the spot would naturally therefore have been selected as the site of an important fortress. How precious such a supply of water would be may be judged from the fact that the brackish stream which flows from the smaller and more insignificant Tel en-Nejîleh, was in ancient times confined there by a massive dam. We know that Lachish was one of the chief fortresses of Judæa, and its capture by Sennacherib was considered sufficiently mem. orable to be depicted in a bas-relief on the walls of that monarch's palace; we know also that it stood somewhere in the neigh borhood of the present Tel el-Hesy. On the other hand, the name of Khurbet 'Ajlân, given to an adjoining site, might incline us to believe that the tel represents Eglon rather than Lachish. Eglon and Lachish, however, were close to one another, and, considering that Lachish was the larger and more important town of the two, Mr. Petrie is probably right in locating it at Tel el-Hesy. In that case Tel en-Nejîleh will be Eglon.

If Tel el-Hesy is Lachish, the monuments of sculpture and inscription overthrown there by Sennacherib must still be lying within its ruins. Indeed, even more precious relics of the past may await the explorer of the old Amorite city. Among the tablets discovered at Tel el-Amarna are despatches to the Egyptian king from Zimridi and Yabniel, the governors of Lachish, which prove that the art of writing the Babylonian language in cuneiforin characters upon clay was known and practised there. The city was the seat of a governor, and it is reasonable to suppose that the governor's palace contained an archive chamber. For aught we know the clay tablets with which the archive chamber was once stored may still lie buried under the débris which has concealed the ruins of the Amorite city for so many generations from the eyes and ravages of

man.

However this may be, Mr. Petrie's excavations, brief and imperfect as they have necessarily been, have taugut us two important facts. The first of these facts is the mutability of local nomenclature in the East. The recurrence of an ancient name in the mouths of the modern inhabitants of Palestine by no means implies that the place to which it is given is the representative of an ancient locality of the same name. The utmost it can prove is

that the ancient site is probably to be sought in the near neighborhood of the spot to which the name is now applied. The existence of a name like Khurbet 'Ajlân, given though it may be to a comparatively recent site, may yet show that the Eglon of the past once stood somewhere in its vicinity. But it can do no more. The tides of war which have swept from time to time over the civilized East have displaced the older population, have reduced the earlier cities of the land to "ruinous heaps," and have transferred their inhabitants to other places. When the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, they were in most cases likely to settle in the open country, at a distance from the barren mounds which were all that remained of the older cities. new Eglon would arise, not on the site of the more ancient one, but where the settlers would be surrounded by green pastures or cultivated fields. The fact is a warning to those who would place the ancient Megiddo at Mujedda on the evidence only of a similarity of name, or who would transform the "Stone' of Zoheleth into the Cliff of Zehwele, in defiance of philology and geography.

The

The second fact brought to light by Mr. Petrie is that, if we are ever to learn anything about pre-exilic Israel on the soil of Palestine itself, it must be by the help of the spade. His excavations have shown that up to now we have known nothing, or next to nothing, of the archæology of the Holy Land before the classical age. They have further shown what a rich harvest, on the other hand, awaits the excavator. Already the basis has been laid for a scientific study of Palestinian antiquities; the sites that cover the ground can now be assigned to their respective ages by means of the pottery they contain; and we can tell from a simple inspection of the stones of a building whether or not it belongs to the pre-exilic epoch. The future excavator will no longer set to work in the dark, trusting for success to chance and luck; he will know beforehand where and how to dig, and with what rewards he is likely to meet. explorer who will devote himself to the labor, as Sir A. H. Layard devoted himself to Nineveh and Dr. Schliemann to Troy, will obtain results as marvellous and far-reaching as those obtained by Layard. and Schliemann. The former story of

The

own. If that assumption could be true, it would be a very difficult question whether the real Jesus, or the imaginary image of him which the pious thought of his followers had constructed, were more truly the saviour of the world. Dr. Dale, however, sees clearly that Christianity would never survive such an analysis of Christ into a real being surrounded by a nimbus of imaginary glory, as Dr. Martineau applies, and that so soon as the nimbus had been successfully dissipated by the higher criticism, the shrunken figure which remained would be gently ignored. The mere shock of discovering, if it could be discovered, that the fictitious Christ of the second century was a much more imposing and life-giving conception than the being from whom this conception had taken its rise, would as completely shatter the spiritual might of Christianity, as the discovery that the shadow seen bowing to you from the summit of the Brocken is nothing but a magnified image of your own person, disposes, to those who recognize it, of the magic of the German superstition. Dr. Dale finds it an easy task to show that a revelation which comes into the world thickly robed in veils of its own, does not effect its purpose of unveiling to man the mind and nature of God. But when Dr. Dale comes to the exposition of his own view of the seat of authority in Christianity, he is hardly so successful as he is in demonstrating that Dr. Martineau has introduced us, not to true authority, but to a pallid ghost of authority which vanishes as we gaze.

