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only one among them which is correct, makes the prophecy and history correspond with each other even to a year." Münter and Ideler have attempted to determine the year of the nativity by ingenious but uncertain astronomical calculations. Winer in his Real-Lexicon has fixed upon the year 747 as the true date of the nativity. The subject has been fully discussed by Wieseler in an Article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. 3, 166, and we need not add anything

more.

As to the duration of Christ's ministry and the year of the crucifixion, there has been much diversity of opinion. Eusebius declares that the whole period of our Saviour's teaching and working miracles was three years and a half, and this appears from a critical examination of John's gospel.

Hengstenberg (vol. 2, 408) has followed the suggestion of Eusebius, and has shown in opposition to Hug, Tholuck, Winer, and Lücke, that the feast spoken of in John v. 1 was not the feast of Purim but that of the Passover. It is called a feast of the Jews to show its importance. There was a Sabbath during it, for the sick man was healed on a Sabbath. It is not to be supposed that Jesus would go up to a civil feast, and neglect the passover a month later.

If we could determine in what year between A. D. 28 and A. D. 37 the passover occurred on Thursday or Friday, we might ascertain the year of our Saviour's crucifixion. If we suppose our Saviour anticipated the passover by a day, it will fall on Friday. If he partook of it at the legal time, then it will fall on Thursday. Roger Bacon found by computation that the paschal full moon, A. D. 33, fell on Friday; and this led him and Scaliger, Usher, Pearson, and Newton to conclude that this was the year of the crucifixion. Ferguson, in his Astronomy, has shown that in A. D. 30, there was a paschal full moon on Thursday, April 6, which Bengel thought was the true date. Usher adopts April 3, as the true date of the crucifixion.

We will not enter upon the vexed question, whether our Lord anticipated the legal time of the passover by a day.

It has been fully discussed by Rauch,' Tholuck in his Commentary on John, Hengstenberg on the Pentateuch, vol. 2, 308, Robinson's Harmony, p. 212, De Wette's Studien und Kritiken for 1834, p. 939, Prot. E. Q. Review, 1. 190, an Essay by Dr. Turner.

ARTICLE III.

GEOLOGICAL AND THEOLOGICAL ANALOGIES.

BY REV. BENJAMIN F. HOSFORD, HAVERHILL, MASS.

THE precise force and value of analogical reasonings. from the physical world to the truths of Revelation, are not yet clearly defined. It is even doubted by some whether they deserve any higher name than mere illustrations. But illustrations are sometimes arguments in their effect upon the understanding. They present solid truth in a clearer light, and no argument can do more. Some benefits at least result from a familiarity with such analogies; and it would be as unwise in us not to avail ourselves of their proper uses, as it would be to try to press them beyond those uses.

To a mind troubled about certain truths of the Scriptures, it is a substantial relief to find that the same sort and quality of difficulty runs through the kingdom of Nature also. This indeed does not solve the first difficulty; in one sense it enlarges it; but in showing that it is wide-spread, it shows that it is not peculiar to the Scriptures, but is a something which runs through the various departments of the creation, and therefore must have been comprehended in the original perfect plan of the creation. Convinced of this, we then fall back upon our confidence in the fundamental wisdom and benevolence of the Creator. As our confidence in the gen

1 Biblical Repository, Vol. IV. 108.

eral wisdom of His Providence is radical, we cast this particular burden upon it. We conclude that this element of difficulty is no mere exception, not a mistake in one unfortunate department, but is something connected with the fundamental principles of His administration. That we cannot make our intelligence shine quite through it, only indicates that it is a part of the Incomprehensible SELF. Thus, practically, the particular difficulty vanishes in proportion as we become convinced of its universality.

It is both refreshing and invigorating to Christian faith thus to draw from the different departments of natural scienceGod's old works-new illustrations and confirmations of the old, well-established doctrines of His Holy Word, albeit neither the one nor the other is fully understood. In this way, new analogies from nature clothe old Bible truths afresh, as each succeeding spring renews the old, warm earth.

