TO THE FRIEND,

TO WHOM HE IS INDEBTED FOR THE PUBLICATION

OF THE LAST TWO VOLUMES

OF HIS LECTURES ON THE OLD TESTAMENT,

THE AUTHOR

RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBES

THIS WORK.

PREFACE.

THE following pages make a sequel to my "Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities," a large portion of their contents being a requisite complement to the leading argument of that work.

Independently of the inherent interest which belongs to the Jewish Scriptures, demanding diligent care for their correct exposition, I have chiefly aimed, in the series of comments now brought to a close, to make a contribution to the Evidences of Christianity.

From the earliest to the latest times, from the contemporaries of the Apostles to Voltaire and Thomas Paine, the Old Testament has been used as an arsenal for assaults upon Christianity. The Jews, who were addressed by our Lord and his first ministers, said that he did not correspond to the idea which their Prophets, venerated by them as unerring guides, had presented of the Messiah. The Pagan writers, as Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian, adopted the same reasoning; and it has been repeated in modern times by Anthony Collins, and other able men. Physical science, as it has advanced, has sup

plied indisputable contradictions to the account of the Creation, and other related statements, in the Book of Genesis, statements for whose correctness the advocates of Christianity had acknowledged that religion to be responsible. The writings of Jews later than the time of Moses, especially the historical books, are represented to contain accounts of persons and transactions, now contradictory and essentially incredible, now unworthy of God to approve or direct; and such as are sufficient to refute the claims of Christianity, if they are to be taken as part and parcel of it.

There is no doubt of the exceedingly offensive spirit and language in which these objections have been urged; but it has never seemed to me, since I began to think upon the subject, that they have been effectually answered. I do not think that Jerome made a satisfactory reply to Porphyry, or Bishop Chandler to Collins, or Bishop Watson to Voltaire and Paine. I was a boy in college when our countryman, Mr. George B. English, published his book, entitled, "The Grounds of Christianity examined by comparing the New Testament with the Old." In the strictures which it drew out, Mr. English was abundantly convicted of plagiarism; but I did not think then that his argument was disposed of, nor do I think so now. Other parts of the Evidences of Christianity may overpower any adverse inference from this class of considerations. But, allow the Jews and Pagans of the first Christian centuries, allow the moderns, Bolingbroke, Collins, Morgan, and Voltaire,

their premises, and I find myself compelled to own, that, as to this topic, they have the best of the dispute.

I deny their premises. If the expositions of the Old Testament, which I have set forth in this series of volumes, are correct, those opponents of Christianity have no ground to stand upon.

First, by a detailed examination of the Old Testament books in my "Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities"; and now, by an examination of passages in the New Testament which quote from, or refer to, the Old, with a view to show that the New Testament never puts upon the Old a sense different from what I had ascribed to it, I have aimed to establish the following propositions, viz.: —

1. That the Pentateuch (with the exception of some later interpolations) was written by Moses, the divinely authorized revealer of the Jewish religion.

2. That the history, in the last four books of the Pentateuch, of the ministry of Moses, and of his promulgation of the Jewish Law and miraculous administration of the Jewish people, contains nothing incredible, or dishonorable to God; but that its contents are eminently of the opposite character.

3. That, as author of the Book of Genesis, Moses nowhere lays claim to the character of an inspired historian; that his object, in its composition, was to confirm the revelations and provisions of his Law, to which it is a preface; that its last thirty-nine chapters contain family traditions, sometimes more, some