.28 FLOWERS OF THE HOLY LAND. 



have asserted that those who wrote the Holy Word as God 

 directed them were mistaken, and that the Scriptures are false. 

 And though such objections to the Scriptures failed to pros 

 trate the faith of Christians, many were unable to account for 

 certain facts well sustained by an examination of the soils. 

 Take the following as an illustration. Some years since, some 

 skeptics discovered what they supposed to be the proof of an error 

 in the books of Moses. The record there plainly speaks of the 

 chief butler and the wine and grapes in Egypt. (Gen. xl.) But 

 history and facts were against the statement. The Greek his 

 torian Herodotus, who wrote of Egypt more than four hun 

 dred years before the time of our Saviour, declares that no 

 vines grew in Egypt; and the opinions of others added 

 authority to that historian s statement. The soil was exa 

 mined and found to be wanting in the ingredients necessary 

 to sustain the grape; and the conclusion was that here was 

 an error in Scripture. For two thousand years the testi 

 mony of Moses stood alone in its contradiction to the 

 testimony of historians and the voice of the soil. But a 

 Frenchman, (M. Costaz,) during a visit to the catacombs 

 and caverns of an ancient city on the Nile, discovered sculp 

 tures revealing the fact that, at a time long before the birth of 

 the Greek historian, there lived men who planted vineyards and 

 made wine in Egypt, and had carved in the rock the history 

 of the whole process ; and, as the curiosity of antiquaries was 

 stimulated, other places were opened, and a certain sediment 

 was found in ancient jars; and chemists knew this sediment 

 to be the remains of ancient wines. The first discoveries 



