Elijah, by the Psalmist, and by the prophet Isaiah, sympathetically read to them, applied to the hearts by the Holy Spirit, never failed to have the desired effect. Hence our success among this class of the people, among whom we labor. On the contrary, Mohammedanism arms the hearts of its professors with deadly weapons against Christianity, by denying its fundamental doctrine, the Sonship of Christ, and his divinity as one with God the Father, which is blasphemy according to the teaching of the Koran. Thus their hearts are hardened with prejudices, selfconceit, a self-righteous spirit, and self-confidence in their meritorious religious performances, especially in prayer and fasting, and in works of supererogation, which they believe they can make over for the benefit of others who are deficient. They are freely allowed the indulgence of the sinful lust of the flesh; they do not scruple to commit acts of cruelty and oppression on those who are not professors of their faith; slaveholding and trading is fully sanctioned, to carry out which, slave-wars are waged against the heathen with great cruelty, in order to enslave them with oppression and violence, without remorse. . . . Hence slave-wars have desolated the lands of populous heathen tribes and nations, whose inhabitants were carried away captives and sold into slavery, and those who are reserved in the country are doomed to perpetual servitude, hewers of wood and drawers of water, under a most oppressive tribute. This is a faint description of the soil of the minds of the professors of Islamism, in which the seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ is being attempted to be sown, by preaching repentance of sin and a renewed change of heart through faith in Christ Jesus the Son of God. . . . But for all his earnestness, the preacher is looked upon with horrified contempt as a blasphemer, because God never had a son. . . . ... What surprises me most is, that Christianity, with its strict restraints of . . . the allurements of the world, the flesh, and the devil, should get so many converts in the face of all the free allowances in the enjoyment of all these by the religion of the false prophet. It proves that Christianity appeals to the heart and conscience of man as a reasonable being, who ought to judge between truth and error."

Archdeacon Hamilton describes a Mohammedan town in the Upper Niger region. "Bida is certainly superior in many ways to Egan. It is situated in a valley with two watercourses running through it; it is entirely surrounded by a mud wall; its population is variously stated at from 30,000 to 60,000; many of the thoroughfares are wide and open, with trees of various kinds growing in them. The houses are for the most part detached; filth abounds everywhere, there being no attempt at sanitary measures. The palaces of the king and princes interested me, as they have about them, in a rude kind of way, what we see in our old feudal castles at home. First you come to an outer keep or gateway, and here you find a number of hangers-on sitting or lying about; then you pass into a courtyard with the king's or princes' wives' private apartments; and then beyond that, if I may judge from those I saw passing to and fro, the apartments for the women. I noticed large herds of cattle grazing in the neighborhood of the town, beyond the walls, one herd containing at least one hundred head of cattle; and we found that fresh beef, fresh butter and milk were to be had every day in the market.” At Lokoja, a town at the junction of the Niger and Binue, Bishop Crowther is putting up a stone building, intended as a preparatory school for lads who promise well for schoolmasters or catechists. The astonishment

with which the edifice, doubtless of sufficiently modest proportions, is regarded by the natives illustrates what we have seen remarked, that no negro tribe, of itself, has ever hewn a stone. "It has been very amusing," says Mr. J. Burness, " to hear the remarks of the natives, and to see the bewilderment and wonder depicted on their faces. When we dug the foundations they wanted to know if we were going to live underground; and now we have finished they are utterly amazed at the height of the building, and cannot understand how the stones hold to each other at such a height. They pass one hand by the other, and exclaim, Kai! kai!' and then Ah-r,' a kind of a breathed guttural sound, an expression of surprise and wonder. They say, 'White man pass every man; white man be next to God.'

6

The "Spirit of Missions," the missionary organ of the Protestant Episcopal Church of this country, in the number for January, 1886, has a letter from the Right Reverend Samuel David Ferguson, the newly consecrated Missionary Bishop of Cape Palmas, Liberia. He says: "I have met a warm reception on all sides. The first voices that greeted my ears were those of the inmates of our Orphan Asylum and Girls' School, who, descending the cape on the summit of which the institution is located, and standing on the rocks below, sang out merrily, 'Welcome Home,' as the surf-boat that was bearing me to the shore passed them, and made me forget for a while that we were entering the bar whose foaming billows were far from being inviting. Nearing the wharf, the Gloria in Excelsis, chanted joyfully by scores of men, women, and children, was also heard above the noise of the waters; and, on landing, I found the Sunday-school of St. Mark's assembled there, headed by its superintendent, who made a short address, bidding me welcome. Many of the prominent citizens, including Methodists and Baptists as well as our own Church folk, were also present to receive me. A more formal public reception was given four days afterward, under the direction of the officers and teachers of St. Mark's. Nor were the native Christians behind in manifestations of good will toward me. The Hoffman Institute and High School, with several ladies and gentlemen of Cavalla Station, twelve miles away, came up en masse; and after some good singing, their pastor made an address of welcome to me. The Hoffman Station folk also came, and in like manner gave me assurances of their good will. According to their custom, they brought large bowls of palmbutter and rice (their principal article of diet), which we partook of together in token of affectionate regards.

