adapted to the purpose it was peculiarly intended LECT. I. to serve, both must be taken together if we would perceive the full beauty, understand the full import, and reap the full benefit of either.

importance

quiry

ing on the

An inquiry of such a nature must be admitted Interest and to be one of no small interest and importance. of this inInvolving, as it does, questions of moment connected with the history of letters among the Jews, its interest even in a literary point of view is not inconsiderable; but it is from its religious bearings that its main importance, and that which has chiefly prompted to the present course of investigation, arises. It must be obvious that on the right settlement of the various questions presented by such an inquiry depends in no small degree the opinion we shall form both of the meaning of many sections from its bearof the Old Testament Scriptures, and of the meaning and use it is incumbent upon us to make of that portion of the sacred canon. If it cannot be shown to contain substantially the same religious system with that developed in the Christian Scriptures, and if its obscure and symbolical adumbrations of truth are not to be expounded by the clearer revelation with which we have been favoured, it will follow not only that much of it will remain to us a sealed book, but that even to those parts of it which we may be able to understand it will not be competent for us to appeal, either in polemical defence of any controverted dogma of our New Testament faith, or

use of the Old Testament;

LECT. I. in practical enforcement of those which are admitted on all sides to be true.

Another feature of this inquiry, which confers upon it no small value, is its relation to certain of those controversies which Christians have been called to carry on in defence of their com---on the In- mon faith. On the infidel controversy, for fidel contro- instance, the subject before us has a two-fold

versy;

Jewish con

bearing the one, as supplying materials for an important part of the direct argument in favour of the Divine authority of the Scriptures-that viz. derived from the fulfilment of prophecy; the other, as aiding to repel the objections which, with its characteristic want of candour, Infidelity has urged, alike from the irreconcilable discrepancies, and the too close resemblances alleged to exist between the Old Testament and the New, against the inspiration of both. On and on the the controversy between Christians and Jews, also, the bearing of this inquiry is too obvious to require to be pointed out; for if that inquiry can be successfully prosecuted;-if it can be shown that the religious system unfolded in the New Testament is essentially the same with that inculcated in the Old; that all the evidences of true Messiahship prescribed by the latter meet in the person whose history and doctrines the former is occupied in setting forth; and that, besides all this, apart from the revelations of the New Testament, a great part of their own Scriptures must remain even to them

versy.

I.

selves unintelligible upon any rational principles LECT. 1. of interpretation;-it must be obvious to all that the materials will be furnished for a most cogent appeal to the best feelings and most enlightened convictions of the Jews, the effect of which, when skilfully and devoutly made, has been already proved in the gathering up of not a few of these outcast branches, who, by the Divine blessing on the use of such means, have been graffed into their own olive-tree."

66

calculated to

Nor, in enumerating the advantages of such Pleasure it is an inquiry as that before us, must we omit the afford. pleasure which it is calculated to convey to the pious mind, in the view which it will naturally unfold of the unbroken harmony of Divine truth, and the consequent unity of that church which is built upon the truth. In pursuing it we shall be led to trace the stream of gospel blessing from its first appearance in our world down to that point where, emerging from the limits to which it had been previously confined, it sent forth its healing and purifying waters over the length and the breadth of our barren and polluted earth. At every stage of its progress we shall have occasion to mark the same properties as characterising it, and the same benignant results as effected by its presence. We shall thus be brought into contact, as it were, with the entire family of the redeemed, and be taught to realize in some measure the delightful fact that, under the gospel dispensation, believers have even in

LECT. I. their present state, come to the general assembly and church of the First-born which are written in heaven." By every christian mind an occupation such as this will be welcomed as replete with the materials of the purest and most elevated pleasure.

Attention it has already

received.

A subject of so much interest and importance both in itself and in its relations could not fail to attract towards it much of the attention of those who devote themselves to the study of Divine truth. There exist, accordingly, both in our own language and in others, vast masses of learned and profound dissertation upon almost every point embraced in the present subject; so that in treating of these little is left for a writer in the present day beyond the duty of arranging, condensing, and discriminating the materials of his predecessors. As these, however, exist chiefly in a controversial form, and as, consequently, the general question is viewed rather in its argumentative bearings, than in respect of its intrinsic merits, it is not unfrequently the case that principles are hastily assumed, generalizations rashly made, truth presented only in a one-sided aspect, and conclusions affirmed which rest upon very questionable bases. It seems desirable, therefore, to submit the general question, as I have already stated it, to a more rigid crisis; and abstracting for the present from the uses to which the discussion may be applied, to endeavour to ascertain facts and fix principles,

that thereby a satisfactory basis may be laid for LECT. 1. further inquiry. In this department some valuable efforts have of late years been put forth by several German divines of eminence, of whose labours, however, a very discriminating use requires to be made.*

present Lec

Leaving for subsequent investigation the in- Subject of the ternal harmony of the Old and New Testaments, ture. I shall in the present Lecture confine myself to the consideration of those affinities which subsist between them in an external or literary point of view. Viewing them simply as venerable remains of the literature of a great nation, we shall inquire in what relation they stand to each other, in what light the earlier was viewed by the authors of the later, and what use they made of it in the composition of their own writings.

nity of the

Testaments.

A person familiar with the Scriptures of the Old General affiTestament, and proceeding to the study of those Old and New of the New, would not advance far in that study without being satisfied that the two volumes are of the same kind, and belong to the literature of the same people. The mode of thought and phraseology in both,-the peculiar opinions and prejudices of the writers, the historical and topographical allusions, are all essentially the same, with only such minuter peculiarities as lapse of time and change of circumstance natu

* See Appendix, Note C.