THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK IN FRANCE, REV. DR. ROBERT L. STANTON, CINCINNATI, 578 612 673 697 ROBERT FLINT, D.D., LL.D., UNIVERSITY OF EDINBurgh. THEODORE D. WOOLSEY, EX-PRESIDENT OF YALE College. LEONE LEVI, F.S.A., F.S.S., KINGS COLLEGE, LONDON. PROF. JOSEPH Le Conte, UNIVERSITY OF California. SIMON NEWCOMB, LL.D., U. S. N. OBSERVATORY, WASHINGTON. PROFESSOR YOUNG, PRINCETON COLlege. PRESIDENT MCCOSH, PRINCETON College. 916 EXPLORATION AS VERIFYING REVELATION. THE HE Bible is not a revelation of abstract truth; it is mainly a record of God's dealings with, and instructions to, his people. In it we have a history, sometimes of individuals, sometimes of families, sometimes of tribes and nations; and we observe that in instructing and guiding them God did not, as a rule, remove them from their ordinary homes and spheres of duty. When he did remove them, it was because of some pressing necessity, and because, humanly speaking, their moral training and influence on the world for good required it. Usually he dealt with men as they lived; and he was pleased to adapt his government and his instructions, whether providential or supernatural, to the circumstances in which they were placed for the time being. Another marked characteristic of the Bible is the minuteness of its ethnographical and geographical details, and the clearness of its historic statements. The division of the original human family into nations and tribes; the countries they colonized; their subsequent migrations; the cities they built, and the empires they founded, are given in the book of Genesis with a circumstantiality which, considering the remote age of the document, is altogether unparalleled. That book, in fact, especially the tenth chapter, forms the basis of the science of ethnology; and the most recent and exhaustive researches in the languages, the monuments, and the records of antiquity. tend to establish its accuracy. Then, again, we have in the concluding chapters of Genesis, and in the beginning of Exodus, some very graphic sketches of nomad life in Canaan and settled life in Egypt; we have in the remaining books of the Pentateuch topographical notes on the peninsula of Sinai, Edom, Moab, Ammon, and the old kingdoms of Sihon and Og east of the Jordan. The book of Joshua is the Domesday Book of Palestine, not only describing, with the fulness of a government survey, the various tribal boundaries throughout the land, but containing long lists of the towns and villages allotted to each tribe, in the order, as recent research has shown, of their geographical position. In the records of Kings and Chronicles, and the parallel fragments of history in the writings of the several prophets, we are brought into contact with other ancient nations and peoples-the Benekedem, the Arameans (Syrians) of Damascus, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Medes, the Persians; and we have some vivid pictures of the power and conquests of their monarchs, and of the splendors of their courts. The book of Daniel is a life-sketch of the dazzling but transient glories of Babylon; while Esther is an invaluable monograph on the Persian court of Susa. In the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and some of St. Paul's Epistles, we observe the same geographical precision and strong local coloring. One can follow to this day, as the writer has done, the footsteps of Jesus over the mountains of Judah, along the banks of the Jordan, by the silent shores of the Sea of Galilee, marking, as he proceeds, those characteristics of each district, and of each class among the people, which suggested his beautiful parables and gave point to his illustrations and discourses. One can also follow the track of the great apostle of the Gentiles from country to country, and from city to city, by land and by sea, and observe at every stage of his journey the clear topographical details and the thoughtful and profound delineations of national character which leave on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles the indelible stamp of authenticity and genuineness. Hence, in considering the evidences of the divine authority of the Bible, we ought never to forget that its fundamental doctrines are all, more or less, connected with and woven into the facts of history, and, in many instances, in such a way as that the proof of the reality of the facts recorded involves the truth of the doctrine. Nearly every great doctrine has been either developed in or illustrated by some historic event, upon which we can as fully and as safely exercise the powers of our mind in eliciting and testing truth, as we can upon the facts of science. The Bible, as a revelation of dogma, has in this way been subjected to the scrutiny of historical criticism. It has been subjected to it in every age since the completion of the canon, but more especially within the past half-century, and though assailed with every weapon which ingenuity could invent or an exhaustive scholarship rake up, it has uniformly come forth, in the judgment of impartial men, triumphant. Then, again, the Bible contains a series of prophecies, clear, detailed, in many cases most startling in their nature, and in some cases altogether improbable-many would say incredible. The future history and final doom of nations, countries, and cities are portrayed with singular clearness. No amount of political sagacity could have foreseen what is predicted; no depth of philosophical speculation could have divined it; no breadth of research could have discovered it; and yet time has converted all those strange and varied and astounding prophecies of Jewish seers into facts which historians have recorded and travellers have witnessed. In Scripture, faith is enjoined as the great requisite—the first duty of man. "Without faith it is impossible to please God." But it is not a credulous or blind faith. Faith is the fruit of knowledge, not the offspring of ignorant credulity. The doctrines of Scripture which, in one sense, constitute the objects of our faith, are developed through the medium of facts which are exhibited openly before the eyes of men, coming within the range of observation and reason, and thus challenging investigation according to the principles of pure science. Faith and reason go hand in hand, because reason judges of the evidence on which faith rests. Every attempt made to undermine the basis of faith in the progressive development of all the forms and phases of human error, it is within the province and power of reason to meet and counteract. Now, scepticism is progressive. In each succeeding age it assumes a new form; but it so happens that the evidence of the facts on which faith rests is also progressive, and keeps pace, as it were, with the advance of scepticism. It would almost seem as if it had been so ordered in the councils of the Eternal, that the new discoveries made in the fields of biblical research should be exactly suited to meet and counteract the new errors and objections of each successive age. The main object of this article is to give a condensed summary of the leading results of the explorations and discoveries made in Bible lands during recent years, and to show how they are calculated to illustrate Bible history, and thus confirm our faith in divine revelation. DISCOVERIES AT NINEVEH. The story of Layard's wonderful discoveries at Nineveh thirty years ago took the world by surprise. It brought us face to face, as it were, with those monarchs whose conquests and cruelties, as narrated by the writers of the Old Testament, appeared to many to be in a large measure fabulous. On the Assyrian monuments one now sees depicted some of the very scenes mentioned in Scripture; while on the voluminous inscribed tablets he has ample details of the manners and customs, the wars and sports, the science and religion, of the primeval nations of Central Asia. The researches of Layard were followed up by a number of able and enthusiastic scholars Loftus, Botta, Rawlinson, Smith, and others. Traditions, legends, and historic annals have been exhumed illustrating, in a most remarkable manner, not merely those portions of Scripture in which the wars of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings are chronicled, but, strange to say, the very earliest narratives in the book of Genesis. Inscribed. tablets, which have lain buried for two thousand five hundred years beneath desolate mounds on the plains of Assyria and Babylonia, contain, in a language until very recently unknown to scholars, accounts in some points substantially identical with the Mosaic narrative of the creation, the fall, and the deluge. The Bible represents those great plains as the home of our first parents, the site of Eden, the scene of the deluge and of the confusion of tongues, the birth-place of Israel, the centre from which the human race was dispersed, and the common nucleus of those mighty empires which for ages ruled the destinies of the world-Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and Persia. |