Recent Expositions of Daniel. By Prof. W. H. Green, D. D. [pp. 397-424]

Recent Exposition,s of Daniel.
weeks based on its alleged non-fulfilment, except as a valid
argumientuin ad hominerin directed against the criticism of
modern unbelief. "It is not a vacticinium ex eventa concocted in the Maccabean period," he says, p. 195, "for the points
in which its statements do not agree with the events of the
time are more numerous than those in which they do." And
we consider it but a doubtful compliment to the prophet when
his perspicacity is lauded, p. 194, at the expense of the truth
of the revelation made to him. "While there could scarcely
have been one of his contemporaries in the exile, who would
have postponed the dawn of Mlessiah's days much beyond the
close of the Babylonishl captivity, it evidences a marvellous
breadth of vision" in Daniel that he sees the great crisis by
which it is typified and with which it is identified in his
mind at a distance of 490 years; though this does not correspond in point of fact with the interval that separated him
either from the type or the antitype.
The limitations which really belong to prophecy, are not
imposed upon it by the narrow bounds of human vision,
whether unassisted or but partially aided from on high. It is
neither by an inborn nor an acquired faculty, neither by their
native sagacity nor their spiritual penetration, that the
prophets forecast the future, the result of which would be
that, however they may surpass other men in prescience, the
necessary weakness of the human understanding must unavoidably restrict it in its range, and render it liable to error. The
limitation of prophecy arises solely out of the Divine intention. The prophet foresees just what God chooses to comnmunicate and as he communicates it. And the Divine intention
in the case is governed by the need to be supplied. All is not
made known which God's omniscience might reveal. But
just so much of the tfuture is exhibited, and under just such
aspects as are adapted to furnish the stimulus, or warning, or
consolation. which is required.
In the present instance Daniel was stirred up to pray that
God would revisit the desolations of Jerusalem, by the speedily approaching, close of the predicted term of exile. It was
not because he was unable to compute the seventy years of
Jeremiah, but because he could compute and had computed
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