raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of nature were frequently
suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and
Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary
occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations
in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of
Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman
Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even
this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the
curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age
of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and
the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or
received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these
philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena
of nature--earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his
indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have
omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has
been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of
Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual
duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of
light which followed the murder of Cæsar, when, during the greatest part
of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour.
This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the
preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by
most of the poets and historians of that memorable age" (Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall," vol. ii., pp. 191, 192. Ed. 1821).

If Pagan historians are thus curiously silent, what deduction shall we
draw from the similar silence of the great Jewish annalist? Is it
credible that Josephus should thus have ignored Jesus Christ, if one
tithe of the marvels related in the Gospels really took place? So