collection at the sanctuary all the time from Moses to Samuel. 5. If now we examine the books of Joshua and Judges, we must be satisfied that the men who compiled them made use of such materials. In the book of Joshua is recorded, with much detail, the allotment of the land of Canaan among the several tribes. A document of this nature must have been written at the time, and by Joshua himself, or under his immediate direction. The same may be reasonably supposed of other portions of the book. If then it was put into its present form after the death of Joshua, as some suppose, the materials must still have been furnished by him to a great extent. The book of Judges covers a period of more than three centuries. Who composed it we do not know, but the materials employed by him must have existed, in part at least, in a written form. The book of Ruth may be regarded as an appendix to that of the Judges. 6. The two books of Samuel (which originally constituted one whole) bring down the history of the Theocracy from the birth of Samuel to the close of David's reign--a period of about a century and a half. The author, therefore, can have been, upon any supposition, only in part contemporary with the events which he records. Yet if we examine the biographical sketches of Saul, Samuel, and David contained in these books, the conviction forces itself upon us that they must have been written by contemporaries. Their freshness, minute accuracy of detail, and graphic vividness of style mark them as coming from eye-witnesses, or from writers who had received their accounts from eye-witnesses. Who were authors of these original documents we cannot determine. It is certain that Samuel was one of them. 1 Chron. 29:29. Who composed the books, again, is a question that we are unable to answer. It was probably a prophet living not very long after the separation of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. From the days of Samuel and onward there was a flourishing school of the prophets at hand which could furnish, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, both the writers of the original materials and the author of the books in their present form.