that night." And the same natural agency produces precisely the same effects to this day at Bab-el-Mandeb. It piles up the waters to a considerable height, though it has no power to cleave the sea asunder. Accepting the narrative of Moses, it is easy to determine the exact site of this stupendous miracle. And we shall see, as we proceed, the confirmation the inspired history receives, both from the geographical features of the country, and the traditions, and even the names of the various headlands, valleys, and other places prominent in the geography of the scene. There can be little doubt that the land of Goshen lay, as Josephus mentions, along the west bank of the Nile, opposite to the site of old Cairo. Hence the road led by the valley of Budeah, better known as the Wadi Tawarik, to the Red Sea, at a spot where, as the Israelites discovered with dismay, and their enemies with triumph, "the sea shut them in." The mountains surrounded them on every side; they must either remain where they stood and perish with hunger, or by the hosts of Pharoah, or the sea must cleave asunder to afford them a passage, for there was no other way of escape. Here they were ordered to encamp at Pihahiroth, opposite to Baal Zephon, between Migdol and the sea. Pihahiroth is the mouth of the valley of Budeah. Budeah, of Arabic derivation, is the valley of the flight; "its other name, Wadi Tawarik, signifies the valley of the nocturnal travellers," ("And the Lord called for Moses and Aaron by night and said, Rise up and get you forth," &c. Exod. xii. 31-42; and again, Deut. xvi. 1.) But a third name for this valley has been recently brought to light, which crowns and seals the testimony of both the others; it is that by which it is known at the present day, and has been known, we may be assured, from time immemorial among the Arab tribes inhabiting this coast. In the splendid chart of that scientific officer, Captain Moresby, it is laid down as the Wadi Mousa, the Valley of Moses. The evidence, says Mr. Forster, of nomenclature can be carried no higher; and yet we think it is carried even higher, for on the opposite coast we have the Ayûn Mousa, the Wells of Moses. The Arabic name is proof sufficient of their vast antiquity, and it may safely be presumed that they have borne it ever since the Exodus. The people travelled three days and found no water. Without water neither they nor their cattle could have lived so long; they must have digged them wells, and the name, if not the wells, remain unto this day.

Let us investigate the names which the surrounding places. still retain. Along the Arabian coast, opposite to the Valley of Moses, beginning at the Wells of Moses, are six Wadis, or landing places; we give their names, with the Arabic derivations-1. Ayûn Mousa, speaks for itself. 2. W. Reianeh, or Reiyâneh, "The Valley of the People." 3. W. Kurdhiyeth,

"The valley of the congregation." 4. W. El. Ahtha, "The valley of the pilgrims." 5. W. Sudah, "A road leading men up from the water." 6. W. Wardan, "The waterers.' These headlands extend eighteen miles along the eastern coast, which is likewise the length of the Wâdi Mousa, on the other side. If it is asked, at what point the Israelites crossed over, or struck the coast, Mr. Forster answers, they reached it abreast, along the entire line of the contested localities. The whole sea in front of the Wâdi Mousa opened her bosom to the people of God, and the winds of heaven kept the passage free; and the reader has only to look into Moresby's chart, in order to satisfy himself that a north-east wind, striking the Arabian coast at Agûn Mousa, would exactly sweep the whole breadth of the sea for sixteen or eighteen miles in front. And this, amazing as it is, is nothing more than the Mosaic history demands. The rationalists and the timid school, as expositors, have utterly failed in all their explanations. Of these, Dr. Robinson is one of the most respectable, and Mr. Forster answers him at length. He is the advocate of a shallow passage near the Isthmus of Suez. And as the subject is just now of more than usual interest, we will give his argument in his own words :-

"As the Israelites numbered more than two millions of persons, besides flocks and herds, they would, of course, be able to pass but slowly. If the part left dry were broad enough to enable them to cross in a body one thousand abreast, which would require a space of more than half-a-mile in breadth, (and is, perhaps, the largest supposition admissible), still the column would be more than two thousand persons in depth, and in all probability could not have extended less than two miles. It would then have occupied at least an hour in passing over its own length, or in entering the sea; and deducting this from the longest time intervening before the Egyptians must also have entered the sea, there will then remain only time enough, under the circumstances, for the body of the Israelites to have passed, at the most, over a space of three or four miles. This circumstance is fatal to the hypothesis of their having crossed from Wady Tawárik; since the breadth of the sea at that point, according to Niebuhr's measurement, is three German or twelve geographical miles, equal to a whole day's journey."

