the vineyards of Engedi." Engedi was once such a spot of fruitfulness and fragrance as water can create only in the East. To this day, by its scanty rill there struggles up into the splendid day, if not in quantity in kind, a tropical vegetation. Higher on the hillsides, the traces of the ancient vineterraces are still seen by the traveler. Tristram found at Engedi the "camphire" of the English translation, that white-flowered Henna (Lawsonia alba, natural order, Lythracea) whose powdered leaves were employed in early Egypt to dye the nails yellow, and are still so employed, and whose fragrant blossoms are still sold in the streets of Cairo to the cry, "Oh! odours of Paradise; Oh! the flowers of the Henna!" The Eastern women still perfume and decorate themselves with it.

The last mention of Engedi is that already referred to in 2 Chron. xx. 2, in which the place then known as Engedi is said to be the place formerly known as Hazazon Tamar, or the "Cutting of the Palm Trees."

Tidings were brought to Jerusalem that the invader was on his way to overrun Judah. Gathering from the south and east, the heterogenous bands of the enemy were encamped at Engedi, where water and forage could be found for so large a force. Jehoshaphat, who occupied the Jewish throne at the time, at once proclaimed a fast, went with all the people to the temple, and following the example of Solomon, led the public devotions in person. It was a terrible moment. The kingdom lay at the mercy of a vast and pitiless horde. The king, it is said, stood in the congregation, and there audibly offered his prayer. From the theocratic king downwards, "all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children." In answer to the king's prayer, the Lord turned the arms of the various tribes of the enemy against one another, and Jehoshaphat reigned the rest of his days in peace.

The ruins of Sebbeh, the ancient Masada, like the spring of Engedi, link the desolate shores of the Dead Sea with human history. The story of Masada as related by Josephus ("Jos. Jewish War" vii. c. 8), is as follows: The prophecy of the 24th chapter of Matthew's Gospel had been fulfilled. After one of the most terrible sieges on record, Jerusalem had been taken by the Roman army. The curtain seemed to have fallen in blood and fire over the last act of the long tragedy. But it was not so. The indomitable spirit of the Jew was yet to have an illustration not inferior to anything in the annals of that singular race.

A band of Sicarii, Hebrew zealots who, in the disturbed state of the country, made revenge on the Romans, and on those who submitted to their rule, the cloak of a succession of acts of pillage and murder, had seized the strong fortress of Masada, whose ruins still crown a well-nigh inaccessible craig standing out from the line of mountains which form the western lip of the deep basin of the Dead Sea. The fortress had been greatly strenthened by Herod the Great, who, fearful of some great reverse of fortune, either from the Jews, or from Anthony, from whom Cleopatra often besought Judea as a present, selected Masada as a last stronghold, and stored up there vast treasures, and a supply of provisions and arms sufficient for the longest siege.

When the Roman general invested Masada, his first care was to surround it with a wall, so that no one within might escape. He then began to throw up an immense mound at the low neck by which the cliff was joined to the main line of mountains. At last the siege engines could be advanced close to the walls, and in due time a breach was made. But the breach only revealed an inner rampart of beams of wood laid crosswise, and earth, which the beseiged had thrown up behind. On this fresh rampart, from its yielding nature, the battering ram could make no impression. Perceiving this, the Roman general ordered his soldiers to supply themselves with torches, and to fling them lighted against the rampart. When the rampart took fire the wind blew the smoke and flames in the face of the Romans, threatening to destroy their battering engines. The wind however chang d, and the rampart was soon a mass of smouldering ruins. When the last hope of the beseiged was destroyed, there were 967 human beings within the fortress. The Romans postponed their attack till the following morning, meanwhile redoubling their vigilance lest any of the beseiged should escape in the dark

ness.

When the morning dawned, the Roman soldiers advanced to the breach. But no one appeared, and there was a dead silence over the place. Raising a shout as they stood gazing in through the blackened gap, two women appeared, who, with five children, had hidden themselves in some underground recess. These seven were the only persons left alive of the 967 who were within the walls when the Romans drew off the night before.

The amazed soldiers rushed in, and found the treasures of Herod's palace piled up and on fire. Quantities of provis

ions were left untouched, in order to show that the garrison had not been reduced by famine. And 960 human forms, men, women and children, lay dead on the bloody ground.

Eliazar, the leader of the Sicarii, after it was evident that further resistance was hopeless, had summoned the garrison, and in a speech which, as given by the historian, is full of the noblest sentiments, pointed out to them that God had forsaken their nation, that the struggle for land and liberty was now over, and that in a few hours the Romans would be in possession of the last stronghold of the race. He reminded them of the cruelties perpetrated in various cities in Palestine on the Jewish inhabitants, and told them that if they resolved to see the light of another day they would virtually resolve to behold, without being able to resist, their wives ravished and their children enslaved.

