Most of our popular commentaries are occupied with minute details and explanations of particular words and passages. From the manner in which they are prepared, they treat each passage, sometimes each verse, as if it were an independent proposition by itself, and tend to encourage the idea that it is so. They foster this as the only mode of studying the Bible. They seldom give a philosophical analysis of the general scope, spirit, and purpose of the separate books whose contents they seek to explain. They have little to say about the individual characteristics of the writer, and of his place and importance as one of the "Providential Leaders" in the heavenguided march of humanity. Then we have "Bible Histories" and "Sacred Histories," which are nothing more than condensed epitomes of Scriptural facts, naked skeletons, with no clothing of flesh and blood, no living, breathing life in themselves, and no power to awaken and impart it to others. We want a more free, full, just treatment and study of the Bible, both as a whole and in parts, a more perfect and diversified unfolding of its various and wonderful history, contents, characters, and writers. We are persuaded that in the direction of Mr. Osgood's book much may be done to diffuse a better knowledge and more just conceptions of the Bible, to remove sceptical doubts and beget a reverent and practical faith. We have already said that the volume before us assumes an established Christian faith in the reader, and this is true. It enters into no direct argument with unbelief; it does not address itself to that state of mind. Yet were a person a prey to sceptical doubts and tendencies, wanting faith in divine revelation, we know of few books that we should sooner put into his hands, and with stronger hope of good results, than these "Footprints of Providential Leaders." Modern infidelity attacks the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, from the high moral standard to which the Gospel has raised the human mind. It forgets that the world and its inhabitants had an infancy. It overlooks the fact that divine revelation as contained in the Bible is a series of progressive dispensations; and is to be studied and interpreted in the light of this great fact. This fact is the radical and pervading thought of Mr. Osgood's volume, giving it unity of purpose and impression, and admirably adapting it, therefore, VOL. LVI. -4TH S. VOL. XXI. NO. I.

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to remove the sceptical doubts and difficulties which disturb some minds; not by directly combating with them, but by suggesting thoughts or enforcing principles before which they fade away. It will strengthen the faith of every reader, enlarge his views of the general 'subject of divine revelation, and increase his interest in the habitual and thorough reading of the Bible.

We have given the general impression made upon us by Mr. Osgood's book. It would be very easy, in a more minute examination of its contents, to exercise the special vocation of a critic, and find fault, or at least indicate when our own taste, opinions, and judgment differ from those of the writer. But to do this with the thoroughness and fairness with which it ought to be done, if done at all, is forbidden by our limits, and the feelings of general satisfaction with which we have closed the volume do not prompt to it. We prefer to lay before our readers two or three passages from the volume itself, which will give them some idea of its character, and beget a desire to read the whole.

In the lecture on "Moses and the Law," the argument in behalf of his divine legation and the character of his institution is thus summed up:

"But let the message speak alike for itself, the man, and the mission. Viewed in its central principle, this message was the revelation of the one God, just and holy, a declaration of a law of duty towards God and man, and an application of this law to the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the chosen nation.

"The great principle, and the consequent declaration, who will undertake to slight or to gainsay? What philosophy has ever equalled in depth and sublimity the Mosaic revelation of the Godhead? What morality goes beyond that of the Decalogue, unless it be that taught by Him who reduced each table of commandments to a single principle, and summed up all in the love of God and our neighbor? The difficulty, if such there be, lies in the attempted application of the Divine law to the polity of a chosen nation. What, then, shall we say of the message as exhibited in the civil and Levitical codes?

"As Christians we do not by any means feel called upon to defend these codes as being in themselves perfect. They are not our law. Yet we owe them the debt of fair appreciation. The Levitical law needs only to be understood to be respected. Its minute enactments, that seem to us so trivial, were aimed at prevalent dangers, and guarded the national life against idola

trous practices that would utterly corrupt the morals of the people, or against impurities of diet which would impair their health. Its symbols, feasts, and sacrifices were intended to impress upon them, through the senses, the truths and duties which they were too unspiritual to appreciate in a more direct and philosophical statement. Its priesthood were the appointed clergy, who instructed the people in the law, administered in public worship, and by both agencies bound the tribes together in a sacred national compact. All the particulars of the Levitical system we cannot expect to understand, so remote is the time, so peculiar were the circumstances, of the Hebrews and their idolatrous neighbors. We know enough of its leading principles, enough of the practical workings of idolatry, to move us to look with reverence upon the enactments by which the lawgiver hoped to secure his people against what had been the degradation and ruin of so many nations.