To all this Mr. Forster answers by asking a few plain questions, which he prefaces by observing, with some truth, that most modern travellers who ride their own hobby are sure to pronounce their theory fatal to whatever theory stands opposed to it; the amount of this fatality, however, is not a question of words, but of facts. He then asks,-and we, too, repeat the questions on our own behalf,-what title has Dr. Robinson to assume half-a-mile, or any other theoretical space, as the largest supposition admissible? What authority has he for drawing up the Israelites in close column at all? What be

comes of the immense herds and flocks of cattle and sheep, wholly excluded from his computation, while requiring as great or greater space than the people themselves? And what of the enormous mass of tents and household furniture, and of the mixed multitude which followed in their train? Altogether the host must have numbered probably three millions. Take the miraculous fissure at half-a-mile, a camp of three millions of persons, allowing twenty to each tent, would require 150,000 tents. But tents require intervals; and Mr. Forster, by a simple computation, shows that, arrange them as you will, a march of several hours must take place before the remoter parts of the encampment could even reach the supposed fissure of half-a-mile, already crowded almost to suffocation by the van and centre of the vast army.

"But this time has all to be added to the time occupied in the passage, and thereby doubles the time specified by the Scripture narrative solely for the transit. These calculations leave no alternatives between absolute impossibilities on the one hand, and the extension of the camp along a great length of shore, and the expulsion of the sea along the entire length of the shore on both sides, on the other. Now the Wâdi Mousa, or Tawárik, presents the only level and open space for such an extension, along the entire western, or Egyptian, side. It is eighteen miles in length; and the Israelites, encamped along it between its opposite extremities, Migdol and Baal-Zephon,' would simultaneously enter into the sea at the one given time, and march across the uncovered bottom, like a vast army in line, without the loss of one needless hour in reaching the shore."

We have given the merest outline of the argument in favour of the Wâdi Mousa passage. It is confirmed by ancient traditions. It seems to accord in every point with the conditions the Mosaic narrative demands. It allows, for instance, for the exact and literal truth of the statement, that the children of Israel, with all that pertained to them, crossed over in a single night, and all went (as though at once and in one body) "into the midst of the sea upon dry ground." (Exod. xiv. 15-29.)

The passage of the sea being accomplished, the first great object which presented itself before them was Horeb, the mount of God, now mount Serbâl. So Mr. Forster maintains. But here again the battle is joined between our author and his opponents, who are both stout and many; and if the reader is one of those who has given heed to monkish legends, repeated with undoubting reverence by modern travellers, he must prepare himself for a rude assault upon a favourite prejudice; for the popular Horeb lies twenty miles from Serbâl, at the south-eastern extremity of the Sinaitic range. the Greek convent stands, piled up high on the mountain side; and there, for the most part, credulous travellers wend their way. If that be the true Horeb, the labours of a life are lost,

and Mr. Forster's researches are time misspent. He is willing to accept the challenge; and we think he may do so without the least misgiving. The point is of vital importance. If mount Serbâl be not the real Horeb, the inscriptions in the desert are not the work of Moses, or of the Israelites. Here, again, we shall give in a few words an outline of Mr. Forster's line of evidence.

