all the lesser yet perhaps more striking and instructive peculiarities of the dispensation are lost.

2. With this danger realized, we next observe the need of much diligence and pains to counteract it. The natural faculty of memory differs greatly in its power in different individuals but when weak, either generally or in any particular respect, we have recourse to certain means and helps for assisting and strengthening it. A careful and systematic classification of events, or the aid of a Memoria Technica, or a well-arranged common-place book, will go far to supply the deficiencies of memory. Men will think no pains too great which will enable them thus to master the events of history or the facts of science. But when we pass from the subjects of human learning to the record of God's dealings with the church and our own souls, all such efforts on our part are deemed useless and superfluous. The men of this generation prove themselves, in this as in other respects, wiser than the children of light. In order to counteract our natural forgetfulness of divine things, we must be more careful as to the way in which we read or hear God's word. "Understandest thou what thou readest?" and "Take heed how ye hear," are two precepts bearing upon this point. We must read or hear, not with a view to the mere act, but for the purpose of remembering what is brought before us. The apostle enforces this upon the Hebrew Christians when he says, "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip,"-run out as leaking vessels. (Margin.) We must be careful, too, in carrying out into corresponding action any impressions which have been made upon our minds, so as to fix them in the character by habits resulting from them. And we must note any dealings of God with us in providence or in grace which seem calculated to bring us nearer to Himself, in patient dependence or in grateful love. Our heavenly Father condescends to say that a book of remembrance is written before Him for them that fear the Lord, and that think upon His name; whereby He implies the pains, if we may so speak, taken to prevent the possibility of the smallest circumstance being forgotten which affects their eternal welfare. We may well employ a book of remembrance to assist our treacherous memories in preserving the record of God's dealings with our souls. God, too, provided for His Jewish church, in order to produce and preserve a spirit of humility and contrition amongst them, that there should be a remembrance made of sin every year. In like manner, we might hope to find a remedy against forgetfulness of God in appointing certain solemn seasons of retirement for the purpose of bringing clearly before our minds a full and comprehensive view of those particular mani

festations of God's grace and goodness which make up the sum of our spiritual experience.

3. In the use of these and like helps, it is necessarily implied that the soul will be seeking by earnest prayer the effectual aid of the Holy Spirit; but this point must be specially insisted upon. We have viewed this forgetfulness of God as an inseparable consequence of our fallen nature, and one which no amount of outward and sensible evidence or impression can of itself obviate, as the case of the Israelites fully proves. A similar, and even stronger, proof is presented in the case of the apostles. They had enjoyed unrestrained intercourse with our blessed Lord for several years; there must have been something in the look, and voice, and tone, and character of Jesus eminently calculated to command and to impress. His conversation, His teaching, His expositions, never could be forgotten. Yet the mere moral and physical effects of this teaching would be counteracted by the weak and treacherous nature of human memory; and hence our Lord promises a direct and specific operation of the Holy Spirit to remedy this infirmity: "The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." It was by this divine aid that the disciples remembered the saying of Jesus respecting the resurrection of His body, and the figurative entry into Jerusalem of Sion's King, sitting on an ass's colt. The same divine aid qualified them to prepare the narrative of our Lord's life and actions. Many a fact in that history had doubtless been forgotten and unrecorded but for this suggesting and reminding influence of the Holy Spirit. The gifts and operations of the Holy Spirit are still essentially the same; and he that would understand aright God's word and dispensations, and lay them up in his memory, and have them ever rising up with freshness and power to instruct and comfort, must look to the Holy Spirit for His operation in this particular respect. Thus it was He brought about the conversion of Peter, by causing him to remember the words of his Lord; and, in the remembrance of them, the tears. of penitence began to flow. And so with us. There is many a lesson of God's past dealings with us hidden in the depths of our experience which the Holy Spirit alone can give life and force to; and there is many a warning, an exhortation, and promise of the Word, working from time to time upon our hearts which, without the Holy Spirit's aid, will soon be forgotten and unimproved. We are passing, it may be, through dispensations so solemn that we think their sacred influence must abide with us for ever; but they will vanish as a dream when one awaketh, unless the Holy Spirit rivet them upon the tablet of our memory. With such infirmities we need caution

and diligence, and much watchfulness over ourselves. But our very infirmities are the subject-matter of the Holy Spirit's operation. His strength, like the Redeemer's, is made perfect in weakness. He can overcome our natural tendency to forgetfulness of God, can renew and refresh our minds and memories day by day, till we enter upon that state where God's presence and glory will be ever with us, and to forget Him, even for a moment, will be an impossibility.

W. C.

BASHAN; AND THE CITIES OF MOAB.*

USES of far deeper value and moment than were formerly contemplated, are now subserved by the researches of travellers in Scripture Lands. Until quite recently it was thought enough if they were employed to confirm the accuracy, or to explain the allusions of an inspired writer: the interpreter's concern with them was ended when he could bring forward the place, or the custom alluded to in an obscure passage, and when he thus enabled us to read this intelligently and confidently, with a clear perception of the spiritual lessons that might be educed from it. And so extensive have these researches been, and so diligently have they been thus made use of, that, in fact, very few pages of the Holy Volume have been left unexplained by this kind of illustration.

