sessed of as large resources. The young people this spring are anxious to put in costly windows, a new organ, velvet carpeting, etc., and to hire a noted soprano and basso for the choir.

But Mr. Patton has opened a new Mission chapel and a Workingman's club-room, and is now contriving an association by means of which unemployed laborers will be helped to buy land in the waste districts of the state and to colonize there. The church, he says, ought to set an example as to the proper outlay of money. No honest man, with the times as hard as they are now, if he is in debt to his poorer neighbor, is going to treat himself to fine furniture in his house, or even to noble music."

"But St. Matthew's is not in debt?" cried his hearers. "We do not owe a dollar!"

"My friends," said the old man,

66 we are

in debt as long as there is a human being on the earth poorer in body or soul than we. We owe him education, civilization, the Gospel-that help, in short, which is to make a man of him instead of a brute. Until we have met this great and terrible obligation which rests upon us, every dollar spent in luxury in our place of worship is simply defrauding our creditors. Beauty is a help to devotion, eh? Oh, children, the sight of a single man whom we have helped out of misery and vice to a clean, honest life, is a better help to devotion than all the red glass or velvet carpeting in the city!

But Mr. Paton by most people is looked upon as an extremist in his views.

So St. Mark's and St. Matthew's work, each in its own way, for the honor of their Master. Each is a type of a large class of churches throughout this country. Rebecca Harding Davis.

Susan Coolidge.

II.

REPHIDIM AND SINAI.

WE left the Hebrew host toiling upward from the maritime plain of the Gulf of Suez, along the Wady Feiran, and approaching the defile where Amelek had mustered all his wild desert rangers to oppose their farther progress; and may now more particularly mark the circumstances which preceded the contest of Rephidim. The lower part of the Wady Feiran is dry and desert, but its upper part above the entrance of the lateral valley of Wady Aleyat is comparatively well watered and verdant, and was no doubt very valuable to the native tribes. At the commencement of this fertile portion there is a strong position, flanked by hills and affording good means of retreat in case of defeat. The defenders of such a position would also have the advantage of water and pasturage, while their assailants must march for three days through an arid waste. On the one hand the Amalekites were here defending the frontier of the habitable country under favorable circumstances. On the other the Israelites, after the dreary march through the wilderness of Sin and the lower stretches of Feiran, would hope when they reached the upper part of the valley, to enjoy comparative ease and plenty. How bitter then would be their disappointment, when arriving faint and thirsty, they found the pass occupied by their enemies, ready to bar their entrance, and so situated that defeat or retreat would be equally fatal to their assailants. There was no way of flanking the

position of the enemy. They must conquer, or return to perish in the thirsty desert through which they had been marching. Accordingly the biblical narrative informs us that on reaching this place, where they had no doubt expected to find rest and water, the Israelites "chode with Moses," and gave way to the utmost alarm and irritation. It was here that the rock was smitten to give water to the people, and surely there never was greater need of a miraculous intervention. Refreshed and strengthened, a chosen band under Joshua attacked the position of the Amalekites, and after a protracted fight extending throughout the day, and apparently after several repulses, succeeded in storming the position and putting them to flight. Moses watched the fight from a neighboring hill, and prayed to God for the success of Israel; and when the battle was decided he raised an altar to Jehovah, calling it Jehovah Nissi (The Lord my banner), and he is said to have written a memorial of it in "the book "-that book of records which we now have in Exodus and Numbers. The explorers identify a hill, Jebel et Tahûneh as the "Gibeah" on which Moses must have stood to witness the fight, and not far below the field of battle is one of those rocks which the Arab traditions indicate as the smitten rock from which the water flowed.

It is worthy of note that before reaching Rephidim the Israelites would have passed over the outcrop of the cretaceous limestone and of the underlying sandstone, now

known to be of carboniferous age, and would have entered on the much older gneiss and slate underlying the sandy and gravelly bed of the wady, and flanked on either hand by the high granitic or syenitic masses of Serbál and Banát, the whole constituting a wild and alpine scenery altogether strange to the greater part of the people, and fitted to impress them with awe and terror. On the other hand, the walking is now good, and generally over a clean granitic gravel, the deeper colors of the old rocks are less glaring in the sunlight, and there are many high cliffs giving the "shadow of a great rock in a weary land." The scenery of this first of the battles of the Lord's host is so vividly sketched by Captain Palmer that it would be wrong not to quote a part of his description.

"The road now lies wholly among the older rocks, whose somber lines and varied outlines afford a pleasant change and relief to the eye after the glare and sameness of chalk, and the somewhat overrich coloring of the sandstone cliffs. The ranges, especially on the left, here take fanciful forms and rise in long serrated ridges now and then surmounted by graceful cones." (He then describes the banded appearance of the higher hills, caused by dark red, purple and olive green dykes of dolerite and diorite traversing the dull brownish gneissic rocks of the hills.) "From a point almost a mile further on, the character of the route gradually changes and the scenery increases in grandeur at every mile. We are now entering the intricate labyrinths of the Sinai mountains, approaching the huge clusters of which Mount Serbál forms the crowning feature; the hills draw closely in on either hand, the wady becomes more and more winding the higher you advance, and its bed ere long contracts to but half or even less of its former width. High banks of alluvial deposits cut through by the passage of torrents guard the mouths of tributary valleys; chalk debris disappears and gives place to boulders of gneiss and granite; shade is now abundant, the air cool and bracing, and the spirits of the scorched traveler, half depressed it may be by the fatigue and exposure of his march, now rise

