Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" (part 2)

The Semitic peoples were essentially theocratic in their religion; they used the forms of the sensuous imagination in setting forth the realities of the unseen world. They were not given to metaphysical speculation, nor long insistent in their inquiries as to the meaning and origin of things. With the Greeks it was far otherwise. For them ideas and not images set forth fundamental reality, and their restless intellectual activity would be content with nothing else than the ultimate truth. Their speculation as to the nature of God had led them gradually to separate him by an infinite distance from all creation, and to feel keenly the opposition of the finite and the infinite, the perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and the temporal. To them, therefore, Christianity presented itself not primarily as the religion of a redemption through the indwelling power of a risen saviour, as with Paul, nor even as the solution of the problem how the sins of men could be forgiven, but as the reconciliation of the antinomy of the intellect, indicated above. The incarnation became the great truth: God is no longer separated by a measureless distance from the human race, but by his entering into humanity he redeems it and makes possible its ultimate unity with himself. Such lines of thought provoke discussion as to the relationship of Jesus to God the Father, and, at a later period, of the nature of the Holy Spirit who enters into and transforms believers.

Greek philosophy in the second century A.D. had sunk for the most part into scepticism and impotence; its original impulse had been lost, and no new intellectual power took its place; only in Alexandria was there a genuine effort made to solve the fundamental problems of God and the world. Plato had made God accessible to the highest knowledge as the transcendent idea, remote from the world. For Aristotle, too, God in his essence is far above the world and at most its first mover. The stoics, on the other hand, taught his immanence, while the eclectics sought truth by the mingling of the two ideas. They accomplished their purpose in various ways, by distinguishing between God and his power—or by the notion of a hierarchy of super-sensible beings, or in a doctrine which taught that the operations of nature are the movement of pure spirit; or by the use of the “Word” of “Wisdom,” half personified as intermediate between God and the world. While these monotheistic, pantheistic doctrines were taught in the schools, the people were left to a debased polytheism and to new superstitions imported from the Orient; the philosophers themselves were by no means unaffected by the popular beliefs. Mingled with all these were the ancient legends of gods and heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence. In this period of degeneracy there were none the less an awakening to religious needs and a profound longing for a new revelation of truth, which should satisfy at once the intellect and the religious emotions.

Christianity came as supplying a new power; it freed philosophy from scepticism by giving a definite object to its efforts and a renewed confidence in its mission. Monotheism henceforth was to be the belief not of philosophers only but even of the ignorant, and in Jesus Christ the union of the divine and the human was effected. The Old Testament, allegorically explained, became the substitute for the outgrown mythology; intellectual activity revived; the new facts gained predominant influence in philosophy, and in turn were shaped according to its canons. In theology the fundamental problems of ontological philosophy were faced; the relationship of unity to multiplicity, of noumenon to phenomena, of God to man. The new element is the historical Jesus, at once the representative of humanity and of God. As in philosophy, so now in theology, the easiest solution of the problem was the denial of one of its factors: and successively these efforts were made, until a solution was found in the doctrine of the Trinity, which satisfied both terms of the equation and became the fundamental creed of the church. Its moulds of thought are those of Greek philosophy, and into these were run the Jewish teachings. We have thus a peculiar combination—the religious doctrines of the Bible, as culminating in the person of Jesus, run through the forms of an alien philosophy.

The Jewish sources furnished the terms Father, Messiah, Son and Spirit. Jesus seldom employed the last term and St Paul’s use of it is not altogether clear. Already in Jewish literature it had been all but personified (cf. the Wisdom of Solomon). Thus the material is Jewish, though already modified doubtless by Greek influence. But the problem is Greek. It is not primarily ethical nor even religious, but it is metaphysical. What is the ontological relationship between these three factors? The answer is given in the Nicene formula, which is characteristically Greek. By it we perceive how God, the infinite, the absolute, the eternal, is yet not separated from the finite, the temporal, the relative, but, through the incarnation, enters into humanity. We further see how this entering into humanity is not an isolated act but continues in all the children of God by the indwelling spirit. Thus, according to the canons of the ancient philosophy, justice is done to all the factors of our problem—God remains as Father, the infinitely remote and absolute source of all; as Son, the Word who is revealed to man and incarnate in him; as Spirit, who dwells even in our own souls and by his substance unites us to God.

While thus the Greek philosophy furnished the dialectic and the mould for the characteristic Christian teaching, the doctrine of the Trinity preserved religious values. By Jesus the disciples had been led to God, and he was the central fact of faith. After the resurrection he was the object of praise, and soon prayers were offered in his name and to him. Already to the apostle Paul he dominates the world and is above all created things, visible and invisible, so that he has the religious value of God. It is not God as abstract, infinite and eternal, as the far-away creator of the universe, or even as the ruler of the world, which Paul worships, but it is God revealed in Jesus Christ, the Father of Jesus Christ, the grace and mercy in Jesus Christ which deliver from evil. Metaphysics and speculative theories were valueless for Paul; he was conscious of a mighty power transforming his own life and filling him with joy, and that this power was identical with Jesus of Nazareth he knew. In all this Paul is the representative of that which is highest and best in early Christianity. Speculation and hyperspiritualization were ever tending to obscure this fundamental religious fact: in the interest of a higher doctrine of God his true presence in Jesus was denied, and by exaggeration of Paul’s doctrine of “Christ in us” the significance of the historic Jesus was given up. The Johannine writings, which presupposed the Pauline movement, are a protest against the hyperspiritualizing tendency. They insist that the Son of God has been incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, and that our hands have handled and our eyes have seen the word of life. This same purpose, namely, to hold fast to the historic Jesus, triumphed in the doctrine of the Trinity; Jesus was not to be resolved into an aeon or into some mysterious tertium quid, neither God nor man, but to be recognized as very God who redeemed the soul. Through him men were to understand the Father and to understand themselves as God’s children. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity satisfied at once the philosophic intelligence of scholars and the religious needs of Christians. Only thus can its adoption and ultimate acceptance be explained. Its doctrinal form is the philosophic statement of beliefs held by the common people, who had little interest in theology, but whose faith centred in Jesus. It marks the naturalization of Christianity in the Greek world for the common people who believed in Christ, and for the philosophers who justified the faith to reason.

The historic and religious values of the doctrine of the Trinity may be illustrated by way of contrast. The Mahāyāna systems are the union of Buddha’s teaching with the forms of the Brahman philosophy. The historic Buddha—the man Gautama—is taught as only one of a limitless series of incarnations or (better) appearances. For his life on earth with his material body was only an appearance, a seeming, a phenomenon, and simultaneously with its activities the true Buddha existed unmoved and eternal. Thus the way was opened for other apparitional Buddhas, and different sects take different ones as the objects of faith and worship. Moreover, our true nature is also Buddha. The conscious life of all men is apparitional and illusive. Salvation is the comprehension of this fact, and in the apprehension of our essential oneness with the absolute. Hence the way of salvation is by knowledge. In the Mahāyāna gnosticism was triumphant, and the historic values of Gautama’s teaching and personality are lost. The Mahãyãna illustrates in part what would have followed the triumph of gnosticism in Christianity, for not only would the historic value of the life and teaching of Jesus have been lost, but with it the significance of humanity.

It is apparent that such a doctrine as the Trinity is itself susceptible of many explanations, and minds differently constituted lay emphasis upon its different elements. Especially is this true as its Greek terminology was translated into Latin, and from Latin came into modern languages—the original meaning being obscured or disguised, and the original issues forgotten. For some the first thought of God, the infinite and ultimate reality lying beyond and behind all phenomena, predominates. With these the historic manifestation of Jesus becomes only a guide to lead us to that immediate apprehension of God which is the end of theology, and to that immediate union with God which is the end of religion. Such an end is accomplished either by means of pure thought or by a oneness of pure feeling, giving as results the theological or philosophical construction of the concept God, or a mystical ecstasy which is itself at once immediate, inexplicable and indescribable. On the other hand, minds of a different and more concrete character so emphasize the distinctions God, Son and Holy Spirit, that a tritheistic construction appears—three individuals in the one Godhead: these individuals appearing, as for example in the Father and the Son, even in opposition to each other. In general we may say then that the Trinity takes on four differing aspects in the Christian church: in its more common and easily apprehended form as three Gods, in its ecclesiastical form as a mystery which is above reason to be accepted by faith, in its philosophic form as the highest reason which solves the ultimate problems of the universe, and finally, as a mode by which the spirit through an emotional content enters into communion with God himself.

To some Christians the doctrine of the Trinity appeared inconsistent with the unity of God which is emphasized in the Scriptures. They therefore denied it, and accepted Jesus Christ, not as incarnate God, but as God’s highest creature by whom all else was created, or as the perfect man who taught the true doctrine of God. The first view in the early Church long contended with the orthodox doctrine, but finally disappeared, and the second doctrine in the modern Church was set forth as easily intelligible, but has remained only as the faith of sects relatively small in number.

Allied with the doctrine of God which seeks the solution of the ultimate problem of all philosophy, the doctrine of salvation has taken the most prominent place in the Christian faith: so prominent, indeed, that to a large portion of believers it has been the supreme doctrine, and the doctrine of the deity of Jesus has been valued only because of its necessity on the effect of the atonement. Jesus alone of the great founders of religion suffered an early and violent death, even the death of a criminal. It became therefore the immediate task of his followers to explain this fact. This explanation was the more urgent because under the influence of Jewish monotheism the rule of God was accepted as an undoubted presupposition, so that the death of Jesus must be in accordance with his will. The early Church naturally used the terms and phrases of the prophets. He died the death of a criminal, not for his sins, but for ours. Isaiah liii. was suggested at once and became the central explanation: Christ is the suffering servant who is numbered with the transgressors and who bears the sins of many.

Jesus faced this problem perhaps before the opening of his ministry, certainly from his break with the ecclesiastical authorities. As his violent death drew near, his words indicated how he preserved his deep faith unshaken while yet recognizing the seeming failure of his mission. He devotes himself more exclusively to the little body of his faithful friends and commits his mission to them. As his work is sealed by his death his body is broken and his blood is shed for them. Through this is to come the victory which is denied to his life, as the seed cast into the ground and dead brings forth fruit. Our hints are few of Jesus’ teaching, but this much, at least, we cannot doubt unless we suppose that death took him unawares, or that his explanation of the impending fact took on some un-Jewish form; and further, that the earliest tradition misrepresents him. But these hypotheses do not commend themselves, and we accept the tradition that Jesus taught that his death was an atonement for others.

Beyond this the gospel does not go. Why vicarious suffering is needed, or why the God who is the loving Father does not simply forgive, as in the parable of the prodigal son, is not asked. For after all it is not theory which is central, but the fact of the death, and the reason assigned is simply “for others.”

In St Paul we find the beginnings of explanation, indeed of two explanations, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews the whole sacrificial system is found to culminate in Christ, of whom all priests and sacrifices are symbols, so that they are abolished with the coming of the great reality.

In the Greek world further questions are raised and the thought of the death as a ransom is prominent. To whom was the ransom paid? For a thousand years the answer was “to the devil.” He had gained control of man by man’s sin, and Christ set man free. God then, who is love, delivers us from evil through Christ, who pays the penalty of our transgression to the enemy of God and man. There were other theories also, indeed the germs of all later theories existed even in the second century, but this one prevailed. The heretic Marcion taught a variant, namely, the existence of two Gods, one of the Old Testament of law, the other of the New Testament of grace. Christ, unjustly condemned by the God of law, is given as reparation for all men who put their trust in him. From Anselm’s time (12th century A.D.) this theory of Marcion’s is held as orthodox in substance but is made monotheistic in form. St Anselm denied that any penalty was due to the devil, and in terms of feudal honour restated the problem. The conflict here is in God himself, so to speak, between his immutable righteousness and his limitless grace. In the sacrifice of Jesus these are reconciled. This doctrine of St Anselm’s attaches itself readily to texts of St Paul, for his teachings contain undeniably the vicarious propitiatory element.

These theories have to do with the being to whom the ransom is paid or the sacrifice offered. Another group of theories deals with the effect of the death of Christ upon the sinner. One of these is the so-called governmental theory, wherein the death of Christ is set forth as for the sake of good government, so that the forgiveness of sins shall not be thought a sign of laxity. Again, by other theologians the death of Jesus is extolled because of the moral influence it exerts, since Christ’s devotion unto death incites a like devotion in us.

Excepting in relatively narrow circles these theories have been seriously studied only by professed theologians. That Christ died for us, and that we are saved by him, is indeed the living truth of the Church in all ages, and a false impression of the fact is given by dwelling upon theories as if they were central. At best they bear only the relationship of philosophy to life.

Another explanation, or (better) system of beliefs, has been far more influential in the Church. Belief in mysterious powers attached to food, feasts, ceremonial rites and sacred things is all but universal. Primitive man seldom connects sacrifice with notions of propitiation, indeed only in highly ethicized religions is the consciousness of sin or of guilt pre-eminent. Sacrifice was believed to exert an influence on the deity which is quasi-physical, and in sacrificial feasts God and worshipper are in mysterious union. Sometimes, indeed, such contact with deity is thought to be dangerous, and the rites indicate avoidance (tabu), and sometimes it is thought desirable.

So universal are such ideas that the problem in particular religions is not their origin but their form. In the Old Testament repeatedly they are found in conflict with the prophetic ideals. Sometimes the prophets denounce them, sometimes ignore them, sometimes attempt to reform and control them. Jesus ignores them, his emphasis being so strong upon the ethical and spiritual that the rest is passed by. In the early Church, still Jewish, the belief was in the coming of a mysterious power from God which produced ecstasy and worked wonders. St Paul also believes in this, but insists that it is subordinate to the peaceable fruits of righteousness. With the naturalization of the Church in the Gentile world ethical ideas became less prominent, and the sacramental system prevailed. By baptism and the Lord’s Supper grace is given (ex opere operato), so that man is renewed and made capable of salvation. Already in the 2nd century baptism was described as a bath in which the health of the soul is restored, and the Lord’s Supper as the potion of immortality. Similar notions present in the ethnic faiths take the Christian facts into their service, the belief of the multitude without essential change remaining vague and undefined. While the theologians discussed doctrine the people longed for mystery, as it satisfied their religious natures. By sacraments they felt themselves brought into the presence of God, and to sacraments they looked for aid. Many sacraments were adopted by portions of the Church, until at last the sacred number seven was agreed upon.

As the way of salvation was modified, so too was the idea of salvation: the dream of a Messianic kingdom on earth, with its corollary the resurrection of the physical body, faded away, especially after the Roman empire adopted Christianity; It was no longer the Jewish nation against the heathen empire, for the Jewish nation had ceased to be, and the empire and the Church were one. Salvation henceforth is not the descent of the New Jerusalem out of heaven, but the ascent of the saints to heaven; for the individual it is not the resurrection of the body but the immortality of the soul. So Jesus is no longer Christ or Messiah, but the Son of God. These terms again are variously interpreted: heaven is still thought of by many under the imagery of the book of Revelation, and by others it is conceived as a mystical union of the soul with God through the intelligence or of feelings. Yet the older conceptions still continue, Christianity not becoming purely and simply Greek. Again and again individuals and groups turn back to the Semitic cycle of hopes and ideas, while the reconciliation of the two systems, Jewish and Graeco-Roman, becomes the task of exegetes and theologians.

These hopes and theories of salvation, however, do not explain the power of Christianity. Jesus wearied himself with the healing of man’s physical ailments, and he was remembered as the great physician. Early Christian literature is filled with medical terms, applied (it is true) for the greater part to the cure of souls. The records of the Church are also filled with the efforts of Jesus’ followers to heal the diseases and satisfy the wants of men. A vast activity animated the early Church: to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to succour the diseased, to rescue the fallen, to visit the prisoners, to forgive the erring, to teach the ignorant, were ministries of salvation. A mighty power impelled men to deny themselves in the service of others, and to find in this service their own true life. None the less the first place is given to the salvation of the soul, since, created for an unending existence, it is of transcendent importance. While man is fallen and by nature vile, nevertheless his possibilities are so vast that in comparison the affairs of earth are insignificant. The word, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” comes to mean that the individual soul outvalues the whole world. With emphasis upon God as creator and ruler, and upon man as made in God’s image, endowed with an unending existence, and subject to eternal torture if not redeemed, the concept of personality has been exalted at the expense of that of nature, and the future has been magnified at the expense of the present. Thus a future heaven is man’s true home, and theology instead of philosophy or natural science is his proper study.

Indeed, intellectual interest centred in religion. Natural science was forsaken, except in so far as it ministered to theology. Because the Old Testament contained references to the origin and the objects of the universe, a certain amount of natural science was necessary, but it was only in this connexion that it had any value. By Augustine’s time this process is complete. His writings contain most of the knowledge of his age, but it is strictly subordinate to his theological purpose. Hence, when the barbarians submerged southern Europe, theology alone survived. The Church entered upon a new task. In the beginning Christianity had been the teacher of religion to highly civilized peoples—now it became the civilizing agent to the barbarians, the teacher of better customs, the upholder of law and the source of knowledge. The learned men were monks and priests, the universities were Church institutions, and theology was the queen of the sciences.

The relation of cult to creed is still undetermined. Theoretically the first depends on the second, for its purpose is twofold: the excitation of worthy religious emotions and the attaining of our desires; and how shall these objects be attained unless we know him whom we worship and to whom we pray? But it is plausibly maintained that the reverse is true, namely, that theology rests on cult. In the beginnings of consciousness instinctive reactions precede definite thoughts, and even in mature life thoughts often follow acts instead of preceding them. Our religious consciousness is simply our ordinary consciousness obeying its laws. So unpurposed does cult grow up that it combines many elements of diverse origin, and is seldom precisely and wholly in accordance with the creed. No doubt the two interact, cult influencing creed and creed modifying cult—cult, perhaps, being most powerful in forming the actual religious faith of the multitude. Cult divides into two unequal parts, the stimulation of the religious emotions and the control of piety. In the Church service it came early to centre in the sacrament of the Eucharist (q.v.). In the earliest period the services were characterized by extreme freedom, and by manifestations of ecstasy which were believed to indicate the presence of the spirit of God; but as the years went by the original enthusiasm faded away, the cult became more and more controlled, until ultimately it was completely subject to the priesthood, and through the priesthood to the Church. In the Roman communion the structure of the sacred edifice, the positions and attitudes of the priest and the congregation, the order of service, emphasize the mystery and the divine efficacy of the sacrament. The worshipper feels himself in the immediate presence of God, and enters into physical relations with him. Participation in the mass also releases from guilt, as the Lamb of God offered up atones for sin and intercedes with the Father in our behalf. Thus in this single act of devotion both objects of all cults are attained.

As the teaching and person of Jesus were fitted into the framework of the Greek philosophy, and the sacraments into the deeper and broader forms of popular belief, so was the organization shaped by the polity of the Roman empire. Jesus gathered his group of followers and committed to it his mission, and after his resurrection the necessities of the situation brought about the choice of quasi-officials. Later the familiar polity of the synagogue was loosely followed. A completer organization was retarded by two factors, the presence of the apostles and the inspiration of the prophets. But when the apostles died and the early enthusiasm disappeared, a stricter order arose. Practical difficulties called for the enforcement of discipline, and differences of opinion for authority in doctrine; and, finally, the sacramentarian system required a priesthood. In the 2nd century the conception of a Catholic Church was widely held and a loose embodiment was given it; after the conversion of the empire the organization took on the official forms of the empire. Later it was modified by the rise of the feudal system and the re-establishment of the modern European nationalities (see Church History).

The polity of the Church was more than a formal organization; it touched the life of each believer. Very early, Christianity was conceived to be a new system of law, and faith was interpreted as obedience. Legalism was joined with sacramentarianism, doubling the power of the priest. Through him Church discipline was administered, a complete system of ecclesiastical penalties, i.e. penance, growing up. It culminated in the doctrine of purgatory, a place of discipline, of purifying suffering after death. The Roman genius for law strengthened and systematized this tendency.

The hierarchy which centres in the pope constitutes the Church of which the sacramental system is the inner life and penance is the sanction. It is thus a divine-human organization. It teaches that the divine-human Son of God established it, and returning to heaven committed to the apostles, especially to St Peter, his authority, which has descended in an unbroken line through the popes. This is the charter of the Church, and its acceptance is the first requisite for salvation; for the Church determines doctrine, exercises discipline and administers sacraments. Its authority is accompanied by the spirit of God, who guides it into truth and gives it miraculous power. Outside the Church there are only the “broken lights” of man’s philosophy and the vain efforts of weak human nature after virtue.

Christianity in its complete Roman development is thus the coming of the supernatural into the natural. The universe falls into these orders, the second for the sake of the first, as nature is of and for God. Without him nature at its highest is like a beautiful statue, devoid of life; it is of secondary moment compared even to men, for while it passes away he continues for ever. He is dependent, therefore, not upon nature, but upon God’s grace for salvation, and this comes through the Church. In the book of Revelation the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to the earth may be taken as a symbol of a continuing process: the human receives the divine, as the Virgin Mary received the Holy Spirit and brought forth Jesus, perfect man and perfect God. Thus the Church ever receives God and has a twofold nature; its sacraments through material and earthly elements impart a divine power; its teachings agree with the highest truths of philosophy and science, yet add to these the knowledge of mysteries which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive; it sanctifies human relationships, but the happiness of earth at purest and best is only a shadow of the divine bliss which belongs to the redeemed soul. Hence man should deny the world for the sake of the other world, and the title “religious” belongs distinctly to the monastic and priestly life. Theology is the queen of the sciences, and nothing should be taught in school or university which contradicts its conclusions. Moreover, nothing should be done by the state which interferes with the transcendent interest committed to the Church. Thus the Church touches and controls all realms of life, and the cycle is complete. It began as separate from the world and proscribed by it; next it adapted itself to the learning, the customs and the polity of the world. Finally it asserted its mastery and assumed sovereign power over all. The Church in its completed form was the outcome of a long development; if the seed was Jewish the environment was Gentile. Into the full tree were gathered the effects, not only of the initial energy, but of the forces of earth, air, water and sun. The Roman Church expressed the beliefs and answered the needs of the people, and this explains in part both its forms and its power, its long continuance and wide supremacy.

The Church was never completely successful in unifying its organization. In part it shared the destiny of the Roman empire, and with it fell into two parts, East separating from West. Indeed the East never really acknowledged the Roman primacy nor shared in its development, and it still remains apart. With characteristic oriental conservatism it claims the title of “Orthodox,” and retains the creed and organization of the early Church. In general its conception of the relation of the world to the super-world is identical with that of the Roman Church, though somewhat less defined, as its organization is less complete. It has remained in the second stage mentioned above; established, as in Russia, by the empire, it is dependent upon it and in alliance with it. In the Mahommedan dominions it has been recognized as a state within the state, and in these communities faith and patriotism are one.

The idea of the Roman Church was imperfectly embodied at the best; the divine gift was in earthen vessels. The world was never completely cast out; indeed the Church became the scene for ambition and the home of luxury and pleasure. It was entangled also in the political strife of the feudal ages and of the beginning of modern empires. Its control of the sciences embroiled it with its own philosophers and scholars, while saints and pure-minded ecclesiastics attempted, without success, its reform from within. Finally, through Luther, the explosion came, and western Christendom broke into two parts—Catholic and Protestant.

Protestantism in its primary principle is the return to primitive Christianity. The whole development which we have traced, culminating in the ecclesiastical-doctrinal system of the Roman Church, is regarded as a corruption, since foreign and even heathen elements have been brought in, so that the religion established by Christ is obscured or lost. For Protestants the Bible only now becomes the infallible, inspired authority in faith and morals. Interpretations by the Fathers or by the councils are to be taken only as aids to its understanding. With this principle is associated a second, the liberty of the individual; he reads the sacred Scriptures and interprets them for himself without the intervention of priests or church; and he enters by faith in Christ into communion with God, so that all believers are priests. Here may be noted a fundamental difference in the psychology of religion, since in the Roman Church the chief appeal is to the emotions, while in the Reformed it is to the intelligence. Yet this appeal to the intelligence is not rationalism: the latter makes reason the supreme authority, rejecting all which does not conform to it; the Bible is treated like any other book, to be accepted or rejected in part or in whole as it agrees with our canons of logic and our general science, while religion submits to the same process as do other departments of knowledge. But in Protestantism reason and the light of nature are in themselves as impotent as in the Roman Church. The Bible interpreted by man’s unaided intelligence is as valueless as other writings, but it has a sacramental value when the Holy Spirit accompanies its teaching, and the power of God uses it and makes the soul capable of holiness. In all this the supernatural is as vividly realized as in the Roman Church; it is only its mediation which is different.

These principles are variously worked out in the different churches and variously expressed. In part because of historical circumstances, the divergence from the older systems is more marked in some Protestant churches than in others, yet on the whole these two principles determine cult and in part organization. As in the Roman Church cult centres in the mass, so in the Reformed Church it centres in the sermon. The Holy Spirit, the determining factor in the religious life, uses the Bible as his means, and calls the intelligence into action. The clergyman is primarily the preacher, renewed by God’s power and enlightened by the Spirit, so that he speaks with divine authority. The ancient Jewish prophetic office is revived, yet with a difference: the ancient prophets acknowledged no external authority, but the Protestant preacher is strictly subordinate to the Scriptures of which he is the interpreter. Beside the sermon the sacraments are observed as established by Christ—two in number, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But these do not exert a quasi-physical or magical influence, ex opere operato. Unless there be faith in the recipient, an understanding of the meaning of the sacrament and an acceptance of it, it is valueless or harmful. Prayer and praise also are effective only as the congregation intelligently join in them; hence they are not to be solely by a priest nor in a strange tongue, as the clergyman is simply the leader of the devotions of the people. In large portions of the Church also opportunity for the free expression of the religious experience of the laity is found.

The emphasis upon the believer and his freedom from all external authority do not result in a thoroughgoing individualism. Luther clearly held to the unity of all Christians, and Protestants are agreed in this. For them, as for the Roman Church, there is a belief in a catholic or all-embracing Church, but the unity is not that of an organization; Christians are one through an indwelling spirit; they hold the same faith, undergo the same experience and follow the same purpose. This inner life constitutes the oneness of believers and forms the true Church which is invisible. It expresses itself in outward forms, yet there are not two Churches visible and invisible, but only one. The spiritual experience of the individual utters itself in words, and desires association with others who know the same grace. There is formed a body of teaching in which all agree, and an organization in which the common experience finds expression and aid. While then membership in this organization is not primary, it assumes a higher and even a vital importance, since a true experience recognizes the common faith and the common fellowship. Were it to refuse assent to these, doubt would be thrown upon its own trustworthiness.

Historically these principles were only in part embodied, for the Reformation was involved in political strife. The Reformers turned to the government for aid and protection, and throughout Europe turmoil and war ensued. In consequence, in the Protestant nations the state assumed the ultimate authority over the Church. Moreover, in the early days of the Reformation the Catholic Church charged it with a lawless individualism, a charge which was seemingly made good by an extreme divergence in theological opinion and by riots in various parts of the Protestant world. The age was indeed one of ferment, so that the foundations of society and of religion seemed threatened. The Reformers turned to the state for protection against the Roman Church, and ultimately as a refuge from anarchy, and they also returned to the theology of the Fathers as their safeguard against heresy. Instead of the simplicity of Luther’s earlier writings, a dogmatic theology was formed, and a Protestant ecclesiasticism established, indistinguishable from the Roman Church in principle. The main difference was in the attitude to the Roman allegiance and to the sacramentarian system. There was thus by no means a complete return to the Bible as the sole authority, but the Bible was taken as interpreted by the earlier creeds and as worked into a doctrinal system by the scholastic philosophy. Thus Protestantism also came to identify theology with the whole range of human knowledge, and in its official forms it was as hostile to the progress of science as was the Roman Church itself.

Many Protestants rebelled against this radical departure from the principles of the Reformation and of Biblical Christianity. To them it seemed the substitution of the authority of the Church for the authority of a living experience and of intellectual adherence to theological propositions for faith. The freedom of the individual was denied when the state enforced religious conformity. Thus a struggle within Protestantism arose, with persecutions of Protestants by Protestants. Moreover, many failed to find the expression of their faith in the official creed or in the established organization, and Protestantism divided into many sects and denominations, founded upon special types of religious experience or upon particular points in doctrine or in cult. Thus Protestantism presents a wide diversity in comparison with the regularity of the Roman Church. This we should expect indeed from its insistence upon individual freedom; yet, notwithstanding certain notable exceptions, amid the diversity there is a substantial unity, a unity which in our day finds expression in common organizations for great practical ends, for example in the “Bible Societies,” “Tract Societies,” the “Young Men’s Christian Associations,” “Societies of Christian Endeavour,” &c., which disregard denominational lines.