It was enough. Each man embraced his wife and children for the last time, and killed them with his own hands. Twelve men were then chosen by lot who slew the rest, each man having lain down by his dead wife and children, and the twelve chose one who slew the eleven, examined the prostrate bodies to see that none breathed, and then slew himself.

There still remains to be considered one fact with reference to the Dead Sea, which lends it an interest still deeper than that of its connection with past history. Its employment in the picture of the future of the gospel kingdom (Ezk. xlvii, 1-12) links it with some of the highest hopes of the Christian heart.

Ezekiel stood in vision on a very high mountain, the moral summit of the world. On this mountain there was a glorious temple, which he describes minutely. From under the temple, into which the glory of the Lord had previously entered by the east gate, the prophet saw a strong flow of water issuing. Taken round to the outside of the temple wall, he found that these waters ran out at the east side. His guide, who had a measuring line in his hand, going with the stream eastward, measured a thousand cubits, and made the prophet wade the stream. At this point it reached to his ankles. Again the guide measured a thousand cubits, and brought the prophet through the stream, which reached to his knees. Again the same thing is done, when the waters of the stream reach to the loins; and still again, when the prophet has to struggle back to the brink, finding that they were waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. This river goes eastward till it reaches the "desert" or barren district already described, near the banks of the Jordan at the north

ern end of the Dead Sea, and after passing through this, falls into the sea itself. Let us regard for a moment the framework of this remarkable vision. It is evident that in the main it is founded on the physical features of the plateau on which the actual temple stood,-the barren end of the Ghor, and the anomalous character and low level of the Dead Sea. But it departs from physical possibility in one important point. The waters, instead of turning southwards for a short distance, and then turning eastward, as they must have done had they followed what is now called the valley of Jehoshaphat, or upper end of the valley of the Kidron, which, be it remarked, is the natural road for waters issuing from the east side of the temple area, go from the first eastwards till they reach, not the Dead Sea, which alone they could have reached by the gorge of the Kidron, but the salt land, the land not inhabited at the mouth of the Jordan, and then, but not till then, the sea itself.

On the banks of this river the prophet saw trees growing, indeed its whole course was marked by life and fertility; and finally its living waters triumph over the death of the sea. The scene changes. The waters of the Dead Sea teem with fish. Its desolate shores start into life and activity. A line of fishermen plying their trade occupy every available spot from Engedi to Engelaim, and everywhere their nets are seen hung up to dry.

We are now in a position to estimate the singular power and suggestiveness of this prophetic vision. The waters issue from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and it is in this form that John lifts Ezekiel's vision into the still clearer atmosphere of the New Testament. The blessing they confer is received by contact with them. They fertilize where they go. The trees are by their brink. And how true this is to the physical conditions of the natural district referred to, is best understood by him who has ridden long over desolate, whitened uplands, when he comes suddenly to the brink of a watercourse, and looks down on the tops of the trees which flourish by the brink of the stream. The necessity of actual contact with these gracious streams is rendered, if possible, clearer by the solitary exception to their benign influences. The marshy places which, though close to the edge of the sea, had elevated themselves slightly above its level, and refuse an entrance to the waters, were not to be healed, they were to remain under the blighting power of salt.

These blessed waters come from the highest point on the earth's surface in the old vision, the point at which earth was

in contact with heaven; from heaven itself in the new. They go to the lowest point on the earth's surface, a fact which science has established with regard to the actual sea. The "salt land," the land not inhabited, once the blooming site of Sodom and Gomorrah, is to be reached by the life-giving waters, impossible as it might seem, and the desert is once more to blossom as the rose.

In closing this paper, let us resume in a single paragraph the main points which constitute the human interest of the Dead Sea.

In the very dawn of history we see a cloud of shadowy warriors sweep down on its shores to smite the Amorites at Engedi. Over the same spot the adventures of David the outlaw cast all the charms of romance. In more peaceful times, David's son Solomon walked among the groves of Engedi when the time of the singing of birds was come, and vine and camphire sent forth a pleasant smell. In the story of Masada the same shores are linked with one of those dark deeds of savage bravery of which the passionate heart is sometimes capable in its last extremity of suffering. And as we turn away, we see the subject of our study lying in a light which never was on sea or shore, a light which comes from within, where God sits with the destiny of his church in his hands. The glorious future of a world wherein dwelleth righteousness, is painted by the hand of prophecy with materials drawn from the scenery of the Dead Sea.

ART. VIII.-MINISTERIAL RELIEF.

THE NEED of a more comprehensive and effective mode of Ministerial Relief than any hitherto devised, begins to be admitted by all who have intelligently considered the subject. The radical defect, and utter insufficiency of existing theories and schemes, are apparent at a glance. In this advanced stage of the science of " Applied Christianity," there is not a single branch of the Church that has taken hold of the matter in a scientific way, or put in operation a system worthy of the object, or worthy of the age. There is as yet scarcely a conscience in the matter. A feeble effort has been made by a few denominations, in the line of charity, to relieve specific