any point or peninsula. The necessary circumnavigation of peninsular Greece gave rise to the word, and not that Timotheus did not take the direct route.

§ 254. Eschines here says that, in a few days the Pythian games were to be held, and the Amphictyonic council was to meet. On this passage Mr. C. quotes from Bremi that these games were not celebrated in the same month of different years, but that for the most part they took place in the month Elaphebolion or March. We believe that this information is erroneous in more than one respect, and beg leave to make a few remarks upon the point on account of its historical importance.

The death of Darius then as we have seen occurred in July 330, during the first month of the archon Aristophon at Athens, and the rival orations of Eschines and Demosthenes are assigned on the authority of Dionysius of Halicarnassus to the same year. Alexander would without fail send speedy news to Greece of the death of the Persian king. But he is spoken of as alive by Æschines in § 132, where he says "Is not the king of the Persians... now contending not for mastery over others but for the safety of his person?" These orations then were delivered during that archonship before the news of the death of Darius could reach Greece; that is we may say, without being venturesome before the first three months of the year had run out. The Pythia and the meeting of the council then fell upon the early part of the autumn.

The force of this argument - which in the words of Eschines we may call an ❝quxtos λóyos1 — is sought to be turned aside in a very strange and unsatisfactory way by Boeckh in his notes on the Amphictyonic marble. (Corp. Inscr. Vol. I. No. 1688.) He says: this could have been said even if the death of Darius were known. Nay, were it so known, so much the more weight does the sentence have, in which Æschines lays before the minds of the Athenians a very sad event lately announced, and in gentle words expresses his pity. All that Æschines says could be retained although something relating to the death of Darius be added. He might have written after this manner: νῦν οὐ περὶ τοῦ κύριος ἑτέρων εἶναι διαγωνίζεται, ἀλλ ̓ ἤδη περὶ τῆς τοῦ σώματος σωτηρίας· ὃν ἔναγχος ἠκούσατε ἀπεσφάχθαι: but he does not add this last clause, because all knew of the fact." Moreover, continues Boeckh, the passage where Eschines (§ 165) speaks of Alexander, as (to τns άoxzov etc.) beyond the north and almost

1 This is only one argument out of many in favor of assigning the Pythia to the autumn.

outside of the world, must refer to his northern expedition after the death of Darius. With regard to the first of these arguments, it is enough to say that if Æschines had written, as this eminent scholar says he might have done, he would have written absurdly even if Darius had left a successor; how much more when his empire fell with him. With regard to the second, we affirm that the words of Eschines are hyperbolic, and what renders it certain that they cannot have the reference which Boeckh seeks in them is, that they are connected in time by the orator with the warlike movements in Peloponnesus, on the part of the Lacedaemonians and others, in 331 B. C. "The Lacedaemonians and mercenaries met in battle and crushed the troops with Corragus -and all Arcadia had gone over except Megalopolis, and that was under siege and daily its capture expected, while Alexander had retired beyond the north, etc. and Antipater was a long time collecting an army, and the issue was uncertain." Can anything be clearer than that none of these circumstances is of later date than the death of Darius, unless they all are?

Boeckh entertained the opinion that the Pythia were held in the spring; but nearly everybody who has expressed himself on this subject of late has looked for them on the opposite side of the year, in the autumn, although the exact time cannot be ascertained. The important marble, to which reference was made above, informs us that they were to be celebrated in the Delphic month Bucatius. Without entering into the question in what part of the year that month fell, we can only say here, that K. F. Hermann regards it as made out and settled that it fell within the autumn, and he synchronizes it with the Attic month Baedromion. The evidence as to the time of the Pythia may be found in Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, Appendix I., and in Böhneke's Forschungen, Vol. I. p. 307. See also K. F. Hermann de anno Delphico, (Götting. 1844), his Griechische monatskunde (Götting. 1844.), p. 50, and his Religious Antiquities of Greece, § 49, note 12.

As the Amphictyonic Council met at Delphi in the autumn, their spring session was at Thermopylae. Hence the Documents in Demosthenes de Cor. (§§ 154, 155), which speak of a spring session at Delphi, on the occasion of which Æschines discourses at length (§ 115 -125), are likely to prove forgeries. We know that their character has been defended by Schömann (Antiq. jur. publ. Graec. p. 391), who accepts an hypothesis once started by Heeren, that the deputies always met spring and autumn, first at Thermopylae, and then, after some sacred rites were performed, adjourned to Delphi. But Aschines again oversets this theory; for the only meeting at the former place, of which we know anything, was, according to his statement (§ 128),

