Genesis xi. 4.-"AND THEY SAID, GO TO, LET US BUILD US A CITY AND A TOWER, WHOSE TOP MAY REACH UNTO HEAVEN; AND LET US MAKE US A NAME, LEST WE BE SCATTERED ABROAD UPON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH.

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1620. The Tower of Babel.-Birs-Nimrud. - The "tower "Babel" is only mentioned once in Scripture (Gen. xi. 4, 5), and then as incomplete. No reference to it appears in the prophetic denunciations of the punishments which were to fall on Babylon for her pride. It is therefore quite uncertain whether the building ever advanced beyond its foundations. As, however, the classical writers universally in their descriptions of Babylon gave a prominent place to a certain tower-like building, which they called the temple, or the tomb of Belus, it has generally been supposed that the tower was in course of time finished, and became the principal temple of the Chaldean metropolis. Certainly this may have been the case; but while there is some evidence against, there is none in favour of it. A Jewish tradition, recorded by Bochart, declared that fire fell from heaven, and split the tower through to its foundation; while Alexander Polyhistor, and the other profane writers who noticed the tower, said that it had been blown down by the winds. Such authorities, therefore, as we possess, represent the building as destroyed soon after its erection. When the Jews, however, were carried captive into Babylonia, struck with the vast magnitude and peculiar character of certain of the Babylonian temples, they imagined that they saw in them not merely buildings similar in type and mode of construction to the "tower (p) of their Scriptures, but in this or that temple they thought to recognize the very tower itself. The predominant opinion was in favour of the great temple of Nebo at Borsippa, the modern Birs-Nimrud, although the distance of that place from Babylon is an insuperable difficulty in the way of the identification. Similarly, when Christian travellers first began to visit the Mesopotamian ruins, they generally attached the name of "the tower of Babel" to whatever mass, among those beheld by them, was the loftiest and most imposing. Rawulf in the 16th century found the "tower of Babel at Felugiah, Pietro della Vale in the 18th identified it with the ruin Babil near Hillah, while early in the present century Rich and Ker Porter revived the Jewish notion, and argued for its identity with the Birs. There are in reality no real grounds either for identifying the tower with the Temple of Belus, or for supposing that any remains of it long survived the check which MARCH, 1867.

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the builders received when they were "scattered abroad upon the face of the earth," and "left off to build the city" (Gen. xi. 8). All then that can be properly attempted by the modern critic is to show, 1st, what was the probable type and character of the building; and 2nd, what were the materials and manner of its construction.

With regard to the former point it may readily be allowed that the Birs-Nimrud, though it cannot be the tower of Babel itself, which was at Babylon (Gen. xi. 9), yet, as the most perfect representative of an ancient Babylonian temple-tower, may well be taken to show, better than any other ruin, the probable shape and character of the edifice. This building appears, by the careful examinations recently made of it, to have been a sort of oblique pyramid built in seven receding stages. "Upon a platform of · crude brick, raised a few feet above the level of the alluvial plain, was built of burnt brick the first or basement stage-an exact square, 272 feet each way, and 26 feet in perpendicular height. Upon this stage was erected a second, 230 feet each way, and likewise 26 feet high; which, however, was not placed exactly in the middle of the first, but considerably nearer to the south-western end, which constituted the back of the building. The other stages were arranged similarly-the third being 188 feet, and again 26 feet high; the fourth 146 feet square, and 15 feet high; the fifth 104 feet square, and the same height as the fourth; the sixth 62 feet square, and again the same height; and the seventh 20 feet square, and once more the same height. On the seventh stage there was probably placed the ark or tabernacle, which seems to have been again 15 feet high, and must have nearly, if not entirely, covered the top of the seventh story. The entire original height, allowing three feet for the platform, would thus have been 156 feet, or, without the platform, 153 feet. The whole formed a sort of oblique pyramid, the gentler slope facing the N.E., and the steeper inclining to the S.W. On the N.E. side was the grand entrance, and here stood the vestibule, a separate building, the débris from which having joined those from the temple itself, fill up the intermediate space, and very remarkably prolong the mound in this direction."-Rawlinson's "Herodotus," vol. ii., pp. 582-3.

Burnt bricks were employed in the composition of the tower (Gen. xi. 3), and though perhaps it is somewhat doubtful what the khemar (1) used for mortar may have been, ye ton the whole it is most probable that bitumen (which abounds in Babylonia) is the substance intended.-Rev. George Rawlinson, M.A., in Dr. Wm. Smith's " Bible Dictionary."

1 Corinthians iii. 16.-"KNOW YE NOT THAT YE ARE THE TEMPLE OF GOD?"

1621. Temple-what it Means.-Our associations with this word are largely of a material kind. A house, an edifice, bricks, stone, ornament, and splendour, at once occur when we catch the word. But let us go up to the fountain-head of its meaning, and study it in the light of its primitive idea. It belongs to a large family of words. The root is "tem" (Tɛμ), and signifies "cut.” Templum means a portion cut off. But whence its special religious associations? The Roman augurs, when they wished to observe the heavens, went forth with the sacred rod in their hands, and marked out therewith a portion of the sky. Whatever passed within that portion was the subject of their augury; no more. This was the "templum," the separated space, cut out of the blue heavens for sacred uses. Thence the word came to be appropriated to any enclosed spot which might be separated to sacred uses; thence to sanctuaries, houses of prayer, and the like. The fundamental notion is not construction, but separation; the severing of a portion of the material of the universe for higher use and honour than the residue enjoyed.-REV. J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A.

Proverbs iv. 14, 15.-"ENTER NOT INTO THE PATH OF THE WICKED, AND GO NOT IN THE WAY OF EVIL MEN. AVOID IT, PASS NOT BY IT, TURN FROM IT, AND PASS AWAY."

1622. Temptation Resisted.-James Nisbet.-The following in cident in the early career of James Nisbet, the publisher, for many years a member of the Sunday School Union Committee, is related by Dr. Hamilton, in his work on the parable of the "Prodigal Son:"

"On a wintry day in 1803 a lad left his native Kelso so sad at heart that, as he stood that night on the bridge at Berwick, the tear had almost frozen on his cheek. It was his eighteenth birthday when he found himself for the first time in our great labyrinth, and on one of the first evenings after his arrival a youth, who from the same vicinity had gone up to town the previous year, took him out to see the sights. The stroll ended in a sort of blind alley, and as his companion knocked at a door it was opened by some lightlooking girls, evidently well acquainted with their visitor. With