writer, and wish that others, whom God has exalted outwardly in station, would manifest the same interest in searching the sacred oracles, and make the same bold confession of deep reverence for their inspired authority. We should then be spared the sight of apostasy in high places, and our nation be rescued from its downward course, and restored to the true and honourable standing of a Christian people. If ever the full sympathy of the heart could tempt us to silence the convictions of the understanding, the present instance would be one; and we should renounce the office of the impartial critic, to gratify our instinctive feelings of deep esteem and admiration for the noble author. We honour him from our heart, as one of a peerless few among the peers of the land.

Our regret is deeper, on these accounts, that we are compelled to dissent from most of the conclusions at which the author has arrived, and must even think some of them injurious and unsettling to the faith of Christians, however opposite such a result would be to the purpose and design of the work. The paradoxical nature of those conclusions must, we should think, be apparent to almost every reader of the Scriptures, and it will be felt that only very strong reasons can justify the extensive changes which they would introduce into the whole of this portion of the sacred times. Two or three of them were noticed in our former article, and we must first of all correct an inaccuracy which his Grace has pointed out by letter, in that very brief statement. It is true that the theory supposes two Scripture Nebuchadnezzars, of whom the first destroyed the temple, and the second was smitten with madness. It is true that it asserts the Cyrus of Scripture to be, not Cyrus the Great, but a satrap of Babylon in the time of Pericles, so obscure in profane authors of those times, however conspicuous in prophecy, that no mention of him is found in their writings. But since the author blends the Babylonian and Persian dynasties together, and places Esther in the reign of Xerxes, our third statement was not strictly correct, that she is made to reign in the times of the Babylonian, and not of the later Persian kingdom. The paradox, as we ought to have stated it, was this; that the reigns of Cyrus the Great, of Darius Hystaspes, and Xerxes, as well as the history of Esther, all occurred during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, and before the seventy years were expired.

Our simplest course will be, first to exhibit the leading dates and synchronisms of the common view, and next those of the proposed system. We shall examine the force of the main objections to the usual arrangement, and the weightier, and, in our opinion, insuperable arguments, which disprove the new theory. We will

then, if our space allows, build up the main outline anew, first from Scripture, and then from the best external evidence, so as to establish the truth of all the most important elements in the usual chronology.

The dates, and correspondences of name, on the common system, are as follows, and in these, with one or two slight exceptions, the four authors already quoted, seem to agree.

The views of his Grace, on the contrary, will be represented by

the following table.

To most readers the bare inspection of this outline will prove sufficiently startling. It needs a short pause, to recover from the sensation of dizziness when all common impressions and ideas of the history are so completely overturned. Can it be true, we are ready to ask at once, that the Persian empire was in the height of its power before the captivity began, or that Darius Hystaspes began to reign ten years before Cyrus, whose daughter we are assured that he married to strengthen himself on the throne; or that Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus the Great are one and the same person; and the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible two distinct per

sons; or that Cambyses, being the same with the Nebuchadnezzar whose madness is recorded in Daniel, captured Tyre after the battle of Salamis; and that all the inhabitants of the isles shook at the sound of the fall of Tyre, at the very time when all history resounds with the Persian invasion, where the ships of Tyre are numbered as present, and not a word escapes a single writer about its siege or fall in those days? Is it possible that Herodotus, born in Asia, after travelling to Babylon and Egypt to procure information, should place the death of Cambyses near forty years before his own birth, when they were really contemporary for forty years, and his history was recited at the Olympian games thirteen years before Cambyses' death? Was Jerusalem or Cadytis still desolate and in ruins at the very time when Herodotus describes its actual state as a city not less "as it seems to me” than Sardis? Could the history of Esther really be in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, or would Darius Nothus hunt out for the decree of a mere satrap of Babylon, in the reign of Artaxerxes, to decide whether he should suffer the rebuilding of the Jewish temple? These are only a few of the insuperable difficulties which meet us at the first glance; and all the doubts which the noble author has suggested on the received explanation seem only like gnats, compared with camels which need to be swallowed, before we can accept the new theory.

But let us examine more fully the objections which are brought against the common view, and those which lie against the rival hypothesis. Our sources of information are the Scriptures themselves, the canon of Ptolemy, the Greek writers, fragments of Berosus and Ctesias, and the modern Persian historians. The profane authorities are usually ranked in the above order; but his Grace appears disposed nearly to reverse it, and to place the Canon lowest, and the Persian legends highest, in the scale of evidence.

Four main reasons are advanced against the usual chronology; the natural correspondence between the names of the Persian kings, in Scripture and in the Canon; the captivity of Mordecai; the sealing under Zerubbabel and Nehemiah; and inferences drawn from the Persian histories. Each will require a brief examination.

The first argument, on which the noble author seems to place much reliance, is stated in the Preface with much point and ingenuity, in the following passage.

Suppose, by way of illustration, that the historical writers of France and England, in professing to give certain parts of English history, mentioned a portion commencing and concluding with two kings of the name of William, an Anne and three Georges intervening; that in one of these histories the reign of one other king is implied, but his name is not mentioned, whereas, in the other history, we find the name of a fourth George; that the names in

both histories occur in the same order, the first-mentioned William in each history coming to the throne by the prince_of_the former dynasty being deposed, the national faith being greatly modified, and laws for the preservation of the principles instrumental in bringing the aforesaid William to the throne being enacted by him; and that the second of these Williams did, moreover, according to both histories, break down these exclusive laws. That, notwithstanding this similarity, some discrepancy in the account of one Prince Leopold existed, the English historians declaring him to be heir to the throne of Britain, while the French maintained that he was king of some small country dependant upon France; surely this dissimilarity would not be sufficient to set aside the general identity.

