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to come. I am sailing to India, and intend to be absent there ten days, and then to return. The wise among you will understand." At first this would appear simply mysterious and unaccountable. But when six or seven years had elapsed, without further tidings, except of his safe arrival, it might be natural and reasonable to suppose that he had secretly purposed to remain absent ten years. The illustration is imperfect, because of the many casualties which may frustrate the designs of men, but it may help to explain the warrant in this case for the symbolical meaning.

The circumstances, then, under which these dates are given, suggest the notion of some peculiar and recondite sense, but give no precise key to its nature. The passage in Numbers, like the prophecy of the seventy weeks, supplies the key which was wanting, and yields a firm basis for the maxim, that a day is used to represent a natural year.

III. THE TYPICAL SIEGE OF EZEKIEL is a third main argument by which the year-day theory is sustained. And here, also, it will be desirable to give the words of the text.

Ezek. iv. 4-9. "Lie thou also on thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it; after the number of the "days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days; I have appointed thee a day for a year, a day for a year. Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophecy against it. And behold I will

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lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege. Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie on thy side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof."

The argument from this passage exactly resembles the last. Ezekiel, like the spies, is a type of the nation of Israel; his recumbent posture, of their degradation by national sin; and the days represent an equal number of years, to be completed before the consummation of judgment. The only difference between this and the prophetic days is the difference between a type and a symbol. Ezekiel was a real person representing the nation; the woman (Rev. xii.) is an unreal emblem denoting the Church of God. The days in Ezekiel were actual days, representing the same number of years; and the days in the Apocalypse are unreal days, mentally suggested by the letter of the passage, representing the same number of years. The analogy, in this as in the former instance, is full and complete ; and the seventy weeks, as has been shown, point to exactly the same conclusion.

The objection to this argument is various in form, but in little besides, and chiefly rests on a total misconception of the year-day theory.

1. First, it has been roundly asserted (Rev. Lit., p. xviii.) that the instance is "nothing at all to the point;" that it was "merely the exhibition of a past fact;" and that "there is not an atom of prophecy in this part of the transaction."

This is bold and confident, but, unhappily for the conclusion, it is quite untrue. The prophecy was in Q ૩

the fifth year of Jehoiachim's captivity, or about July, B.C. 594. The three hundred and ninety years, according to Usher, whose view Mr. Faber adopts, occupy the interval B.C. 974-584. Perhaps more exactly, they reach from the accession of Rehoboam to the fall of the temple, B.C. 976-587. Hence this prophetic type was given at least seven years before the completion of the predicted time. And here it must be observed that the true object of the prediction was not the events to occur during the continuance of those years, but the siege by which they would be finished, and the nation led captive from the land.

The case is just similar with the other type of the forty days, and the forty years of Judah. They must either close, like the former, at or just after the fall of the first temple; or else, which is possible, denote the interval of forbearance before the fall of the second temple, A.D. 30-70. In either case, their termination, the predicted event, was future when the type was given. It thus appears that the objection itself is, in fact, entirely devoid of truth.

2. There are next several remarks quoted by Mr. Maitland from Bishop Horsley, for which the reputation of the writer claims a notice by no means due to their own weight or justice :

"Where shall we find, in any of the sacred writers, one indubitable instance in which day is put for year? Is it when we are told that the day of temptation in the wilderness was forty years? or when we are told that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day? Certainly, it might be concluded, with more colour of reason, from the first passage, that a day is forty years; or a thousand years from the second, than it is inferred from Ezekiel and Daniel that it is a year."

"How is it to be inferred (from Ezekiel) that a day in prophecy always signifies a year; or indeed ever, except in this in

stance, where the signification lies not in the word, but in the action publicly exhibited? It might, as I think, with equal reason, and by the same analogy, be concluded, that the word ironplate, wherever it occurs in the writings of the prophets, is to be understood figuratively of the wall of a city; for the iron-plate of Ezekiel is as much a type of the wall of Jerusalem, as his forty days of forty years. Nothing, therefore, can be concluded from this passage of Ezekiel concerning any figurative sense of the word day in the prophetic writings, or in any other passage. Indeed, as a word, it is here used without any figure at all for that portion of time which we generally mean by a day."

This able and learned, but self-confident author, seems here to be equally at fault in his assertions and his reasonings.

(1). The whole triumphant inquiry depends on a misconception, as if a day were said to be grammatically translated by a year. This has been justly and forcibly exposed by Mr. Faber. In fact, all the advocates of the year-day theory presuppose the mental suggestion and intervention of days in the interpretation of the times, just as much as the ideal intervention of beasts in the prediction of empires. The objection is thus, in its foundation, a building of sand.

(2). There are three plain instances in which a day is put for a year, that is, to represent it, one in Numbers and two in Ezekiel; besides the not less conclusive instance of the seventy weeks.

(3). To say that there is more colour of reason for concluding that a day is forty, or a thousand years, is an exaggeration quite unworthy of the writer. There are three instances in the first case, and only one each of the two others. What is of still more weight, the analogy of the year-day does not rest on a bare unit, but is exhibited in three numbers of considerable size-forty, three hundred, and ninety, and forty days. In each of the others it is a single unit only, where loose metaphors

might have a more natural place. It would be more exact, then, to say that the evidence for the year-day system is four hundred and seventy times as great as for either of the others.

(4). The objection is still more unfounded for a second reason. We have strong scriptural grounds to believe that a day does in several passages really signify and represent a thousand years; and this opinion has prevailed in the Church from early times. The bishop could, therefore, scarcely have chosen an objection more · destructive to his own cause.

(5). The other remarks hardly deserve a reply. When a passage shall be found in which three hundred iron plates are declared to represent three hundred walls, or forty iron plates to represent forty walls, or ten, or five, or even two, in the same manner, we may bow to the conclusion. We will then freely consent to the propriety of expounding the word by the wall of a city, in every place of the prophets where the bishop requires us-a concession doubly safe, since not one single passage of the kind is to be found.

(6). But "how is it inferred that a day always in prophecy denotes a year?" I answer, few or none assert that it does. The assertion is limited to specific passages, which bear on their face, when compared with each other and the context, the mark of some hidden meaning. Some proofs of this have been offered in the former chapter, and more will presently be given. The texts in Numbers and Ezekiel presuppose, in their application, the general presumptions in favour of some secret meaning. They then supply us, from two distinct sources, with a divine pattern of symbolical time, which exactly corresponds, like a key to the lock, with the mysterious passages; lends a precise and simple. rule for their exposition; and, by the triple coincidence,