The coming of the northern peoples into the Roman world profoundly modified Christianity. It shared indeed in the dreariness and corruption of the times commonly called the “dark ages,” but when at last a productive period began the Church was the first to profit by it. Since all educated men were priests, it assimilated the new learning—the revived Aristotelianism—and continued its control of the universities. In the 13th century it was supreme, and Christianity was identified with world systems of knowledge and politics. Both were deemed alike divine in origin, and to question their validity was an offence against God. Christianity thus had passed through three stages in politics as in science. At first it was persecuted by the state, then established by it, and finally dominated over it; so its teaching was at first alien to philosophy and despised by it, next was accepted by it and given form and rights through it, and finally became queen of the sciences as theology and ruled over the whole world of human knowledge. But the triumph by its completeness ensured new conflicts; from the disorder of the middle ages arose states which ultimately asserted complete autonomy, and in like fashion new intellectual powers came forth which ultimately established the independence of the sciences.

In the broadest sense the underlying principle of the struggle is the reassertion of interest in the world. It is no longer merely the scene for the drama of the soul and God, nor is man independent of it, but man and nature constitute an organism, humanity being a part of the vaster whole. Man’s place is not even central, as he appears a temporary inhabitant of a minor planet in one of the lesser stellar systems. Every science is involved, and theology has come into conflict with metaphysics, logic, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, biology, history and even economics and medicine. From the modern point of view this is unavoidable and even desirable, since “theology” here represents the science of the 13th century. As in the political world the states gained first the undisputed control of matters secular, rejecting even the proffered counsel of the Church, and then proceeded to establish their sovereignty over the Church itself, so was it in the empire of the mind. The rights gained for independent research were extended over the realm of religion also; the two indeed cannot remain separate, and man must subordinate knowledge to the authority of religion—or make science supreme, submitting religion to its scrutiny and judging it like other phenomena. Under this investigation Christianity does not appear altogether exceptional. Its early logic, ontology and cosmology, with many of its distinctive doctrines, are shown to be the natural offspring of the races and ages which gave them birth. Put into their historical environment they are freed from adverse criticism, and indeed valued as steps in the intellectual development of man’s mind. Advanced seriously, however, as truths to-day, they are put aside as anachronisms not worthy of dispute. The Bible is studied like other works, its origins discovered and its place in comparative religion assigned. It does not appear as altogether unique, but it is put among the other sacred books. For the great religions of the world show similar cycles of development, similar appropriations of prevalent science and philosophy, similar conservative insistence upon ancient truth, and similar claims to an exclusive authority.

With this interest is involved an attitude of mind toward the supernatural. As already pointed out, nature and super-nature were taken as physically and spatially distinct. The latter could descend upon the former and be imparted to it, neither subject to nature nor intelligible by reason. In science the process has been reversed; nature ascends, so to speak, into the region of the supernatural and subdues it to itself; the marvellous or miraculous is brought under the domain of natural law, the canons of physics extend over metaphysics, and religion takes its place as one element in the natural relationship of man to his environment. Hence the new world-view threatens the foundations of the ecclesiastical edifice. This revolution in the world-view is no longer the possession of philosophers and scholars, but the multitude accepts it in part. Education in general has rendered many familiar with the teachings of science, and, moreover, its practical benefits have given authority to its maxims and theories. The world’s problem is not only therefore acute, but the demand for its solution is wider than ever before.

The Roman Catholic Church uncompromisingly reasserts its ancient propositions, political and theological. The cause is lost indeed in the political realm, where the Church is obliged to submit, but it protests and does not waive or modify its claims (see the Syllabus of 1864, paragraphs 19 ff., 27, 54 and 55). In the Greek and Protestant churches this situation cannot arise, as they make no claims to governmental sovereignty. In the intellectual domain the situation is more complex. Again the Roman Church unhesitatingly reaffirms the ancient principles in their extreme form (Syllabus, paragraphs 8-9-13; Decrees of the Vatican Council, chapter 4, note especially canon 4-2). The works of St Thomas Aquinas are recommended as the standard authority in theology (Encyc. of Leo XIII., Aeterni Patris, Aug. 4, 1879). In details also the conclusions of modern science are rejected, as for example the origin of man from lower species, and, in a different sphere, the conclusions of experts as to the origins of the Bible. Faith is defined as “assent upon authority,” and the authority is the Church, which maintains its right to supremacy over the whole domain of science and philosophy.

The Greek Church remains untouched by the modern spirit, and the Protestant Churches also are bound officially to the scholastic philosophy of the 17th century; their confessions of faith still assert the formation of the world in six days, and require assent to propositions which can be true only if the old cosmology be correct. Officially then the Church identifies Christianity with the position outlined above, and hostile critics agree to this identification, rejecting the faith in the name of philosophic and scientific truth.

On the other hand there are not wanting individuals and even large bodies of Christians who are intent upon a reinterpretation. Even in the official circles of the Church, not excepting the Roman Church, there are many scholars who find no difficulty in remaining Christian while accepting the modern scientific view of the world. This is possible to some because the situation in its sharp antithesis is not present to their minds: by making certain compromises on the one side and on the other, and by framing private interpretations of important dogmas, they can retain their faith in both and yet preserve their mental integrity. A large literature is produced, reconciling science and theology by softening and compromising and adapting; a procedure in accordance with general historical development, for men do not love sharp antagonisms, nor are they prepared to carry principles to their logical conclusions. By a fortunate power of mind they are able to believe as truths mutually inconsistent propositions.

Thus the crisis is in fact not so acute as it might seem. No great institution lives or dies by logic. Christianity rests on great religious needs which it meets and gratifies, so that its life (like all other lives) is in unrationalized emotions. Reason seeks ever to rationalize these, an attempt which seems to destroy yet really fulfils. As thus the restless reason tests the emotions of the soul, criticizes the traditions to which they cling, rejects the ancient dogmas in which they have been defined, the Church slowly participates in the process: silently this position and that are forsaken, legends and beliefs once of prime importance are forgotten, or when forced into controversy many ways are found by which the old and the new are reconciled: the sharpness of distinctions can be rubbed off, expressions may be softened, definitions can be modified and half-way resting-places afforded, until the momentous transition has been made and the continuity of tradition is maintained. Finally, as the last step, even the official documents may be revised. Such a process in Christianity is everywhere in evidence, for even the Roman Church admits the modern astronomy. So too it accepts the changes in the world of politics with qualified approval. In the Syllabus of 1864 the separation of state and church was anathematized, yet in 1906 this separation in the United States was held up as an example to be followed by the French government. In the Protestant Churches the process is precisely similar. No great church has yet modified its articles of religion so as to admit, for example, that the Garden of Eden was not a definite place where Eve was tempted, yet the doctrine is contradicted with approval by individuals, and the results of modern science are accepted and taught without rebuke. In all this the Church shows its essential oneness with other organizations of society, the government, the family, which are at once deeply rooted in the past, and yet subject to the influences of the present. For Christianity is by no means wholly intellectual, nor chiefly so. It would be fully as true to facts to describe this religion as a vast scheme for the amelioration of the condition of humanity. In education, in care for the sick, the poor, the outcast, it has retained the spirit of its Lord. Though it has at times denied this spirit, been guilty of crimes, persecutions, wars and greed—still the Church has never quite forgotten him who went about doing good, nor freed itself from the contagion of his example. No age has been so responsive to the needs of man as our own; whatever doubts men have as to the doctrines or the cults there is an agreement wider than in the past in the good works whose inspiration is a divine love.

Yet the intellectual crisis cannot be ignored in the interest of the practical life. Men must rationalize the universe. On the one hand there are churchmen who attempt to repeat the historical process which has naturalized the Church in alien soils by appropriating the forces of the new environment, and who hold that the entire process is inspired and guided by the spirit of God. Hence Christianity is the absolute religion, because it does not preclude development but necessitates it, so that the Christianity that is to come shall not only retain all that is important in the Christianity of the past and present but shall assimilate new truth. On the other hand some seek the essential Christianity in a life beneath and separable from the historic forms. In part under the influence of the Hegelian philosophy, and in part because of the prevalent evolutionary scientific world-view, God is represented under the form of pure thought, and the world process as the unfolding of himself. Such truth can be apprehended by the multitude only in symbols which guide the will through the imagination, and through historic facts which are embodiment of ideas. The Trinity is the essential Christian doctrine, the historic facts of the Christian religion being the embodiment of religious ideas. The chief critical difficulty felt by this school is in identifying any concrete historic fact with the unchanging idea, that is, in making Jesus of Nazareth the incarnation of God. God is reinterpreted, and in place of an extra-mundane creator is an omnipresent life and power. The Christian attainment is nothing else than the thorough intellectual grasp of the absolute idea and the identification of our essential selves with God. With a less thorough-going intellectualism other scholars reinterpret Christianity in terms of current scientific phraseology. Christianity is dependent upon the understanding of the universe; hence it is the duty of believers to put it into the new setting, so that it adopts and adapts astronomy, geology, biology and psychology. With this accomplished, Christianity will resume its ancient place. Consciously and of purpose the attempt is made to do once more what has been done repeatedly before, to restate Christianity in the terms of current science.

From all these efforts to reconstruct systematic theology with its appropriations of philosophy and science, groups of Christians turn to the inner life and seek in its realities to find the confirmation of their faith. They also claim oneness with a long line of Christians, for in every age there have been men who have ignored the dogma and the ritual of the Church, and in contemplation and retirement have sought to know God immediately in their own experience. To them at best theology with its cosmology and its logic is only a shadow of shadows, for God reveals himself to the pure in heart, and it matters not what science may say of the material and fleeting world. This spirit manifests itself in wide circles in our day. The Gordian knot is cut, for philosophy and religion no longer touch each other but abide in separate realms.

In quite a different way a still more influential school seeks essential Christianity in the sphere of the ethical life. It also would disentangle religion from cosmology and formal philosophy. It studies the historic development of the Church, noting how element after element has been introduced into the simplicity of the gospel, and from all these it would turn back to the Bible itself. In a thorough-going fashion it would accomplish what Luther and the Reformation attempted. It regards even the earliest creeds as only more or less satisfactory attempts to translate the Christian facts into the current language of the heathen world. But the process does not stop with this rejection of the ancient and the scholastic theology. It recognizes the scientific results attained in the study of the Bible itself, and therefore it does not seek the entire Bible as its rule of truth. To it Jesus Christ, and he alone, is supreme, but this supremacy does not carry with it infallibility in the realm of cosmology or of history. In these too Jesus participated in the views of his own time; even his teaching of God and of the future life is not lacking in Jewish elements, yet none the less he is the essential element in Christianity, and to his life-purpose must all that claims to be Christianity be brought to be judged. To this school Christianity is the culmination of the ethical monotheism of the Old Testament, which finds its highest ideal in self-sacrificing love. Jesus Christ is the complete embodiment of this ideal, in life and in death. This ideal he sets before men under the traditional forms of the kingdom of God as the object to be attained, a kingdom which takes upon itself the forms of the family, and realizes itself in a new relationship of universal brotherhood. Such a religion appeals for its self-verification not to its agreement with cosmological conceptions, either ancient or modern, or with theories of philosophy, however true these may be, but to the moral sense of man. On the one hand, in its ethical development, it is nothing less than the outworking of that principle of Jesus Christ which led him not only to self-sacrificing labour but to the death upon the cross. On the other hand, it finds its religious solution in the trust in a power not ourselves which makes for the same righteousness which was incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Thus Christianity, as religion, is on the one hand the adoration of God, that is, of the highest and noblest, and this highest and noblest as conceived not under forms of power or knowledge but in the form of ethical self-devotion as embodied in Jesus Christ, and on the other hand it meets the requirements of all religion in its dependence, not indeed upon some absolute idea or omnipotent power, but in the belief that that which appeals to the soul as worthy of supreme worship is also that in which the soul may trust, and which shall deliver it from sin and fear and death. Such a conception of Christianity can recognize many embodiments in ritual, organization and dogma, but its test in all ages and in all lands is conformity to the purpose of the life of Christ. The Lord’s Prayer in its oldest and simplest form is the expression of its faith, and Christ’s separation of mankind on the right hand and on the left in accordance with their service or refusal of service to their fellow-men is its own judgment of the right of any age or church to the name Christian. This school also represents historic Christianity, and maintains the continuity of its life through all the ages past with Christ himself. But this continuity is not then in theological systems or creeds, nor in sacraments and cult, nor in organization, but in the noble company of all who have lived in simple trust in God and love to humanity. It is this true Church of the spirit and purpose of Jesus which has been the supreme force for the uplifting of humanity.

Christianity has passed through too many changes, and it has found too many interpretations possible, to fear the time to come. Thoroughgoing reconstruction in every item of theology and in every detail of polity there may be, yet shall the Christian life go on—the life which finds its deepest utterance in the words of Christ, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself”; the life which expresses its profoundest faith in the words Christ taught it to pray, “Our Father”; the life which finds its highest rule of conduct in the words of its first and greatest interpreter, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Bibliography.—Detailed bibliographies accompany the separate articles on subjects connected with the Christian religion and Church. In the following list a selection is given of books on the wider and general subject:—

Extent and Growth.—D. Dorchester, The Problem of Religious Progress (revised ed., 1894); S. Gulick, The Growth of the Kingdom of God (1895); James S. Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress (1906).

Prophets of Israel.—Rudolf Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte (2nd ed., 1899); A.B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy (1903); Karl Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899); W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel and their Place in History (1899); A.F. Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets (3rd ed., 1901); Beruk Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten (1875).

Judaism.—Emil Schürer, History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1890); C.G. Montefiore, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews (2nd ed., 1893); W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (2nd ed., 1906).

The Life and Teaching of Jesus.—Hans Heinrich Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus (1892), 2 vols.; Oskar Holtzmann, The Life of Jesus (Eng. trans., 1904); Paul Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, 2 vols. (1903-1904); T. Crawford Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (1906).

The Beginnings of Christianity.—Ernst von Dobschütz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church (Eng. trans., 1904); A.C. McGiffert, The Apostolic Age (1900); Carl Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age (Eng. trans., 1897); Otto Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum (1902).

The Expansion of Christianity.—Edwin Hatch, “The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church,” the Hibbert Lectures, 1888 (1890); Adolf Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (Eng. trans., 1904); Sir W.M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire (1893).

The History of Church and of Dogma.—Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. trans., 1895); Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (1895, 2 vols.); Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (3 vols., 1881, 3rd ed.).

The Roman Church.—Joseph Wilhelm and Thomas B. Scannell, Manual of Catholic Theology (1906); J.A. Moehler, Symbolism (trans. 1844); Thomas Aquinas, The Summa (Eng. trans., 1907); William Ward, The Ideal of a Christian Church (1844).

The Greek Church.—“The Creeds of the Greek and Russian Churches,” in Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii. pp. 275-542; and J. Michalcesu, Die Bekenntnisse und die wichtigsten Glaubenszeugnisse der griechisch-orientalischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1904).

Protestantism.—John Calvin, Institutio Religionis Christianae, (1536; Eng. trans., 1816); Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (3 vols., 1872); Ernst Troeltsch, Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte (1902); First Principles of the Reformation, or the Ninety-five Theses and the Three Primary Works, trans. by Henry Wace and C.A. Buchheinz (1883).

Christianity in the Modern World.—Andrew D. White, Conflict of Science with Theology (2 vols., 1896); D.F. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872; Eng. trans., 1873); A.J. Balfour, The Foundations of Belief (1897); J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism (1899).

Modern Adaptations of Christianity.—William Adams Brown, Christian Theology in Outline (1906); Augustus Sabatier, Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit (1904); J.A. Zahm, Evolution and Dogma (1896); John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845); Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion (1893); Otto Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion (Eng. trans., 1888, especially volumes 3 and 4); Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in New Lights (1879), Through Science to Faith (1902); Henry Drummond, The Ascent of Man (1894); William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism (Bampton Lectures, 1894); Wilhelm Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian with God (1895); George William Knox, Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the Christian Religion (1903); Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (1900).

Modern Definitions of Christianity.—Alfred Loisy, The Gospel and the Church (1904); Adolf Harnack, What is Christianity? (1901); William Adams Brown, The Essence of Christianity (1902); Ernest Troeltsch, Das Wesen des Christentums; J. Kaftan, Das Wesen der christlichen Religion (2nd ed., 1888); J. Caird, The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity (1899).

(G. W. KN.)

CHRISTIANSAND (Kristiansand), a fortified seaport of Norway, the chief town of a diocese (stift), on a fjord of the Skagerrack, 175 m. S.W. of Christiania by sea. Pop. (1900) 14,701. It stands on a square peninsula flanked by the western and eastern harbours and by the Otter river. The situation, with its wooded hills and neighbouring islands, is no less beautiful than that of other south-coast towns, but the substitution of brick for wood as building material after a fire in 1892 made against the picturesqueness of the town. There is a fine cathedral, rebuilt in Gothic style after a fire in 1880. Christiansand is an important fishing centre (salmon, mackerel, lobsters), and sawmills, wood-pulp factories, shipbuilding yards and mechanical workshops are the principal industrial works. The port is the largest on the south coast, and all the coast steamers, and those serving Christiania from London, Hull, Grangemouth, Hamburg, &c., touch here. The Saetersdal railway follows that valley north to Byglandsfiord (48 m.), whence a good road continues to Viken i Valle at the head of the valley. Flekkerö, a neighbouring island, is a favourite pleasure resort. The town was founded in 1641 by Christian IV., after whom it was named.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, a system of theosophic and therapeutic doctrine, which was originated in America about 1866 by Mrs Mary Baker Glover Eddy, and has in recent years obtained a number of adherents both in the United States and in European countries. Mrs. Eddy (1821-1910; née Baker) was born near Concord, New Hampshire; in 1843 she married Colonel G.W. Glover (d. 1844), in 1853 she married Daniel Patterson (divorced 1873), and in 1877 Dr Asa Gilbert Eddy (d. 1883). About the year 1867 she came forward as a healer by mind-cure. She based her teaching on the Bible, and on the principles that man’s essential nature is spiritual, and that, the Spirit of God being Love and Good, moral and physical evil are contrary to that Spirit, and represent an absence of the True Spirit which was in Jesus Christ. There is but one Mind, one God, one Christ, and nothing real but Mind. Matter and sickness are subjective states of error, delusions which can be dispelled by the mental process of a true knowledge of God and Christ, or Christian science. Ordinary medical science—using drugs, &c.—is therefore irrelevant; spiritual treatment is the only cure of what is really mental error. Jesus himself healed by those means, which were therefore natural and not miraculous, and promised that those who believed should do curative works like his. In 1876 a Christian Scientist Association was organized. Mrs Eddy had published in the preceding year a book entitled Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, which has gone through countless editions and is the gospel of Christian Science. In 1879 she became the pastor of a “Church of Christ, Scientist,” in Boston, and also founded there the “Massachusetts Metaphysical College” (1881; closed 1889) for the furtherance of her tenets. The first denominational chapel outside Boston was built at Oconto, Wisconsin, in 1886; and in 1894 (enlarged and reconstructed in 1906) a great memorial church was erected in Boston. Mrs Eddy’s publications also include Retrospection and Introspection (1891), Unity of Good and Unreality of Evil (1887), Rudimental Divine Science (1891), Christian Healing (1886), &c. The progress of the cult of Christian Science has been remarkable, and by the beginning of the 20th century many hundreds of Christian Science churches had been established; and the new religion found many adherents also in England. A purely local and congregational form of government was adopted, but Christian Scientists naturally looked to the mother church in Boston, with Mrs Eddy as its guiding influence, as their centre. A monthly magazine, The Christian Science Journal (founded in 1883), and the weekly Christian Science Sentinel are published officially in Boston.

The profession of the paid Christian Science “healer” has been very prominent in recent years both in America and in England; and very remarkable successes have been claimed for the treatment. In some serious cases of death after illness, where a coroner’s inquest has shown that the only medical attendance was that of a Christian Science “healer,” the question of criminal responsibility has been prominently canvassed; but an indictment in England against a healer for manslaughter in 1906 resulted in an acquittal. The theosophic and the medical aspects of Christian Science may perhaps be distinguished; the latter at all events is open to grave abuse. But the modern reaction in medical practice against drugs, and the increased study of the subject of “suggestion,” have done much to encourage a belief in faith-healing and in “psychotherapy” generally. In 1908, indeed, a separate movement (Emmanuel), inspired by the success of Christian Science, and also emanating from America, was started within the Anglican Communion, its object being to bring prayer to work on the curing of disease; and this movement obtained the approval of many leaders of the church in England.

An “authorized” Life of Mrs Eddy, by Sibyl Wilbur (1908), deals with the subject acceptably to her disciples. “Georgine Milmine’s” Life of M.B.G. Eddy, and History of Christian Science (1909), though not so acceptable, is a judicious critical account. A detailed indictment against the whole system, by a competent English doctor (Stephen Paget), will be found in The Faith and Works of Christian Science (1909).

CHRISTIANSUND (Kristiansund), a seaport on the west coast of Norway, in Romsdal amt (county), 259 m. N.E. by N. of Bergen, in the latitude of the Faeroe Islands. Pop. (1901) 11,982. It is built on four small islands, by which its harbour is enclosed. The chief exports are wood, cod, herrings and fish products, and butter to Great Britain. The town is served by the principal steamers between the south Norwegian ports, Hull, Hamburg, &c, and Trondhjem, and it is the chief port of the district of Nordmöre. Local steamers serve the neighbouring fjords, including the Sundalsfjord, from which at Sundalsören a driving road past the fine Dovrefjeld connects with the Gudbrandsdal route. Till 1742, when it received town privileges from Christian VI., Christiansund was called Lille-Fosen.

CHRISTIE, RICHARD COPLEY (1830-1901), English scholar and bibliophile, was born on the 22nd of July 1830 at Lenton in Nottinghamshire, the son of a millowner. He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1857, and in 1872 became chancellor of the diocese of Manchester. This he resigned in 1893. He held numerous appointments, notably the professorships of history (from 1854 to 1856) and of political economy (from 1855 to 1866) at Owens College, Manchester. He always took an active interest in this college, of which he was one of the governors; in 1893 he gave the Christie library building designed by Alfred Waterhouse, and in 1897 he devoted £50,000 of the funds at his disposal as a trustee of Sir Joseph Whitworth’s estate for the building of Whitworth Hall, which completed the front quadrangle of the college. He was an enthusiastic book collector, and bequeathed to Owens College his library of about 75,000 volumes, rich in a very complete set of the books printed by Dolet, a wonderful series of Aldines, and of volumes printed by Sebastian Gryphius. His Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance (1880), is the most exhaustive work on the subject. He died at Ribsden on the 9th of January 1901.

CHRISTINA (1626-1689), queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, was born at Stockholm on the 8th of December 1626. Her father died when she was only six years old. She was educated, principally, by the learned Johannes Matthiae, in as masculine a way as possible, while the great Oxenstjerna himself instructed her in politics. Christina assumed the sceptre in her eighteenth year (Dec. 8, 1644). From the moment when she took her seat at the head of the council board she impressed her veteran counsellors with the conviction of her superior genius. Axel Oxenstjerna himself said of her, when she was only fifteen: “Her majesty is not like women-folk, but is stout-hearted and of a good understanding, so that, if she be not corrupted, we have good hopes of her.” Unfortunately her brilliant and commanding qualities were vitiated by an inordinate pride and egoism, which exhibited themselves in an utter contempt for public opinion, and a prodigality utterly regardless of the necessities of the state. She seemed to consider Swedish affairs as far too petty to occupy her full attention; while her unworthy treatment of the great chancellor was mainly due to her jealousy of his extraordinary reputation and to the uneasy conviction that, so long as he was alive, his influence must at least be equal to her own. Recognizing that he would be indispensable so long as the Thirty Years’ War lasted, she used every effort to bring it to an end; and her impulsive interference seriously hampered the diplomacy of the chancellor, and materially reduced the ultimate gains of Sweden. The general peace congress was not opened till April 1645. The Swedish plenipotentiaries were Johan Oxenstjerna, the chancellor’s son, and Adler Salvius. From the first the relations between them were strained. Young Oxenstjerna, haughty and violent, claimed, by right of birth and rank, to be caput legationis. The chancellor, at home, took his son’s part, while Salvius was warmly supported by Christina, who privately assured him of her exclusive favour and encouraged him to hold his own. So acute did the quarrel become that there was a violent scene in full senate between the queen and the chancellor; and she urged Salvius to accelerate the negotiations, against the better judgment of the chancellor, who hoped to get more by holding out longer.

The longer Christina ruled, the more anxious for the future fate of her empire grew the men who had helped to build it up. Yet she gave fresh privileges to the towns; she encouraged trade and manufactures, especially the mining industries of the Dales; in 1649 she issued the first school ordinance for the whole kingdom; she encouraged foreign scholars to settle in Sweden; and native science and literature, under her liberal encouragement, flourished as they had never flourished before. In one respect, too, she showed herself wiser than her wisest counsellors. The senate and the estates, naturally anxious about the succession to the throne, had repeatedly urged her majesty to marry, and had indicated her cousin, Charles Gustavus, as her most befitting consort. Wearied of their importunities, yet revolting at the idea of submission to any member of the opposite sex, Christina settled the difficulty by appointing Charles her successor, and at the Riksdag of 1650 the Swedish crown was declared hereditary in Charles and his heirs male. In the summer of 1651 Christina was, with difficulty, persuaded to reconsider her resolution to abdicate, but three years later the nation had become convinced that her abdication was highly desirable, and the solemn act took place on the 6th of July 1654 at the castle of Upsala, in the presence of the estates and the great dignitaries of the realm. Many were the causes which predisposed her to what was, after all, anything but an act of self-renunciation. First of all she could not fail to remark the increasing discontent with her arbitrary and wasteful ways. Within ten years she had created 17 counts, 46 barons and 428 lesser nobles; and, to provide these new peers with adequate appanages, she had sold or mortgaged crown property representing an annual income of 1,200,000 rix-dollars. Signs are also not wanting that Christina was growing weary of the cares of government; while the importunity of the senate and Riksdag on the question of her marriage was a constant source of irritation. In retirement she could devote herself wholly to art and science, and the opportunity of astonishing the world by the unique spectacle of a great queen, in the prime of life, voluntarily resigning her crown, strongly appealed to her vivid imagination. Anyhow, it is certain that, towards the end of her reign, she behaved as if she were determined to do everything in her power to make herself as little missed as possible. From 1651 there was a notable change in her behaviour. She cast away every regard for the feelings and prejudices of her people. She ostentatiously exhibited her contempt for the Protestant religion. Her foreign policy was flighty to the verge of foolishness. She contemplated an alliance with Spain, a state quite outside the orbit of Sweden’s influence, the firstfruits of which were to have been an invasion of Portugal. She utterly neglected affairs in order to plunge into a whirl of dissipation with her foreign favourites. The situation became impossible, and it was with an intense feeling of relief that the Swedes saw her depart, in masculine attire, under the name of Count Dohna. At Innsbruck she openly joined the Catholic Church, and was rechristened Alexandra. In 1656, and again in 1657, she visited France, on the second occasion ordering the assassination of her major-domo Monaldischi, a crime still unexplained. Twice she returned to Sweden (1660 and 1667) in the vain hope of recovering the succession, finally settling in Rome, where she died on the 19th of April 1689, poor, neglected and forgotten.

See Francis William Bain, Queen Christina of Sweden (London, 1890); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia (Cambridge, 1905); Christina de Suède et le Cardinal Azzolino (Paris, 1899); Claretta Gaudenzio, La Regina Christina de Suezia in Italia (Turin, 1892); Hans Emil Friis, Dronning Christina (Copenhagen, 1896); C.N.D. Bildt, Christina de Suède et le conclave de Clement X (Paris, 1906); Drottning Kristinas sista dagar (Stockholm, 1897); and J.A. Taylor, Christina of Sweden (1909).

(R. N. B.)

CHRISTINA [Maria Christina Henrietta Désirée Félicité Rénière], for some years queen-regent of Spain (1858- ), widow of Alphonso XII. and mother of Alphonso XIII., was born at Gross Seelowitz, in Austria, on the 21st of July 1858, being the daughter of the archduke Charles Ferdinand and the archduchess Elizabeth of Austria. She was brought up by her mother as a rigid Catholic, and great care was taken with her education. At eighteen she was appointed by the emperor Francis Joseph, abbess of the House of Noble Ladies of Saint Theresa in Prague, where she made herself very popular and distinguished herself by her intellectual parts. It is said that at the court of Vienna the archduchess saw the young prince Alphonso of Spain when he was only a pretender in exile, before the restoration of the Bourbons. A few years later, when Alphonso XII. had lost his first wife and cousin, Queen Mercedes, daughter of the duc de Montpensier, his ministers, especially Señor Canovas, urged him to marry again. He told them that if he did so it would only be with the young Austrian archduchess Maria Christina. After some negotiations between the two courts and governments it was agreed that the archduchess Elizabeth and her daughter should meet Alphonso XII. at Arcachon, in the south of France, where a few days’ personal acquaintance was sufficient to make both come to a decision. The duke of Bailen went officially to Vienna to get the emperor of Austria’s authorization, and on the 14th of November 1879, in the throne-room of the Imperial palace, the archduchess solemnly abdicated all her rights of succession in Austria, in accordance with the law obliging all princesses of the imperial house to do so when they wed a foreign prince. On the 17th of November the archduchess and her mother, with a numerous suite, started for Spain, arriving at the royal castle of El Pardo, near Madrid, on the 24th of November. The wedding took place in the Atocha cathedral, on the 29th of November, in great state, and was followed by splendid festivities. Queen Christina bore her husband two daughters before he died in 1885—Dona Mercedes, born on the 11th of September 1880, and Dona Maria Theresa, born on the 12th of November 1882. During her husband’s lifetime the young queen kept studiously apart from politics, so much so that her inexperience caused much anxiety in November 1885, when she was called upon to take the arduous duties of regent. During the long minority of the posthumous son of Alphonso XII., afterwards King Alphonso XIII., the Austrian queen-regent acted in a way that obliged even the adversaries of the throne and the dynasty to respect the mother and the woman. The people of Spain, and the ever-restless civil and military politicians, found that the gloved hand of their constitutional ruler was that of a strong-minded and tenacious regent, who often asserted herself in a way that surprised them much, but always, somehow, enforced obedience and respect. More could not be expected by a foreign ruler from a nation little prone to waste attachment or demonstrative loyalty upon anybody not Castilian born and bred.

