and makes way for a natural and non-miraculous explanation of the legend. But we have still to explain the name of the fountain, said to have been given from the “calling” of Samson. This is easily done. It appears that the phrase “him that calleth,” or “the Caller,” is a Hebrew name for the Partridge, so named from its “call,” or cry. The “Fountain of the Caller,” therefore, in the “hollow place” of the “Ass’s Jawbone,” was simply, as we might say, Partridge Well in Jawbone Valley, which lay below Jawbone Hill. But now, many years after the champion of Israel had passed away, comes the legendary poet or historian, who has to tell of some great exploit of deliverance wrought by the hero Samson in this Valley of the Jawbone of the Ass by the side of the Fountain of the Caller. Straight-way, every local name must be connected with the incident that fills his mind and the minds of all his countrymen who live in the neighbourhood. And so “Jawbone Valley” became so called because it was there that Samson smote the Philistines with “the jawbone of an ass;” and “Jawbone heights” are so-called because on this spot Samson “lifted up” the jawbone against his foes, or “threw it away” after he had destroyed them; and “the Well of the Caller” derives not only its name but even its miraculous existence from “_the calling_ of Samson upon Jehovah.” I think you will now perceive the kind of reasoning which has compelled me to give up the miracles of the Old Testament. It is not in any way because I have an _a priori_ prejudice against miracles: on the contrary, I started with an _a priori_ prejudice for miracles in the Bible, though against miracles in general. It is not simply because there is not sufficient evidence for them; it is in great measure because there is evidence against them. For, when you can shew how a supposed miracle may naturally have occurred, and how the miraculous account may naturally and easily have sprung up, I think that amounts to evidence against the miracle. And of course when you find yourself compelled to explain in this way a large number of miracles in the Old Testament, it becomes far more probable than before that the rest are susceptible of some natural explanation. I do not pretend to have investigated in detail every miraculous narrative in the Old Testament. I am ready to admit that at the bottom of the miraculous, there may have been in many cases something very wonderful. Being for example personally very much inclined to the mysterious, I would not deny that in the Hebrew race, as in some others, there may have been some strange power, natural but at present inexplicable, of “second sight;” but, on the whole, looking at the evidence for and against the miracles of the Old Testament, I have now no hesitation in rejecting them as miracles, however much I may admire the spirit that suggested the narratives, as exhibiting a profound and spiritual sense of the sympathy of God with men.