darkness rather than its details: and that thus, as of the events of the Old Testament history, so of its prophecies, even the earliest, it may be said, in the words of the Apostle, "they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world [or ages] are come;" for our warning, in prospect of those "perilous times" of "the last days" which, they advertise us, shall precede the establishment of Christ's Kingdom, and for the confirmation of our faith and hope in waiting for it. May these our meditations be blessed to this end : and, above all, may the fuller apprehension of the import of these ancient oracles which have engaged our attention tend to quicken our desires for that glorious event which they combine to invest with such intense interest- the re-appearing of the Saviour: His "coming again the second time without sin unto SALVATION ;"-the final victory over man's enemy, or crushing of the Serpent's head, promised in the first of them; the judgment of the ungodly and Antichristian predicted by Enoch in the second;the avenging of the redeemed of all their persecutors, and of Death itself, anticipated by Job ;-the blessing of mankind and of the earth, covenanted to Abraham ;-the "Glory of Israel" and "Light of the Gentiles" revealed to Jacob;-and "the Kingdom of God," the reign of that Divine Lawgiver who shall give laws to the world,-at once typified and foretold by Moses. APPENDIX. LECTURE I. (A.)-PAGE 24. UT little has been written on this prophecy, consider BUT ing its vast importance and comprehensive import. Bishop Newton disposes of it in two sentences, in the opening of his " Dissertations on the Prophecies" (the first of which, passing over this and the prophecy of Enoch, has for subject" Noah's prophecy”), viz. :— "The first prophecy that occurs in Scripture is that part of the sentence pronounced upon the Serpent, which is, as I may say, the opening of Christianity, the first promise of our redemption: Gen. iii. 15. If you understand this in the sense which is commonly put upon it by Christian interpreters, you have a remarkable prophecy, and remarkably fulfilled: taken in any other sense, it is not worthy of Moses, nor indeed of any sensible writer." But if" remarkably fulfilled," it were surely worth while to have shown when and how: and would have fallen strictly within the scope of a work, the purpose of which is announced in the Introduction to be-to point out "the evidence for the truth of revealed religion from that series of prophecies which is preserved in the Old and New Testaments;" and, in order to this, "to lay together the several predictions of Scripture with their completions, to show how particularly things have been foretold, and how exactly fulfilled." It would L not, however, have been so easy to show the fulfilment of this as of" Noah's prophecy," or " the prophecies concerning Ishmael" or "Jacob and Esau," and some others on which his treatises fully answer the expectation raised and the promise thus given, though this cannot be said of all. Bishop Sherlock, in the third of his "Discourses on the Use and Intent of Prophecy in the several Ages of the World," has a fuller notice of it, but chiefly to meet the objections of sceptics to its assumed obscurity and its figurative language. He justly entitles it, as "the first of prophecies," so," the groundwork, and foundation of all that have been since," . . . " the grand charter of God's mercy after the Fall:" and he sends us for its meaning to the occasion on which it was uttered, and the sense in which it would be then understood: "Let us [he says] for the present lay aside all our own notions, and go back to that state and condition of things which was at the time of the delivery of this prophecy; and see (if happily we may discover it) what God intended to discover at that time by it, and what we may reasonably suppose our first parents understood it to mean. "They were now in a state of sin, standing before God to receive sentence for their disobedience, and had reason to expect a full execution of the penalty threatened,- In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' But God came in mercy as well as judgment, purposing not only to punish but to restore man. They knew full well at this juncture, that their fall was the victory of the serpent, whom by experience they found to be an enemy to God and man: to man, whom he had ruined by seducing him to sin; to God, the noblest work of whose creation he had defaced. It could not, therefore, but be some comfort to them to hear the serpent first condemned, and to see that, however he had prevailed against them, he had gained no victory over their Maker, who was able to assert His own honour, and to punish this great author of iniquity. . . . The belief of God's supreme dominion, which is the foundation of all religion, being |