John Calvin · 3 of 200

Translator's Preface · Part 2

Having replied to the most subtle objections against the Genuineness of these Prophecies, Hengstenberg proceeds to uphold the direct arguments in its favor. He first discusses the testimony of the author himself, and then enters upon its reception into the Canon of the Sacred Writings. He comments at full length on the important passage in Josephus contra Apion. 1:8, and shews the groundlessness of every assertion which impugns its Canonical value. He next proves that the declaration of our Lord assumes the prophetical authority of the work, and traces its existence in pre-Maccabaean times. The alleged exhibition of these Writings to Alexander The Great and the exposition of their contents to the Grecian Conqueror of the East, form a singular episode in the midst of profound criticism. The incorrectness of the Alexandrine Version and its rejection by the Early Church, who substituted that of Theodotion for it, is turned into an argument against the Maccabaean origin of the original; for certainly, a composition of which the author and the translators were nearly contemporary, might be better translated, than one separated by an interval of many ages. Then the peculiar features and complexion of the original language point out the exact period to which the writing is to be assigned. The historical accuracy, the apparent discrepancies, and yet the real agreement with Profane Narratives, all strengthen the assertion, that the writer lived during the times of the Babylonian and Persian Monarchies. Another argument, as strong as any of the former, is deduced from the nature of the symbolism used throughout the Book. The reasonings of Hengstenberg have now received additional confirmation from the excavations of Layard. The prevalence of animal imagery, rudely grotesque and awkwardly gigantic, is characteristic of Chaldean times, and bespeaks an era previous to the Medo-Persian Sculptures at Persepolis. Summing up his reasonings, the Professor quotes the observation of Fenelon: “lisez Daniel, denoncant a Balthasar la vengeance de Dieu toute prete a fondre sur lui, et cherchez dans les plus sublimes originaux de l’antiquite quelque chose qu’on puisse comparer a ces endroits la!”

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL

The speculations which we have hitherto discussed are not confined within the limits of unreadable German Neology they have been transfused into English Philosophy, and presented in a popular form to the readers of our current literature. In a learned and speculative Work, entitled “The Progress of the Intellect, as exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews,” the writer has adopted the untenable hypothesis of the German Neologists. In his second section of a chapter on the “Notion of a supernatural Messiah,” he writes as follows; “During the severe persecution under Antiochus Ephphanes, when the cause of Hebrew faith in its struggle with colossal heathenism seemed desperate, and when, notwithstanding some bright examples of heroism, the majority of the higher class was inclined to submit and to apostatize, an unknown writer adopted the ancient name of Daniel, in order to revive the almost extinct hopes of his countrymen, and to exemplify the proper bearing of a faithful Hebrew in the presence of a Gentile Tyrant. The object of pseudo-Daniel is to foreshow, under a form adapted to make the deepest impression on his countrymen, by a prophecy, half-allusive, half-apocalyptic, the approaching destruction of heathenism through the advent of Messiah. Immediately after the overthrow of the Four Beasts, emblematic of four successive heathen Empires, the last being the Macedonian with its offset, the Syrian; the kingdom would devolve to the ‘Saints of the Most High,’ that is, to the Messianic Establishment of Jewish expectation, presided over by a being appearing in the clouds, and distinguished, like the angels, by his human form from the uncouth symbols of the Gentile Monarchies.” He treats “Messiah” as a “title which hitherto confined to human anointed authorities, such as kings, priests, or prophets, became henceforth, specifically appropriated to the ideal personage who was to be the Hope, the Expectation, and the Salvation of Israel.” He discusses the Seventy Weeks as the fiction of the imaginary Daniel, and terms the accompanying predictions “adventurous,” and as turning out “as fallacious as all that had preceded them.” His fourth section on Daniel’s Messiah is, if possible, more wildly conjectural than the two preceding ones. Daniel’s idea, says he, of a supernatural leader called “Son of Man,” became afterwards “a basis of mystical Christology.” Those glowing passages of this Prophet, which fill the Christian mind with awe and delight, are to this theorist “the earthly or Messianic resurrection of pious Hebrews, which was all that was originally contemplated in the prediction.” In thus attempting to overthrow the Inspired authority of Daniel, he mingles the Books of Esdras and the Jewish Targum, and is eager to catch at ally Jewish fiction as if it were true interpretation of ancient prophecy. He alludes to puerile Rabbinical fables as really explanatory of the Divine Records, and mingles Zoroaster and Maimonides, Gfrorer and Eisenmenger, as of equal value in determining abstruse points of sound criticism! The sections with which we are concerned evince the greatest research and the crudest opinions all hurried together without the slightest critical skill or philosophical sagacity. With materials gathered together in the richest abundance, he has presented us with results which are alike baseless, futile, and injurious. Tobit and Papias, the Book of Baruch and the Book of Enoch, are all treated as on a level with the writings of Moses or Tacitus, Justin Martyr or a German Mystic! The public, too, are in danger of being imposed on by a show of learning and by long Latinized words and phrases, which merely disguise, under classical forms, ideas with which the well-read Divine is already familiar; at the same time, they give such an air of scholarship to these speculations, that the unlearned may be readily deceived by their showy rationalism. The whole work utterly fails in its attempt to explain the rites and symbols of Jewish worship, and to give the slightest explanation of the “theories” and “philosophies” of the Old Testament. The tendency is to reduce it all to mysticism and symbolism, and to any other “theosophy” which leads the mind away from the Christian assurance of one God, one Faith, and one Spirit.

