religious and intellectual culture, and liberty and equality, in the highest possible degree consistent with united national government, cannot be denied by any one.

Far back in the infancy of nations, for the preservation of divine truth and worship, a republic, free as ever existed, and yet compact, intelligent, and efficient, was instituted, which was submitted to and adopted by the people; a nation of landholders, owners of the soil by a tenure which excluded alike a voluptuous nobility, and a landless, reckless poverty, — the most terrific material of republics :-a republic whose blessed outlines survived all changes by kingly power, and vicissitudes of corruption and captivity; and, with its sacred charge — the oracles and worship of God - baffled idolatry, and brought salvation down to the times of the Messiah.

These republican institutions introduced by Moses contain strong internal evidence of the divine original of the Old Testament, independent of the testimony of miracles and prophecies.

This evidence is, that no existing knowledge in or around the nation, no examples, and no powers of the human mind, were sufficient to account for the existence of an institution, to whose excellence the world has scarcely reached with all the light of the present day. They are an effect for which no adequate human cause existed at that day, and indicate as clearly an origin above human intellect as miracles indicate a power above human power.

We are not now more republican than they were, though we have the gathered experience and light of all ages before us. With a constitution and laws brought from the best wisdom of the whole earth, and matured by the ripest experience of the human mind in a Christian and civilized and scientific age, we have no better system now, on earth, than belonged to

that nation of bond-men, rude shepherds from the slavery of Egypt, after wandering for forty years in a wilderness. Now, tell me where this system came from. Amid the total darkness of that semi-barbarous age, could a system so pure and bright, so permanently endeared to the choice of the people, have been struck out by human wisdom? We can no more account for it by the known laws of the human mind, than for the stopping of the sun by the voice of Joshua.

Delightful as are the sounds of liberty and equality, it is an exotic in our dark and wicked world. The pride and selfishness of man, ever the antagonist principles of equality, are tending constantly to extremes - rushing up to the extremes of power, and falling down to the debasement of ignorance, poverty, and crime. But that happy medium, where all are free and independent, none but God, in that distant age, knew how to secure; and here, amid the darkness, a light rises - a well-balanced republic, which, amid corruptions, temptations and vices, and captivities and arms, brought all its elementary treasures, with the oracles of God, down to the Gospel day.

My last remark is, that our own republic, in its constition and laws, is of heavenly origin. It was not borrowed from Greece or Rome, but from the Bible. Where we borrowed a ray from Greece or Rome, stars and suns were borrowed from another source - the Bible. There is no position more susceptible of proof, than that, as the moon borrows from the sun her light, so our constitution borrows from the Bible its elements, proportions, and power. It was God, that gave these elementary principles to our forefathers, as the "pillar of fire by night, and the cloud by day," for their guidance. All the liberty the world ever knew is but a dim star to the noon-day sun which is poured on man by

these oracles of Heaven. It is truly testified by Hume, that the Puritans introduced the elementary principles of republican liberty into the English constitution; and when they came to form colonial constitutions and laws, we all know with what veneration and implicit confidence they copied the principles of the constitution and laws of Moses. These elementary principles have gone into the constitution of the Union, and of every one of the States; and we have hence more consistent liberty than ever existed in all the world, in all time, out of the Mosaic code.

We have reason to

And this is the secret of our success. hope that our free government will endure. Let us so hope, so pray; and hold on to our faith in God, that he will not permit the institutions of liberty, which he has given to man, for freedom, to perish from the earth. I beseech you, do not oppose the crude objections of sceptics to the experience of the world, to the light of the Bible. It is the anchor of republics. Do not let your minds be carried away by specious sophistries from that wisdom which is based upon evidence, and adapted to the wants of human society. If the young mechanics of our cities will revere the Bible, will read the Bible, will study the Bible, and form their understandings and hearts by the Bible, I shall say, as Simeon did when he clasped and blessed the infant Saviour,-"Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." My dear friends, a better defence of civil and religious liberty than the consecrated hearts of the young mechanics of the land cannot be desired. Let them gather round and guard the ark of God, and it will be safe and victorious forever.

LECTURE VIII.

THE IDENTITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW.

THIS is a subject upon which a vast amount of misapprehension prevails. Many regard the Old Testament as containing a different religion from the New, "imperfect, earthly, obscure, and adapted only to the childhood of the human race, and chiefly useful in preparing the way for the Christian religion, as revealed in the Gospel; a record of the Hebrew, and not of the Christian faith; and calculated, as some have said, to neutralize our conceptions of God, to localize him as a tutelar divinity, instead of the omnipresent God of the universe; to give prominence to his power, and throw his moral perfections into relative obscurity; amplifying his wrath, while the SUN of his mercy is hid by the dark storm of his vengeance; producing slavish fear and dark superstition, instead of humble confidence and filial love; a religion of forms, instead of the worship of the heart, and of actions, instead of principles and affections; leaving the future veiled in doubt and uncertainty, and imparting a new sorrow and a deeper darkness to the tomb; that its morality is low, and suited only to the circumstances of the Jews, and to be superseded by the purer, nobler morality of the Gospel."

The authors of these representations are not professed infidels; and yet, the first generation of English deists spoke more respectfully of the Old Testament, and with less exaggerated misrepresentations.

Indeed, if such conceptions of the Old Testament are just, it would be as difficult to see its adaptation to the "childhood" as to the manhood of the world; and as difficult to see its adaptation to prepare the way for the Christian religion, as to see how a book of fables should prepare the way for authentic history, or debasing error the way for a pure and correct belief. As well provide a book of directions for the hunting life, as a preparation for agriculture; or on the dressing of skins for clothing, as a preparation for the manufactories of civilized life.

It must be remembered that the Jewish polity comprehended the political, ecclesiastical, and moral laws of the nation. The first we have considered. The third-the moral laws of the Old Testament-will now claim our attention, as identical with the New.

We might infer this identity from the immutability of God, and the immutable relations of creatures to the Creator and to one another; and what we should anticipate, we find to be the fact. The Old Testament and the New give us the same account of the being, attributes, and character of God, as distinguished from the attributes, laws, and operations of

matter.

He is not represented in the Old Testament as a local divinity, but as the God of the whole earth, -the God of the universe, inhabiting eternity and filling immensity,a spirit, a free agent,-wise, holy, just, merciful, and good.

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We see, then, that God is not materialized in the Old Testament to the apprehension of any but those who do not understand the difference between personification and metaphor, and literal language. On the contrary, every power of language is employed to exalt our conceptions of