During the last few years immense additional materials have been and still are being discovered of extreme antiquity, and in both hemispheres, all more or less seeming to confirm the veracity of Moses. The present generation has been putting the grand old prophet upon his trial, and now year by year witnesses dusty with antiquity are rising from their graves to bear him witness. Like Banquo’s ghost, they rise with forty hoary centuries on their crowns to push from their stools the camp followers of the modern “men of culture.”
There certainly are and always have been a few honest doubters—sometimes men of the highest culture—and generally distinguished by a silence eminently golden. Much learning and research have already been expended in speculations bearing upon the subject, but to use the language of Mr. Ruskin, “absolutely right no one can be in such matters; nor does a day pass without convincing every honest student of antiquity of some partial error, and showing him better how to think, and where to look. But I knew that there was no hope of my being able to enter with advantage on the fields of history opened by the splendid investigation of recent philologists; though I could qualify myself, by attention and sympathy, to understand, here and there, a verse of Homer’s, as the simple people did for whom he sung.” And again, “Let me ask pardon of all masters in physical science, for any words of mine, that may ever seem to fail in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or in the admiration due to the far scope of their discovery. But I will be judged by themselves, if I have not bitter reason to ask them to teach us more than they have yet taught.”
Since then we have been receiving some strange theories certainly, but no “teachings,” and plain people have yet more “bitter reason” to ask anew for teaching in the direction of tracing all the facts of antiquity with these recent discoveries, and with the hieroglyphics and writings of the oldest historians, without, as hitherto, omitting Moses. If this were done in the line of the most ancient Idolatries, after the manner and spirit of Max Müller in the line of Language, perhaps some traces might be obtained more valuable than volumes of theory, although less sensational.
This, indeed, is a matter in which we must wait. No authority exists in any one whatever to decide as umpire amongst the endless decisions which only “more embroil the fray,” and “make confusion worse confounded.” The different theories of so-called scientific experts only prove that they really know nothing with certainty more than “the simple people” who sit at their feet. If any one will take the trouble to collate the hundred and one different theories—scientific, philosophical, and literary—of the self-named “advanced thinkers” even of this generation, perhaps he would be better cured of doubts, if he has any, than by any elaborate “vindications” of the old Book. Surely a humble teachable spirit like the great Newton’s is more likely to see the way than that of some self-confident philosophers of our day, who, like the lost sheep of the parable, climb up to the mountain top and there from its uppermost peak gaze up into the blue empyrean, and demand, as it were, of the great Creator, to give an account of His actings for their review!
If not ridiculous, surely such presumption (even in the interest of so-called science) is sublime![7] What if there be in these questions something in which science can have no standing, unless perhaps to shed by the reflection of its little tapers just enough light to make the darkness visible? It may be that much of the present confusion and conflict of opinion arises out of words, and I will close this digression by again quoting “Athena.” “On heat and force, life is inseparably dependent; and I believe, also, on a form of substance which the philosophers call ‘protoplasm.’ I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by ‘chlorophyll,’ which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called ‘green leaf,’ we should see more precisely how far we had got.”
Our journey from Sabaste with its Romanesque ruins[8] was now southward through the great plains of Sharon to Jaffa. The soil was rich-looking, and we passed several small streams, but, as elsewhere, stones were too abundant, and the cultivation very defective. The barley crop was just coming into ear, but seemed very poor for such a soil.
Here we re-embarked for Beyrout by a steamer of the Austrian Lloyd’s fleet—a very comfortable vessel in every respect: the cabin arrangements were especially so, and I observed her engines were made in this country. The weather was moderate, and so we had no difficulty in embarking. Our passage money was paid by Braham, as he had discharged our horses and retinue, which otherwise he would have had to take all the way through Galilee and the Hauran to Damascus and back to Jaffa. He seemed quite willing that we should go by this sea route and diligence journey instead, although a longer circuit, so that I presume it had not cost him more. To us it was an agreeable change, although we had enjoyed our tent life very much indeed. The weather had been excellent and dry, and as to temperature, we had experienced all varieties between a tropical and a coolness quite bracing.
And so we bade a tender and silent adieu to the “Holy Land”—interesting exceedingly even in its ruins.
“Still ’mid its relics lives a nameless charm,
By age unwithered, and in ruin warm.”