On the slope of it, down to the vale of Eshcol, sat Abram, as the sun ripened its grapes through the glowing day; the shadows lengthening at last under the crags of Machpelah;—the golden light warm on Ephron’s field, still Ephron’s, wild with wood. “And as the sun went down, an horror of great darkness fell upon Abram.” Indigestion, most likely, thinks modern philosophy. Accelerated cerebration, with automatic conservation of psychic force, lucidly suggests Dr. Carpenter. Derangement of the sensori-motor processes, having certain relations of nextness, and behaviour uniformly depending on that nextness, condescendingly explains Professor Clifford. Well, my scientific friends, if ever God does you the grace to give you experience of the sensations, either of horror, or darkness, even to the extent your books and you inflict them on my own tired soul, you will come out on the other side of that shadow with newer views on many subjects than have occurred yet to you,—novelty-hunters though you be. “Behold, thy seed shall be strangers, in a land not theirs.” Again, the importunate question returns, ‘When was this written?’ But the really practical value of the passage for ourselves, is the definite statement, alike by the Greeks and Hebrews, of dream, as one of the states in which knowledge of the future may be distinctly given. The truth of this statement we must again determine for ourselves. Our dreams are partly in our power, by management of daily thought and food; partly, involuntary and accidental—very apt to run in contrary lines from those naturally to be expected of them; and partly, (at least, so say all the Hebrew prophets, and all great Greek, Latin, and English thinkers,) prophetic. Whether what Moses, Homer, David, Daniel, the Evangelists and St. Paul, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Bacon, think on this matter, or what the last-whelped little curly-tailed puppy of the Newington University thinks, is most likely to be true—judge as you will. “In the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” What was the iniquity of the Amorites, think you, and what kind of people were they? Anything like ourselves? or wide-mouthed and goggle-eyed,—terrifically stalking above the vineyard stakes of Eshcol? If like us, in any wise, is it possible that we also may be committing iniquity, capable of less and more fulness, through such a space as four hundred years? Questions worth pausing at; and we will at least try to be a little clear-headed as to Amorite personality.