"In the midst of all this, reflecting on what the wise king of Israel says, 'Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof,' and also on what another said to the king of Syria, 'Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast as he that taketh it off,' I rejoice with trembling."The Bishop finds occasion to stir up in the minds of the AmericoLiberians a spirit of coöperation with his work, exhorting them to regard it as an enterprise which is peculiarly their own, and not some foreign enterprise of which they are to be merely spectators.

Bishop Ferguson soon after baptized the king and queen of the Cape Palmas Grebo tribe. Having received the message soliciting baptism, the Bishop went to the king's village. He found him an invalid about seventy years old. He had, he said, been long persuaded of the truth of the gospel, and had desired baptism, but had regarded himself as obliged by his office to the practice of certain heathen ceremonies. These, how

ever, he declared himself now willing to renounce, as well as to give up polygamy, and everything else savoring of heathenism. The bishop was satisfied of his sincerity, and accordingly baptized him. The king's name is Yiba Wa. "Several of the principal men of the tribe," says Dr. Ferguson, "were present to witness the ceremony which made their chief an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. They looked on aghast ; and one a very intelligent man who fills the office of prime ministerremarked that but for polygamy he would become a Christian likewise." About ten days later the bishop baptized the queen, and another candidate, a young man. The queen seems about ten years the junior of her husband. The solemn sacrament of initiation into the Church of God was administered to her and to her young companion "in an open space in front of the house of the bodio (high-priest)," where were assembled "nearly all the Christians from Hoffman Station, themselves rescued from heathenism. On the one side were the state officials, and on the other eminent heathen personages. A large number of young men and naked children made the circle almost complete, while small groups of women, whom heathenism denies a seat in the assemblies of the opposite sex, stood a few yards off, gazing wistfully upon a scene which they had never witnessed before." The Bishop took advantage of the representative character of the three who had just received or were just about to receive the holy rite to appeal to the various classes present to follow the example. "Indeed, if care had been taken to select the candidates for such an occasion, with a view to making a desirable impression on the heathen, we could not have found more suitable persons. The one full of youthful vigor, kneeling beside the other in the evening of her life, with the recent baptism of the king fresh in memory, made the occasion a most striking one." It was not without warm, and well-warranted hope, that after the baptism, which expressed and constituted the two candidates "fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God," the exultant strains of the Gloria in Excelsis went up to Him who had here given assurance of his presence and expectation of his working, by planting the little church of two or three at the very centre of the little realm.

ANDOVER.

Charles C. Starbuck.

(To be continued.)

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

LES LANGUES PERDUES DE LA PERSE ET DE L'ASSYRIE, par M. JOACHIM MENANT. Assyrie. Pp. 340. Paris Ernest Leroux. 1886.

THE most important additions to our knowledge of the history of man have come, within the last quarter of a century, from the East. The Mesopotamian Valley, long shrouded in the deep gloom of wild tradition and meagre, one-sided accounts, has of a sudden been opened to us. The archives, reports, and inscriptions of the kings of Assyria and Babylonia have been unsealed, and we now have at hand the same sort of material for writing the history of the Orient as is accessible to a Motley or a Bancroft. The story of the sudden and wonderful growth of this

science, Assyriology, is fraught with unusual interest. It is a record of man's marvelous perseverance, skill, industry, and ingenuity, and, as such, appeals strongly to our human instincts. From this side alone the story is well worth telling, and general scholars will join specialists in thanking M. Menant for the able and impartial manner in which he has handled his difficult theme.

Photius, Eusebius, Moses of Chorene, Berosus, Strabo, Nicholas of Damascus, Polyhistor, and, of course, Herodotus (why not add Ctesias and Diodorus?) have all preserved for us some truth about AssyroBabylonian history and mythology. But along with it they have handed down so much that is misleading, and so much that is absolutely false, that even a Biblical critic could not restore and adjust with his wonted nicety the disjecta membra of the Assyro-Babylonian Empire. Even the very considerable help which the tenth chapter of Genesis and the second Book of Kings afford would be unavailing. The enigma which literary criticism never did and never could have sclved was accordingly passed on to Archæology, who chose as her first servants the adventuresome portion of the human race. When Benjamin de Tudela visited the Orient in the twelfth century, he asserted that the ruins of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon were still visible, but that they could not be approached because of the serpents and scorpions which infested the place. The next visitors to the Mesopotamian Valley were Eldred, an Englishman, in 1583, and Rauwolf, a German botanist, later in the same century. After them came Pietro della Valle, in 1616; and then there was no traveler of any importance until Niebuhr in 1765. Beauchamp, the astronomer, visited a number of Babylonian sites later on, giving an account of his observations in a Memoir to the Academy of Inscriptions. The work of exploration really began, however, with the visit of Rich to Birs-Nimroud in December, 1811, and was followed up by Robert KerPorter, Botta, Layard, and Loftus. Side by side with the traveling, and long before any systematic exploration was attempted, persistent efforts were made at deciphering the few characters already in the possession of European scholars. As far as is known, the first publication on the subject was a Latin essay on the cuneiform writing of Persepolis by Olav Gerhard Tyschen, printed at Rostock in 1798, Münter and Grotefend following him with their publications in the order named. Then the question seems to have dropped out of sight until the second paper of Grotefend, in 1837, which was followed by the important contributions of Westergaard and Hincks. Meanwhile the discovery of the Behistun inscription by Sir Henry Rawlinson, and his memoir on it, as well as that of Edwin Norris, all combined to place cuneiform study on a sound footing, fitting it for the test which it was put to in 1857, and which it so successfully endured.