THE RECENT EASTERN DISCOVERIES

The strongest of all possible arguments against these fallacious theories has lately been derived from Eastern discovery. Fresh importation’s of sculptured rock are daily arriving in Europe, from the sepulchers of those cities amidst which our Prophet dwelt. The more this new vein is worked, the richer it becomes. Are we to be told by Bleek that the writer of this Book transferred the events of which he was a spectator to the more ancient times of Assyria and Babylon? and that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were but fabulous characters, of which the original types were Antiochus and Alexander? Are Eichhorn and Bertholdt to make Daniel another Homer, or Virgil, or AEschylus? Then let us appeal to the testimony of Mm. Botta and Layard let us visit the British museum, and under the guidance of Rawlinson and Hincks, let us peruse, in the arrow-headed characters, the history of the Monarchs of Assyria and Babylon, and observe how exactly those memorials of antiquity illustrate the Visions of our Prophet. The assistance which these excavations afford, for the elucidation of our subject, is too important to be passed over, and we must venture upon such arguments as may properly enter into a General Preface, while they vindicate the historical accuracy of the interpretation which Calvin has so elaborately set before us in the following Lectures.

ANCIENT ASSYRIAN REMAINS

The order of the Visions suggests the propriety of treating, first, The Ancient Assyrian Remains; then those of Babylon and Persepolis with such notices of the Egypt Of The Ptolemies as the connection of the history may require.

The earliest memorials of Assyria have not been preserved in the records of literature, but by durable engravings on marble and granite. Within the last fifty years the Pyramids of Egypt have been compelled to open their lips of stone to speak for God’s Word, and the Rosetta table suggested to Young and Champollion an alphabet by which they read on sarcophagus and entablature the history of the earliest dynasties of the Nile. What Lepsius and Bunsen have done for Thebes and Memphis, Dendera and Edfou, Layard and Rawlinson are now accomplishing for the long lost Nineveh, the majestic Babylon, and the elegant Persepolis. It has lately been revealed to astonished Europe, that a buried city lies, in all its pristine grandeur, beneath that huge mound which frowns over Mosul on the banks of the Tigris. Khorsabad and Koyunjik, Nimroud, and BEHISTUN, are now giving up their black obelisks, their colossal bulls, and their eagle-headed warriors, to become “signs and wonders” to our curious generation. In this general sketch we must avoid details, however interesting we can only allude to the first Assyrian monuments discovered by M. Botta, in 1843, as containing a line of Cuneiform Inscriptions amid winged kings and their warlike chariots. They are deposited in the Louvre, and form the most ancient of its esteemed collections. The elegant volumes of Layard, and the more tangible proof of his untiring labors, now deposited in the British Museum, have thrown new light upon the prophetic portion of the Elder Covenant. Two-coned Conquerors, winged Chiefs, carrying either the gazelle or the goat, sacred trees, and their kneeling worshippers —