With great diligence have they been gathered, and most profitably have they been so employed. Still this use of them only enabled us to look on the sacred delineations at a distance. We saw clearly, and perhaps vividly, the occurrences related in the Bible: the import of the sacred narrative was unfolded, and it grew life-like, and became familiar, as we gazed on it. Still it stood before us only as a picture, and it lay in remote distance. So far as living intercourse with the objects and beings brought forward in scripture was concerned, it seemed that we must necessarily stand apart from the scenes which it unfolded. And now, indeed, some of our recent biblical interpreters have told us that just so it was intended that we should look on the inspired delineations. According to these teachers, such delineations are only pictures, or pictorial embodiments of thought: historical ideas, or theological conceptions, are depicted in these Eastern forms: they were not, nor were they ever intended to be recognized as actual events and living men whom we have been looking on. This has been affirmed; and

* Scripture Lands in connection with their History, &c. By G. S. Drew, M.A., Incumbent of St. Barnabas, South Kennington. Smith, Elder, and Co. 1860. Five Years in Damascus. By Rev. J. L. Porter. Murray. 1855

as the so-called historical philosophy has advanced, its professors have boasted that they, one after another, had divested our sacred records of its literal significance. Now, against statements of this kind, the confirmatory, illustrative use which the old commentators made of travellers' researches was wholly ineffective. All they had accomplished was to prove the accuracy of the sacred narrative, and its true adjustment, as if it were authentic history, with the framework that surrounded it. But not only was this view compatible with the sceptical theory, it even strengthened the confidence with which that theory was put forward. Another use, one far more deep and searching, of observations in Bible lands was needed, and this has been made opportunely, we may say providentially, just as this new form of scepticism has become most threatening and destructive. For now our Bible travellers, with deeper views of their work, and with far greater facilities of investigation, aspire rather after the reproduction of scripture life, than its simple illustration: they now give us in coloured stereographic views, rather than in surface pictures, the result of their investigations. We no longer look on scripture scenes at a distance, but we actually live amongst them: their vicissitudes of climate, the changing aspects of their sky, the hues and shadows of their landscape, the objects seen by the men of scripture, the sounds they heard, are known to us: we not only witness, but almost share in, the life of Bible times and men: our "newly-awakened historical consciousness" is in the very scene and platform of its movements. No one who has familiarized himself with Dr. Robinson's exact descriptions, with Stanley's glowing illustrations of them, and especially with Mr. Grove's recent contributions to the topography of scripture, can fail to recall numerous examples in illustration of these remarks. And in each case this vivid realization has been effected with no purpose of mere vindication, or even with the set design of illustrating the Bible history in the accustomed form. The truth of scripture has been assumed, and it has been read trustingly on the scene of its occurrence. An "evidence of congruity" has hence arisen. The sense of agreement and conformity with facts has been so strongly felt, such an intense consciousness of the presence of truth has been awakened, that, while a deeper insight into the meaning of the sacred writers has also been obtained, their historical verity, the literal and objective accuracy of their statements, has been so established, that the myth professor, the "philosophical historian," might as well attempt to vaporize the substantial facts around us, as to convert into the thin exhalations of his theory these historical details of the scripture narrative which have been thus illustrated and confirmed.

The importance of this use of Biblical travel, and its providential adaption to our present need, will be instantly recognized by all who understand the ground on which the Biblical

controversy has lately moved. As Mr. J. Taylor, the Editor of Dr. Traill's Josephus, has remarked, "What seems just now to be needed is, not so much any new presentation of the Christian argument, as the bringing back upon the mind of the educated classes a firm, healthy, rational regard to the certainty of history—a deference to evidence as opposed to the baseless theories, the myths, the mystifications, by means of which, of late, the public mind has been abused, and the edge of the most conclusive reasoning turned aside. There is needed an everyday familiarity with the scenes, with the persons, and usages and costumes, with the minor incidents, as well as with the leading events of the Christian epoch. The times of the gospel history are indolently thought of by many, as if the clouds and mists of the remotest ages had settled down just upon that spot of time, or as if the rolling flood of years had there taken a sweep through an impenetrable gloom; and hence they have allowed themselves to listen to the wild conjectures of erudite pantheists."-These remarks are even more applicable at the present time than when they were first published; and we may here observe, that few have done more than this accomplished writer himself in meeting the need which he has so forcibly expressed. His "Notes" in the above-named work abound with the means of that vivid realization of scripture incidents which he has described. They suggested some of the uses which, in a former number of this journal, we made of the knowledge that has recently been collected respecting what we called the "subterranean Jerusalem." And now, it is from the same point of view, and with the purpose of subserving the objects which he has so clearly indicated, that in this article we propose to give some detailed account of another field of discovery recently explored, which furnishes means of vivid realizations of scripture history that are not less remarkable than those above alluded to, though they are less familiarly and accurately known.

The regions to which we now allude are the provinces of the ancient Bashan, and the widely-extended plains immediately on the south of them. They are still comparatively unfamiliar; and this may be explained by the form in which descriptions of them have hitherto appeared, as well as by the comparative brevity of those portions of scripture which they illustrate. Neither Burckhardt, nor Porter, notwithstanding their high merit as accurate observers, have attempted any of that scenic picturing which gives the pages of Stanley and Grove their great charm and use. And the late important researches of Mr. Graham in this region are only known from the detached and hastily-written papers in which he has attempted nothing more than an outline of his discoveries. Those who have given us our stereographic revivals of Bible life have hitherto employed themselves on the more familiar incidents of holy writ which occurred in the better-known and more frequently trodden paths