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scope, and in a large measure confirmatory of the details of 
our chronology, certainly so far as the relation between 
Jewish and Christian history is concerned. Our strongest 
ground, however, lies in the fact that our records are the 
records of religious rivals, and rivals, moreover, with no mean 
measure of the odium theologicum ; and that they have been 
catalogued, warded, and hedged around in a manner that no 
other records have ever been. The bare mention of the well- 
known fact that the J ewish sacred books were so analyzed and 
tabulated, that not only their divisional and verbal, but even 
their literal correctness is guaranteed ; and that, with a vene- 
ration amounting well nigh to superstition, the Jews not only 
applied a species of Cabalism to their Scriptures, but in their 
Masoretic notes and points descended to the very alphabetic 
component characters ; and we have a security for the perfect 
accuracy of their books, as they have come down to us, which 
the student in vain seeks for in any others. Place side by 
side with this fact the early formation of the Christian canon, 
and the jealous care and discrimination by which some books 
were excluded and some retained, and we have another pledge 
for not only the genuineness and authenticity of the com- 
ponent parts, but for the truth and accuracy of the entire 
collection. 
And with thoroughly trustworthy Jewish Scriptures and 
unimpeachable Canonical Books, the desired evidence of suc- 
cession is secured, and the reality of prediction and fulfilment 
established. The early distich fully sets forth our position : — 
“ In vetere testamento novum latet, 
In novo testamento vetus patet ” — 
a position as tenable now as in all past times, and which 
justifies the further and greater conclusion of the general 
value of our Sacred Books, in their integrity, as a basis of 
scientific truth. 
My next example is the revelation respecting the person of 
the founder of Christianity, one of the great central truths of 
Theology. Now, true or false, no man can deny that the 
particulars, as predicted in the old Scriptures, and recited in 
the New, are, to say the least, marvellously coincident. Were 
we to sit down to write a life of the Saviour, with no other 
available authorities than the prophetical writings, we might 
from the several authors, and at various dates, so fully 
delineate every important feature, as almost to leave nothing 
for the historian, in the actual portraiture, to supply. Thus 
we could set forth His genealogy ; His exceptional conception 
