a departure from the ethnological type which is due to admixture with the older races among whom they settled. Positive evidence of these races is found in various remains which have been discovered all over the region now under consideration. Sacrificial pillars (menhirs), gravestones or altars (dolmens), ancient shrines of the cromlech pattern, and underground or rock dwellings of artificial construction, belong to an age probably earlier than the differentiation of any of the Semitic races from the original stock. Argument for a pre-Semitic settlement may also be drawn from the names applied by the Old Testament writers to the most ancient inhabitants of the land of Canaan. Such terms as Rephaim (giants), Anakim (long-necked), and Horim (cave-dwellers), being mere epithets, cannot naturally refer to a Semitic race. names, as Zuzim, Zamzummim, Emim, and Avvim, seem to be merely artificial creations to designate an extinct people of unknown race. Such names would not be used to denote Semites any more than the epithets just mentioned. The little we know of this old Syro-Palestinian race is enough to show that it was not a people possessed of any high degree of civilization. Its instruments are of rude stone with here and there a token of more advanced culture in the shape of a tool or vessel of bronze.

Other

In the last place, we turn to Ethiopia. The pre-Semitic race in this country was Hamite with some admixture of negro blood. Hamite and Semite were in the beginning of one stock, and Ethiopia was a part of the original home land. That Semites should return thither from Arabia across the narrow strait dividing southern Yemen from Africa was not unnatural. By small groups this return journey had been made from early times and even now is being made by men from Arabia. At definite periods, rather late in the history of the Semitic peoples, larger bodies crossed over to Ethiopia from Yemen carrying with them their south Arabian culture and arts. They were of sufficient numbers and energy of character to determine the development of the country and to assert themselves over the original race. Hence, though Hamite and negro influences have left their deep impression, the people of Ethiopia are to this day in all predominant features a Semitio people.

It is not likely that Egypt penetrated into Palestine and Syria at a period antedating the arrival of the Semites. Her presence in the Bedouin region of Sinai is attested for the third Egyptian dynasty (circa 4000 B. C.), but when she came there she found the Semites already there. Indeed, the very earliest Pharaohs constructed on the northeastern frontier of Egypt a famous defense, known as the "Wall of the Princes," to repel invasion on the part of these ancient Bedouin. A reminiscence of an early Egyptian rule over the Sinai district is found in the application of the name Mutsri to that part as well as to Egypt itself.

In every Semitic land there has been a pre-Semitic raceArabia alone excepted. In every case this race has largely influenced the development of the Semites by whom it was displaced. In every instance the corruption of the old Semitic type under foreign influences was very rapid, so that everywhere—the Arab again excepted-the Semite when he first becomes known to us has lost much of his original character and taken on many new characteristics. From the moment when the old Semitic herdsmen first left their desert cradle-land, "not knowing whither they went,' but always under the unseen hand of the Almighty, they were under a discipline which everywhere and always tended to make them cosmopolites-losing that which made them peculiar and gaining that which brought them nearer to the world they were so powerfully to move.

Walter A Patton

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS.

NOTES AND PISOPSSIONS.

Avery A. Shaw, discussing the question whether Christianity created Christ or Christ created Christianity, reasons to this conclusion: "Here is our choice-Christianity: founded on the Risen and Living Christ, or on fog and rottenness. After all, as one has put it, 'It is better to believe in the supernatural than.in the ridiculous."" Showing that men may know God directly, Carlyle's statement is quoted: "Of final causes, man, in the nature of the case, can prove nothing, knows them (if he knows them at all) not by the glimmering flint-sparks of logic, but by an infinitely higher light of intuition," and also these words from Romanes: "All first principles, even of scientific facts, are known by intuition-not by reason." The necessary conclusion is that, if there be a God, he is knowable by intuition. Faith does not rest on a mere process of reasoning. It is rather the surrender of the whole man to God as seen in Jesus Christ. How it comes about is illustrated by the case of a highly cultured Japanese gentleman. Thoughts came into his mind of a personal Being great and kindly above him. He was anxious to learn if these thoughts were true. Confucius could not help him. At length a Christian gave him a Bible in Chinese. He read until he came to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. These are his words: "I was arrested, fascinated. I had never seen nor heard nor dreamed of a morality like that. I felt that it was above the reach of the human race, that it must have come from Heaven, that the man who wrote that chapter must have received light from God-from God about whose existence I had been speculating. And then I read the Gospel of John, and the words of Christ filled me with wonder. They were not to be resisted. I could not refuse Christ my faith." He saw the divine light in the record itself and became a Christian. The story is also told of a woman of loose moral character who earned a livelihood by posing for a noted artist. She was specially gifted for this work. Her grace of form and her imitative genius made her an admirable model. If she were to pose as Mary Queen of Scots she would gather together all the material of the queen's life, visit her haunts, and after three weeks come to the studio as Mary Queen

