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enter into our inheritance of teaching, from these Stones of Chaldea at the end of thousands of years.

It is said that in the nineteenth century "nothing is true that is new, and nothing is new that is true," but it is this century that alone can put together all the treasures of the centuries that are past.

We have asked what these Stones say to the JEWS, and have seen that their final message to them is concerning CHRIST.

But what is it they say to THE GENTILES?

It was declared of that Saviour whom Judah has hitherto rejected, "that in his name shall the Gentiles trust," and we hear explicitly of "Times of the Gentiles," and that Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until these "times" are fulfilled.

If OUR Times began with the BURIAL of NINEVEH and Divine rejection of the Jews till they should have suffered "double" for all their sins, and if their promised sign appears, what does it say for our Era? In what state is the Gentile world? Is it sitting at the feet of the Christ whom Judah refused, or is it not rather become the temper of the age to seek to overturn and doubt His Word which these Stone books are come forth to verify?

"When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth ?” was the question asked by the very Son of Man himself. The more the conquests of Sennacherib are studied on the walls of the British Museum, the more it will be

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perceived that the punishment of the Jews is written there for the eye of the Common People, but still the Book says of Judah—

“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

"He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

"Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old."—MICAH viii. 8, 19, 20.

And to this Paul adds

"Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness ?"-ROM. xi. 12.

And David declares

"When the Lord shall build up ZION, he shall appear in his glory." -Ps. cii. 16.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that the abundant access of the Gentiles does not come in till the Lord is risen upon Zion

"For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

"And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."-ISA. lx. 2, 3.

We merely venture to put it as a query:-Notwithstanding all the advances of science, notwithstanding all the circulation of the Scriptures during the last half century, notwithstanding the advance of education, what is the mental state of the masses of the people?

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Is it light, or darkness? Ah, even in favoured England! Is the Bible understood by the working classes, and how much has it been explained to them? Let the answers daily brought in by the CITY MISSIONARIES and SCRIPTURE READERS, and by the BIBLE-WOMEN of London tell. Are there not many hundreds of thousands of HEATHEN in England still? May the "dumb stones," therefore, begin to "cry out" and "teach," but a far different lesson from what their gravers intended. They are solemn, silent lecturers on the historical and prophetical books of the Jews. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," and interpret; for rich and poor, old and young, learned and unlearned, are concerned in the Cry. Whatever concerns the Bible must no longer be locked up in learned libraries; the enemy soweth tares; and they and the good seed are both to grow together until the harvest.

The reader is especially invited in this book to contemplate the history of the unchosen sons of Shem and Abraham; those Fathers, chosen of the Lord, had each one chosen son, Arphaxad and Isaac. In Shem's case Elam, Assur, Lud, and Aram, were left; in Abraham's case, Ishmael and all the sons of Keturah, the second wife, and even other sons of his other wives, were "sent away while he yet lived, from Isaac his son unto the east country" (Gen. xxv. 6), whence we hear of their coming against Israel, in Judg. vi. 3, with the Midianites and Amalekites, "like grasshoppers for multitude.”

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The tide of time has floated many of these names out of the list of living nations, but Elam and Aram still survive under the modern appellations of Persia and Syria, while the "mingled people," the sons of Ishmael and Esau (mingled with the race of Joktan) have been Lords of the Desert from of old till now, and it is very remarkable that if we ask what languages the men of Persia, Syria, and Arabia, still speak, one word will answer the question. They all speak ARABIC, not the arrow-headed language of ancient Persia, not the old Himyaritic tongue of Eber, or of the Queen of Sheba, but a modern form of the latter, expressed by quite different signs, into which all the dialects of Arabia were resolved, through the preparation by Mohammed of one book-the Koran-which has now for twelve centuries and a half held sway over them all, and this book and this tongue have spread also largely into Tartary, India, China, over half of Africa, round the sea-coasts of the Mediterranean, and also to Turkey. The Arabic language and the Mohammedan religion have everywhere gone together the Semitic language for the unchosen sons of Shem-who only in the last ten years have bee permitted by their rulers to cast their eyes on the true Word of God, which the fabulous Koran had kept back from every Arabic-speaking nation for all the latter half of the Times of the Gentiles.

The importance of the recent production of an universal and easily - read ALPHABET FOR THE BLIND, in

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Arabic (see p. 181), by Mr. Moon, himself a blind man, will easily be perceived. As applied to the Bible, it may be a link for all nations in the oldest of languages; and with trifling variations these few symbols can be applied to the Hebrew, Syriac, Turkish, and Persian tongues likewise.

The history of Elam with its "outcasts," whether Parsees or Gipsies the former brought now so thankfully under the sway of England, the ruler of India-is profoundly interesting, and the coming up of Nineveh's cherubic forms has led us to retrace it.

DIVISION OF PICTURES AND INSCRIPTIONS.

The main design of this volume is to lead the reader through the Nineveh sculptures in the British Museum with an English Bible in his hand, and to examine the Stones as pictures illustrative of the Bible, before he devotes his attention to man's readings of the writings of the Heathen by their side-the correctness of which might in many ways be disputed. The Appendix, nevertheless, contains some extracts from those readings, which are very interesting-which verify the facts of Scripture by their allusions, in a way that is marvellous indeed if they are not true readings; and these extracts are given in sequence, according to the succession of the kings alluded to, stated in the Table of Chronology in P. 376.

The last chapter of the book is reserved also for the subject of the Inscriptions.