Again, the author of “Rivers of Faith” remarks: “No efforts, say the leaders of the Biblical Archæological Society, have been able to find, either amid the numerous engravings on the rocks of Arabia Petrea or Palestine, _any save Phenician inscriptions_—not even a record of the Syro-Hebrew character, which was once thought to be the peculiar property of Hebrews. ‘_Most of those inscriptions hitherto discovered do not date anterior to the Roman Empire_’ (Dr. Birch, President of Soc, op. cit., p. 9). ‘Few, if any, monuments (of Jews) have been obtained in Palestine’ or the neighbouring countries of any useful antiquity, save the Moabite Stone, and the value of this last is all in favour of my previous arguments on these points. At the pool of Siloam we have an ‘inscription, _in the Phenician character_, as old as the time of the kings.... It is incised upon the walls of a rock chamber, apparently _dedicated to Baal, who is mentioned on it_.’ So that here, in a most holy place of this ‘peculiar people,’ we find only Phenicians, and these worshipping the Sun-God of Fertility, as was customary on every coast of Europe, from unknown times down to the rise of Christianity. The Biblical Archæological Society and British Museum authorities tell us frankly and clearly that no Hebrew square character can be proved to exist till after the Babylonian captivity, and that, ‘at all events, _this inscription of Siloam shows that the curved or Phenician character was in use in Jerusalem itself under the Hebrew Monarchy, as well as the conterminous Phenicia, Moabitis_, and the more distant Assyria. No monument, indeed,’ continues Dr. Birch, ‘of greater antiquity, inscribed in the square character (Hebrew), has been found, _as yet, older than the fifth century_, A.D.; and the coins of the Maccabean princes, as well as those of the revolter Barcochab, are impressed with _Samaritan_ characters.’” As to the Moabite Stone, I would refer my readers to a little work entitled “An Inquiry into the Age of the Moabite Stone,” by Samuel Sharpe, the celebrated author of “The History of Egypt,” in which will be found abundant evidence to prove that the inscription on the Stone is a forgery of about the year A.D. 260.