of Scots. One day the artist said, "You would make a splendid model for the Magdalene." "And who is that?" she asked, "and where shall I find out about her?" The artist told her, and procured a Testament for her. She went to her home, and for the first time came face to face with herself in Mary Magdalene, and with Him whose words and acts were such as she had never dreamed of. At the end of three weeks she failed to appear: After a further three weeks the artist sought her out, and found a transformed Magdalene, sitting at the feet of her new Master, clothed, and in her right mind, an angel of mercy to those who, like herself, had gone astray.

A PREACHER'S ESSAYIST.*

AMONG living writers in this year of our Lord one of the essayists for the preacher is Brierley, whose previous volumes were noticed last year. The thirty-six essays of this new volume, Problems of Living, are as high in level and as wide in range. They aim to show that the spiritual element in man is not only the one feature that gives distinction to life, but is the only adequate clew to the sphinx riddle of our world; that however this riddle is studied, whether along its physical, historical, or economic sides, or into the inmost depths of Personality, the answer can be found only in the realm of the invisible; that all our problems of living are finally religious problems and look to religion for their solution; that a religion adequate for such solution must be one that allies itself to the nature of things and is at one with the soul's universal affirmations; and that Christianity, properly conceived, is that adequate religion.

As to the intellectual difficulties which some modern minds have with revealed religion, our essayist's opinion is that many of these difficulties arise from antique but remediable forms of statement. And as to all those difficulties, he names two considerations, which are looming more and more in modern thought, and which cast a new and reassuring light in which Faith can make its argument more clear and strong. The first of these considerations is the towering and immense significance of personality. The more personality is considered, the more clearly is it seen that it is only in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation that the idea of a personal God becomes at all intelligible to us. It is being recognized that on this

* Problems of Living. By J. Brierley, B.A. 12mo, pp. 356. New York: Thomas Whittaker. Price, cloth, $1.40.

planet the human personality is the appointed organ of the Eternal Reason, in and through which organ the Divine Voice speaks, and that only along this channel has the Soul of the Universe come to speaking terms with man's consciousness. Admitting that our conception of personality involves limitation, and that the nature of the infinite God may transcend such limits; conceding that the Absolute is beyond our comprehension, and that it is

The Somewhat which we name, but cannot wholly know,

Even as we name a star and only see

His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show
And ever hide him, and which are not he;

nevertheless man as a person, recognizing, communing with, and receiving revelation from a God who manifests Himself as a person, and who is incarnate, visible, and accessible in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Saviour, not only knows God, but is more and more fashioned into the likeness of the Lord. The second consideration which is prevailing against the intellectual difficulties referred to is that it is growing more and more clear that there is an eternal miraculous and an eternal supernatural in the Gospel. To the question, What is the supernatural? this in substance is the answer given: Man regards as supernatural whatever is above his natural. We are supernatural to our dog. We can do things which would be miraculous in him. Byron said that if the dog has a religion, his master is his god. A civilized human being, with firearms, electricity, and all modern arts, is as a god to the savage, and sometimes receives worship from him. When we toss a stone into the air we transcend the laws which belong to the stone. Christ is supernatural to us in His nature and in His powers. Because He is above us He does what we cannot do, and that is miracle to us. First is the stone, held fast to the ground by the grip of something we call gravitation. Then comes man, who defies the power of gravitation, and by exercise of will and a superior power flings the stone up into the air. Next comes a Being of a grade above man, a Being in whom Divine powers are superadded to or blended with the human. As to what this higher Being can and will do when He arrives, we who are below Him in the scale of being are not able to foreknow; we can only wait and see; but that He will speak as never man spake, and that the things which He will naturally do will be supernatural to us and will appear as miraculous wonders, this much is not only credible but sure and inevitable. The supernatural Christ makes all miracles possible. In Him God re