ght hundred years before Christ; but these
Siloeian inscriptions are not complete examples of literature.

"The Ancient culture of the East," says Professor A. H. Sayce, "was
pre-eminently a literary one. We have learned that long before the day
of Moses, or even Abraham, there were books and libraries, readers and
writers; that schools existed in which all the arts and sciences of the
day were taught, and that even a postal service had been organized from
one end of Western Asia to the other. The world into which the Hebrew
patriarchs were born, and of which the book of Genesis tells us, was
permeated with a literary culture whose roots went back to an antiquity
of which, but a short time ago, we could not have dreamed. There were
books in Egypt and Babylonia long before the Pentateuch was written;
the Mosaic age was in fact an age of a widely extended literary
activity, and the Pentateuch was one of the latest fruits of long
centuries of literary growth."

There is no doubt that these discoveries of modern times have been a
distinct gain to Christianity, as well as to the older Hebrew
literature, for it confirms (if confirmation is needed), the history of
the creation, to find it was believed by the ancient peoples, whom we
have seen were a learned and cultivated race.

In the present day the great College of St. Etienne in Jerusalem,
founded by the Dominicans expressly for the study of the Scriptures,
carries on a never ending and widely extended perusal of the subject.
Parties of students are taken over the Holy Places to study the
inscriptions and evidences of Christianity, and the most learned and
brilliant members of the Order are engaged in research and study that
fits them to combat the errors of the Higher Criticism. Their work,
which is of a very superior order, has attracted attention among
scholars of every country in Europe.

In the ancient development of the world there came a time when there
was danger of truth being corrupted and mingled with fable among those
who did not follow the guidance of God, as did Abraham and the
patriarchs; then the great lawgiver, Moses, was given the divine
commission to make a written record of the creation of the world and of
man and to transmit it to later ages; and because he was thus commanded
and inspired by God, his literature represents the most perfect and
trustworthy expression of the primitive revelations. From the very
beginning, therefore, we trace this inte