selfishness with benevolence, superstition with religion, infidelity with science, injustice with law and evil, too, is in combination with customs, systems, institutions. It is a huge conglomeration. Unmixed naked evil could not, perhaps, exist. Worldly souls so compound it as to make evil seem good.

II. IT IS A BIG THING. This image was the biggest thing in the imagination of the monarch. Evil is the biggest thing in the world. Paul calls it the world itself, against which we are to battle, and the world which is to be conquered by faith. The image represents here what Paul meant by the "world," the mighty aggregation of evil. Alas, evil is the great image in the world's mind. When is it not? It stands on the great field of human life as a mountain darkening the moral sun, and keeping the whole race under its black, frigid, blighting shadows.

III. IT IS AN IMPERIAL THING. The various substances that composed the image, Daniel tells us, represent kingdoms -Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Evil here is imperial. The New Testament calls it "The kingdom of darkness." It wears the purple, occupies the throne, and wields the sceptre of nations. It is at the head of all earth's "principalities and powers." It sitteth as God even in the Temple.

IV. IT IS A HUMAN THING. The colossal image was a human figure-human head, breast, arms, legs, feet; and of human manufacture. Evil here is a human thing! All the errors of the world are the fabrications of the human brain; all the bad passions of the world are the lusts of the human heart; all the wrong institutions of the world are the productions of human power. Evil is human, it thinks with the human brain; it speaks with the human tongue; it works with the human hand. Man is at once its creator, organ, and victim.

V. IT IS A TOTTERING THING. On what does the figure stand? On marble, on iron, or brass? No, on clay; his

feet part of iron and part of clay. Evil, big, grand, and imperial though it be, lacks standing power; it is not firmfooted. It has clay feet, and must one day tumble to pieces. (1) Grand theories, if erroneous, have clay feet. (2) Great ecclesiastical systems, if wrong, have "clay feet." (3) Magnificent institutions, if unrighteous, have "clay feet." What though it has a golden head, a silver chest, and a brilliant. and commanding aspect? its feet are only part of iron and part of clay.

Thinkings by a Broad-Bibleman.

(No. VI.)

SUBJECT: The Know-nothings of Yesterday.

HE Saturday Review, writing of Exeter Hall and the

raised by scientific growth, are obviously the main cause of many of the new theological developments in Europe. Now, in regard to these it is plain, to any one who observes what is going on around him, that the Evangelical party stands, as it were, on one side; it does not meet sceptics by denying the competency of reason, like one extreme set of thinkers, nor does it accept scientific opinions, and try to reconcile them with ancient doctrine, like the other extreme. It is confused and puzzled, and contents itself with simply denouncing all who differ from it."

There is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in all this. For, though it may be fairly doubted whether "scientific growth be not in many cases scientific error, or perversion, there can be little question that the slow-going theologists of the present day slink away from controversy on these matters, and do not meet with a bold and manly front, these "oppositions of science." They are, in fact, "confused and puzzled." They seem afraid to encounter face to face, and on their own ground, men of such intellectual calibre; and, either from indolence or disinclination, arrange a disgraceful compromise, or allow judgment to go by default.

But there is far less to be feared than they seem to anticipate. "Great men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment." Elihu was young, and his brother counsellors were old, yet in his controversy with Job, he had unquestionably the best of the argument; and experience has amply proved the truth of his statement, that the dicta of great men may be often doubted with impunity, if not with advantage.

We should not find it difficult to rebut very much that is foisted on us as "philosopby," and "scientific growth," if we would only go fairly into the subject for ourselves, though we are really often shut out from this course by the covert arguments of these sceptics themselves, and agree to close with them on a basis which enables us to evade the question, instead of grappling with it. "The Author of Nature, is the Author of Revelation; there can be nothing, therefore, in the world of physics really opposed to the testimony of inspiration." "God spake in times past by the prophets, but we are not told that He spake by the chroniclers or historians, so that the mere narratives and biographies of the Bible may or may not be true!"

Silly sophistries! disgraceful lullabies, these! and such as no honest Christian could accept, coupled as they often are, with direct and circumstantial details thoroughly at variance with the surface-meaning of God's Word. No, we must take these writers of the neological school fairly to pieces; first looking at their general reliability in matters of fact and inductive argument, and then examining, one by one, such of their indvidual statements as seem peculiarly to lie open to controversy or refutation.

