the arm of thy father's house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house," 1 Samuel ii. 31. "So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the Lord; that he might fulfil the word of the Lord, which he spake concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh," 1 Kings ii. 27.-" Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations," 1 Samuel viii. 5. "I will be thy king; where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? and thy judges, of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and princes? I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath," Hosea xiii. 10, 11. "And afterward they desired a king, and God gave unto them Saul," Acts xiii.21.-"So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shew-bread that was taken from before the Lord," 1 Samuel xxi. 6. "But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shew-bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests," Matt. xii. 3, 4.—“ And David came to Baal-perazim, and David smote them there, and said, the Lord hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the breach of waters. Therefore he called the name of that place, Baal-perazim," 2 Samuel v. 20. "For the Lord shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act," Isaiah xxviii. 21. can dispose of the profusion of these testimonies We in no other way, than by pointing out the places where so many of the remainder are to be found in a note below.* 20. Kings-two Books.] We may here observe, that still more remarkably than with the pieces which we have just quitted, we have now the benefit of a multiple testimony, both for the contents of the books on which we are entering; and so by implication, for the books themselves. We have not only the corroboration of other books, such as the two of Chronicles and Second Samuel ; but we have other historical witnesses in those speakers or writers of other times, who gave sum * 1 Sam. i. 11.—Judges xiii. 5. | 2 Sam.vii. 1.—1 Chr.xvii. 1,&c. ii. 8.-Ps. cxiii. 7. vii. 3.-Matt. iv. 10. ix. 1.-1 Chr. viii. 33. Matt. ix. 13. xvi. 11. 2 Sam. vii. 8. XXV. 44.-2 Sam. iii. 14, xxix. 4.-1 Chr. xii. 19. vii. 2-13.-1 Kings viii. vii. 7.-1 Chr. xvii. 6. V. 5. vi. 12. 1 Chr. xxii. 10. vii. 14.-Heb. i. 5. Ps. lxxxix. 30, viii. 18.-1 Chr. xviii. 17. 1 Chr. xxii. 9. xii. 30. v. 17. maries of the Jewish story-as the prayer of the ninth chapter of Nehemiah-several historical psalms, the 78th, the 105th, and 106th-the long speech of Stephen, in the 7th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles; and of Paul in the 13th chapter -besides the enumeration of Old Testament worthies, which he gives in the 11th chapter of his epistle to the Hebrews. It is true, that we are uncertain of the precise authors for all the precise portions of the historical books in the Old Testament. We are unable to make such a distribution as this; but we know that there was no lack either of writers or inspired men, and at opportune times, for all the scriptural compositions which have come down to us. The character indeed of these compositions rests, not on our knowledge of their secondary or human authors; but on our knowledge of their divine authorship, as attestedby the general estimation in which they were held among the Jews-by the virtual consent to this of Christ and His Apostles, who would have made it known to their disciples, if they had thought the estimation extravagant or false-by the direct attestations given to these writings in certain parts of the Old, and more especially in the New Testament by the agreement of Jews and Christians in this matter—and by all the general arguments which we have brought to bear on the question of the canonical authority of the Jewish scriptures. As to the abundance of qualified penmen in those days, though we cannot point to the definite contributions of each or any of them-yet we know generally of their existence in the tribe of Levi, and schools of the prophets; and, individually, even the names of some of them. We have Samuel who did, as we have already seen, write memoirs; and had the highest place and character of his day in Israel; and is ranked by succeeding writers with the greatest worthies of the nation. "Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name; they called upon the Lord, and he answered them," Ps. xcix. 6. "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me,' Jeremiah xv. 1. "Yea and all the prophets from Samuel," Acts iii. 24. "He gave judges until Samuel the prophet," Acts xiii. 20. "Time would fail to tell of David and Samuel and the propдets," Heb. xi. 32.—And then we have Nathan the seer, and Gad the seer, both of them recorded in 1 Chron. xxix. 29, as the writers of national history.* And we have Solomon.-And we have Ezra. And we have transcribers as well as original writers for instance the men whom Hezekiah employed to copy out the Proverbs of Solomon. * In 1 Chr. xxix. 29, there occur the names of no less than three Jewish historians two of which do not appear in the titles of any of our sacred books. There are a good many other instances besides -as in 2 Chr. xii. 15; xiii. 22; xx. 34; xxvi. 22, where Isaiah is specified as one of the writers of Jewish history; and xxxiii. 19, where mention is made of the written sayings of the seers. There is reference made also to what undoubtedly were other than scriptural books, as the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, as in 1 Kings xiv. 19. There is reason to believe that there were chronological and political histories, diverse from those now extant in our Bibles, yet valuable documents notwithstanding. In as far as they are referred to in scripture, they must be regarded as at least true narratives of the history for which they are quoted; and they seem to have been thus referred to in 1 Kings 2 Chr. xvi. 11; xxiv. 27; xxv. 26; xxvii. 7; xxviii. 26; xxxii. 32; xxxv. 27. These seem to have been more ample records than those which have been actually transmitted to us. XV. 7. In short we have no want of a sufficient human agency to account for all the compositions which have come down to us. For the character of these we must examine the evidence in regard to their nature and quality viewed as productswhich may be altogether independent of our knowledge in regard to the names of the men who were used instrumentally in the production of them. It is evident from 1 Kings viii. 8 & ix. 21, that at least certain parts of these compositions must have been written during the currency of the kingdom of Judea, or prior to the captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. The intimate connexion of these books with others in scripture, as with the Chronicles, and the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, speaks strongly for their own rank and authority as canonical writings. But we have more particular and express evidence for this in such quotations as the following. "And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions," &c. 1 Kings x. 1, &c. "The queen of the south came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon," Matt. xii. 42.-" And behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt |