rule of a just and pious king like Josiah, whose ancestors, they would be aware, had once been the sovereigns of Samaria, as well as of Judea. It is also to be observed that the Scythian dominion in Asia bears, in some measure, upon the disastrous defeat of Josiah at Megiddo, and the melancholy close of his life and reign. If the Scythians had not vanquished the Mede, and established themselves in the regions of the Tigris and Euphrates, PharaohNecho might not have ventured to undertake an expedition to the borders of Mesopotamia. The same barbarian triumph and dominion invited (or perhaps almost constrained) Josiah to assume the sovereignty of Samaria. This increase of power and dominion was a strong temptation to lead him unconsciously to depart, in some measure, from the devout and humble fear of God which had previously possessed his heart. He appears, from the completion of his reformation to the close of his reign, to have been virtually the sovereign of Samaria as well as of Judea. And when Pharaoh-Necho was marching, on his way to the Euphrates, through a portion of the territory of the ten tribes, Josiah, in addition to other motives, would naturally resent the act as an infringement upon his own regal rights and sovereignty, and would resist the Egyptian, not as the lord of the two tribes of Rehoboam's kingdom, but as reigning over the dominions of his ancestor David: and, through an unhappily blind and culpable self-confidence in consequence of the gracious promise that he should be gathered to his grave in peace-a promise necessarily conditional upon his obedience to the Divine will-he appears to have marched, without duly seeking counsel of the Lord, to the plain of Megiddo, where he was mortally wounded, and died shortly after at Jerusalem.a

The Scytho-Cimmerian narrative of the venerable father of history will suggest more than one important reflection to the mind of the Christian reader.

Should we not adore the divine wisdom and power manifested in the unexpected provision made for the accomplishment of predictions uttered many years previously by the prophet Isaiah to the king Hezekiah? Behold, the days come that all that is in thine house, and all that thy fathers have laid up in store for thee until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the Lord; and thy sons shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon' (Isa. xxxix. 7). But when we look at the

This promise was, however, fulfilled in its essential features. For Josiah died at Jerusalem in the midst of his friends, without witnessing any of the calamities which afterwards befel his devoted country, and was buried in the sepulchre of his fathers. It is said of another illustrious reformer, Hezekiah, that 'God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart.' 2 Chron. xxxii.

31.

defeat and death of Phraortes, the power of Nineveh seems again to revive, and the term of Chaldean subjection and inferiority to be prolonged-nay, when Cyaxares smites the Assyrian, and lays siege to his metropolis, all hope of early Babylonian independence may seem to have vanished; for, if the son of Phraortes had succeeded in gaining possession of Nineveh, Babylon would most likely have become a province of the Median, as previously of the Assyrian empire; and the fierce ambition, power, and military skill of Cyaxares would have effectually overshadowed Asia during his reign. And how is this Median triumph to be prevented, and Babylon be permitted to rise into independence? A horde of unknown Scythian barbarians, under the overruling guidance of an unseen and almighty hand, unwittingly turns aside from the track of those whom it is eagerly seeking, and unexpectedly encounters and smites the Median conquerors occupied, at the time, in the siege of Nineveh. These same barbarians, by their subsequent dominion in Asia during twenty-eight years, gave to Babylon the opportunity of assuming independent royalty, rising into imperial power and greatness, and fulfilling the predictions of the Hebrew prophets. It was their victories which so thoroughly destroyed for a time all political connection between Palestine and Nineveh as to enable Josiah (without wrong to the Assyrian monarch) to accomplish the divinely-predicted desecration and overthrow of the altar at Bethel, and also to exercise a sovereign anti-idolatrous jurisdiction to the glory of the God of Israel, not only in Judea, but also in the land of the ten tribes on the western side of the Jordan.

I shall now close this essay with a brief notice of the prediction delivered at Bethel before the first king of the ten tribes: And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord; behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee' (1 Kings xiii. 1). If the Lord had announced that the future Josiah was to wage a triumphant warfare against idolatrous altars and high places throughout the land of Ephraim, and rule as a king in the territory of the ten tribes, some royal descendant of David might have been tempted to anticipate the divine purpose by presumptuously giving the predicted name to his son and heir. But the

The particular name of the tribe is unknown; that of the Cimmerians seems allied to the Gomer of prophecy.

desolation of the single altar at Bethel, on the very confines of Judea, was too unimportant (so to speak) an achievement to excite the attention and ambition of a Jewish king; and the prophetic announcement appears to have slumbered in comparative neglect and obscurity. And as Bethel was consecrated in Jewish recollections as the place where their illustrious ancestor Jacob had received the typical vision of the ladder which reached from earth to heaven, a much earlier fulfilment of the denunciation might have been expected than that which took place three centuries afterwards. Yet during that long interval no Jewish king appears to have been induced to bestow the name of Josiah upon his firstborn; nor, perhaps, can one be mentioned earlier than Manasseh who was likely to do so from private and personal motives, without any reference whatever to the prophetic denunciation of which we are speaking. But the Most High ever chooses his own times and seasons, without consulting the judgment of man. When, however, the appointed time at length arrived, it is very possible that neither Manasseh nor Amon was aware that any such threat had ever been uttered against Bethel indeed, it may be well believed that the truly penitent and humbled Manasseh would have shrunk from the presumption of giving the name, had he been aware of the prophecy. And we may readily suppose that Manasseh (unconsciously moved by a divine impulse), without one thought of Bethel or its altar, in humble and adoring gratitude for his own twofold merciful deliverance from Babylonish captivity and idolatrous apostasy, proposed that the name Josiah (Jehovah heals) should be given to his grandson-a name so deeply and truly significant of the goodness and forbearance of God towards himself. And thus would the Most High, by the most simple and natural means, provide that the name long previously predicted, should, in His own due season, be given to him who was destined to desecrate and desolate the idolatrous altar and high places at Bethel.

