Monuments to the Truth of the Scriptures. 27 keep in mind that where so few facts are known, and general ignorance is so great, negative evidence is of small account, while every scrap of positive evidence has great weight. The burden of proof in such cases falls upon those who dispute the positive evidence. For example, in the article above re ferred to, Professor Barton argues that it is not “quite cer tain” that Arioch (Eri-Agu) was a real Babylonian king. But he admits that our ignorance is such that we must admit its “possibility.” Dr. Barton further argues that “we have as yet no evidence from the inscriptions that Arad-Sin, even if he were called Iri-Agu, ever had anything to do with Ham murabi.” But, he adds, “Of course, it is possible that he may have had, as their reigns must have overlapped, but that re mains to be proved.” All such reasoning (and there is any amount of it in the critics of the prevalent school) reveals a lamentable lack in their logical training. When we have a reputable document containing positive historical statements which are shown by circumstantial evidence to be .possible, that is all we need to accept them as true. When, further, we find a great amount of circumstantial evidence positively showing that the state ments conform to the conditions of time and place, so far as we know them, this adds immensely to the weight of the tes timony. We never can fill in all the background of any his torical fact. But if the statement of it fits into the background so far as we can fill it in, we should accept the fact until posi tive contrary evidence is produced. No supposition can be more extravagant than that which Professor Barton seems to accept (which is that of the German critic, Meyer) that a Jew, more than 1,000 years after the event, obtained in Babylon the amount of exact information concerning the conditions in Babylonia in Abraham’s time, found in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, and interpolated the story of Chedorlaomer’s ex pedition into the background thus furnished. To entertain such
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