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oteric and esoteric declarations of divine provision and purpose are the same; the secret and the published decree of the divine counsel are identical, and the Atonement is not limited but universal; it is not for the elect only, but for the entire human family.

5. As the Atonement is for man, it is for man as he is, with all his power of volition. Material things come to us conditionally. Intellectual things come in the same way. Why should not spiritual and eternal things, with which the Atonement specially has to do? The true theory of man's relation to both Nature and Providence is synergism, and not monergism. Atonement is out of analogy with all the works and ways of God, if it involves a different arrangement.

6. As the Atonement is from sin unto holiness, as it is the chief display of divine glory, and for all men, though realized in its saving efficiency by those only who comply with the conditions, it is full, complete, and perfect; full, because not fragmentary; complete, because not defective; perfect, because it is free from all inadequacy to meet the sublime ends for which as a plan it was achieved. It is adequate to save from all sin; to rescue from the deepest degeneracy; to uplift the chief and vilest of transgressors; to impart an entire justification, a complete sanctification, a victory over every foe, and the endless and ever-augmenting beatitudes of an eternal heaven in a word, to make us like Jesus here, and endlessly and ever-increasingly like him in glory.

And, 7. As the Atonement is by suffering, Christ having once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, in this vicarious substitution, and as the whole line of truth indicates it as an infinite achievement, the suffering involved was nothing less than infinite. Dr. Miley argues this conclusively:

Nor have we the truest, deepest sense of the sufferings of Christ, except in the fact that he endured them as the Theanthropos. With the doctrine of a union of the divine and human natures in a unity of personality in Christ, and that in the incarnation he was truly the God-man, we know not either the theology or philosophy which may limit his sufferings to a mere human consciousness. And with the impassivity of his divine nature in the incarnation and atonement, many texts of Scripture, fraught with infinite treasures of grace and love, would be little more than meaningless words. On such a principle their

exegesis would be superficial and false to their infinitely deeper meaning. The divine Son incarnate, and so incarnate in human nature as to unite it with himself in personal unity, could suffer, and did suffer, in the redemption of the world.

Redemption from suffering by suffering involves the element of infinity. If sin has its course, and ultimates in the penal death which violated law threatens, there is the element of infinity in it; for such suffering our Lord says is "everlasting" or eternal; and eternity is infinity. If our Atoning Substitute saves even one sinner from the ultimate consequences of sin, he does it by suffering, and this vicarious suffering must have the element of infinity in it. That element is not eternity, for Christ suffered "once," to suffer no more; he died "once," to die no more; but the element of infinity is to be sought in sufferings endured in finite time. How could this be except as it was endured by an Infinite Nature? If Christ suffered, the divine nature suffered, for Christ is divine as well as human. And if the divine nature suffered, the infinite element is introduced into the atoning sufferings in finite time.

It has long been a favorite view of theologians that God is impassible; that he is incapable of suffering. But do the Scriptures anywhere teach this? Is it not a venturing in theologic dogma beyond the bounds of revelation? Is it not a substitution of a deduction from human reasoning for a "thus saith the Lord?" Is it not a limiting of the Holy One of Israel? Is it not a contradiction of what God says concerning himself? Dr. Miley cites many passages of Scripture bearing on this vital issue.

On psychological grounds, apart from revelation, we do not question that ability to suffer is the complement and correlate of ability to enjoy. Where there is no ability to enjoy, there is none to suffer; but wherever there is ability to enjoy, there always is, and, from the nature of the case, there must be, ability to suffer; and the ability in one direction is the measure of the ability in the other. As God is undeniably capable of enjoyment, and enjoyment that is infinite, it is a reckless declaration, violative of psychological facts, as well as out of harmony with the word of God, for any one to affirm that he is incapable of suffering. To say the least, it is very immodest for men to speak dogmatically concerning what is impossi

ble in a nature as illimitable as God's, when they cannot tell what is the limit of possibility in their own. More than that, it is impious, and a familiarity which God has taken occasion to resent on more occasions than one. If God has established the great law, which we see contradicted nowhere, but asserted every-where in the whole compass of sentient being, that ability to suffer invariably and necessarily accompanies ability to enjoy, it would certainly require a very explicit divine revelation on the subject to make it possible for us to believe that he violated in his own nature his own law.

The Atonement is an infinite transaction. It is the highest divine achievement. It is the sublimest and divinest visible manifestation of the heart of God. It may prove the central event in all history. Its primary applications are to our lost but redeemed world; its wider, ultimate, and eternal applications are "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Eph. iii, 10-11.

ART. VII.-A HARMONY OF THE EGYPTIAN AND MOSAIC RECORDS.