CHRISTISON, SIR ROBERT, Bart. (1797-1882), Scottish toxicologist and physician, was born in Edinburgh on the 18th of July 1797. After graduating at the university of that city in 1819, he spent a short time in London, studying under John Abernethy and Sir William Lawrence, and in Paris, where he learnt analytical chemistry from P.J. Robiquet and toxicology from M.J.B. Orfila. In 1822 he returned to Edinburgh as professor of medical jurisprudence, and set to work to organize the study of his subject on a sound basis. On poisons in particular he speedily became a high authority; his well-known treatise on them was published in 1829, and in the course of his inquiries he did not hesitate to try such daring experiments on himself as taking large doses of Calabar bean. His attainments in medical jurisprudence and toxicology procured him the appointment, in 1829, of medical officer to the crown in Scotland, and from that time till 1866 he was called as a witness in many celebrated criminal cases. In 1832 he gave up the chair of medical jurisprudence and accepted that of medicine and therapeutics, which he held till 1877; at the same time he became professor of clinical medicine, and continued in that capacity till 1855. His fame as a toxicologist and medical jurist, together with his work on the pathology of the kidneys and on fevers, secured him a large private practice, and he succeeded to a fair share of the honours that commonly attend the successful physician, being appointed physician to Queen Victoria in 1848 and receiving a baronetcy in 1871. Among the books which he published were a treatise on Granular Degeneration of the Kidneys (1839), and a Commentary on the Pharmacopoeias of Great Britain (1842). Sir Robert Christison, who retained remarkable physical vigour and activity down to extreme old age, died at Edinburgh on the 23rd of January 1882.

See the Life by his sons (1885-1886).

CHRISTMAS (i.e. the Mass of Christ), in the Christian Church, the festival of the nativity of Jesus Christ. The history of this feast coheres so closely with that of Epiphany (q.v.), that what follows must be read in connexion with the article under that heading.

The earliest body of gospel tradition, represented by Mark no less than by the primitive non-Marcan document embodied in the first and third gospels, begins, not with the birth and childhood of Jesus, but with his baptism; and this order of accretion of gospel matter is faithfully reflected in the time order of the invention of feasts. The great church adopted Christmas much later than Epiphany; and before the 5th century there was no general consensus of opinion as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on the 6th of January, or the 25th of March, or the 25th of December.

The earliest identification of the 25th of December with the birthday of Christ is in a passage, otherwise unknown and probably spurious, of Theophilus of Antioch (A.D. 171-183), preserved in Latin by the Magdeburg centuriators (i. 3, 118), to the effect that the Gauls contended that as they celebrated the birth of the Lord on the 25th of December, whatever day of the week it might be, so they ought to celebrate the Pascha on the 25th of March when the resurrection befell.

The next mention of the 25th of December is in Hippolytus’ (c. 202) commentary on Daniel iv. 23. Jesus, he says, was born at Bethlehem on the 25th of December, a Wednesday, in the forty-second year of Augustus. This passage also is almost certainly interpolated. In any case he mentions no feast, nor was such a feast congruous with the orthodox ideas of that age. As late as 245 Origen, in his eighth homily on Leviticus, repudiates as sinful the very idea of keeping the birthday of Christ “as if he were a king Pharaoh.” The first certain mention of Dec. 25 is in a Latin chronographer of A.D. 354, first published entire by Mommsen. It runs thus in English: “Year 1 after Christ, in the consulate of Caesar and Paulus, the Lord Jesus Christ was born on the 25th of December, a Friday and 15th day of the new moon.” Here again no festal celebration of the day is attested.

There were, however, many speculations in the 2nd century about the date of Christ’s birth. Clement of Alexandria, towards its close, mentions several such, and condemns them as superstitions. Some chronologists, he says, alleged the birth to have occurred in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, on the 25th of Pachon, the Egyptian month, i.e. the 20th of May. These were probably the Basilidian gnostics. Others set it on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi, i.e. the 19th or 20th of April. Clement himself sets it on the 17th of November, 3 B.C. The author of a Latin tract, called the De Pascha computus, written in Africa in 243, sets it by private revelation, ab ipso deo inspirati, on the 28th of March. He argues that the world was created perfect, flowers in bloom, and trees in leaf, therefore in spring; also at the equinox, and when the moon just created was full. Now the moon and sun were created on a Wednesday. The 28th of March suits all these considerations. Christ, therefore, being the Sun of Righteousness, was born on the 28th of March. The same symbolical reasoning led Polycarp (before 160) to set his birth on Sunday, when the world’s creation began, but his baptism on Wednesday, for it was the analogue of the sun’s creation. On such grounds certain Latins as early as 354 may have transferred the human birthday from the 6th of January to the 25th of December, which was then a Mithraic feast and is by the chronographer above referred to, but in another part of his compilation, termed Natalis invicti solis, or birthday of the unconquered Sun. Cyprian (de orat. dom. 35) calls Christ Sol verus, Ambrose Sol novus noster (Sermo vii. 13), and such rhetoric was widespread. The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to the 6th of January, accused the Romans of sun-worship and idolatry, contending with great probability that the feast of the 25th of December had been invented by disciples of Cerinthus and its lections by Artemon to commemorate the natural birth of Jesus. Chrysostom also testifies the 25th of December to have been from the beginning known in the West, from Thrace even as far as Gades. Ambrose, On Virgins, in. ch. 1, writing to his sister, implies that as late as the papacy of Liberius 352-356, the Birth from the Virgin was feasted together with the Marriage of Cana and the Banquet of the 4000 (Luke ix. 13), which were never feasted on any other day but Jan. 6.

Chrysostom, in a sermon preached at Antioch on Dec. 20, 386 or 388, says that some held the feast of Dec. 25 to have been held in the West, from Thrace as far as Cadiz, from the beginning. It certainly originated in the West, but spread quickly eastwards. In 353-361 it was observed at the court of Constantius. Basil of Caesarea (died 379) adopted it. Honorius, emperor (395-423) in the West, informed his mother and brother Arcadius (395-408) in Byzantium of how the new feast was kept in Rome, separate from the 6th of January, with its own troparia and sticharia. They adopted it, and recommended it to Chrysostom, who had long been in favour of it. Epiphanius of Crete was won over to it, as were also the other three patriarchs, Theophilus of Alexandria, John of Jerusalem, Flavian of Antioch. This was under Pope Anastasius, 398-400. John or Wahan of Nice, in a letter printed by Combefis in his Historia monothelitarum, affords the above details. The new feast was communicated by Proclus, patriarch of Constantinople (434-446), to Sahak, Catholicos of Armenia, about 440. The letter was betrayed to the Persian king, who accused Sahak of Greek intrigues, and deposed him. However, the Armenians, at least those within the Byzantine pale, adopted it for about thirty years, but finally abandoned it together with the decrees of Chalcedon early in the 8th century. Many writers of the period 375-450, e.g. Epiphanius, Cassian, Asterius, Basil, Chrysostom and Jerome, contrast the new feast with that of the Baptism as that of the birth after the flesh, from which we infer that the latter was generally regarded as a birth according to the Spirit. Instructive as showing that the new feast travelled from West eastwards is the fact (noticed by Usener) that in 387 the new feast was reckoned according to the Julian calendar by writers of the province of Asia, who in referring to other feasts use the reckoning of their local calendars. As early as 400 in Rome an imperial rescript includes Christmas among the three feasts (the others are Easter and Epiphany) on which theatres must be closed. Epiphany and Christmas were not made judicial non dies until 534.

For some years in the West (as late as 353 in Rome) the birth feast was appended to the baptismal feast on the 6th of January, and in Jerusalem it altogether supplanted it from about 360 to 440, when Bishop Juvenal introduced the feast of the 25th of December. The new feast was about the same time (440) finally established in Alexandria. The quadragesima of Epiphany (i.e. the feast of the presentation in the Temple, or hupapantē) continued to be celebrated in Jerusalem on the 14th of February, forty days after the 6th of January, until the reign of Justinian. In most other places it had long before been put back to the 2nd of February to suit the new Christmas. Armenian historians describe the riots, and display of armed force, without which Justinian was not able in Jerusalem to transfer this feast from the 14th to the 2nd of February.

The grounds on which the Church introduced so late as 350-440 a Christmas feast till then unknown, or, if known, precariously linked with the baptism, seem in the main to have been the following. (1) The transition from adult to infant baptism was proceeding rapidly in the East, and in the West was well-nigh completed. Its natural complement was a festal recognition of the fact that the divine element was present in Christ from the first, and was no new stage of spiritual promotion coeval only with the descent of the Spirit upon him at baptism. The general adoption of child baptism helped to extinguish the old view that the divine life in Jesus dated from his baptism, a view which led the Epiphany feast to be regarded as that of Jesus’ spiritual rebirth. This aspect of the feast was therefore forgotten, and its importance in every way diminished by the new and rival feast of Christmas. (2) The 4th century witnessed a rapid diffusion of Marcionite, or, as it was now called, Manichaean propaganda, the chief tenet of which was that Jesus either was not born at all, was a mere phantasm, or anyhow did not take flesh of the Virgin Mary. Against this view the new Christmas was a protest, since it was peculiarly the feast of his birth in the flesh, or as a man, and is constantly spoken of as such by the fathers who witnessed its institution.

In Britain the 25th of December was a festival long before the conversion to Christianity, for Bede (De temp. rat. ch. 13) relates that “the ancient peoples of the Angli began the year on the 25th of December when we now celebrate the birthday of the Lord; and the very night which is now so holy to us, they called in their tongue modranecht (môdra niht), that is, the mothers’ night, by reason we suspect of the ceremonies which in that night-long vigil they performed.” With his usual reticence about matters pagan or not orthodox, Bede abstains from recording who the mothers were and what the ceremonies. In 1644 the English puritans forbad any merriment or religious services by act of Parliament, on the ground that it was a heathen festival, and ordered it to be kept as a fast. Charles II. revived the feast, but the Scots adhered to the Puritan view.

Outside Teutonic countries Christmas presents are unknown. Their place is taken in Latin countries by the strenae, French étrennes, given on the 1st of January; this was in antiquity a great holiday, wherefore until late in the 4th century the Christians kept it as a day of fasting and gloom. The setting up in Latin churches of a Christmas crèche is said to have been originated by St Francis.

Authorities.—K.A.H. Kellner, Heortologie (Freiburg im Br., 1906), with Bibliography; Hospinianus, De festis Christianorum (Genevae, 1574); Edw. Martène, De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus, iii. 31 (Bassani, 1788); J.C.W. Augusti, Christl. Archäologie, vols. i. and v. (Leipzig, 1817-1831); A.J. Binterim, Denkwürdigkeiten, v. pt. i. p. 528 (Mainz, 1825, &c.); Ernst Friedrich Wernsdorf, De originibus Solemnium Natalis Christi (Wittenberg, 1757, and in J.E. Volbeding, Thesaurus Commentationum, Lipsiae, 1847); Anton. Bynaeus, De Natali Jesu Christi (Amsterdam, 1689); Hermann Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Bonn, 1889); Nik. Nilles, S.J., Kalendarium Manuale (Innsbruck, 1896); L. Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien (3e éd., Paris, 1889).

(F. C. C.)

In the Abhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1850). Note that in A.D. 1, Dec. 25 was a Sunday and not a Friday.

In a fragment preserved by an Armenian writer, Ananias of Shirak.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND, a British possession under the government of the Straits Settlements, situated in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean (in 10° 25′ S., 105° 42′ E.), about 190 m. S. of Java. The island is a quadrilateral with hollowed sides, about 12 m. in greatest length and 9 in extreme breadth. It is probably the only tropical island that had never been inhabited by man before the European settlement. When the first settlers arrived, in 1897, it was covered with a dense forest of great trees and luxuriant under-shrubbery. The settlement in Flying Fish Cove now numbers some 250 inhabitants, consisting of Europeans, Sikhs, Malays and Chinese, by whom roads have been cut and patches of cleared ground cultivated.

The island is the flat summit of a submarine mountain more than 15,000 ft. high, the depth of the platform from which it rises being about 14,000 ft., and its height above the sea being upwards of 1000 ft. The submarine slopes are steep, and within 20 m. of the shore the depth of the sea reaches 2400 fathoms. It consists of a central plateau descending to the water in three terraces, each with its “tread” and “rise.” The shore terrace descends by a steep cliff to the sea, forming the “rise” of a submarine “tread” in the form of fringing reef which surrounds the island and is never uncovered, even at low water, except in Flying Fish Cove, where the only landing-place exists. The central plateau is a plain whose surface presents “rounded, flat-topped hills and low ridges and reefs of limestone,” with narrow intervening valleys. On its northern aspect this plateau has a raised rim having all the appearances of being once the margin of an atoll. On these rounded hills occurs the deposit of phosphate of lime which gives the island its commercial value. The phosphatic deposit has doubtless been produced by the long-continued action of a thick bed of sea-fowl dung, which converted the carbonate of the underlying limestone into phosphate. The flat summit is formed by a succession of limestones—all deposited in shallow water—from the Eocene (or Oligocene) up to recent deposits in the above-mentioned atoll with islands on its reef. The geological sequence of events appears to have been the following:—After the deposition of the Eocene (or Oligocene) limestone—which reposes upon a floor of basalts and trachytes—basalts and basic tuffs were ejected, over which, during a period of very slow depression, orbitoidal limestones of Miocene age—which seem to make up the great mass of the island—were deposited; then elapsed a long period of rest, during which the atoll condition existed and the guano deposit was formed; from then down to the present time there has succeeded a series of sea-level subsidences, resulting in the formation of the terraces and the accummulation of the detritus now seen on the first inland cliff, the old submarine slope of the island. The occurrence of such a series of Tertiary deposits appears to be unknown elsewhere. The whole series was evidently deposited in shallow water on the summit of a submarine volcano standing in its present isolation, and round which the ocean floor has probably altered but a few hundred feet since the Eocene age. Thus although the rocks of the southern coast of Java in their general character and succession resemble those of Christmas Island, there lies between them an abysmal trough 18,000 ft. in depth, which renders it scarcely possible that they were deposited in a continuous area, for such an enormous depression of the sea-floor could hardly have occurred since Miocene times without involving also Christmas Island. One of the main purposes of the exploration was to obtain light on the question of the foundation of atolls.

The flora consists of 129 species of angiosperms, 1 Cycas, 22 ferns, and a few mosses, lichens and fungi, 17 of which are endemic, while a considerable number—not specifically distinct—form local varieties nearly all presenting Indo-Malayan affinities, as do the single Cycas, the ferns and the cryptogams. As to its fauna, the island contains 319 species of animals—54 only being vertebrates—145 of which are endemic. A very remarkable distributional fact in regard to them, and one not yet fully explained, is that a large number show affinity with species in the Austro-Malayan rather than in the Indo-Malayan, their nearer, region. The ocean currents, the trade-winds blowing from the Australian mainland, and north-westerly storms from the Malayan islands, are no doubt responsible for the introduction of many, but not all, of these Malayan and Australasian species. The climate is healthy, the temperature varying from 75° to 84° F. The prevailing wind is the S.E. trade, which blows the greater part of the year. The rainfall in the wet season is heavy, but not excessive, and during the dry season the ground is refreshed with occasional showers and heavy dews. Malarial fever is not prevalent, and it is interesting to note that there are no swamps or standing waters on the island.

It is not known when and by whom the island was discovered, but under the name of Moni it appears on a Dutch chart of 1666. It was first visited in 1688 by Dampier, who found it uninhabited. In 1886 Captain Maclear of H.M.S. “Flying Fish,” having discovered an anchorage in a bay which he named Flying Fish Cove, landed a party and made a small but interesting collection of the flora and fauna. In the following year Captain Aldrich on H.M.S. “Egeria” visited it, accompanied by Mr J.J. Lister, F.R.S., who formed a larger biological and mineralogical collection. Among the rocks then obtained and submitted to Sir John Murray for examination there were detected specimens of nearly pure phosphate of lime, a discovery which eventually led, in June 1888, to the annexation of the island to the British crown. Soon afterwards a small settlement was established in Flying Fish Cove by Mr G. Clunies Ross, the owner of the Keeling Islands, which lie about 750 m. to the westward. In 1891 Mr Ross and Sir John Murray were granted a lease, but on the further discovery of phosphatic deposits they disposed of their rights in 1897 to a company. In the same year a thorough scientific exploration was made, at the cost of Sir John Murray, by Mr C.W. Andrews, of the British Museum.

See C.W. Andrews, A Monograph of Christmas Island (Indian Ocean), (London, 1900).

CHRISTODORUS, of Coptos in Egypt, epic poet, flourished during the reign of Anastasius I. (A.D. 491-518). According to Suidas, he was the author of Πάτρια, accounts of the foundation of various cities; Λυδιακά, the mythical history of Lydia; Ίσαυρικά, the conquest of Isauria by Anastasius; three books of epigrams; and many other works. In addition to two epigrams (Anthol. Pal. vii. 697, 698) we possess a description of eighty statues of gods, heroes and famous men and women in the gymnasium of Zeuxippus at Constantinople. This ἔκφρασις, consisting of 416 hexameters, forms the second book of the Palatine Anthology. The writer’s chief models are Homer and Nonnus, whom he follows closely in the structure of his hexameters. Opinions are divided as to the merits of the work. Some critics regard it as of great importance for the history of art and a model of description; others consider it valueless, alike from the historical, mythological and archaeological points of view.

See F. Baumgarten, De Christodoro poëta Thebano (1881), and his article in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, iii. 2 (1899); W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898).

CHRISTOPHER, SAINT (Christophorus, Christoferus), a saint honoured in the Roman Catholic (25th of July) and Orthodox Eastern (9th of May) Churches, the patron of ferrymen. Nothing that is authentic is known about him. He appears to have been originally a pagan and to have been born in Syria. He was baptized by Babylas, bishop of Antioch; preached with much success in Lycia; and was martyred about A.D. 250 during the persecution under the emperor Decius. Round this small nucleus of possibility, however, a vast mass of legendary matter gradually collected. All accounts agree that he was of great stature and singularly handsome, and that this helped him not a little in his evangelistic work. But according to a story reproduced in the New Uniat Anthology of Arcudius, and mentioned in Basil’s Monologue, Christopher was originally a hideous man-eating ogre, with a dog’s face, and only received his human semblance, with his Christian name, at baptism. Most of his astounding miracles are of the ordinary type. He thrusts his staff into the ground; whereupon it sprouts into a date palm, and thousands are converted. Courtesans sent to seduce him are turned by his mere aspect into Christians and martyrs. The Roman governor is confounded by his insensibility to the most refined and ingenious tortures. He is roasted over a slow fire and basted with boiling oil, but tells his tormentors that by the grace of Jesus Christ he feels nothing. When at last, in despair, they cut off his head, he had converted 48,000 people.

The more conspicuous of these legends are included in the Mozarabic Breviary and Missal, and are given in the thirty-third sermon of Peter Damien, but the best-known story is that which is given in the Golden Legend of Jacopus de Voragine. According to this, Christopher—or rather Reprobus, as he was then called—was a giant of vast stature who was in search of a man stronger than himself, whom he might serve. He left the service of the king of Canaan because the king feared the devil, and that of the devil because the devil feared the Cross. He was converted by a hermit; but as he had neither the gift of fasting nor that of prayer, he decided to devote himself to a work of charity, and set himself to carry wayfarers over a bridgeless river. One day a little child asked to be taken across, and Christopher took him on his shoulder. When half way over the stream he staggered under what seemed to him a crushing weight, but he reached the other side and then upbraided the child for placing him in peril. “Had I borne the whole world on my back,” he said, “it could not have weighed heavier than thou!” “Marvel not!” the child replied, “for thou hast borne upon thy back the world and him who created it!” It was this story that gave Christopher his immense popularity throughout Western Christendom.

See Bolland, Acta Sanct. vi. 146; Guenebault, Dict. iconographique des attributs des figures et des légendes des saints (Par., 1850); Smith and Wace, Dict. of Christ. Biog. (London, 1877, &c., 4 vols.); A. Sinemus, Die Legende vom h. Christophorus (Hanover, 1868); and other literature cited in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. iv. 60.

Or Dagnus—perhaps to be identified with Maximinus Daza, joint emperor (with Galerius) in the East 305-311, and sole emperor 311-313.

CHRISTOPHORUS, pope or anti-pope, elected in 903 against Leo V., whom he threw into prison. In January 904 he was treated in the same fashion by his competitor, Sergius III., who had him strangled.

CHRISTOPOULOS, ATHANASIOS (1772-1847), Greek poet, was born at Castoria in Macedonia. He studied at Buda and Padua, and became teacher of the children of the Vlach prince Mourousi. After the fall of that prince in 1811, Christopoulos was employed by Prince Caradja, who had been appointed hospodar of Moldavia and Walachia, in drawing up a code of laws for that country. On the removal of Caradja, he retired into private life and devoted himself to literature. He wrote drinking songs and love ditties which are very popular among the Greeks. He is also the author of a tragedy, of Politika Parallela (a comparison of various systems of government), of translations of Homer and Herodotus, and of some philological works on the connexion between ancient and modern Greek.

His Hellenika Archaiologemata (Athens, 1853) contains an account of his life.

CHRIST’S HOSPITAL (the “Blue-coat School”), a famous English educational and charitable foundation. It was originally one of three royal hospitals in the city of London, founded by Edward VI., who is said to have been inspired by a sermon of Bishop Ridley on charity. Christ’s hospital was specially devoted to fatherless and motherless children. The buildings of the monastery of Grey Friars, Newgate Street, were appropriated to it; liberal public subscription added to the king’s grant endowed it richly; and the mayor, commonalty and citizens of London were nominated its governors in its charter of 1553. At first Christ’s hospital shared a common fund with the two other hospitals of the foundation (Bridewell and St Thomas’s), but the three soon became independent. Not long after its opening Christ’s was providing home and education (or, in the case of the very young, nursing) for 400 children. The popular name of the Blue-coat school is derived from the dress of the boys—originally (almost from the time of the foundation) a blue gown, with knee-breeches, yellow petticoat and stockings, neck-bands and a blue cap. The petticoat and cap were given up in the middle of the 19th century, and thereafter no head-covering was worn. The buildings on the Newgate Street site underwent reconstruction from time to time, and in 1902 were vacated by the school, which was moved to extensive new buildings at Horsham. The London buildings were subsequently taken down. The school at Horsham is conducted on the ordinary lines of a public school, and can accommodate over 800 boys. It includes a preparatory school for boys, established in 1683 at Hertford, where the buildings have been greatly enlarged for the use of the girls’ school on the same foundation. This was originally in Newgate Street, but was moved to Hertford in 1778. In the boys’ school the two highest classes retain their ancient names of Grecians and Deputy Grecians. Children were formerly admitted to the schools only on presentation. Admission is now (1) by presentation of donation governors (i.e. the royal family, and contributors of £500 or more to the funds), of the council of almoners (which administers the endowments), or of certain of the city companies; (2) by competition, on the nomination of a donation governor (for boys only), or from public elementary schools in London, certain city parishes and certain endowed schools elsewhere. The main school is divided into two parts—the Latin school, corresponding to the classical side in other schools, and the mathematical school or modern side. Large pension charities are administered by the governing body, and part of the income of the hospital (about £60,000 annually) is devoted to apprenticing boys and girls, to leaving exhibitions from the school, &c.

CHRISTY, HENRY (1810-1865), English ethnologist, was born at Kingston-on-Thames on the 26th of July 1810. He entered his father’s firm of hatters, in London, and later became a director of the London Joint-Stock Bank. In 1850 he started on a series of journeys, which interested him in ethnological studies. Encouraged by what he saw at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Christy devoted the rest of his life to perpetual travel and research, making extensive collections illustrating the early history of man, now in the British Museum. He travelled in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, British Columbia and other countries; but in 1858 came the opportunity which brought him fame. It was in that year that the discoveries by Boucher de Perthes of flint-implements in France and England were first held to have clearly proved the great antiquity of man. Christy joined the Geological Society, and in company with his friend Edouard Lartet explored the caves in the valley of the Vézère, a tributary of the Dordogne in the south of France. To his task Christy devoted money and time ungrudgingly, and an account of the explorations appeared in Comptes rendus (Feb. 29th, 1864) and Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London (June 21st, 1864). He died, however, on the 4th of May 1865, of inflammation of the lungs supervening on a severe cold contracted during excavation work at La Palisse, leaving a half-finished book, entitled Reliquiae Aquitanicae, being contributions to the Archaeology and Palaeontology of Perigord and the adjacent provinces of Southern France; this was issued in parts and completed at the expense of Christy’s executors, first by Lartet and, after his death in 1870, by Professor Rupert Jones. By his will Christy bequeathed his magnificent archaeological collection to the nation. In 1884 it found a home in the British Museum. Christy took an earnest part in many philanthropic movements of his time, especially identifying himself with the efforts to relieve the sufferers from the Irish famine of 1847.

CHROMATIC (Gr. χρωματικός, coloured, from χρῶμα, colour), a term meaning “coloured,” chiefly used in science, particularly in the expression “chromatic aberration” or “dispersion” (see Aberration). In Greek music χρωματικὴ μουσική was one of three divisions—diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic—of the tetrachord. Like the Latin color, χρῶμα was often used of ornaments and embellishments, and particularly of the modification of the three genera of the tetrachord. The chromatic, being subject to three such modifications, was regarded as particularly “coloured.” To the Greeks chromatic music was sweet and plaintive. From a supposed resemblance to the notes of the chromatic tetrachord, the term is applied to a succession of notes outside the diatonic scale, and marked by accidentals. A “chromatic scale” is thus a series of semi-tones, and is commonly written with sharps in ascending and flats descending. The most correct method is to write such accidentals as do not involve a change of key.

CHROMITE, a member of the spinel group of minerals; an oxide of chromium and ferrous iron, FeCr2O4. It is also known as chromic iron or as chrome-iron-ore, and is the chief commercial source of chromium and its compounds. It crystallizes in regular octahedra, but is usually found as grains or as granular to compact masses. In its iron-black colour with submetallic lustre and absence of cleavage it resembles magnetite (magnetic iron-ore) in appearance, but differs from this in being only slightly if at all magnetic and in the brown colour of its powder. The hardness is 5½; specific gravity 4.5. The theoretical formula FeCr2O4 corresponds with chromic oxide (Cr2O3) 68%, and ferrous oxide 32%; the ferrous oxide is, however, usually partly replaced by magnesia, and the chromic oxide by alumina and ferric oxide, so that there may be a gradual passage to picotite or chromespinel. Much of the material mined as ore does not contain more than 40 to 50% of chromic oxide. In the form of isolated grains the mineral is a characteristic constituent of ultrabasic igneous rocks, namely the peridotites and the serpentines which have resulted from their alteration. It is also found under similar conditions in meteoric stones and irons. Often these rocks enclose large segregated masses of granular chromite. The earliest worked deposits were those in the serpentine of the Bare Hills near Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.; it was also formerly extensively mined in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, and is now mined in California, as well as in Turkey, the Urals, Dun Mountain near Nelson in New Zealand, and Unst in the Shetlands.

Chrome-iron-ore is largely used in the preparation of chromium compounds for use as pigments (chrome-yellow, &c.) and in calico-printing; it is also used in the manufacture of chrome-steel.

(L. J. S.)

CHROMIUM (symbol Cr. atomic weight 52.1), one of the metallic chemical elements, the name being derived from the fine colour (Gr. χρῶμα) of its compounds. It is a member of the sixth group in the periodic classification of the elements, being included in the natural family of elements containing molybdenum, tungsten and uranium. The element is not found in the free state in nature, nor to any large extent in combination, occurring chiefly as chrome-ironstone, Cr2O3·FeO, and occasionally being found as crocoisite, PbCrO4, chrome-ochre, Cr2O3, and chrome-garnet, CaO·Cr2O3·3SiO2, while it is also the cause of the colour in serpentine, chrome-mica and the emerald. It was first investigated in 1789 by L.N. Vauquelin and Macquart, and in 1797 by Vauquelin, who found that the lead in crocoisite was in combination with an acid, which he recognized as the oxide of a new metal.

