In an important sense the foundations of this book are laid in human history and geography. However high toward the heavens it may reach in doctrine and promise, its foundations lay hold of the earth. If the children of Israel did not live in Egypt and Canaan and the far East, if the statements of their history as recorded in the book be not _facts_, if the story of Jesus Christ be false,--everything fails us. With the sweeping away of fact, we must also bid farewell to the words of doctrine and of promise here recorded; to the divine words of assurance which now give comfort to the penitent, hope to the despairing, strength to the feeble, and immortal life to the dying. As we sit down on this side of the sea, it is well that we are able to look beyond the sea to the lands which gave to the world the book in our hands. And it is well, that, as we look, we are able to connect the book of to-day with those same lands as they now lie among the rivers and by the seaside, from the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates to the mouths of the Nile, from the palaces of Babylon to the dock at Puteoli and the prison at Rome. And it is well that the lands as they are found to-day correspond to the records of the Book as they were made centuries and centuries ago. The Book, on its human historic, geographical and archæological side, is true to the facts as in the nineteenth century they are presented to us in the lands of the East. There are those who believe with firm faith, that, for these days of skepticism and of merciless and conscienceless historic criticism, the lands have been kept almost in their original condition, that the testimony of the modern skeptical traveler might (though unintentionally on his part, but necessarily) corroborate the teachings of the Bible. Have the mummy wrappings of Mohammedan domination held the far East unchanged through the centuries, that in these days of doubt the hills of Canaan, the plains of Egypt and the ruins of Mesopotamia might lift their voice in solemn attestation to the divine truthfulness of the sacred historians? These lands are memorial lands. They are now what the Book says they once were. Although the sweeping away of ancient governments and the reign of anarchy have modified the face of the country, the evidences still remain that the most glowing descriptions of their prosperity were not exaggerated. Infidels have doubted, for example, whether Palestine could contain the immense populations which, in its prosperous days, according to the statements of the Book, were resident there. But scientists show that the soil of Canaan, under cultivation, is one of the richest and most fertile in the world. The broken terraces that may still be traced on the hill-sides, the walls of cities and other ruins that fill the land, sustain the account of the prosperous days and the immense populations of Bible times.