262 



ARTHDE W. SUTTON^ J.P._, F.L.S.. ON 



since the fifth century, and if so we cannot wonder that the 

 thirty-three bishoprics which formerly existed in Arabia are 

 now extinct. 



The monks showed iis the Charnel House. As the monks die 

 they are buried in a garden, and after some time the bones are 

 dug up and placed in this charnel house, the skulls by them- 

 selves and the other bones apart. Here lie, carefully piled up, 

 the bones of the monks from the sixth century ! ! ! The bishops' 

 bones are in boxes apart. The whole place savours of " death 

 unto death." 



When standing before Jebel Sufsafa, we could understand 

 how Moses, coming down the eastern side of the mount, and 

 before he reached the hill on which, according to tradition, 

 Aaron watched the idolatrous worship of the golden calf, would 

 hear the shouts of the people before the scene itself came into 

 view. As Moses came round the north-east shoulder of the 

 mount, everything would be clearly visible, and then it was that 

 the tables of the law^ were broken in pieces " beneath the moun- 

 tain," and the fragments of the idol strewn on the surface of 

 the brook which descends from a spring on the western slopes 

 of the Sufsafa. Upon that mountain, and before it, everything 

 recorded in Holy Scripture could take place, as the physical 

 features show ; but the same could not be said of any other spot 

 in all the world. 



From the Scripture records we find that the Israelites arrived 

 on the plain of Er-Eaha — " the Wilderness of Sinai " — in the 

 third month of the first year of their wanderings : that the 

 Tabernacle was set up before the Holy Mount on the first day 

 of the first month in the second year, and that the numbering 

 of the host took place on the first day of the second month of 

 the second year, the number being recorded as 603,550, besides 

 women and children.* Also that the Israelites removed from Sinai, 

 when the cloud was first taken up from off the Tabernacle, 

 on the twentieth day of the second month of the second 

 year — so that they were encamped eleven months before the 

 mount. 



I had not fully realized before the merciful providence of 

 God in so ordering events that the giving of the Law — the First 

 or Old Covenant — should at once be followed, and in the same 

 place, by the institution of sacrifices for the pardon of trans- 

 gressions against that Law which no human being has ever yet 

 been known to keep perfectly. The institution of the Passover, 



^ See " Notes on the Census NiimbeiF," pp. 265-8. 



