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ART. IV. THE ABRADATES OF THE CYROPÆDIA.

WHILE We very decidedly dissent from Niebuhr's estimate of the literary merits of the Cyropædia, we are disposed to agree fully with the learned German's view, that "it is as clear as daylight that his [Xenophon's] object was to write a political novel in the form of the history of a king." It may, therefore, seem, at first sight, wholly unnecessary to occupy a single page of this journal with any notice of what Xenophon has recorded concerning Abradates, king of Susa, with whose melancholy end we are made familiar in our school-boy days. As, however, the Greek writer professes to have himself seen the tomb which Cyrus is stated to have raised in honour of his memory, some will, perhaps, think that the narrative of Abradates and Panthea may have been, to a certain extent, founded upon fact. If this view be conceded, no conclusions can be fairly drawn unfavourable to the historical statements in the prophet Daniel, as we shall proceed briefly to shew.*

Abradates was king of Susa; and we do not wonder to see him described by Rollin as king of Susiana,† which is explained in a foot-note as identical with Shushan. A cursory reader might thus suppose that this Abradates was the sovereign of the Elam of Holy Writ, and that the Shushan of the sacred writers was the capital of his dominions. Such a view, however, would be scarcely consistent with what we read of this royal city and fortress in Dan. viii. 1, 2. It there appears, that, so late as in the third year of Belshazzar, Elam was a province, and Shushan a provincial city of the Babylonian empire. We shall readily believe that Elam and Shushan were brought under subjection to the Chaldean sceptre by Nebuchadnezzar, from whom it passed to his successors, as a part of their royal inheritance. According to this view, it is impossible to suppose that the Abradates who assisted Cyrus in the great battle in which Croesus was defeated, was king of the scriptural Elam and Shushan. At the same time, it is not unimportant to notice that he had previously been one of the confederates in the Assyrian or Babylonian service.

Until recently, not a little uncertainty prevailed among biblical commentators on the subject of the Elamites; and it was thought by some that they were, possibly, in the sacred

* See the Journal of Prophecy, October, p. 376, note. In p. 394, 1. 31, for "His right hand," read "his right hand."

It is unnecessary for our present purpose to speak of the geography of Elymaus and Susiana.

writers, to be identified with the Persians. Thus, in the wellknown prophetic injunction, which contemplated the overthrow of Babylon-" Go up, O Elam! besiege, O Media!”—the former nation was mainly interpreted of the Persians under Cyrus. The Elamites are now very properly regarded as a distinct nation, who had been reduced into the form of a dependent province by Nebuchadnezzar. It could not, however, have been very long before the commencement of the siege of Babylon, that Cyrus became lord of the Elamites and their capital; and it is quite within the limits of probability as well as possibility, that it was at Shushan that Cyrus finally decided to advance against the Chaldean metropolis; and that it was from Shushan that he set out on his expedition at the head of the combined forces of Elam and Persia-the Medes having been instructed to meet him on the other side of the Tigris. And the Divine prescience may have intended to include under the designation of Elam that portion of the great invading host which was more especially under the command of Cyrus, giving it the precedence over Media.

One result of the discovery and interpretation of the Assyrian cuneiform tablets has been to teach us that the kingdom of Elam was of considerable importance and antiquity. Its kings carried on war against the Assyrian monarchs, Sargon, Sennacherib, and their predecessors. And the more carefully we examine the cuneiform inscriptions, the more readily shall we receive the scriptural account of the invasion of Palestine or Canaan by certain confederate nations, at the head of which were the Elamites, under their king, Chedorlaomer, in the days of the patriarch Abraham. We cannot, therefore, well conceive of the kings of Elam as being, so far as the nature of their armour is concerned, rude and halfcivilised, in comparison with the warriors of Media, and Babylon, and Persia. And this consideration will be of material service in assisting us to reply to the question-" Was the Abradates of Xenophon king of the scriptural Elam and Shushan?"

The following extract is from Rollin's narrative, taken from the Cyropædia, of the battle of Thymbra, in which Crœsus was defeated by Cyrus:

"The next day, very early in the morning, Cyrus offered a sacrifice, during which time, his army took a little refreshment, and the soldiers, after having offered their libations to the gods, put on their armour. . . . When Abra

dates was just going to put on his cuirass, which was only of quilted flax, according to the fashion of his country, his wife, Panthea, came to present him with a helmet, bracers, and bracelets, all of gold, with a coat-armour of his own length, plaited at the bottom, and with a coloured plume of feathers."