The life-like statue and the breathing bust, The column rescued from defiling dust —

enable us to guess at the exploits of a long line of kings before the age of Saul or Priam. The name of Sardanapalus is now rescued from traditional disgrace, and ennobled in the midst; of a hardy race of ancestors and successors. Our progress in interpreting these arrow-headed mysteries, enables us to assign the date 1267 B.C. for the founding of Nineveh as a settled point in Asiatic chronology. The earliest historical document in the world is that on the north-west palace of Nimroud built by Assar-Adan-Pal. He informs us of the existence, and celebrates the exploits of Temen-Bar the first, the founder of Haleh, at a time when the Hebrews were just entering the promised land, and the Argives were colonizing the virgin valleys of Hellas! The familiar names of Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, are found incised upon the enduring masonry; and it is now possible to ascertain who founded the Mespila of Xenophon, who constructed the towers in the south-west palace of Nimroud and who stamped his annals on the clay cylinders in the British Museum. The Nimroud obelisk becomes a precious relic, since it enables us to ascertain, for the first time, the events of those nine centuries, during which Nineveh existed from its rise to its overthrow. We are mainly concerned with the manner in which it confirms the truthfulness of the Prophets of the Hebrews, and with the unanswerable arguments which it supplies against the subtleties of German Neology. The credibility of one Prophet is intimately bound up with that of another. Whatever confirms either Isaiah or Ezekiel, throws its reflected light upon Daniel and Hosea. The god Nisroch, in whose temple Sennacherib was slain, (2 Kings 19:37, and Isaiah 37:38,) is, repeatedly mentioned on the obelisk as the chief deity of the Assyrians. The “Sargon king of Assyria” (Isaiah 20:1) is most probably the monarch who founded the city excavated by M. Botta; and the occurrence of the name “Yehuda,” in the 33rd number of the British Museum series, leads Interpreters to consider the passage as alluding to the conquest of Samaria. The very paintings so graphically described by Ezekiel, (Ezekiel 23:14, 15,) have reappeared upon the walls of these palaces. They are, perhaps, the very identical objects which this Prophet beheld, for he dwelt at no great distance from them on the banks of the Khabur, and wrote the passage about thirteen years after the destruction of the Assyrian Empire. The prophecy bears the date B.C. 593, and “the latest Assyrian sculpture on the site of Nineveh must be as early as B.C. 634.” We would gladly linger over these proofs of the truthfulness of the ancient Prophets; but further details must be inserted in those Dissertations which accompany the text, and we close this rapid sketch of these Assyrian remains in the touching words of their enterprising Discoverer. “I used,” says Mr. Layard, “to contemplate for hours these mysterious emblems, and to muse over their intent and history. What more noble forms could have ushered the people into the temple of their gods? What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature, by men who sought, unaided by the light of Revealed Religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power, and ubiquity of a Supreme Being? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge, than the head of a man; of strength, than rite body of the lion; of ubiquity, than the wings of the bird. The winged-human-headed lions were not idle creations;, the offspring of mere fancy; their meaning was written upon them. They had awed and instructed races which had flourished 3000 years ago. Through the portals which they guarded, kings, priests, and warriors had borne sacrifices to their altars, long before the wisdom of the East had penetrated to Greece, and had furnished its mythology with symbols long recognized by the Assyrian votaries. They may have been buried, and their existence may have been unknown, before the foundation of the Eternal City. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and they now stood forth once more in their ancient majesty. But how changed was the scene around them! The luxury and civilization of a mighty nation had given place to the wretchedness and ignorance of a few half-barbarous tribes; the wealth of temples, and the riches of great cities had been succeeded by ruins and shapeless heaps of earth. Above the spacious hall in which they stood, the plough had passed and the corn now waved. Egypt had monuments no less ancient and no less wonderful, but they have stood forth for ages, to testify her early power and renown, while those before me had but now appeared to bear witness in the words of the Prophet, that once The Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud of a high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. His height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long, because of the multitude of the waters which he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations; for now is ‘Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness, and flocks lie down in the midst of her; all the beasts of the nations, both the cormorant and the bittern lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice sings in the windows, and desolation is in the thresholds.’”

