fear for Christianity itself. They have formnlated their ideas of the truth; their notionl' are like Prinoe Rupert's drops-- scientific toy of old days. In their eyes, break off the smallest portion of them, and they sink into dust. In others it is the unwilling- ness that many minds hal'e to researoh; they must follow some one, and for the time they arc on the ort-hodox side ; they are now drifting to the oritical eide. On the other hand, in the oase of many on the critical side, the historical nnd linguistic objections paraded forth hide what is the real and insoluble objection-the presence of miracle. Many of the critical school seem as if they were not conscious of this latent motive, yet in many ways it manifests itself. Closely conneoted with miracle is prophecy, and to that idea, too, they have an invincible repugnance. 'l'he fourth empire must be the Greek, for if it be not, then there is, even on the assumption of the latest date permissible, a prophecy, a foretelling. The Messiah cut off must be Oniu III., who, as probably as not, died in his bed, because otherwise there might be a "foretelling" of Christ. The attitude thus ta.ken up is eminently unscientific. To approach any problem with a determination to exclude all features that cause difficulty is the very revel'Be of scientific.
V. DIFFICULTIES J:R REGAllD TO DANIEL. We have already Iloticed the latent objection to the authenticity of Daniel, the ostensible objections we consider in regard to the passages on which they are founded. We shall, however, rapidly gather them together and look at them. For convenience we shall follow the order iil which Dean Farrar has collected these alleged " diffi- culties" in his recent • Commentary on Daniel.' (1) There is an alleged anachronism. In the first verse of Daniel it is asserted that Nebuchadnezzar received the submission of Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim; &Dd this is alleged to contradict Jer. _n:v. 1, which synchronizes the first year of Nebuchadnezzar with the fourth of Jehoiaki.m. The members of the critical school who advance that objection forget to tell us that the clause in Jeremiah on which they base their objection is not found iil the Septuagmt. Further, the critics assume a siege and plunder of Jerusalem and of the temple, although the narrative says nothing of this, and then declare the narrative to be false, because of this plundering which they have imagined. (2) Belteshazzar is said to be Il&med "according to the Il&me of my god" (eh. iv. 8). whereas the received iDterpretation of BalatZU,-utzur does not contain any divine name. It never sug!";ests itself to these critics, that as the LXX. end Theodotion call him always "Balthaear," giving him the same name as they give King Belshazzar, the form in our Hebrew Bibles is due to the defacing i.nstinct which led them to write "Manasseh" instead of "Moll!'s " in J udg. :xviii. 30.1 We Deed not speak of the other Il&mes in this section ; we speak of them in the places where they occur. (3) "The second year of Nebuchadnezzar" (eh. ii. 1). This statement is assumed to contradict eh. i. 6, where "three years" is fixed as the duration of the period of training assigned to the Jewish youths. lf this contradiction be maintained to be absolute, then Daniel cannot be "a religious novel," as Dean Fa.rrar maintains-the two conflicting notes of time a.re too close to each other in the narrative not to have 1 The Vulgate here follows the Greek versions. The Peshitta denominates the prophet Belteshazzar e.nd the king Beleetahazzar, but in eh. vii. 1 the name of the king is bpelt in the 118,!Ile way &S that of the prophet. 'fllf,; UOOK OF JJANrnr,, xliii
boen obeorved by the author. Again, the de.te may have been e.ltered throu<rh the 0 blunder of a copyist, as Ewald thinks. '£hie, however, is a difficnlty only to those who deny the statement of Berosus that Nebuchadnezzar made the expedition to Syria before he became king, and forget that the years of a Babylonian king's reign dated from the new yeo.r after his accession. Moreover, the training of those hostages may have begun before the death of Nabopola.ssar. If these things are borne in mind, tho second year of Nebuchadnezzar, when nearing its close, might coincide with the clos 0