The metal can be obtained by various processes. Thus Sainte Claire Deville prepared it as a very hard substance of steel-grey colour, capable of taking a high polish, by strong ignition of chromic oxide and sugar charcoal in a lime crucible. F. Wöhler reduced the sesquioxide by zinc, and obtained a shining green powder of specific gravity 6.81, which tarnished in air and dissolved in hydrochloric acid and warm dilute sulphuric acid, but was unacted upon by concentrated nitric acid. H. Moissan (Comptes rendus, 1893, 116, p. 349; 1894, 119, p. 185) reduces the sesquioxide with carbon, in an electric furnace; the product so obtained (which contains carbon) is then strongly heated with lime, whereby most of the carbon is removed as calcium carbide, and the remainder by heating the purified product in a crucible lined with the double oxide of calcium and chromium. An easier process is that of H. Goldschmidt (Annalen, 1898, 301, p. 19) in which the oxide is reduced by metallic aluminium; and if care is taken to have excess of the sesquioxide of chromium present, the metal is obtained quite free from aluminium. The metal as obtained in this process is lustrous and takes a polish, does not melt in the oxyhydrogen flame, but liquefies in the electric arc, and is not affected by air at ordinary temperatures. Chromium as prepared by the Goldschmidt process is in a passive condition as regards dilute sulphuric acid and dilute hydrochloric acid at ordinary temperatures; but by heating the metal with the acid it passes into the active condition, the same effect being produced by heating the inactive form with a solution of an alkaline halide. W. Hittorf thinks that two allotropic forms of chromium exist (Zeit. für phys. Chem., 1898, 25, p. 729; 1899, 30, p. 481; 1900, 34, p. 385), namely active and inactive chromium; while W. Ostwald (ibid., 1900, 35, pp. 33, 204) has observed that on dissolving chromium in dilute acids, the rate of solution as measured by the evolution of gas is not continuous but periodic. It is largely made as ferro-chrome, an alloy containing about 60-70% of chromium, by reducing chromite in the electric furnace or by aluminium.

Chromium and its salts may be detected by the fact that they give a deep green bead when heated with borax, or that on fusion with sodium carbonate and nitre, a yellow mass of an alkaline chromate is obtained, which, on solution in water and acidification with acetic acid, gives a bright yellow precipitate on the addition of soluble lead salts. Sodium and potassium hydroxide solutions precipitate green chromium hydroxide from solutions of chromic salts; the precipitate is soluble in excess of the cold alkali, but is completely thrown down on boiling the solution. Chromic acid and its salts, the chromates and bichromates, can be detected by the violet coloration which they give on addition of hydrogen peroxide to their dilute acid solution, or by the fact that on distillation with concentrated sulphuric acid and an alkaline chloride, the red vapours of chromium oxychloride are produced. The yellow colour of normal chromates changes to red on the addition of an acid, but goes back again to yellow on making the solution alkaline. Normal chromates on the addition of silver nitrate give a red precipitate of silver chromate, easily soluble in ammonia, and with barium chloride a yellow precipitate of barium chromate, insoluble in acetic acid. Reducing agents, such as sulphurous acid and sulphuretted hydrogen, convert the chromates into chromic salts. Chromium in the form of its salts may be estimated quantitatively by precipitation from boiling solutions with a slight excess of ammonia, and boiling until the free ammonia is nearly all expelled. The precipitate obtained is filtered, well washed with hot water, dried and then ignited until the weight is constant. In the form of a chromate, it may be determined by precipitation, in acetic acid solution, with lead acetate; the lead chromate precipitate collected on a tared filter paper, well washed, dried at 100° C. and weighed; or the chromate may be reduced by means of sulphur dioxide to the condition of a chromic salt, the excess of sulphur dioxide expelled by boiling, and the estimation carried out as above.

The atomic weight of chromium has been determined by S.G. Rawson, by the conversion of pure ammonium bichromate into the trioxide (Journal of Chem. Soc., 1899, 55, p. 213), the mean value obtained being 52.06; and also by C. Meinecke, who estimated the amount of silver, chromium and oxygen in silver chromate, the amount of oxygen in potassium bichromate, and the amount of oxygen and chromium in ammonium bichromate (Ann., 1891, 261, p. 339), the mean value obtained being 51.99.

Chromium forms three series of compounds, namely the chromous salts corresponding to CrO, chromous oxide, chromic salts, corresponding to Cr2O3, chromium sesquioxide, and the chromates corresponding to CrO3, chromium trioxide or chromic anhydride. Chromium sesquioxide is a basic oxide, although like alumina it acts as an acid-forming oxide towards strong bases, forming salts called chromites. Various other oxides of chromium, intermediate in composition between the sesquioxide and trioxide, have been described, namely chromium dioxide, Cr2O3·CrO3, and the oxide CrO3·2Cr2O3.

Chromous oxide, CrO, is unknown in the free state, but in the hydrated condition as CrO·H2O or Cr(OH)2 it may be prepared by precipitating chromous chloride by a solution of potassium hydroxide in air-free water. The precipitate so obtained is a brown amorphous solid which readily oxidizes on exposure, and is decomposed by heat with liberation of hydrogen and formation of the sesquioxide. The sesquioxide, Cr2O3, occurs native, and can be artificially obtained in several different ways, e.g., by igniting the corresponding hydroxide, or chromium trioxide, or ammonium bichromate, or by passing the vapours of chromium oxychloride through a red-hot tube, or by ignition of mercurous chromate. In the amorphous state it is a dull green, almost infusible powder, but as obtained from chromium oxychloride it is deposited in the form of dark green hexagonal crystals of specific gravity 5.2. After ignition it becomes almost insoluble in acids, and on fusion with silicates it colours them green; consequently it is used as a pigment for colouring glass and china. By the fusion of potassium bichromate with boric acid, and extraction of the melt with water, a residue is left which possesses a fine green colour, and is used as a pigment under the name of Guignet’s green. In composition it approximates to Cr2O3·H2O, but it always contains more or less boron trioxide. Several forms of hydrated chromium sesquioxide are known; thus on precipitation of a chromic salt, free from alkali, by ammonia, a light blue precipitate is formed, which after drying over sulphuric acid, has the composition Cr2O3·7H2O, and this after being heated to 200° C. in a current of hydrogen leaves a residue of composition CrO·OH or Cr2O3·H2O which occurs naturally as chrome ochre. Other hydrated oxides such as Cr2O3·2H2O have also been described. Chromium trioxide, CrO3, is obtained by adding concentrated sulphuric acid to a cold saturated solution of potassium bichromate, when it separates in long red needles; the mother liquor is drained off and the crystals are washed with concentrated nitric acid, the excess of which is removed by means of a current of dry air. It is readily soluble in water, melts at 193° C., and is decomposed at a higher temperature into chromium sesquioxide and oxygen; it is a very powerful oxidizing agent, acting violently on alcohol, converting it into acetaldehyde, and in glacial acetic acid solution converting naphthalene and anthracene into the corresponding quinones. Heated with concentrated hydrochloric acid it liberates chlorine, and with sulphuric acid it liberates oxygen. Gaseous ammonia passed over the oxide reduces it to the sesquioxide with formation of nitrogen and water. Dissolved in hydrochloric acid at -20°, it yields with solutions of the alkaline chlorides compounds of the type MCl·CrOCl3, pointing to pentavalent chromium. For salts of this acid-forming oxide and for perchromic acid see Bichromates.

The chromites may be looked upon as salts of chromium sesquioxide with other basic oxides, the most important being chromite (q.v.).

Chromous chloride, CrCl2, is prepared by reducing chromic chloride in hydrogen; it forms white silky needles, which dissolve in water giving a deep blue solution, which rapidly absorbs oxygen, forming basic chromic salts, and acts as a very strong reducing agent. The bromide and iodide are formed in a similar manner by heating the metal in gaseous hydrobromic or hydriodic acids.

Chromous sulphate, CrSO4·7H2O, isomorphous with ferrous sulphate, results on dissolving the metal in dilute sulphuric acid or, better, by dissolving chromous acetate in dilute sulphuric acid, when it separates in blue crystals on cooling the solution. On pouring a solution of chromous chloride into a saturated solution of sodium acetate, a red crystalline precipitate of chromous acetate is produced; this is much more permanent in air than the other chromous salts and consequently can be used for their preparation. Chromic salts are of a blue or violet colour, and apparently the chloride and bromide exist in a green and violet form.

Chromic chloride, CrCl3, is obtained in the anhydrous form by igniting a mixture of the sesquioxide and carbon in a current of dry chlorine; it forms violet laminae almost insoluble in water, but dissolves rapidly in presence of a trace of chromous chloride; this action has been regarded as a catalytic action, it being assumed that the insoluble chromic chloride is first reduced by the chromous chloride to the chromous condition and the original chromous chloride converted into soluble chromic chloride, the newly formed chromous chloride then reacting with the insoluble chromic chloride. Solutions of chromic chloride in presence of excess of acid are green in colour. According to A. Werner, four hydrated chromium chlorides exist, namely the green and violet salts, CrCl3·6H2O, a hydrate, CrCl3·10H2O and one CrCl3·4H2O. The violet form gives a purple solution, and all its chlorine is precipitated by silver nitrate, the aqueous solution containing four ions, probably Cr(OH2)6 and three chlorine ions. The green salt appears to dissociate in aqueous solution into two ions, namely CrCl2(OH2)4 and one chlorine ion, since practically only one-third of the chlorine is precipitated by silver nitrate solution at 0° C. Two of the six water molecules are easily removed in a desiccator, and the salt formed, CrCl3·4H2O, resembles the original salt in properties, only one-third of the chlorine being precipitated by silver nitrate. In accordance with his theory of the constitution of salts Werner formulates the hexahydrate as CrCl2·(OH2)4·Cl·2H2O.

Chromic bromide, CrBr3, is prepared in the anhydrous form by the same method as the chloride, and resembles it in its properties. The iodide is unknown.

The fluoride, CrF3, results on passing hydrofluoric acid over the heated chloride, and sublimes in needles. The hydrated fluoride, CrF3·9H2O, obtained by adding ammonium fluoride to cold chromic sulphate solution, is sparingly soluble in water, and is decomposed by heat.

Oxyhalogen derivatives of chromium are known, the oxychloride, CrO2Cl2, resulting on heating potassium bichromate and common salt with concentrated sulphuric acid. It distils over as a dark red liquid of boiling point 117° C., and is to be regarded as the acid chloride corresponding to chromic acid, CrO2(OH)2. It dissolves iodine and absorbs chlorine, and is decomposed by water with formation of chromic and hydrochloric acids; it takes fire in contact with sulphur, ammonia, alcohol, &c., and explodes in contact with phosphorus; it also acts as a powerful oxidizing agent. Heated in a closed tube at 180° C. it loses chlorine and leaves a black residue of trichromyl chloride, Cr3O6Cl2, which deliquesces on exposure to air. Analogous bromine and iodine compounds are unknown, since bromides and iodides on heating with potassium bichromate and concentrated sulphuric acid give free bromine or free iodine.

The oxyfluoride, CrO2F2, is obtained in a similar manner to the oxychloride by using fluorspar in place of common salt. It may be condensed to a dark red liquid which is decomposed by moist air into chromic acid and chromic fluoride.

The semi-acid chloride, CrO2·Cl·OH, chlorochromic acid, is only known in the form of its salts, the chlorochromates.

Potassium chlorochromate, CrO2·Cl·OK, is produced when potassium bichromate is heated with concentrated hydrochloric acid and a little water, or from chromium oxychloride and saturated potassium chloride solution, when it separates as a red crystalline salt. By suspending it in ether and passing ammonia, potassium amidochromate, CrO2·NH2·OK, is obtained; on evaporating the ether solution, after it has stood for 24 hours, red prisms of the amidochromate separate; it is slowly decomposed by boiling water, and also by nitrous acid, with liberation of nitrogen.

Chromic sulphide, Cr2S3, results on heating chromium and sulphur or on strongly heating the trioxide in a current of sulphuretted hydrogen; it forms a dark green crystalline powder, and on ignition gives the sesquioxide.

Chromic sulphate, Cr2(SO4)3, is prepared by mixing the hydroxide with concentrated sulphuric acid and allowing the mixture to stand, a green solution is first formed which gradually changes to blue, and deposits violet-blue crystals, which are purified by dissolving in water and then precipitating with alcohol. It is soluble in cold water, giving a violet solution, which turns green on boiling. If the violet solution is allowed to evaporate slowly at ordinary temperatures the sulphate crystallizes out as Cr2(SO4)3·15H2O, but the green solution on evaporation leaves only an amorphous mass. Investigation has shown that the change is due to the splitting off of sulphuric acid during the process, and that green-coloured chrom-sulphuric acids are formed thus—

2Cr2(SO4)3 + H2O = H2SO4 + [Cr4O·(SO4)4]SO4

(violet) (green)

since, on adding barium chloride to the green solution, only one-third of the total sulphuric acid is precipitated as barium sulphate, whence it follows that only one-third of the original SO4 ions are present in the green solution. The green salt in aqueous solution, on standing, gradually passes back to the violet form. Several other complex chrom-sulphuric acids are known, e.g.

[Cr2(SO4)4]H2; [Cr2(SO4)5]H4; [Cr2(SO4)6]H6

(see A. Recoura, Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1895 (7), 4, p. 505.)

Chromic sulphate combines with the sulphates of the alkali metals to form double sulphates, which correspond to the alums. Chrome alum, K2SO4·Cr2(SO4)3·24H2O, is best prepared by passing sulphur dioxide through a solution of potassium bichromate containing the calculated quantity of sulphuric acid,

K2Cr2O7 + 3SO2 + H2SO4 = H2O + K2SO4 + Cr2(SO4)3.

On evaporating the solution dark purple octahedra of the alum are obtained. It is easily soluble in warm water, the solution being of a dull blue tint, and is used in calico-printing, dyeing and tanning. Chromium ammonium sulphate, (NH4)2SO4·Cr2(SO4)3·24H2O, results on mixing equivalent quantities of chromic sulphate and ammonium sulphate in aqueous solution and allowing the mixture to crystallize. It forms red octahedra and is less soluble in water than the corresponding potassium compound. The salt CrClSO4·8H2O has been described. By passing ammonia over heated chromic chloride, the nitride, CrN, is formed as a brownish powder. By the action of concentrated sulphuric acid it is transformed into chromium ammonium sulphate.

The nitrate, Cr(NO3)3·9H2O, crystallizes in purple prisms and results on dissolving the hydroxide in nitric acid, its solution turns green on boiling. A phosphide, PCr, is known; it burns in oxygen forming the phosphate. By adding sodium phosphate to an excess of chrome alum the violet phosphate, CrPO4·6H2O, is precipitated; on heating to 100° C. it loses water and turns green. A green precipitate, perhaps CrPO4·3H2O, is obtained on adding an excess of sodium phosphate to chromic chloride solution.

Carbides of chromium are known; when the metal is heated in an electric furnace with excess of carbon, crystalline, C2Cr3, is formed; this scratches quartz and topaz, and the crystals are very resistant to the action of acids; CCr4 has also been described (H. Moissan, Comptes rendus, 1894, 119, p. 185).

Cyanogen compounds of chromium, analogous to those of iron, have been prepared; thus potassium chromocyanide, K4Cr(CN)6·2H2O, is formed from potassium cyanide and chromous acetate; on exposure to air it is converted into the chromicyanide, K3Cr(CN)6, which can also be prepared by adding chromic acetate solution to boiling potassium cyanide solution. Chromic thiocyanate, Cr(SCN)3, an amorphous deliquescent mass, is formed by dissolving the hydroxide in thiocyanic acid and drying over sulphuric acid. The double thiocyanate, Cr(SCN)3·3KCNS·4H2O, is also known.

Chromium salts readily combine with ammonia to form complex salts in which the ammonia molecule is in direct combination with the chromium atom. In many of these salts one finds that the elements of water are frequently found in combination with the metal, and further, that the ammonia molecule may be replaced by such other molecular groups as -NO2, &c. Of the types studied the following may be mentioned: the diammine chromium thiocyanates, M[Cr(NH3)2·(SCN)4], the chloraquotetrammine chromic salts, R¹2[Cr(NH3)4·H2O·Cl], the aquopentammine or roseo-chromium salts, R¹3[Cr(NH3)5·H2O], the chlorpentammine or purpureo-chromium salts, R¹2[Cr(NH3)5·Cl], the nitrito pentammine or xanthochromium salts, R¹2[NO2·(NH3)5·Cr], the luteo or hexammine chromium salts, R¹3[(NH3)6·Cr], and the rhodochromium salts: where R¹ = a monovalent acid radical and M = a monovalent basic radical. For the preparation and properties of these salts and a discussion on their constitution the papers of S.F. Jörgensen and of A. Werner in the Zeitschrift für anorganische Chemie from 1892 onwards should be consulted.

P. Pfeiffer (Berichte, 1904, 37, p. 4255) has shown that chromium salts of the type [Cr{C2H4(NH2)2}2X2]X exist in two stereo-isomeric forms, namely, the cis- and trans- forms, the dithiocyan-diethylene-diamine-chromium salts being the trans- salts. Their configuration was determined by their relationship to their oxalo-derivatives; the cis-dichloro chloride, [CrC2H4(NH2)2Cl2]Cl·H2O, compound with potassium oxalate gave a carmine red crystalline complex salt, [Cr{C2H4(NH2)2}C2O4][CrC2H4(NH2)2·(C2O4)2]1½H2O, while from the trans-chloride a red complex salt is obtained containing the unaltered trans-dichloro group [CrC2H4(NH2)2·Cl2].

CHROMOSPHERE (from Gr. χρῶμα, colour, and σφαῖρα, a sphere), in astronomy, the red-coloured envelope of the sun, outside of the photosphere. It can be seen with the eye at the beginning or ending of a total eclipse of the sun, and with a suitable spectroscope at any time under favourable conditions. (See Sun and Eclipse.)

CHRONICLE (from Gr. χρόνος, time). The historical works written in the middle ages are variously designated by the terms “histories,” “annals,” or “chronicles”; it is difficult, however, to give an exact definition of each of these terms, since they do not correspond to determinate classes of writings. The definitions proposed by A. Giry (in La Grande Encyclopédie), by Ch. V. Langlois (in the Manuel de bibliographie historique), and by E. Bernheim (in the Lehrbuch der historischen Methode), are manifestly insufficient. Perhaps the most reasonable is that propounded by H.F. Delaborde at the École des Chartes, that chronicles are accounts of a universal character, while annals relate either to a locality, or to a religious community, or even to a whole people, but without attempting to treat of all periods or all peoples. The primitive type, he says, was furnished by Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote (c. 303) a chronicle in Greek, which was soon translated into Latin and frequently recopied throughout the middle ages; in the form of synoptic and synchronistic tables it embraced the history of the world, both Jewish and Christian, since the Creation. This ingenious opinion, however, is only partially exact, for it is certain that the medieval authors or scribes were not conscious of any well-marked distinction between annals and chronicles; indeed, they often apparently employed the terms indiscriminately.

Whether or not a distinction can be made, chronicles and annals (q.v.) have points of great similarity. Chronicles are accounts generally of an impersonal character, and often anonymous, composed in varying proportions of passages reproduced textually from sources which the chronicler is seldom at pains to indicate, and of personal recollections the veracity of which remains to be determined. Some of them are written with so little intelligence and spirit that one is led to regard the work of composition as a piece of drudgery imposed on the clergy and monks by their superiors. To distinguish what is original from what is borrowed, to separate fact from falsehood, and to establish the value of each piece of evidence, are in such circumstances a difficult undertaking, and one which has exercised the sagacity of scholars, especially since the 17th century. The work, moreover, is immense, by reason of the enormous number of medieval chronicles, both Christian and Mahommedan.

The Christian chronicles were first written in the two learned languages, Greek and Latin. At an early stage we have proof of the employment of national languages, the most famous instances being found at the two extremities of Europe, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (q.v.), the most ancient form of which goes back to the 10th century, and the so-called Chronicle of Nestor, in Palaeo-Slavonic, written in the 11th and 12th centuries. In the 13th and 14th centuries the number of chronicles written in the vulgar tongue continued to increase, at least in continental Europe, which far outpaced England in this respect. From the 15th century, with the revived study of Greek and Roman literature, the traditional form of chronicles, as well as of annals, tended to disappear and to be replaced by another and more scientific form, based on the models of antiquity—that of the historical composition combining skilful arrangement with elegance of literary style. The transition, however, was very gradual, and it was not until the 17th century that the traditional form became practically extinct.

See E. Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischcn Methode (4th ed., 1903); H. Bloch, “Geschichte der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter” in the Handbuch of G. von Below and F. Meinecke (Munich, 1903 seq.); Max Jansen, “Historiographie und Quellen der deutschen Geschichte bis 1500,” in Aloïs Meister’s Grundris (Leipzig, 1906); and the Introduction (1904) to A. Molinier’s Les Sources de l’histoire de France.

(C. B.*)

CHRONICLES, BOOKS OF, two Old Testament books of the Bible. The name is derived from Chronicon, first suggested by Jerome as a rendering of the title which they bear in the Hebrew Canon, viz. Events of the Times. The full Hebrew title would be Book of Events of the Times, and this again appears to have been a designation commonly applied to special histories in the more definite shape—Events of the Times of King David, or the like (1 Chron. xxvii. 24; Esth. x. 2, &c.). The Greek translators divided the long book into two, and adopted the title Παραλειπόμενα, Things omitted [scil. in the other historical books].

The book of Chronicles begins with Adam and ends abruptly in the middle of Cyrus’s decree of restoration, which reappears complete at the beginning of Ezra. A closer examination of those parts of Ezra and Nehemiah which are not extracted from earlier documents or original memoirs leads to the conclusion that Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah was originally one work, displaying throughout the peculiarities of language and thought of a single editor, who, however, cannot be Ezra himself as tradition would have it. Thus the fragmentary close of 2 Chronicles marks the disruption of a previously-existing continuity,—due, presumably, to the fact that in the gradual compilation of the Canon the necessity for incorporating in the Holy Writings an account of the establishment of the post-Exile theocracy was felt, before it was thought desirable to supplement Samuel and Kings by adding a second history of the period before the Exile. Hence Chronicles is the last book of the Hebrew Bible, following the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, which properly is nothing else than the sequel of Chronicles.

Of the authorship of Chronicles we know only what can be determined by internal evidence. The style of the language, and also the position of the book in the Jewish Canon, stamp the book as one of the latest in the Old Testament, but lead to no exact determination of the date. In 1 Chron. xxix. 7, which refers to the time of David, a sum of money is reckoned by darics, which certainly implies that the author wrote after this Persian coin had been long current in Judaea. In 1 Chron. iii. 19 sqq. the descendants of Zerubbabel seem to be reckoned to six generations (the Septuagint reads it so as to give as many as eleven generations), and this agrees with the suggestion that Hattush (verse 22), who belongs to the fourth generation from Zerubbabel, was a contemporary of Ezra (Ezra viii. 2). Thus the compiler lived at least two generations after Ezra. With this it accords that in Nehemiah five generations of high priests are enumerated from Joshua (xii. 10 seq.), and that the last name is that of Jaddua, who, according to Josephus, was a contemporary of Alexander the Great (333 B.C.). That the compiler wrote after the fall of the Persian monarchy has been argued by Ewald and others from the use of the title king of Persia (2 Chron. xxxvi. 23), and from the reference made in Neh. xii. 22 to Darius III. (336-332 B.C.). A date some time after 332 B.C. is now accepted by most modern critics. See further Ezra and Nehemiah.

What seems to be certain and important for a right estimate of the book is that the writer lived a considerable time after Ezra, and stood entirely under the influence of the religious institutions of the new theocracy. This standpoint determined the nature of his interest in the early history of his people. The true importance of Hebrew history had always centred in the fact that this petty nation was the people of Yahweh, the spiritual God. The tragic interest which distinguishes the annals of Israel from the forgotten history of Moab or Damascus lies wholly in that long contest which finally vindicated the reality of spiritual things and the supremacy of Yahweh’s purpose, in the political ruin of the nation which was the faithless depository of these sacred truths. After the return from the Exile it was impossible to write the history of Israel’s fortunes otherwise than in a spirit of religious pragmatism. But within the limits of the religious conception of the plan and purpose of the Hebrew history more than one point of view might be taken up. The book of Kings looks upon the history in the spirit of the prophets—in that spirit which is still echoed by Zech. i. 5 seq., but which had become extinct before the Chronicler wrote. The New Jerusalem of Ezra was organized as a municipality and a church, not as a nation. The centre of religious life was no longer the living prophetic word but the ordinances of the Pentateuch and the liturgical service of the sanctuary. The religious vocation of Israel was no longer national but ecclesiastical or municipal, and the historical continuity of the nation was vividly realized only within the walls of Jerusalem and the courts of the Temple, in the solemn assembly and stately ceremonial of a feast day. These influences naturally operated most strongly on those who were officially attached to the sanctuary. To a Levite, even more than to other Jews, the history of Israel meant above all things the history of Jerusalem, of the Temple, and of the Temple ordinances. Now the writer of Chronicles betrays on every page his essentially Levitical habit of mind. It even seems possible from a close attention to his descriptions of sacred ordinances to conclude that his special interests are those of a common Levite rather than of a priest, and that of all Levitical functions he is most partial to those of the singers, a member of whose guild he may have been. From the standpoint of the post-exilic age, the older delineation of the history of Israel, especially in the books of Samuel and Kings, could not but appear to be deficient in some directions, while in other respects its narrative seemed superfluous or open to misunderstanding, as for example by recording, and that without condemnation, things inconsistent with the later, post-exilic law. The history of the ordinances of worship holds a very small place in the older record. Jerusalem and the Temple have not that central place in the book of Kings which they occupied in the minds of the Jewish community after the Exile. Large sections of the old history are devoted to the religion and politics of the ten tribes, which are altogether unintelligible and uninteresting when measured by a strictly Levitical standard; and in general the whole problems and struggles of the prophetic period turn on points which had ceased to be cardinal in the life of the New Jerusalem, which was no longer called to decide between the claims of the Word of Yahweh and the exigencies of political affairs and social customs, and which could not comprehend that men absorbed in deeper spiritual contests had no leisure for the niceties of Levitical legislation. Thus there seemed to be room for a new history, which should confine itself to matters still interesting to the theocracy of Zion, keeping Jerusalem and the Temple in the foreground, and developing the divine pragmatism of the history, not so much with reference to the prophetic word as to the fixed legislation of the Pentateuch, so that the whole narrative might be made to teach that the glory of Israel lies in the observance of the divine law and ritual.

For the sake of systematic completeness the book begins with Adam, as is the custom with later Oriental writers. But there was nothing to add to the Pentateuch, and the period from Moses to David contained little that served the purpose. The early history is therefore contracted into a series of tribal and priestly genealogies, which were doubtless by no means the least interesting part of the work at a time when every Israelite was concerned to prove the purity of his Hebrew descent (cp. Ezra ii. 59, 62). Commencing abruptly (after some Benjamite genealogies) with the death of Saul, the history becomes fuller and runs parallel with the books of Samuel and Kings. The limitations of the compiler’s interest in past times appear in the omission, among other particulars, of David’s reign in Hebron, of the disorders in his family and the revolt of Absalom, of the circumstances of Solomon’s accession, and of many details as to the wisdom and splendour of that sovereign, as well as of his fall into idolatry. In the later history the ten tribes are quite neglected (“Yahweh is not with Israel,” 2 Chron. xxv. 7), and political affairs in Judah receive attention, not in proportion to their intrinsic importance, but according as they serve to exemplify God’s help to the obedient and His chastisement of the rebellious. That the compiler is always unwilling to speak of the misfortunes of good rulers is not necessarily to be ascribed to a deliberate suppression of truth, but shows that the book was throughout composed not in purely historical interests, but with a view to inculcating a single practical lesson. The more important additions to the older narrative consist partly of statistical lists (1 Chron. xii.), partly of full details on points connected with the history of the sanctuary and the great feasts or the archaeology of the Levitical ministry (1 Chron. xiii., xv., xvi., xxii.-xxix.; 2 Chron. xxix.-xxxi., &c.), and partly of narratives of victories and defeats, of sins and punishments, of obedience and its reward, which could be made to point a plain religious lesson in favour of faithful observance of the law (2 Chron. xiii., xiv. 9 sqq.; xx., xxi. 11 sqq., &c.). The minor variations of Chronicles from the books of Samuel and Kings are analogous in principle to the larger additions and omissions, so that the whole work has a consistent and well-marked character, presenting the history in quite a different perspective from that of the old narrative.