ANCIENT BABYLONIAN REMAINS

As we travel onwards in time, and southward in place, our attention is attracted to those Babylonian antiquities which vindicate the correctness of the Comments of Calvin.

After centuries of extensive empire, Nineveh yielded to a younger rival. The army of Sennacherib had been annihilated by the angel of the Lord; Esarhaddon, his son, had planted his heathen colonizes in the fertile plains of Samaria. Nebuchadonosor had won the battle of Rhagau; Phraortes had been slain, and his son, Cyaxares in alliance with Nabopalassar, had taken Nineveh, and destroyed for ever its place in the history of Asia. Palaces of black basalt, bas-reliefs, and hawk-headed heroes, covered with legends of unbounded triumphs, no longer rose at the bidding of the servants of Bar, and the worshippers of Assarac, Beltis, and Rimmon. No more

Her obelisks of buried chrysolite

proclaimed her far-famed majesty; for her new masters transferred the scat of their empire to the banks of the Euphrates. The renowned son of Nabopalassar now commences the era of Babylonian greatness. This enterprising chieftain is no creation of poetic fancy. Herodotus and Berosus have recorded his exploits, and we have now the testimony of recent discovery to confirm the assertions of Daniel, and to throw fresh light upon his narrative.

“The earliest Babylonian record that we have,” says Major Rawlinson, “is, I think, the inscription engraved on a triumphal tablet at Holwan, near the foot of Mount Zagros; it is chiefly religious, but it seems also to record the victories of a certain king named Temnin against the mountaineers. Unfortunately it is in a very mutilated state, and parts of it alone are legible. I discovered this tablet on the occasion of my last visit to Behistun, and with the help of a telescope, for there are no possible means of ascending the rock, succeeded in taking a copy of such portions of the writing as are legible. I am not able at present to attempt a classification of the kings of Babylon, such as they are known from the various relics that we possess of them nor, indeed, can I say with certainty, whether the kings recorded, with the exception of Nebuchadnezzar and his father, may be anterior or posterior to the era of Nabonassar. The Babylonians certainly borrowed their alphabet from the Assyrians, and it requires no great trouble or ingenuity at the present day to form a comparative table of the characters.” “I have examined,” says this enterprising traveler, “hundreds of the Hymar bricks, (near Babylon,) and have found them always to bear the name of Nebuchadnezzar ” Borsippa was a city in the neighborhood of Babylon, and there is monumental” evidence of its being the capital of Shinar, as early almost as the earliest Assyrian epoch.” Temenbar, the Obelisk king, conquered it in the ninth year of his reign. the bricks upon the spot are exclusively stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, being at this moment tangible proofs of the reality of the words “Is not this the great Babylon that I have built?” The rebuilding of the city, and the construction and dedication of the great temple is noticed “in the standard inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, of which the India house slab furnishes us with the best and most perfect copy ” This valuable monument gives a detail of all the temples which he built throughout the various cities of his extensive provinces, it names the particular deities to whom the shrines were dedicated, and mentions other particulars, which our present ignorance of the language enables us. but partially to comprehend. The vast; mound of El Kasr contains the remains of a magnificent palace, supposed to be that of Nebuchadnezzar; but as these recent excavations are more to our present purpose, it is unnecessary to refer at length to this majestic ruin.

