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The Penta than any other Book in the world, deals at once, 
tench. PeDta as we have said, with that problem of our origin 
to which we turn so perpetually, notwithstanding our being 
baffled in every appeal elsewhere for its solution. How this 
most ancient volume has power to interest us, as it deals with 
our Beginning and our End, when later teachings on the same 
subject are valueless ?— is an inquiry that at once arises. We 
look perhaps again, to be quite sure of its date; and the e 
is no impeaching the fact that the Samaritan Pentateuch, the 
Septuagint, and a widely-scattered nation of unwilling wit- 
nesses, carry back its antiquity to times immediately followmg 
the fall of Babylon ; that is, some generations at least before 
Herodotus, “the father of history ” had written his dim 
account of what he could gather of the past. Frame > so 
idea, if possible, of the civilization of that era ; look at its best 
relics, in some uncouth inscription of a stone dug up at 
Nineveh, or a Greek anecdote or two about Egypt. Ihen 
turn to the Pentateuch. Already you cannot help perceiving 
that this Book unaccountably exceeds all that existed in the 
world, all that has survived of its history, law, religion, an 
thought, down to the fifth century before Christ. But go 
0I1 VII The Pentateuch is only the beginning of the volume 
Tb„ rest of before you. You do not find it, even at the date 
the Scripture. we fj rs t meet with it, unaccompanied by other docu- 
ments. Psalms, Prophecies, and religious tractates of various 
name accompany it, full of incident and allusion touching at a 
thousand points, physical, ethnological, social, and mor» , 
the previous course of the world for many centuries Stdl 
more urgently rises the inquiry, What will account foi this . 
book ? No Zoroaster or Confucius will be equal to it. Prone 
as men are to assign to some intellectual chief everything 
ancient that surpasses average human capacity, the " 
not admit of it. It begins with its own account of the world s 
beginning; it selects its own line of events, keeping to it 
with a surprising unity that never diverges, and it reaches on 
and on to the future which it tells of; and all with a steadfiy 
advancing precision. How wonderful, could you see that boo 
as Ptolemy saw, or could you get sight of it as when first 
outer world gained a trace of it, m the possession of the old 
Babylonian captives two thousand four hundred years ago. 
Only then, perhaps, would any one fully feel at this time how 
entirely the Bible stands alone. But further : 
VIII. Can you trace its history back from that time 
_ . through the millennium from Ezra to Moses . 
wsto, T pre,,ous gearch well,for this is the book th erationale of whose 
