of life." A second tree is mentioned in Babylonian hymns on whose heart the name of the god of wisdom is said to be inscribed.

THE FLOOD: In 1872 George Smith discovered the Babylonian account of the deluge, which strikingly resembles that of Genesis. It is contained in a long poem which was composed in the age of Abraham, but the Chaldean tradition of the deluge, of which the account in the poem is but one out of many, must go back to a very much earlier date. Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah was rescued along with his family, servants, and goods, on account of his righteousness. The god Ea warned him in a dream of the coming flood, and ordered him to build a ship, into which he should take every kind of animal so that "the seed of life" might be preserved.

UR OF THE CHALDEES: "Ur" is now identified as Mugheir. This was the early home of Abraham and his forefathers spoken of in Genesis (12:27-32). It was situated on the west side of the Euphrates. The name means "the city" in Babylonia. It is proven now that there was such a city, and that it is identical with Mugheir, the ruins of which have been thoroughly explored. It was the seat of a dynasty of kings who reigned before the age of Abraham, and was famous for its temple of the moon-god, whose other famous temple was at Haran in Mesopotamia.

ABRAHAM: Contract-tablets show that in the age of Abraham, Canaanites—or "Amorites," as the Babylonians called them—were settled in Babylonia, and that a district outside the walls of Sippara had been assigned to them. Several of the names are distinctly Hebrew, and, in a tablet dated in the reign of the grandfather of Amraphel (Gen. 14:1), one of the witnesses is called "the Amorite, the son of Abi-ramu," or Abram.

CAMPAIGN OF CHEDORLAOMER: The records on the tablets that this event (described in Genesis 14) is in accordance with the national movements of that age.

SHISHAK'S INVASION OF JUDAH: On the southern wall of the temple of Karnak, Shishak (Shashang in Egypt) the founder of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty, has given a list of the places he captured in Palestine. Most of them were in Judea, but there are few (e. g. Megiddo and Taanach) which belonged to the northern kingdom.

THE MOABITE STONE: The Moabite stone was discovered by Rev. F. Klein, at Dhiban in the land of Moab, on August 19, 1868. It measures three feet ten inches, by two feet, by one foot two inches; and is inscribed with thirty-four lines of text. The language of the inscription hardly differs from Hebrew in vocabulary, grammar, or expression. The stone gives the Moabite account of the war of Mesha, king of Moab, about 860 B. C., against Omri, Ahab, and other kings of Israel, and confirms to quite an extent the history of the same war as given in II Kings, chapter 3. ^[17]

Very naturally those believers in the Bible who regard it as the very word of God, those believers who regard the Bible's historical statements as substantially true, allowing only for such errors as may have crept in through the carelessness of copyists, or perchance here and there an error through additions or omissions on the part of copyists or designing custodians—such believers rejoice at the confirmation the scriptures receive from the inscriptions upon monuments and tablets brought to light by the researches and scholarship of the nineteenth century. It is a pious sentiment, this rejoicing over the confirmation of the word of God; and one can only regret that the evidences supplied by these modern discoveries are not sufficiently voluminous or explicit to silence altogether the unbelief of modern times in the Bible. But they are not sufficient; for in spite of them unbelievers not only exist in Christian lands, but increase daily.