RELIGION IN MESOPOTAMIA. 



185 



and was even now a city of some 10,000 inhabitants, and if he thought 

 it was yet to be rebuilt as a commercial metropolis ? 



Also whether he thought the eventual port of Mesopotamia 

 would be Tyre, or some port on the littoral of Palestine, as Sir 

 Wm. Wilcox suggested, or Basrah ? 



Mr. HosTE asked the lecturer whether he understood him aright 

 to say that it was impossible there should ever be a Jewish State 

 set up again in Palestine ? 



On the paper being printed, Mr. Hoste supplemented this question 

 with a few further remarks : We are greatly indebted to Canon 

 Parfit for the brilliant series of lantern views of the Mesopotamia 

 region, with which with bewildering rapidity he illustrated his 

 lecture. I wish I could say the same of some of the ' views ' 

 expressed in the lecture itself. Of course we were at a disadvantage 

 in not having the lecture before us in print as usual, and so may 

 have misunderstood the exact terms of some of its contents. I 

 thought if there was one point on which all Biblical students were 

 agreed, it was the re-establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, 

 though a few years back the very return of the Jews to their own 

 land would have been scouted as a dream. Why should it be taken 

 for granted that such a State should be so intolerant of other faiths, 

 as to exclude, say, capable Moslems, from a share in the adminis- 

 tration ? Religious liberty and equality of political privilege might 

 well be a condition of the setting up of the said State. Another 

 point : The Canon suggested, I understood, that a certain ruin at 

 Carchemish may quite possibly have been the model of Solomon's 

 temple. This strikes one as a very hazardous conjecture, con- 

 tradicting as it does the plain statement of Holy Scripture that 

 David gave the pattern to Solomon, ' which the Lord had made 

 him understand in writing by His hand upon him ' (1 Chron. xxviii). 

 We never read of David or Solomon even visiting Carchemish, 

 nor is the place once mentioned in the Bible till the reign of Josiah. 

 If the alleged similarity be anything but conjectural, w^hy should 

 not some visitor attracted to Jerusalem by the fame of Solomon 

 have seen the temple in its glory there and copied it ? As for the 

 ' TiCague of Religions,' it is clear that a Christianity which would 

 join hands on equal terms with Judaism or Mohammedans could not 

 but be one bereft of its essence. I remember a few years back in 



