ture, surviving
through many vicissitudes, have produced in each succeeding age a new
harvest of poetry and history, leavened with their own spirit. In the
mean time the learning and the superstition of Egypt faded from the
eyes of men. The splendid political and military organizations of
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Macedon arose and crumbled into dust.
The wonderful literature of Greece blazed forth and expired. That of
Rome, a reflex and copy of the former, had reached its culminating
point; and no prophet had arisen among any of these Gentile nations to
teach them the truth of God. The world, with all its national
liberties crushed out, its religion and its philosophy corrupted and
enfeebled to the last degree by an endless succession of borrowings
and intermixtures, lay prostrate under the iron heel of Rome. Then
appeared among the now obscure remnant of Israel, one who announced
himself as the Prophet like unto Moses, promised of old; but a prophet
whose mission it was to redeem not Israel only, but the whole world,
and to make all who will believe, children of faithful Abraham.
Adopting the whole of the sacred literature of the Hebrews, and
proving his mission by its words, he sent forth a few plain men to
write its closing books, and to plant it on the ruins of all the
time-honored beliefs of the nations--beliefs supported by a splendid
and highly organized priestly system and by despotic power, and gilded
by all the highest efforts of poetry and art.

The story is a very familiar one; but it is marvellous beyond all
others. Nor is the modern history of the Bible less wonderful. Exhumed
from the rubbish of the Middle Ages, it has entered on a new career of
victory. It has stimulated the mind of modern Europe to all its
highest efforts, and has been the charter of its civil and religious
liberties. Its wondrous revelation of all that man most desires to
know, in the past, in the present, and in his future destinies, has
gone home to the hearts of men in all ranks of society and in all
countries. In many great nations it is the only rule of religious
faith. In every civilized country it is the basis of all that is most
valuable in religion. Where it has been withheld from the people,
civilization in its highest aspects has languished, and superstition,
priestcraft, and tyranny have held their ground or have perished under
the assaults of a heartless and inhuman infidelity. Where it has been
a household book, edu