that each is the same kind of apostrophe, produced by the common sensibility, and by the emotion arising from the common sensibility, on two distinct, but cognate, occasions, of the near prospect of the same painful and disastrous event.

The part addressed to the multitude, which concludes the chapter, admits also of distribution into the substance of 54-56. and the substance of 57–59. The first of these contains a distinct allusion to the demand of a sign, that is, an extraordinary proof of the truth of our Saviour's character, preferred and declined in the eleventh chapter. If there were any doubt upon this point, it would be removed by a comparison with Matt. xvi. 1-4. where the demand of such a sign, characterized by its proper name, as the sign from heaven, is found to have been put, and declined, in terms almost the same; the account of which was probably omitted, at the time, in the corresponding part of St. Luke's Gospel, because he knew that something of the same kind would come over again here. Οψίας γενομένης, λέγετε εὐδία (ἔσται·) πυῤῥάζει γὰρ ὁ οὐρανός· καὶ πρωΐ· σήμερον χειμών πυῤῥάζει γὰρ στυγνάζων ὁ οὐρανός. Ὑποκριταί, τὸ μὲν πρόσωπον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ γινώσκετε διακρίνειν, τὰ δὲ σημεῖα τῶν καιρῶν οὐ δύνασθε ;

In both these instances, the nature of the reasoning employed is to proceed upon the acknowledged observation of certain natural phenomena, as indicating certain natural effects, the connection between which was obvious to every one; and as a case in point, they constitute the principles of a reductio ad absurdum, that it was mere hypocrisy to be able thus to judge of the signs of the weather, or to draw the proper inference from the affections of the heavens, and yet to mistake the signs of the times-not to draw the proper inference from the events which were daily passing before their eyes.

That the demand, then, of an extraordinary means of conviction, distinct from the ordinary, or the evidence daily produced, may be equally referred to in both these instances must be apparent. There is some difference, however, in the later, compared with the former, which convinces me

that more is intended by that, than was by this. It is not without reason that St. Matthew's general designation οἱ σημεῖα τῶν καιρῶν διακρίνειν is changed in St. Luke, for the particular one of τὸν δὲ καιρὸν τοῦτον πῶς οὐ δοκιμάζετε; The truth is our Lord in St. Matthew is reproaching his hearers with not discerning, in the proofs of his divine commission daily vouchsafed before, the time or season of the Messiah in general; in St. Luke, with not discovering, from the same proofs, as now vouchsafed, the last time or season of the Messias in particular. The illustrations, which he employs, will lead to no other conclusion.

It is a well known fact, with respect to Judæa, that the seasons of rain, and of fair weather, in that country, were fixed and determinate: each had its proper commencement, and each its proper termination; and there was a definite interval between them. No allusion occurs in the sacred writers, except to two such periods of rain, at opposite quarters of the year, and called respectively the former and the latter rain. From the last passage, quoted below 8, which is to this effect, He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain, in the first month -it appears that the latter rain was the rain which fell in the spring, in or about the first month of the sacred year, Abib or Nisan, answering partly to April and partly to March with us. The same thing is implied by Jerome in his commentary upon Amosh; Quæ locusta venit in principio imbris serotini, quando cuncta virent, et parturit omnis ager, et diversarum arborum flores in sui generis poma erumpuntur: for this is a description of the month Adar among the Jews. This, then, is the rain alluded to by Solomoni; For lo! the winter is past; the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Amos iv. 7. it is said, And, also, I have withholden the

Lev. xxvi. 4. Deut. xi. 14. xxviii. 12. Jerem. iii. 3. v. 24. Hos. vi. 3. Zech. x. 1. Joel ii. 23.

rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest-which harvest being necessarily the wheat harvest, the season whereof was Pentecost, the period of the rain, three months prior to that, is at least the close of the last, or the beginning of the first, month in the sacred year. Jerome's commentary, ut supra, is to this effect, Significat vernum tempus extremi mensis Aprilis, a quo ad messem frumenti tres menses supersunt, Maius, Junius, Juliuswhich, however, is not altogether a correct statement; for wheat harvest in Judæa, no more than in Egypt, was ever later than the beginning of June. Δυομένης Πλειάδος, that is, about the end of the brumal quarter*, is specified by

* I am well aware that the notes of time, δυομένης Πλειάδος, περὶ Пády dúow, and the like, in their ordinary acceptation imply just the reverse of this; the commencement of the autumnal, not the end of the brumal, quarter. But that Josephus intended to describe the period of the vernal rains, whether he has described it by its proper characteristics, or no, appears from the fact that this supply of water from heaven was early in the duration of the siege, and long prior to the feast of Tabernacles. Now the feast of Tabernacles could never be later than the period ordinarily meant by the Пáday dứσs—which the ancient Calendariak place about forty-three or forty-four days after the autumnal equinox, as they do their rising about the same time after the vernal. Fortyfour days after the autumnal equinox would bring us to the seventh of November; almost a month later than the latest time when the feast of Tabernacles could fall. The necessity of the case, then, requires that Josephus should be understood of the Πλειάδων ἐπιToλ, not the dis-the time of which would be early in May, not much posterior to the ordinary termination of the vernal rains.

