this, that both the purity of the Arabic language, and the propriety and elegance of their pronunciation, have owed their preservation entirely to it. Ebn Phares observes, that the Arabic poems serve in the place of commentaries, or annals, in which are recorded the series of their genealogies, and all the facts of history deserving of remembrance, and from which a knowledge of the language is to be collected.'"

CHAPTER X.

Inspiration only extended to the subject of revelation, not to the vehicle through which that revelation was communicated. The inspiration of the Bible, therefore, not to be found in its language, but in the events which it records, the doctrines which it teaches, the precepts which it contains, the prophecies which it promulgates. Social condition of the patriarchal ages not congenial to the cultivation and expansion of genius. The Hebrew writers, nevertheless, men of the highest mental endowments. Their improvement as they united into political combinations and advanced in the science of government.

Of the precise character of Isaac's prophecies respecting his sons, Bishop Lowth says, in his fourth Prælection,-"The inspired benedictions of the patriarchs Isaac and Jacob, are altogether of the same kind (that is, metrical) and the great importance of these prophecies, not only to the destiny of the people of Israel, but likewise of that of the whole human race, renders it highly probable that they were extant in this form before the time of Moses; and that they were afterwards committed to writing by the inspired historian, exactly as he had received them from his ancestors, without presuming to bestow, on those sacred oracles, any adventitious ornaments, or poetical colouring." This

view is fully concurred in by the learned German professor, quoted at the conclusion of the last chapter.

If then we consider the extreme antiquity of these fragments, so long anterior to the time of Moses who has recorded them, we may well wonder at their extraordinary poetical merit, apart from their manifest inspiration: for although in those prophecies was displayed the brightest effulgence of that inspiration, the vehicles, or words in which the divine revelations were conveyed, were manifestly the compositions of man, since the style of the predictions, throughout the Bible, is as different as the characters of the persons who delivered them; as will be sufficiently obvious in the prophecies of Isaac, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, to mention no others. It was not at all necessary that the Almighty should dictate the very words in which his sacred communications were to be made to mankind, through the mouths of his accredited ministers, when those ministers were evidently endowed with the highest order of intellect, and were, no doubt, chosen on that account, being men of irreproachable lives, and, with capacities greatly enlarged by communication with the eternal fountain of wisdom, capable of embodying, in the most eloquent and sublime language, those events in futurity, which the Almighty had, by a divine and infallible afflatus fixed upon their minds. They were not taught to deliver their inspirations in terms with which those to whom they addressed themselves were not familiar.

There was nothing superhuman in the mere vehicle, but only in the communications, the former being simply human, the latter altogether divine. These prophets spoke the language of men, and God allowed them to declare in their own words, the revelations vouchsafed to them" those good things to come," which

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pass man's understanding." Through those inspired sages, the God of mercy repeatedly forewarned mankind of the judgments about to fall upon them, or of the blessings which would inevitably accrue from unrighteousness of life.

The inspiration of the Bible, consequently, is not to be found in its language-for though this possesses all the beauty of the sublimest eloquence, it is human nevertheless-but in the events which it records, the doctrines which it inculcates, the predictions which it proclaims, the spiritual wisdom with which it is filled. There is nothing in its mere language, beautiful as this is, which requires us to suppose it exclusively an emanation from the divine mind. In short, the several portions of scripture which are by different hands, derive a certain tone and colouring, characteristic of those individual minds which produced them; they exhibit specific peculiarities, and how is this to be accounted for, but upon the broad fact of the language being the spontaneous supply of those minds to whom the divine revelations, designed for man's benefit, were promulgated, and which they clothed in the most apt and eloquent expressions that their genius was

capable of suggesting. The language of scripture is undoubtedly the composition of men, the matter the revelation of God.

Although the prophecies delivered by the immediate "seed of Abraham" to his two sons are far exceeded in the graces of poetical adornment by many compositions in the Bible, especially by parts of Job and Isaiah, which rise to a height of sublimity immeasurably above any thing produced out of the Hebrew writings, those very important predictions exhibit nevertheless, as I trust has been sufficiently shown, the genuine features of poetry, and that too of a very high order.

We find in the patriarchal ages, when the common intercourse among men scarcely extended beyond their own families, and human society therefore was divided into an infinite number of small communities, that their lives were necessarily simple, and that they only turned their attention to those arts requisite to procure for them the ordinary conveniencies and supports of life. They did not think of cultivating their intellects beyond what such a condition of existence required. The earth gave its increase as a reward for their unweary toil, their flocks and herds brought forth abundantly, and they had no positive wants which were extraneous to the simple requirements of nature. They had no supervacaneous cares, because their desires were few and readily satisfied. In such a state of primitive simplicity there was no stimulus to the exercise and displays of genius, consequently its noble resources were seldom