ruinous assistance of pitiless money-lenders, were compelled to take interest under another name. The Church cursed the lender; the wiser world, when it cursed at all, cursed the borrower. The Church lauded recklessness and poverty, the world forethought and thrift. Loans being left more and more to the natural laws by which they are governed, were found to be beneficial and even necessary, though they might still be reckoned among mortal sins. They were tested by far other standards than obsolete texts of Scripture, and the grotesque absurdities of patristic logic. Men still may repudiate usury and affect to despise the world, but the new spirit is everywhere; and even Churches themselves are often paid for by borrowed funds, and exist by the usury that was once punished with excommunication, and threatened with the endless torments of hell.

Political economy, moreover, has wholly subverted the ancient doctrine of charity, and the mischievous custom of reckless almsgiving. It is no longer esteemed a virtue to open the doors of great houses of religion to every idle vagrant, and feed his indolence and dishonesty with the bread of God. To be needlessly poor is justly accounted a vice; inasmuch as every man who does not keep himself must be compelling somebody else to keep him. The idler can live only by robbing the industrious: either picking the pocket of the honest worker himself, or sending the tax gatherer to steal for him. The whole world is turned upside down; and it is not too much to say, that rationalism has restored the Christianity which the mediaval Church so nearly succeeded in destroying.

For, after all, the Christianity of the medieval Church was not the Christianity of Christ. A lazy mendicant, swarming with vermin and loathsome with filth, is not the noblest fashion of man. Contempt of human nature is wholly incompatible with the fundamental doctrine even of the Church itself, the true humanity of the Son of God. Rationalism is but the echo of Christ's own words-" to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness of the truth; every man that is of the truth heareth my voice." It is but the proving of all things, and the holding fast of that which is good. But, henceforth it is dominant in Europe; and what is not rational is doomed. Creeds, churches, Bibles, forms of government, modes of social life, must henceforth justify themselves or depart elsewhither.

And when timid Christians look with horror on this huge giant striding through Europe, and wish that the days of unenquiring credulity could come back once more, we well might ask them at what point in the progress of free thought they

would be willing to stop; or what reformation they would be able to justify. They could not justify dissent, nor the Reformation, for both were rationalistic. They could not justify the Bible, for it rests on the conviction that it is reasonable to expect that Almighty God will make some revelation of His will; and that the Bible does actually contain the record of that revelation. They could not rent a house, or buy a coat; for some part of the price is sure to be " usury." Their whole life would become one tangled mass of contradictions, from which nothing but rationalism could possibly set them free.

"The bane and antidote are both before us." While Mr. Lecky's sheets were in the press, Dr. Newman was publishing the Apologia pro sua Vita. Most certainly this is not the ultimate but a near alternative for every one of us,-Reason or Rome. An infallible Bible must have an infallible church and infallible expounders. The Anglican "via media" is a road that leads only from one chaos to another. Authority, if we could only find it, might at least stun us. But surely there is something better and nobler. Reason cannot be an accursed thing. And there is a living God to guide all earnest seekers into His own light.

WILLIAM KIRKUS,

NEW SERIES.-VOL. VIII., NO. XV.

CORRESPONDENCE.

[We wish our readers to understand that we cannot be held responsible for the opinions of our contributors and correspondents. The utmost we can do is to keep a careful eye upon the literary character of their communications, and to see that they do not transcend the limits of fair criticism and lawful inquiry.]

THE METONIC CYCLE.

I HAD hoped that my letter on the Metonic Cycle in the April number of The Journal of Sacred Literature would have rendered it unnecessary for me to notice Mr. Parker again. I find, however, that in the July number of the Journal, you have inserted a letter of Mr. Parker's in which he attributes to me a statement which I never made, and which I repudiate as unworthy of any one that made the slightest pretensions to scholarship. In p. 438 he thanks me for having called his attention to the circumstance, "That from the archonship of Apseudes at Athens, when the summer solstice was observed by Meton on the 27th of June, the Athenian year has always begun on the new moon next after the 27th June." Such a statement I never made; and I consider it a gross imputation on my scholarship to suppose that I could have made it. Mr. Parker in two subsequent places in p. 439 speaks of this as "Dr. Hincks's rule." It is not my rule at all. What I said was this (p. 215) "Mr. Parker supposes that the Athenian year began at the summer solstice. Every one else supposes that it began in 432 B.C., on the observed day of the new moon which next followed the summer solstice, that is, on the 16th July of the Julian year; but in subsequent years it began on the computed day of new moon, the computation being made according to the rules laid down by Meton." Mr. Parker represents me as saying that the year which followed the archonship of Apseudes, and every subsequent year, began on the new moon next following the summer solstice; but I distinctly say that this was only true of the one year which followed the archonship of Apseudes; a different rule having prevailed in all other years. Mr. Parker has given a false rule as "Dr. Hincks's," you will, I trust, allow me to give Dr. Hincks's real rule. I quote from the introduction to Hincks's Greek-English School Lexicon edition of 1843, which I wrote for my father, the compiler of the lexicon. After speaking of the various corrections prior to Meton's, I say, "At length, in the summer of the year 432 B.C., a cycle of nineteen years was introduced by Meton. Its first year was the first year of the 87th Olympiad or the 345th Olympic year. According to this system, which prevailed during the times of the principal Attic writers, all the months consisted nominally of thirty days, but every sixty-third day was passed over. Thus in the first year of the cycle. the day next following the second of Boedromion was called the