The first time we hear of the sacred mountain, second only in awful interest, if second, to the Hill of Calvary,-for Calvary retains no traces now of that wondrous scene of which it was the theatre, is while Moses still dwelt in Midian, and kept the flocks of Jethro. "He led them to the back side of the desert, and came to the mount of God, even to Horeb." There is no dispute as to the situation of Midian; it lay along the eastern coast of the gulf of Akaba. The back side of the desert, then, must have been the western side, or that next to the Mediterranean Sea. "The mountain" stood alone; the name Horeb, in Hebrew, is literally a single isolated mountain; and of all the peaks of the Sinaitic range, Serbâl only answers to either of these conditions. It towers up in solitary grandeur to the height of three thousand feet, and it lies at the back side of the desert. The monkish Sinai is a cluster, whose rival peaks may continue vainly to dispute with each other, to the end of time, a name and an honour to which the Serbâl seems alone entitled. Again, it occurred to Mr. Forster, to try, as an experi mentum crucis, whether some of the existing Arabic names of places in this sacred region might not throw light upon the question. He found in Burckhardt's map, Zebeir, as the name of a rocky spur, at the very foot of mount Serbâl; he was not acquainted with the word, but he referred to his Arabic Lexicon, scarcely venturing, he says, to anticipate that it would prove of the least Scriptural importance.

"I leave," he says, "the Christian reader to judge, from his own feelings, those with which I first found the word itself, and then read the following definition :- Ayzebir, Mons in quo loquutus Moysi fuit Deus.' Richardson repeats this definition (of Golius) Zabir, the mountain on which God spake to Moses. . . . And the reader will observe, that the local name Zebeir, in Burckhardt, and the Arabic word Zabir, in Golius, are wholly independent witnesses. The Arab lexicographers had no reference whatever to this local name, which has to the present moment escaped altogether unnoticed. They gave the denomination solely as an old proper name for mount Sinai-as their synonyme for the mount of God.''

It is further remarkable, that before the sixth century there seems to have been no doubt upon the subject. Till Justinian built his monastery of St. Katherine, upon the mountain to which it has given a name, the unbroken consent of all tradition regarded Serbâl, rò opos, as "the mount of God." The

pre-Justinian tradition is at least the unbiassed witness of the primitive church. But the witness of the primitive church on a point like this is, we may reasonably infer, itself based on Jewish tradition; and no rival tradition is to be met with in Josephus or Philo. Yet upon the question of the true Sinai, our recent travellers, and writers at home, continue to reason as though ecclesiastical history and monkish tradition were of equal authority. Drs. Robinson and Stewart, who reject the inscriptions as the work of other hands and much later date, yet both admit that, down to the sixth century, Serbâl was the only acknowledged Sinai. Dr. Stewart, indeed, marks the point of transition to the monkish Sinai, when he adds, "ere imperial patronage had brought Hebal Mousa into favour, and when Serbâl was reckoned the mount of God." Nor must we omit, that from the very foot of Serbâl, along the valley of Firan, still runs a perennial stream. Eusebius mentions the place as the ancient Rephidim, "a locality in the desert close to mount Horeb, into which the waters from the rock in mount Horeb flowed, and the place was called Temptation." That no such river originally flowed through the Wâdi Firan, if Moses and the Israelites were there, is perfectly certain. There could, in that case, have been no murmuring for want of water. The danger of the Israelites must have lain, not in the want of it, but in its abundance. We honour Mr. Forster for his courage, and we go with him in his creed. We are quite disposed to commit ourselves, heart and soul, to the Mosaic narrative, and to receive it as it stands, "all or none." This, then, is the river which gushed from out of the stony rock, when Moses smote it with his rod! There is more truth in the New Testament than even many Christians can receive. "They did all drink of that spiritual rock which followed them." There is more truth in Hebrew poetry than pious commentators admit. Indeed, there is a vast deal of sheer exaggeration, amounting almost to positive untruth, in several passages, if it were not a perennial stream, a river, which flowed from the rock at Rephidim. Such expressions, referring to this event as that "rivers ran in the dry places," (Psalm cv. 41), or that "He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused the water to run down like rivers," (Psalm lxxviii. 16), surely imply something more than a mere gushing torrent that speedily dried up and disappeared. But still more express is the 107th Psalm: "He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings. And there He maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation; and sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase." "I pause," we quote Mr. Forster, "to compare this description with the physical characteristics, and the actual circumstances, of the Wâdi Firan. It is the only spot in