in and real literary
character? Are there still to be found, often in humble walks of
life, earnest Christians who have similar deep spiritual
experiences and describe them with the same vivid imagery and
concreteness? Is the value of our conception of God's presence and
activity in human history deepened and strengthened or lessened by
the thought that in the past, even as to-day, he accomplished his
ends by natural rather than contra-natural methods? Are the faith
and institutions of nations and individuals developed most through
special revelations or through ordinary, constant, daily training
and experience? Is it not true that to us all there come at times
experiences akin to those that underlie these wonderful narratives?

IV.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EAST-JORDAN CONQUESTS.

Desert dwellers take little account of the lapse of time. It is
not strange that the data regarding the duration of the sojourn in
the wilderness are late and exceedingly vague. The number forty in
the Bible is the concrete Hebrew equivalent of many. Ordinarily
the forty years represent a generation. A period of about forty
years accords well with the facts of contemporary Egyptian
chronology. If the Hebrews fled from Egypt about 1200, during the
period of anarchy following the breakdown of the nineteenth
Egyptian dynasty, they could not have entered Palestine much before
the middle of the twelfth century, for Ramses III of the Twentieth
Dynasty succeeded in re-establishing and maintaining his authority
in Southern Palestine until his death about 1167 B.C.

The account of the spies, preserved according to some writers in
variant versions by each of the great groups of Hebrew narratives,
indicates that the Hebrews attempted but failed to enter Canaan
from the south. For tribesmen like the Israelites, chafing under
their harsh environment and recalling the prosperity of the land of
Egypt, Palestine with its green hills and fertile fields was an
irresistible lodestone luring them on to the conquest. The reasons
why they failed to enter Canaan from the south are suggested in the
narrative of the spies and confirmed by a study of the historical
geographical situation. The Canaanite cities of Southern Palestine
were built largely with the view to protecting their inhabitants
from the ever-lurking nomad invaders. On the other hand the
Hebrews had none of the equipment needed to conquer walled cities.
More than that the barren hil