must in any case be a modification of the Greek psalterion.1 That a gentleman has been found to suggest a Semitic root PSaL, proves so little about the Greek inflexion, which was the point, that it is difficult to imagine the suggestion serious, though Reviews applaud it. The word SamBuCa retains too much trace of its Asiatic original to be urged, though it is probably on its return as a visitor from Greece, as our own adoption from France of boire (bibere), if for an illustration's sake I may so far follow Voss, does not prevent our restoring it in the form la bière. A more certain word is Soumphonia, of which, notwithstanding the alternative writing Siphonia, I should feel the force needed no argument, if it were not eminently significant, that Polybius (Athenæ. x. p. 439) mentions Antiochus (the tyrant symbolised by Nebuchadnezzar) as dancing to the symphony, whether one instrument, or more; Polybius, I think, meant it of one; as also did Livy. But what shall we say of Ashaphim; the wise men, or diviners? Hebrew lexicographers seldom scruple to invent roots, and in the comparatively modern colluvies, called Syriac, the word has been adopted out of Daniel. No Semitic warrant for it approaches within ages the time required for a precedent, unless any one chooses to make it a dialectic variation of the Hebrew Cashaph. A more probable clue is furnished by the frequent recurrence of cópos in the LXX. Ashaph, I suspect, can only be Sophos, and it bears to its Greek original the same relation as the Hebrew Ani, a ship, bears to its Greek and Sanscrit cognate Nau -8. I will not urge barer possibilities; if the above instances exhaust the Greek words in Daniel, they present, standing alone, a chronological suggestion, which with

1 Compare the Homeric γέντο for ἕλετο. Doric βεντίον for βελτίον, βέντιστος for BÉATIOTOS. The Doric usage does not exclude the Macedonian, but renders it probable. The word yaλrhpιov could not have come from the Dorians, for it was not a Dorian name, but was a comparatively modern substitute for the older name μáyadıs, which meant the lyre with some special number of strings. See Athenæus, xiv. p. 636 (v. 309, Schweighæuser). Dr. Pusey must pardon this correction, which I would have spared, if his extreme confidence had not taken such a tone of rebuke, not sparing even St. Gregory, a bishop and a father, as well as a grammarian.

accompanying circumstances may be a link of proof. If they were possible under Nebuchadnezzar, they are natural after Alexander.

5. To the common sense of the multitude a consideration of the subject-matter of the book may furnish plainer ground. There will be found in the following treatise abundant evidence that the four kingdoms described in symbol by Daniel are Babylonian, Persian, and Macedonian, with either a Median as the second, or the Seleucid dynasty of Syria (and possibly its Egyptian contemporaries) as the fourth. Either alternative leaves the "little horn" as the well-known, widely-acknowledged, representation of Epiphanes, who in his love of Greek fashion thought to change Semitic times and seasons, and who raised by his insults the splendid outburst of fanatical valour which is the glory of the Maccabees. Expositors so unlike as Porphyry and Jerome1 agree so nearly as this: the one supposes Daniel to describe Antiochus; the other prefers Antichrist under the type of Antiochus; in either view, a knowledge of Antiochus is presupposed. All introductions into the text of the Ottoman empire or the Pope-as a primary meaning as an historical form which the writer gives to his thought, may safely be set aside. Some few scholars may conceive allusion to Antiochus a proof that the book was as late as his age; a far larger number of divines imagine the predictive form in which the allusion is conveyed abundantly demonstrative that the book existed earlier; otherwise, they say, it would be deceptive. A middle, and a moderate, course is, to ask on

1 Hieron. in Dan., vii., viii.

2 A most reverend writer has said upon St. Luke: "It is painful to remark, how the opinions of many commentators who refuse to fix the date of this Gospel earlier than the destruction of Jerusalem, have been influenced by the determination that nothing like prophecy shall be found in it. Believing that our Lord did really prophesy that event, we have no difficulty in believing that an evangelist reported the prophecy before it was fulfilled." Now, supposing his grace to know by inspiration, or otherwise, the motives of commentators, who might have deduced their apparent axiom from previous instances, the laws of thought still permit us to see a correspondent assumption on his grace's side. Granting that there are truths to

behalf of a book, for which prediction is claimed, that some evidence, or a probability, however slight, of its existence anterior to the event, should be shown. We have seen, in the case of Daniel, the external evidence against a date earlier than Antiochus. While this remains so, it is respectful to hope the "intention" was not "deceptive," in a practice which even Christian poets, Tasso, and our own Spenser, and Geoffry, who was a bishop, have sanctioned; and which can hardly surprise us in a lower age, two centuries before the Christian era, when it is known to have existed largely among Jews and Gentiles. The books of the Sibylline Prophecies,1 formerly ranked by church authority with David's Psalms, may exemplify the habit for the Greeks, the book of Enoch (the date of which I do not presume to fix) for the Jews, and Virgil's sixth Æneid for the Romans. If the divinest inspiration is shown by many instances to include the free spontaneity of poetry, parable, apologue, patriotism, and passion, we cannot, antecedently to investigation, assume that it must exclude a play of imagination in prose, which we might call dramatic, but consistent with the modes of thought of that age, and of many ages. At least, on the side of "evidences," the predictive or symbolical form, in which the book of Daniel enfolds its allusions to the period of Antiochus, is not sufficient to counteract the tendency of those allusions in fixing the date as contemporary or subsequent to Antiochus.

