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crifice morality to party spite-that hypocrisy is added to dishonesty. If the Free Church must be hated, that is no reason why immorality in the Establishment should be patronized, and when a choice must be made between them, why the latter should be preferred.

This

One of the sad signs of the times is the low moral tone which is required in public men, whether belonging to the ecclesiastical or the civil departments. Little conscience is expected even in those who should be the leaders in their respective fields. is an indication of a bad state of things, and tends to pull down the public standard to a still lower level. Hence the importance and necessity of maintaining a high moral tone, especially among religious bodies,-of being morally consistent and superior to the prejudices and party'spirit which disturb the moral judgments of the world. This end is so important in itself and in its consequences, that it is worthy of being pursued as a distinct object of care; and how sad, then, that good men should ever be found throwing their influence into the depressing and deteriorating scale.

We greatly fear, that unless there be an improvement here, serious obstacles will be raised up to the success of the present laudable efforts after Evangelical Union. Though other difficulties were got over with a better definition of terms and common objects; yet, if the membership is to remain as before, and Evangelical ministers of the Church of England and of the dissenting bodies are to treat the renegades of the Scottish Establishment, and the honest men of the Free Church in the same way as if they were alike, or as if the moral distinction between them were inappreciable,-such a confounding of things which differ cannot fail to prevent union, and even to lead to separations where there should be fellowship. We are not insensible to the practical difficulties of the case, but where a choice must be made, moral considerations surely should be supreme. By all means let there be Evangelical union; there cannot be too much of it, only let there be as great care not to obscure moral distinctions as not to compromise doctrinal principles. Let Christian men care as much about the character as the creed of their fellow members. We think it not at all improbable that the Great Head of the Church may have allowed difficulties to occur in connection with Evangelical union, from the side of character, for this, among other reasons, to lead Evangelical men and churches to judge more seriously of what is due to the morality of public men than they have hitherto been doing. Here to a great extent they are called to make a choice between the Free Church and the renegades of the Establishment. The question is one of public character, for in creed the parties are

professedly the same. Can good men hesitate on such a point? If they do, it is a plain proof that much has yet to be learned, and that there is a loud call, in the present circumstances of the Church and of society, for the acquisition. Among all the services of different kinds which the Free Church has been honoured to render, that will not be the least, should she be instrumental in conducting the members of other Evangelical communions to judge fairly and honestly of character, and so should be privileged to sustain the claims of Public Morality. The service rendered will reach not only to our day, but to all generations, not only to our country, but to Christendom.

We are aware of the difficulties of the case, that good men will ask 'How can you judge of character, when men profess a certain creed, and are externally respectable? We are not insensible to the apparent odiousness of the position of calling character in such circumstances into question; but all intelligent and honest men, who are cognizant of the facts, are conscious that there is moral disqualification, and if so, means may surely be fallen upon for marking that disqualification. Why should not a bold and manly course be pursued? The more straightforward the course is, while mingled with charity, the greater good may be expected to the cause of public morals. Why should it not be resolved, that while men of a certain creed and character are received, all those are excluded, to whatever Evangelical denomination they belong, in regard to whom it can be shown that they have publicly apostatized from the most solemn engagements at the call of self-interest? It is surely no discredit, but the reverse, to the Evangelical Alliance, or any similar confederacy, to hold that the 250 Scottish renegades are ineligible. Can the fellowship of such men be any real honour or strength to the body which they enter? Do they not rather expose the Alliance to the just taunts and derision of the world?

If we are not mistaken, it is intended that character as well as creed shall affect membership. As a practical measure, it has been determined (we do not pronounce any opinion upon its propriety or impropriety,) that no Christian office-bearer or member of an Evangelical church, however distinguished, shall be admissible to the Evangelical Alliance, if he be the actual holder of slave property. The Alliance is perfectly entitled to take this ground, and to say who are and who are not the parties with whom it chooses to associate. But by parity of reason, should it not brand tergiversation and apostacy with its displeasure? Is there any comparison in point of criminality between the man who has been born and bred in the midst of slavery, and been so unfortunate as to inherit slave property, and who does not see his way to its im

mediate relinquishment, and the minister of the gospel, who, in the midst of gospel light, after ten years of earnest controversy, after solemn pledges to a certain course of procedure from regard to the authority and honour of the Lord Jesus Christ, trampled all his professed principles in the dust, when a sifting time of trial came, and perhaps walked into the richer benefice of an honest man as the reward of his sordid apostacy? Is there any real comparison between the two cases? We could put the comparison to the conscience even of the renegade, and not be doubtful of the verdict. Men may differ upon the question of slavery. We know that good men, on Scripture grounds, do differ, and will probably think that the Evangelical Alliance has gone too far; but there is no diversity of opinion about common honesty. There can be none among men who have any conscience, uninstructed and irreligious as that conscience may be. We do trust, therefore, while the doctrinal is carefully attended to, in such a way as to prevent the possibility of the charge that any truth is forgotten, far less compromised, that the moral, as respects character, will be not less anxiously cared for. It would be a noble result, worthy of the Alliance, though nothing else were accomplished, worthy of no small trouble and even exposure to charges of uncharitableness and severity, were the world for once in its history to see the friends of evangelical religion, of every name and denomination, united, standing up as the defenders of moral consistency and truth in public character. The moral benefit to society would be incalculable. Christianity would occupy her own appropriate place, the MORAL INSTRUCTOR of the world.

