contact. These traces were sometimes in signs and languages not understood or wholly unknown in our learned world, but with assiduous study the mysteries came, in course of time, to be unravelled. The story of these discoveries is in various ways extremely interesting, and we shall speak of them more in detail later on.

Besides the primitive inscriptions just referred to, a number of cities have been discovered which lay buried for many centuries beneath the ground upon which afterwards other races dwelt and built their homes. Excavations in Palestine go, day by day, to explain, where they do not simply corroborate, the statements of the Bible. The diggings about the supposed ancient site of Nineveh, in Babylonia, have unearthed the ruins of an immense library. Sir A. H. Layard, and subsequently Mr. George Smith and Hormuzd Rassam, have brought together a number of clay tablets which open an immense world of Assyrian and Babylonian literature, whose existence was hitherto known only by the indications given in the Book of Daniel and other historical portions of the Bible concerning the conquerors of the Jews. These discoveries, as Mr. A. H. Sayce remarks in his "Fresh Lights from Ancient Monuments" (page 17), have not only "shed a flood of light on the history and antiquity of the Old Testament, but they have served to illustrate and explain the language of the Old Testament as well."

The evidence brought to light by these monuments has left no doubt in the minds of scientific men as to the facts that occurred three and four thousand years ago. We read the inscriptions which bear witness to the work of the Chaldean king Nimrod, to Zoroaster the Elamite, to Khamu-rabi, the Arab of the days of Moses; we treasure as of primary historical importance the account of Herodotus, who visited Babylon at the time when Esdras and Nehemias, who were both ministers at the court of Artaxerxes, wrote their continuation of the Book of Chronicles for the Jewish brethren in Palestine. When we read the works of Tacitus and Suetonius, of Cicero and Virgil, all of whom indicate that they had some knowledge of the Jewish sacred books,[1] we entertain no doubt as to their existence or the authenticity of their writings; yet men under the guise of scientific criticism have sought to cast doubts upon the Biblical records which have in their favor a documentary evidence a hundred times more accurate and trustworthy than any work of antiquity without exception in the whole range of history. If apologists were silent, the very stones would begin to cry out in behalf of the authenticity and antiquity of the Biblical records. Every day is bringing this truth into stronger relief. "Discovery after discovery," says Prof. Sayce, "has been pouring in upon us from Oriental lands, and the accounts given only ten years ago of the results of Oriental research are already beginning to be antiquated.... The ancient world has been reawakened to life by the spade of the explorer and the patient skill of the decipherer, and we now find ourselves in the presence of monuments which bear the names or recount the deeds of the heroes of Scripture."

[1] Cf. Hettinger-Bowden, "Revealed Religion," page 158.

V.

HEAVENLY DOCTRINE.

"Whence but from heaven could men, unskilled in arts,
In several ages born, in several parts,
Weave such agreeing truths?"
                    (Dryden, Religio Laici.)

The Bible, regarded as a work of history which offers us proofs of credibility beyond those of any secular work of the same kind, has in its composition and style a refinement and loftiness of tone far superior to other writings of equal age which have come down to us. The Jews "attributed to these books, one and all of them, a character which at once distinguishes them from all other books, and caused the collection of them to be regarded in their eyes as one individual whole. This distinguishing character was the divine authority of every one of those books and of every part of every book."[1] This belief of the Jews was so strong, so universal, so unchanging that, as has already been said, it pervaded and regulated their entire religious, political, and social life during all the eventful centuries of Israelitish history.

That our Lord knew of this belief, that He endorsed it, preached and emphasized it repeatedly, is very evident from the authentic narrative of the Gospels.

Expressions indicating this are to be found everywhere in the writings of the evangelists: "Have you never read in the Scriptures?" He says to the Scribes in referring to the words of the Psalmist (cxvii. 22): The stone which the builders rejected, etc. (St. Matthew xxi. 42.) Again, a little later on, He charges the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection: "You err, not knowing the Scriptures" (Ibid. xxii. 29). In the Garden of Olives He bears witness to the prophetic character of the Book of Isaiah: "How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled" (Ibid. xxvi. 54)? And the historian, a friend and Apostle of Christ, adds: "Now all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled" (Ibid. 56). St. John's Gospel, especially, abounds in references like the foregoing, which point to the intimate relation between the Messianic advent of Christ and the figures of the Old Law, and assure us that the books of the Prophets, as well as the accompanying historic accounts of the Scriptural books generally, were regarded as the sacred word of God, not only by the Jews, but by the disciples of Christ.

This sacred collection was generally spoken of as consisting of three parts, namely, the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Philo and Josephus, both trained in the schools of the Pharisees, mention the division as one well understood among the Jews of their time. Christ Himself speaks of the Sacred Scriptures, in different places, with this same distinction.

Now the testimony of Christ, who proved Himself to be the Son of God, and therefore unerring truth, is explicit in so far as it appeals with a supreme and infallible authority to the Jewish Scriptures as to a testimony not human, but divine. "Have you not read that which was spoken by God?" He says, referring to the Mosaic Law in Exodus iii. 6 (St. Matt. xxii. 31). Many times He speaks of the Scriptures "that they may be fulfilled," thus indicating that they contain that which lay in the future, and whose foreknowledge must have come from God. This testimony of Our Lord is strengthened by the interpretation of His Apostles in the same sense.

Yet although the testimony of Christ and the Apostles regarding the fact that the Books of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms are divinely inspired, is very explicit, we have nowhere a clear statement or a catalogue which might assure us what books and parts of books are actually comprised in this collection of the Sacred Scriptures of which our Lord speaks. Christ approves as the word of God those writings which were accepted as such among the Jews of His day, but He does not give us any definite security by this general endorsement that every chapter, every verse, much less every word of the Bible, as we have received it, is actually inspired. We are not therefore quite sure from the evidence thus far given that the Old Testament, as we have it, has in every part of it the sanction of Christ's testimony to its