Riches of the Old Testament.
THERE is scarcely a surer evidence of low attainments in religion, than undervaluing the Old Testament. The mature Christian finds it rich in the same gospel as the New, and the New is the key to the Old. "If the Psalms," says Irving, in his brilliant introduction to Horne, "contain not the argument of the simple doctrines, and the detail of the issues of the gospel, to reveal which the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, yet now that the key is given, and the door of spiritual life is opened, where do we find such spiritual treasures as in the book of Psalms, wherein are revealed the depths of the soul's sinfulness, the stoutness of her rebellion against God, the horrors of spiritual desertion, the agonies of contrition, the blessedness of pardon, the joys of restoration, the constancy of faith, and every other variety of Christian experience? And if they contain not the narrative of Messiah's birth, and life and death; or the labors of his apostolic servants, and the struggling of his infant church, as these are written in the books of the New Testament, where in the whole Scriptures, can we find such declarations of the work of Christ, in its humiliation and its glory, the spiritual160agonies of his death and glorious issues of his resurrection, the wrestling of his kingdom with the powers of darkness, its triumph over the heathen, and the overthrow of all its enemies?"