the command of obedience to the sun and to the moon.  I suppose that few persons who read this book will be unaware, that the circumstance is alluded to as well in that honest heathen, old Herodotus, as in the learned Jew Josephus.  The volumes are not near me for reference to quotations:  but such is fact:  it will be found in Herodotus, about the middle of Euterpe, connected with an allusion to the analogous case of Hezekiah.

No miracles, on the whole (to take one after-view of the matter), could have been better tested:  for two armies (not to mention all surrounding countries) must have seen it plainly and clearly:  if then it had never occurred, what a very needless exposure of the falsity of the Jewish Scriptures!  These were open, published writings, accessible to all:  Cyrus and Darius and Alexander read them, and Ethiopian eunuchs; Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, with all other nations of the earth, had free access to those records.  Only imagine if some recent history of England, Adolphus’s, or Stebbing’s, contained an account of a certain day in George the Fourth’s reign having had twenty-four hour’s daylight instead of the usual admixture; could the intolerable falsehood last a minute?  Such a placard would be torn away from the records of the land the moment a rash hand had fixed it there.  But, if the matter were fact, how could any historian neglect it?—­In one sense, the very improbability of such a marvel being recorded, argues the probability of it having actually occurred.

Much more might here be added:  but our errand is accomplished, if any stumbling-block had been thus easily removed from some erring thinker’s path.  Surely, we have given him some reason for faith’s due acceptance of Joshua’s miracle.

THE INCARNATION.

In touching some of the probabilities of our blessed Lord’s career, it would be difficult to introduce and illustrate the subject better, than by the following anecdote.  Whence it is derived, has escaped my memory; but I have a floating notion that it is told of Socrates in Xenophon or Plato.  At any rate, by way of giving fixity thereto and picturesqueness, let us here report the story as of the Athenian Solomon: 

Surrounded by his pupils, the great heathen Reasoner was being questioned and answering questions:  in particular respecting the probability that the universal God would be revealed to his creatures.  “What a glorious King would he appear!” said one, possibly the brilliant Alcibiades:  “What a form of surpassing beauty!” said another, not unlikely the softer Crito.  “Not so, my children,” answered Socrates.  “Kings and the beautiful are few, and the God, if he came on earth as an exemplar, would in shape and station be like the greater number.”  “Indeed, Master? then how should he fail of being made a King of men, for his goodness, and his majesty, and wisdom?” “Alas! my children,” was pure Reason’s