"... the White Nile is completely closed by the sudd, and the waters are wandering over the immense swamps which stretch from latitude 7 to latitude 10. The failure of this supply in the summer of 1900 will be serious. Now England holds the keys of the Nile. The waters which leave the Great Lakes are considered never to fall below 18,000 cubic feet per second (see Sir W. Garstin's last report on the Soudan, published by the Egyptian Government). The discharge at Assouan, in spite of the additions of surface and subsoil waters from the Gazelle, the Sobat, the Blue Nile, and the Atbara, has within the last twenty-five years twice fallen as low as 7,000 cubic feet per second, and may again fall as low, or even lower. What becomes of the immense body of water which leaves the lakes? After passing Lado, the White Nile splits up into numerous branches which lose themselves in the swamps. 'Divide et Impera.' The swamps vanquish the Nile. Now if a very small expedition were to find its way to Lado via Mombasa, and engage laborers among the Bari and Madi tribes, it would be a comparatively easy task to close the heads of the Bahr Seraf and other channels which leave the right bank and confine the water to the Bahr-el-Jebel, which passes by Bor and Shambeh. (Colonel Martyr says the sudd is thirty miles north of Shambeh. If he had had a canal engineer with him, he might have cut the sudd and come on to Khartoum.) Once the waters of the Great Lakes were confined to one channel they would be able to account for any amount of sudd. No attempt has ever been made to cut the sudd with the aid of the current. This is the true way to do it, looked at from the point of view of the hydraulic engineer. Once the sudd is removed, it will be easy, with the aid of a dredger and willows, to confine the water permanently to one channel, because it is muddy for three months in the year. Willows will have to be imported, as none are to be found in the White Nile or the Gazelle river; and very possibly it is owing to their absence from these regions that the swamps have become so unmanageable."

Since this letter of Mr. Willcocks's, Lord Cromer's report for the year 1900 on the "Condition of Egypt and the Soudan" gives further interesting and significant information. From this it appears that the surface of Lake Victoria Nyanza had fallen from 3 feet 2 inches in 1898 to I foot 7 inches in 1900, and that Major Peake was making good progress in removing the sudd by cutting it up in large blocks; but

"instead of sudd being, as had been supposed, a tangle of weeds floating on the water and descending a few feet below the surface, it proved in most cases to be a mass of decayed vegetation, papyrus roots, and earth,

much resembling peat in consistency, and compressed into such solidity by the force of the current that men could walk over it everywhere, and even elephants could, in places, cross it without danger. One block in the Bahr-el-jabel, 140 miles south of Lake No, is twenty-five miles long. Another fifty-two miles south is fifty-three miles long. In both instances the true channel of the river is blocked by sudd, and it now follows a false channel; in the former instance it passes through a series of broad shallow lakes."1

In view of these lake reservoirs in Central Africa, and of the readiness with which their outlets may be temporarily obstructed, successive years of plenty and of famine in Egypt no longer seem a mystery. The real mystery of the Bible account connected with the events of Joseph's career is the supernatural revelation made to him, which, being itself a miracle, elevated the whole transaction into the realm of the miraculous. It is to be noted, however, that the biblical account is not compromised by any doubtful references to supernatural agency in the production either of the years of plenty or of famine. We may, therefore, easily imagine the progress of events to have been something as follows.

The Great Lake Victoria, which forms the principal reservoir for the regulation of the flood of the Nile, has an area of 40,000 square miles, being about twice as large as Lake Huron. A gradual obstruction of the outlet which should cause its surface to rise a few feet in the course of time, would greatly enlarge its surface by flooding the marshy tracts on either side, and thus store up an immense amount of water, compared with which, that to be ponded back by the dam which the Egyptian government is now building at Assouan, would be a mere bagatelle. That, to be sure, raises the water at Philae sixty feet, and sets it back up the river to a distance of 150 miles; but, as the river is not over a quarter of a mile wide, its total surface is scarcely over forty square miles, that is, one-thousandth

1 Nature, 1901, July 25, p. 318.

part of the surface of the Victoria Lake. A rise of two or three feet, therefore, in the great lake would store an almost incalculable amount of water.

To produce the results described in connection with the history of Joseph, we may easily suppose that the main outlet at length became so clogged with sudd that the overflow opened up a fresh channel on one side, which, by rapidly enlarging itself, would let down an abnormal amount of water for a series of years, and so supply the conditions of successive years of plenty. At length these channels became again filled with sudd, thus obstructing the water and causing years of famine below, until the reservoir had again filled up with water and the channel could readjust itself in more permanent form. This succession of events is easy enough to imagine as taking place in conformity with the foreordained conditions existing in the region. Indeed, so natural does the succession of events recorded now seem, that it is capable of being perceived and believed, upon as small amount of evidence as that which would establish the occurrence of any ordinary event. The Nile itself is a wonderful illustration of the complicated character of Divine Providence. The revelation of a small section of that wonder to a divinely chosen agent, such as Joseph was, in the training of the chosen people, is as easy to believe as anything else which is supernatural.

ARTICLE XII.

AN OBERLIN INTERPRETER OF ALBRECHT RITSCHL.1

BY THE REVEREND A. A. BERLE, D.D.

PRESIDENT FAIRCHILD, in an interesting conversation with the present writer a few years ago, said, that the time was ripe for a revival of apriorism in philosophy, and a new emphasis upon supernaturalism—possibly with the meaning of mysticism-in religion, especially in Christian preaching. This remark was induced, without doubt, by the prevalence of the experience doctrine and the accentuation of Christian experience as the terminus a quo in Christian theological thought. The remark is even truer to-day than it was when it was uttered; and, before we see the hoped-for epoch of new life in the Christian churches, and the desired awakening of spiritual feeling, it is safe to say, that in some form there will be a revival of the a priori method in the thought of theologians and of the dogmatic method in Christian preaching. All the signs of the times seem to point to this conclusion with unmistakable clearness.

It was the late Dean Everett of the Harvard Divinity School, who remarked, in his essay on the "Distinctive

'The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl. By Albert Temple Swing, A.M., Professor of Church History in Oberlin Theological Seminary. Together with Instruction in the Christian Religion. By Albrecht Ritschl. Translated by permission from the Fourth German Edition. By Alice Mead Swing, A.B. 12mo. Pp. xiv, 296. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1901. $1.40, net.

Mark of Christianity," that "the truth of history may be violated by too much catholicity as truly as by too great exclusiveness," and, after pointing out the distinctive mission of Greece in sculpture and the necessity of regard for perspective, says, "there is no reason why the highest form of religion should not proceed from one portion of the world (i.e. human race), than why the highest art should not proceed from a special people." And this discrimination points out a fact, which apparently much of the thought of to-day seems to overlook, that, having determined that the high-water mark of religious development has been found in a certain portion of the human race, it is not needful in the interest of a supposititious catholicity to tear up and work over, every time somebody thinks he would like to see the thing done, the great established facts of the religious life of that favored part of the human race in which the highest point of development and religious expression has been reached.

The historical method of criticism and investigation has certainly wrought great and wonderful results since it first began its work, and has laid Christian theology under deep and lasting obligations. It may be said to have engrafted into the consciousness and thought of the church. certain moods of insight and certain methods of approach which will be permanent. Historical science has achieved the greatest victories of the last century of development, great as the victories in other departments of human effort have been. And the effect of all this has been, that we now have, as the preliminary work of almost every science, the history of the science to master, before we can be said to be ready for the science itself. This is well. But there needs to be a qualification and a caution suggested, in the use of the historic method, which, while not valid against the method itself, is none the less extremely necessary for the right use of doctrines and documents alike. This is,