It is well known that everything is miraculous in the history of the Jews; the miracle performed in favor of King Hezekiah on the dial of Ahaz is one of the greatest that ever took place: it is evident that the whole earth must have been deranged, the course of the stars changed forever, and the periods of the eclipses of the sun and moon so altered as to confuse all the ephemerides. This was the second time the prodigy happened. Joshua had stopped the sun at noon on Gibeon, and the moon on Ascalon, in order to get time to kill a troop of Amorites already crushed by a shower of stones from heaven.

The sun, instead of stopping for King Hezekiah, went back, which is nearly the same thing, only differently described.

In the first place Isaiah said to Hezekiah, who was sick, “Thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order; for thou shalt die and not live.”

Hezekiah wept and God was softened; He signified to him, through Isaiah, that he should still live fifteen years, and that in three days he should go to the temple; then Isaiah brought a plaster of figs and put it on the king’s ulcers, and he was cured — “et curatus est.”

Hezekiah demanded a sign to convince him that he should be cured. Isaiah said to him, “Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?” And Hezekiah answered, “It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees; let the shadow return backward ten degrees.” And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and He brought the shadow ten degrees backwards from the point to which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz.

We should like to know what this dial of Ahaz was; whether it was the work of a dialmaker named Ahaz, or whether it was a present made to a king of that name, it is an object of curiosity. There have been many disputes on this dial; the learned have proved that the Jews never knew either clocks or dials before their captivity in Babylon — the only time, say they, in which they learned anything of the Chald?ans, or the greater part of the nation began to read or write. It is even known that in their language they had no words to express clock, dial, geometry, ............