10 THE president's ADDRESS. 



As I have already remarked a flood of light is being turned upon 

 many of the subjects thus peculiarly brought before the public. 



The full discussion thus elicited will, amongst other good eiFects, 

 serve to dissipate an uneasy feeling which prevailed extensively, of the 

 vast superiority of German critical analysis and explorations of the 

 text of the sacred writings. 



It seemed almost conceded that no names could be found to weigh 

 against the established reputations of the Bauers, De Wettes, and 

 Strausses. General readers may feel somewhat reassured by the 

 mention of such names as Hengstenberg and Max Miiller, and others 

 brought prominently forward of late, as occupying very different, 

 although equally honourable places among German philologists. 



Science has not been false to her great mission on earth, and has 

 advanced torch in hand to explore and light up many of the dark 

 caverns of which the black mouths alone have been exhibited to us, 

 by those, who seem rather to delight in pointing out darkness than in 

 striving to explore it. Patient research has journeyed toilsomely 

 through lonely and savage lands to trace out perishing characters of 

 the elder days, on Idumean tomb, Egyptian obelisk, or Assyrian tro- 

 phy. It has called to its aid a wondrous handmaiden, the photogra- 

 phic art, to copy the ancient letters as in a mirror, and patiently has 

 it unravelled the strange alphabet, hieroglyphic, or Cufic or Cunei- 

 form, till the world was shewn the cotemporaneous record of a Sesos- 

 tris or a Nebuchadnezzar. 



The Bampton Lecturer for 1859, Mr. George Rawlinson, has given 

 us a noble contribution to the Christian Evidences, -wholly drawn from 

 the sources of profane history, and the recent decipherings of Egyp- 

 tian, Babylonian, Persian, and Assyrian records. I cannot refrain 

 from giving two brief examples of these interesting testimonies, if only 

 ta shew how truly worthy of perusal is such a work in such an age. 

 Those who wished to impugn the book of Daniel, are wont to point 

 out that while the prophet makes Belshazzar the last King of Babylon 

 and slain at its capture, the historian Berosus gives Nabonadius as the 

 last native king, that he was absent from the city at its capture and 

 was not slain but taken prisoner by Cyrus. This was embarrassing. 

 But Sir Henry Rawlinson, the gifted brother of the lecturer, found an 

 inscription in 1854, at Mugheir, the ancient, " Ur of the Chaldees," 

 stating that Nabonadius the last King, during the later years of his 

 reign, associated with him in the throne his son •' Bil-shar-uzur," and 

 allowed him the royal title. There can be little doubt, he adds, that 