The chronicler makes frequent reference to earlier histories which he cites by a great variety of names. That the names “Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,” “Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel,” “Book of the Kings of Israel,” and “Affairs of the Kings of Israel” (2 Chron. xxxiii. 18), refer to a single work is not disputed. Under one or other title this book is cited some ten times. Whether it is identical with the Midrash of the book of Kings (2 Chron. xxiv. 27) is not certain. That the work so often cited is not the Biblical book of the same name is manifest from what is said of its contents. It must have been quite an extensive work, for among other things it contained genealogical statistics (1 Chron. ix. 1), and it incorporated certain older prophetic writings—in particular, the debārīm (“words” or “history”) of Jehu the son of Hanani (2 Chron. xx. 34) and possibly the vision of Isaiah (2 Chron. xxxii. 32). Where the chronicler does not cite this comprehensive work at the close of a king’s reign he generally refers to some special authority which bears the name of a prophet or seer (2 Chron. ix. 29; xii. 15, &c.). But the book of the Kings and a special prophetic writing are not cited for the same reign. It is therefore probable that in other cases than those of Isaiah and Jehu the writings of, or rather, about the prophets which are cited in Chronicles were known only as parts of the great “book of the Kings.” Even the genealogical lists may have been derived from that work (1 Chron. ix. 1), though for these other materials may have been accessible.

The two chief sources of the canonical book of Kings were entitled Annals (“events of the times”) of the Kings of Israel and Judah respectively (see Kings). That the lost source of the Chronicles was not independent of these works appears probable both from the nature of the case and from the close and often verbal parallelism between many sections of the two Biblical narratives. But while the canonical book of Kings refers to separate sources for the northern and southern kingdoms, the source of Chronicles was a history of the two kingdoms combined, and so, no doubt, was a more recent work which in great measure was doubtless based upon older annals. Yet it contained also matter not derived from these works, for it is pretty clear from 2 Kings xxi. 17 that the Annals of the Kings of Judah gave no account of Manasseh’s repentance, which, according to 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18, 19, was narrated in the great book of the Kings of Israel. It was the opinion of Bertheau, Keil and others, that the parallelisms of Chronicles with Samuel and Kings are sufficiently explained by the ultimate common source from which both narratives drew. But most critics hold that the chronicler also drew directly from the canonical books of Samuel and Kings as he apparently did from the Pentateuch. This opinion is not improbable, as the earlier books of the Old Testament cannot have been unknown in his age; and the critical analysis of the canonical book of Kings is advanced enough to enable us to say that in some of the parallel passages the chronicler uses words which were not written in the annals but by one of the compilers of Kings himself. In particular, Chronicles agrees with Kings in those short notes of the moral character of individual monarchs which can hardly be ascribed to an earlier hand than that of the redactor of the latter book.

For the criticism of the book it is important to institute a careful comparison of Chronicles with the parallel narratives in Samuel-Kings. It is found that in the cases where Chronicles directly contradicts the earlier books there are few in which an impartial historical judgment will decide in favour of the later account, and in any point that touches difference of usage between its time and that of the old monarchy it is of no authority. The characteristic feature of the post-exilic age was the re-shaping of older tradition in the interest of parenetic and practical purposes, and for this object a certain freedom of literary form was always allowed to ancient historians. The typical speeches in Chronicles are of little value for the periods to which they relate, and where they are inconsistent with the evidence from earlier writings or contain inherent improbabilities are scarcely of historical worth. According to the ordinary laws of research, the book, being written at a time long posterior to the events it records, can have only a secondary value, although that is no reason why here and there valuable material should not have been preserved. But the general picture which it gives of life under the old monarchy cannot have the same value for us as the records of the book of Kings. On the other hand, it is of distinct value for the history of its time, and presents a clear picture of the spirit of the age. The “ecclesiastical chronicle of Jerusalem,” as Reuss has aptly called it, represents the culminating point (as far as the O.T. Canon is concerned) of that theory of which examples recur in Judges, Samuel and Kings, and this treatment of history in accordance with religious or ethical doctrines finds its continuation in the didactic aims which characterize the later non-canonical writings (cf. Jubilees; Midrash).

The most prominent examples of disagreement with earlier sources may be briefly noticed. Thus, it would appear that the book has confused Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin (2 Chron. xxxvi. 5-8) and has statements which directly conflict with 2 Sam. xxi. 19 (1 Chron. xx. 5; see Goliath), and 1 Kings ix. 10 seq. (2 Chron. viii. 2); it has changed Hezekiah’s submission (2 Kings xviii.) into a brave resistance (2 Chron. xxxii. 1-8) and ignored the humiliating payment of tribute by this king and by Joash (2 Kings xii. 18; 2 Chron. xxiv. 23 sqq.). That Satan, and not Yahweh incited David to number Israel (1 Chron. xxi.; 2 Sam. xxiv. 1) accords with later theological development.

A particular tendency to arrange history according to a mechanical rule appears in the constant endeavour to show that recompense and retribution followed immediately on good or bad conduct, and especially on obedience or disobedience to prophetic advice. Thus, the invasion of Shishak (see Rehoboam) becomes a typical romance (2 Chron. xii.); the illness of Asa is preceded by a denunciation for relying upon Syria, and the chronology is changed to bring the fault near the punishment (2 Chron. xv. seq.). The ships which Jehoshaphat made were wrecked at Ezion-geber because he had allied himself with Ahaziah of Israel despite prophetic warning (2 Chron. xx. 35 sqq.; 1 Kings xxii. 48; cf. similarly the addition in 2 Chron. xix. 1-3), and the later writer supposes that the “Tarshish ships” (large vessels such as were used in trading with Spain—cf. “Indiamen”) built in the Red Sea were intended for the Mediterranean trade (cf. 2 Chron. ix. 21 with 1 Kings x. 22). The Edomite revolt under Jehoram of Judah becomes the penalty for the king’s apostasy (2 Chron. xxi. 10-20; 2 Kings viii. 22), Ahaziah was slain because of his friendship with Jehoram (2 Chron. xxii. 7). The Aramaean invasion in the time of Joash of Judah was a punishment for the murder of Jehoiada’s son (2 Chron. xxiv.; 2 Kings xii.). Amaziah, after defeating Edom (2 Chron. xxv., esp. verses 19-21; see 2 Kings xiv. 10 seq.), worshipped strange gods, for which he was defeated by Joash of Israel, and subsequently met with his death (2 Chron. xxv. 27; 2 Kings xiv. 19). Uzziah’s leprosy is attributed to a ritual fault (2 Chron. xxvi. 4 seq., 16 sqq.; cf. 2 Kings xv. 3-5; see Uzziah). The defeat and death of the good king Josiah came through disobedience to the Divine will (2 Chron. xxxv. 21 seq.; see 2 Kings xxiii. 26 sqq.).

In addition to such supplementary information, another tendency of the chronicler is the alteration of narratives that do not agree with the later doctrines of the uniformity of religious institutions before and after the exile. Thus, the reformation of Josiah has been thrust back from his eighteenth to his twelfth year (when he was nineteen years old) apparently because it was felt that so good a king would not have tolerated the abuses of the land for so long a period, but the result of this is to leave an interval of ten years between his conversion and the subsequent act of repentance (2 Chron. xxxiv. 3-6; 2 Kings xxii. seq.). References to Judaean idolatry are omitted (1 Kings xiv. 22-24; see 2 Chron. xii. 14; 2 Kings xviii. 4; 2 Chron. xxxi. 1) or abbreviated (2 Kings xxiii. 1-20; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 29-33); and if the earlier detailed accounts of Judaean heathenism were repulsive, so the tragic account of the fate of Jerusalem was a painful subject upon which the chronicler’s age did not care to dwell (contrast 2 Kings xxiv. 8-xxv. with the brief 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9-21). At an age when the high places were regarded as idolatrous it was considered only natural that the good kings should not have tolerated them. So 2 Chron. xiv. 5, xvii. 6 (from unknown sources) contradict 1 Kings xv. 14, xxii. 43 (that Asa and Jehoshaphat did not demolish the high places), whereas xv. 16-18, xx. 31-34, are quoted from the book of Kings and give the older view. The example is an illustration of the simple methods of early compilers. Further, it is assumed that the high place at Gibeon was a legitimate sanctuary (2 Chron. i. 3-6; 1 Kings iii. 2-4; 1 Chron. xxi. 28-30; 2 Sam. xxiv.); that the ark was borne not by priests (1 Kings viii. 3) but by Levites (2 Chron. v. 4), in accordance with post-exilic usage; and that the Levites, and not the foreign bodyguard of the temple, helped to place Joash on the throne (2 Chron. xxiii.). Conversely 1 Chron. xv. 12 seq. explains xiii. 10 (2 Sam. vi. 7) on the view that Uzza was not a Levite, hence the catastrophe.

Throughout it is assumed that the Levitical organization had been in existence from the days of David, to whom its foundation is ascribed. In connexion with the installation of the ark considerable space is devoted to the arrangements for the maintenance of the temple-service, upon which the earlier books are silent, and elaborate notices of the part played by the Levites and singers give expression to a view of the history of the monarchy which the book of Kings does not share. Along with the exceptional interest taken in Levitical and priestly lists should be noticed the characteristic preference for genealogies. Particular prominence is given to the tribe and kings of Judah (1 Chron. ii.-iv.), and to the priests and Levites (1 Chron. vi., xv. sq., xxiii.-xxv.; with ix. 1-34 cf. Neh. xi.). The historical value of these lists is very unequal; a careful study of the names often proves the lateness of the source, although an appreciation of the principles of genealogies sometimes reveals important historical information; see Caleb, Genealogy, Judah. But the Levitical system as it appears in its most complete form in Chronicles is the result of the development of earlier schemes, of which some traces are still preserved in Chronicles itself and in Ezra-Nehemiah. (See further Levites.)

The tendency of numbers to grow is one which must always be kept in view—cf. 1 Chron. xviii. 4, xix. 18 (2 Sam. viii. 4 [but see LXX.], x. 18), 1 Chron. xxi. 5, 25 (2 Sam. xxiv. 9, 24); consequently little importance can be attached to details which appear to be exaggerated (1 Chron. v. 21, xii., xxii. 14; 2 Chron. xiii. 3, 17), and are found to be quite in accordance with similar peculiarities elsewhere (Num. xxxi. 32 seq.; Judg. xx. 2, 21, 25).

But when allowance is made for all the above tendencies of the late post-exilic age, there remains a certain amount of additional matter in Chronicles which may have been derived from relatively old sources. These items are of purely political or personal nature and contain several details which taken by themselves have every appearance of genuineness. Where there can be no suspicion of such “tendency” as has been noticed above there is less ground for scepticism, and it must be remembered that the earlier books contain only a portion of the material to which the compilers had access. Hence it may well happen that the details which unfortunately cannot be checked were ultimately derived from sources as reputable as those in the books of Samuel, Kings, &c. As examples may be cited Rehoboam’s buildings, &c. (2 Chron. xi. 5-12, 18 sqq.); Jeroboam’s attack upon Abijah (2 Chron. xiii., cf. 1 Kings xv. 7); the invasion of Zerah in Asa’s reign (2 Chron. xiv.; see Asa); Jehoshaphat’s wars and judicial measures (2 Chron. xvii. xx.; see 1 Kings xxii. 45); Jehoram’s family (2 Chron. xxi. 2-4); relations between Jehoiada and Joash (2 Chron. xxiv. 3, 15 sqq.); conflicts between Ephraim and Judah (2 Chron. xxv. 6-13); wars of Uzziah and Jotham (2 Chron. xxvi. seq.); events in the reign of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 8-15, 18 seq.); reforms of Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxix. sqq., cf. Jer. xxvi. 19); Manasseh’s captivity, repentance and buildings (2 Chron. xxxiii. 10-20; see 2 Kings xxi. and Manasseh); the death of Josiah (2 Chron. xxxv. 20-25). In addition to this reference may be made to such tantalizing statements as those in 1 Chron. ii. 23 (R.V.), iv. 39-41, v. 10, 18-22, vii. 21 seq., viii. 13, xii. 15, examples of the kind of tradition, national and private, upon which writers could draw. Although in their present form the additional narratives are in the chronicler’s style, it is not necessary to deny an older traditional element which may have been preserved in sources now lost to us.

Bibliography.—Robertson Smith’s article in the 9th ed. of the Ency. Brit. was modified by his later views in Old Test. in the Jewish Church2, pp. 140-148. Recent literature is summarized by S.R. Driver in his revision of Smith’s article in Ency. Bib. and in his Lit. of Old Test., and by F. Brown in Hastings’ Dict. Bib. (a very comprehensive article). Many parts of the book offer a very hard task to the expositor, especially the genealogies, where to other troubles are added the extreme corruption and many variations of the proper names in the versions; on these see the articles in the Ency. Bib. Valuable contributions to the exegesis of the book will be found in Wellhausen’s Prolegomena (Eng. trans.), pp. 171-227; Benzinger in Marti’s Hand-Kommentar (1901); Kittel in Sacred Books of the Old Test. (1895), History of the Hebrews, ii. 224 sqq. (1896), and in Nowack’s Hand-Kommentar (1902). W.H. Bennett in Expositor’s Bible (1894), W.E. Barnes in Cambridge Bible (1899), and Harvey-Jellie in the Century Bible (1906), are helpful. Among more recent investigations are those of Howorth, Proc. Soc. of Bibl. Archael. xxvii. 267-278 (Chronicles a late translation from the Aramaic).

(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

See the lists in Driver, Lit. of Old Test. pp. 502 sqq.; and the exhaustive summary by Fr. Brown in Hastings’ Dict. Bible, i. 289 sqq.

R.V. “commentary,” properly, an edifying religious work, a didactic or homiletic exposition. A distinct tendency to Midrash is found even here and there in the earlier books.

The problem of the sources is one of considerable intricacy and cannot be discussed here; the introduction to the commentaries of Benzinger and Kittel (see Bibliography below) should be consulted. The questions depend partly upon the view taken of the origin and structure of the book of Kings (q.v.) and partly upon the results of historical criticism.

“A careful comparison of Chronicles with Samuel and Kings is a striking object lesson in ancient historical composition. It is an almost indispensable introduction to the criticism of the Pentateuch and the older historical works” (W.H. Bennett, Chronicles, p. 20 seq.).

But xxxii. 1-8 may preserve a tradition of the account of the city’s wonderful deliverance mentioned in Kings (see Hezekiah), and the details of the invasion of Judah in the time of Joash differ essentially from those in the earlier source. Even 2 Chron. viii. 2 cannot be regarded as a deliberate alteration since the writer does not appear to be quoting from 1 Kings ix. 10 sqq. (the two passages should be carefully compared), and his view of Solomon’s greatness is already supported by allusions in the earlier but extremely composite sources in Kings (see Solomon).

But that this was not the invention of the chronicler appears possible from Jer. xxv. 3. Similarly, Hezekiah’s reforms are dated in his first year (2 Chron. xxix. 3), against all probability; see Hezekiah (end).

2 Chron. xxiii. is an excellent specimen of the redaction to which older narratives were submitted; cf. also 2 Chron. xxiv. 5 seq. (2 Kings xi. 4 seq.), xxxiv. 9-14 (2 Kings xxii.), xxxv. 1-19 (2 Kings xxiii. 21-23).

Passages in the books of Samuel and Kings which might appear to point to the contrary require careful examination; they prove to be glosses or interpolations, or are relatively late as a whole.

The view that the chronicler invented such narratives is inconceivable, and in the present stage of historical criticism is as unsound as an implicit reliance upon those sources in the earlier books, which in their turn are often long posterior to the events they record. Although Graf, in a critical and exhaustive study (Geschichtlichen Bücher des A.T., Leipzig, 1866), concluded that the Chronicles have almost no value as a documentary source of the ancient history, he subsequently admitted in private correspondence with Bertheau that this statement was too strong (preface to Bertheau’s Commentary, 2nd ed., 1873).

CHRONOGRAPH (from Gr. χρόνος, time, and γράφειν, to write). Instruments whereby periods of time are measured and recorded are commonly called chronographs, but it would be more correct to give the name to the records produced. Instruments such as “stop watches” (see Watch), by means of which the time between events is shown on a dial, are also called chronographs; they were originally rightly called chronoscopes (σκοπεῖν, to see).

In the first experiments in ballistics by B. Robins, Count Rumford and Charles Hutton, the velocity of a projectile was found by means of the ballistic pendulum, in which the principle of momentum is applied in finding the velocity of a projectile (Principles of Gunnery, by Benjamin Robins, edited by Hutton, 1805, p. 84). It consisted of a pendulum of considerable weight, which was displaced from its position of rest by the impact of the bullet, the velocity of which was required. A modification of the ballistic pendulum was also employed by W.E. Metford (1824-1899) in his researches on different forms of rifling; the bob was made in the form of a long cylinder, weighing about 140 ℔, suspended with its axis horizontal from four wires at each end, all moving points being provided with knife edges. The true length of suspension was deduced from observations of the time of a complete small oscillation. The head of the pendulum was furnished with a wooden block, which caught the fragments of bullets fired at it, and its displacement was recorded by a rod moved by the bob (The Book of the Rifle, by the Hon. T.F. Fremantle, p. 336). An improved ballistic pendulum in which the geometric method of suspension is introduced has been used by A. Mallock, to determine the resistance of the air to bullets having a velocity up to 4500 F/S. (Proc. Roy. Soc., Nov. 1904). A ballistic pendulum, carried by a geometric suspension from five points, has also been employed by C.V. Boys in a research on the elasticity of golf balls, the displacement of the bob being recorded on a sheet of smoked glass. For further information on the dynamics of the subject see Text Book of Gunnery, 1897, p. 101.

In nearly all forms of chronographs in which the ballistic pendulum method is not used, the beginning and end of a period of time is recorded by means of some kind of electrically controlled mechanism; and in order that small fractions of a second may be measured, tuning-forks are employed, giving any convenient number of vibrations per second, a light style or scribing point, usually of aluminium, being attached to one of the legs of the tuning-fork. A trace of the vibration is made on a surface blackened with the deposit from the smoke of a lamp. Glazed paper is often employed when the velocity of the surface is slow, but when a high velocity of smoked surface is necessary, smoked glass offers far the least resistance to the movement of the scribing points. If the surface be cylindrical, thin sheet mica attached to it, and smoked, gives excellent results, and offers but little resistance to all the scribing points employed. The period of vibration of tuning-forks is determined by direct or indirect comparison with the mean solar second, taken from a standard clock, the rate of which is known from transit observations (“Recherches sur les vibrations d’un diapason étalon,” R. Koenig, Wied. Ann., 1880). In the celebrated ballistic experiments of the Rev. F. Bashforth, the time markings were made electrically from a standard clock, and fractions of a second were estimated by interpolation. Regnault (Mémoires de l’acad. des sciences, t. xxxvii.) employed both a standard clock and a tuning-fork in his determination of the velocity of sound. The effect of temperature on tuning-forks has been determined by Lord Rayleigh and Professor H. McLeod (Proc. Roy. Soc., 1880, 26, p. 162), who found the coefficient to be 0.00011 per degree C. between 9° C. and 27° C. The beginning and end of a time period is marked on a moving surface in many ways. Usually an electromagnetic stylus is employed, in which a scribing point suddenly moves when the electric circuit is broken by a projectile. Another method is to arrange the terminals of the secondary circuit of an induction coil, so that when the primary circuit is opened a small spark punctures or marks a moving surface (Helmholtz, Phil. Mag., 1853, p. 6). A photographic plate or film, moving in a dark chamber, is also used to receive markings produced by a beam of light interrupted by a small screen attached to an electromagnetic stylus, or by the legs of a tuning-fork, or by the mercury column of a capillary electrometer. In certain researches on the explosive wave of gases the light given by the burning gases made the time trace on a rapidly moving photographic film (H.B. Dixon, Phil. Trans., 1903, 200, p. 323). In physiological chronography the stylus is in many cases actuated directly by the piece of muscle to which it is attached; when the muscle is stimulated its contraction moves the stylus on the moving surface of the myograph (M. Foster, Text Book of Physiology, 1879, p. 39).

Gun Chronographs.—Probably the earliest forms of chronographs, not based on the ballistic pendulum method, are due to Colonel Grobert, 1804, and Colonel Dabooz, 1818, both officers of the French army. In the instrument by Grobert two large disks, attached to the same axle 13 ft. apart, were rapidly rotated; the shot pierced each disk, the angle between two holes giving the time of flight of the ball, when the angular velocity of the disks was known. In the instrument by Colonel Dabooz a cord passing over two light pulleys, one close to the gun, the other at a given distance from it, was stretched by a weight at the gun end and by a heavy screen at the other end. Behind this screen there was a fixed screen. The shot cut the cord and liberated the screen, which was perforated during its fall. The height of fall was measured by superposing the hole in the moving screen upon that in the fixed one. This gave the approximate time of flight of the shot over a given distance, and hence its velocity.

In the early form of chronoscope invented by Sir C. Wheatstone in 1840 the period of time was measured by means of a species of clock, driven by a weight; the dial pointer was started and stopped by the action of an electromagnet which moved a pawl engaging with a toothed wheel fixed on the axle to which the dial pointer was attached. The instrument applied to the determination of the velocity of shot is described thus by Wheatstone:—“A wooden ring embraced the mouth of the gun, and a wire connected the opposite sides of the ring. At a proper distance the target was erected, and so arranged that the least motion given to it would establish a permanent contact between two metal points. One of the extremities of the wire of the electromagnet (before mentioned) was attached to one pole of a small battery; to the other extremity of the electromagnet were attached two wires, one of which communicated with the contact piece of the target, and the other with one of the ends of the wire stretched across the mouth of the gun; from the other extremity of the voltaic battery two wires were taken, one of which came to the contact piece of the target, and the other to the opposite extremity of the wire across the mouth of the gun. Before the firing of the gun a continuous circuit existed, including the gun wire; when the target was struck the second circuit was completed; but during the passage of the projectile both circuits were interrupted, and the duration of this interruption was indicated by the chronoscope.”

Professor Joseph Henry (Journal Franklin Inst., 1886) employed a cylinder driven by clockwork, making ten revolutions per second. The surface was divided into 100 equal parts, each equal to 1/1000 second. The time marks were made by two galvanometer needles, when successive screens were broken by a shot. Henry also used an induction-coil spark to make the cylinder, the primary of the coil being in circuit with a battery and screen. This form of chronograph is in many respects similar to the instrument of Konstantinoff, which was constructed by L.F.C. Breguet and has been sometimes attributed to him (Comptes rendus, 1845). This chronograph consisted of a cylinder 1 metre in circumference and 0.36 metre long, driven by clockwork, the rotation being regulated by a governor provided with wings. A small carriage geared to the wheelwork traversed its length, carrying electromagnetic signals. The electric chronograph signal usually consists of a small armature (furnished with a style which marks a moving surface) moving in front of an electromagnet, the armature being suddenly pulled off the poles of the electromagnet by a spring when the circuit is broken (Journal of Physiology, ix. 408). The signals in Breguet’s instrument were in a circuit, including the screens and batteries of a gun range. The measurement of time depended on the regularity of rotation of the cylinder, on which each mm. represented 1/1000 second.

In the chronograph of A.J.A. Navez (1848) the time period is found by means of a pendulum held at a large angle from the vertical by an electromagnet, which is in circuit with a screen on the gun range. When the shot cuts this screen the circuit is broken and the pendulum liberated and set swinging. When the next screen on the range is broken by the shot, the position of the pendulum is recorded and the distance it has passed through measured on a divided arc. From this the time of traversing the space between the screens is deduced. By means of an instrument known as a disjunctor the instrumental time-loss or latency of the chronograph is determined.In Benton’s chronograph (1859) two pendulums are liberated, in the same manner as in the instrument of Navez, one on the cutting of the first screen, the other on the cutting of the second. The difference between the swings of the two pendulums gives the time period sought for. The disjunctor is also used in connexion with this instrument. In Vignotti’s chronograph (1857) again a pendulum is employed, furnished with a metal point, which moves close to paper impregnated with ferro-cyanide of potassium. The gun-range screens are included in the primary circuits of induction coils; when these circuits are broken a spark from the pointer marks the paper. From these marks the time of traverse of the shot between the screens is determined.

In the Bashforth chronograph a platform, arranged to descend slowly alongside of a vertical rotating cylinder, carries two markers, controlled by electromagnets, which describe a double spiral on the prepared surface of the cylinder. One electromagnet is in circuit with a clock, and the marker actuated by it marks seconds on the cylinder; the circuit of the other is completed through a series of contact pieces attached to the screens through which the shot passes in succession. On the gun range, when the shot reaches the first screen, it breaks a weighted cotton thread, which keeps a flexible wire in contact with a conductor. When the thread is broken by a shot, the wire leaves the conductor and almost immediately establishes the circuit through the next screen, by engaging with a second contact, the time of the rupture being recorded on the cylinder by the second marker. The velocity with which the cylinder rotates is such that the distance between successive clock marks indicating seconds is about 18 in.; hence the marks corresponding with the severance of a thread can be allotted their value in fractions of seconds with great accuracy. The times when the shot passes successive screens being thus recorded on the spiral described by the second marker, and the distance between each screen being known, the velocity of the shot can be calculated.

The chronoscope invented by Sir Andrew Noble is so well adapted to the measurement of very small intervals of time that it is usually employed to ascertain the velocity acquired by a shot at different parts of the bore in moving from a state of rest inside the gun. A series of “cutting plugs” is screwed into the sides of the gun at measured intervals, and in each is inserted a loop of wire which forms part of the primary circuit of an induction coil. On the passage of a shot this wire is severed by means of a small knife which projects into the bore and is actuated by the shot as it passes; the circuit being thus broken, a spark passes between the terminals of the secondary of the coil. There is a separate coil and circuit for each plug. The recording arrangement consists of a series of disks, one for each plug, mounted on one axle and rotating at a high angular velocity. The edges of these disks are covered with a coating of lamp-black, and the secondaries of the coils are caused to discharge against them, so that a minute spot burnt in the lamp-black of each disk indicates the moment of the cutting of the wire in the corresponding plug. Hence measurement of the distance between two successive spots gives the time occupied by the shot in moving over the portion of the bore between two successive plugs. By the aid of a vernier, readings are made to thousandths of an inch, and the peripheral velocity of the disks being 1100 in. a second, the machine indicates portions of time rather less than one-millionth of a second; it is, in fact, practically correct to hundred-thousandths of a second (Phil. Trans., 1875, pt. i.).

In the Le Boulengé chronograph (“Chronograph le Boulengé,” par M. Bréger, Commission de Gâvre, Sept. 1880) two screens are used. The wire of the first forms part of the circuit of an electromagnet which, so long as it is energized, supports a vertical rod called the “chronometer.” Hence when the circuit is broken by the passage of a shot through the screen this rod drops. The wire of the second screen conveys a current through another electromagnet which supports a much shorter rod. This “registrar,” as it is called, when released by the shot severing the wire of the second screen, falls on a disk which sets free a spring, and causes a horizontal knife to fly forward and nick a zinc tube with which the chronometer rod is sheathed. Hence the long rod will be falling for a certain time, while the shot is travelling between the two screens, before the short rod is released; and the longer the shot takes to travel this distance, the farther the long rod falls, and the higher up on it will be the nick made by the knife. A simple calculation connects the distance through which the rod falls with the time occupied by the shot in travelling over the distance between the screens, and thus its velocity ascertained. The nick made by the knife, if released while the chronometer rod is still suspended, is the zero point. If both rods are released simultaneously, as is done by breaking both circuits at once by means of a “disjunctor,” a certain time is consumed by the short rod in reaching the disk, setting free the spring and cutting a nick in the zinc; and during this time the long rod is falling into a recess in the stand deep enough to receive its full length. The instrument is so adjusted that the nick thus made is 4.435 in. above the zero point, corresponding to 0.15 sec. This is the disjunctor reading, and requires to be frequently corrected during experiments. The instrument was modified and improved by Colonel H.C. Holden, F.R.S. For further information respecting formulae relating to it see Text Book of Gunnery (1857).

The electric chronograph of the late H.S.S. Watkin consists of two long cylinders rotating on vertical axes, and between them a cylindrical weight, having a pointed head, is free to fall. The weight is furnished with an insulated wire which passes through it at right angles to its longest axis. When the weight falls the ends of the insulated wire move very close to the surfaces of the cylinders which form part of a secondary circuit of an induction coil, the primary circuit of which is opened when a screen is ruptured by a shot. A minute mark is made by the induced spark on the smoked paper with which the cylinders are covered. The time period between events is deduced from the space fallen through by the weight, and by means of a scale, graduated for a given distance between the screens, the velocity of a shot is at once found. It may be noted that the method of release is such that the falling weight is not subjected, after it has begun to fall, to a diminishing magnetic field, which would be the case if it were directly supported by an electromagnet. An iron rod when falling from an electromagnet, during a minute portion of its fall, is subject to a diminishing force acting in the opposite sense to that of gravity, whereby its time of fall is slightly changed.

