The Pulaskian., 1915-07-23

looked down upon by the
 French and English war avia- tors. Where, according to the Bible, There were thunders and lightnings, and thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people trembled," the shots of the cannon of the nations may resound, and the detonation of bombs may be heard within short time.
 It is now something like thirty-four centuries since that historic revelation of the Ten Commandments-the basis of all the laws of civilized humanity, accepted by Jew, Christian and Mo- hammedan alike. No prophet has ever dared to attempt to rewrite these ten words, for they have been accepted as the basis of the moral law wherever law prevailed or was preached in the name of the one God Yet now, in the Twentieth century, almost as if in irony, the supreme engine of human ingenuity, the aeroplane, by which man spurns the earth and mounts to the skies, sweeps over Mt. Sinai and seems to reply to the commandment, Thou shalt not kill" by the forecast ing of wholesale slaughter.
 What the Men-Birds Saw.
 Mt. Sinai had been famous for thou sands of years. It had been held as sacred to the moon-god, Sin, by the ancient Babylonians. The Egyptians worked the copper mines in these mountains for centuries, and at the base of the largest of the peaks they had an elaborate Egyptian temple which was in existence when Moses led the Israelites to the spot This temple was explored by Professor Flinders-Petrie few years ago, and he found that it had been popular shrine of the Egyptian deities, and that many of the Pharaohs had adorned it with statues and rich of ferings.
 The only building now near the Sinai group of mountains is the monastery of St. Catherine, but it is most in- teresting and ancient structure, in which one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries of modern times was made. A noted scholar, Doctor 1 Tischendorf, made visit to this mon astery Studying in its library the valuable ancient manuscripts, he saw a leaf of old parchment in fuel bas- ket.
 A Priceless Find.
 Upon examining it closely he ascer- rained that 1t was single page of very old manuscript of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testa- ment made in Egypt under the Ptole- mics, third century B. c. Further search brought to light many other pages. and now this priceless manu- script, which is dated in the third or fourth century A. D., is held to be one of the most valuable, as it is one of the oldest manuscripts of any part of the Bible.
 A new understanding of the purpose of Moses in bringing the people to the foot of Sinai, and the conditions ot the revelation, is brought home to us ia the light of Professor Petrie's excaya- tions.
 The popular idea has long been that Moses led the Israelites through des- ert to a great mountain in the midst of the wilderness, a place hardly known to any human being before that time; that there one of the most stu pendous scenes in the history of man. kind was enacted-the revelation of the Ten Commandments to people xhat was to transmit 1t to mankind.
 The finding of the great Egyptian temple near the Mount of Revelation will be news to large part of the thinking world, and will compel them to very considerably revise their ideas ef the revelation. Now, perhaps, we snail understand more fully what is meant in the Bible by that strange