Thcroforo the diffcronce ma,y be fonnd Bo.bi!," yet in some of the eontritet tl\hl~s qnito oxplionblo could we go baok to the of the first two yoA.re of his rei~n hn ie n0t Aramaic originnl. If 'ad roproeentor\ 'ad di co.lied" King of B.. bil," but 0nly "kin~ ,,f (oh. vi. 24) in the Arn.mnic, 11,nrl Lhe two nations," o.nrl there o.re c0ntro.ct tahle,~ of fotter 0111.ueoe woro transposed, we ehonld those yeELre that o.re even dated by tho trn.nel11to, "And Daniel w11e for Cyrus the yeFtrs of NFtbunahid, is it not, then, pos- Icing even before hie first ye11r." 'l'ho sible that the third year of Cyr □ e "e "kin~ cnnneotion is eomewbut violent; but if wo of nations" might coincide with the fir~t regard the rcd11ctor ne thinking of tho year of hie reign ELB "King of Bahil "? Yet eucoeee of Daniel, this might be n thought further, we most remember that the reign whioh euggeetorl itself to bis mind-he wn.s of Cyrus could be reckoner:! from several dif- with Nebucha,clnezzar, and he woe with ferent starting-points. He first oppeare as Oyrne. The difficulty of the date is not King of Ansan, then he becomes Kini\' of the of importance. That might be got over in Perain.na, and ee such he conquers Babylon. several ways. Either by adopting in Hie first year ae King of Babylon may have ob. x. 1 the rail.ding of the Septuagint, been hie third year as King of Persia. whioh is "'P"'T'fJ, instead of Tpl,,.r,,--tbe only Thus it would be equally true to say that objection to this ie that it ie a correction the Emperor William I. of Germany died th11.t might easily be made by a would-be in the seventeenth and in the twenty- harmoniet; but, on the other h11.nd, the eighth year of his reign-the one statement "third" year of Belshazzar being mentioned reckoning his reign as emperor, the other 11.8 in the eighth chapter may hnve occasioned king. No solution seems absolutely satis- the insertion of "third" in the tenth. Or, factory. The difficulty presses equally on since we know that, though in his procla- the critics and those who maintain the mation Cyl'WI styles himself "King of traditional opinion.
HOMILETICS. Vere. 1, 2.-National retribution. I. HE WHO KNOWS NOTHING 01' Go» MAY BE THE UNCONSCIOUS INSTRUMENT OF THE DIVINE WILL. Nebuchadnezzar, who has never heard of the Hebrew prophecies, fulfils their solemn predictions. This throws some light on God's providential relations to evil. 1. The motives which prompt a bad man to an action may be different from the motives which incline God to permit it. God may permit the action of selfish cruelty because he sees it will issue in righteous chastisement. 2. A man who ignores the Divine guidance can still go no further than God permits him. Jerusalem was delivered into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and only because this was the case was the King of Babylon able to take it. 3. There is a twofold Divine permission-the moral permission, which sanctions conduct ; the material permission, which does not visibly restrain it. We see here that when the latt.er is accorded, though it does not justify the morality of the agent, it indicates the ultimate working of e.11 things together for God's will (Ps. lx:xvi. 10). II. NATIONAL BIN INCURS NATIONAL RETRIBUTION. Though guilt is personal, and though national actions can only be the outcome of individual actions, it often happens that men do in their public capacity what they would shrink from doing in private life. 'l'he resultant, too, of the individual actions of all the members of the community may . not be a mere multiplication of those actions, but, owing to their mutual interaction, it may be something quite different, and thus characteristic of the nation rather than of the individual. Now, these national actions, when wrong, become distinctly national sins, and incur national retribution, one great cho.racteristic of which is that it happens in this world. The retribution for individuals is largely postponed to the next life, perhaps because earthly life is too bhort for conduct to ripen all its fruits. But we have no reason to believe that the national entity is perpetuated in the next life. On the other hand, the nation survives its individual members on the earth, and Jives on from age to age, and thus gives time for the harvest of its conduct to come in. It is one special design of the histories in the Bible to trace this process out. Tbe fate of the Jews is just an instance of it. The so.me principles apply to all nations. III. THE EARTHLY GROUND OF CONFIDENCE WHICH TAK.ES THE PLACE OF Goo IN OUR FAITH MAY BECOME THE VERY SOURCE OF OUR RUIN. Against the advice of their prophets, the Jews had weakly entered into an alliance with Babylon. Thus they wer'l drow!l into the quarrel of Babylon with Egypt, Pharaoh-N echo had deposed J ehoaha.z, 30 'l'HE BOOK OF DANIEL. [oH, I. 1-21.
the son of Josish, for his Babylonian allianoo, and Silt up Jebolakim in hie place, It wa11 natural that Nebuchadnezzar should aim a blow at Pharaoh through hie weak vassal and &t the same time reduce to a state of harmless helplessness the people who had been transferred from the protection of Babylon to that of Egypt. If the Jews had bee~ true t-0 their destiny of isolation and simple trust in God, tho political cause of their overt.brow might never have existed. No foe is more dangerous than the friend who has taken the place of God in our trust. lY. 1\'nEK THE 1-PIRITUAL TREASURE OF TRUE RELIGION 18 LOSl', TRE LOSS OF ITS MATERIAL TllEASURES MAY FOLLOW AS A WHOLESOME OHASTISEMENT. Nebuchadnezzar carried away part of the sacred veeeels of the temple and offered them as booty to his p:od. No miracle rebuked him as when, in an earlier age, the image of Dagon was found fallen and broken before the &rk (1 Sam. v. 4). Now there was little spirituality left among the Jews to render their sacred vessels of any real uee. They had been already desecra~ ~y the wickedness of the nation. True sacrilege is not pagan pillage, but the assoc1at1on of an immoral character with the observance of religious rites. When the soul has gone out of our religion, it may be well if the external ordinances are disturbed, (1) to save us fro~ ~he additional sin of hypocrisy; and (2) to open our eyes to our loss ol the greater spmtual trea.sures, and thus to prepare the way for genuine repe.ntance. •