In the second place, in all ages and nations, and especially among ancient ones, "universal terms are often used to signify only a very large amount in number or quantity."--Dr. Smith, _Scrip. and Geol._ p. 212, 4th ed.--The Hebrew [Hebrew], (_kol_,) the [Greek: pas], and the English _all_, are alike employed in this manner, to signify _many_. There are some very striking cases of this sort in the Bible. Thus in Genesis it is said that _all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn, because the famine was sore in all lands_. This certainly could apply only to the well-known countries around Egypt; for transportation would have been impossible to the remotest parts of the habitable globe. In the account of the plagues that came upon Egypt, it is said that _the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field_; but, in a few days afterwards, it is said of the locusts that _they did eat every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left_. _This day_, said God to the Israelites, while yet in their journeyings, _will I begin to put the fear of thee and the dread of thee upon the face of the nations under all the heavens_. But it is obvious that only the nations contiguous to the Israelites, chiefly the Canaanites, are here meant. In the New Testament, it is said that, at the time of the pentecost, there were dwelling at Jerusalem _Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven_. Yet, in the enumeration, which follows this passage, of the different places from which those Jews had come, we find only a region extending from Italy to Persia, and from Egypt to the Black Sea. It could have been a district of only about that size which Paul meant, when he said to the Colossians that the _gospel was preached to every creature which is under heaven_. In the First Book of Kings, it is said that _all the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom_;--a passage which requires as much limitation as the others above quoted. A similar mode of expression is employed by Christ, when he says of the queen of Sheba that she came from _the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon_; for her residence, being probably on the Arabian Gulf, could not have been more than twelve or fourteen hundred miles from Jerusalem. A like figurative mode of speech is employed in the description of Peter's vision, in which he saw a great sheet let down to the earth, _wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air_. Who will suppose, since it is wholly unnecessary for the object, which was to convince Peter that the Mosaic distinction into clean and unclean beasts was abolished, that he here had a vision of all the species of terrestrial vertebral animals on the globe?