Colonel Sebert (Extraits du mémorial de l’artillerie de la marine) devised a chronograph to indicate graphically the motion of recoil of a cannon when fired. A pillar fixed to the ground at the side of the gun-carriage supported a tuning-fork, the vibration of which was maintained electrically. The fork was provided with a tracing point attached to one of the prongs, and so adjusted that it drew its path on a polished sheet of smoke-blackened metal attached to the gun-carriage, which traversed past the tracing point when the gun ran back. The fork used made 500 complete vibrations per second. A central line was drawn through the curved path of the tracing point, and every entire vibration cut the straight line twice, the interval between each intersection equalling 1/1000 second. The diagram so produced gave ihe total time of the accelerated motion of recoil of the gun, the maximum velocity of recoil, and the rate of acceleration of recoil from the beginning to the end of the motion. By means of an instrument furnished with a microscope and micrometers, the length and amplitude, and the angle at which the curved line cut the central line, were measured. At each intersection (according to the inventor) the velocity could be deduced. The motion at any intersection being compounded of the greatest velocity of the fork, while passing through the midpoint of the vibration and the velocity of recoil, the tangent made by the curve with the straight line represents the ratio of the velocity of the fork to the velocity of recoil. If a be the amplitude of vibration, considered constant, v the velocity of the fork at the midpoint of its path, r the velocity of recoil, α the angle made by the tangent to the curve with the straight line at the point of intersection, and t the line of a complete vibration; then, v = 2πa/t; r = v/tan α.

F. Jervis-Smith’s tram chronograph (Patents, 1894, 1897, 1903) was devised for measuring periods of time varying from about one-fourth to one twenty-thousandth part of a second (Proc. Roy. Soc., 1889, 45, p. 452; The Tram Chronograph, by F. Jervis-Smith, F.R.S.). It consists of a metal girder having a T-shaped end. This carries two parallel steel rails, the edges of which lie in the same vertical plane. The girder, which is slightly inclined to the horizontal plane, is geometrically supported, being carried at its end, and at the extremities of the T-piece, on a V-groove, trihedral hole and plane. A carriage or tram furnished with three grooved wheels runs on the rails, and a slightly smoked glass plate is attached to its vertical side. The tram in the original instrument was propelled by a falling weight, but in an improved form one or more spiral springs are employed. All time traces are made immediately after the propelling force has ceased to act. The tram is brought to rest by a gradually applied brake, consisting of two crossed leather bands stretched by two springs; a projection from the tram runs between the bands, and brings it to rest with but little lateral pressure. When, for certain physiological experiments, a low velocity of traverse is required, a heavy fly-wheel is mounted on the tram and geared to its wheels. A pillar also mounted geometrically, placed vertically in front of the carriage, carries the electromagnet style or signals and tuning-fork which can be brought into contact with the glass by means of a lever. Also styli are used which depend for their action on the displacement of one or more wires under tension or torsion carrying a current in a magnetic field, the condition being such that no magnetic lag due to iron armatures and cores exists. Two motions of a slide on the pillar, viz. of rotation and translation, allow a number of observations to be made. The traces are counted out on a sloping glass desk, and the time of flight of a projectile between two or more screens is found. When very close readings are required, they are made by means of a traversing geometric micrometer microscope. When the distance between the screens is known, and also the time of flight, the midpoint velocity is found by applying Bashforth’s formula. When the velocity of shot from a shot-gun has to be found, a thin wire stretched across the muzzle takes the place of the first screen, and a thin sheet of metal or cardboard carrying an electric contact, or a Branly coherer, the conductivity of which is restored by means of an induced current, takes the place of the second screen. The electric firing circuit is provided with a safety key attached by a cord to the man who loads the gun and prepares the electric fuse. The firing circuit is closed by inserting the key in a switch at the rear of the gun, thus preventing him from getting into the line of fire when the gun is fired by the chronograph. The tram, when the instrument is adjusted, has a practically constant velocity of traverse.

The polarizing photo-chronograph, designed and used by A.C. Crehore and G.O. Squier at the United States Artillery School (Trans. Amer. Inst. Elect. Eng. vol. 14, and Journal United States Artillery, 1895, 6, p. 271), depends for its indications upon the rotation of a beam of light by a magnetic field, produced by a solenoidal current which is opened and closed by the passage of the projectile. The general arrangement is as follows:—A beam of light from an electric lamp traverses a lens, then a Nicol prism, next a glass cylinder furnished with plane glass ends and coiled with insulated wire, then an analyser and two lenses, finally impinging on a photographic plate to which rotation is given by an electric motor, the plane of rotation being perpendicular to the direction of the beam of light. The same plate also records the shadow of a pierced projection attached to a tuning-fork, light from the electric lamp being diverted by a mirror for this purpose. The solenoid used to produce a magnetic field across the glass cylinder, which is filled with carbon bisulphide, is in circuit with a dynamo, resistances, and the screens on the gun range. It is a well-known phenomenon in physics that when, with the above-mentioned combination of polarizing Nicol prism and analyser, the light is shut off by rotating the analyser, it is instantly restored when the carbon bisulphide is placed in a magnetic field. This phenomenon is utilized in this instrument. The projectile, by cutting the wire screens, causes the magnetic field to cease and light to pass. By means of an automatic switch the projectile, after cutting a screen, restores the electric circuit, so that successive records are registered. After a record has been made it is read by means of a micrometer microscope, the angle moved through by the photographic disk is found, and hence the time period between two events. In the photo-chronograph described in Untersuchungen über die Vibration des Gewehrlaufs, by C. Cranz and K.R. Koch (Munich, 1899), also note on the same, Nature, 61, p. 58, a sensitive plate moving in a straight line receives the record of the movement of the barrels of firearms when discharged. It was mainly used to determine the “angle or error of departure” in ballistics.

In a second chronograph by Watkin (“Chronographs and their Application to Gun Ballistics,” Proc. Roy. Inst., 1896), a metal drum, divided on its edge so that when a vernier is used a minute of angle may be read, is rotated rapidly by a motor at a practically uniform speed. The points of a row of steel-pointed pins, screwed into a frame of ebonite, can be brought within 1/200 in. of the surface of the drum. Each pin is a part of the secondary circuit of an induction coil, the space between the pins and the drum forming spark-gaps. The drum is rubbed over with a weak solution of paraffin wax in benzol, which causes the markings produced by the sparks to be well defined. The records are read by means of a fine hair stretched along the drum and just clear of it, the dots being located under the hair by means of a lens. The velocity of rotation is found by obtaining spark marks, due to the primary circuits of two induction coils being successively broken by a weight falling and breaking the two electric circuits of the coils in succession at a known distance apart. This chronograph has been used for finding the velocity of projectiles after leaving the gun, and also for finding the rate at which a shot traverses the bore. For the latter purpose the shot successively cuts insulated wires fixed in plugs screwed into the gun at known intervals; each wire forms a part of the primary of an induction coil, and as each is cut a dot is made on the rotating drum by the induced spark.

In the chronograph of Marcel Deprez, a cylinder for receiving records is driven at a high velocity, 4 to 5 metres per second surface velocity. The velocity is determined by means of an electrically-driven tuning-fork, the traces being read by means of a vernier gauge. A mercury speed indicator of the Ramsbottom type enables the rotation to be continuously controlled (A. Favarger, L’Électricité et ses applications à la chronométrie).

Astronomical Chronographs.—The astronomical chronograph is an instrument whereby an observer is enabled to register the time of transit of a star on a sheet of paper attached to a revolving cylinder. A metal cylinder covered with a sheet of paper is rotated by clockwork controlled by a conical pendulum, or by a centrifugal clock governor such as is used for driving a telescope. By means of a screw longer than the cylinder, mounted parallel with the axis of the cylinder and rotated by the clockwork, a carriage is made to traverse close to the paper. In some instruments this carriage is furnished with a metal point, and in others with a stylographic ink pen. The point or pen is made to touch the paper by an electromagnet, the electric current of which is closed by the observer at the transit instrument, and a mark is recorded on the revolving cylinder. The movement of the same point or pen is also controlled by a standard clock, so that at the end of each second a mark is made. The cylinder makes one revolution per minute, and the minute is indicated by the omission of the mark. In E.J. Dent’s form (Nature, 23, p. 59) continuous observations can be recorded for 62⁄3 hours. The conical pendulum used to govern the rotation of the cylinder was the invention of Sir G.B. Airy. The lower end is geared to a metal plate which sweeps through an annular trough filled with glycerin and water. When the path of the pendulum exceeds a certain diameter it causes the plate to enter the liquid more deeply, its motion being thereby checked; also, when the pendulum moves in a smaller circle the plate is lifted out of the liquid and the resistance is diminished in the same proportion as the force. The compensatory action is considerable; doubling the driving power produces no perceptible difference in the time. To prevent the injury of the conical pendulum and the wheel work by any sudden check of the cylinder, a ratch-wheel connexion is placed between the cylinder and the train of wheel work; this enables the pendulum to run on until it gradually comes to rest. The pendulum, which weighs about 18 ℔, is compensated, and makes one revolution in two seconds; it is suspended from a bracket by means of two flexible steel springs placed at right angles to one another.

The observatory of Washburn, University of Wisconsin, is furnished with a chronograph of the same type as that of Dent (Annals Harvard Coll. Obs. vol. i. pt. ii. p. 34), but in this instrument the rotation of the cylinder is controlled by a double conical pendulum governor of peculiar construction. When the balls fly out beyond a certain point, one of them engages with a hook attached to a brass cylinder which embraces the vertical axle loosely. When this mass is pulled aside the work done on it diminishes the speed of the governor. The pendulum ball usually strikes the hook from 60 to 70 times per minute. Governors on this principle were adopted by Alvan Clark for driving heliostats in the United States Transit of Venus Expedition, 1874.

In the astronomical chronograph designed by Sir Howard Grubb (Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., July 1888), the recording cylinders—two in number—are driven by a weight acting on a train of wheel work controlled by an astronomical telescope governor. The peculiar feature of this instrument is that the axle is geared to a shaft which communicates motion to the cylinders through a mechanism whereby the speed of rotation is constantly corrected by a standard clock. Should the rotation fall below the correct speed it is automatically accelerated, and if its speed of rotation rises above the correct one it is retarded. The accelerator and retarder are thrown into action by electromagnets, controlled by a “detector” mounted on the same shaft. The rather complicated mechanism employed to effect the correction is described and fully illustrated in the reference given. The cylinders are covered with paper, but all the markings are made with a stylographic pen. The marks indicating seconds are dots, but those made by the observer are short lines. When an observation is about to be made the observer first notes the hour and minute, and, by pressing a contact key attached to a flexible cord at the transit instrument, marks the paper with a letter in Morse telegraph characters, indicating the hour and minute; he then waits till a micrometer wire cuts a star and at the instant closes the circuit, so that the second and fraction of a second are registered on the chronograph paper. When a set of observations have been taken, the paper is removed from the cylinder, and the same results are obtained by applying a suitably divided rule to the marked paper, fractions of a second being estimated by applying a piece of glass ruled with eleven straight lines converging to a point. The ends of these lines on the base of the triangle so formed are equidistant on one edge of the glass, so that when the first and last lines are so placed as to coincide with the beginning and end of the markings of a second, that second is divided into ten equal parts. The base of the triangle is always kept parallel with the line of dots. The papers, after they have been examined and the results registered, are kept for reference.

In the astronomical chronograph of Hipp, used in determining longitudes, the movement of a recording cylinder is regulated by means of a toothed wheel, the last of a clockwork train, controlled by a vibrating metal tongue; this important feature is described in detail in Favarger’s work cited above.

Acoustic Chronographs.—In the chronograph devised by H.V. Regnault (Acad. des Sc., 1868) to determine the velocity of sound propagated through a great length of pipe, a band of paper 27 mm. wide was continuously unrolled from a bobbin by means of an electromagnetic engine. In its passage over a pulley it passed over a smoky lamp flame, which covered it with a thin deposit of carbon. It next passed over a cylinder in contact with the style of a tuning-fork kept in vibration by electromagnets placed on either side of its prongs, the current being interrupted by the fork; it was also in contact with an electric signal controlled by a standard clock. Also an electromagnetic signal marked the beginning and end of a time period. Thus three markings were registered on the band, viz. the time of the pendulum, the vibrations of the fork, and the marking of the signal due to the opening and closing of the current by electrical contacts attached to diaphragms on which the sound wave acted. The contacts consisted of minute hammers resting on metal points fixed to the centre of diaphragms which closed the end of the experimental pipes. The signal marked the instant at which a sound wave impinged on a diaphragm. The markings on the paper band gave the period of time between two events, and the number of vibrations of the tuning-fork per second was estimated by means of markings due to the clock. The sound wave was usually originated by firing a pistol into the pipe furnished with diaphragms and contact pieces.

In the chronographic use of the Morse telegraph instrument (Stewart and Gee, Elementary Practical Phys. p. 234) a circuit is arranged which includes a seconds’ pendulum furnished with a fine platinum wire below the bob, which sweeps through a small mass of mercury forming a part of the circuit. There is a Morse key for closing the circuit. A fast-running Morse instrument and a battery are placed across this circuit as a shunt. A succession of dots is made on the paper ribbon by the circuit being closed by the pendulum, and the space between each adjacent dot indicates a period of one second’s duration. Also, when the key is depressed, a mark is made on the paper. To measure a period of time, the key is depressed at the beginning and end of the period, causing two dots to be made on the ribbon; the interval between these, when measured by the intervals due to the pendulum, gives the length of the period in seconds, and also in fractions of a second, when the seconds’ interval is subdivided into convenient equal parts. This apparatus has been used in determination of the velocity of sound. In the break circuit arrangement of pendulum key and Morse instrument the markings appear as breaks in a line which would otherwise be continuous. This combination was employed by Professors W.E. Ayrton and J. Perry in their determination of the acceleration of gravity at Tokio, 1877-1878 (Proc. Phys. Soc. Lond. 3, p. 268).

In the tuning-fork electro-chronograph attributed to Hipp a metal cylinder covered with smoked glazed paper is rotated uniformly by clockwork, a tuning-fork armed with a metallic style being so adjusted that it makes a clear fine line on the smoked paper. The tuning-fork is placed in the secondary circuit of an induction coil, so that when the primary circuit is broken an induced spark removes a speck of black from the paper and leaves a mark. The time period is deduced by counting the number of vibrations and fractions of vibration of the tuning-fork as recorded by a sinuous line on the cylinder. In later forms of this instrument the cylinder advances as it rotates, and a spiral line is traced. To obtain good results the spark must be very small, for when large it often leaps laterally from the end of the style, and does not give the true position of the style when the circuit is broken. The same arrangement of tuning-fork and revolving cylinder, with the addition of a standard clock, has been used by A.M. Mayer (Trans. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. vol. iii.) and others for calibrating tuning-forks, and comparing their vibrations directly with the beats of the pendulum of a standard clock the rate of which is known. The pendulum marks and breaks the primary circuit by carrying a small platinum wire through a small mercury meniscus. Better and apparently certain contacts can be obtained from platinum contact-pieces, brought together above the pendulum by means of a toothed wheel on the scape-wheel arbor. Sparking at the contact points is greatly reduced by placing a couple of lead plates in dilute sulphuric acid as a shunt across the battery circuit.

For Physiological Purposes.—A. Fick’s pendulum myograph or muscle-trace recorder is described in Vierteljahrsschr. der naturforsch. Ges. in Zürich, 1862, S. 307, and in Text-book of Physiology, M. Foster, pp. 42, 45. It was used to obtain a record of the contraction of a muscle when stimulated. In many respects the instrument is similar to the electro-ballistic chronograph of Navez. A long pendulum, consisting of a braced metal frame, carries at its lower end a sheet of smoked glass. The pendulum swings about an axis supported by a wall bracket. Previous to an experiment, the pendulum is held on one side of its lowest position by a spring catch; when this is depressed it is free to swing. At the end of its swing it engages with another spring catch. In front of the moving glass plate a tuning-fork is fixed, also a lever actuated by the muscle to be electrically stimulated. When the pendulum swings through its arc, it knocks over the contact key in the primary circuit of an induction coil, the secondary of which is in connexion with the muscle. The smoked plate receives the traces of the style of the tuning-fork and of the lever attached to the muscle, and also the trace of an electromagnetic signal which marks the instant at which the primary circuit is broken. After the traces are made, they are ruled through with radial lines, cutting the three traces, and the time intervals between different parts of the muscle curve are measured in terms of the period of vibration of the tuning-fork, as in other chronographs in which the tuning-fork is employed.

In the spring myograph of E. Du Bois Reymond (Munk’s Physiologie des Menschen, p. 398) a smoked glass plate attached to a metal rod is shot by a spiral spring along two guides with a velocity which is not uniform. The traces of a style moved by the muscle under examination, and of a tuning-fork, are recorded on the glass plate, the shooter during its traverse knocking over one or more electric keys, which break the primary circuit of an induction coil, the induced current stimulating the muscle.

In the photo-electric chronograph devised by G.J. Burch, F.R.S. (Journ. of Physiology, 18, p. 125; Electrician, 37, p.436), the rapid movements of the column of mercury in a capillary electrometer used in physiological research are recorded on a sensitive plate moving at a uniform angular velocity. The trace of the vibrating prongs of a tuning-fork of known period is also recorded on the plate, the light used being that of the electric arc. The images of the meniscus of the mercury column and of the moving fork are focused on the plate by a lens. Excellent results have been obtained with this instrument.

An important development of a branch of chronography is due to E.J. Marey (Comptes rendus, 7. août 1882, and Le Mouvement, par E.J. Marey, Paris, 1894), who employed a photographic plate for receiving successive pictures of moving objects, at definite times, when investigating the movements of animals, birds, fishes, insects, and also microscopic objects such as vorticellae. The instrument in one of its forms consisted of a camera and lens. In front of the sensitive plate and close to it a disk, pierced with radial slits, revolved at a given angular velocity, and each time a slit passed by the plate was exposed. But since, in the time of passage of the space between the slits, the object had moved by a certain amount across the field of view, a fresh impression was produced at each exposure. The object, well illuminated by sunlight, moved in front of a black background. Since the angular velocity of the disk was known, and the number of slits, the time between the successive positions of the object was also known.

Marey (La Méthode graphique, pp. 133, 142, 456), by means of pneumatic signals and a rotating cylinder covered with smoked glazed paper, measured the time of the movements of the limbs of animals. The instrument consists of a recording cylinder rotated at a uniform angular velocity by clockwork controlled by a fan governor, and pneumatic signal, constructed thus. One end of a closed shallow cylinder, about 4 cm. dia., is furnished with a stretched rubber membrane. A light lever, moving about an axis near the edge of the cylinder, is attached to the centre of the membrane by a short rod, its free end moving as the membrane is distended. The cylinder is connected by a flexible tube with a similar cylinder and membrane, but without a lever, which is attached to that part of the body of the animal the movement of which is under investigation. The system is full of air, so that when the membrane attached to the animal is compressed, the membrane which moves the lever is distended and the lever moved. Its end, which carries a scribing point, marks the smoked paper on the rotating cylinder. The pneumatic signal is called by Marey “tambour à levier.”

References to Chronographic Methods:—(1) Chronographs used in Physiology: Helmholtz, “On Methods of measuring very small Portions of Time,” Phil. Mag. (1853), 6; Id., Verhandlungen der physikalisch-medicinischen Gesellschaft in Würzburg (1872); Harless, “Das Attwood’sche Myographion,” Abhandlungen der k. bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1862); Id., Fall-Myographion aufgestellt in der Wiener Weltausstellung in der Abteilung für das Unterrichtswesen von Ungarn (Budapest, 1873); Hensen, “Myographion mit vibratorischer Bewegung,” Arbeiten aus dem Kieler physiol. Instit. (1868); Brücke, Sitzungsber. d Wien. Acad. (1877); Pflüger, “Myographion ohne Bewegung,” Untersuchungen über die Physiologie des Electrotonus (1859); Pouillet, Compt. rend. (1844); I. Munk, Physiologie des Menschen (for Pflüger’s cylinder governed by conical pendulum); J.G. M’Kendrick, Life in Motion (1892) (for early form of cylinder chronograph by Thomas Young); Stirling, Outlines of Practical Physiology (for reaction-time chronographs of F. Galton and Exner). (2) Chronographs used in gun work and for other purposes: Sabine, Phil. Mag. (1876); Moisson, Notice sur la chronographie système Schultz (Paris, 1875); Paul la Cour, La Roue phonique (Copenhagen, 1878); Mach, “Collected Papers on Chronographs,” Nature, 42, p. 250; C.V. Boys, “Bullets photographed in Flight,” Nature, 47, p. 415; Pneumatic Tube Co., Paris, “Chronograph,” Nature, 9, p. 105; G.C. Foster, “Laboratory Chronograph,” Nature, 13, p. 139; E.S. Holden, “Astronomical Chronograph,” Nature, 26, p. 368; D’Arsonval, La Lumière électrique (1887); Dunn, “The Photo-retardograph,” Journal United States Artillery, 8, p. 29; E.J. Marey, La Méthode graphique (for Deprez accélérographe); Werner Siemens, “Electric Spark Chronograph,” Wied. Ann. (1845), 66.

(F. J. J. -S.)

The velocity of the projectile is found thus. Let V be the velocity of the bob, due to the impact of the projectile, v the velocity of the projectile, h the height through which the bob is raised vertically, then

h = V² , and V = √2gh.

2g

If W be the weight of the bob, and w the weight of the projectile, then

wv = (W + w)V, and v = ( W + 1) √2gh.

w

If l be the true length of suspension, and C the length of the chord of the arc of displacement of the bob after being struck, then

C² = 2hl, and v = ( W + 1) √ g . C.

w l

Also if T be the time of a complete small oscillation of the pendulum,

2π = √ g ,

T l

so that

v = ( W + 1) 2πC .

w T

CHRONOLOGY (Gr. χρονολογία, computation of time, χρόνος), the science which treats of time, its object being to arrange and exhibit the various events which have occurred in the history of the world in the order of their succession, and to ascertain the intervals of time between them. The term “chronology” is also used of the order in time itself, as adopted, and of the system by which the order is fixed.

The preservation of any record, however rude, of the lapse of time implies some knowledge of the celestial motions, by which alone time can be accurately measured, and some advancement in the arts of civilized life, which could be attained only by the accumulated experience of many generations (see Time). Before the invention of letters the memory of past transactions could not be preserved beyond a few years with any tolerable degree of accuracy. Events which greatly affected the physical condition of the human race, or were of a nature to make a deep impression on the minds of the rude inhabitants of the earth, might be vaguely transmitted through several ages by traditional narrative; but intervals of time, expressed by abstract numbers, and these constantly varying besides, would soon escape the memory. The invention of the art of writing afforded the means of substituting precise and permanent records for vague and evanescent tradition; but in the infancy of the world, mankind had learned neither to estimate accurately the duration of time, nor to refer passing events to any fixed epoch.

For these reasons the attempt at an accurate chronology of the early ages of the world is only of recent origin. After political relations began to be established, the necessity of preserving a register of passing seasons and years would soon be felt, and the practice of recording important transactions must have grown up as a necessary consequence of social life. But of these deliberate early records a very small portion only has escaped the ravages of time and barbarism.

The earliest written annals of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans are irretrievably lost. The traditions of the Druids perished with them. A Chinese emperor has the credit of burning “the books” extant in his day (about 220 B.C.), and of burying alive the scholars who were acquainted with them. And a Spanish adventurer destroyed the picture records which were found in the pueblo of Montezuma.

Of the more formal historical writings in which the first ineffectual attempts were made in the direction of systematic chronology we have no knowledge at first-hand. Of Hellanicus, the Greek logographer, who appears to have lived through the greater part of the 5th century B.C., and who drew up a chronological list of the priestesses of Here at Argos; of Ephorus, who lived in the 4th century B.C., and is distinguished as the first Greek who attempted the composition of a universal history; and of Timaeus, who in the following century wrote an elaborate history of Sicily, in which he set the example of using the Olympiads as the basis of chronology, the works have perished and our meagre knowledge of their contents is derived only from fragmentary citations in later writers. The same fate has befallen the works of Berossus and Manetho, Eratosthenes and Apollodorus. Berossus, a priest of Belus living at Babylon in the 3rd century B.C., added to his historical account of Babylonia a chronological list of its kings, which he claimed to have compiled from genuine archives preserved in the temple. Manetho, likewise a priest, living at Sebennytus in Lower Egypt in the 3rd century B.C., wrote in Greek a history of Egypt, with an account of its thirty dynasties of sovereigns, which he professed to have drawn from genuine archives in the keeping of the priests. Of these works fragments only, more or less copious and accurate, have been preserved. Eratosthenes, who in the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. was keeper of the famous Alexandrian library, not only made himself a great name by his important work on geography, but by his treatise entitled Chronographia, one of the first attempts to establish an exact scheme of general chronology, earned for himself the title of “father of chronology.” His method of procedure, however, was usually conjectural; and guess-work, however careful, acute and plausible, is still guess-work and not testimony. Apollodorus, an Athenian who flourished in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., wrote a metrical chronicle of events, ranging from the supposed period of the fall of Troy to his own day. These writers were followed by other investigators and systematizers in the same field, but their works are lost. Of the principal later writers whose works are extant, and to whom we owe what little knowledge we possess of the labours of their predecessors, mention will be made hereafter.

The absence or incompleteness of authentic records, however, is not the only source of obscurity and confusion in the chronology of remote ages. There can be no exact computation of time or placing of events without a fixed point or epoch from which the reckoning takes its start. It was long before this was apprehended. When it began to be seen, various epochs were selected by various writers; and at first each small separate community had its own epoch and method of time-reckoning. Thus in one city the reckoning was by succession of kings, in another by archons or annual magistrates, in a third by succession of priests. It seems now surprising that vague counting by generations should so long have prevailed and satisfied the wants of inquiring men, and that so simple, precise and seemingly obvious a plan as counting by years, the largest natural division of time, did not occur to any investigator before Eratosthenes.

Precision, which was at first unattainable for want of an epoch, was afterwards no less unattainable from the multiplicity, and sometimes the variation, of epochs. But by a natural process the mischief was gradually and partially remedied. The extension of intercourse between the various small groups or societies of men, and still more their union in larger groups, made a common epoch necessary, and led to the adoption of such a starting point by each larger group. These leading epochs continued in use for many centuries. The task of the chronologer was thus simplified and reduced to a study and comparison of dates in a few leading systems.

The most important of these systems in what we call ancient times were the Babylonian, the Greek and the Roman. The Jews had no general era, properly so called. In the history of Babylonia, the fixed point from which time was reckoned was the era of Nabonassar, 747 B.C. Among the Greeks the reckoning was by Olympiads, the point of departure being the year in which Coroebus was victor in the Olympic Games, 776 B.C. The Roman chronology started from the foundation of the city, the year of which, however, was variously given by different authors. The most generally adopted was that assigned by Varro, 753 B.C. It is noteworthy how nearly these three great epochs approach each other,—all lying near the middle of the 8th century B.C. But it is to be remembered that the beginning of an era and its adoption and use as such are not the same thing, nor are they necessarily synchronous. Of the three ancient eras above spoken of, the earliest is that of the Olympiads, next that of the foundation of Rome, and the latest the era of Nabonassar. But in order of adoption and actual usage the last is first. It is believed to have been in use from the year of its origin. It is not known when the Romans began to use their era. The Olympiads were not in current use till about the middle of the 3rd century B.C., when Timaeus, as already mentioned, set the example of reckoning by them.

Even after the adoption in Europe of the Christian era, a great variety of methods of dating—national, provincial and ecclesiastical—grew up and prevailed for a long time in different countries, thus renewing in modern times the difficulties experienced in ancient times from diversities of reckoning. An acquaintance with these various methods is indispensable to the student of the charters, chronicles and legal instruments of the middle ages.

In reckoning years from any fixed epoch in constant succession, the number denoting the years is necessarily always on the increase. But rude nations and illiterate people seldom attach any definite idea to large numbers. Hence it has been a practice, very extensively followed, to employ cycles or periods, consisting of a moderate number of years, and to distinguish and reckon the years by their number in the cycle. The Chinese and other nations of Asia reckon, not only the years, but also the months and days, by cycles of sixty. The Saros of the Chaldaeans, the Olympiad of the Greeks, and the Roman Indiction are instances of this mode of reckoning time. Several cycles were formerly known in Europe; but most of them were invented for the purpose of adjusting the solar and lunar divisions of time, and were rather employed in the regulation of the calendar than as chronological eras. They are frequently, however, of very great use in fixing dates that have been otherwise imperfectly expressed, and consequently form important elements of chronology.

(W. L. R. C.)

Modern Results of Archaeological Research.

