text have been transmitted for ages without change. Thus in the Book of Numbers xi. 1 we find the letter נ (nun) written backward [Hebrew: reversed nun], to express more emphatically the meaning of "perversity," mentioned in the verse. In Job xxxviii. 13 the letter ע (ayin) in the word ךשעים (reshachim), "ungodly," is raised above the line, to indicate how God will shake up into the air, like chaff, the ungodly of whom the Prophet speaks.

But it is needless to point out in detail all the odd precautions which were invented by the rabbis that they might exercise a most rigorous control over the Hebrew text; and although these methods are the results of a later school of Hebraists, they go to show the sense of responsibility which the Jews must always have felt regarding the preservation of the ancient Testament. Even at this day you can hardly discover a substantial departure from the original in the numerous manuscript copies extant. Kennicott, an English Biblical scholar, brought together five hundred and eighty Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible which, after careful study and comparison, revealed scarcely any differences of the text. An Italian, Prof. de Rossi, who died in 1831, had collected seven hundred and ten manuscripts, and had seen in various libraries one hundred and thirty-four more, all of which he examined critically without finding any notable differences. I am speaking, remember, of such differences as would affect the historical identity of these manuscript copies with their original. It would be folly to assert that these manuscripts, which reached the number of over 1,600, are copies made by the same scribes; for some of them were discovered in Arabia, others in old Jewish settlements in China; one, the oldest in existence, as some believe, was found in a synagogue in the Crimea, by a Jewish rabbi named Abraham Firkeowicz.

[1] Apolog., i. 67.

[2] Ep. St. John, chap. i. 1.

[3] Tacit., Annal., xv. 38-44.

[4] St. Luke iv. 16-22.

II.

STRANGE WITNESSES.

If there remained no trace of the original writings of the Old Testament books preserved for us in the Hebrew tongue, we should still possess very reliable witnesses of ancient date to testify to their existence in substantially the same form in which we have them; for the children of Jewish exiles, who were forced gradually to substitute the language of their conquerors for their mother tongue, had well authenticated translations for their use in the synagogues. The most remarkable of such translations is the so-called Greek Septuagint, commonly believed to have been made for the Alexandrian Library by seventy Jewish rabbis at the request of King Ptolemy Philadelphus. We shall have occasion, later on, to revert to the significance of this Greek version. For the present it is only necessary to mention that it was so highly esteemed by the Jews themselves that they used it for several centuries in their reading to the people, many of whom understood only the Greek.

Even the enemies of the Jews bear witness to the unchanged character of the oldest portion of the Hebrew Bible for centuries before the coming of our Lord.

About the year 536 B.C., on the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, the Samaritans, a mixed race of Jewish and Aramaic stock, sought from the temple authorities at Jerusalem the privilege of worshipping with the rest of the Jews in the holy city. This was refused. Shortly afterwards one of the priests at Jerusalem was excommunicated for having married the daughter of a Samaritan prince. He sought refuge in Samaria, and having built a temple on Mount Garizim, induced the people to worship according to the Mosaic Law. They were found to possess a copy of the Pentateuch, which they had transcribed in Samaritan characters; and whilst the Jews of Southern Palestine held no communication with them, and the Samaritans on their part looked upon the Jews as schismatics who had changed the ancient observances of the Law, yet both recognized the same sacred code as the rule of their conduct and religion.

A copy of this valuable version, which at a later date was translated into the actual Samaritan dialect, was discovered at Damascus in 1616, and has since been printed in several editions at Paris and London. It is of great importance, as it establishes a perfect accord with the reading of the Jewish Hebrew text. These versions, made at different times, in places widely apart, and by men who were decidedly hostile to each other on religious as well as on national grounds, force us to admit a well-fixed, universally known, and trusted original of the books of Moses; for where there is a copy there must be something copied from, just as when we see the well-defined shadow of an object we know that the object itself exists.

The antiquity of the Hebrew Bible is indeed attested by many no less conclusive arguments than those we have given, which, from the historian's point of view, stamp it as the most important monument of antiquity which we have, and whose genuine character is proved by the most trustworthy documentary evidence. There is no page of historical account in existence to-day that has such overwhelming testimony in favor of its authentic origin as these books of the Bible. Known by generations as the inviolable law of God, guarded with scrupulous solicitude as their greatest religious treasure, read sabbath after sabbath in the synagogues, not alone of Palestine, but of Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome—in short, wherever the sons of Abraham had been dispersed in the course of more than twenty centuries—who was it, friend or foe, that could have dared to change this royal mandate of the Most High to His chosen people! If a man were to-day to print a copy of the Constitution, or a history of the formation of the American Republic, introducing some hitherto unheard-of statements, or omitting some important words or facts, how long would such imposition remain unnoticed or unchallenged? Yet it would be infinitely easier in our times, and under our conditions, for such change to pass unnoticed than it would have been among the Jews. The Oriental races are intensely averse to anything that threatens to alter their traditions. The customs of the Eastern peoples to-day are the same as they are described by Isaias seven hundred years before Christ, and the Jew of Isaiah's time reflects in every act the manners of another seven hundred years before, when Moses describes his people as imitating the domestic virtues and habits of Abraham's day, a time which carries us back still another seven centuries. A thousand years make no perceptible change in Oriental civilization. You may see it every day. Take as a ready instance Algeria, visited annually by many Americans, who go to Europe by the southern route. It is a coast city, lying in the full glare of European civilization; nay, modern life has forced itself upon this town with the captivating aggressiveness of French manners, French magnificence, French soldiery, and a system of commerce which, within the last sixty years, has caused the European population to outnumber the original Arab inhabitants of