We have left ourselves no room to speak of the pamphlet whose title we have prefixed to this article, but our readers will at once see the bearing. The pamphlet we earnestly recommend as an admirable defence of the principles and position of the Free Church. The author we sincerely pity. We cannot venture to say more, lest perhaps we should deal too severely with one who has laid himself open to so much reproach for the desertion of principles once so strongly held and so vigorously maintained.

ART. IV.-1. 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: James Darling, 1844.

2. Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes herausgegeben, von CHRISTIAN LASSEN. Bonn: H. B. König, 1844.

THE difficulties which perplex the present system of connecting sacred and profane chronology are sufficiently well known to

those who have made the subject their study; but, as they are not equally patent to the ordinary reader, a statement of some of the most glaring of them is a necessary introduction to any attempt to remove them. In order to do this, however, we must first mention in order the monarchs of whom Scripture speaks, before we proceed to compare them with the list furnished to us by profane historians. We have, then, first of all, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil Merodach, and Belshazzar. After them, the first name mentioned is Dariavesh Madaia (Darius the Mede,) who is mentioned by Daniel, (ch. v. 31,) as having, after Belshazzar's death, taken the kingdom. Next to him appears to have been Koresh Parsaia (Cyrus the Persian,) for we read, (Dan. vi. 28,) 'So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Dariavesh, and in the reign of Koresh the Persian.' It is important to remark that Ezra (ch. v. 13) calls him Malkadi Babel, king of Babylon. Koresh must have been followed by another Dariavesh, for the adversaries of Judah hired counsellors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Koresh king of Persia, even until the reign of Dariavesh, king of Persia, (Ezra iv. 5;) but from the two verses immediately following, we learn that two kings, Ahashverosh and Artashastha, must have intervened between Koresh and Dariavesh. The latter of them is called king of the Persians, and Dariavesh himself bears the titles of king of the Persians and king of Assyria. We shall hereafter see some reason for thinking that Ahashverosh and Artashastha are different names for the same monarch. There seems, however, to have been an Ahashverosh even before the time of Koresh: for the events of the book of Esther evidently took place during the captivity, and with this agrees what is mentioned below concerning the age of Mordecai. Then follows, after an interval, on the duration of which Scripture throws no light, a second Artashastha, in the twentieth year of whose reign Nehemiah received permission to go unto Jerusalem, (Neh. ii. 1.) The only king afterwards mentioned is a third Dariavesh, called the Persian,' (Neh. xii. 22.)

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Such, then, is the succession of monarchs, according to the Scripture history, and the connection of this series with profane history has generally proceeded upon an identification of Koresh Parsaia with Cyrus the Great. The difficulties arising from this scheme are very great: 1. The authors of it have, one and all of them, failed in finding any monarch mentioned in profane history who can answer to Dariavesh Madaia. The common opinion is that he was Cyaxares; but the slightest examination of this hypothesis is sufficient to show that nothing but the supposed difficulties of the case would ever have caused it to be

adopted. 2. If Koresh be Cyrus, then the other monarchs who follow him in order must have reigned after the Jewish captivity came to an end. And in this case we must, with Prideaux, come to the conclusion that the Mordecai mentioned in Ezra ii. 2, and Neh. vii. 7, as having come up from the captivity with Zerubbabel, could not be the Mordecai who makes such a figure in the book of Esther. For if Ahashverosh was the Xerxes of the Greek historians, Mordecai must have been eighty years of age, and if Artaxerxes, he must have been upwards of one hundred years of age when his cousin Esther was only about sixteen. But we have in the book of Esther plain proof that Mordecai was one of those who were carried into captivity, for we are told that in Shushan, the palace, there was a certain Jew whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite, who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captivity which had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon carried away, and he brought up Hadassah, &c. Some, indeed, would maintain that it was Kish who was carried into captivity, but this is a mere subterfuge to support a theory, and is completely exposed by the author of The Times of Daniel, whose arguments are, however, too long for quotation. Besides, the whole history of the book of Esther shows that the Jews were in captivity during the occurrence of the events there related. 3. But again, Nehemiah gives us (ch. xii.) a list of the priests and Levites who went up with Zerubbabel in the first year of Koresh, and also, (ch. x.) a list of those that sealed the covenant in the twentieth of Artaxerxes II., that is, if Koresh be Cyrus, upwards of one hundred years afterwards. In these two lists there are about twenty names which occur in both; and how can we believe with most chronologists that all these were different persons? Nay, not only are the names the same, but they occur in the same order, and some of them holding the same offices. As the Levites did not enter upon their office till they were twenty years of age, those that are mentioned as Levites in the list of such as came up with Zerubbabel must have been then twenty years of age, so that between fifty and sixty years is the utmost we can allow between that time and the twentieth of Artaxerxes.

These are three specimens, and we might have furnished more, of the difficulties which have to be surmounted, on the supposition that Koresh and Cyrus are identical, and we hesitate not to say, that they are perfectly sufficient to set aside that scheme altogether.

In this dilemma, some have been inclined to make very light of the authority of the Greek historians, and especially of Hero

VOL. XIX. NO. III.

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