to buoyancy and even to enthusiasm." (Here occurs Hery el Khattatin, according to Bedouin tradition the scene of the miracle of water in Rephidim, where is a large block of fallen granite covered with pebbles placed there by the Bedouins in commemoration of the event. In this neighborhood are also many of the Sinaitic inscriptions, which however the explorers do not believe to be of great antiquity). Above this place the scenery of the pass becomes so wild and grand as almost to overwhelm the mind; here and there stupendous cliffs rise perpendicularly above the path, elsewhere the slopes are covered with immense slides of disintegrated rocks, and the devastating effects of winter torrents are plainly seen in the main valley and its tributary glens. The rocks from the hill tops to the valley's level are to all appearance absolutely bare. At the mouth of Wady Umfús the traveler halts to enjoy a glimpse of Jebel el Banát, a towering ridge of red granite of matchless depth of color, and the yet more magnificent view of Jebel Serbál now near at hand. A mile further on we come to the little oasis of El Hesweh-palms, water and Bedouin dwellings-a bright spot of living green in the midst of stern desolation and just where a wide rugged valley, "Wady Aleyat, descending from the Eastern slopes of Serbál comes in from the South-east, we get our first view of the great palm-grove of Wady Feiran, a rich mass of dark green foliage winding through the hills.”

It was in front of this Eden of the Sinai desert, that the Amalekites are supposed to have posted themselves, and we may imagine the discouragement of the people when they found the sword of the desert ranger excluding them from this paradise and threatening to drive them back into the wilderness, and the earnestness of Moses in his prayer that success might be granted to the arms of Joshua.

The battle of Rephidim opened to the Israelites a comparatively fertile and watered country leading to the great plain before Sinai. Farther, it enabled them to open communication with the Midianites dwelling on the East side of the peninsula, on the gulf of Akabah, and who were

full view of the peak, and has ample camping-ground for the whole host in its tributary valleys. Magnificent photographs of this plain and the mountain are given in the work, which leave no reason to doubt that it is just such a theatre of the giving of the Law as the most sanguine and vivid imagination would conceive. "From the time when the traveler enters the plain, the peak of Sufsafeh stands out sharp and clear against the sky," and he never loses sight of it for a moment till "he crosses the dry wady bed at its foot and gazes up at the tremendous cliff in front of him, and which is sufficiently steep to be described as a mountain that may be touched." Farther, it is so completely separated from the neighboring mountains that a short and easily intelligible description would define its limits, which could be easily marked out.

Another remarkable feature is that we have here the brook descending out of the mount referred to in the Exodus, and besides this five other perennial streams in addition to many good springs. The country is by no means desert, but supplies much pasturage; and when irrigated and attended to forms good gardens, and is indeed one of the best and most fertile spots of the whole peninsula. The explorers show that the statements of some hasty travelers who have given a different view are quite incorrect, and also that there is reason to believe that there was greater rainfall and more verdure in ancient times than at present in this part of the country. They further indicate the Wady Shreick in which is the stream descending from the mount, as the probable place of the making and destruction of the golden calf, and a hill known as Jebel Moneijeh, the mount of conference, as the probable site of the tabernacle. They think it not improbable that while Ras Sufsafeh was the Mount of the Law, the retirement of Moses during his sojourn on the mount may have been behind this peak, in the recesses of Jebel Musa, which thus might properly bear his

name.

Other interesting considerations are of a political and military nature. It was necessary for the Israelites to have a secure dwell

ing place for some time, in order that their religious and social institutions might be fully organized before their march northward to Canaan. For this purpose the plain of Er Rahah and the region in its vicinity were admirably fitted. It is in the very heart of the peninsula, and approached only by passes easily defended, one of which the Israelites themselves had to force at Rephidim. It was too remote to be attacked by Egyptian expeditions, had these been sent against it, and the Amalekites after their chastisement at Rephidim were not likely to assault a place whose strength was so well known. It was on the borders of the territories of the friendly Midianites, with whom Moses had sojourned so long and was connected by marriage. It would thus give a secure abode, with supplies of water and pasture; and after the hardships already endured by the people, would appear to them a haven of comparative rest; while on the other hand it was sufficiently a wilderness to wean them from Egyptian habits and train them to the hardihood of a desert life.

In geological character the Sinai mountains, including the Mount of the Law, are of great antiquity and simple structure. They consist of a red syenitic granite associated with other ancient crystalline rocks, and on which rest mica schists and gneisses much older than the sandstone of the region, which is known to be of the age of our Coal-formation rocks. Thus the syenite of Sinai, though a rock of igneous origin, must have been cooled down in the far back Palæozoic age of Geology. This effectually and forever disposes of the theory held by some interpreters of Exodus, that Sinai was a volcanic mountain, and that the terrific phenomena which accompanied the giving of the law were those of an eruption. It is to be observed also that "the thunders and lightnings and thick clouds" of the Mosaic narrative, rather resemble the appearances of an atmospheric disturbance than of a volcanic eruption.

Lastly-for the benefit of those who love to consider the purely human element in religion, Moses had sojourned in the region, and knew perfectly the way by which he was leading his people; a way which he had fully