"The civil law of Moses may well be called a miracle of jurisprudence. To him belongs the high prerogative of founding government, not upon the will of persons, but upon laws. The law of Israel was supreme. High and low were alike subject to its tribunal. The superior pontiff was not too exalted to be bound by the statute-book, nor was the bondman so mean as to be below its protection. Thus the great achievement of the noblest civilization was secured by Moses. To him belongs the honor of the first statement and practice of the doctrine, that the ultimate foundation of law is the will of God, and that legislation based upon Divine justice, not upon the caprice of man, is to rule the nations. Israel was the first republic. Her people were free and equal, their liberties protected by powers admirably adjusted between senate, priests, magistrates, and people. There was more than an empty superstition in the respect which moved our New England fathers to make the Mosaic code the basis of their legislation. They found in their Bible a system of polity far other than that of kings like James and Charles, and prelates like Whitgift and Laud. The polity of their children has never lost the lessons of their wisdom, and the constitution of our land has borrowed not a little from the Puritan sages. We differ from them in our estimate of the minuter provisions of the code. We of course regard Christianity as establishing far other rela tions between church and state. But do not our best wisdom and experience agree with them in honoring the essential principle of the Mosaic polity?

"But what shall we say of the alleged cruelty of the Mosaic law? Does it not breathe the lust of warfare, and is not Mars, rather than the Heavenly Father, the presiding God of the nation ? What to many may seem a strange statement is the

contrary fact. The Mosaic code is eminently pacific in its nature. The conquest of the promised land was indeed 'bloody, and we do not by any means consider Christians as answerable for the manner in which Moses began or Joshua finished it. The Hebrew leaders, however, in their war policy were more humane than the spirit of their age, and appealed, moreover, for authority to a Divine command which ranked the sword with the earthquake and the flood as an agency in preparing the way for a true civilization. But the law itself, the code matured for the government of the nation, was eminently peaceful. It provided for a life of quiet agriculture, and discouraged the passion for military conquest. There was to be no standing army. The land was to be held and cultivated by the tribes as their own and inalienable. A nation of farmers was thus constituted, who would be averse to aggressive warfare, and the country began to decline in true prosperity when this original policy was abandoned and the lust for extending territory by war begun. Thus the Mosaic code anticipated the result of our best experience, and held in honor the arts of agriculture and peace as the true basis of national welfare.

"Thus pacific as well as equitable, the civil law was also humane, humane surely as compared with any other prominent civil code, more humane than the present policy even of Christian nations. Even the principle of retributive justice— so much reprobated by a later age, and so abused by the Jews as to call forth a special condemnation upon its misapplication, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'- was mercy itself when compared with much that is now called Christian legislation. Simply an equivalent for injury was to be demanded. How much more mercy is there in that principle, than in the system that sacrifices human existence to chattel property, and demands a man's life for a sheep or horse or forged name! The great error in judging the Mosaic criminal code consists in judging of its merit, not in connection with civil law, but in comparison with the lofty spiritual principles which are the crowning grace of evangelical religion.

"Whilst crimes against property were leniently dealt with, offences against religion were very severely punished, on account of their being treason against a Divine Sovereign, as well as sacrilege against the national church. It is not very consistent for us in this time, when a soldier is shot for disrespect to his commander, to blame the code which doomed all idolatrous persons to death, as for an offence the most heinous against the sovereign and the people. It does not do for us to accuse the Mosaic law of inhumanity towards the slave. Although not prohibited, slavery was restricted in the mode best fitted ultimately

to suppress it. The slave was under legal protection. The person of the bondman was inviolable. Freedom was the immediate recompense of the slave who had been maimed, even by the loss of a tooth. We do not maintain that the Mosaic code was perfect, and beyond need of improvement or progress; else, what room would be left for the dispensation of grace and truth? That it was humane, we say without hesitation. . . . . . In some points Christian powers, whether monarchical or republican, may learn humanity from the system which vulgar infidelity so often stigmatizes as the quintessence of cruelty.

"Equal, pacific, and humane, the Mosaic civil law stands a stately monument of an age when the world was in darkness and the lands from which the light of jurisprudence have since beamed were an unbroken wilderness.

"Put all parts of the message together, its fundamental principle, its ecclesiastical polity, and its civil code, may we not say that it proves at once the greatness of the man and the authority of the mission? Nationality, indeed, exclusive nationality, pervades the whole dispensation; but mark well the fact, that this nationality contained within itself the seeds of its own enlargement into a broad humanity. The one nation was to be prepared to become the teacher of all nations. The seed given of God was planted within a walled garden, guarded from harm, and fed with rain and dew from heaven. Complain not of the tem. porary inclosure. Remember that the fruit there borne is to be for the use of the nations, and in the fulness of time branches from that tree are to take root in every land on earth."— pp. 28-34.

In the paper on "Aaron and the Priesthood," after contrasting the Jewish priesthood and the Christian ministry, and alluding to the mistake made by those Christian "hierarchies that have striven to build up the kingdom of God upon the Jewish basis"; and "to the growing longing for a Christian civilization, a civilization that shall be the embodiment of Christianity, and present man in true relations with nature, his neighbor, and his God," Mr. Osgood says:

"Till a truer civilization comes, the priestly hierarchy will remain. Till then let it remain. For if earth presents to us nothing better than idols of gold and military glory, we prefer to kneel at the shrine of Aaron, and win the blessing of the pontiff who wears his robes and aims to repeat his sacrifice. We wish not the old hierarchy to disappear, until a better order prevails or is recognized. The worship of physical comfort and social luxury that characterizes our time, the deification of Nature, not under the forms of the heavenly host, or of sacred