t basis, has exercised a great control over the
destinies of mankind, and still serves as a rule of life to a very large
portion of our race. Considering the asserted origin of this
book--indirectly from God himself--we might justly expect that it would
bear to be tried by any standard that man can apply, and vindicate its
truth and excellence in the ordeal of human criticism. In our estimate
of it we must constantly bear in mind that it does not profess to be
successive revelations made at intervals of ages and on various
occasions, but a complete production delivered to one man. We ought,
therefore, to look for universality, completeness, perfection. We might
expect that it would present us with just views of the nature and
position of this world in which, we live, and that, whether dealing with
the spiritual or the material, it would put to shame the most celebrated
productions of human genius, as the magnificent mechanism of the heavens
and the beautiful living forms of the earth are superior to the vain
contrivances of man. Far in advance of all that has been written by the
sages of India, or the philosophers of Greece, on points connected with
the origin, nature, and destiny of the universe, its dignity of
conception and excellence of expression should be in harmony with the
greatness of the subject with which it is concerned.

We might expect that it should propound with authority, and definitively
settle those all-important problems which have exercised the mental
powers of the ablest men of Asia and Europe for so many centuries, and
which are at the foundation of all faith and all philosophy; that it
should distinctly tell us in unmistakable language what is God, what is
the world, what is the soul, and whether man has any criterion of
truth; that it should explain to us how evil can exist in a world the
Maker of which is omnipotent and altogether good; that it should reveal
to us in what the affairs of men are fixed by Destiny, in what by
free-will; that it should teach us whence we came, what is the object of
our continuing here, what is to become of us hereafter. And, since a
written work claiming a divine origin must necessarily accredit itself
even to those most reluctant to receive it, its internal evidences
becoming stronger and not weaker with the strictness of the examination
to which they are submitted, it ought to deal with those things that may
be demonstrated by the increasing knowledge and genius o