hemselves.

In the providence of God, and under the influences of His patient Spirit,
this needful system was developed in the exile: a system whose symbolism
was so charged with ethical and spiritual senses that it led on to Christ;
as the Epistle to the Hebrews rightly shows and as Paul distinctly
declares. As the first priestly period, following the first prophetic
epoch, bodied that double movement in a book--Deuteronomy; so the second
priestly period, following the second prophetic epoch, bodied this double
movement in a book, or group of books--the present form of the Pentateuch.
The traditions and histories and legislations of the past were worked over
into a connected series of writings, through which was woven the new
priestly system, in a historical form. On the restoration to Judea, this
institutional reorganization was set up as the law of the land, and
continued thenceforward in force--the providential instrumentality for the
_ad interim_ work of four centuries. Such a remarkable process of
development, so deepening in us a sense of the guiding hand of God, ought
to show some sign of its working, in the literature of the period. However
clear, from our general knowledge, the tendencies which were at work in
that period, we could not feel assured of our correct interpretation of
this most important epoch, in the absence of some such sign, in a writing
of that date.

The Book of Ezekiel supplies the missing link. The writer was a
prophet-priest, who went into the exile, and wrote in Babylonia. In the
earlier part of his life-work, recorded in the earlier portion of his
book, he was thoroughly prophetic, intensely ethical and spiritual,
breathing the very spirit of his great master, Jeremiah. In the latter
part of his career he was visited with dreams, such as are plainly
indicated to us in the remarkable vision occupying the concluding section
of his book. The fortieth chapter opens thus:

In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me
upon a very high mountain, upon which was as the frame of a city on the
south.

Then follows, through eighteen chapters, a sketch of the temple system in
the expected restoration. It is a thoroughly ideal sketch, a vision
destined to take on much simpler and humbler proportions in its
realization; a picture probably not intended for copying in actual
construction, but, like all ideal work, a powerful stimulus to the
aspirations it expressed