Seven of

fourth; there being no actual third day in that month. the nineteen years of this cycle continued thirteen months, that is, nominally, 390 days. These were the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 16th, and 19th. This cycle was not quite correct, the exemptile days (Faupésiμo) occurring too often. To remedy this, Meton himself directed that the last of the 111, which would fall in the nineteenth year, should be retained as a real day; but this was an inadequate remedy for the evil. About a hundred years after, Calippus introduced a new system, in which every sixty-fourth day was passed over in place of every sixty-third. His period consisted of seventysix years, or four Metonic cycles. The first year of his first period was the third of the 112th Olympiad or the eighth of the sixth Metonic cycle. Calippus made no change in the number or order of the years which contained thirteen months; but he placed the intercalary month at the end of the year instead of in its middle. The first year of the first Calippic period began on the 28th of June of the proleptic Julian year 330 B.C. Being the eighth of the Metonic cycle, it contained thirteen months, 390 nominal and 384 actual days. Consequently, the following year did not begin till the 16th of July." The first day of the first Calippic period, like the first day of the first Metonic cycle, was the day of the observed new moon next after the summer solstice; but in no year but these two was the commencement of year or month determined by observation. may here remark that if Meton's cycle had continued in use, the two years last mentioned would have began on the 1st July, 330 B.C., and the 18th July, 329 B.C.; the error in Meton's cycle having amounted to three days in the year when it was abandoned. Thus, although it is in a certain sense true, that the Metonic year began on the new moon following the solstice, that being the result which was aimed at by Meton, and which was in general approximately attained to; it was not attained to in every instance, even approximately. The first day of Meton's year did not always coincide with the actual new moon; and the new moon on or about which the year commenced was not always that which next followed the solstice. The case was exactly parallel to our mode of computing Easter. Theoretically, Easter Sunday is the Sunday next following the full moon, which next follows the vernal equinox; but in computing the ecclesiastical Easter, the Paschal full moons must be taken as they are given by the tables in the Prayer-book, not as they are given by astronomical tables, though the latter are the real full moons. Thus, the ecclesiastical Easter-day is sometimes a week, and sometimes four weeks different from the Easter-day which the above theoretical rule combined with actual observation would point out. These errors in respect to Easter are, however, much less frequent than those in respect to the commencement of the Metonic year, though of the same nature with them.

I

Having said this much in explanation of Meton's calendar, I will repeat a passage from my paper of January, 1864, The Journal of Sacred Literature, Vol. IV., p. 424, which appears to me to be con

clusive as to the point at issue between Mr. Parker and the rest of the learned world. "The year in which the Peloponnesian war broke out the year in which Pythodorus was archon-is remarkable as the first year of the Metonic cycle, and the year in which the adoption of this cycle was published at the Olympic games which began on the eleventh day of the year. The time when this cycle began must have been a matter of public notoriety. The year of the cycle was made generally known by the appearance, in a conspicuous position at Athens, of its number formed in gold; and the omission from the calendar of every sixty-third day, counted from the beginning of the cycle, must have rendered it absolutely impossible for any mistake, or any difference of opinion as to the time when it began, to have existed. Now all are agreed that the Metonic cycle dates from the 16th of July, 432." Mr. Parker denies that the cycle dates from this day; but in language which proves that he does not possess that knowledge of the nature of the cycle which graduates are commonly supposed to have acquired at the university, if they have failed to do so at school. Mr. Parker affirms that the Metonic cycle began on the new moon next after the summer solstice of 452. That would be on the 28th June, 452; and according to Meton's rule the following year would commence 360 days, wanting 5 (the integers in the quotient when this is divided by 63) or 355 days after this; that is, on the 18th of June, 451; and the next year would commence 720 days, wanting 11, or 709 days after, that is, on the 7th June. Meton could never have supposed that his cycle, starting from Mr. Parker's date, would give a commencement of the year subsequent to the solstice; seeing that in almost every year the commencement would precede it. Thus from the very nature of Meton's system, it is evident that it could not commence in 452. The impossibility of this being the true date of its commencement is further shewn by the eclipse of the sun, which Thucydides records as having happened at the close of the summer in which the war began. Mr. Parker is obliged to maintain that this was the eclipse of the 20th March, 451. Assuming that this was visible at Athens, which there is not the slightest reason for supposing to have been the case, it must have been visible soon after sunrise. Mr. Parker says that Thucydides, who relates that this eclipse took place μerà μeonμßpiav, meant that it took place after sunrise. He contends that μeonußpia is Greek for "sunrise!" and that this may be proved out of Genesis! No doubt he can interpret in an equally satisfactory manner the words τοῦ θέρους καὶ τοῦ σίτου ἀκμάζοντος, by which Thucydides describes the time when Attica was invaded, which preceded the eclipse in question. Most persons, however, will think this language inapplicable to the beginning of March.

As to the received opinion very little need be said. It is beyond all doubt that an eclipse of the sun was visible at Athens in the afternoon of the 3rd August, 431; and nothing that Mr. Parker has said by way of objection to its being that described by Thucydides has the slightest force. According to Thucydides, the summer of 431,