aspect of the times, the actual estate of her who ought to stretch forth the hand to save-who ought to be able to furnish the only remedy that can avail-almost compel us. It is not that we lose faith in what God hath declared, for he is true though all be liars-it is not that we give up hope in that which he hath promised, though "hope deferred maketh the heart sick." But it is that we are conscious on every hand that love waxeth cold, and that the Church has a secret root of bitterness within her in the spirit of division, which is far more paralyzing in its power than the "pressure from without." Christendom languishes from one extremity to the other for lack of spiritual counsel, or trembles to fainting at the threatened assaults of the demons of democracy and infidelity: and what is the Church doing in the mean while? If we look to Rome, she is either rocking herself to sleep amidst the murmurs of the coming storm with the soft lullaby of her own unity and perfection; or, in the intervals of quietude, coming forth in holiday attire as though all were well, putting on the gorgeous garments of queenly pomp to cheat the world with a false vision of her prosperity, and hide the disease that preys upon her vitals. If we look to our own beloved portion of the Church of Christ, what is there but fierce contention of pastor with people, brother with brother-the catholic hope, the catholic work, the catholic views, which properly belong to her, all lost sight of in the eagerness and bitterness of domestic strife. If we look to the Greek Church, she is either drilled to the despotic will, and, according to the despotic rule of an autocrat, lost in ignorance, or dreaming over the legends of oriental tradition. If we look upon the many who write themselves Christian, and assume the names of churches, what single element is there of spiritual intelligence to comprehend the exigency, or spiri tual power to meet it?"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint; from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores that have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment? And where is the physician? "There is none to help, no not cone.""Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens! Oh that thou wouldst come down!" may well be the prayer of every Christian man who has the least perception of the coming evil. aut temps amout ka cine Socialism is far more generally embraced than is supposed. But forty years have elapsed since Fourier published his first work on the subject, and but fifteen since the first serious attempt was made to organize a society for the adoption of its principles, and already that society boasts of ramifications in

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Germany, Italy, England, America, Switzerland, even Spain. Many journals and reviews, of no mean eminence, are devoted to the propagation of its doctrines in Germany and Switzerland; and however direct identification with it may be disowned, its influence, spirit, and many of its leading principles, are perceptible in the writings of some of the first continental authors of the day. It is no new thing: it is true Rome and Greece, of old, have listened to similar theses. Something of that which is now boldly developed may be traced out in the popular philosophy of the ancients, whilst German mystics and French illu minats, with Rouiseau at their head, have, from time to time, imagined the faint outline of that which is now so hardily filled up. Nor is the Phalansterian doctrine to be regarded as an isolation; it must be considered as a movement in connection with all that is passing around-as but one from amongst the many in which the restless spirit of the age, impatient of con troul and longing for change, manifests itself. Germany is at present rife with such forms: its Hermesians, its Rationalists, its Pietists, its "Friends of Light," its Neo-Protestants and Neo-Catholics-what are they but so many manifestations of a spirit evoked by the daring licence or necessity of the times too powerful to be ruled, and too active to be laid? Neander with his rationalisms, Hegel with his subtle infidelities, are, each in their way, effecting what Considerant and his brethren are aiming to accomplish in another; whilst the movement, headed by Ronge, to which the eyes of Christendom have been turned with hope and expectation of some moral good, is only likely to add to its divisions and difficulties, without yielding a single element of relief for its distress. In the midst of all, Rome still holds on her way without abating one single article of her pretensions: without withholding the sanction of her authority for one instant from the lying legends which her servants publish, the duplicate or doubtful relics which her priests hold up to veneration, or the senseless superstitions which she permits her people to practice. She consoles herself with the fond delusion that the days of her triumph are at hand, because she has won a few morbid but amiable-minded men from their allegiance, and heeds not the menace which, though uttered by Ronge, is the deep-meaning threat of the people strong in determination-" She shall fall."

It is difficult to decide which most commands attention as a moral phenomenon, the listlessness of the good, or the energy of the bad; the visible gathering together of the social elements for a strife of death; or the self-complacency with which the Church of Rome compromises all that she lias of good by her

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determined adherence to foolish lies, to senseless mummeries, and to spiritual tyranny. Her infallibility is dear to her; and, if she suffered doubt to rest upon her holy coat of Tréves, and her false legends of Ste. Philoméne if she abstracted one particle from the veneration with which she permits the ill-shaped tawdry dolls that disgrace her churches to be worshipped she fears that this might be denied to her, and she is more willing that her Lord should be dishonoured and grieved in the midst of Christendom than that one iota of her earthly dignity should fail her. She will die in her dotage. Whilst she is coquetting with Oxford and coveting England, her own children are combining on every hand against her, and in the moral strife that must sooner or later come she will be the first to fall, because she has been the last to comprehend the necessities of men, to know her own position, and be penitent for her misdoings; but with her will probably fall much that is noble and true, for the spirit that will then be let loose to punish for wrongs committed will not stop to discriminate: it will associate in one common destruction all that bears the least semblance to the form in which they were wrought. Ecclesiastical constitutions will be considered as inseparable from ecclesiastical tyrannies, and the same blow will level those that are pure and those that are not, those that are sound and those that are not, together. In that day, should we live to see it, we shall be driven, each one in the secret of his heart and the privacy of his chamber, for help to Him who alone can still the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people." as quid da lane & ymbiotz Judul # Porub bu laiva di » § ..