PERSIAN AND EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES

Again, in commenting on the ninth chapter, Calvin has followed the usual method of interpreting it of Alexander and his successors he naturally assumes them to be real predictions, and believes them to have been accomplished according to the utterance of their Hebrew captive. And have we no traces of the foot-prints of Alexander now remaining to us? Not long ago, a traveler, amid the barren plains of Persia, lighted unexpectedly on a magnificent ruin — alone, on a deserted plain — its polished marbles, and its chiseled columns all strewed around in wild confusion. This Chehel-Minar, or hall of forty pillars, was built by the Genii, said the Arabs, amid the desert solitudes of Merdusht. The Genii builders have lately been stripped of their disguise of fable, and the long lost Persepolis, destroyed by the mad frolic of Alexander stands revealed to the world in the Takht-i-Jemshid. The grandeur of these pillared halls, these sculptured staircases, and fretwork fringes of horn-bearing lions, interests the reader of Daniel, through the inscriptions which they bear on their surface. The ingenuity of a Westergaard and a Lassen has been displayed in deciphering them, and has enabled us to discover the original architects. Cyrus and Cambyses, Darius Hystaspes and Xerxes, each erected his own portion. One portion can be assigned to the Achaenenian dynasty, and another to the monarchs of the Sassanian family. These inscriptions also point out where the rulers of Persia formed their sepulchral repose. The tomb of Cyrus at Moorghab, his statue discovered and described by Sir R. K. Porter, and “the thousand lines” on the sculptured rock of Behistun, throw a clear and brilliant light on the statements of Daniel, as well as on the narrative of Herodotus. These passing allusions must suffice at present — further discussions must be left for distinct dissertations — while the ninth and tenth chapters of Vaux’s Nineveh and Persepolis will supply additional information to all who are inclined to search for it. Enough is introduced, if the reader is impressed with the conviction that Daniel’s Vision; and Calvin’s Lectures are no vague or cunning delusions, no skillful travestying of history, under the garb of either intentional forgery or weak credulity.

As Persepolis suggests the triumph of the He-goat, and the rising of the four horns towards the four winds of heaven, (Daniel 8:8,) so it leads us forwards towards the subsequent warfare between Asia and Egypt. The mighty king stood ups, and his kingdom was broken and the king of the south became strong and mighty, (Daniel 11:3, 4.) All index here points to the valley of the Nile, where there now exists a countless host of monuments, raised by the giants of the very earliest days of out race. On the day when Cambyses, flushed with victory, stabbed with his own hand the living Apis, and commanded the bones of the Pharaohs to be beaten with rods, he struck to the heart the genius of the Nile. At that moment, the quarries were teeming with busy sculptors, numerous as swarming bees — massive monoliths were becoming Sphinxes and Memnons, while architrave’s and propyla, worthy of the Temple of Karnak, were emerging from the living rock. They all retired to rest that evening, intending to renew their labor on the morrow, but can the morrow bursts the avenging Persian, and that long train of workers are still for ever. But their unfinished handicraft remains for the astonishment of our later centuries. A perfect statue only awaits one final blow to detach it from its parent rock — there runs the track of the wheels which had come to transport it to either Edfou or Luxor; there may be seen the very marks of the tools which lay by its side all night, and were never used on the next fatal morning.

Henceforth Egyptian art is transferred to the tombs and palaces of the kings of Persia. It is cheering to feel, that as our knowledge of the significance of these treasures advances, they confirm the assertions of Holy Writ. Among the mural sculptures at Karnak, one of the captives, with a Jewish physiognomy, bears the title which we can now read — Youdah Malek, meaning a king of Judah. The Rosetta Stone in our National Museum, which is the basis of modern Egyptology was sculptured as late as B.C. 195 and contains decree of Ptolemy Ephphanes, to whom Daniel is supposed to refer. The primaeval antiquity of The Zodiac on the majestic portico Dendera, has now been disproved. “The Greek Inscription on the pronaos refers to Tiberius and Hadrian.” The hieroglyphic legends on the oldest portion of its walls belong to the last Cleopatra while the Zodiac was constructed between A.D. 12 and 132. While we willingly allow the connection between Assyria and Egypt as early as the thirteenth century before Christ, and admit the occurrence of its name on the Nimroud obelisk in the British Museum, and on the sculptures of Behistun and Nakhshi-Rustam, yet; we contend. against that assumption of a false antiquity, which is assumed for the purpose of throwing discredit upon die prophetic portions of our Sacred Oracles.

What, then, is the result of our rapid sketch of these remains of the dynasties of former eras? A complete overthrow of the baseless fabrications of German Neology. Till the arrow-headed character was deciphered, the history of Nineveh was almost a bank to the world. As Assyria and Babylon now breathe and live in resuscitated glory, so all that Daniel wrote is confirmed and amplified by the marbles and tombs which have traveled to this Island of the West. Hence this Captive of Judah really lived while the Head of Gold was towering majestically upon the allegorical image. Neither poet nor impostor of the reign of Antiochus could have fancied or forged characters and events which accord so exactly with the excavations of a Layard, or the decipherings of a Rawlinson. Skeptical infidelity must now hide its head for ever, and speculations of the school of Arnold must shrink into their original insignificance.

