was affected. The verses of the Grecian oracles, the couplets or triplets of the Goths and the Welsh; in the East parts of the Sanscrit writings, and the earliest odes of the Chinese, retain some vestiges of that symmetrical composition by which the writings of the Hebrews are so strongly marked. In the Greek chorus the same character is preserved, though on a larger scale, with the same alternation of the song and the dance, as when Miriam, taking up the words of Moses, led the women with timbrels and dances to celebrate the overthrow of Pharaoh in the Red Sea. Thus one division of the Greek chorus is set over against the other, moves in the same measure, and re-echoes the same sentiments. Among the Hebrews this is the perpetual structure of their songs, one band of singers with musical instruments and of dancers repeats and prolongs the sentiments which has just been spoken by another, and, like the echoes from nature, deepens and confirms the praises offered to Jehovah.

XI. Moses and Lycurgus discerned the root of all mutations in government, and moulded the polity of their respective nations with a view to perpetuate their institutions. All changes in Society take place either from a change of property or from a change in opinion. That form of Government was therefore best fitted to resist innovation, which, by a perpetual Agrarian law, reduced the fortunes of the citizens to nearly the same level, and by excluding wealth and luxury, excluded the satiety of superabundance and its restless desire of novelty.

Such a state of society was also peculiarly adapted to perpetuate the same opinions. The nation of the Jews continuing for a series of years to consist chiefly of yeomanry, cultivating their paternal farms at a moderate rent, which was devoted to the support of a ceremonial religion, and of a hereditary priesthood, had ever before

them the same appearances of nature, and the same solemnities of worship.

This imagery is not only perpetual from its simplicity, it is also universal, their climate and their country being placed in the middle regions of the earth, the sacred writers abound in allusions and usages which are intelligible to earth's extremities. The Laplander and the Negro live on different productions and under different skies, the one has no winter, and the other scarcely any summer, but the allusions of the Hebrew Poets, and their images are intelligible to both. Judea united the phenomena of summer and winter; the pasturage of the north with the palms of the tropics; and abounded in corn and wine and oil, the most favored productions of the earth.

Could laws enforce themselves, and were they independent of the weakness and mutability of human creatures, Sparta and Israel would have been perpetual commonwealths, unless overturned by force from without. Every Israelite would have retained his own hereditary garden, and would have been placed exactly in the same situation as his forefathers; fixed to the same spot, with the same hills and vales before his eyes. The priesthood would have been forever celebrating the same rites. The arts would have been forever at a stand, having supplied man's first necessities, nothing more would have been required of them. Men would have beheld their institutions as stable as the movements of the heavenly bodies. But in human affairs the design of Providence is not permanence but progression. The Jewish commonwealth having answered the purposes for which it was intended, was to be enlarged through successive changes into a universal and spiritual dominion. Yet though the republic of the Jews has ceased to exist, still their cast of thought and model of life, like the pyramids of Egypt, appear distinctly

outlined even to the far distant observer, and their genius and their writings tower above the waste of antiquity, and the ruins of other nations, vast, simple, and enduring.

XII. The Scriptures are marked strongly by the character of vitality, of all writings they lose least by time or by translation. Even the poverty of the language of the Hebrews contributes to the energy of their thoughts, as the mountain torrent, far from being impeded by the rocks which would confine it, only rushes more rapidly along its narrow channel. The Hebrew writings resemble the first characters that the hand of man traced, chiseled with a pen of iron, and legible to a distance on the sides of the mountains on which they were engraved.

Whatever in other respects is gained by education, much is lost in originality. Our images want the sharp and deep chiseling of the ancients, they are but the copies of impressions that thousands of years ago were taken fresh and vivid from nature. The Hebrews describe the world perfectly, such as it is presented to the outward senses; not imperfectly, such as it is imagined in ages of learned ignorance, when it is half-perceived, and half-conceived, according to some erroneous system of mistaken science. The appearances of nature are ever the same, while the dreams of knowledge, falsely so called, are ever disappearing.

The simple and natural writings of the Hebrews, far from losing by the lapse of years, more deeply affect our feelings as voices from a world which is departed, and as monuments of manners which can never return. Like the poems of Homer, they are the offspring of the poetical age of the human race, and appear to be thought and uttered by more energetic men than now breathe upon the earth. But not only have the Hebrew writings more energy and life, but that life is more easily transmitted to other climes and ages. The primitive forms of speech, like the

elements of primitive language, easily incorporate with other tongues, and while the more delicate thoughts of later poets can scarcely survive transfusion into another language, the mind of Homer, and of the Hebrews, passes immortal like the transmigrating spirit from one body to another, with all the freshness of youth and of a life unknowing of decay. The difference between the genius of the east and west, disappears in the Scriptures, and both are there united together. The strong and masculine sense of the Europeans is clothed in the fervid imagery of orientals; and all the thoughts of the human mind, and all its emotions, are embodied in the worship of a Being, before whom the human race stand all alike, the vast family of one common Father.

XIII. The Scriptures are striking, from their singularity; they unite the view of either world, and present each in its just proportions. All sublunary things are viewed from an amazing eminence, and shrink from their imaginary importance. The Bible, like the astronomy of Copernicus, no longer leaves the earth in the centre of the universe, but diminishes its magnitude to a point in space, and its duration to a moment in time.

As compositions, the Scriptures are divine and yet human; the mind of Him is everywhere apparent in them, with whom all terrestrial ages are fleeting as a morning dream, and in whose sight the myriads of worlds are circumscribed within a narrow circle; yeť human feelings and human interests are as vividly cared for as if this earth were all, and Providence were watching for it alone. There is nothing stoical amid the sufferings of the Hebrew martyrs. Life has full possession of them with all its joys and sorrows; but under a divine transmutation these sorrows are sanctified into complainings for the cloud which sin has interposed between man and his Maker; and the joys are enlarged into the triumphant hope of

immortality. And the evanescent concerns of this life, instead of passing away with its short-lived generations, become, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the emblems of a future dispensation, pledges of the divine promises; the fore-shadows of immortal life.

XIV. The inspired Scriptures derive their singular unity, not only from all the doctrines forming one vast and ever during system of Truth, but from all the rays of heavenly light converging upon one glorious and divine Person, who is the sun and the centre of the whole dispensation, "to Him give all the Prophets witness." Whatever may be their theme in the first instance, it terminates and rests at last upon the advent of the promised deliverer. Whether they sing of judgment or of mercy, they are carried forward to the great King, who shall break in pieces his enemies with a rod of iron, but who shall rule over his obedient subjects with the sceptre of righteousness and peace. To Him give all the Apostles witness. Their lives were spent in proclaiming his salvation, their blood was shed in confirmation of his faithfulness and truth. To Him give all his disciples witness in all ages of the world. To Him the true church gives witness, acknowledging his omniscience to foreshow the trials that were to befal believers, and his Almightiness to rescue them from all dangers, confessing that he is the first and the last, and that in his hand are the keys of life and of death.

The first Adam was but a shadow of Him that was to come; the true head of those who are redeemed from among men. In Him we are rescued from the judgments impending on a world lying in wickedness; in Him our true Noah, we find rest and renovation of life in a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth right

eousness.

In Abraham, the type and example of all believers, we