ADDENDA.

It has been recently asserted that the eclipse which occurred on the 28th May, 585 B.C., is to be regarded as that which was predicted by Thales, and which closed the Lydo-Median war in its sixth campaign. The following are some of the historical objections to this hypothesis.

I. (a.) 480 B.C. is now generally considered as the ascertained date of the battle of Salamis. According to Herodotus, the Greeks obtained this victory in the 6th or 7th year of the reign of Xerxes. Thus fifty years intervened between the battle of Salamis and the death of Cyrus, who therefore died cir. 530 B.C. (b.) As Cyrus reigned 29 years and Astyages 35 years, the death of Cyrus must have happened 64 years after that of Cyaxares, who therefore died cir. 594 B.C. (c.) Hence, if Cyaxares (in whose reign the eclipse of Thales closed the Lyod-Median war) died cir. 594, it follows that the eclipse in question could not have occurred so late as 585 B.C.

II. If we admit that Herodotus has correctly given 64 years as the amount of the united reigns of Cyrus and Astyages, the eclipse of 585 B.C. cannot be received as that predicted by Thales. Two questions, however, will here naturally suggest themselves. (d.) May we not suppose that the reign of Cyrus really commenced in Persia, at the death of his father Cambyses, and thus its earlier portion may have synchronised with the latter part of the reign of Astyages, in which case the above interval of 64 years may be sufficiently shortened for the admission of the 585 hypothesis? Herodotus seems positively to forbid any such supposition, whatever Xenophon, in his (perhaps) philosophical romance, may have taught to the contrary. In Herodotus, Cambyses is only a respectable Persian nobleman, whose comparative obscurity recommended him to Astyages as a suitable husband for his daughter Mandane; and Cyrus himself, in the forged letter which, when preparing to revolt, he read to the assembly of his countrymen, stated that Astyages had made him general of the Persians.' Nor

is the language of the historian less decisive on this point, when, speaking of the defeat of Astyages, he says, 'Cyrus, therefore, having been thus born and educated, came to the throne.' B. 1, c. 130.

III. We come now to the second question. Is it at all improbable that transcribers—even if Herodotus wrote his numbers fully in words, and not in any abbreviated form-may, in the course of time, have inadvertently (for there is no conceivable motive for designed change) altered one or both of the numbers originally assigned by Herodotus to the reigns of Cyrus and Astyages? (e.) The length of the reign of Astyages. Our present text of Herodotus scarcely permits us to take a single year from the thirty-five of this king's reign. This is almost proved by the following passage from B. 1, c. 130: Astyages, after

6

The battle of Salamis was fought in the sixth or seventh of Xerxes (Book 7, chap. 20). Darius reigned thirty-six years, and the united reigns of Cambyses and Smerdis amounted to eight years; in all about fifty years.

he had reigned thirty-five years, was thus deposed; and the Medes bent under the Persian yoke, after they had ruled over all Asia beyond the river Halys, for the space of one hundred and twenty-eight years, excepting the interval of the Scythian dominion.' There is here a slight error of excess, yet not such as to affect the argument. For other data in Herodotus teach us that the united reigns of the Median kings amounted to 150 years; and if from this number we subtract the 28 years of the Scythian rule, we have 122, and not 128 years, as in our present copies. The mistake, however, whether it arose from the inattention of the historian or his transcribers, is perhaps easily explained; for as the duration of the Scythian dominion (named in this passage in such close connection with that of the Median kingdom) was twenty-eight years, Herodotus himself may (not at all improbably) have unconsciously written 28 after the 100, instead of the correct number 22. At all events, it may be fairly concluded from this passage that, in the original text of Herodotus, the Median kingdom was stated to have continued more than 120 years, deducting the 28 years of the Scythian rule; and, if the assigned lengths of the reigns of the preceding Median kings are correct, this could not be, unless we allow Astyages to have reigned at least thirty-four years. Thus we have a twofold assertion of the length of the reign of Astyages -1, directly and in express terms; 2, by inference from the whole duration of the Median kingdom. It is therefore improbable that transcribers should have changed the number originally assigned by Herodotus to the years of Astyages' reign. (f.) The following consideration tends still further to show this improbability. It seems certain from Herodotus that Mandane was not given in marriage to Cambyses until at least three or four years after the accession of her father Astyages to the throne. The birth of Cyrus cannot therefore well be dated earlier than the fifth year of Astyages; and even if we suppose that Cyrus was not more than 25 years of age (he was perhaps nearer 30) at the time of his successful revolt, Astyages must, on this view, have reigned thirty years before his defeat and dethronement. We may thus feel almost assured that Herodotus originally assigned 35 years to the reign of Astyages.

IV. The length of the reign of Cyrus.-As Herodotus does not give a similar twofold statement of the length of the reign of Cyrus, there is room for the supposition of error here, through the inattention of transcribers. If the eclipse of Thales really occurred 585 B.C., and if we assume (the view most favourable to the 585 hypothesis) that Cyaxares died in the following year (584), we cannot, for the reasons given above, well assign an earlier date than cir. 579 B.C. for the birth of

This is rather loosely expressed. It does not appear that the Median dominion extended to the Halys before the time of Cyaxares (Book 1, chap. 103). There is a somewhat similar departure from strict accuracy in Book 4, chap. 1; where it is said that before the arrival of the Scythians the Medes ruled over Asia.'

c Deioces reigned 53 years; Phraortes 22; Cyaxares 40; Astyages 35; in all 150 years.