At this point let us glance backward 490 years, or 70 weeks to the Passover of B.C. 458, and we shall meet the children of Israel making their Exodus from Persia [Ezra VIII. 31] "going forth" under the leadership of Ezra, by "commandment" of Artaxerxes ordering them "to restore and to build Jerusalem." In view of this marvellous fulfilment of prophecy, how frivolous do seem the charges of those who claim that the Book of Daniel is--"a bundle of loose leaves"--"a consolatory political pamphlet"--and "written as historic fiction in 168-165 B.C." Pretty good fiction, is it not? for one writing in B.C. 168 to make declaration that a certain event, figured from a given starting point, would _positively_ take place at the end of 490 years! We have many writers of historic fiction in our own day, but none so venturesome as "the chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon." Those who call the predictions found in the Book of Daniel--"historic fiction"--simply destroy the meaning of words and pour contempt upon the Word of God. Our explanation robs the IXth chapter of Daniel of all its mystery and shows why the LORD called him "Daniel the PROPHET." CHRONOLOGY. THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. Christ was born in the year B.C. 2. In support of this announcement we do not propose to give a table of dates, setting forth the ideas of the Christian Fathers who wrote prior to the 5th century. Nor those of Dionysius Exiguus, of the Venerable Bede, or of Roger Bacon, all of whom wrote between the 5th and the 14th centuries. Neither shall we give those of Archbishops Usher and Lloyd in the 17th century, nor those of Dr. Hales and of Sir Isaac Newton in the 18th century, nor those of Prideaux and of the talented chronologist H. Fynes Clinton in the 19th century. We find our authority in Eusebius the "father of ecclesiastical history" [A.D. 325] and give with it a 20th century Chart in proof of the accuracy of his statement. Of course back of Eusebius lay Jewish tradition, which in modern times has found expression in the "Jewish Calendar" of E. H. Lindo; London, 1838. Under the title of the "Book of the Generations," that noted chronologist states that the Christian Era began with the year A.M. 3760, in other words with the 30th day of August B.C. 2 as shown in the diagram. LOCATION OF CHRISTIAN ERA JEWISH CALENDAR.