition of Napoleon set sail for Egypt. Just as he was poring incredulously over the exodus of the Jews, Bouchard unearthed the Rosetta stone; the key to the locked mysteries of Egyptian lore was being fitted into the wards. When his work was falling from the press, Champollion lè Jeune was reading to the savans of Paris the outlines of his future works on Egypt. When the zodiacs of Dendera and Esneh were declared by M. Gore to be at least eleven thousand years older than the period assigned by biblical chronology for the existence of man, he had just become able to read the name of Augustus Cesar upon one and of Antonius upon the other. Thus these zodiacs, which, "like birds of the night," says Osborn, "hovering over or perching upon the uncouth remains of ancient superstition, filled the air with dismal forebodings of the downfall of Christianity," were proved to be

no older than the Christian era. Just as Strauss reached the zenith of his fame as an alchemist, transmuting facts to myths, gold to dross, Layard was preparing for a grander fame, earned by turning his pretended myths to facts, dross to gold.

HISTORICAL.

For the reason mentioned, the direct historical confirmations of Scripture in Egypt are few but decisive, the incidental

abundant.

Brick-making.-Rosellini found in the tomb of Roscherê a picture of the Hebrews in their bondage: "Of the laborers some are employed in transporting clay in vessels, some in intermingling it with the straw, others in taking the bricks out of the form and placing them in rows, still others with a piece of wood on their backs and ropes on each side carrying away the bricks already burned or dried. Their dissimilarity to the Egyptians appears at the first view; the complexion, physiognomy, and beard permit us not to be mistaken in supposing them to be Hebrews; ... the physiognomy is unmistakably Jewish." In this conclusion agree Rosellini, Hengstenberg, Osborn, and Kitto.

Shishak.-In the twelfth chapter of Second Chronicles we have the history of the invasion of Shishak king of Egypt. Rehoboam is humiliated and made repentant by the warning of Shemaiah the prophet. The Lord declared that they should be made prisoners of Shishak, who came and "took all" the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the king's treasures, reducing the kingdom to the level of a conquered province.

Champollion landed one day about sunset to glance at the ruins of Karnak. In a large hall was a picture of a triumph. In the midst of sixty-three prisoners, each representing a conquered city, nation, or tribe, he saw one inscribed "king of the country of Judah." The picture was executed by the order of Shishak, and stands, a sculptured record of the invasion and subjugation of Judah, recorded in Chronicles. In the same picture were the name of Beth-horon, Megiddo, Mahanaim, and some others, towns which Shishak captured while invading Judea.

Death of Pharaoh.-Brugsh has lately identified the Pharaoh

* "Egypt and its Monuments," pp. 180, 182.

of the exodus with Thothmes II. of the monuments.* Thothmes III. was a great conqueror, and placed magnificent inscriptions concerning himself upon the monuments of Karnak. These records fix the date of his accession to the throne. Astronomically determined, it is found to have been May 5, 1515, and "with the sunset of the preceding day would commence the twelfth day of the second lunar month, counting from the equinox." Now, assuming this to have been the day of the demise of the preceding monarch, it is identical with the day of the submersion of the exodic Pharaoh in the Red Sea. For Moses says that from the overthrow to the arrival at Elim was "three days," that is, vvxonuɛpa, measured from sunset to sunset. This would make them arrive at Elim on the fourteenth, and leave there on the fifteenth. Just so it is said by Moses: "They took their journey from Elim... on the fifteenth day of the second month."+

In the remains of Assyria direct historical verification of the Scripture record is very abundant, and the evidence of the highest possible order. The events of the reign of each king whose annals have been discovered are minutely described. In some cases of foreign conquest daily events are particularly noted. Of the main figures in every picture commemorating a victory are the "scribes of the host" (2 Kings xxv, 19) taking an exact account of every article of spoil.

“Pul the king of Assyria came up against the land; and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand." 2 Kings xv, 19. This term, Pul, seems to be an abbreviation, or half a name. The Septuagint has it Phalôch. Almost the

* We record this professed discovery of the future Egyptologer, well aware that it puts a different king on the throne at the time from any one hitherto supposed to occupy it. It has been supposed by Wilkinson, without any ground for absolute certainty, that Pthahmen was king of Egypt at the time of the exodus. Bunsen thinks it was Menephthath. Osborn, as will be seen hereafter, infers in favor of Sethos II. of the nineteenth dynasty, while Brugsh carries it back to the second king of the eighteenth dynasty. Should the supposed discovery prove to be real, it will be heartily welcomed as a fixed point in the confusion of the earlier history. For while the order of succession of many kings is clear, and the approximate length of their regnal periods discovered, points synchronous with other history greatly need to be ascertained. See the subject treated extenso in the British Quarterly Review, October, 1860.

+ Methodist Quarterly Review, 1861, p. 155.