full of very important business. Meanwhile, five marbles have become known, dug up at Delphi, by the lamented Ottfried Müller, and published by his fellow-traveller, Ernest Curtius (Anecdota Delphica, Berl. 1843), which contain Amphictyonic decrees: on three of these marbles it is said that the decrees were passed at the autumnal session; while the others are without date. We have then evidence of a session in the autumn at Delphi; and of a meeting for business at the Straits: we have, on the other hand, no evidence of a meeting in the spring at Delphi, except that furnished by the documents in Demosthenes. These documents are defended by Böhneke on the plea that they belong to the actual spring session, not to that where Eschines made his speech, (which Böhneke also places in the fall), nor to the extraordinary one of which Æschines speaks § 128, 129; but to a regular one in the spring. One of the documents, however, refuses to have these screws put upon it; for it requires the deputies of the Council to go to the sacred land and set up boundaries and tell the Amphissans not to commit encroachment; whereas, even at the extraordinary session, before this supposed meeting, the council, so far from being thus mild, decreed a military expedition against the invaders of the sacred soil, and appointed a general. And the subsequent complaints against the Amphissans were not for using that ground for pasturage and arable land, but for not paying their fine and restoring the exiles whom the council had required them to banish.

To sum up all in a word, the Pythia were held in autumn; the Amphictyonic council convened at Delphi in the autumn, and as far as anything is known only there; and the events in which Eschines was an actor at Delphi, were therefore in the autumn of B. C. 340, soon after his election probably to the office of pylagoras.

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§ 258. παρ' ουδὲν μὲν ἦλθον ἀποκτεῖναι. “ By nothing did they come from killing him, like the Latin minimum aberat quin interficerent; i. e. his punishment was equal to death." We were surprised at reading these words; nor was our surprize lessened when we found that Bremi led Mr. C. into his interpretation by saying, 'poena qua multabant eum mortis poenam aequiparabat.' As the Athenians only warned Arthmius out of their territory, one would think that this fact, if nothing else, would be seen to be adverse to this rendering. Is it necessary to say that the meaning is, they came within next to nothing of killing him.' Not that they touched him even with one of their fingers, but their feelings were such, that a very little more and they would have put him to death. - T. D. W.

ARTICLE III.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF CHRIST, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE DISCOURSE IN MATT. XXIV. AND XXV.

By Prof. C. E. Stowe, D. D., Cincinnati.

INTRODUCTION.

Ir will be admitted, I presume, by every intelligent reader of the Bible and the commentaries upon it, that there is often very great vagueness, uncertainty, and inconsistency in the interpretation of its language. It will also be admitted, I believe, that these faulty interpretations cannot fairly be attributed to the language itself; for most readers are convinced that there is scarcely a mode of speech in the whole compass of literature more simple, direct, and intelligible than is the language of the Bible as to much the greater portion of it. There must be some other cause, and the following, I suppose, will generally be received as the true cause, namely: Men who profess to be Christians usually feel obliged to believe what the Bible affirms ; if any passage of the Bible, therefore, understood in its obvious and true sense, states a sentiment which they are strongly disinclined to believe, there is a powerful temptation to reconcile the words to some other meaning more agreeable to the interpreter. Hence has arisen a very general practice of interpreting meanings derived from other sources into the words of the Bible, instead of simply explaining the words themselves according to grammatical usage, the context, and the nature of the subject. The art of interpretation, instead of being a simple hydrant by which the waters of life may be drawn out of their receptacles for our use, has too often been made a sort of forcing-pump, by which other waters, not of life, have been driven into the Scriptural reservoirs. Some interpreters are in this respect much more guilty than others, but almost all have participated in the sin more or less. There is scarcely one who does not find some passage somewhere in the Bible, in respect to which he would like a little more latitude than the strictest rules of grammatical interpretation, faithfully carried out, will allow him; and if he himself takes this latitude, he cannot be very severe on others when they take the same. Hence the very great prevalence of the practice in all parties.

ESCHATOLOGICAL TEXTS.

In view of these remarks, I propose to examine, by the strictest rules of grammatical interpretation, some of the more important eschatological texts contained in the record of our Lord's discourses, particularly MATTHEW XXIV. 29-31, and its parallels MARK XIII. 24-27 and LUKE XXI. 25-27, and see what they really import when thus examined.

The reader, that we may enter upon the subject understandingly, is earnestly requested, before we proceed any further with these remarks, to take the Greek Testament and carefully examine for himself the following eschatological passages from the discourses of Christ recorded in the Gospels:

It is the purpose of the following pages to point out and illustrate the right interpretation of these and similar texts. In respect to all which are cited in the above paragraphs, there is but little difference of opinion among interpreters of any authority or note. They are generally understood in their obvious sense, as being really eschatological, as pertaining to the final judgment and a future state of rewards and punishments in the eternal world. The passage in MATTHEW XXIV. 29—31, however, though in all respects similar to these, on account of the connection in which it stands, and some difficulties which are supposed to arise from the context, has not been so unanimously agreed upon. To this text, therefore, our attention will be principally directed; for if it can be shown that this must be understood eschatologically, must be interpreted as referring to the final judgment, there