When Queen Victoria came to the English throne, 4004 B.C. was still accepted, in all sobriety, as the date of the creation of the world. Perhaps no single statement could more vividly emphasize the change in the point of view from which scholars regard the chronology of ancient history than the citation of this indisputable fact. To-day, though Bibles are still printed with the year 4004 B.C. in the margin of the first chapter of Genesis, no scholar would pretend to regard this reference seriously. On the contrary, the scholarship of to-day regards the fifth millennium B.C. as well within the historical period for such nations as the Egyptians and the Babylonians. It has come to be fully accepted that when we use such a phrase as “the age of the world” we are dealing with a period that must be measured not in thousands but in millions of years; and that to the age of man must be allotted a period some hundreds of times as great as the five thousand and odd years allowed by the old chronologists. This changed point of view, needless to say, has not been reached without ardent and even bitter controversy. Yet the transformation is unequivocal; and the revised conception no longer seems to connote the theological implications that were at first ascribed to it. It has now become obvious that the data afforded by the Hebrew writings should never have been regarded as sufficiently accurate for the purpose of exact historical computations: that, in short, no historian working along modern scientific lines could well have made the mistake of supposing that the genealogical lists of the Pentateuch afforded an adequate chronology of world-history. But it should not be forgotten that to many generations of close scholarship these genealogical lists seemed to convey such knowledge in the most precise terms, and that at so recent a date as, for example, the year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne, it was nothing less than a rank heresy to question the historical accuracy and finality of chronologies which had no other source or foundation.

This changed point of view regarding the chronology of history may without hesitation be ascribed to the influence of evidence obtained in a single field of inquiry, the field, namely, of archaeology. No doubt the evidence as to the age of the earth and as to the antiquity of man was gathered by a class of workers not formally included in the ranks of the archaeologist: workers commonly spoken of as palaeontologists, anthropologists, ethnologists and the like. But the distinction scarcely covers a real difference. The scope of the archaeologist’s studies must include every department of the ancient history of man as preserved in antiquities of whatever character, be they tumuli along the Baltic, fossil skulls and graven bones from the caves of France, the flint implements, pottery, and mummies of Egypt, tablets and bas-reliefs from Mesopotamia, coins and sculptures of Greece and Rome, or inscriptions, waxen tablets, parchment rolls, and papyri of a relatively late period of classical antiquity. If at one time the monuments of Greece and Rome claimed the almost undisputed attention of the archaeologist, that time has long since passed. For the most important historical records that have come to us in recent decades we have to thank the Orientalist, though the classical explorer has been by no means idle. It will be sufficient here to point out in general terms the import of the message of archaeological discovery in the Victorian Era in its bearings upon the great problems of world-history.

A start was made through the efforts of the palaeontologists and geologists, with only indirect or incidental aid from the archaeologists. The new movement began actively with James Hutton in the later years of the 18th century, and was forwarded by the studies of William Smith in England and of Cuvier in France; but the really efficient champion of the conception that the earth is very old was Sir Charles Lyell, who published the first edition of his epoch-making Principles of Geology only a few years before Queen Victoria came to the throne. Lyell demonstrated to the satisfaction, or—perhaps it should rather be said—to the dissatisfaction, of his contemporaries that the story of the geological ages as recorded in the strata of the earth becomes intelligible only when vast stretches of time are presupposed. Of course the demonstration was not accepted at once. On the contrary, the champions of the tradition that the earth was less than six thousand years old held their ground most tenaciously, and the earlier years of the Victorian era were years of bitter controversy. The result of the contest was never in doubt, however, for the geological evidence, once it had been gathered, was unequivocal; and by about the middle of the century it was pretty generally admitted that the age of the earth must be measured by an utterly different standard from that hitherto in vogue. This concession, however, by no means implied a like change of view regarding the age of man. A fresh volume of evidence required to be gathered, and a new controversy to be waged, before the old data for the creation of man could be abandoned. Lyell again was in the forefront of the progressive movement, and his work on The Antiquity of Man, published in 1863, gave currency for the first time to the new opinions. The evidence upon which these opinions were based had been gathered by such anthropologists as Schmerling, Boucher de Perthes and others, and it had to do chiefly with the finding of implements of human construction associated with the remains of extinct animals in the beds of caves, and with the recovery of similar antiquities from alluvial deposits the great age of which was demonstrated by their depth. Every item of the evidence was naturally subjected to the closest scrutiny, but at last the conservatives were forced reluctantly to confess themselves beaten. Their traditional arguments were powerless before the array of data marshalled by the new science of prehistoric archaeology. Looking back even at the short remove of a single generation, it is difficult to appreciate how revolutionary was the conception of the antiquity of man thus inculcated. It rudely shocked the traditional attitude of scholarship towards the history of our race. It disturbed the most cherished traditions and the most sacred themes. It seemed to threaten the very foundations of religion itself. Yet the present generation accepts the antiquity of man as a mere matter of fact. Here, as so often elsewhere, the heresy of an elder day has come to seem almost an axiomatic truth.

If we go back in imagination to the beginning of the Victorian era and ask what was then known of the history of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, we find ourselves confronted with a startling paucity of knowledge. The key to the mysteries of Egyptian history had indeed been found, thanks to the recent efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion, but the deciphering of inscriptions had not yet progressed far enough to give more than a vague inkling of what was to follow. It remained, then, virtually true, as it had been for two thousand years, that for all that we could learn of the history of the Old Orient in pre-classical days, we must go solely to the pages of the Bible and to a few classical authors, notably Herodotus and Diodorus. A comparatively few pages summed up, in language often vague and mystical, all that the modern world had been permitted to remember of the history of the greatest nations of antiquity. To these nations the classical writers had ascribed a traditional importance, the glamour of which still lighted their names, albeit revealing them in the vague twilight of tradition rather than in the clear light of history. It would have been a bold, not to say a reckless, dreamer who dared predict that any future researches could restore to us the lost knowledge that had been forgotten for more than two millenniums. Yet the Victorian era was scarcely ushered in before the work of rehabilitation began, which was to lead to the most astounding discoveries and to an altogether unprecedented extension of historical knowledge. Early in the ‘forties the Frenchman Botta, quickly followed by Sir Henry Layard, began making excavations on the site of ancient Nineveh, the name and fame of which were a tradition having scarcely more than mythical status. The spade of the discoverer soon showed that all the fabled glories of the ancient Assyrian capital were founded on realities, and evidence was afforded of a state of civilization and culture such as few men supposed to have existed on the earth before the Golden Age of Greece. Not merely were artistic sculptures and bas-reliefs found that demonstrated a high development of artistic genius, but great libraries were soon revealed,—books consisting of bricks of various sizes, or of cylinders of the same material, inscribed while in the state of clay with curious characters which became indelible when baking transformed the clay into brick. No one was able to guess, even in the vaguest way, the exact interpretation of these odd characters; but, on the other hand, no one could doubt that they constituted a system of writing, and that the piles of inscribed tablets were veritable books. There were numerous sceptics, however, who did not hesitate to assert that the import of the message so obviously locked in these curious inscriptions must for ever remain an absolute mystery. Here, it was said, were inscriptions written in an unknown character and in a language that for at least two thousand years had been absolutely forgotten. In such circumstances nothing less than a miracle could enable human ingenuity to fathom the secret. Yet the feat pronounced impossible by mid-century scepticism was accomplished by contemporary scholarship, amidst the clamour of opposition and incredulity. Its success contains at once a warning to those doubters who are always crying out that we have reached the limitations of knowledge, and an encouragement and stimulus to would-be explorers of new intellectual realms.

In a few words the manner of the discovery was this. It appears at a glance that the Assyrian written character consists of groups of horizontal, vertical or oblique strokes. The characters thus composed, though so simple as to their basal unit, are appallingly complex in their elaboration. The Assyrians with all their culture, never attained the stage of analysis which demonstrates that only a few fundamental sounds are involved in human speech, and hence that it is possible to express all the niceties of utterance with an alphabet of little more than a score of letters. Halting just short of this analysis, the Assyrian ascribed syllabic values to the characters of his script, and hence, instead of finding twenty odd characters sufficient, he required about five hundred. There was a further complication in that each one of these characters had at least two different phonetic values; and there were other intricacies of usage which, had they been foreknown by inquirers in the middle of the 19th century, might well have made the problem of decipherment seem an utterly hopeless one. Fortunately it chanced that another people, the Persians, had adopted the Assyrian wedge-shaped stroke as the foundation of a written character, but making that analysis of which the Assyrians had fallen short, had borrowed only so many characters as were necessary to represent the alphabetical sounds. This made the problem of deciphering Persian inscriptions a relatively easy one. In point of fact this problem had been partially solved in the early days of the 19th century, thanks to the sagacious guesses of the German philologist Grotefend. Working with some inscriptions from Persepolis which were found to contain references to Darius and Xerxes, Grotefend had established the phonetic values of certain of the Persian characters, and his successors were perfecting the discovery just about the time when the new Assyrian finds were made. It chanced that there existed on the polished surface of a cliff at Behistun in western Persia a tri-lingual inscription which, according to Diodorus, had been made by Queen Semiramis of Nineveh, but which, as is now known, was really the work of King Darius. One of the languages of this inscription was Persian; another, as it now appeared, was Assyrian, the language of the newly discovered books from the libraries of Nineveh. There was reason to suppose that the inscriptions were identical in meaning; and fortunately it proved, when the inscriptions were made accessible to investigation through the efforts of Sir Henry Rawlinson, that the Persian inscription contained a large number of proper names. It was well known that proper names are usually transcribed from one language into another with a tolerably close retention of their original sounds. For example, the Greek names Ptolemaios and Kleopatra became a part of the Egyptian language and appeared regularly in Egyptian inscriptions after Alexander’s general became king of Egypt. Similarly, the Greek names Kyros, Dareios and Xerxes were as close an imitation as practicable of the native names of these Persian monarchs. Assuming, then, that the proper names found in the Persian portion of the Behistun inscription occurred also in the Assyrian portion, retaining virtually the same sound in each, a clue to the phonetic values of a large number of the Assyrian characters was obviously at hand. Phonetic values known, Assyrian was found to be a Semitic language cognate to Hebrew.

These clues were followed up by a considerable number of investigators, with Sir Henry Rawlinson in the van. Thanks to their efforts, the new science of Assyriology came into being, and before long the message of the Assyrian books had ceased to be an enigma. Of course this work was not accomplished in a day or in a year, but, considering the difficulties to be overcome, it was carried forward with marvellous expedition. In 1857 the new scholarship was put to a famous test, in which the challenge thrown down by Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Ernest Renan was met by Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert and Fox Talbot in a conclusive manner. The sceptics had declared that the new science of Assyriology was itself a myth: that the investigators, self-deceived, had in reality only invented a language and read into the Assyrian inscriptions something utterly alien to the minds of the Assyrians themselves. But when a committee of the Royal Asiatic Society, with George Grote at its head, decided that the translations of an Assyrian text made independently by the scholars just named were at once perfectly intelligible and closely in accord with one another, scepticism was silenced, and the new science was admitted to have made good its claims.

Naturally the early investigators did not fathom all the niceties of the language, and the work of grammatical investigation has gone on continuously under the auspices of a constantly growing band of workers. Doubtless much still remains to be done; but the essential thing, from the present standpoint, is that a sufficient knowledge of the Assyrian language has been acquired to ensure trustworthy translations of the cuneiform texts. Meanwhile, the material found by Botta and Layard, and other successors, in the ruins of Nineveh, has been constantly augmented through the efforts of companies of other investigators, and not merely Assyrian, but much earlier Babylonian and Chaldaean texts in the greatest profusion have been brought to the various museums of Europe and America. The study of these different inscriptions has utterly revolutionized our knowledge of Oriental history. Many of the documents are strictly historical in their character, giving full and accurate contemporary accounts of events that occurred some thousands of years ago. Exact dates are fixed for long series of events that previously were quite unknown. Monarchs whose very names had been forgotten are restored to history, and the records of their deeds inscribed under their very eyes are before us,—contemporary documents such as neither Greece nor Rome could boast, nor any other nation, with the single exception of Egypt, until strictly modern times. There are, no doubt, gaps in the record; there are long periods for which the chronology is still uncertain. Naturally there is an increasing vagueness as one recedes farther into the past, and for the earlier history of Chaldaea there is great uncertainty. Nevertheless, the Assyriologist speaks with a good deal of confidence of dates as remote as 3800 B.C., the time ascribed to King Sargon, who was once regarded as a mythical person, but is now known to have been an actual monarch. Indeed, there are tablets in the British Museum labelled 4500 B.C.; and later researches, particularly those of the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur, have brought us evidence which, interpreted with the aid of estimates as to the average rate of accumulation of dust deposits, leads to the inference that a high state of civilization had been attained in Mesopotamia at least 9000 years ago.

While the Assyriologists have been making these astonishing revelations, the Egyptologists have not been behindhand. Such scholars as Lepsius, Brugsch, de Rougé, Lenormant, Birch, Mariette, Maspero and Erman have perfected the studies of Young and Champollion; while at the same time these and a considerable company of other explorers, most notable of whom are Gardner Wilkinson and Professor Flinders Petrie, have brought to light a vast accumulation of new material, much of which has the highest importance from the standpoint of the historian. Lists of kings found on the temple wall at Abydos, in the fragments of the Turin papyrus and elsewhere, have cleared up many doubtful points in the lists of Manetho, and at the same time, as Professor Petrie has pointed out, have proved to us how true a historian that much-discussed writer was. Manetho, it will be recalled, was the Egyptian who wrote the history of Egypt in Greek in the time of the Ptolemies. His work in the original unfortunately perished, and all that we know of it we learn through excerpts made by a few later classical writers. These fragments have until recently, however, given us our only clue to the earlier periods of Egyptian history. Until corroboration was found in the Egyptian inscriptions themselves, not only were Manetho’s lists in doubt, but scepticism had been carried to the point of denying that Manetho himself had ever existed. This is only one of many cases where the investigations of the archaeologist have proved not iconoclastic but reconstructive, tending to restore confidence in classical traditions which the scientific historians of the age of Niebuhr and George Cornewall Lewis regarded with scepticism.

As to the exact dates of early Egyptian history there is rather more of vagueness than for the corresponding periods of Mesopotamia. Indeed, approximate accuracy is not attained until we are within sixteen hundred years of our own era; but the sequence of events of a period preceding this by two thousand years is well established, and the recent discoveries of Professor Petrie carry back the record to a period which cannot well be less than five thousand, perhaps not less than six thousand years B.C. Both from Egypt and Mesopotamia, then, the records of the archaeologist have brought us evidence of the existence of a highly developed civilization for a period exceeding by hundreds, perhaps by thousands, of years the term which had hitherto been considered the full period of man’s existence.

We may note at once how these new figures disturb the historical balance. If our forerunners of eight or nine thousand years ago were in a noonday glare of civilization, where shall we look for the much-talked-of “dawnings of history”? By this new standard the Romans seem our contemporaries in latter-day civilization; the “Golden Age” of Greece is but of yesterday; the pyramid-builders are only relatively remote. The men who built the temple of Bel at Nippur, in the year (say) 5000 B.C., must have felt themselves at a pinnacle of civilization and culture. As Professor Mahaffy has suggested, the era of the Pyramids may have been the veritable autumn of civilization. Where, then, must we look for its springtime? The answer to that question must come, if it come at all, from what we now speak of as prehistoric archaeology; the monuments from Memphis and Nippur and Nineveh, covering a mere ten thousand years or so, are the records of recent history.

The efforts of the students of Oriental archaeology have been constantly stimulated by the fact that their studies brought them more or less within the field of Bible history. A fair proportion of the workers who have delved so enthusiastically in the fields of Egyptian and Assyrian exploration would never have taken up the work at all but for the hope that their investigations might substantiate the Hebrew records. For a long time this hope proved illusory, and in the case of Egyptian archaeology the results have proved disappointing even up to the very present. Considering the important part played by the Egyptian sojourn of the Hebrews, as narrated in the Scriptures, it was certainly not an over-enthusiastic prediction that the Egyptian monuments when fully investigated would divulge important references to Joseph, to Moses, and to the all-important incidents of the Exodus; but half a century of expectant attention in this direction has led only to disappointment. It would be rash, considering the buried treasures that may yet await the future explorer, to assert that such records as those in question can never come to light. But, considering the fulness of the contemporary Egyptian records of the XIXth dynasty that are already known, it becomes increasingly doubtful whether the Hebrews in Egypt played so important a part in history, when viewed from the Egyptian standpoint, as their own records had seemed to imply. As the forgotten history of Oriental antiquity has been restored to us, it has come to be understood that, politically speaking, the Hebrews were a relatively insignificant people, whose chief importance from the standpoint of material history was derived from the geographical accident that made them a sort of buffer between the greater nations about them. Only once, and for a brief period, in the reigns of David and Solomon did the Hebrews rise to anything like an equal plane of political importance with their immediate neighbours. What gave them a seeming importance in the eyes of posterity was the fact that the true history of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Arabians and Hittites had been well-nigh forgotten. The various literatures of these nations were locked from view for more than two thousand years, while the literature of Israel had not merely been preserved, but had come to be regarded as inspired and sacred among all the cultured nations of the Western world. Now that the lost literatures have been restored to us, the status of the Hebrew writings could not fail to be disturbed. Their very isolation had in some measure accounted for their seeming importance.

All true historical perspective is based upon comparison, and where only a single account has been preserved of any event or of any period of history, it is extremely difficult to judge that account with historical accuracy. An illustration of this truth is furnished in profane history by the account which Thucydides has given us of the Peloponnesian War. For most of the period in question Thucydides is the only source; and despite the inherent merits of a great writer, it can hardly be doubted that the tribute of almost unqualified praise that successive generations of scholars have paid to Thucydides must have been in some measure qualified if, for example, a Spartan account of the Peloponnesian War had been preserved to us. Professor Mahaffy has pointed out that many other events in Greek history are viewed by us in somewhat perverted perspective because the great writers of Greece were Athenians rather than Spartans or Thebans. Even in so important a matter as the great conflict between Persia and Greece it has been suggested more than once that we should be able to gain a much truer view were Persian as well as Greek accounts accessible.

Not many years ago it would have been accounted a heresy to suggest that the historical books of the Old Testament had conveyed to our minds estimates of Oriental history that suffered from this same defect; but to-day no one who is competent to speak with authority pretends to doubt that such is really the fact. Even conservative students of the Bible urge that its historical passages must be viewed precisely in the light of any other historical writings of antiquity; and the fact that the oldest Hebrew manuscript dates only from the 8th century A.D., and therefore of necessity brings to us the message of antiquity through the fallible medium of many generations of copyists, is far more clearly kept in mind than it formerly was. Every belief of mankind is in the last analysis amenable to reason, and finds its origin in evidence that can appeal to the arbitrament of common sense. This evidence may in certain cases consist chiefly of the fact that generations of our predecessors have taken a certain view regarding a certain question; indeed most of our cherished beliefs have this foundation. But when such is the case, mankind has never failed in the long run to vindicate its claim to rationality by showing a readiness to give up the old belief whenever tangible evidence of its fallaciousness was forthcoming. The case of the historical books of the Old Testament furnishes no exception. These had been sacred to almost a hundred generations of men, and it was difficult for the eye of faith to see them as other than absolutely infallible documents. Yet the very eagerness with which the champions of the Hebrew records searched for archaeological proofs of their validity was a tacit confession that even the most unwavering faith was not beyond the reach of external evidence. True, the believer sought corroboration with full faith that he would find it; but the very fact that he could think such external corroboration valuable implied, however little he may have realized it, the subconscious concession that he must accept external evidence at its full value, even should it prove contradictory. If, then, an Egyptian inscription of the XIXth dynasty had come to hand in which the names of Joseph and Moses, and the deeds of the Israelites as a subject people who finally escaped from bondage by crossing the Red Sea, were recorded in hieroglyphic characters, such a monument would have been hailed with enthusiastic delight by every champion of the Pentateuch, and a wave of supreme satisfaction would have passed over all Christendom. It is not too much, then, to say that failure to find such a monument has caused deep disappointment to Bible scholars everywhere. It does not follow that faith in the Bible record is shaken, although in some quarters there has been a pronounced tendency to regard the history of the Egyptian sojourn as mythical; yet it cannot be denied that Egyptian records, corroborating at least some phases of the Bible story, would have been a most welcome addition to our knowledge. Some recent finds have, indeed, seemed to make inferential reference to the Hebrews, and the marvellous collection of letters of the XVIIIth dynasty found at Tel el-Amarna—letters to which we shall refer later—have the utmost importance as proving a possible early date for the Mosaic accounts. But such inferences as these are but a vague return for the labour expended, and an almost cruelly inadequate response to seemingly well-founded expectations.

When we turn to the field of Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology, however, the case is very different. Here we have documents in abundance that deal specifically with events more or less referred to in the Bible. The records of kings whose names hitherto were known to us only through Bible references have been found in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, and personages hitherto but shadowy now step forth as clearly into the light of history as an Alexander or a Caesar. Moreover, the newly discovered treasures deal with the beliefs of the people as well as with their history proper. The story of the books now spoken of as the “Creation” and “Deluge” tablets of the Assyrians, in the British Museum, which were discovered in the ruins of Nineveh by Layard and by George Smith, has been familiar to every one for a good many years. The acute interest which they excited when George Smith deciphered their contents in 1872 has to some extent abated, but this is only because scholars are now pretty generally agreed as to their bearing on the corresponding parts of Genesis. The particular tablets in question date only from about the 7th century B.C., but it is agreed among Assyriologists that they are copies of older texts current in Babylonia for many centuries before, and it is obvious that the compilers of Genesis had access to the Babylonian stories. In a word, the Hebrew Genesis shows unequivocal evidence of Babylonian origin, but, in the words of Professor Sayce, it is but “a paraphrase and not a translation.” However disconcerting such a revelation as this would have been to the theologians of an elder day, the Bible scholars of our own generation are able to regard it with entire composure.

From the standpoint of the historian even greater interest attaches to the records of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings when compared with the historical books of the Old Testament. For some centuries the inhabitants of Palestine were subject to periodical attacks from the warlike inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as even the most casual reader of the Bible is aware. When it became known that the accounts of these invasions formed a part of the records preserved in the Assyrian libraries, historian and theologian alike waited with breathless interest for the exact revelations in store; and this time expectation was not disappointed. As, one after another, the various tablets and cylinders and annalistic tablets have been translated, it has become increasingly clear that here are almost inexhaustible fountains of knowledge, and that sooner or later it may be possible to check the Hebrew accounts of the most important periods of their history with contemporaneous accounts written from another point of view. It is true that the cases are not very numerous where precisely the same event is described from opposite points of view, but, speaking in general terms rather than of specific incidents, we are already able to subject considerable portions of history to this test. The records of Shalmaneser II., Tiglath-Pileser III. and Sennacherib, kings of Assyria, of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and of Cyrus, king of Persia, all contain direct references to Hebrew history. An obelisk of Shalmaneser II. contains explicit reference to the tribute of Jehu of Samaria, and graphically depicts the Hebrew captives. Tiglath-Pileser III., a usurper who came to the throne of Assyria in 745 B.C., and whose earlier name of Pul proved a source of confusion to the later Hebrew writers, left records that have served to clear up the puzzling chronology of a considerable period of the history of Samaria. Most interesting of all, perhaps, are the annals of Sennacherib, the destruction of whose hosts by the angel of God is so strikingly depicted in the Book of Kings. The court historian of Sennacherib naturally does not dwell upon this event, but he does tell of an invasion and conquest of Palestine. The Hebrew account of the death of Sennacherib is corroborated by a Babylonian inscription. Here, however, there is an interesting qualification. The account in the Book of Kings is so phrased that one might naturally infer from it that Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons immediately after his return from the disastrous campaign in Palestine; but in point of fact, as it now appears, the Assyrian king survived that campaign by twenty years. One cannot avoid the suspicion that in this instance the Hebrew chronicler purposely phrased his account to convey the impression that Sennacherib’s tragic end was but the slightly delayed culmination of the punishment inflicted for his attack upon the “chosen people.” On the other hand, the ambiguity may be quite unintentional, for the Hebrew writers were notoriously lacking in the true historical sense, which shows itself in a full appreciation of the value of chronology.

One of the most striking instances of the way in which mistakes of chronology may lead to the perversion of historical records is shown in the Book of Daniel in connexion with the familiar account of the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Within the past generation records of Cyrus have been brought to light, as well as records of the conquered Babylonian king himself, which show that the Hebrew writers of the later day had a peculiarly befogged impression of a great historical event—their misconception being shared, it may be added, by the Greek historian Herodotus. When the annalistic tablet of Cyrus was translated, it was made to appear, to the consternation of Bible scholars, that the city of Babylon had capitulated to the Persian—or more properly to the Elamite—conqueror without a struggle. It appeared, further, that the king ruling in Babylon at the time of the capitulation was named not Belshazzar, but Nabonidos. This king, as appears from his own records, had a son named Belshazzar, who commanded Babylonian armies in outlying provinces, but who never came to the throne. Nothing could well be more disconcerting than such a revelation as this. It is held, however, that the startling discrepancies are not so difficult to explain as may appear at first sight. The explanation is found, so the Assyriologist assures us, in the fact that both Hebrew and Greek historians, writing at a considerable interval after the events, and apparently lacking authentic sources, confused the peaceful occupation of Babylon by Cyrus with its siege and capture by a successor to that monarch, Darius Hystaspes. As to the confusion of Babylonian names—in which, by the way, the Hebrew and Greek authors do not agree—it is explained that the general, Belshazzar, was perhaps more directly known in Palestine than his father the king. But the vagueness of the Hebrew knowledge is further shown by the fact that Belshazzar, alleged king, is announced as the son of Nebuchadrezzar (misspelled Nebuchadnezzar in the Hebrew writings), while the three kings that reigned after Nebuchadrezzar, and before Nabonidos usurped the throne, are quite overlooked.

Our present concern with the archaeological evidence thus briefly outlined, and with much more of the kind, may be summed up in the question: What in general terms is the inference to be drawn by the world-historian from the Assyrian records in their bearings upon the Hebrew writings? At first sight this might seem an extremely difficult question to answer. Indeed, to answer it to the satisfaction of all concerned might well be pronounced impossible. Yet it would seem as if a candid and impartial historian could not well be greatly in doubt in the matter. On the one hand, the general agreement everywhere between the Hebrew accounts and contemporaneous records from Mesopotamia proves beyond cavil that, broadly speaking, the Bible accounts are historically true, and were written by persons who in the main had access to contemporaneous documents. On the other hand, the discrepancies as to details, the confusion as to exact chronology, the manifest prejudice and partizanship, and the obvious limitations of knowledge make it clear that the writers partook in full measure of the shortcomings of other historians, and that their work must be adjudged by ordinary historical standards. As much as this is perhaps conceded by most, if not all, schools of Bible criticism of to-day. Professor Sayce, one of the most distinguished of modern Assyriologists, writing as an opponent of the purely destructive “Higher Criticism,” demands no more than that the Book of Genesis “shall take rank by the side of the other monuments of the past as the record of events which have actually happened and been handed on by credible men”; that it shall, in short, be admitted to be “a collection of ancient documents which have all the value of contemporaneous testimony,” but which being in themselves “wrecks of vast literatures which extended over the Oriental world from a remote epoch,” cannot be understood aright “except in the light of the contemporaneous literature of which they form a portion.” From the point of view implied by such words as these, it is only necessary to recall the mental attitude of our grandfathers to appreciate in some measure the revolution in thought that has been wrought in this field within the last half-century, largely through the instrumentality of Oriental archaeology.

We have seen that the general trend of Oriental archaeology has been reconstructive rather than iconoclastic. Equally true is this of recent classical archaeology. Here no such revolution has been effected as that which virtually created anew the history of Oriental antiquity; yet the bearings of the new knowledge are similar in kind if different in degree. The world had never quite forgotten the history of the primitive Greeks as it had forgotten the Mesopotamians, the Himyaritic nations and the Hittites; but it remembered their deeds only in the form of poetical myths and traditions. These traditions, finding their clearest delineation in the lines of Homer, had been subjected to the analysis of the critical historians of the early decades of the 19th century, and their authenticity had come to be more than doubted. The philological analysis of Wolf and his successors had raised doubts as to the very existence of Homer, and at one time the main current of scholarly opinion had set strongly in the direction of the belief that the Iliad and the Odyssey were in reality but latter-day collections of divers recitals that had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another of bards through ages of illiteracy. It was strenuously contended that the case could not well be otherwise, inasmuch as the art of writing must have been quite unknown in Greece until after the alleged age of the traditional Homer, whose date had been variously estimated at from 1000 to 800 B.C. by less sceptical generations. It had come to be a current belief that the Iliad was first committed to writing in the age of Peisistratus. A prominent controversialist, F.A. Paley, even went so far as to doubt whether a single written copy of the Iliad existed in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War. The doubts thus cast upon the age when the Homeric poems first assumed the fixed form of writing were closely associated with the universal scepticism as to the historical accuracy of any traditions whatever regarding the early history of Greece. Cautious historians had come to regard the so-called “Heroic Age” as a prehistoric period regarding which nothing definite was known, or in all probability could be known. It was ably argued by Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in connexion with his inquiries into early Roman history, that a verbal tradition is not transmitted from one generation to another in anything like an authentic form for a longer period than about a century. If, then, the art of writing was unknown in Greece before, let us say, the 6th century B.C., it would be useless to expect that any events of Grecian history prior to about the 7th century B.C. could have been transmitted to posterity with any degree of historical accuracy.