WE give from the London (Wesleyan) Quarterly Review for January, 1880, part of an article on Egyptian Chronology, which furnishes a remarkably clear view of its accord with the Hebrew chronology. Its identification of Menes with Mizraim is as good as any other account of Menes; that is, pretty much good for nothing. Such identification supposes but a brief period for the founding of a kingdom of Egypt; and thus perhaps demands the Septuagint chronology at that era. It furnishes no room for the legendary slow growth and mature grandeur of the empire of Menes; but it furnishes other legends quite as authentic, namely, that Abraham, 2,000 years before Christ, taught arithmetic to the Egyptians! The more rational supposition seems, perhaps, to be that Mizraim or Menes led the first immigration to Egypt, and occupied the ground whence the kingdom of Egypt rose, and so was the essential founder.

He carried much of the antediluvian science and civilization inherited through Noah with him; but the fantasy that he was a great monarch preceded by ages of development is too absurd for any but the greediest credulity.

CHRONOLOGICAL CONTRADICTIONS AMONG EGYPTOLOGISTS.

The late Dean Milman had no hesitation in declaring, in his "History of the Jews," that "the internal evidence in respect to the genuineness of the Mosaic records is to me conclusive. All attempts to assign a later period for the authorship, or even for the compilation, though made by scholars of the highest ability, are so irreconcilable with facts, so self-destructive, and so mutually destructive, that I acquiesce without hesitation in the general antiquity."—Vol. i, p. 46. This conclusion of a distinguished historian respecting the "mutually destructive" nature of rationalistic speculations on the genuineness and authenticity of the books of Moses, appears still more evident when we see the differences which exist among those who ignore Scripture testimony respecting various incidents in the combined histories of Israel and Egypt. We propose to set this plainly before our readers in the following brief tables.

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First, as regards the primary colonizer or protomonarch of Egypt after the dispersion at Babel. His name is first seen on the monuments in the reign of Pharaoh Seti I., in the fifteenth century B. C., and therefore nearly 1,000 years after the biblical date of the Noachian deluge. It is read now by Birch and other Egyptian scholars as Mena, by Herodotus and the Greek historians as Menes, and in Genesis as Mizraim," the son of Ham and grandson of Noah. Of him Manetho, the Egyptian scribe, thus speaks: "After the dead demigods, the first king was Menes the Thenite; and he reigned sixty-two years," while Syncellus, a Byzantine historian, who gives the canon of the kings of Egypt, says that "Mizraim, who is the same as Menes, reigned thirty-five years." This difference between two ancient historians respecting the duration of the reign of him who is regarded as the first king of Egypt, is significant of the amazing variations between modern interpreters of Manetho as to the time when the said Menes lived. Thus the era of Menes is dated by various chronologers as follows:

1. Mariette-Bey computes the era of Menes to have begun.. 2. Brugsch-Bey..

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..B.C. 5004

66

4400

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5. Bunsen, on the second occasion..

showing a variation of nearly 2,000 years for the foundation of the Egyptian kingdom.

So as regards the time when that greatest of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh, was erected,

the differences among scholars of the present day are still more marked. This will be seen in the following table:

1. Le Suer computes the building of the Great Pyramid..

2. Brugsch-Bey...

3. Bunsen.

4. Lepsius..

5. Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland..

6. The late Sir George Cornwalle Lewis.....

.B.C. 4975

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Thus showing a difference of nearly 4,000 years! The only one of the above quoted authorities whose date may be accepted as the most correct, and this only approximately, is that of Professor Piazzi Smyth; and he is far from ignoring Scripture, though we believe he accepts the Septuagint computation in preference to that of the Hebrew.

THE EARLIEST INSCRIBED MONUMENTS.

As many Egyptologers in the present day ignore the evidence of Scripture on this subject, it is satisfactory to know that the elder Champollion, who may be regarded as the founder of Egyptology, in allusion to such skeptics once wrote: "They will find in this work an absolute reply to their calumnies, since I have demonstrated that no Egyptian monument is really older than the year 2200 B. C.* This certainly is very high antiquity, but it presents nothing contradictory to the sacred histories, and I venture to affirm that it establishes them on all points: for it is, in fact, by adopting the chronology and the succession of kings given by the Egyptian monuments, that the Egyptian history accords with the sacred writings." More recent discoveries in Egypt since Champollion's time have proved that a tablet, which has been in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford for upward of two centuries, must be approximately dated about B.C. 2300, and therefore about a century older than any monument known to the learned Frenchman.

Assuming, then, for a moment, that this Oxford monument, as being the oldest proof of man's existence at present known to us, may be dated within a century of the biblical date of the Noachian flood, circa B.C. 2348, we have the authority of the Turin papyrus for saying that only 355 years elapsed between the era of Menes, or the first colonization of Egypt, and the end of the sixth dynasty. This would give the approximate date to the end of the sixth dynasty somewhere in the twenty-first century B.C. It has long been seen by Egyptologers that some of Manetho's dynasties are certainly contemporaneous. It is the failure of not seeing this which has caused certain authors to prolong the dura

* The author of "Grant's Travels Around the World" says that for other antiquities we have only traditions and doubtful records; for Egypt there are the sure monuments. And certainly an inscribed contemporary monument would be a very conclusive voucher. But, lo, the earliest monument is of about the era of Abraham!-ED.

"Ancient Egypt, its Monuments and History," p. 56.

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