PALESTINE:

ITS HOLY SITES AND SACRED STORY.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.-FROM B.C. 4004 TO B.C. 2247.

Creation-Position of Eden-The Expulsion-Cain and Abel-Seth-Erection of Memorial Pillars-Noah and the Deluge-Nimrod and Babel-Dispersion of the People-Foundation of Kingdoms-Job: his Prosperity; his Adversity; his Friends; his Restoration-Palestine, the Land of Promise.

THIS beautiful world in which we dwell, with its expansive oceans, wide extending prairies, richly clothed pampas, lofty mountains, deep valleys, highly cultivated country, and wild deserts, has doubtless seen many changes since it received the blessing of its Divine Author. It had grown under His creative Word. Light had banished darkness; a firmament had stretched over it; the waters had rushed into their deep beds; the dry land had brought forth verdure and every kind of vegetation; animal life had appeared, in all its varied forms, on earth and in the waters and the air; and Man had been created, and a help-meet given to him. The pair-bright, and beautiful, and happy in their Maker's benison-were monarchs over all, and had their home in a garden which well deserved the name of Paradise.

The geographical position of Eden is purely conjectural; different writers have placed it in various positions, and nothing can now be known with certainty concerning its locality. It has been placed by some on the Lower Euphrates, near the junction of that river with the Tigris and the Gulf of Persia. By others, it has been described as situated in Media, Armenia, or the north of Mesopotamia, all mountain tracts of extreme beauty and fertility. It has also been imagined that the ancient site of Eden is now covered by Lake Arissa. All this, however,

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is simply speculative, while the events which therein occurred were of the utmost importance to the whole human race.

Milton, in his immortal epic, indulges his vivid and powerful imagination in depicting the unalloyed happiness, unsullied purity, and chaste love of our first parents; they freely conversed with angels and the Lord of angels; they knew neither hatred nor fear, until, in an unhappy hour, they, under strong temptation, broke through a restriction placed upon them, and were expelled from their Paradise to lives of labour and sorrow. This statement agrees in the main outline with the narrative given in Genesis, and is to be traced with more or less likeness in many of the traditions of ancient civilized nations and even those of modern savages.

Whither, after their expulsion, the unhappy couple directed their steps, is entirely unknown: there is no evidence to throw any light upon the matter. How long they wandered before they resolved on some settled habitation is equally uncertain; but we learn that two sons were born to Adam; Cain, the eldestborn, sharing his father's labour, and tilling the ground in the sweat of his face, while Abel, the younger, devoted himself to tending the flocks. It is a beautiful Arcadian picture, although the brighter glories of Paradise are withdrawn: but enmity in the heart of Cain against his brother, who seemed more highly favoured of Heaven than he was himself, led to murder: the earth drank in its first libation of human blood, and the fratricide became a fugitive.

When Cain at last grew weary of wandering he made a settlement at Nod. The country thus named is now unknown, but wherever it may have been, Cain and his posterity appear to have established themselves in great force, to have introduced many habits luxurious for these ancient days, and to have erected a fortified city. Cain is said to have lost nothing of the wickedness of his old nature, to have been cunning and crafty, and by a great show of exactness, such as bringing in the use of weights and measures, the setting up of landmarks and similar methods for the apportionment of property, to have considerably enriched himself. Cain's descendant, Lamech, is re

presented as being the father of no less than seventy-seven children, so rapidly in those days did the race increase and multiply. One of his sons was Jubal, who exercised himself in music, and is reputed to have invented the psaltery and harp. Another son was Tubal, generally regarded as the first who wrought in metal, but no less famous for strength of body and martial ability.

It appears that as years rolled on, the posterity of Cain became outrageously wicked; they took to brigandage, and were not slow to commit murder; they were probably the wildest and most cruel tribe in the locality, and were held in detestation by the other children of Adam; but we really know nothing definitely about them; rabbinical traditions confirm the statements of the great secular Jewish historian, but it is scarcely possible to conceive the sort of life these people led.

Adam is said by Josephus to have had a very numerous family, but the one to whom chief attention is directed is Seth. It seems that Adam regarded this child with peculiar affection; as if he had been given in place of Abel, "whom Cain slew." Seth bore an excellent character for wisdom and virtue, and his children imitated his example; they lived together in peace and quietness, unlike the sons of Cain, and added to their pastoral pursuits some attempts at science. They were the first who studied the motions of the heavenly bodies, and were probably the originators of astrology, thinking they could decipher in the position of the stars the destiny of man. Josephus tells us that, in order their discoveries might not be lost before they were sufficiently known upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, one of brick and the other of stone, then inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit their discoveries to mankind. "This remains," says Josephus, "in the land of Siriad until this day;" but learned as he was, he made a great mistake or very wilful blunder. He confounded Seth, the son of Adam, with Seth, the Sesostris king of Egypt, who erected such a pillar of stone

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and made such an inscription.

As to Adam foretelling the flood and final destruction of the world by fire, that is a matter which no amount of investigation can settle with certainty.

It appears that the descendants of Seth walked in ways of righteousness, that they adhered to the God of their father, and thus became signally distinguished from the posterity of Cain. The descendants of the murderer were wild and lawless, caring nothing for the reciprocal duties of life, but doing what they pleased without regard to God or Man. Seth's children walked. "wisely in a perfect way" for many a generation, but at length a laxity of morals was tolerated, and those whose high privilege it was to be called the "sons of God" intermarried with those who were called the "daughters of men." Poetry has seized upon this circumstance, and made it appear that angels from heaven came down to earth and took to themselves wives of the human race; Jewish tradition backs up this fanciful idea-for it is purely fanciful there is no doubt whatever that what we should call the professors of religion intermarried with the profane and openly irreligious, the result being a gross perversion of pure morality, and a wicked, senseless yielding to the pleasures of this life.

We are taught to believe that the world then became desperately wicked; that such enormous and astounding crimes were committed as to exceed even the strongest imagination. A rude, rough, coarse race, with no sense of self or mutual respect, given up to the vilest vices, strong in nothing but its daring impiety., Tradition tells us that Adam had thirty-three sons and twentythree daughters, but in the course of seventeen hundred years there were but eight people in the world who were regarded with Divine favour. This number, indeed, might very properly be reduced to one. Noah was a just and faithful man. He found favour in the sight of his Maker-one bright star in a black and stormy sky. Those who belonged to him were as himself -his wife-his sons-his sons' wives, and it was revealed to him that a fearful convulsion of nature, a down-pouring of water from above, an upheaval of water from below, should utterly destroy all human kind, all living things except those whịch