the East India Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar he calls Merodach "the supreme Master," "the First-born," "Chief of all the gods," "divine presence of heaven and earth," "Lord God," "lofty Master of the gods," and then identifies him with the supreme divine essence Ilu, who is figured in the monuments as the winged circle hovering over the royal throne. Here was an evident tendency to the monotheism that became more distinct, even, in the succeeding Persian dynasty of Cyrus and his successors, who worshipped their one god under the name of Ormazd; and the Jewish translator of Nebuchadnezzar's proclamation had the right, in his version, to identify this Ilu, Bel-Merodach, with the one God, Elohim or Ilaya of the Jews. But it will be noticed, that the designations and attributes given to the almighty God in this proclamation of Nebuchadnezzar are such as would be expected from a Babylonian rather than a Jew. The name Jehovah is not used. He is the "high God," "the Most High,” "the God of heaven." At the same time, there are traces of polytheism in the casual mention of the fact that Daniel's name was Belteshazzar, “after the name of my God," and that "the spirit of the holy gods" was in him.

While I have said that it is not a natural and plausible thing that the great king should in a public proclamation have dwelt upon his own humiliation, and that we may suppose this fact to have been enlarged upon by the Aramæan translator, yet it is not at all contrary to the spirit of the monuments of Babylon that its kings should take as humble a position before their gods as Nebuchadnezzar takes before the Most High. They were always ready to express themselves humbly and repentantly to the gods. King Assurbanipal was as proud of his great conquests as was Nebuchadnezzar, yet we have this admirable prayer of his:

"May the careful regard which shines in Thine eternal face dissipate my sadness, and never may the fury and wrath of God come nigh

unto me!

"May the forgiveness of my transgressions and my sins reconcile me, who am His servant, with Him!

"May Thy mighty face bring me help!

"May it shine like the heaven, and load me with fortune and riches. May it abound like the earth with fortune and unnumbered blessings !"

Similarly Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, in view of the storm which began to gather from the side of Persia and to threaten his crown, humbly addressed himself to the god Sin:

"In my state of sin towards His great divinity, may He save me, Nabonidus, and generously grant me length of life to distant years.

"And as to Belshazzar, my first-born son, the offspring of my heart, inspire his heart with devotion to Thy great divinity, that he may never wander into sin nor take pleasure in falsehood."

I have thus briefly taken up nearly every point where the account in Daniel touches Babylonian history and habits, and as frankly as I could, to show where there is confirmation from the monuments, and where we may suspect any contradiction. The contradictions existing are easily explained by the condition of the book and the hands of the translator, or paraphrast rather, through which considerable portions have passed. I have not spoken of the remarkable appearance on the wall of a hand, and the Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, which appeared to Belshazzar. That comes into the realm of the miraculous. I can only say that I do not know why the wise men were unable to read it. The Aramæan language in which the words come down to us was perfectly familiar to the Chaldeans, and was the language of much of the trade of the city. It may be that the chapter being translated from the Hebrew which is lost, these words represent a Hebrew original, which would not have been familiar to the Chaldeans. We do not know what that original Hebrew was, and it is quite conceivable that in the early text it was only stated that they could not interpret the writing, and not also that they could not read it.

Let us now, in conclusion, contrast this Book of Daniel which we are told is a mere Jewish romance of the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, written to encourage Jews under the Maccabees in their struggle against their cruel and sacrilegious foe, with a book that we know was thus written

for just such a purpose. We have seen that the Book of Daniel is full of absolutely correct accounts of Babylonian history and correct allusions to Babylonian customs and institutions. There is a naturalness about it which by no means could have been simulated by any wealth of antiquarian learning existing three hundred years later, and which would be very difficult to attain in the case of any writer of the present day who might wish to give us a romance of the days of Luther and Christopher Columbus. With Daniel compare the Book of Judith, which is in reality apocryphal, to which no one now attributes an historical character, which is everywhere contradicted by the monuments, actually written by a pious Jew merely to encourage his

people in the wars of the Maccabees. What do we find? Let Lenormant answer:

"A king of Assyria who never existed; a Nebuchadnezzar ruling at Nineveh, where no Nebuchadnezzar ever ruled; defeated in the twelfth year of his reign, on the territory of an equally unknown king of the Elamites, Arioch, and at an epoch when Elam had ceased to have an independent existence, in a plain which at the same time is near the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, a river of India; and a king of the Medes who bears the Shemitic name of Arphaxad, a name given to a descendant of Shem, in the tenth chapter of Genesis. After having vanquished the Medes, the king of Assyria becomes conqueror of the world. His general, who bears a Persian name, Holofernes (Urufrana), conquers all Syria in a campaign of fantastic geography, and at last comes to the land of Judah, which is under an unnamed king, lays siege to a city which no one knows where to place, and which is nowhere else mentioned, but whose name Beth-eloah, 'House of God,' is quite allegorical. This is a city which a woman delivers, whose name is not less significant, Judith, The Jewess.' Here is evident fiction. We are in the domain of impossibilities, of names taken at hazard and which clash when put together. It is impossible not to see that the author has invented the story as a medium by which to convey the excellent moral lessons which give to the Book of Judith so much value for the heart and the conscience, but not at all for history. How different is the case with the Book of Daniel, in which each character, even the long lost Belshazzar, is as historical in his physiognomy as are those of the court of Xerxes in the Book of Esther."

IX. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF MAN.

BY PROFESSOR STEARNS.

WHAT is man? What is his meaning and his final purpose? Every philosophy, every theology, every religion must give some answer. It is not too much to say that their value may be gauged by the answer they furnish. If Christianity is to vindicate its claim to absolute truth, we shall expect from it also an adequate response.

It must be a thoroughly Christian response. To look at man from any lower point of view than that proper to Christianity as distinctively the religion of Christ would be a confession of failure. The problem of humanity can be solved only in the light of Christ's revelation. The scientific, archæological, and ethical discussions which form the bulk of that division of our systematic theologies denominated anthropology have their value in their place, but in no sense do they furnish a Christian doctrine of man. Theology has here a greater work to do.

It is the object of this article to show that in the idea of sonship revealed by Christ are to be found the distinctive features of the Christian conception of man. It is not asserted that this idea includes all the truth which Christianity has taught man concerning himself. As Christianity itself is larger than any system of doctrine, so the Christian conception of man is larger than any single form of scriptural or doctrinal representation. But upon no other form has Christianity so deeply stamped its meaning. The Fatherhood of God gives us the truest and most comprehensive conception of the Divine nature. The sonship of man is its pregnant correlate.

Our examination of the subject must start from the Person of the Redeemer. The Incarnate Son is the perfect Revelation. As in Him God is revealed in His true character, so that He could say, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," so humanity is revealed in Him in its true meaning. To know Christ is to know man in his perfection; it is to catch the divine secret of his essential being. Now, since Christ was Divine, we might expect that His life in manhood would manifest and illustrate humanity pre-eminently upon the side on which it is allied to God, namely, in the moral and spiritual

life. Accordingly, we find in Him the realization of man's true relation to his Maker as a son or child of God, a revelation at once of human capacity, duty, and destiny. What is the nature of this sonship? In a word, fellowship with God and moral and spiritual likeness to Him. It has its deep, unfailing springs in the prevenient love of the Divine Father. It is the manifestation of a corresponding love. Its vital element is a personal, intimate knowledge of God. It involves trust, dependence, perfect obedience. Its meat is to do the will of the Father in Heaven. It does not exclude, nay rather it requires, a process of moral development, in which temptations withstood and discipline cheerfully undergone, in the freedom of an uncoerced will, yet only through the power of the Father, take a prominent place. It voices its communion and its needs in prayer. It glorifies the Father by making known His perfections in the mirror of a filial life, and the testimony of a filial love. Not least-may we not even say greatest-it manifests itself in the love of brotherhood to all whom the Father loves, devoting itself in absolute self-sacrifice to the task of restoring His other children to His fellowship. It was this perfect revelation of sonship that received the seal of the Father's approval at the great crisis of the Saviour's ministry, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And here we need not hesitate to employ, as explicative of Christ's filial humanity, the title Son of God. It is true that it belongs to Him in a special and unique sense, in which no man can share it with Him. The New Testament teaches the metaphysical oneness of the Son with the Father, clearly distinguishing His preëxistent Divine nature from our human nature, into which He entered at the incarnation, and calling Him in this higher sense the Son. But granting all this, it is also true that the term Son designates that characteristic in the eternal relations of God which can be exhibited in manhood and imitated by men. The essential relation must indeed underlie the personal and spiritual relation. It is unique, transcendent, incomprehensible. But the conceptions of Fatherhood and sonship give us that which is comprehensible, capable of revelation not only to humanity, but in humanity and of being copied by humanity. When God made men in His own image, He made them capable of entering into a relation to Him like that in which the Divine Son had eternally stood to the Divine Father. He provided from the first for a unique revelation of sonship in humanity, in which the eternal relation should be manifested, not partially but perfectly, in One who should be at once Son of God and Son of Man,