Chapters IV. and V. of M. Menant's work are devoted to an account of the exploration of Nineveh and Assyria, and Babylon and Chaldea respectively; and this we can safely pass over, adding to the names already mentioned those of Mohl, Rassam, and Cooper, and stopping to sympathize over the loss in the Schatt el Arab of the splendid collection sent to Paris by M. Botta in 1855, a result due, as was said at the time, to "sheer carelessness and mismanagement."

To Chevalier Isidore Löwenstein belongs the credit of being the first to assert that some of the cuneiform inscriptions were Semitic; from a study of the variants to known texts he was led to a recognition of the

The

polyphonic character of cuneiform signs, a step absolutely indispensable for the correct understanding of a single line of Assyrian writing. Longpérier followed with the identification of the name of Sargon. Then came the further identification of characters by F. de Sauley. centre of the work now passed from France into the hands of Rawlinson and Hincks, the latter of whom, there is now good reason to believe, being deserving of much more credit than it has been wont to give him. Assyrian grammar and phonetics are more indebted to Hincks than to any other Assyriologist. In 1851 Dr. Hincks found the Biblical names Hezekiah, Jerusalem, and Sennacherib on the inscriptions. In 1852 he published a list of 252 characters, with a discussion of their values. About this time Mr. H. Fox Talbot was added to the list of workers in England and Jules Oppert in France. And in 1857, in order to settle the claims of Assyriology to consideration as a science, Sir Henry Rawlinson, H. Fox Talbot, Dr. E. Hincks, and M. Jules Oppert presented independent translations of the inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. to the Royal Asiatic Society. Chapter VII. is devoted to a more detailed account of the development of Assyrian grammar, etc., and Chapter VIII. to the resumption of exploration in 1872, in which George Smith played so great a part. All are familiar with the "Daily Telegraph" expedition, and Mr. Smith's discovery of the creation tablets and the so-called Izdubar legends, including the Chaldean account of the Flood. His successor as agent of the British Muscum, Hormuzd Rassam, who was at Mosul with Layard, continued his brilliant discoveries, as the finds at Aboo-Habbah (Sippara) sufficiently attest. Meanwhile the French were not idle, their work having been kept up by M. de Sarzec in lower Chaldea ever since 1877. The name of Dr. W. Hayes Ward, leader of the Wolfe expedition, closes the list.

Our attention is next turned to the development of Assyrian study, which in the beginning as well as now was regarded as a branch of Biblical research. In France, Oppert, Menant, Lenormant, De Chossat, Stanislaus Guyard, Henri Pognon, Halévy, Amiaud, and Ledrain have done great work for its advancement. In England Assyriology was in the hands of Hincks, Rawlinson, Bosanquet, Fox Talbot, Edwin Norris, George Smith, A. H. Sayce, M. Boscawen, J. M. Rodwell, William Houghton, E. A. W. Budge, George Bertin, and Theo. G. Pinches. Although France had many scholars who pursued Assyrian studies, and though England had a still larger number interested, they never devoted themselves in the same way as did the German scholars. It was Schrader who, in 1869, crystallized what had already been done, and in 1872 published the first work which showed the bearing of cuneiform research on Old Testament study. His pupil, Friedrich Delitzsch, commenced to teach Assyrian at Leipzig in 1874, and one need but mention the names of Paul Haupt, Carl Bezold, J. N. Strassmaier, Wilhelm Lotz, Reinhart Hoerning, Fritz Honmel, as well as younger men like Zimmern, Jensen, Latrille, Winckler, and Jeremias, to show how dependent Assyriology has been upon German scholars for advancement. With the mention of Dr. Felice Finzi, an Italian savant, we will leave Europe and come over to the United States, where we may be permitted to linger a while.

Assyriological studies in the United States have never received that hearty support and sympathy from the authorities extended by the governments of France and England, yet American students have, principally through the scientific spirit which imbued some of the Christian mission