NOTICE TO THE READER.

THE first nineteen sections of this volume, which follow the introduction, simply set forth the principal patriarchal prophecies, from Abraham to Naphtali; with their respective scriptural fulfilments placed in the parallel pages.

To some of these a few explanatory remarks are added.

The sections relating to "Joseph," and "Benjamin," are designed to shew the typical connection of Jacob's two sons, by the once barren Rachel, with the conversion of the gentile world.

The twenty-ninth and following sections are intended to exhibit the Christian elements of Abraham's faith ;—a faith working obedience by love to God; and justified by His imputed righteousness.

The prophetic scheme, developed in the Old Testament, is viewed as a testimony to the unity of divine revelation, antecedent to its consummation by the Gospel.

The two concluding sections introduce a testimony to the same revealed truth, by confirmation subsequent to the gospel history.

The evidence, both external and internal, which sacred prophecy, in connection with its fulfilment, bears to the truth of divine revelation, is so convincing, that infidelity appears to be almost a wilful perversion of human reason and judgment.

By "external" evidence, that kind of testimony is meant, which is direct and palpable. The realised prediction of an event, which was beyond the possible anticipations of human sagacity, is a miracle; and constitutes a palpable or external proof of divine agency.

"Internal" evidence proceeds rather from inference, than from direct proof. The transcendent purity of gospel morality is internal evidence of its divine authority; as the miracles of Christ were external evidence of his divine power.

The series of scripture prophecies, and their fulfilments, whether those fulfilments be recorded in sacred or profane history, comprises both these descriptions of testimony.

If a person were to announce, (as Daniel announced to Nebuchadnezzar) without any hint to guide him, what had been the exact particulars of a vision in sleep; this would be a miracle! There could be no doubt that such a divination was miraculous. So also, if he were to say, that the subject of the dream

indicated three successive dynasties, destined to supersede an existing government; the actual occurrence of these events, in the course of time, would prove that the prediction had been supernatural.

A certain notary of Ajaccio became an exile, with Paoli, from the city of his residence, and fled from the French troops to the mountains of Corsica. His wife was permitted to return to the city for her confinement, where, in 1769, she gave birth to a son.

Had any one, at that time, declared that the newborn infant should be Emperor of the French; should depose, and create sovereign princes in Europe; and should, finally, die on a barren rock in the Southern Ocean; the event would have proved, that this prediction was miraculous. In 1769, there existed no circumstance, which could prompt the most acute sagacity, even to guess the possibility of such occurrences. If an exile were wandering in a strange country, having no inheritance there, no, not so much as to set his foot on ;" and, in this unfriended and desolate condition, were he to hear a voice saying, "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt, unto the great river, the river Euphrates ;"*

* "In that same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt, unto the great river, the river Euphrates. The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites." (Gen. xv. 18. B. C. 1913.)

"Now, after the death of Moses, . . . . the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, saying, Arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land, which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel

and were his descendants four hundred years afterwards to be in the actual possession of that very territory; the prediction would be proved to have been miraculous.

Were a father to call his sons around him, and to announce, in figurative language, a peculiar destiny as awaiting each of these sons, or the posterity of each; if the histories of these individuals, or of their respective descendants, should, by the event, clearly explain the figurative language which the father had used, and shew beyond doubt, the hidden intent of his first announcement; such announcement would be proved to have been prophetic, in a miraculous sense.

If a particular result were said to be preordained by the operation of means apparently prohibitory of the result proposed; as a numerous progeny by means of conjugal sterility; or the rights of primogeniture, through the last, instead of the first-born; we should perceive a mode of action, quite foreign to the ordinary designs and proceedings of man; and if the result, said to have been so preordained, should be realised by the event, and that, moreover, in a spiritual, and not a worldly, sense; the whole scheme

from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites." (Jos. i. 2.—B. C. 1451.) "Of the sons of Reuben. . . . Bela inhabited eastward, unto the entering of the wilderness, from the river Euphrates." (1 Chron. v. 9.)

"Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath," (bounded on the north by the Euphrates)" unto the river of Egypt."

would possess a prophetic, and therefore a miraculous character.

Again, if a lawgiver were to prescribe, with great minuteness, a code of ceremonial and moral laws; and were he finally to proclaim, that all pretension to merit, from the observance of those very rules which he had strictly enjoined, was a delusion; we should perceive in this the operation of some principle quite distinct and different from any previous experience of human agency. But should we be led to perceive that a principle, so opposed to our customary notions, tended to the humiliation of the creature, and the exaltation of all honour and glory due to the Almighty Creator, we should acknowledge its sublimity; and we should adore, as a divine truth, that which might first have appeared, to our imperfect conceptions, as anomalous.

For what can be more fitting, than that the Creator should in all things transcend his creatures! But, if we found, that the merit which we had been disposed to claim as due to our observance of these laws, was withheld, because, in fact, it was unattainable by us; but that the great Lawgiver, who withheld that merit which his justice could not concede, had, at the same time, provided means, by which it could be gratuitously conferred; we should discover, that the whole dispensation was one of infinite holiness and goodness. We should find that while the imperfections of the creature tended to exalt the per