“He takes hold of it by faith, carries it home, lays it up in his cell of sweets, richer than a lord, and again goes forth in search of more. He now lights upon Eze. 4:6: ‘I have appointed thee each day for a year.’ He is now rich in very deed—two jewels in one cell. He does not stop to criticize, like a Stuart, and query, and reason himself out of common sense and reason too; but, Abraham-like, he believes, and lays up his treasure at home.
“‘I see,’ says the child, ‘this use of days was so ordained by my Father in two cases; and two witnesses are enough. But I am not certain that I have a right to use these jewels in this place. I will go and beg, and dig again.’
“In this excursion he lights on Daniel 9:23-27: ‘Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people.’
“‘Seventy weeks of what?’ says the critic.
“‘I do not care a fig.’ says the believing child, ‘whether you call it days or years: I know how long it was in fulfilling.’
“‘How long?’
“‘Exactly four hundred and ninety years: from the decree given in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, four hundred and fifty-seven years before Christ, unto his death, thirty-three years after the birth of Christ, making exactly four hundred and ninety years, or seventy sevens of years of the vision.’
“Prof. Stuart having applied the days in Daniel 12 to the times of Antiochus, when the context shows that the resurrection will follow their termination, Mr. Miller said: ‘Suppose Prof. Stuart had been a believing Jew, and lived in the time of Antiochus, and had been of the same mind he is now, or says he is, and one of his brother Jews had come along and prophesied or preached that the Jews were to be a scattered and a peeled people, dashed and scattered among all nations, more than two thousand years, then to come; and suppose the professor had been then an expounder of the law and the prophets, and was called upon to explain this text as being then fulfilled, what would he say to his brother Jew, the prophet? He would say, as any man must say by him:—
“‘Sir, you are a false prophet; for God has told us plainly, in this very text, that, when this three and a half years are fulfilled under which we are now groaning, then our scattering or dashing will be accomplished—yes, and finished, too. So says the word. Therefore do you keep away from my flock of Pharisees, for I do not want my people excited by your false, alarming doctrine. Do you not see that, at the end of 1335 days, Daniel will stand in his lot? And do you not see, sir, that his standing in his lot means the resurrection? Read the first three verses of this chapter.’