indestructibility; for God will not destroy the temple which He has built with His own hands, and He has given it for its tenant an immortal soul. As Christ's body rose from the dead and the grave, and was reunited with His spirit, so shall the bodies and souls of all men, once parted, become life-companions again; and this is the great argument of that wonderful fifteenth chapter, which has so often poured consolation into the broken heart at the grave's side of the faithful disciples of Christthat marvellous chapter whose last words dismiss us from the scene of mourning into the stirring life of active Christianity: "Stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord" (1 Cor. xv. 58).

We meet in I Cor. viii. 11-13 with the Christian rule about the use of things indifferent, and wise abstinence from the exercise of our undoubted rights when too rigid an insistance on those claims would lead to results calamitous to Christian unity. Such noble self-restraint St. Paul was ever ready to practise as well as to preach, and especially in the important matter of ministerial maintenance, a matter on which there is by no means an over-disposition of concession in our own, and, perhaps, never has been in any, time.

But among the occasions for self-repression, St. Paul does not reckon it a Christian duty to submit humbly and with tacit acquiescence to all kinds of misrepresentations and false, disparaging reports. Such calumnies do not always die out harmlessly, if left alone, as some ill-judging people are always ready to tell us; and a man who modestly but firmly vindicates his integrity will have the example of Paul to sustain him. In 1 Cor. iv., ix., and in 2 Cor. iii., v. 12-21, and in x., xi., we see on reiterated occasions how a Christian may actively and energetically vindicate and justify himself, and not transgress the bounds of Christian moderation. Yet see the motto to the next chapter.

More yet, that marvellous narrative of a mysterious rapture into Paradise, which is, as it were, forced and extorted from him by the violence and injustice of his enemies, shows how boasting may be no more than a righteous and necessary glorification of God in His dealings with His servants.

Finally, as a last thought upon these Epistles, think of Paul entering this highly-civilized but deeply-corrupted city of Corinth, seething with all the sins that wait upon a corrupt civilization, yet not without hope that out of the pit of iniquity he should be strengthened to save some souls alive; think how those sanguine hopes were so justified by the issue that he could thank God for the grace given them by Jesus Christ, and that they were enriched by Him in everything, in all utterance and in all knowledge, and came behind in no gift. The raising of Lazarus from the dead was a physical miracle of the most striking character; but the moral wonder of the resurrection of Corinth, dead in trespasses and in sins, to life in Jesus Christ, was of a higher and more striking order yet. But what was the secret of St. Paul's confidence in so improbable a change? He had the promise of God, faithful, and which could not be broken: "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for I have much people in this city." Why should our hopes ever grow faint with such an example before our eyes?

CHAPTER XX.

MACEDONIA AND TROAS.

ACTS xx. 1-16; 2 COR. ii. 12, 13; vii. 5-7, 13-15; ROM. xv. 19. A.D. 57.-Rulers as in Chap. XIX.

...

"Moins grand, moins possédé du démon sacré qui s'était emparé de ses entrailles, Paul se fût usé en querelles stériles. Pour répondre aux petits esprits, il eût été obligé de se faire petit lui-même. . . . En génie supérieur, Paul les dédaigna. Il marcha droit devant lui, et laissa au temps le soin de décider entre lui et ses ennemis. La première règle de l'homme voué aux grandes choses est de refuser aux hommes médiocres le pouvoir de le détourner de son chemin."-RENAN.

THE

HE fact of the uniform and incessant working of the wonderful providence of God has, within the last forty years, received marvellous confirmation in the sudden resurrection into the light of day of hundreds of the buried monumental records of heathen history, exactly illustrating and corroborating the Divine records. And let it be remembered that we are but on the threshold of far greater discoveries yet. Had these discoveries taken place in the last century, or in the beginning of this, they would only have perplexed and sent astray the less informed scholars of that day. Coming now, in the great revival of Oriental learning, it is just as if a library had been found of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in complete harmony with the Biblical records.*

* For easily accessible works on this subject let me refer my readers to Bishop Pakenham Walsh's "Ancient Monuments " (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.) and "Ancient History from the Monuments" (S.P.C.K.), where also references will be found to more elaborate works.

But we are unwilling spectators to a stand-up fight between two forces, driven into an unnatural hostility. On the one hand is the recently-discovered "critical faculty," whose office apparently is to build imposing but shadowy assumed certainties upon vague, loose foundations, composed of such phrases as "the theory" or "hypothesis is," "it is probable," "many are of opinion," and so on; on the other hand, historical documents of incontrovertible certitude starting into light, now here, now there, thickly and more thickly as the age advances, all confirming the entire truthfulness and reliableness of Holy Writ. Are those dim conjectures which unfortunately go to compose so much of the writings of Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, Bünsen, and so many others, true science and honest criticism? and are the historical records, which no one has yet attempted to discredit, unworthy guides? Looking rightly, the competitors in the struggle are limited to uncertain criticism and conjectural science on the one hand, and the unquestionable evidence of history on the other, and the prize is Faith in Divine Revelation.

The Bible-believing members of the Palestine Exploration Fund would indeed have a dreary task before them if they had the smallest lurking suspicion that the success of their researches would lead on to the discredit of the Bible. But they know that it has not been, and moreover never will be so. Every fresh discovery of inscribed tablets or other ancient monuments serves, not to confound, as an unbeliever ought to expect, but to confirm and establish the Sacred Records.

To those recent discoveries, necessarily mentioned in this book, add the many others which do not belong to the Apostolic period, but to times a thousand years anterior, and the accumulated testimony becomes overwhelming. The only method the sceptic has yet been able to devise to disparage these testimonies is-not to notice

them; a convenient policy for them, but provoking to us, who wish for nothing but what is true and right, and who naturally feel astonished to see learned doctors, high in position, with dogmatic persistency clinging to their baseless theories, and hermetically closing their eyes and their ears against facts which they well know they could not

overturn.

On a late visit to the British Museum, the author could not but greatly admire the consummate ingenuity displayed in uniting together, each in its proper place, the numerous scattered and disjointed fragments of statues and of long inscriptions. Now if the workmen employed in this labour of patience had had laid before them pieces which absolutely refused to come together and be fitted, the obvious conclusion would have been, not that the labourers were incompetent, but that wrong fragments had been given them; and that, until the right ones were found, all further efforts would be useless.

In the present, as in many other portions of this work, we are forcibly reminded of some such illustration as the above. We have to frame and fit together fragments of the Book of Acts, and fragments from sundry Epistles, written about the same time by two authors, and relating to the same course of events. If we can adjust them to each other, so to form a harmonious and connected whole, we know that our materials are genuine. If they should obstinately refuse to come together, we should be justified in saying," There is some mistake here: the writers entirely disagree, and we cannot harmonize them." But in this case the acutest intellects, from Paley downwards, have been busied in cementing the accounts into a solid whole; and so far from being baffled by the intrusive presence of unconformable pieces, which will come in nowhere, behold, a shaking, and "the bones come together, bone to his bone," and the sinews and the flesh, and the skin covers