After presenting the precious pearls of affection, the aromatic blossoms of love, and the increase of excessive longing after the intimate presence of the light of your rising in prosperity, we would say that in a most blessed and propitious hour your precious letter honoured us," &c. Indeed, a whole page is sometimes taken up in this way. The words "all" and "none are constantly used, by the figure of Hyperbole, respectively for a "great many" or "very few," and this is just the same in the Bible. Thus when the woman of Samaria cries, "Come, see a man who told me all things that ever I did,"1 and when John the Baptist, after the conversion and saving faith of at least four disciples, John, Andrew, Simon Peter, and Nathanael, declares of Christ, "No man receives his testimony," 2 the statements, as forms of Hyperbole, are strictly true. All that the woman of Samaria meant when she said "all things" was "many things," and all that John. the Baptist meant when he said "no man" was "few men," and this is just the manner in which the most careful and accurate people speak throughout the East to-day. But how important-how very important it is to thoroughly master figures of speech if we would fully understand the Bible, where such figures abound on every page.

3

1 John iv. 29, 39. See also for a similar hyperbolic usage of "all" Gen. vii. 19; 1 Sam. ix. 19; 2 Sam. xvi. 4; 1 Kings xx. 4; Ps. xxii. 17; Luke xv. 31; Phil. iv. 18; 2 Peter iii. 9; 1 Tim. ii. 6.

2 John iii. 32.

3 The exceedingly interesting subject of figurative language, by far the most important of all branches of Bible study, has fallen into lamentable neglect, and there are few works in English to which to refer the reader.

We avoid many delicate subjects, and in polite and respectable circles never mention them in mixed company, but in the East everything that is natural may be and is spoken of with the greatest freedom before men, women, and children, and that by people of the highest respectability, refinement, and purity, and there are few stranger, or to a Western sense more embarrassing, things than this in all the strange life of the Holy Land. How thoroughly natural, truthful, realistic, and right some of the stories and allusions of the Bible become in the light of this important fact, thoughtful readers will well understand. The purestminded and most respectable Palestine lady would smile at the strong objection to Scripture urged by atheists, on the ground of its mention of matters and its use of expressions which, quite arbitrarily, we now consider to be wrong. Knowing these Eastern lands as I do, I should regard the Bible as neither real, genuine, nor authentic if it did not contain the plain speaking it does on these delicate subjects! The story in Genesis xxv. 23-26, would be told anywhere in public in the East to-day, and probably with much more detail, without bringing a blush to any cheek. Students of English literature know that it was just the same in England five hundred years ago, and a visitor at the London houses of the most refined and respectable Syrian and Egyptian merchants now

He will, however, find a general popular treatise on the subject, and some of the principal figures dealt with, more or less exhaustively, in the author's Figurative Language of the Bible. Third Thousand. J. Nisbet and Co., London. 1892. IS.

residing in town may hear just such things said by a young lady of the house to a gentleman visitor at a morning call. In all such matters, for an ancient Eastern book, the Bible is singularly reticent and delicate.

With us, a man is left in a civil cause to pursue alone and unaided his legal remedy, but in serious criminal matters, where the death sentence is involved, the Government prosecutes and enforces the extreme penalty of the law. In the East all is the exact opposite. Wherever ancient law and custom prevail -and the Turks have found it impossible to abolish them in the country districts-a civil case is dealt with by the government of the community, and a man aggrieved alleges not so much his own private wrong, as the injury done to the community by the disturbance of its customary laws. In criminal procedure, on the other hand, such as the trial and execution of a murderer or of an unfaithful wife-for adultery throughout the East is, as I have said, always punished in the case of the wife by death—all is left entirely in the hands of the family or individual who is wronged. Murder or manslaughter is avenged by any one of the male relatives of the slain, within certain wide degrees. of kinship, taking the life of the slayer or of his next of kin, a custom which gives rise to endless and desolating blood-feuds. The guilty wife is always tried and put to death by her own, and not by her husband's

family, her father, uncles, brothers, or cousins having to be her judges and executioners; for should they neglect this stern duty, no one would ever marry into their family again. All this accords in the main with the provisions of the law of Moses and the events of Bible history. It was thus that David, no doubt most reluctantly, gave up seven of Saul's grandchildren to the Gibeonites, to enable them to take the thar, or blood-revenge. The king himself tells his son Solomon to put Joab to death as soon as he gets an opportunity" Let not his hoary head go down to the grave in peace!" 2 "Thou knowest," he says, "what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me [that was, in slaying Absalom], and what he did to the two captains of the hosts," the commanders-in-chief Abner and Amasa, whom he cruelly and treacherously murdered. Solomon is thus told not so much to be the executioner of a state criminal as "the avenger of blood." The fear expressed by Rebekah would be meaningless if it did not point to this. When urging Jacob to fly to his uncle's, she cries, "Arise, flee to Laban my brother to Haran; . . . why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?" For, since Esau had determined to slay Jacob, the next of kin to Jacob, she knew, was bound to take the life of Esau.

3

We sit on chairs when resting, or lounge at full length on couches, but do most of our manual work 3 Gen. xxvii. 43 45

1 2 Sam. xxi. 3-9.

21 Kings ii. 5, 6.