And, first, let us look at Bunsen and his "Biblical Researches," as presented to us through Dr. Rowland Williams in the notorious "Essays and Reviews."

Something has been already said respecting his reliance on spurious and unintelligible traditions, as modifying the Bible; and it will, therefore, excite but little surprise to find him remarking, with "quaint strength," that "there is no chromological element in Revelation!" Truly, "the German refinement of method, has all the effect of confusion," if it can lead any man of common sense and common honesty to such a conclusion. The German mystics, who seem generally to "want time" for the development of their history of the human race, may revel in such choice "elements" of chrono

logy as are to be found in Eratosthenes and Manetho. "To Hephaestus is assigned no time." "Helius reigned three myriads of years." "Mines lived in the year of the world 2900 !" Precious elements these! Either Bunsen is a gigantic simpleton, or the whole world misunderstands him; joining with one voice in the wish of the editor of the Athenæum, "that some one would project his writings into the region of common sense!" But in the face of so notorious a mis-statement as this, is it not perfectly marvellous that he should find so many disciples. "No chronological element in Revelation?" Why, the Old Testament is essentially and pre-eminently chronological! A book of dates with a niche in history, for everything, and everything in its niche. How grateful would Bunsen have been if all the wisdom of Egypt could have supplied him with even so scanty, yet so substantial a chronology, as that furnished by a single verse of New Testament. "All the generations from Abraham to David, are fourteen generations; and from David to the carrying away into Babylon, are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ, are fourteen generations.

With what extreme accuracy and minuteness are the generations from Adam to the year of the Deluge recorded in Gen. v. 3-32. From the Flood to Abraham they are continued with the same care in Gen. xi. 10—26. "The sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt," beginning at this latter date, is declared to have been "four hundred and thirty years"; their wanderings in the wilderness occupied forty; and from the time of their entrance on the promised land, the sequence and succession of the Judges and Kings of that people are recorded with as much accuracy as those of our own sovereigns in England. And yet we have "no chronological element in Revelation !" according to Bunsen and his school. So far, therefore, from "accepting" his opinions, as some may recommend, we would rather have them noted, protested, and returned dishonoured.

To a similar school, perhaps, belong those other worshippers of a giant chronology, who are drawing their inferences respecting the "antiquity of man" and the "age of man" from geological and collateral discoveries in connection with his pristine handiworks. Our peat bogs and gravel-beds, our river-deltas and submerged forests, punctuated now and then by some rude Celtic or more finished Roman work of art

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form, according to their theory, the registers of human progress in ages so very remote that Adam would have blushed to think of them.

Their argument stands something like this:-Peat is decomposed vegetable matter, decaying in a certain ratio. Allow us to fix that ratio at our own sweet will, and we can tell you to a nicety exactly how long any particular bed has been in course of formation. If we find a work of art buried in it, it becomes a mere question of arithmetic when it was so buried; but if it do not lie deep enough for our purpose, you must allow us the alternative of supposing that its peculiar form prevented its subsidence, and, like Mohammed's coffin, it remained suspended half-way.

These premises allowed, the theorist will have very easy work; but we protest against such arguments in limine. Peat in a semi-fluid state, as it often is, naturally finds its own level, and if it flow into a hollow of any depth, will, in a few hours, become as thick as, in the ordinary course of things, it would do in as many years. Yet the inference of these theorists is, that anywhere and everywhere it grows only at the rate of one inch and a fifth in each hundred years.

Unfortunately, too, facts are against this theory in certain definite and well-determined instances. Let us, however, pity the poor facts, and set them aside. For Sir Charles Lyell, one of the great apostles of this system, thinks so little of them as to admit that the overthrow of a forest in the middle of the seventeenth century gave rise to a peatmoss in Lochbroom, Ross-shire, from which in less than fifty years afterwards the inhabitants dug peat; though, according to his own principles, the thickness ought not to have been greater than six-tenths of an inch.

So, with the growth of mud-banks, and the deltas of our rivers, no matter how powerful the current, or over what description of stratum it might flow. Put it down in round numbers at one foot in four hundred years, or one thirty-third of an inch every year, and you will be astonished to find how very old our race is!

To such reasoners thirty-thousand years are but as yesterday when it is passed. On data like these is based the stupendous antiquity of the human family-the theory of our successive ages of flint, of bronze, and of iron, as those may know who will consult Professor Kirk's handy volume, "The Age of Man, Geologically Considered in its Bearings