22 RT. HON. SIR R. TEMPLK, BART., ON THE UNITY OP TRUTFI. 



thing's must be taken on trust and that others we must 

 admit to be unintelligible, Avhich we might understand on 

 the other side of the grave, but should never do so in this 

 life, and the like. Now I do not want to take refuge in any 

 of those convenient subterfuges. I wish to show this after- 

 noon to a certain point, at least, that the more we study and 

 understand the words of Scripture the more we shall perceive 

 its absolute truth. Of course it is an enormous subject, and 

 I can only touch on an important fringe of it, and you will 

 be able to judge Iioav far what I say is sufficient to prove my 

 proposition. 



Now in the first place, let me point out to you that there 

 is a Society called the Palestine Exploration Society, of 

 Avhich I myself was, for a long time, one of the Vice- 

 Presidents. I say that Society, by its surveys and examina- 

 tions on the spot and the like, has done more to spread and 

 to confirm the faith of Christians in their own Bible than 

 anything that has been done since the translation of that 

 Bible into the vulgar tongue. Among other things it has 

 had to identify names. When we were young I suppose 

 there were very many names of places in the Old Testament 

 and many in the New Testament which were quite unknown, 

 and which had never been identified. I have been in one of 

 the caves near Bethlehem right under the site of the Nativity, 

 where St. Jerome laboured for half his life. His object was 

 to identify a great number of Scripture names of places. 

 Apparently in the first, second or third centuries of Christianity 

 no Christians knew more than a fcAV names in the Scriptures, 

 which were to be found on the spot, in the Holy Land, and 

 St. Jerome set himself to work and ascertained some 

 hundreds, and a few more were ascertained by the Crusaders. 

 Then for a long time research seemed to go to sleep, and it 

 was reserved for us to continue the exploration. Now I 

 suppose they have identified several hundred names within 

 my time and several liundred nan\es still remain to be 

 identified, l)ut no doubt we sliall ascertain all before we have 

 done with it. 



Now do you understand how this is done? Let me show 

 you the process. I recollect riding nlong a road in Palestine 

 and I sto]iped a man and asked him in the rough Syriac 

 Arabic dialect, which I kncAv enough of to ask him, what 

 was the name of that mountain just in front of me. He 

 looked suspiciously at me for a moment. I said, " I am going 

 to ride further on — you just tell me the name." I knew the 



