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merable facts to encourage the most confident hopes of its final overthrow. When the Lord was with Jonathan he discomfited and routed hosts of his enemies. Multitudes of similar examples to that of Gideon and others, may be seen in the history of the Israelites.

The abominable idolatries of apostate Christianity, engrafted on the religion of Christ, seem to be pointed out also by the calf of Aaron the high priest. He by no means professed to reject the true God, but purposed to give the people some visible object of worship. The feast appointed for the calf was proclaimed as the feast of the Lord, the God who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Exod. xxxii. 4. It was therefore well calculated to portray the Antichristian idolatry of the Antichristian high priest, which, with all its extravagancies, professes loudly to be in honour of Jehovah. But like Aaron's calf, it shall, in the end, be reduced to powder, and scattered by the winds of heaven. The calf of Aaron was made in the absence of Moses when he was in the Mount and the calf of Rome was made after the ascension of Jesus to the hill of God, and will be consumed by the brightness of his appearing.

The same thing seems to be intimated in the defection of the ten tribes under Jeroboam, and the establishment of a mixture of the institutions of Moses and the rites of Paganism by that prince. The calves of Dan and Bethel were designed to keep the people from going up to Jerusalem. And are not all the mummeries of Antichrist contrived to keep his votaries from the Gospel of Christ, and the true church of God? There is such an artful mixture of heathenism with Christianity, so much profession of zeal for the true God, conjoined with the idolatry of ancient Rome, that

the eyes of men are blinded with respect to its true nature. With all their superstitions and idolatries, Papists, like the Jews of old, cry, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. As among the ten tribes God had his elect and his prophets, while the kings were universally wicked men, and some of them monsters of iniquity and idolatry, as well as the most cruel persecutors of the church of God; in like manner in the defection of the Antichristian apostasy, God has had his elect, and occasionally some of his ministers, yet the line of Popes has been as one man pursuing one system, and in all ages wasting the church of God, as well as promoting idolatry.

Let the above serve as specimens of the innumerable facts in the history of the Old Testament, which, by their moral import, invite to the closest study of that part of the sacred volume. Let the Christian readerdismissing the lax and unscriptural views of the inspiration of the Scriptures which have been too common, and abhorring the idea, founded in gross ignorance, that inspiration was not necessary in the historical parts of Scripture-peruse his Bible with this in view, and the immense variety of facts that he will be enabled to collect, either with the direct stamp of inspired interpretation, from the New Testament, or naturally resolvable by the key afforded in those that are explained there, will excite his astonishment. Nothing is better adapted to correct the errors of those rash and shallow-thinking persons, who have presumed to speak slightingly of the Old Testament, to discountenance the study of it, and to pay a compliment to one part of the Divine Word at the expense of another. But this view of the subject is not only calculated to raise the Old Testament Scriptures in the esteem of the Christian, it is equally calculated to confirm the truth of Revelation. Though the Chris

tian depends on the interpretation of the New Testament for the assurance of the moral import of the historical facts of the Old, yet the circumstance that a history of such a variety of events, through such a number of ages, should possess a natural capability of a moral interpretation, is itself irrefragable evidence of a Divine Author. This evidence is increased by the consideration, that it is not a random import imposed on it, but that it is one that perfectly coincides with the meaning of the typical ordinances. An ungoverned fancy might take mysteries out of any history; and ungoverned fancy has taken fanciful mystical meanings out of the Scriptures, as Origen and some of the Fathers did; but while a proper discernment on this subject will secure the Christian from this abuse of the Bible, it will also prevent the giving any handle to infidelity to bring such a charge. When all such figurative import is to be understood, either by the direct explanation of inspiration, or to be derived by the sober use of the key thus afforded, and always under the sanction of plainly revealed truth, so that no truth or meaning is to be taken from the history that is not expressly and plainly taught in the New Testament, the caprice of fancy can have no place. We should constantly resist that pernicious method of what is called spiritualizing the Scriptures, by the random efforts of an unbridled imagination. This is an error on one side. To despise or neglect the moral and typical instruction of the history of the Old Testament, is an error on the other, against both of which every Christian should strongly protest. The facts of the Old Testament history teach spiritual truth, according to the interpretation of the New Testament. The moral as well as typical import of the facts is perfectly identical with that of the ordinances. This consideration at once

secures against error, and confirms the truth of Revelation. If the same import is found in a vast variety of histories or figures, it proves that that import was intended; and if the typical import of a chain of facts, in a history of many generations, coincides with that of an immense variety of typical ordinances, we have the most satisfactory evidence that the thing is designed, and that the author is God.

The typical facts narrated in the Old Testament history, are not only infinitely numerous, corresponding to the typical ordinances, but they form one whole with the utmost exactness and symmetry of parts. All the truths of Revelation are shadowed forth by them. Not one part is useless. All united embody and figure the whole range of Divine truth. In this point of view, is it possible that we can be insensible to the confirmation afforded by this subject to the evidence of Christianity? The study of the Old Testament, in this light, must delight the Christian, and is calculated to convince every candid enquirer, that the Bible is the Word of God. The Old Testament history, throughout a period of some thousand years, written by different hands, and at many different times, not only exhibits a series of events, arranged and exclusively designed to prepare the way for the advent of the Messiah, and the accomplishment of the plan of salvation, but has woven into its very texture all the doctrines and duties of Christianity-doctrines and duties not fully developed nor understood till the coming of Christ, but now to be clearly traced in the ancient records. Can there be a doubt about the Author of the history? It would be as easy to forge the heavens and the earth as to forge such a series of documents. The Bible, then, must be the book of God.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE MIRACLES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THE history which we have been considering, stands connected with a train of miraculous agency, from which it cannot be separated. Miracles are proper and direct proofs of the immediate interposition of God. Those laws by which God conducts the government of the material creation, were originally adjusted, and continue to be carried into effect, by himself; and to suppose, that, without his special permission, any other being can exercise power over them, is to deny the Divine supremacy. Of the truth of the Scriptures there are various other proofs; but that of miracles, wrought to attest the doctrine they contain, is of itself conclusive. Nor can this proof be invalidated by an appeal to other miracles said to be performed, besides those which the Scriptures relate and account for.

There is no reason to believe that any created being, angel or spirit, possesses the power of working a miracle. The laws by which God usually conducts the government of the material creation, from which miracles are a deviation, were originally adjusted by himself, and are still preserved by his providence; and it cannot be supposed that he will give any other being power over them without his own special commission. Not a single miracle in all history, without the record of Scripture, which depends upon good evi

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