But if the Old Testament be attentively examined, we shall soon see that it is a continuous history, whoever was the means of making it so (God, as its divine Author, I doubt not), with moral and prophetic addresses joined to it, beginning with the creation and ending with the re-building of the temple 'and city, after their destruction by Nebuchadnezzar; not setting aside, however, the Gentile dominion, which had taken the place of God's throne in David's family in Jerusalem-a dominion which will continue till Christ takes His, and that at Jerusalem again, as David's son. But this continuous history is in each successive book carried on, with just so much reference to the previous parts, and especially to the Pentateuch, the foundation of all, as was real and true in the state of the time they refer to; the last verse of Malachi throwing back (while announcing the coming of the great day of the Lord) the thoughts of the hearer to the days of Horeb and of the law. In first Samuel we have seven references to the Pentateuch, one to Joshua; in the second, two. That the law was forgotten in practice is most certain. But the whole of the Old Testament has the character of a successive history stamped on it in the very plainest possible way. This is its clear, natural, intrinsic character.
Mr. N. states that "no prophecy of the Pentateuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, which had not been already fulfilled before Hezekiah's day." (Phases, pp. 171, 172.)
I take the opportunity of this note to insert a statement from Lightfoot, in reference to the period at which the Magi came up, the sheet to which it properly belongs being already printed off. He supposes, as I have done, that the Magi came up some time after the birth of Christ, making the interval at least a year.
"Since, therefore, only fourteen years passed from the nativity of Christ to the death of Augustus, etc., we must reckon that Christ was not born but in the last years of Herod. 'Thus we conjecture:
" In his thirty-fifth, Christ was born.
"In his thirty-seventh, now newly begun, the wise men came: presently after this, was the slaying of the infants-and after a few months, the death of Herod.")
This assertion is so flatly contradicted by the contents of Lev. 26, and the well-known public history of the Jews, that it is needless to go farther. It is quite clear that Israel had not been scattered among the heathen before Hezekiah's reign, and quite clear they have since, and that God's sanctuary has been destroyed.