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events which looked forward to still further manifestations of God. It was promised to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The law brought the Israelite into immediate connection with God, and made him a conscious instrument of the Divine purposes. In the progress of time these expectations of the future took a more definite form. Faith in a coming Deliverer became almost as much a part of the national life as the remembrance of the past. This expectation grew stronger as their fortunes grew darker, -surviving conquest and captivity, and steadily becoming more distinct and more intense. Thus through a long series of centuries we behold a sublime hope, transmitted from gen eration to generation, uniting ages that were past to ages that were to come, a hope vague, but confident, and coloring the whole Jewish mind. We see it gradually opening like the dawn, first the evanescent colors just glancing from the top. most clouds, then the clearer intimations of the earlier prophets, shooting up like beams of light over the dome of the sky, and flushing into a broader and fuller illumination, as the later prophets uttered their warnings, and then the cold and cheerless hours before the dawn, when for four hundred years the heart of Judaism waited, but never despaired, till at length, scattering the shadows, the visible centre of the moral world, lose the full-orbed sun, the Sun of Righteousness, - with healing in his beams.

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In reading the Old Testament, it is not necessary for one's faith, to settle every conceivable question of chronology or history. There is a larger and a higher view, which makes these questions, as they commonly present themselves, quite unimportant. Take what view we will, there can be no doubt about the general history. It has a singular unity, and that unity brought about by causes as singular. It began in wonderful events, and for fifteen hundred years continued on, until it was consummated in one more wonderful. And when we trace the Hebrew history from the beginning, and see how it was made the introduction to a new and higher order of things,

whose beneficent influence is extending over the world, we acknowledge the presence of Providence, we behold in this succession of events the controlling hand of God.

In studying the Old Testament, the great benefit which we are to derive from it is a religious one. That mode of criticism which lays the chief stress on the value of its history, or the sublimity of its poetry, mistakes the true point. No doubt the history, as such, is of great interest, but its highest value consists in the fact that no one can read it without having the thoughts directed to the presence and government of that Almighty Power, who not only guides the stars in their courses, but overrules and leads on to blessed ends what seems to us the confused order of events in the moral world.

Its poetry is sublime, but its great value to us consists in its power to fill and refresh the soul with adoring and devout thoughts, which nowhere else have found such adequate expression. Above all, History, Psalm, and Prophecy alike bring the believing mind into the presence of the Almighty Providence, and crowd upon the attention, what we are so slow to heed, the great truth, that in all we do or suffer, in the inward purpose or the outward act, we live under the immediate and moral sovereignty of the Most High.

For those who wish to pursue the study of the Old Testament, there are various works which will be found useful. Among those easily accessible, we may name Noyes's Transla tion of Job, the Psalms, and the Prophets; Beard's People's Dictionary of the Bible; Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature; Jahn's Archæology, and his Introduction to the Old Testament; De Wette's Introduction; or Dr. Palfrey's recently completed, and very valuable, Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities. We would also recommend a little work, entitled, "Observations on the Bible, for the Use of Young Persons"; which, from its size and from its union of scholarship, religious feeling, and sound judgment, is particu larly adapted to be useful in the Sunday School.

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