5, 6, we find that a principle is recognized there which makes directly against the interpretation we are calling in question. The _express exception_ as to the usual modes of reckoning goes directly to show, that the {xxii} _general rule_ would necessitate a different interpretation.’ I may possibly be over sanguine, but I cannot well resist the belief, that the reader will perceive that that which you regard as _the exception_, is in fact _the rule_.”[31] Dr. Maitland’s famous objection, that in Ezekiel the case is one of _representing_, whereas in Daniel and the Apocalypse it is one of _interpreting_, has already been met in a previous part of this Preface. The objection of Bishop Horsley is not very grave――namely, that because the _day_ of temptation in the wilderness was _forty years_, and one _day_ is with the Lord as a _thousand years_, and a thousand years as one day, we might as well conclude that a day is forty years or a thousand years, as that it represents but one year. So might we, indeed, _if_ a number of passages could be produced in which a day has such significancy, and another set of passages could be produced to which the first set furnish a key that seems exactly to answer. In the meantime, we must recognize the difference between what is merely figurative language, and therefore loose and shifting, and the language of symbol. But the case of Isaiah[32] has been supposed to neutralize any argument built upon that of Ezekiel: “The Lord spake by Isaiah, go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot _three years_, for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners.” Now, it is argued that here “three _years_ correspond to three _years_, not three _days_ to three years. It is arbitrary to suppose with Lowth that the original reading was _three days_, or to supply _three days_, with Vitringa. The text must stand as it is.”[33] But the interpretation of Lowth and Vitringa is not the only mode in which we may escape from the difficulty, as this learned writer seems to hint. We are not shut up to conjectural emendations. The “three years” in the third verse may be connected with what follows, as well as with what goes before; then the verse will run, “Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot; _a three years’ sign and wonder_,” which relieves us entirely from the supposition that Isaiah walked three years barefoot, and, by consequence, from the objection that is founded on it. All that is intimated is, that in some way or other (the passage does not say how) the prophet was a three years’ sign――a sign, that is, of a calamity that would last during that time, or commence from that time. In proof of the justice of this arrangement, it may be noticed that