The Editor most anxiously avoids that spirit of error which has, unhappily, too much prevailed of late on the Continent, and which, by arrogating to itself the claims of superior sagacity and learning, has sought to reduce everything in the Sacred Volume to the level of its own limited views and narrow conceptions, denying or explaining away the miracles, and seeking thereby to lower our reverence for the word of God, and for divine things in general. Such views and principles, usually classed under the term Neology, receive no countenance in the pages of this work. The Bible is, throughout, exhibited as Scripture given by inspiration of God, and not as mere human composition.
Scripture Biography is treated of in a brief and concise manner, except when difficulties occur which require to be cleared up; and the topographical descriptions of remarkable places of Scripture form a marked feature in the Bible Cyclopædia.
Numerous Wood-Cuts are given of Coins, Medals, Gems, remarkable Places, and other subjects capable of legitimate illustration, from the best and most recent sources of information.
Uniformly with the above, price 7s. 6d., coloured, and bound in cloth,
Bible Maps;
A SERIES OF NEW AND ACCURATE MAPS, CONSTRUCTED ON THE BEST
AUTHORITIES, AND VERIFIED BY COLLATION WITH THE
DISCOVERIES OF MODERN TRAVELLERS:
FORMING A COMPLETE
HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ATLAS OF SCRIPTURE
GEOGRAPHY.
By WILLIAM HUGHES, F.R.G.S.
The numerous attempts successively made to illustrate the geography of the Bible have been, in too many instances, based upon mere conjectures, sometimes supported only by vague etymological analogies drawn from the writings of Greek and Roman antiquity, and often only showing how little the framers of them really knew of Palestine, but which have, in almost all cases, been disproved by the appliance of modern observation. This would have been of comparatively little importance if, as new facts were acquired, they had been constantly made use of, and applied as tests of the worth of preconceived hypotheses. But it has unfortunately happened that, either from the ignorance or carelessness of the greater number of the compilers of Scripture Atlases, a large amount of real and available information has either not yet been applied to the illustration of the Geography of the Sacred Volume, or else it has been mixed up with long-received conjectures, in such a manner as to make the ascertained truths subservient to the hypotheses, instead of confirming or rejecting the latter, according as it corresponded or not with the former. The result has, of course, been to confuse rather than elucidate the subject; and the great majority of the Maps professing to illustrate the Bible, mostly copied from others of a similar description, and inheriting in succession the absurdities and puerile conjectures of former times, present, accordingly, a mass of confusion, in which it is impossible for the inexperienced student to separate the true from the false, or the known from the conjectural.
Published by Authority,