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ART. VII.The Times of Daniel, Chronological and Prophetical, Examined with Relation to the Point of Contact between Sacred and Profane Chronology. By GEORGE, DUKE OF MANCHESTER. London: Darling. 1845.

IN so dry and so hackneyed a path as that of chronology, it is not a little refreshing to find something of novelty and originality. And when the work is based upon solid learning, and the parts are carefully adjusted and accurately connected, so as to make a well proportioned whole-when the freshness is not mere novelty, which may be whim or caprice, but is the result of a more careful and more diligent research, and in order to to solve a perplexity and remove an acknowledged difficulty we accept it with thankfulness as a boon, and not merely with pleasure as a novelty."

The subject likewise is most important in every point of view. For the times of Daniel, in their connexion with sacred and profane history, have formed the questio vexata of the Church from the beginning; as connected most intimately with the return of the Jews from Babylon, and the time when Messiah should appear and as bearing upon the coming of Christ, and on the rejection of the Jews for their disbelief in Jesus of Nazareth, and on the restoration of the house of Israel, when the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled; these prophecies of Daniel have been the battle-field most frequently chosen in contentions between Jews and Christians concerning the coming of Christ, and between heretics and the orthodox concerning the work which he came to do, and the consequences thereof. In the early ages of the Church, Porphyry could find no other escape from the force of conviction than insinuating that the prophecies of Daniel were forged after the events took place; and the Jews, in later times, have been suspected of tampering with chronology, and falsifying some of the dates, to make them disagree with Daniel's numbers.

All of which circumstances tend to prove the great importance attaching to the prophecies of Daniel and they have accordingly attracted the attention of nearly all the most able men whether in controversy or chronology; and it is no slight praise of the present volume, that, coming after such works as those of Usher, and Sir Isaac Newton, and the innumerable expositions of Daniel, the Duke of Manchester has been able to find points which have escaped their notice: yet points of such importance as to place the whole chronology of that period on a new basis, and handled in such a manner as to fall in with portions of almost every other scheme which has been proposed, and to be more in consistency with Scripture than any other scheme is; and so to reflect a clearer light on the things which we most surely believe, and guide us through some passages which were the most obscure before.

We think that there are a sufficient number of points fairly demonstrated in this volume to make it an important acquisition to the Church. There are others sufficiently probable to gain the assent of many, though they may not carry conviction to all and where we differ from the noble author we shall endeavour to state the grounds of our difference in such a manner as may enable his grace to adopt and incorporate all the truth which may be contained in the hints which we throw out being well assured that the paragraph with which the volume closes is not an affectation of modesty, but that every endeavour to further the enquiry, and to fill up the details, or

even to correct errors, will be really welcome to the Duke of Manchester.

We should first state the historical difficulties which raised those doubts, and prompted those enquiries out of which the present volume has originated; and which arose from the manifest discrepances between many points in such writings of Herodotus and Xenophon as have reference to those kings of Assyria and Persia which are mentioned in Scripture; and from the violence which has been done to Scripture, in endeavouring to produce harmony between the facts recorded and the names retained, in the Greek historians on the one hand, and in Scripture and the Persian chronicles on the other; which last have often been made to give way to the former, from our being unconsciously biassed in favour of Grecian history.

"The Coresch of Scripture is assumed to be Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy; in adapting the Scripture to accord with this view, we have our choice between the histories of Herodotus and Xenophon."

"The history of Cyrus, as recorded in the Cyopædia, is essentially different from the account given by Herodotus; it is not the discrepancy which might arise from one historian mentioning a fact which the other omits to record; but the whole machinery of the story in Herodotus turns upon the fact of Astyages having no son; and the machinery of the Cyropædia as essentially depends upon the existence of Cyaxares, son of Astyages, and uncle to Cyrus. We are therefore to make our choice between these two authorities; one contradicts the other; so in admitting the one, we reject the other." (xxi.)

"This is the first difficulty, and because Xenophon appears more easily reconcileable with Scripture, his authority is in this instance preferred; and although Cyaxares appears to be introduced by Xenophon as a foil to the hero of his tale, he is regarded as a real personage, and identified with Darius the Mede, of Daniel. But Xenophon being preferred, we must abide by his authority. What, then, is the agreement? Scripture says Darius the Mede took Babylon; and, whilst there, he personally settled the internal arrangements of the kingdom. Xenophon says that Cyaxares did not take Babylon, nor was he there, but in Media, after the conquest. Xenophon says that Cyrus took Babylon; Scripture does not say that Cyrus took Babylon; and it is impossible to account for, not the silence of Daniel, but his testimony by implication to the contrary effect, had the capture by Darius been the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah."

In the chronology which has been adopted similar contradictions appear. For by following the astronomical canon, or the assertion of Eusebius, Cyrus is made to reign seven years in Babylon; but, according to Xenophon, Cyrus took Babylon before he began to reign either in Media or Persia. Therefore, if we follow Xenophon, we must adopt the ecclesiastical canon,