Old Testament patent in the New; the New latent in the Old."

In such a book, then, it is not likely that there would be unity; for all the conditions were unfavorable, all the circumstances disadvantageous to a harmonious moral testimony and teaching. Here are some sixty or more separate documents, written by some forty different persons, scattered over wide intervals of space and time, strangers to each other; these documents are written in three different languages, in different lands, among different and sometimes hostile peoples, with marked diversities of literary style, and by men of all grades of culture and mental capacity, from Moses to Malachi; and when we look into these productions, there is even in them great unlikeness, both in matter and manner of statement; and yet they all constitute one volume.

Imagine another book, compiled by as many authors, scattered over as many centuries! Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, contributes an historic fragment on the origin of all things; a century later, Aristotle adds a book on moral philosophy; two centuries pass, and Cicero adds a work on law and government ; still another hundred years, and Virgil furnishes a grand poem on ethics. In the next century, Plutarch supplies some biographical sketches; nearly two hundred years after, Origen adds essays on religious creeds and conduct; a century and a half later, Augustine writes a treatise on theology, and Chrysostom a book of sermons; then seven centuries pass away, and Abelard completes the compilation by a magnificent series of essays on rhetoric and scholastic philosophy. And, between these extremes, which, like the Bible, span fifteen centuries, all along from Herodotus to Abelard, are thirty other contributors, whose works enter into the final result-men of different nations, periods, habits, languages, and education. Un

der the best conditions, how much real unity could be expected, even if each successive contributor had read all that preceded his own fragment? Yet here all are entirely at agreement. There is diversity in unity, and unity in diversity. It is "e pluribus unum." If, at first sight, there be apparent divergence, a further search shows real harmony. As in a stereoscope, the two pictures sometimes appear as distinct, and will not come together, but, as we continue to look, and as the eye rests on some particular point, one view is seen; so in the Word of God. The more we study it, the more do its unity and harmony appear. Even the Law and the Gospel are not in conflict. They stand, like the cherubim, facing different ways, but their faces are toward each other. And the four gospels, like the cherubic creatures in Ezekiel's vision, facing in four different directions, move in one. All the criticism of more than three thousand years has failed to point out one important or irreconcilable contradiction in the testimony and teachings of those who are farthest separated-there is no collision, yet there could be no collusion!

How can this be accounted for? There is no answer which can be given unless you admit the supernatural element. If God actually superintended the production of this book, so that all who contributed to it were guided by Him, then its unity is the unity of a divine plan and its harmony the harmony of a supreme intelligence and will.

As the baton rises and falls in the hand of the conductor of some grand orchestra, from volin and bass-viol, cornet and flute, trombone and trumpet, flageolet and clarinet, bugle and French horn, cymbals and drum, there comes one grand harmony! There is no doubt, though the conductor were screened from view, that one master mind controls all the instrumental performers. But God makes

His oratorio to play for more than a thousand years; and where one musician becomes silent, another takes up the strain, and yet it is all one grand symphony-the key is never lost and never changes except by those exquisite modulations that show the master composer; and when the last strain dies away it is seen that all these glorious movements and melodies have been variations on one grand theme! Did each musician compose as he played, or was there one composer back of all the players ?—“one supreme and regulating mind" in this Oratorio of the Ages? If God was the master musician planning the whole and arranging the parts, appointing player to succeed player, and making one strain to modulate or melt into another, then we can understand how Moses' grand anthem of Creation glides into Isaiah's oratorio of the Messiah; by and by sinks into Jeremiah's plaintive wail, swells into Ezekiel's awful chorus, changes into Daniel's rapturous lyric; and, after the quartette of the evangelists, closes with John's full choir of saints and angels!

The temple, first built upon Mt. Moriah, was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither; there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building. The stone was cut, squared, polished, and fitted to its place in the quarry, before it was brought to the temple platform-the beams and boards were all wrought into the desired form and shape in the shops; and when the material for the temple was on the ground nothing was necessary but to put it together. What insured symmetry in the temple when constructed, and harmony between the workmen in the quarries and the shops, and the builders on the hill? One presiding mind planned the whole; one intelligence built that whole structure in ideal before it was in fact. The builders built more wisely than they knew, putting together the ideas of the architect and not their own. Only

so can we account for the structural unity of the Word of God. The structure was planned and wrought out in the mind of a divine Architect who, through the ages, superintended His own workmen and work. Moses laid its foundations, not knowing who should build after him, or what form the structure should assume. Workman after workman followed; he might see that there was agreement with what went before, but he could not foresee that what should come after would be only the sublime carrying out of the grand plan. And yet no one disputes the singular unity of the structure, though during all those sixteen centuries through which the building rose toward completion, there was no sound of ax or hammer, no chipping or hacking to make one part fit its fellow. Everything is in agreement with everything else, because the whole Bible was built in the thought of God before one book was laid in order. The building rose steadily from corner-stone to cap-stone, foundations first, then storey after storey, pillars on pedestals, and capitals on pillars, and arches on capitals, till, like a dome, flashing back the splendors of the noonday, the Apocalypse spans and crowns and completes the whole, glorious with celestial visions.

You cannot look on that cathedral at Milan, whose first stone was laid in 1386, March 15th, and which after these five centuries is yet incomplete, without instinctively knowing that it must have been the product of one mind, however many workmen may have helped to rear its marble walls and pinnacles. Its unity of design cannot be the result of accident. No, the workmen were not the architect. Every stone was shaped and polished to fit its place in the plan. And so of the Bible: that cathedral of the ages! Whoever the workmen were, the architect was God!

2. he unity is historic. The whole Bible is the his

tory of the kingdom of God. Israel represents that kingdom. Aud two things are noticeable. All centres about the Hebrew nationality. With their origin and progress the main historical portion begins; and with their apostasy and captivity it stops. The times of the Gentiles filled the interval, and have no proper history; prophecy, which is history anticipated, takes up the broken thread, and gives us the outline of the future, when Israel shall again take its place among the nations.

3. The unity is dispensational. There are certain uniform dispensational features which distinguish every new period. Each dispensation is marked by seven features, in the following order: (a). Increased light; (b). Decline of spiritual life; (c). Union between disciples and the world; (d). A gigantic civilization worldly in type; (e). Parallel development of good and evil; (ƒ). Apostasy on the part of God's people; (g). Concluding judgment. We are now in the seventh dispensation, and the same seven marks have been upon all alike, showing one controlling power-Deus in Historia.

4. The unity is prophetic. Of all prophecy, there is but one centre: The kingdom and the king. 1. Adam, the first king, lost his sceptre by sin. His probation ended in failure and disaster, wreck and ruin. 2. The second Adam, in his probation, gained the victory, routed the tempter, and stood firm. The two Comings of this King constituted the two focal centres of the prophetic ellipse. His first coming was to make possible an empire in man and over man. His second coming will be to set that empire up in glory. All prophecy moves about these two advents. It touches Israel only as related to the kingdom; and the Gentiles only as related to Israel. Hence, in the Old Testament, Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt loom up in the prophetic horizon as the main foes to the kingdom, as represented by the Hebrews; and in