It would be a departure from the principles which govern this enquiry (and are inculcated by me elsewhere,) to assume that the presence of miracles in a narrative disproves its genuineness or its authenticity. Still, there are narratives in which our assent properly commences in volition, it is not clear that the existence of a prediction for near half a century before an event, if it is not attested until half a century after the event, belongs to such an order of truths. At all events, the acceptance of such a prediction is too much a result of faith or volition, to be a foundation. It does not furnish that proof, for the sake of which it was alleged. I only borrow here an illustration of reasoning, the two cases being manifoldly unlike in themselves.

1 Oracula Sibyllina, Friedlieb. Lipsiæ, 1852.

Daniel, which even upon comparison with other miracles in the Old Testament retain a certain air of strangeness; and in proportion as things are strange, they require more evidence; whereas here the evidence is less than usual; thus the book being on other accounts questioned, if we proceed to ask what inherent verification is afforded by such narratives as represent the fire not burning, and the lions not rending, the answer can hardly avoid a tone of suspicion, which would make us rejoice to find such an interval of elapse between the author and his subjectmatter, as on independent grounds we have already found. This would be stated more strongly by those who magnify the presumption in favour of an Order of Nature into a certainty that exceptions from that order are precluded by its Divine Author's all-sufficing omniscience. There is so little likelihood of that view's being confounded by any sincere mind with my own, that I may venture to say, it does not appear to me contemptible. It deserves more respectful treatment than the triple series of prejudications, Miracles are necessary; Miracles must have occurred; All records of miracles must be placed, even without evidence, in such an order of time as may render them available proofs. There is more consistency in saying with the physical philosopher, Miracles, as we enlarge our grasp upon Nature, become less probable; and with the critical historian, Records of miracle ought to be vigilantly scrutinised; yet in no less maintaining, as a Christian divine, Nothing is impossible with God; and, at the same time, if all the miracles of the Bible are undoubted and literal history, our faith in the Supernatural does not depend upon them, since to ground faith in sensuous miracle is that very materialism which Christ rebuked in Nicodemus1 (St. John iii. 2, 5, 10).

1 If Bishop Warburton and Archdeacon Hare (comp. "Mission of the Comforter," pp. 212, 354-68) are adequate representatives of the two schools, to one of which the foundation of faith seems phenomenal, and to the other spiritual, we not only see that both schools are equally bound to produce historical evidence, and to limit their affirmations in accordance with it, so that it is the merest polemical artifice to ascribe to the spiritualist rather than the phenomenalist any assumptions' de

I hasten reluctantly by many questions of interest connected with Daniel, a discussion of which would swell this Introduction into a treatise. It is disputed, whether the emphasis with which almsgiving and ascetic practices are prescribed, marks a stage of Judaism intermediate between the Old Testament and the New. At least it is in perfect consonance with a period, when the received interpretation of righteousness as almsgiving (See Beza, Mill, Elsley, on St. Matth. vi. 1) shows the natural sentiment of a "blessing on him who considereth the poor" passing into that more formal code on the subject, which finds countenance in the infant Christianity of the Gospels, and which, though firmly rejected by St. Paul, has been revived in parts of Christendom. A more difficult enquiry is, how far Zoroastrianism appears? So much is certain, that names and other distinctions of an angelic hierarchy come forward in a way unknown to the older Scriptures; if this change may be ascribed to a fresh revelation, it is more naturally explained by contact with a faith likely to have suggested it, and of high antiquity, although the books which now present it to us do not yet admit a settlement of their age or interpretation. The bearings of a great argument are not affected by the possibility of complicating its collateral or supplementary details. The tendency, as it seems to me, of research up to our own days, from the time when Dean Prideaux1 conceived of Zoroaster as an apostate Jew, is to magnify the antiquity, importance, and spiritual force of the impulse which the East received, when the great Bactrian reformer scattered the night of Nature from eyes sealed in the slumber of Vedic infancy, and out of the contrast of light and darkness evoked the perrogatory to history; but in fact the spiritual school has often been the stronger on the historical ground. We shall not arrive at an understanding, until the impartial neutrality of the intellect is guaranteed by an habitual distinction between things historical or ratiocinative, which are subject-matter of belief, and things spiritual, which are objects of faith; the latter being tests of character, inasmuch as our relation to them is affected by volition.

1 Conn. O. N. T. i. 4, with which his account of Judith, i. 1, is curious enough to bear comparison. (Comp. Pusey, p. 97.)