Such analogies are also a convenient weapon with which to foil a captious doubter. Cavillers at Scripture are usually mere naturalists in belief. They admit a God, and nature as the exponent of Him. When, then, they are forced to admit that their store-house of illustrations, Nature, is full of precisely the same sort of element which they rail at in the Divine Revelation, their mouths are stopped. Moreover, the Bible theology can apply the facts drawn from nature to the highest and noblest uses. Their deeper meaning is never touched until they are made to utter God's idea in them. This the Bible helps us to do; and in this way it discharges in full its obligations to science for whatever light science may have shed upon the true intent of inspiration in certain passages of the sacred record.

Mere science arranges the wonderful facts of nature in beautiful order, along the ground. With this her peculiar province ends. Infidelity would fasten this chain to the great iron wheel of Fate, or to the no less inexorable "Laws of Nature." Christianity raises one end of the beautiful series and fastens it to the throne of God. Then all the facts shine with a new lustre from above, for the Spirit of the Infinite Intelligence pulsates through them. Christian

faith is always comforted when facts in science can be thus raised above the earth, or wrested back from the grasp of Infidelity, and applied to their highest uses in illustrating and substantiating the truths of Revelation.

This brief essay is an attempt to do a little something in this good cause. If the facts used in illustration are questioned, the writer takes covert under the wing of the best Christian Geologists in the world, who are authority for all the facts of any importance, which he has quoted. Should the method of reasoning from these facts be questioned, he is equally happy to hide himself in the shadow of the many great and good men who have used the same method, and with far better success, but not with a better intent or for a better end.

It is sometimes objected to the commonly received doctrine of the fall of man, that it was too great an evil for God to permit; that, according to the orthodox view of mankind, "the universe is a failure."

Geology, especially in its record of the carboniferous era, furnishes analogies for an answer.

No ruin could be more complete than that which ended the carboniferous era. It was universal and utter. All the luxuriant vegetation which clothed the earth with a wreath of beauty, was swept off, and hardly a species of the numer ous animals which had swum in its tepid lakes, or browsed on the gigantic vegetation which overhung their banks, survived to see their strange but nobler successors. Nebuchadnezzar and Titus at Jerusalem, Alaric at Rome, and the Turks at Athens, only did on a limited scale what was done universally, when the powers of nature were let loose upon the earth at this Geological epoch.

Each stately palm and fern, every leaf and spire of moss in those illimitable forests, as shown by their perfect impress on the rock to-day, was a beautiful and complete demonstration of the being and attributes of God; and yet the whole magnificent record, when as yet no intelligent eye had read it, was swept off into a perfect ruin, and once more the fair earth was "tohu vavohu." Moreover, all

the Fauna of this period,— the highest types of animal life yet seen upon the earth, a Fauna, in many respects the most wonderful that the earth has even seen or ever will see, these characteristic races, the only sentient inhabitants of the earth at that time, all went down alive into the pit.

It seemed as if the Great Creator were disappointed with the work of His fingers, and had suddenly turned it to destruction. The shadow on the dial of progress seemed to have leaped'ten degrees backward, as if suddenly rebuked by the Almighty.

It may be said that this ruin of plants and animals, however great, furnishes no fair analogy for the ruin of rational and immortal souls by sin. We apprehend that the quality of the thing destroyed does not materially affect the analogy.

At that time there were no higher creatures on the earth than those which were destroyed. They were the best which Infinite Benevolence had yet contrived for this sphere.

Moreover, the blank ruin was relieved by no clear promise of anything better to come. It appeared as if the Creator had destroyed forever the very climax of his works, up to that time. Apparently, the whole system was coming to an end, for all its princes were cut off. It was a direful premonition of what actually occurred at a later period, and of which the Christian poet sang:

"Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost!"

But this terrestrial ruin was only apparent and temporary. It swept the earth with a besom, only that higher orders of creation might have a clean field. The gigantic and clumsy creations of that fertile period were cleared off, root and branch, sire and son, in order that no relics of them might mingle with, and thus degrade, the higher natures and the warmer blood of the races which were to come. The high temperature of that period appears to have been suddenly lowered, causing universal death; but it was in order

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