Indo-Arabic numerals. But how very often are these phrases used in conversation, or the digits preserved on paper without the speaker or recorder troubling himself to enquire whether there are other methods of noting the date? For instance, I can recall a sermon preached about twenty years ago by an eminent English Church divine (now deceased), in which he pictured the absurdity of any rationalist remaining a rationalist who used the year of grace to date his letters. The argument was all right on the surface. As soon, however, as one peruses the chronological authorities, one finds that the Christian era has a limited application; and that there are and were other races—by no means blind to civilisation—which possess more ancient systems of reckoning years, months, and days.
3. To be particular. The year—say 1896—conveys one meaning to us Western Gentiles, another—a very sacred purport—to Jewish minds, and a third and different idea[1] to the Moslem nations. We are apt to forget that it is only to the members of Christendom that these figures refer, in a chronological connection, to present time. To the Jews they memorise a year long ended and past; to the Moslems,[2] a year in a future which is still dim and distant. But that is not all. Go to Asia, and millions of educated persons are regulating their lives, their fasts, and feasts according to an era which is older than our era by fifty-seven years.[3] Which one is right, or is any one epoch the correct chronologic basis, are questions to which this volume will supply approximate answers.
4. Historians, it will be observed, seem to delight to