POSITIVE EVIDENCE

The positive evidence of additional facts may also be adduced. This Book was translated by The Seventy many years before the death of Antiochus, and the translation was well known to Jerome, although it has not come down to our age. Bishop Chandler has pointed out fifteen places in which Jerome refers to it; and Bishop Halifax has collected many conclusive arguments on these and kindred topics. The words of Josephus are explicit enough as to the received opinion in his day, “you will find the Book of Daniel, in our Sacred Writings.” Maimonides, indeed, has attempted to detract from its high reputation, but has been sufficiently refuted by Abarbanel and the son of Jarchi. The arrangement of the Jews, which places this Book among the Hagiography, and not among the Prophets, seems also to be intended to depreciate its Canonical value; but while the earlier Talmudists place it with the Psalms and the Proverbs, the later ones range it with Zechariah and Haggai. When Aquila and Theodotion translated their Versions, he was admitted to the Prophetic rank and although we can — not absolutely determine the point from the MS. of the Septuagint in the Chigian Library at Rome, yet the probability is highly in its favor. Origen places Daniel among the Prophets and before Ezekiel, following the example of Josephus in his first book against Apion.

JEWISH TESTIMONIES — SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS

Instead of following the beaten track of reference to Jewish Comments and Rabbinical Traditions, which Calvin always quoted and refitted, we shall here introduce a collateral branch of singular and valuable evidence. As the surface of the Theological world is much agitated by doubts of historic facts, originating alike with Rationalists and Romanists, it is desirable to fortify our evidence from existing inscriptions of correlative value with those of Nineveh. That far-famed seceder to Rome, Dr. Newman, speaks of some “Scripture Narratives which are quite as difficult to the reason as any miracles recorded in the History of the Saints;” and he then instances that “of the Israelites flight from Egypt, and entrance into the Promised Land.” Anxious as the votary of either Superstition or of Reason may be to suggest doubts as to the recorded facts, The Rocks Of Sinai are now vocal with the voices of the moving Tribes Valley after valley has been found in which these Sinaitic Inscriptions abound. “Their numbers may be computed by thousands, their extent by miles, and their positions above the valleys being as often measurable by fathoms as by feet.” These hitherto unreadable remnants of a former age have now been read, and they become fresh confirmations of the truthfulness of the Mosaic Narrative. It is enough for our present purpose to refer to the conclusive labors of the Rev. Charles Forster, who has compared the characters used with those of The Rosetta Stone, with the Arrow-headed Character, and with the Alphabets of Etruria, Palmyra, and Persepolis; and has been enabled to read what neither Beer could decipher nor Pococke explain. By him they are shewn to record the bitterness of the Waters at Marah — the Flight of Pharaoh on horseback — the Miracle of the feathered fowls, the Murmuring at Meribah — and the Uplifting of the hands of Moses at the battle of Rephidim. Thus the “Written Valley,” and the “Written Mountain,”’ have rendered their testimony in favor of Revelation. “No difficulties of situation, no ruggedness of material, no remoteness of locality, has been any security against the gravers of the one phalanx of mysterious scribes. The granite rocks of the almost inaccessible Mount Serbal, from its base to its summit, repeat the characters and inscriptions of the Sandstone’s of the Mokateh.” Countless multitudes are supposed to be yet undiscovered. And what people but the Israelites could have engraven them? Professor Beer allows them to be all of the same age — the soil affords no sustenance for hordes of men, and never did provide for the existence of a settled population. This wilderness may be periodically traveled through, but never has been permanently settled by mankind. The very execution of such works requires the use of ladders and platforms, ropes, baskets, and tools, and all the usual instruments of a long established population. But no people could have executed all this unproductive labor without a ready supply of water and food. If, then, a single generation carved and grayed these countless Inscriptions, how can we account for the fact, except by the Mosaic narrative? Whence came the bodily aliments, by which so many workmen were enabled to carry out their hazardous employments for so long and continuous a period? Grant that Israel coming out of Egypt performed them, and the difficulty is solved — adopt; any other possibility, and the problem becomes perfectly insoluble! We forbear to enter further little this important discussion; it is enough to have awakened this train of thought, in accordance with our previous reasonings.