rance, superstition, misery, and crime. The rise of the Protestant Reformation was worthy of a copious detail, but the subsequent ages have unhappily furnished too little to instruct, improve, or delight the church.

Ecclesiastical history has so generally told her tale under the evil bias of that antichristian corruption which we have had to record, that the student may say,

"And while I listen'd to your song

Your stream had e'en conveyed me there."

It is nothing less than a duty, therefore, to supply the rising race of Christian readers with safer sources of information. Nor is there a sufficient variety of compendiums, for the instruction of those who have either not time to read, or not money to purchase, more voluminous works.

The

For those who pursue with devout interest the church's story, it is natural to inquire what shall be the history of ages yet to come. lawfulness of such curiosity, and the desirableness of meeting it with some information, we learn from the manner in which the Author of all knowledge has constructed both the volumes

of divine revelation-opening them with a record of what is past, but closing with a prophecy of things to come.

The diseased curiosity which now afflicts the church, as it has ever done in times of excitement and of change, renders it desirable to give a scriptural and practical turn to the inquiries and expectations of the pious. As the simplest elements of knowledge are the best, the only introduction to its more recondite principles, the reader is here prepared for the depths of prophecy, not merely by being informed of the records of past history, but by being assisted in the study of those scenes which are passing under our eyes. By these steps, we have advanced to the investigation of those disclosures made in the book of the Revelation, of which a brief outline is given, that our little volume may, like the greatest, in the sense of the best of books, begin with the creation, narrate the history, and end with the glorious consummation of all things.

THE HISTORY AND PROSPECTS

OF THE CHURCH.

As a large part of the inspired Scriptures consists of history, we are thus taught the value of this kind of knowledge, and the worth of the Bible, without which the narrative of the earliest ages, both of the church and the world, had been lost. What God has so kindly deigned to teach we should be diligent to learn from his lips, and in his fear. The two volumes into which Divine Revelation is divided, the Old Testament and the New, give their names to the two grand divisions of the history of the church.

BOOK I.

THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE OLD TESTAMENT, OR BEFORE THE COMING OF CHRIST.

THIS includes a period of four thousand years, which is twice the length of the Christian history. The whole space must, therefore, be subdivided into shorter periods. Following the divisions which

Matthew* has adopted, I shall notice four distinct

eras.

CHAP. I.-FROM THE CREATION TO THE CALLING OF ABRAHAM.

The world, which is shown by the Scripture history not to have been eternal, as idiot philosophers have dreamed, was probably placed at creation in the state of autumn-loaded with fruits for the food of man. The civil year of the Jews, and other ancient nations, began at the autumnal equinox. Our first parents were placed in the Paradise, or pleasure-ground, which God had planted in Eden, at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris, near the Persian gulf. The state of innocence, which the poets call the golden age, probably lasted longer than is generally supposed. Though, by the fall, Paradise was lost, our first parents carried with them the hope of mercy inspired by the promise, "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."

From the creation, or the fall, to the flood, there were 1656 years. This, which was a period of sin rather than of religion, was closed by a tremendous judgment, which displayed the horrible effects of the fall. Cain, its first-born child, hated and

* Matt. i. 17.

murdered his brother, Abel, whose righteous works, and acceptable offering of a lamb, expressive of faith in Christ, were rewarded with martyrdom; to show that there is another and a better world for the friends of God, to whom death is gain. The murderer, driven out from the presence of God, built a city, and his descendants, who excelled in arts, soon became exceedingly corrupt. Among these, Lamech had the bad pre-eminence of impiety, especially for violating the wise law of marriage, by taking two wives. Instead of Abel, God gave to Eve another pious son, Seth, whose descendants, called the sons or children of God, marrying the daughters of men, or the wicked. offspring of Cain, the whole earth became so corrupt that God, speaking in the language of men, said, "He repented of making man, and would destroy him with the earth."

Grace, however, first showed its triumphs, in Enoch, who walked with God, when the whole world walked contrary to him. As Abel, being dead, yet speaketh, "that the souls of the righteous, at death, enter into bliss;" so it was now shown that the body shares in the state of immortal felicity, to which Enoch was translated without passing through death. He first preached righteousness, and announced the coming of the Lord to