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universal, and eternal lessons, the wondrous Book of God unfolds the evidences of its own divinity, of its inspiration from wisdom more than human. Who but God could reveal the soul's inner workings to itself, its sufferings in the bondage of sin, and its yearnings for freedom; could describe step by step the obstacles, the temptations, the trials, the triumphs, through which it attains inner freedom and blessedness, confirmed by an experience which has been found true to the consciousness of the pilgrims for heaven in every age? Never book spake like this book." The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God endureth for ever."—Isa. XL. 8.

We must not be understood to mean that the Israelitish history is only spiritual or allegorical: its letter is divinely true as a basis for its spirit, and in this respect it is most interesting and most wonderful. There are portions of the Bible,—the first eleven chapters of Genesis, which are wholly and only allegorical, because they relate to ages far before the time of earthly history, when spiritual things were all in all with men; and it would be as little wise, to interpret the tree of life, and the fountain of paradise going out into four rivers, the talking serpent, and the flood, of the beginning of the Divine Volume, by earthly objects, as it would be so to interpret the tree of life, (Bev. XXII. 2.) and the river of the water of life, (ver. I.) the serpent, (Rev. XXII. 3.) and the flood, (Rev. XXII.) of the last book of the Bible,—the Apocalypse, and regard them as earthly objects. But after the decline of the early spiritually-minded ages it is otherwise. The histories are naturally true, but are so arranged by infinite wisdom, as to be the exact counterparts of spiritual and eternal truths, which are realized in the Lord's Church and in the soul of man. Like the veil on the face of Moses, they are real but translucent. The literal histories are clouds, but to the opened eyes of the thoughtful, bright clouds through which beams the perpetual glory of heaven.

The events we are now considering, are eminently interesting in their outward aspect. We have the most remarkable of ancient nations in its proudest state; and Israel, soon to issue upon their wondrous career of keepers of the oracles of God. We have Egypt, whose cultivation was complete and hoary with. age, even at the time of the Exodus, nearly fifteen centuries before the coming of our Lord, and which contains massive monuments, probably of two thousand years before that period: Egypt, whose people were declared by Herodotus to be the most learned of mankind, and whose priests read to him their list of three hundred and fifty kings, embraced in thirty dynasties. We