Notwithstanding the allurements of the subject, such conservative historians as Grote were disposed to regard the problems of early Grecian history as inscrutable, and to content themselves with the recital of traditions without attempting to establish their relationship with actual facts. It remained for the more robust faith of a Schliemann to show that such scepticism was all too faint-hearted, by proving that at such sites as Tiryns, Mycenae and Hissarlik evidences of a very early period of Greek civilization awaited the spade of the excavator. Thanks to the enthusiasm of Schliemann and his successors, we can now substitute for the mythical “Age of Heroes” a historical “Mycenaean Age” of Greece, and give tangible proof of its relatively high state of civilization. Schliemann may or may not have been correct in identifying one of the seven cities that he unearthed at Hissarlik as the fabled Troy itself, but at least his efforts sufficed to give verisimilitude to the Homeric story. With the lessons of recent Oriental archaeology in mind, few will be sceptical enough to doubt that some such contest as that described in the Iliad actually occurred. And now, thanks to the efforts of a large company of workers, notably Dr Arthur Evans and his associates in Cretan exploration, we are coming to speak with some confidence not merely of a Mycenaean but of a pre-Mycenaean Age.

As yet we see these periods somewhat darkly. The illuminative witness of written records is in the main denied us here. Some most archaic inscriptions have been indeed found by the explorers in Crete, but these for the present serve scarcely any other purpose than to prove the antiquity of the art of writing among a people who were closely in touch with the inhabitants of Hellas proper. Most unfortunately for posterity, the Greeks wrote mainly on perishable materials, and hence the chief records even of their later civilization have vanished. The only fragments of Greek manuscripts antedating the Christian era that have been preserved to us have been found in Egypt, where a hospitable climate granted them a term of existence not to be hoped for elsewhere. No fragment of these papyri, indeed, carries us further back than the age of the Ptolemies; but the Greek inscriptions on the statues of Rameses II at Abu-Simbel, in Nubia, give conclusive proof that the art of writing was widely disseminated among the Greeks at least three centuries before the age of Alexander. This carries us back towards the traditional age of Homer.

The Cretan inscriptions belong to a far older epoch, and are written in two non-Grecian scripts of undetermined affinities. Here, then, is direct evidence that the Aegean peoples of the Mycenaean Age knew how to write, and it is no longer necessary to assume that the verses of the Iliad were dependent on mere verbal transmission for any such period as has been supposed.

But even were direct evidence of the knowledge of the art of writing in Greece of the early day altogether lacking, none but the hardiest sceptic could doubt, in the light of recent archaeological discoveries elsewhere, that the inhabitants of ancient Hellas of the “Homeric Age” must have shared with their contemporaries the capacity to record their thought in written words. We have seen that Oriental archaeology has in recent generations revolutionized our conceptions of the antiquity of civilization. We have seen that written documents have been preserved in Mesopotamia to which such a date as 4500 B.C. may be ascribed with a good deal of confidence; and that from the third millennium B.C. a flood of contemporary literary records comes to us both from Egypt and Mesopotamia. But until recently it had been supposed that Hellas was shut out entirely from this Oriental culture. Historians have found it hard to dispel the idea that civilization in Greece was a very late development, and that the culture of the age of Solon sprang, in fact, suddenly into existence, as it seems to do in the records of the historian. But the excavations that have given us a knowledge of the Mycenaean Age have proved conclusively, not alone that civilization existed in Greece in an early day, but that this civilization was closely linked with the civilization of Egypt. Not only have antiquities been found in Crete that point to Egyptian inspiration, but quite recently Professor Petrie has found at Tel el-Amarna Mycenaean pottery. The latter find has a peculiar significance, since the date of the Tel el-Amarna collection is definitely fixed between the years 1400 and 1370 B.C.

It is demonstrated, then, that as early as the beginning of the 14th century B.C. the Mycenaean civilization was in touch with the ancient civilization of Egypt. One must not infer from this, however, that the two civilizations met on anything like an equality. Indeed, in the wonderful Tel-el-Amarna collection there is a suggestive absence of literary documents from the Aegean that demands a word of notice. The Tel el-Amarna collection, it will be recalled, consists of the royal archives of King Amenophis IV. of the XVIIIth Egyptian dynasty, who in the latter years of his reign chose to be known as Akhenaton, “the glory of the solar disk.” This monarch had retired from Thebes and established his court on the site now known as Tel el-Amarna, where he founded the city which existed only during the brief period of thirty years ending with the death of the monarch about 1370 B.C. The date of the documents found in the royal library is, therefore, fixed within very narrow limits. The documents in question consist chiefly of letters, and constitute one of the most important of archaeological finds. These letters came to the king from almost every part of western Asia, including Palestine and Phoenicia, Babylonia and Asia Minor. Strangely enough, all the letters are written in the Babylonian character, and most of them are in the Babylonian language. They afford, therefore, most striking evidence of a widespread diffusion of Babylonian culture. Incidentally they prove, to the utter confusion of a certain school of Bible critics, that the art of writing was familiarly known in Canaan, and that Egypt and western Asia were in full literary connexion with one another, long before the time of the Exodus. Hence all the elaborate arguments based on the supposition that Moses probably could not write fall to the ground. On the other hand, the absence of letters from Mycenae among the tablets of Tel el-Amarna must be regarded as at least suggestive. Seemingly the widespread Babylonian culture had not reached the Aegean peoples; yet these peoples cannot have been wholly ignorant of things with which commercial intercourse brought them in contact. The point is of no very great significance, however, since no one has pretended that the Western civilization compared with the Eastern in point of antiquity; and in any event, no amount of negative evidence weighs a grain in the balance against the positive evidence of the Cretan inscriptions.

The researches of the archaeologist are, in short, tending to reconstruct the primitive classical history; and here, as in the Orient, it is evident that historians of the earlier day were constantly blinded by a misconception as to the antiquity of civilization. Such a fruitage as that of Greek culture of the age of Pericles does not come to maturity without a long period of preparation. Here, as elsewhere, the laws of evolution hold, permitting no sudden stupendous leaps. But it required the arduous labours of the archaeologist to prove a proposition that, once proven, seems self-evident.

(H. S. WI.)

Eras and Periods.

In the article Calendar (q.v.), that part of chronology is treated which relates to the measurement of time, and the principal methods are explained that have been employed, or are still in use, for adjusting the lunar months of the solar year, as well as the intercalations necessary for regulating the civil year according to the celestial motions. But it is necessary to notice here the different Eras and Periods that have been employed by historians, and by the different nations of the world, in recording the succession of time and events, to fix the epochs at which the eras respectively commenced, to ascertain the form and the initial day of the year made use of, and to establish their correspondence with the years of the Christian era. These elements will enable us to convert, by a simple arithmetical operation, any historical date, of which the chronological characters are given according to any era whatever, into the corresponding date in the Christian era.

Julian Period.—Although the Julian period (the invention of Joseph Scaliger, in 1582) is not, properly speaking, a chronological era, yet, on account of its affording considerable facilities in the comparison of different eras with one another, and in marking without ambiguity the years before Christ, it is very generally employed by chronologers. It consists of 7980 Julian years; and the first year of the Christian era corresponded with the year 4714 of the Julian period.

Olympiads.—The Olympic games, so famous in Greek history, were celebrated once every four years, between the new and full moon first following the summer solstice, on the small plain named Olympia in Elis, which was bounded on one side by the river Alpheus, on another by the small tributary stream the Cladeus, and on the other two sides by mountains. The games lasted five days. Their origin, lost in the dimness of remote antiquity, was invested by priestly legends with a sacred character. They were said to have been instituted by the Idaean Heracles, to commemorate his victory over his four brothers in a foot-race. According to a tradition, possibly more authentic, they were re-established by Iphitus, king of Elis, in concert with the Spartan Lycurgus and Cleosthenes of Pisa. The practice was long afterwards adopted of designating the Olympiad, or period of four years, by the name of the victor in the contests of the stadium, and of inscribing his name in the gymnasium of Olympia. The first who received this honour was Coroebus. The games in which Coroebus was victor, and which form the principal epoch of Greek history, were celebrated about the time of the summer solstice 776 years before the common era of the Incarnation, in the 3938th year of the Julian period, and twenty-three years, according to the account of Varro, before the foundation of Rome.

Before the introduction of the Metonic cycle, the Olympic year began sometimes with the full moon which followed, at other times with that which preceded the summer solstice, because the year sometimes contained 384 days instead of 354. But subsequently to its adoption, the year always commenced with the eleventh day of the moon which followed the solstice. In order to avoid troublesome computations, which it would be necessary to recommence for every year, and of which the results differ only by a few days, chronologers generally regard the 1st of July as the commencement of the Olympic year. Some authors, however, among whom are Eusebius, Jerome and the historian Socrates, place its commencement at the 1st of September; these, however, appear to have confounded the Olympic year with the civil year of the Greeks, or the era of the Seleucidae.

It is material to observe, that as the Olympic years and periods begin with the 1st of July, the first six months of a year of our era correspond to one Olympic year, and the last six months to another. Thus, when it is said that the first year of the Incarnation corresponds to the first of the 195th Olympiad, we are to understand that it is only with respect to the last six months of that year that the correspondence takes place. The first six months belonged to the fourth year of the 194th Olympiad. In referring dates expressed by Olympiads to our era, or the contrary, we must therefore distinguish two cases.

1st. When the event in question happened between the 1st of January and the 1st of the following July, the sum of the Olympic year and of the year before Christ is always equal to 776. The year of the era, therefore, will be found by subtracting the number of the Olympic year from 776. For example, Varro refers the foundation of Rome to the 21st of April of the third year of the sixth Olympiad, and it is required to find the year before our era. Since five Olympic periods have elapsed, the third year of the sixth Olympiad is 5 × 4 + 3 = 23; therefore, subtracting 23 from 776, we have 753, which is the year before Christ to which the foundation of Rome is referred by Varro.

2nd. When the event took place between the summer solstice and the 1st of January following, the sum of the Olympic year and of the year before Christ is equal to 777. The difference, therefore, between 777 and the year in one of the dates will give the year in the other date. Thus, the moon was eclipsed on the 27th of August, a little before midnight, in the year 413 before our era; and it is required to find the corresponding year in the Olympic era. Subtract 413 from 777, the remainder is 364; and 364 divided by four gives 91 without a remainder; consequently the eclipse happened in the fourth year of the ninety-first Olympiad, which is the date to which it is referred by Thucydides.

If the year is after Christ, and the event took place in one of the first six months of the Olympic year, that is to say, between July and January, we must subtract 776 from the number of the Olympic year to find the corresponding year of our era; but if it took place in one of the last six months of the Olympic year, or between January and July, we must deduct 777. The computation by Olympiads seldom occurs in historical records after the middle of the 5th century of our era.

The names of the months were different in the different Grecian states. The Attic months, of which we possess the most certain knowledge, were named as follows:—

Hecatombaeon. Gamelion.

Metageitnion. Anthesterion.

Boëdromion. Elaphebolion.

Pyanepsion. Munychion.

Maemacterion. Thargelion.

Poseideon. Scirophorion.

Era of the Foundation of Rome.—After the Olympiads, the era most frequently met with in ancient history is that of the foundation of Rome, which is the chronological epoch adopted by all the Roman historians. There are various opinions respecting the year of the foundation of Rome. (1) Fabius Pictor places it in the latter half of the first year of the eighth Olympiad, which corresponds with the 3967th of the Julian period, and with the year 747 B.C. (2) Polybius places it in the second year of the seventh Olympiad, corresponding with 3964 of the Julian period, and 750 B.C. (3) M. Porcius Cato places it in the first year of the seventh Olympiad, that is, in 3963 of the Julian period, and 751 B.C. (4) Verrius Flaccus places it in the fourth year of the sixth Olympiad, that is, in the year 3962 of the Julian period, and 752 B.C. (5) Terentius Varro places it in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, that is, in the year 3961 of the Julian period, and 753 B.C. A knowledge of these different computations is necessary, in order to reconcile the Roman historians with one another, and even any one writer with himself. Livy in general adheres to the epoch of Cato, though he sometimes follows that of Fabius Pictor. Cicero follows the account of Varro, which is also in general adopted by Pliny. Dionysius of Halicarnassus follows Cato. Modern chronologers for the most part adopt the account of Varro, which is supported by a passage in Censorinus, where it is stated that the 991st year of Rome commenced with the festival of the Palilia, in the consulship of Ulpius and Pontianus. Now this consulship corresponded with the 238th year of our era; therefore, deducting 238 from 991, we have 753 to denote the year before Christ. The Palilia commenced on the 21st of April; and all the accounts agree in regarding that day as the epoch of the foundation of Rome.

The Romans employed two sorts of years, the civil year, which was used in the transaction of public and private affairs, and the consular year, according to which the annals of their history have been composed. The civil year commenced with the calends of January, but this did not hold a fixed place in the solar year till the time of Julius Caesar (see Calendar). The installation of the consuls regulated the commencement of the consular year. The initial day of the consulate was never fixed, at least before the 7th century of Rome, but varied with the different accidents which in times of political commotion so frequently occurred to accelerate or retard the elections. Hence it happens that a consular year, generally speaking, comprehends a part not only of two Julian years, but also of two civil years. The consulate is the date employed by the Latin historians generally, and by many of the Greeks, down to the 6th century of our era.

In the era of Rome the commencement of the year is placed at the 21st of April; an event therefore which happened in the months of January, February, March, or during the first twenty days of April, in the year (for example) 500 of Rome, belongs to the civil year 501. Before the time of the Decemvirs, however, February was the last month of the year. Many authors confound the year of Rome with the civil year, supposing them both to begin on the 1st of January. Others again confound both the year of Rome and the civil year with the Julian year, which in fact became the civil year after the regulation of the calendar by Julius Caesar. Through a like want of attention, many writers also, particularly among the moderns, have confounded the Julian and Olympic years, by making an entire Julian year correspond to an entire Olympic year, as if both had commenced at the same epoch. Much attention to these particulars is required in the comparison of ancient dates.

The Christian Era.—The Christian or vulgar era, called also the era of the Incarnation, is now almost universally employed in Christian countries, and is even used by some Eastern nations. Its epoch or beginning is the 1st of January in the fourth year of the 194th Olympiad, the 753rd from the foundation of Rome, and the 4714th of the Julian period. This epoch was introduced in Italy in the 6th century, by Dionysius the Little, a Roman abbot, and began to be used in Gaul in the 8th, though it was not generally followed in that country till a century later. From extant charters it is known to have been in use in England before the close of the 8th century. Before its adoption the usual practice in Latin countries was to distinguish the years by their number in the cycle of Indiction.

In the Christian era the years are simply distinguished by the cardinal numbers; those before Christ being marked B.C. (Before Christ), or A.C. (Ante Christum), and those after Christ A.D. (Anno Domini). This method of reckoning time is more convenient than those which employ cycles or periods of any length whatever; but it still fails to satisfy in the simplest manner possible all the conditions that are necessary for registering the succession of events. For, since the commencement of the era is placed at an intermediate period of history, we are compelled to resort to a double manner of reckoning, backward as well as forward. Some ambiguity is also occasioned by the want of uniformity in the method of numbering the preceding years. Astronomers denote the year which preceded the first of our era by 0, and the year previous to that by 1 B.C.; but chronologers, in conformity with common notions, call the year preceding the era 1 B.C., the previous year 2 B.C., and so on. By reckoning in this manner, there is an interruption in the regular succession of the numbers; and in the years preceding the era, the leap years, instead of falling on the fourth, eighth, twelfth, &c., fall, or ought to fall, on the first, fifth, ninth, &c.

In the chronicles of the middle ages much uncertainty frequently arises respecting dates on account of the different epochs assumed for the beginning of the Christian year. Dionysius, the author of the era, adopted the day of the Annunciation, or the 25th of March, which preceded the birth of Christ by nine months, as the commencement of the first year of the era. This epoch therefore precedes that of the vulgar era by nine months and seven days. This manner of dating was followed in some of the Italian states, and continued to be used at Pisa even down to the year 1745. It was also adopted in some of the Papal bulls; and there are proofs of its having been employed in France about the middle of the 11th century. Some chroniclers, who adhere to the day of the Annunciation as the commencement of the year, reckon from the 25th of March following our epoch, as the Florentines in the 10th century. Gregory of Tours, and some writers of the 6th and 7th centuries, make the year begin sometimes with the 1st of March, and sometimes with the 1st of January. In France, under the third race of kings, it was usual to begin the year with Easter; and this practice continued at least till the middle of the 16th century, for an edict was issued by Charles IX. in the month of January 1663, ordaining that the beginning of the year should thenceforth be considered as taking place on the 1st of January. An instance is given, in L’Art de vérifier les dates, of a date in which the year is reckoned from the 18th of March; but it is probable that this refers to the astronomical year, and that the 18th of March was taken for the day of the vernal equinox. In Germany, about the 11th century, it was usual to begin the year at Christmas; and this practice also prevailed at Milan, Rome and other Italian cities, in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries.

In England, the practice of placing the beginning of the year at Christmas was introduced in the 7th century, and traces of it are found even in the 13th. Gervase of Canterbury, who lived in the 13th century, mentions that almost all writers of his country agreed in regarding Christmas day as the first of the year, because it forms, as it were, the term at which the sun finishes and recommences his annual course. In the 12th century, however, the custom of beginning the civil year with the day of the Annunciation, or the 25th of March, began to prevail, and continued to be generally followed from that time till the reformation of the calendar in 1752. The historical year has always been reckoned by English authors to begin with the 1st of January. The liturgic year of the Church of England commences with the first Sunday of Advent.

A knowledge of the different epochs which have been chosen for the commencement of the year in different countries is indispensably necessary to the right interpretation of ancient chronicles, charters and other documents in which the dates often appear contradictory. We may cite an example or two. It is well known that Charles the Great was crowned emperor at Rome on Christmas day in the year 800, and that he died in the year 814, according to our present manner of reckoning. But in the annals of Metz and Moissac, the coronation is stated to have taken place in the year 801, and his death in 813. In the first case the annalist supposes the year to begin with Christmas, and accordingly reckons the 25th of December and all the following days of that month to belong to 801, whereas in the common reckoning they would be referred to the year 800. In the second case the year has been supposed to begin with the 25th of March, or perhaps with Easter; consequently the first three months of the year 814, reckoning from the 1st of January, would be referred to the end of the year 813. The English Revolution is popularly called the Revolution of 1688. Had the year then begun, as it now does, with the 1st of January, it would have been the revolution of 1689, William and Mary being received as king and queen in February in the year 1689; but at that time the year was considered in England as beginning on the 25th of March. Another circumstance to which it is often necessary to pay attention in the comparison of dates, is the alteration of style which took place on the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar (see Calendar).

Era of the Creation of the World.—As the Greek and Roman methods of computing time were connected with certain pagan rites and observances which the Christians held in abhorrence, the latter began at an early period to imitate the Jews in reckoning their years from the supposed period of the creation of the world. Various computations were made at different times, from Biblical sources, as to the age of the world; and Des Vignoles, in the preface to his Chronology of Sacred History, asserts that he collected upwards of two hundred different calculations, the shortest of which reckons only 3483 years between the creation of the world and the commencement of the vulgar era and the longest 6984. The so-called era of the creation of the world is therefore a purely conventional and arbitrary epoch; practically, it means the year 4004 B.C.,—this being the date which, under the sanction of Archbishop Usher’s opinion, won its way, among its hundreds of competitors, into general acceptance.

Jewish Year and Eras.—Before the departure of the Israelites from Egypt their year commenced at the autumnal equinox; but in order to solemnize the memory of their deliverance, the month of Nisan or Abib, in which that event took place, and which falls about the time of the vernal equinox, was afterwards regarded as the beginning of the ecclesiastical or legal year. In civil affairs, and in the regulation of the jubilees and sabbatical years, the Jews still adhere to the ancient year, which begins with the month Tisri, about the time of the autumnal equinox.

After their dispersion the Jews were constrained to have recourse to the astronomical rules and cycles of the more enlightened heathen, in order that their religious festivals might be observed on the same days in all the countries through which they were scattered. For this purpose they adopted a cycle of eighty-four years, which is mentioned by several of the ancient fathers of the church, and which the early Christians borrowed from them for the regulation of Easter. This cycle seems to be neither more nor less than the Calippic period of seventy-six years, with the addition of a Greek octaëteris, or period of eight years, in order to disguise its true source, and give it an appearance of originality. In fact, the period of Calippus containing 27,759 days, and the octaëteris 2922 days, the sum, which is 30,681, is exactly the number of days in eighty-four Julian years. But the addition was very far from being an improvement on the work of Calippus; for instead of a difference of only five hours and fifty-three minutes between the places of the sun and moon, which was the whole error of the Calippic period, this difference, in the period of eighty-four years, amounted to one day, six hours and forty-one minutes. Buccherius places the beginning of this cycle in the year 162 B.C.; Prideaux in the year 291 B.C. According to the account of Prideaux, the fifth cycle must have begun in the year 46 of our era; and it was in this year, according to St Prosperus, that the Christians began to employ the Jewish cycle of eighty-four years, which they followed, though not uniformly, for the regulation of Easter, till the time of the Council of Nice.

Soon after the Nicene council, the Jews, in imitation of the Christians, abandoned the cycle of eighty-four years, and adopted that of Meton, by which their lunisolar year is regulated at the present day. This improvement was first proposed by Rabbi Samuel, rector of the Jewish school of Sora in Mesopotamia, and was finally accomplished in the year 360 of our era by Rabbi Hillel, who introduced that form of the year which the Jews at present follow, and which, they say, is to endure till the coming of the Messiah.

Till the 15th century the Jews usually followed the era of the Seleucidae or of Contracts. Since that time they have generally employed a mundane era, and dated from the creation of the world, which, according to their computation, took place 3760 years and about three months before the beginning of our era. No rule can be given for determining with certainty the day on which any given Jewish year begins without entering into the minutiae of their irregular and complicated calendar.

Era of Constantinople.—This era, which is still used in the Greek Church, and was followed by the Russians till the time of Peter the Great, dates from the creation of the world. The Incarnation falls in the year 5509, and corresponds, as in our era, with the fourth year of the 194th Olympiad. The civil year commences with the 1st of September; the ecclesiastical year sometimes with the 21st of March, sometimes with the 1st of April. It is not certain whether the year was considered at Constantinople as beginning with September before the separation of the Eastern and Western empires.

At the commencement of our era there had elapsed 5508 years and four months of the era of Constantinople. Hence the first eight months of the Christian year 1 coincide with the Constantinopolitan year 5509, while the last four months belong to the year 5510. In order, therefore, to find the year of Christ corresponding to any given year in the era of Constantinople, we have the following rule: If the event took place between the 1st of January and the end of August subtract 5508 from the given year; but if it happened between the 1st of September and the end of the year, subtract 5509.

Era of Alexandria.—The chronological computation of Julius Africanus was adopted by the Christians of Alexandria, who accordingly reckoned 5500 years from the creation of Adam to the birth of Christ. But in reducing Alexandrian dates to the common era it must be observed that Julius Africanus placed the epoch of the Incarnation three years earlier than it is placed in the usual reckoning, so that the initial day of the Christian era fell in the year 5503 of the Alexandrian era. This correspondence, however, continued only from the introduction of the era till the accession of Diocletian, when an alteration was made by dropping ten years in the Alexandrian account. Diocletian ascended the imperial throne in the year of Christ 284. According to the Alexandrian computation, this was the year 5787 of the world, and 287 of the Incarnation; but on this occasion ten years were omitted, and that year was thenceforth called the year 5777 of the world, and 277 of the Incarnation. There are, consequently, two distinct eras of Alexandria, the one being used before and the other after the accession of Diocletian. It is not known for what reason the alteration was made; but it is conjectured that it was for the purpose of causing a new revolution of the cycle of nineteen years (which was introduced into the ecclesiastical computation about this time by Anatolius, bishop of Hierapolis) to begin with the first year of the reign of Diocletian. In fact, 5777 being divided by 19 leaves 1 for the year of the cycle. The Alexandrian era continued to be followed by the Copts in the 15th century, and is said to be still used in Abyssinia.

Dates expressed according to this era are reduced to the common era by subtracting 5502, up to the Alexandrian year 5786 inclusive, and after that year by subtracting 5492; but if the date belongs to one of the four last months of the Christian year, we must subtract 5503 till the year 5786, and 5493 after that year.

Mundane Era of Antioch.—The chronological reckoning of Julius Africanus formed also the basis of the era of Antioch, which was adopted by the Christians of Syria, at the instance of Panodorus, an Egyptian monk, who flourished about the beginning of the 4th century. Panodorus struck off ten years from the account of Julius Africanus with regard to the years of the world, and he placed the Incarnation three years later, referring it to the fourth year of the 194th Olympiad, as in the common era. Hence the era of Antioch differed from the original era of Alexandria by ten years; but after the alteration of the latter at the accession of Diocletian, the two eras coincided. In reckoning from the Incarnation, however, there is a difference of seven years, that epoch being placed, in the reformed era of Alexandria, seven years later than in the mundane era of Antioch or in the Christian era.

As the Syrian year began in autumn, the year of Christ corresponding to any year in the mundane era of Antioch is found by subtracting 5492 or 5493 according as the event falls between January and September or from September to January.

Era of Nabonassar.—This era is famous in astronomy, having been generally followed by Hipparchus and Ptolemy. It is believed to have been in use from the very time of its origin; for the observations of eclipses which were collected in Chaldaea by Callisthenes, the general of Alexander, and transmitted by him to Aristotle, were for the greater part referred to the beginning of the reign of Nabonassar, founder of the kingdom of the Babylonians. It is the basis of the famous Canon of kings, also called Mathematical Canon, preserved to us in the works of Ptolemy, which, before the astonishing discoveries at Nineveh, was the sole authentic monument of Assyrian and Babylonian history known to us. The epoch from which it is reckoned is precisely determined by numerous celestial phenomena recorded by Ptolemy, and corresponds to Wednesday at mid-day, the 26th of February of the year 747 before Christ. The year was in all respects the same as the ancient Egyptian year. On account of the difference in the length of the Julian and Babylonian years, the conversion of dates according to the era of Nabonassar into years before Christ is attended with considerable trouble. The surest way is to follow a comparative table. Frequently the year cannot be fixed with certainty, unless we know also the month and the day.

The Greeks of Alexandria formerly employed the era of Nabonassar, with a year of 365 days; but soon after the reformation of the calendar of Julius Caesar, they adopted, like other Roman provincials, the Julian intercalation. At this time the first of Thoth had receded to the 29th of August. In the year 136 of our era, the first of Thoth in the ancient Egyptian year corresponded with the 20th of July, between which and the 29th of August there are forty days. The adoption of the Julian year must therefore have taken place about 160 years before the year 136 of our era (the difference between the Egyptian and Julian years being one day in four years), that is to say, about the year 25 B.C. In fact, the first of Thoth corresponded with the 29th of August in the Julian calendar, in the years 25, 24, 23 and 22 B.C.

Era of the Seleucidae, or Macedonian Era.—The era of the Seleucidae dates from the time of the occupation of Babylon by Seleucus Nicator, 311 years before Christ, in the year of Rome 442, and twelve years after the death of Alexander the Great. It was adopted not only in the monarchy of the Seleucidae but in general in all the Greek countries bordering on the Levant, was followed by the Jews till the 15th century, and is said to be used by some Arabians even at the present day. By the Jews it was called the Era of Contracts, because the Syrian governors compelled them to make use of it in civil contracts; the writers of the books of Maccabees call it the Era of Kings. But notwithstanding its general prevalence in the East for many centuries, authors using it differ much with regard to their manner of expressing dates, in consequence of the different epochs adopted for the beginning of the year. Among the Syrian Greeks the year began with the month Elul, which corresponds to our September. The Nestorians and Jacobites at the present day suppose it to begin with the following month, or October. The author of the first book of Maccabees makes the era commence with the month Nisan, or April; and the author of the second book with the first Tishrin, or October. Albategni, a celebrated Arabian astronomer, dates from the 1st of October. Some of the Arabian writers, as Alfergani, date from the 1st of September. At Tyre the year was counted from the 19th of our October, at Gaza from the 28th of the same month, and at Damascus from the vernal equinox. These discrepancies render it extremely difficult to determine the exact correspondence of Macedonian dates with those of other eras; and the difficulty is rendered still greater by the want of uniformity in respect of the length of the year. Some authors who follow the Macedonian era, use the Egyptian or vague year of 365 days; Albategni adopts the Julian year of 365¼ days.

According to the computation most generally followed, the year 312 of the era of the Seleucidae began on the 1st of September in the Julian year preceding the first of our era. Hence, to reduce a Macedonian date to the common era, subtract 311 years and four months.

The names of the Syrian and Macedonian months, and their correspondence with the Roman months, are as follows:—

Syrian. Macedonian. English.

Elul. Gorpiaeus. September.

Tishrin I. Hyperberetaeus. October.

Tishrin II. Dius. November.

Canun I. Apellaeus. December.

Canun II. Audynaeus. January.

Sabat. Peritius. February.

Adar. Dystrus. March.

Nisan. Xanthicus. April.

Ayar. Artemisius. May.

Haziran. Daesius. June.

Tamus. Panemus. July.

Ab. Loüs. August.