Dr. Dale's view is that "the authority of the New Testament comes from those parts of it in which I find God and God finds me; but it does not follow that only in those parts is there any divine light and power. He compares the authority of revelation as it is contained in the New Testament, to the authority which timehonored artistic triumphs exert over the minds of lovers of the beautiful. Men are only really touched by what stirs their own admiration; but if they find that "a painting which has commanded the wonder and adiniration of cultivated men of different countries for several generations, fails to move' them, then they only suppose that it is due to some want in themselves, not to any want in the painting, and they wait quietly till the time comes when they can see what others have seen, NEW SERIES-VOL. LII., No. 4.

and do not rashly and presumptuously deny the beauty of the picture only because they themselves are apparently too obtuse to perceive it. And this, as we understand Dr. Dale, is precisely the kind of authority which he attributes to those sayings of Christ or his Apostles which do not "find" him. As parts of a whole, many elements of which do "find" him, he puts them by till that which has hitherto not won its way to his heart, shall have time and opportunity to win its way to his heart; but he does not, we presume, feel bound to obey a command even of our Lord's of which he cannot recognize the intrinsic claim to his will's obedience, until the time comes when that claim makes itself clear to him, just as he does not feel bound to confess his own artistic deficiency in not admiring a picture which he cannot admire, only because the rest of the world has concurred in speaking of it with wonder and delight. He even goes so far as to say that he should not attach less spiritual authority to the Gospels even if they could be proved to have been written by unknown persons belonging to the third or fourth generation of Christians"-i.e., at least in the case of the fourth Gospel which plainly indicates its own authorship as that of a direct witness of our Lord's life and death and resurrection, even if it could be proved to be a forgery-surely a very strong assertion of the indefectibility of spiritual authority against plain evidence of moral recklessness and indifference to truth. This appears to us to carry the self-evidencing character of intrinsic divinity to a point which is quite suicidal, for if anything in the world should undermine spiritual authority, it is the evidence that the authority in question did not scruple at giving itself out to be that which it was not. And to a very large extent this indictment would apply against the honesty of the third Gospel as well as that of the fourth, if it could be shown to have originated so late. Surely Dr. Dale's view of the intrinsic authority of the text of Scripture for every individual whom it finds," in spite of external evidence, supposed demonstrative, that it finds us under false pretences, will not hold its ground as adequate. first place, it is a doctrine of provisional authority only for such parts of Scripture as have not "found" us; and in the next place, it is an authority divided

In the

against itself, if it professes to overrule adequate evidence of the unscrupulous assertion of false claims. If the intrinsic authority of any given human being or any given human action is not sufficient to overrule, at once and forever, the suggestion of bad faith, it is, in our opinion at least, not sufficient to exert any practical authority at all. Possibly, however, Dr. Dale may think that none of the Gospels does make any direct claim to an authorship inconsistent with its late origin; and in that case, of course, though we could not admit such a judgment as even plausible, this latter objection drops. But the first objection, the objection that its authority only goes so far as it awakens any echo in the human heart, and as to all other portions is purely provisional, hardly even as much as a working hypothesis, re

mains.

Surely it is obvious that authority is not authority at all unless it inspires us with a perfect willingness to trust it in regions where we cannot verify it. The analogy of the far-famed picture fails here, because it does not inspire us with that will ingness. There is such a thing as widespread bad taste. Have not many of Carlo Dolce's sickly-sweet representations of our Lord, commanded widespread admiration without deserving it? If authority not only begins, but ends with the inward response of the spirit to its claims, it is not an authority as effective even as that of parents on whom children rely for all their training in the discipline of life; for how could a parent train a child who told him that for the present his command to learn the alphabet did not "find him," and that he must put it by till he had reached a stage in experience which assured him that he should profit by a knowledge of the alphabet? Authority, to be worth anything, must not be simply provisional, must not be a sleeping authority at all points where the response of the individual mind is not clear and conscious. Christ assures his Apostles that he will be with them always, even to the end of the world; that they are not to perplex themselves with anxious consideration of the defence they should make when they are brought before Kings and Magis

