The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-12-09
REV. DR. J. C. HIDEN ON
 THE ADVANCED CRITIC
(continued from Page 28)

 that He used it as a sign of His own bur. ial and resurrection. When His enemies demanded "a sign" from Him, He refused to give them any but the sign of the prophet Jonah-that as Jonah spent three days and nights inside the fish, so the Son of Man must spend an equal time in the heart of the earth. Jesus evidently be- lieved the story of Jonah to be authentic history. It was odd to see the effect of this reply The "agnostic" was evidently ignorant or oblivious of the fact tha; Christ had ever said anything of the kind, and the subject was incontinently dropped
 At meeting of the Semitic club, which I attended at Harvard, one of Pro- lessor Toys disciples read a paper in which he spoke of "that historical novel the Book of Daniel" But in Ezekiel xiv, 14-20, Jehovah Himself refers to Daniel as a historical character, and our Lord re- fers to "the abomination of desolatlon spoken of by Daniel the prophet"
 Now, in spite of all the difficulties raised by those critics who seem to make it their special business to raise difficulties, the plain Christian finds it easier to be- lieve in Daniel than to believe that Christ and His Father were both mistaken. He will stand by his Bible as "a light that shineth in dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise.''
 A few Sundays ago, while on visit to Le Reve, attended service at the Nod ding church, and had the inestimabe priv ilege of hearing a discourse from that able divine, the Rev. Dr. Prosy. Dr. Pro- sy is well known as great and scholarly preacher; and, as I do not often have the privilege of hearing a sermon, I listened attentively, and took full notes of his very elaborate discourse
 The preliminary services" as they are usually called, were not such as I am ac- | customed to. There was no choir. The preacher announced a hymn, which he read slowly and deliberately. I was par ticularly struck with the appropriateness Hof the opening line,
 How tedious and tasteless the hours" The tune was ''raisede by a brother : whose style of singing was admirably fit- ted to the sentiment expressed in the line just quoted; and the general tone of the 'preliminaries" was in excellent keeping, and full of what the critics call Propose" ." The prayer was very quiet, and I was struck with the utter absence of anything like that haste or hurry which too often mars the effect of this solemn service. Dr. Prosy arose and very deliberately announced as his text that old anu famil- far passage, which we had all learned on our mothers lap
 Little Jack Horner
 Sat in corner,
 Eating a Christmas pie:
 He put in his thumb
 And pulled out plum
 And said What good boy am l. -
 Dr. Prosy then proceeded as follows Before entering upon the discussion of he very important transaction set forth in my text, it is necessary that I should bo roio of fl,a a-,t itself; for there are. on the part of the most scholarly critics, some considerable divergencies to the original
 "One school of critics are disposed to substitute the name Johnnie (otherwiss written Johnny) for the name Jack, : which we find in our version. It is scarce ly necessary for us to go elaborately into the question as between Johnnie and Johnny fer 1t is obvious to any tolerabiy careful student that there is no essential difference between the two forms, and the best philologists are agreed that they are both affectionate dinlinutives of the oriei- nal name John Careful pathological ili- vestigation has also settled for US the meaning of this name. John and it is now generally agreed among scholars that the name has, in it's Hebrew form. the same meaning as the Greek name, 'Theo- dore;' that is to say, gift of God
 ''The school of critics who contend for Johnny (alias Johnnie) have pointed out few manuscripts in which the tex: reads:
 Little Johnny Horner,
 Sitting in a corner;
 and they hold, not without reason, that this version is more euphonious and melo- dious Still, we must beware of being mis- led by this circumstance; for it is one of the fundamental laws of the great science