In what respect do metropolitan police differ from city police?
A. B.
Answer.—Metropolitan police are appointed and supported by the State or central government, while city police receive their appointments from the city magistrates. The city of London is guarded by 11,667 metropolitan policemen and 842 city policemen. At one time the city of New York was protected by metropolitan police, but for various reasons, one of which was because it restricted the free exercise of the spoils system so common with city governments, the act authorizing the appointment of such police was repealed.
WAS CHRIST BORN IN B. C. 4.
Chicago, Ill.
Is it certain that Christ was born four years before the Christian era?
Chicago.
Answer.—All investigations prove conclusively that it is impossible to determine to the satisfaction of chronologists in general either the day, month, or year of Christ’s birth. It is almost universally admitted that this event preceded the commencement of the Christian era as now reckoned. St. Clement, the earliest of the “church fathers,” fixes it on Nov. 18 in the twenty-eighth year of the Emperor Augustus, a little more than two years before the beginning of our era. Since the death of Herod the Great, according to Josephus, must have occurred before Easter of B. C. 4, modern scholars are generally agreed that Christ’s birth could not have been later than B. C. 4; and there is strong reason to believe that it was in B. C. 6 or 7. See McClintock and Strong’s “Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature,” under “Jesus Christ.” As to the day and month of Christ’s birth the differences are still more difficult to overcome. Modern investigation is strongly against Christmas, or any day in mid-winter, as unseasonable either for the shepherds to be watching their flocks in the fields, or for the congregating of the people from all parts of the kingdom to be registered and taxed, which was the occasion of Mary and Joseph’s being at Bethlehem. These two arguments are used, along with others, by the Biblical scholars who hold severally to the opinions that the nativity was not earlier in the year than March, and, one party says, in March, another in April or May, another in June, and still others in July or August.