trates, but trust to the Holy Spirit which should be given them to show them what they should say; that they are to expect persecutions, and even to rejoice in them; that they are to baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost-and, indeed, he multiplies commands of this kind, which are either binding because they come from him and for no other reason, or can never be proved binding at all, for how is the time ever to come when the individual conscience can verify the authority of such commands as these? To our minds, even human authority, so long as it is useful at all, and divine authority always, must imply perfect willingness, and even eagerness, to take on trust what cannot be verified by the individual conscience, though it begins, no doubt, in that which can be so verified. The Church was promised, and, as we believe, received from Christ, authority to develop its early institutions, and to guard its own doctrinal teaching against error; and though Christians may fairly dispute when that authority was withdrawn-as authority which is abused always will be withdrawn-we do not think it can be questioned that it protected the Church for several centuries from the gravest perils, and gave to the world an inheritance of Christian character and Christian doctrine without which Christianity-in other words, the influence of Christ over disciples who never knew him

could never have been solidly founded at all. It is and will remain a question at what point the special guidance granted to the Church as a whole was forfeited and when it first came to pass that the light which remained was the light which the ancient Church had diffused, but to which modern Churches have not been true. But it seems to us impossible to doubt that if Christ's clain be solid at all, it is a solid claim to have laid the foundation of great institutions and to have started the development of great doctrines, slowly shaped through centuries of immature life, which we must accept as of the very substance of his promises, and the very blossom and fruit of his divine career.— Spectator.

"WHEN I walk through the streets the pretty women invariably turn to look after me. My closed eyes (the right one is still about the eighth of an inch open), my sunken cheeks, fantastically cut beard, uncertain gait, all these little details combined give me the appearance of a dying man-which suits me admirably! I assure you I am just now enjoying an immense success as a candidate for Death." So wrote Heine in the spring of 1847 to Frau Jaubert. All those who visited him in Paris at that period confirm this report, and many are the tales told by them of the terrible ravages made by his illness during the short period of a few months. In spite of this, however, on his good days he was still a convivial companion, and never was better pleased than to offer hospitality to guests with whom he could laugh and jest. "His mind seemed to have remained totally independent of his body, and continued to work with the same untiring energy in a physically ruined dwelling-place, heedless if the roof should give way and crush him." Thus it was that Alfred Meissner, who afterward became one of his best and most trusted friends, first met him on February 10th, 1847. The circle by which he was then surrounded was chiefly composed of literary Germans who had come to Paris as reporters, and among whom may be found such names as Ludwig Wihl, Heinrich Seuffert, L. Kalisch, Karpeles, etc. The intercourse with celebrated French authors and composers had almost entirely died out during those last few years. Only Hector Berlioz visited Heine from time to time, and the ill-fated Gerard de Nerval, the French translator of his poems, remained faithful to him until his death.

In January, 1848, Heine paid his last visit to Frau Jaubert, being borne in his servant's arins from the carriage up the two flights of stairs. But the strain was too great; hardly had he been laid on the sofa when one of his fearful attacks came on, commencing with the brain and agonizing the whole body down to the feet. His terrible sufferings could only be allayed by morphia, which had to be administered in ever-increasing quantities. He himself

66

remarked that he annually consumed about forty pounds' worth of this beneficent drug. A few days after this visit, Heine removed to the Maison de Santé of his friend Faultrier in the Rue de Lourcine, and there he passed some time in comparative ease until the first storms of the revolution swept over France, rudely disturbing the sufferer's peace. Miserable fate," he moaned, "to experience such at revolution in such a position; I should have been either dead or well.' All letters and articles written by Heine on the occurrences of the day bear the mark of this same state of mind. The aspirations and actions of the world found no answering echo in his heart. That the first outbreaks should have excited him to such a degree that "his blood ran cold, and his limbs seemed subjected to a galvanic battery," was not surprising. But these feelings soon passed away, leaving in their place only the pessimistical view which saw in all the events of the revolution nothing save "universal monarchy, and a general upsetting of things on earth and things in heaven." To escape the excitement, which in his state was so injurious, Heine gave way to the entreaties of his wife and allowed himself to be transported to Plassy. Much was hoped from this change of air, but very shortly such alarming symptoms showed themselves that he was compelled to return to Paris. petual dread tortured Heine at this timethe fear that his brain would become affected and that he would lose his reason. To all these physical and mental sufferings was added the fact that in consequence of the general disorder prevalent in public affairs he had incurred heavy pecuniary losses. The shares of the Gouin Bank, in which he had invested his small savings, had become almost worthless, and he was obliged to sell out at a ruinous price. As though illness, revolution and loss of money were not enough, yet another torture was his-an unbounded, and most surely an unfounded, jealousy of his wife. One of his doctors relates the following incident:

A per

What avails our art against the power of an unreasoning love and an uncontrollable jeal