Tradition having been shown to be untrustworthy, when unsupported by other evidence, a general uncertainty prevailed with regard to Scripture places. No traveller could believe what his guide or guide book told him, and no student could have confidence in his map. The labour of investigation was beyond the power of private individuals; and no Government and no Society had ever sent out an organized expedition. But now happily this reproach is removed. The Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund were able to send out Major Conder, R.E., and Colonel Kitchener, R.E., and these officers, with their little party, spent seven years in carrying out a triangulation survey of the entire country west of the river Jordan. As a result of their labours, followed up by much patient work at home, we are now presented with a magnificent map of Western Palestine, on the scale of one inch to the mile, as beautifully and accurately executed as the ordnance map of England, with every road and ruin marked, and every conspicuous object filled in; with the hills and mountains correctly delineated and shaded, with the rivers and brooks all running in the right directions; with every vineyard, every spring of water, and almost every clump of trees set down in its place, and with thousands of names that never appeared on a Palestine map before. Moreover, while there are six hundred and twenty-two Scripture names of places west of the Jordan, and out of these three hundred and sixty were missing, the surveyors have succeeded in finding one hundred and seventy-two of these. A reduced map, on the scale of three-eighths of an inch to the mile, has been prepared, and contains the Old Testament names and New Testament names conspicuously marked, while other forms of the map show the watershed and physical features of the country, or give the divisions of the land and the Arabic names of places in use to-day. There could be no better aid in studying the Scriptures than to have such maps by our side; for whether we read of the marching and counter-marching of armies; of the positions taken up before a battle; of the direction taken by the retreating foe; the sites selected for places of worship; the journeys of prophets of the Old Testament, or of Jesus and his disciples in the New, so much depends upon the relative positions of places, and their distances one from another, that we necessarily lose a part of the meaning, and miss a portion of the enjoyment unless we have a correct map by our side.