follow the meridian of Amman (Philadelphia or Ilabbath- Ammon). It thus lay wholly within 31° 25' and 32° 42' N. lat., and 35’ 34' and 36° E. long. Excluding the narrow strip of low-lying plain along the Jordan, it has an average elevation of 2500 feet above the Mediterranean; but, as seen from the west, the relative height is very much increased by the depression of the Jordan valley. The range from the same point of View presents a singularly uniform outline, having the appearance of an unbroken wall ; in reality, however, it is traversed by a number of deep ravines (wadys), of which the most important are the Yabis, the Ajh‘m, the Rajib, the Zerka (J abbok), the Hesban, and the Zerka Main. The great mass of the Gilead range is formed of J ura limestone. but there are also occasional veins of sandstone. The eastern slopes are comparatively bare of trees; but the western are well supplied with oak, terebinth, and pine. The pastures are everywhere luxuriant, and the wooded heights and winding glens, in which the tangled shrubbery is here and there broken up by open glades and flat meadows of green turf, exhibit a beauty of vegetation such as is hardly to be seen in any other district of
Palestine.The first mention of “ Mount Gilead" in Scripture occurs in Gen. xxxi., where it is said that the place where Jacob’s covenant with his father-in-law was ratified was thenceforward called “the hill of witness” ('11???) The locality contemplated by the sacred writer was doubtless somewhere on the ridge of what is now known as J ebel Ajlfin, and probably not far from Mahneh (Mahanaim), near the head of the wady Yabis.[1] Gilead next comes under notice in connexion with the partition of the promised land among the twelve tribes of Israel. At the period of the conquest the portion of Gilead northward of the J abbok (Zerka) belonged to the dominions of ()g, king of Bashan, while the southern half was ruled by Sihon, king of the Amorites, having been at an earlier date wrested from Moab (Numb. xxi. 24; Deut. iii. 12–16). These two sections were allotted respectively to Manasseh and to Reuben and Gad, both districts being peculiarly suited to the pastoral and nomadic character of these tribes. A. somewhat wild Bedouin disposition, fostered by their surroundings, was retained by the Israelite inhabit- ants of Gilead to a late period of their history, and seems to be to some extent discernible in what we read alike of J cphthah, of David's Gadites, and of the prophet Elijah.
After the close of the Old Testament history the word Gilead seldom occurs. It seems to have soon passed out of use as a precise geographical designation; for though occasionally mentioned by Apocryphal writers, by Josephus, and by Eusebius, the allusions are all vague, and show that those who made them had no definite knowledge of Gilead proper. In Josephus and the New Testament the name Perzea or 7rc’pav To?) ’IopEdvov is most frequently used ; and the country is sometimes spoken of by Josephus as divided into small provinces called after the capitals in which Greek colonists had established themselves during the reign of the Seleucidae. At present Gilead south of the J abbok alone is known by the name of J cbel J ilad (Mount Gilead), the northern portion between the J abbok and the Yarmuk being called J ebel A jlfin. Jebel J ilad includes J cbel Osha, and has for its capital the town of Es-Salt. The cities of Gilead expressly mentioned in Scripture are Ramoth, Jabesh, and J azer. The first of these has been satisfactorily identified with Es—Salt, and apparently ought not to be regarded as distmct from Mizpeh (J ndg. xi. 11, 34), called also Mizpeh-Gilead (Judg. xi. 29), or Ramoth Mizpeh (Josh. xiii. 26).
GILES, St (Ægidius, Egidio, Gil, or Gilles), according to the Brev-iar-imn Rommmm (1st September) was an Athenian of royal descent, and from his earliest years distinguished for piety and charity. On the death of his parents he, while still young, distributed amongst the poor his entire patrimony, including his very tunic, which garment effected a miraculous cure upon the poor sick man to whom it had been given. Shrinking from the publicity involved in this and many other (apparently involuntary) miracles, he betook himself to Provence, where, after a residence of two years with St Caesarius at Arles, he withdrew into the solitude of the neighbouring desert, living upon herbs and the milk of a hind which came to his cell at stated hours. Here he was discovered after some time by the king of France, who on a hunting expedition had tracked the hind to the hermit’s cave. With the reluctant consent of .‘Egidius, a monastery was now built on the spot, he being appointed its first abbot. The functions of this office he discharged with prudence and piety until his death, which occurred some years afterwards.
Some uncertainty attaches to the date, as well as to several other circumstances stated in this narrative. It is known that a certain Egidius, whose name at least (’AL-yL'SLos, from al’f or aZ-yt’e) is suggestive of a Greek origin, held an abbacy in Provence in the 6th century, and, at the instance of Bishop Czesarius, undertook, in 514, a mission to Pope Symmachus on a question relating to certain rivalries between the sees of Arles and Vienne (Labbe, Coma, v. 439—40, ed. 1728); but the modern hagiologists, following the earliest Act/1, which assign the legend to the period of a Catholic Visigothic king “ Flavius ” (Wamba or Ervigius), incline to distinguish the saint from the earlier abbot of the same name, and to fix the date of the former about the end of the 7th century. Of the existence of an abbey under the advocacy of St Giles towards the end of the 9th century there can be no question (Menard, H a'st. de Nismes); while Benjamin of Tudela makes special mention of the crowds of foreigners from all countries who in his time (1160) frequented that shrine, which is situated on the Petit-Rhéne, about 12 miles westward of Arles. In the 11th and following centuries the cultus of the saint, who came to be regarded as the special patron of lepers, beggars, and cripples, spread very extensively over Europe, especially in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and Poland. The church of St Giles, Cripplegate, London, was built about 1090, while the hospital for lepers at St Giles-in-the-Fields was founded by Queen Matilda in 1117. In England alone there are 146 churches dedicated to this saint; and they occur in every county except in those of Westmoreland and Cumberland (Parker, Calendar of the Anglican Church). In Edinburgh the church of St Giles (c. 1359) could boast the possession of an arm-bone of its patron. Representations of St Giles are very frequently met with in early French and German art, but are much less common in Italy and Spain (Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, pp. 768-770).
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and a well-known popular writer, was born 30th January 1813 at Comrie, Perthshire, where his father, the Rev. Samuel Gilfillan, also a man of some literary activity, was for many years minister of a Secession congregation. At Glasgow University and the theological hall, as at Comrie school, ,he took small help from formal lessons, and cared little for a high place in his classes or for proficiency in his prescribed studies, but applied him- self to English literature, with a passion fOr reading, and a memory which held fast and arranged the contents of all the congenial books he met with. In March 1836 he was ordained pastor of a Secession congregation in Dundee. His
first effort beyond the pulpit was in 1839, when he issued
- ↑ See Bckc, “ Notes on an Excursion to Harran,” aim, in vol. xxxii. of the. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1862). “ It was not the river Jordan, but the ridge of Mount Gilead, which formed the natural boundary of the possessions of the children of Israel."