However, suppose one to broach the opinion, that these histories did not refer to the same period, and that in maintaining his hypothesis, he was necessitated to use such language as the following: It is true that in each history, the first William comes to the throne as the first of his dynasty; but the proper name of the William in one history is James, and he did not depose the former prince, but came in peaceably as the next heir, and thus he established the laws of Scotland in England, and so the two kingdoms of England and Scotland were united; it must be admitted that, according to this arrangement, "the confusion of names is embarrassing;" but then, we must observe, that William, in the English language, appears similar to the Pharaohs of Egypt or the Cæsars of Rome, for we find that the founder of the English monarchy was William the Conqueror, and after him was a William Rufus, like Pharaoh Hophra or Pharaoh Necho. So with respect to the Georges. This was a name given probably in relation to the patron saint of the country, and these kings took the title in consequence of the series of victories gained, as they supposed, under his auspices during those reigns. This happy conjecture has been confirmed by a gold coin of that period having been discovered, on one side of which is the head of a George, and, on the reverse, the representation of the patron-saint overcoming a huge dragon.

"To revert, however, to the names. The two successors of James had the name of Charles; and this, by the way, shows the error of the ancient historians, in saying the sovereigns were first coined during the reign of one of the later Georges. The very name denotes that they might have been coined by any king; and, as these Charleses were also called Georges, it is most probable that the sovereigns were first coined to commemorate the restoration of sovereign power in the second Charles. The usurper James is not mentioned; the second William in our list corresponds with the first mentioned William in the other; the account of Anne is in the wrong place in the history, notwithstanding some plausible arguments from the texture of the history advanced in its favour; lastly the third mentioned George is the one whom we call George the First.'

"Now, absurd as this appears, it has its counterpart in the present adaptation of the Scripture account of the kings of Persia to the received view of that history. In the Scriptures we find the names of seven Persian kings, six of which are the same, and occur in the same order, as is found in the received view of the Persian history. Yet this is not taken as the point of contact between the two histories. But Darius, we are told, is a Persian word from Dara, denoting a prince; thus Darius, like Pharaoh, is a general name for the kings of Persia. So Darius the Median is Astyages or Cyaxares the Second; he came to the throne as next heir to Belshazzar, who was slain by some conspirators at a feast; thus the laws of the Medes and Persians were established at Babylon. This Cyaxares was the first person who established a system of taxation; Strabo, therefore, is in error when, on the authority of Polycritus, he makes Darius Hystaspes the author of this mode of raising revenue. Herodotus also erroneously attributes the first coinage of daries to Darius Hystaspes. It was a more ancient king of that name.

"It must be admitted that, according to this arrangement, confusion of names is embarrassing; the royal title Ahasuerus is applied to Xerxes, Ezra

iv. 6; to Artaxerxes Longimanus, Esther i. 1; and to Astyages, the father of Cyaxares or Darius the Mede, Dan. ix. 1.' The Magian usurper is not mentioned. The first-mentioned Artaxerxes denotes Cambyses, for the word simply means a great warrior, and so is applicable to any of these kings. The second-mentioned Artaxerxes, is Artaxerxes the First. The secondmentioned Darius, is Darius the first; and though Artaxerxes be mentioned before him, Ezra iv. 7, 24; we must remove that difficulty, by supposing rather a harsh parenthesis. We must not conceive that the angel spake precisely' in the 9th of Daniel; and as to the mention of the seventy years, in Zechariah, we can only suppose it an unfortunate coincidence.* It is a mistake, moreover, to think that Mordecai went into captivity; for though the language of Esther does seem to imply that he did, and although all ancient Jewish historians say that Kish was the father of Saul, yet we must admit, that Kish was the captive, because from the extent of dominion attributed to Ahasuerus, it is impossible that the history of Esther could have been so early as the captivity."

The system of Dr. Hales, from which the objection borrows most of its apparent force, is by no means generally received, and as applied to the scheme of Usher, Clinton, Cuninghame, and Browne, many of the above remarks would be quite irrelevant. Stripped of these artificial decorations, the main force of the argument consists in the following comparison of names, as they occur in the Canon of Ptolemy and in Scripture.

Darius Hystaspes,

Xerxes,

Artaxerxes Longimanus,
Darius Nothus,

Artaxerxes Mnemon,
(Ochus, Arses.)

Darius Codomannus,

Darius the Mede,
(Cyrus or Coresch.)

Ahasuerus. Ezra iv. Esth. i.
Artaxerxes. Ezra iv.

Darius. Ezra v. Hag. Zech.
Artaxerxes. Ezra vii.

Darius the Persian. Neh. xii.

Assuming that Xerxes and Ahasuerus are the same name, there will be six kings on each list, who correspond in name and order of succession. Only Ochus and Arses need to be omitted on one side, and Cyrus or Coresch on the other. It is hence inferred that Darius the Mede must clearly be Hystaspes, and the Artaxerxes of Ezra's decree Artaxerxes Mnemon, and so of the rest.

This comparison, on a closer scrutiny, will lose all its apparent force. And first, if we include the whole range from the captivity to the close of the Canon, the correspondences are just as numerous, and even more weighty, on the received view. They will be as follows:

Nabuchodonosor Nebuchadnezzar.
Ilverodamus -Evil-Merodach.
Cyrus the Great Coresch.

Darius Hystaspes Darius, of Haggai.
Artaxerxes Long. = Artaxerxes, Ez.vii.
Darius Codoman. Darius the Persian.

=

If we now compare the gain and the loss in this twofold comparison, it will soon be clear on which side the preponderance lies. In the common view, the Nebuchadnezzar of Scripture answers to