There is a passage in Eschylus which, as implying a similar inaccuracy, admits of comparison with this of Josephus. Speaking of the capture of Troy, he describes the io veoσòs, equus durateus, as

Πήδημ ̓ ὀρούσας ἀμφὶ Πλειάδων δύσιν. Agam. 799. whereas the uniform historical tradition is that Troy was taken in the Attic month Thargelion, Scirrophorion, or the like,

Et Danaûm decimo vere redisse rates.

k Plin. H. N. xviii. 25. ii. 47. xi. 16. xvii. 18.

Josephus as the beginning of one of the rainy seasons; consequently, of the vernal or latter rain as such. Now as the period of barley-harvest coincided with the anniversary of the Passover, and the effect of the latter rains, as indeed of the rainy season in general, when over, was necessarily to swell the Jordan, hence it is stated in the Book of Joshuam, Jordan overfloweth all his banks, all the time of harvest, that is, of barley-harvest; for the river was crossed on the tenth of Nisan". Before the time of barley-harvest, that is, before the middle of Nisan, which in a rectified year would answer to the middle of April, the vernal rains would almost always be long over: and in most years by the middle of March. There is a case in point, mentioned by Josephus, when the Jordan was impassable on account of the rain, on the fourth of Dystrus; which corresponded in that year to February 25°.

After the cessation of the last or the spring rains, the continuance of fine weather until the periodic recurrence of the first or the autumnal, that is, all through the vernal and summer quarters, is equally well attested. Enáviov dè, eï Σπάνιον ποτε, τὸ κλίμα τοῦτο θέρους ὕεταιΡ: Nunquam in fine mensis Junii, sive in mense Julio, in his provinciis, maximeque in Judæa, pluvias vidimus 9. Hence, at the inauguration of Saul, which 1 Sam. xii. 17. proves to have taken place about the feast of Pentecost, or in the axun of wheat-harvest, thunder and rain were so strange a phenomenon, as justly to be appealed to in token of the displeasure of God.

Nor is this all. The interval between the latter and the former rains seems to have been in general as near as possible the interval between the autumnal and the vernal equinox, or about six months. The one were over before the Passover, and the other set in shortly after the Scenopegia1. The duration of the dearth in the time of Elijah, though not specified in the Old Testament, further than as almost

Ant. Jud. xiii. viii. 2. xii. 15. Jerem. xii. 5. xlix. 19.

Note.

m iii. 15. niv. 19. Vide also 1 Chron. • B. Jud. iv. vii. 3. 5. P B. Jud. iii. vii. 12. Vide also Ant. xviii. viii. 6.

Oper. iii. 1401.

Ezra x. 9-13.

Vol. i. p. 580.

a Hieronymi

three years, is twice specified in the News, and each time as a dearth of three years and six months in length; which is to be accounted for in this manner. The strictly preternatural period of the drought both began and terminated, as was to be expected, with the ordinary season of the first rain; that is, the autumnal quarter of the year: and lasted just three years in all. The six months, in addition to that, were, consequently, the ordinary interval between the latter and the former rain: which, though they did certainly aggravate the whole duration, and the consequent effects, of the drought, could not by themselves have been considered unnatural or extraordinary.

That this explanation is correct appears from Josephus ', who cites Menander, the Tyrian historian, in testimony to a drought in the reign of Ithobal, the Ethbaal of Scripture, and father of Jezebel, which extended from Hyperberetæus, or Tisri, in one year, to the same month in the next. And hence we may better appreciate the maternal piety of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, and concubine of Saul, which is instanced in 2 Sam. xxi. 9. 10. For these seven men were put to death in the first days of barley-harvest, that is, so early as the sixteenth of Nisan-and her watching over their bodies, which lasted until water dropped upon them out of heaven, must have continued past the same time in the month of Tisri. The Mishna places the recurrence of the autumnal rains, one year with another, about the end of the first week in Marchesvan; a fortnight after the close of the feast of Tabernacles "*.

*Josephus supplies a case in point when they appear to have so begun. The remarkable storm of rain and wind, which is there described, being not many days later than the arrival of John of Gischala at Jerusalem, nor that arrival than the end of the month Tisri, must have coincided with about the middle of Marchesvan, and have been, consequently, the setting in of the autumnal rains. See also a similar instance, in Diodorus Siculus",