We have quoted this passage merely to draw attention to the historian's remark, that the cuirass, which Abradates had brought with him to the camp of Cyrus, and in which, but for the interposition of Panthea, he would have fought at Thymbra, "was only of quilted flax, according to the fashion of his country." It is true that Shushan, at the time of which we are speaking, was, doubtless, very far inferior to the Shushan of Ahasuerus and Esther, which had been enlarged and embellished by Cyrus and his successors. Yet, when we bear in mind the undoubted antiquity of the kingdom and capital of Elam, and that its sovereigns had frequently sustained severe conflicts against the powerful monarchs of Assyria; and when we recollect, also, how comparatively near Shushan was to the Tigris and the Mesopotamian dominions of Nebuchadnezzar, we shall be unable to recognise in the chieftain who presented himself in the "cuirass of quilted flax," the warlike sovereign of Elam. At so late a period as that in which Cyrus encountered Croesus, the king of Shushan, if we can suppose that there was then an independent sovereign of Elam, would be armed with something more costly and regal than linen or cotton. If, therefore, we should concede the truth of what Xenophon has related concerning the husband of Panthea, we should regard him as the chieftain or prince of a warlike tribe occupying a more remote portion of Susiana, and not as the king of Elam, whose royal residence was at Shushan Indeed, the fact that Abradates had previously fought under the banner of the Assyrian, or rather Babylonian king, renders it highly probable that the whole of Elam and Susiana acknowledged, in a greater or less degree, the superiority and supremacy of the Chaldean monarch. Thus there appears to be nothing in what Xenophon has written of the Susian prince which is inconsistent with Daniel's assertion, that, in the third year of Belshazzar, Elam was a province and Shushan a provincial city, though of considerable importance, of the Babylonian empire, or with the supposition that this addition to the Chaldean dominions was made during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Elam having been then made to drink of the cup of subjection, as had been foretold by the prophet Jeremiah.

ART. V.-THE DISPENSATIONS.

FOURTH ARTICLE.

THE adopted children of God, as we have observed, are called to strangership in the world, and citizenship in heaven. These have both been, again and again, the character of the standing of the people of God in this world. Consistency with God is the highest rule of righteousness and holiness; and the call of God is from Him, as well as to Him. He calls, not only as one who has authority and looks for obedience, but as one who seeks for fellowship and consistency with Himself. Hence the third feature in the present dispensation which we proposed to consider:

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3. The election of God the Father, in choosing a people to Himself now.-Adam, at his creation, was a citizen in the earth, because God had placed him in the earth. The works of His hands had been His delight and His glory. He found a place of rest in the garden of Eden, and He walked there; and on account of this, man's citizenship in the earth, and enjoyment of Eden as his home, was holy; for he was where God was, who dwelleth in holiness. Sin, however, quickly defiled the earth, and God was thereby estranged from it, and from man upon it; and if man again became holy, and preserved holiness in the world, he must become a stranger there, as God was. Passing onward from Eden to Pentecost, we see the Holy Spirit poured down upon man in great abundance and with much blessing, to make him holy and fit to dwell with God. But the stubborn heart of man, enselfed in the world, rejects the Holy Messenger, because His actings are contrary to all man's sinfulness; and when He is ready to instruct him, and teach the truths of God which lead to holiness, there is only a dead, cold soil in which to sow the seed of the word. The grace of God is bestowed upon this dead heart; and, in the wondrous love of God, His election goes forth and chooses one of a city, and two of a family, whom He has loved with an everlasting love, and, therefore, with loving mercies does He draw them. The man is thus redeemed, and returns to God from the covert and the distance where guilt had placed him. After that, he should never be seen as seeking citizenship in the earth, and amalgamation with the world. The election is not only unto "the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ," but also "unto obedience"-and this "through the sanctification of the Spirit" and hence, although in the world, he is not of the world, but of that

household who are called by the name of the Lord, and who call upon His name.

In the experience of a child of God, he is, sooner or later, led to ask himself how he became estranged from the pleasures and pursuits of the world, and in what way have his affections been changed in their objects. He must trace all to his Father's election of him, for well he knows that he did not first seek God. "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," witnesses with truthful power to his own soul, that if he be a child of God, He made him so. God cannot own a defiled thing left in its defilement; and so He has made the defiled thing His by purifying, because He has chosen it to be His own. Now, the world is still defiled, and, consequently, the elect ones are strangers in the world, for their calling is a heavenly one; their "citizenship is in heaven." This being so, their relationships have changed-natural relations have given way to spiritual ones-and the citizens of heaven enjoy the blessedness of communion with their brethren of the same family, who are citizens of the same city; and thus the same spirit of adoption pervades the whole body, the sense of which, as placing us among the children, and securing to us the benefits of heirship, the Holy Spirit himself so firmly implants in the soul, that we know it to be no fiction which asserts, He "bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." In this family God dwells by the Holy Spirit, for He has chosen them for a habitation (Eph. ii. 22); they are His little sanctuary until the manifestation of His larger one. This, then, is the standing of the Church of Christ, elected or called from the world-called unto heaven. Our Head is in heaven, our Life is in heaven, our portion and inheritance in heaven: then our hearts should be in heaven.

The Church, thus elected of the Father, is to exhibit her standing before the world-" As thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may know that thou hast sent me." The world can know the Christian's union with Christ only by his outward life; that is what the world will judge by. The Church of Christ, then, must be a visible Church, because an invisible Church cannot be a witness to the world. But this visible Church is not the Church of any denomination upon earth, for wherever is seen a Christian man, filled with the Holy Ghost, and walking according to His truths, there is seen a member of the Church of Christ. No communion of Christians that has ever existed yet could claim to be the Church of Christ exclusively; and we doubt whether there ever existed a communion since apos

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